Israel detain, bar student entry
IN A FIRST, Israel has held an American graduate student at its international airport for a week, accusing her of supporting a Palestinian-led boycott movement against the Jewish state.
Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old American with Palestinian grandparents, landed at Ben Gurion Airport on October 2 with a valid student visa.
But she was barred from entering the country and ordered to be deported, based on suspicion she supported a campaign that called for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
An Israeli court ordered that she remained in custody while she appealed. The week-long detention is the longest anyone has been held in a boycott-related case, and it was not immediately clear yesterday when a decision would be made.
Alqasem was a former president of the University of Florida chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that supported the boycott movement. Israel enacted a law last year banning any foreigner who “knowingly issued a public call for boycotting Israel” from entering the country.
“Lara served as president of a chapter of one of the most extreme and hate-filled anti-Israel BDS groups in the US,” said Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, who is charge of the Israeli government’s efforts against the boycott group.
“Israel will not allow entry to those who work to harm the country, whatever their excuse.”
Yesterday, Erdan floated a possible compromise, saying in a radio interview he would drop his efforts to expel her if she apologised and renounced her BDS support.
In her appeal, Alqasem said she had never actively participated in boycott campaigns, and promised she would not promote them in the future. “We’re talking about someone who simply wants to study in Israel, who is not boycotting anything,” said her lawyer, Yotam Ben-Hillel.”