‘Israel’ weighs entry ban for Amnesty International employees

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israeli occupation Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked is looking to keep Amnesty International employees who support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement out of ‘Israel.’

Israel Hayom reported that Shaked is currently consulting with occupation Interior Ministry and Population and Immigration Authority officials on the matter.

Israel Hayom said it has also learned that ‘Israel’ recently “authorized the entry of radical BDS activists,” claiming that some of whom “were involved in attacks on settlers.”

The authorization was given “despite claims from the nongovernmental organization DMU it supplied the Interior and Foreign Ministries with evidence of those activists violating the boycott law, engaging in BDS activity, and having ties to terrorist groups.”

The 50 BDS activists in question belong to a French boycott organization known as the Association France Palestine Solidarité.

The AFPS was previously blacklisted by the occupation Strategic Affairs Ministry for funding “terrorist activity.”

In a statement, the occupation Interior Ministry officials said, “To prevent such cases from recurring, the minister intends to promote a working plan that will prevent the entry of boycott supporters into Israel. Within the framework of this plan, a mechanism will be established that will determine who meets the definition of a boycott supporter, who is banned by law from entering Israel, and their entry will not be allowed. The decision will be transferred to the Foreign Ministry, and if there are specific objections or justifications, the Foreign Ministry will be asked to relay its claims on the matter and we will examine them.”

DMU claimed: “AFPS is the main BDS organization in France, which also transfers money to terrorist groups. The State of Israel has already stated the organization is not allowed to enter Israel. Nevertheless, a red carpet was rolled out for the organization’s delegation, and it was able to enter the country easily.”

In a statement, the occupation Foreign Ministry said, “Based on the information received on the delegation and additional tests we conducted, we assessed that there was no basis to deny the delegation entry based on the criteria defined in Amendment 28 to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (denial of entry on the basis of a call for a boycott).”

It was reported lately that Israel’ is edging towards stripping Amnesty International of its tax-exempt status.

The Israeli occupation parliament’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is looking to consider rules that would strip Amnesty operations in Israel of tax-exempt status, according to the Israel Hayom newspaper.

The proposed measures were pushed through to this stage when on Saturday Gideon Saar, the occupation’s justice minister, gave the okay at the behest of Avigdor Lieberman, the finance minister.

Shaked’s and the above-mentioned moves came after Amnesty International said in a new report that Israel’ is carrying out “the crime of apartheid against Palestinians” and must be held accountable for treating them as “an inferior racial group”.

The 278-page report by the leading rights group details how Israeli occupation authorities enforce a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinians.

The damning investigation sets out how massive seizures of Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, drastic movement restrictions, and the denial of nationality and citizenship to Palestinians are all components of a system “which amounts to apartheid under international law.”

Amnesty said that this system is maintained by violations which the rights group found to “constitute apartheid as a crime against humanity, as defined in the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.”

Amnesty International has also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the “crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT” and called on all states to “exercise universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.”

One day before Amnesty International issued its report, ‘Israel’ called on the group not to publish the report, saying the conclusions of the London-based international human rights group are “false, biased and antisemitic.”

In a statement issued that day, Israeli occupation Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Amnesty “is just another radical organization which echoes propaganda, without seriously checking the facts,” and that it “echoes the same lies shared by terrorist organizations.”

“Israel isn’t perfect, but we are a democracy committed to international law, open to criticism, with a free press and a strong and independent judicial system,” Lapid claimed.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry also said in a statement that Amnesty’s report “denies the state of Israel’s right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people.”

“Its extremist language and distortion of historical context were designed to demonize Israel and pour fuel onto the fire of antisemitism,” it added.

A year ago, B’Tselem drew criticism from Israeli politicians when it asserted that Israeli policies had been designed to enforce “Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch in April last year became the first significant international rights group to publicly level the allegation of apartheid.