Friday, August 16, 2019

Editorial: The Omar and Tlaib ban from Israel is a disgrace. True democracies aren’t afraid of critics

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-15/ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-israel-ban-trump-netanyahu

Last we checked, both the United States and Israel were democracies — and allies. Yet on Thursday the leaders of both countries sounded more like crazy autocrats with a penchant for silencing their critics. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to prohibit U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from entering Israel on an official congressional visit not only smacks of tin-pot authoritarianism, it elevates his critics.

Netanyahu justified this shameful decision by citing a recent bit of daft legislating, an Israeli law prohibiting foreign nationals who back boycotts against Israel or its West Bank settlements from entering the country. That’s bad enough. Even more outrageous is that President Trump appears to have goaded Netanyahu into making this decision.

Not content to call for Omar and Tlaib (and their two progressive Democratic colleagues on the so-called “squad”) to leave the United States, Trump has been pressing Israel publicly not to let them into that country. To quote his tweet Thursday: “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.” He added, “They are a disgrace!”

The only disgrace here is Trump’s behavior.

1 comment:

  1. Any country can deny admittance to anyone, for any reason, or for no reason. US, UK, Canada does it all the time.

    Mo one has a right to admittance to any country (except Israel under it's law of return, and even that has exceptions.)

    ReplyDelete

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