Matthew Bell

Matthew Bell

Matthew Bell is a Jerusalem-based Middle East reporter. He has been with The World since 2001 and has filed stories from cities across the US and abroad.

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Israel Blocks Pro-Palestinian ‘Flytilla’ Activists

July 8, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
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Pro-Palestinian activists being detained in Ben Gurion airport. (Photo: Fouad Abu Ghosh)

Pro-Palestinian activists being detained in Ben Gurion airport. (Photo: Fouad Abu Ghosh)

Israeli authorities detained dozens of pro-Palestinian activists on Friday arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv. The activists were part of a coordinated effort involving hundreds of people, mostly from Europe.

They had planned to fly into Israel to show solidarity with Palestinians, but most of the activists never made it.

Israeli authorities sent a list of nearly 350 names to airlines, saying the individuals on it would not be allowed to enter Israel for security reasons. They would be sent back, Israel said, and the airlines would have to pay for it.

By lunchtime on Friday, the tactic seemed to have worked. Some 200 activists had been denied permission to board flights to Tel Aviv. Still, the Israelis weren’t taking any chances.

Hundreds of additional security forces were deployed to Israel’s main airport. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said authorities had the situation under control, but the event was also unprecedented.

“This is the first time that we’re dealing with a large number of activists intending to disrupt travel in Ben Gurion airport,” Rosenfeld said. “It’s important for us to make sure that there are no incidents inside the terminal.”

Several minutes later, there was just such a small disturbance, in the main arrivals terminal. A half-dozen Israeli leftwing activists held up signs in Arabic and English that said “Welcome to Palestine.”

They tried to unfurl a large Palestinian flag, but they were quickly hauled away by plainclothes officers. Several Israelis nearby shouted at the protesters, “shame on you, you should go to prison.”

One bystander, shaking his head in disgust, told me he was a Jewish immigrant to Israel from Syria.

“I don’t really know what this protest is, but I’m against it,” he said. Then his friend chimed in, saying no one would be allowed to raise an Israeli flag in Syria, and that people should respect the laws here.

Police said they detained six Israeli demonstrators at the airport Friday. Thursday night, they deported two Americans said to be part of the fly-in protest. French activist Olivia Zemor had planned to fly in, but was refused permission to board a flight.

She said there were no plans to create any provocation at the Israeli airport, or hold demonstrations inside Israel; the plan was to just to visit Palestinian areas in the West Bank.

One Israeli official told me that the government has no objections to visitors coming to Israel or to Palestinian areas that are popular with tourists, like Bethlehem or Jericho. But foreigners traveling to the Palestinian territories to take part in anti-Israel demonstrations? That is something different, he said.


Discussion

3 comments for “Israel Blocks Pro-Palestinian ‘Flytilla’ Activists”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1282417375 Asher B. Garber

    These activists are so…. white.

    It’s amazing, really, to witness the daily Bash Israel ideology in full force. How does one explain to somebody what Apartheid or Zionism really are to people who will strictly maintain their own definitions of those terms?

    The answer is that it’s impossible. We are not speaking on the same level. Zionism is not racism– not inherently, not historically, and not by definition– and Israel is far from an Apartheid state, where Muslim folks don’t have their water fountains, they don’t have their own bathrooms, they don’t have to sit at the back of the bus. Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as Jewish and Christian citizens of Israel. Of course, there aren’t any Jewish citizens of most any neighboring Arab country, but, to these shiny, white, belligerent, and foolish “protesters”, that doesn’t matter.

    Because the real situation being underscored with all of these protests against Israel, all of these (false) accusations against her, all of the missiles shot into her territory, all of her citizens kidnapped in cross-border raids or detained while visiting the impending democracies of  the Middle East (Iran, Egypt, Syria, etc.), is the real racism, the real discrimination, the real evil.

    These lillyputian Europeans have got caught up in their own momentum and are showing us who the ugly people really are.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6L6FTDBJYFKOHEZCN6BO6ZEGQ dorn

    In any other country, if people flew in with the explicitly stated agenda of dismantling that country, they would be expelled without a fuss. But Israel gets singled out for special double standards.

    Isn’t it absurd that none are flying to Syria, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia… ? Or Jordan, the ultimate colonial creation? Of course – if they tried tricks like that in any of these countries, the treatment would be a lot rougher.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Y6L6FTDBJYFKOHEZCN6BO6ZEGQ dorn

    How like Matthew Bell to use the  phrase “Jewish immigrant from Syria” in
    “One bystander, shaking his head in disgust, told me he was a Jewish
    immigrant to Israel from Syria.”

    They were all JEWISH REFUGEES, not immigrants. In my own synagogue, we had descendants of Jewish refugees from Syria, Yemen, … . The travails and suffering of Jews from Arab lands has never been told in the Western press. Roughly half of all Israelis are descended from them.

    How long will it take The World to accurately describe them as refugees, and to compare how Israel uplifted them, with 63 years of cynical Arab manipulation of a similar number of Arab refugees?