Opposition slams blacklist barring members of BDS groups

Opposition leaders slam the government’s policy toward the BDS ​movement following the publication of a list of organizations whose members will be banned from entering Israel.

The blacklist currently covers around 20 groups the ministry says are part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and which it says consistently and openly work to delegitmize Israel.

Speaking at the weekly Yesh Atid faction meeting at the Knesset, party chairman Yair Lapid calls the list an “idiotic idea.”

“BDS activists are detestable but this is an idiotic idea. So our policy to fight boycotts is by implementing another boycott?” he asks.

Lapid says that beyond “harming the war against BDS,” the list also makes no sense since members of some of the Jewish BDS groups on the list, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, “can just make aliyah and then they will be here anyway.”

Zionist Union chair Avi Gabbay, speaking at his faction meeting, says that the blocking BDS activists “has no logic at all.”

“They are causing damage abroad. So if they are here, they can’t do the same damage abroad,” he says.

Zionist Union number two Tzipi Livni echoes Gabbay’s words, saying that the way to prevent BDS activists is not to keep them out of Israel but to “allow them in so that they can see this country for what is really is.”

— Raoul Wootliff