On July 1 prominent Jewish-American CODEPINK activist Ariel Gold was rejected from entering Israel via Ben Gurion airport and deported back to New York.
With a visa secured ahead of time from inside the US, Gold was traveling to Israel to attend a course in Jewish studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
After several hours of aggressive interrogation, she was told that she was being deported and her visa revoked.
When asked why she was being deported, Gold was told that she was being refused entry based on her “lies” during interrogation as well as an incident that happened last year while she was in Israel/Palestine.
Last summer, Gold was assaulted by an extremist settler during a visit to Hebron. She brought the issue to court and had a restraining order filed against the settler.
She managed to get the IDF soldiers that stood by and refused to intervene during the attack punished by their military unit.
“I found out afterward that it was the Minister of Interior [Aryeh Devi] and the Minister of Public Security [Gilad Erdan] who had personally ordered my deportation and had revoked my visa,” Gold told Palestine Monitor.
Haaretz reported Devi rendered Gold as a threat due to her activism in the boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) movement and called her, “a Jewish woman trying to take advantage of that fact for the worse.”
Gold responded to this accusation, telling Palestine Monitor, “I’m so offended to be told that my faith and my identity… is a manipulation of Judaism.”
In reality, Gold believes in quite the opposite.
“A lot of my identity revolves around being Jewish and for me it’s therefore especially my responsibility to work for freedom and justice for Palestinians, which also is for the sake of the future and soul of my own people.
I believe that freedom and equality are at the heart of Judaism. And I hope that we are able to get back to that. As Jews, we’ve strayed a long way off that course.”
Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK, a US-based, women-led, grassroots organization that works, “to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect [US] tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs,” according to their website.
CODEPINK is on the list of 20 global activist groups that Israel published earlier this year whose members would be barred from entering the country.
With a visa in hand, Gold was very hopeful that she would be allowed in.
But Israel seemed determined to recognize CODEPINK and any other supporter of BDS as too much of a security threat to be given entry.
“The forces that want to protect the status quo and uphold the system of racism and privilege,” Gold concluded, “become really desperate and really ugly when a light is shined on them.”
Pixel Co
TAGS:
