UK donor to Israel says he was detained for two hours at airport over Bil‘in visit

David Bernstein, in Israel to receive award, says he was quizzed over previous visit to Palestinian protest against security barrier; Shin Bet: He was questioned and allowed into the country

Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

David Bernstein (right) and Yoni Mendel at the 10th anniversary of protests against Israel's security barrier in the Palestinian village of Bil'in, February 2015
David Bernstein (right) and Yoni Mendel at the 10th anniversary of protests against Israel's security barrier in the Palestinian village of Bil'in, February 2015

A British tourist and philanthropist who flew into Tel Aviv on Monday to receive an award for his family’s generosity to Jerusalem, said he was detained at Ben Gurion airport for two hours and interrogated about a visit he made to a demonstration in the West Bank village of Bil’in in Febuary.

David Bernstein, who will receive the award from the Jerusalem Foundation, and who is also a board member of the New Israel Fund UK, said it was “a credit to the Israeli software industry” that security services had managed to identify him coming in.

“It must have been face recognition,” he told the Times of Israel. “All I can think of is that they photographed everyone at that demonstration and it somehow matched up against a Facebook photo or something.”

Israel’s Shin Bet security authority confirmed Wednesday that Bernstein was delayed at the airport for questioning by security. At the end of this process, it said, “he was permitted to enter Israel.”

Bernstein, 61, a frequent visitor to Israel, said he was stopped at passport control after landing on flight LY316 from London at around 10.45 pm.

His passport was taken and he was sent to wait outside a room to the right of the arrivals hall entrance, he said. He waited for some 50 minutes with around six other people.

“A young woman took me into the room, where another woman sat behind a desk, looking at a computer screen. They questioned me for 30 to 40 minutes,” he said.

“They asked if I’d been to Israel before, why I’d come on this trip, who I knew in Israel, where I had been in the country…”

“I told them that my father Sidney [Baron Bernstein] was a friend of [the late Jerusalem mayor] Teddy Kollek and that we use a small family charitable foundation he set up to support projects in Israel.”

“I told them I had visited Israel in February for the New Israel Fund’s International Council meeting. They asked where I’d been, so I looked at my diary, and said ‘Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.’ ‘Anywhere else?’ they asked. ‘Did you go to the West Bank?’ I said Ramallah. ‘Did you go anywhere else?’ one of them asked. ‘You went somewhere else, I know this.’

“Then I remembered what she was after. On the Friday, I went to Bil’in for the 11th anniversary of their weekly demonstrations. I was with an Israeli friend, and they asked for his phone number, which I gave them. They wanted to know who else was there.”

Illustrative photo of Palestinian and foreign activists during a 2010 protest against the security barrier at the West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah (photo credit: Issam Rimawi / Flash90)
Illustrative photo of Palestinian and foreign activists during a 2010 protest against the security barrier at the West Bank village of Bil’in, near Ramallah (photo credit: Issam Rimawi / Flash90)

Bil’in is a Palestinian village west of Ramallah which has been split in two by Israel’s security barrier. Villagers have attracted international attention and support by staging weekly protests against the wall every Friday, since January 2005.

“I told them I’ve been to Bil’in, to Sussiya [a West Bank village slated for demolition], to the South Hebron Hills and that I support through donations Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem [two human rights organizations active in the West Bank]. I told them these organizations are part of Israel’s vibrant democracy.”

“They wrote down everything, then asked me to wait, and after 20 minutes, returned my passport and I was released.”

Bernstein said the only time he was questioned previously was about a Lebanon stamp in his passport from 2010 and that the two women who questioned him “were only doing their job.”

Dr. Yoni Mendel, who researches Jewish-Arab relations in the Arabic language at Jerusalem’s Van Leer Institute, and who took Bernstein to Bil’in, said he had not been contacted by the security officials.

“David is a person who truly loves Israel,” he said, “and if he goes to Bil’in, it’s out of true love for Israel.”

“Bil’in is a story of real injustice. One morning, the people there woke up to find that their agricultural land wasn’t theirs anymore. Public figures come to the protests, often Members of Knesset.”

In detaining people like Bernstein, the security agencies were trying “to frighten people, [to convey] that it’s not permissible to show support for Palestinian independence,” Mendel added. “They see any campaign for Palestinian independence as anti-Israel, which it absolutely is not.”

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