Americans for Peace Now is so concerned, apparently, about Israel’s new travel ban which gives the Jewish State the freedom to refuse entry to its sworn enemies who are engaged in a boycott, divestment and sanctions, that they cancelled their annual summer trip to Israel, Ha’aretz reported Friday.
Americans for Peace Now calls itself a “leading source of pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy and activism,” which they express through advocating in support of the two-state solution, reporting Jewish settlement activities in Judea and Samaria, and “fighting to end the occupation.”
Last September, APN’s Board of Directors (Michael Walzer and Edward Witten) published an open letter in the New York Review of Books calling for a targeted boycott of “all goods and services from all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, and any investments that promote the Occupation.”
This could qualify not just these two individuals, but the entire NGO as unfit for entry into Israel because they engaged in promoting BDS against Israelis. And so, rather than to go through the cumbersome effort of schlepping with a tour group on a 12-hour flight from New York to Tel Aviv only to be told to take the next available flight back to America – APN stays home this summer.
They wrote their membership: “Now, because of a law that denies entry to individuals and organizations who publicly support boycotting West Bank settlements, we have to cancel our tour. We, who staunchly oppose any boycotts and sanctions of Israel, who call on our supporters to buy Israeli products and to support Israel, find ourselves being boycotted by Israel. We are punished because we believe that the West Bank is not Israel and because we vociferously oppose the Israeli government’s facts-on-the-ground actions to de facto annex the West Bank and by doing so annul the prospects for a two-state solution.”
Yes, absolutely, the State of Israel has decided to protect its citizens who reside and work beyond the 1949 armistice line against the likes of APN, and, frankly, not showing up in Israel to create provocations and generate headlines might mark the beginning of APN’s decline.
According to Ha’aretz, APN asked for clarifications from Israel about the effect of the new law on their prospects of entering the country in June, when their trip was to start, but did not receive an answer. So, while normally we get as angry as any other guy when government bureaucracy is ignoring us, in this case we’re making an exception. Good for you, disinterested, bored, couldn’t-care-less Israeli foreign office officials, keep up the absence of good work! Anyway, since they couldn’t quite organize the trip without the assurance that they’d be able to get in, APN cancelled the trip.
An aside: did we not see APN leading official Mandy Patinkin in his role as Saul Berenson, the on-again, off-again CIA operative in the series “Homeland,” visit his sister on a settlement? It must have been shot before the new law was enacted. Should be interesting to see if Saul visits again, or they shoot the whole thing on the lot in Burbank.