Opinion: Israel wants to deport me for my human rights work
Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch at his hearing in Jerusalem on March 11. By Omar Shakir April 18 at 12:52 PM Omar Shakir is the Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch.
Israeli authorities say they’re deporting me because I promote boycotts of Israel. Setting aside the paradox of the region’s self-proclaimed “only democracy” deporting a rights defender over peaceful expression, the claim isn’t true. This isn’t the first time a Middle Eastern country has sought to bar me. In 2009, Syria denied me a visa after a government official said my writings “reflected poorly on the Syrian government.” In 2014, I was forced to leave Egypt after I wrote a report for Human Rights Watch documenting the Rab’a Massacre, one of the largest single-day killings of protesters. In 2017, Bahrain denied me entry after I identified myself as a Human Rights Watch researcher.
The court ruled that Human Rights Watch’s research and advocacy on settlement businesses constitute a “boycott” under Israeli law. The decision effectively means that, if you call on companies to do the right thing and stop contributing to human rights abuses and discrimination by doing business in settlements, you risk being barred from Israel and the West Bank.
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