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Americans traveling to Israel say they are being denied entry to the country because of their connections to Palestinians or their opinions of Israel. Advocates say entry bans are on the rise and for reasons they hadn't seen before. This month, Israel denied entry to an American multi-faith group and American comedians. NPR's Daniel Estrin has more.
AHMED AL-KADRI: (Inaudible).
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Los Angeles comedian Ahmed Al-Kadri performed this month for the Palestine Comedy Festival in the West Bank. He and other comedians were supposed to be there in person, but they performed on Zoom because Israel refused them entry at the airport. In a video, he talks about being questioned by an Israeli border agent.
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AL-KADRI: I was like, we're just comics who are going to Palestine, doing comedy for people who really need a laugh, spreading joy. She goes, but you say anti-Israel stuff. I'm like, no, we don't. I tell poo-poo and pee-pee jokes.
ESTRIN: Palestinian American comedian Amer Zahr, who runs the comedy festival, says the comedians all arrived with the required Israeli travel authorizations, a prescreening for travelers from the U.S., Canada, and EU.
AMER ZAHR: We're part of a pattern. I've heard of many other delegations being turned away. And I think they're interested in letting foreigners know, like, don't try to come here. You know, this government is interested in cutting Palestinians off from the world.
ESTRIN: Bans can last five to 10 years, say Israeli lawyers who have fought them in court. They say Israeli entry bans began to rise after the October 7 attack in 2023. Israel began deporting visitors who volunteer in the occupied West Bank, protecting Palestinians from Israeli settler violence. And a new Israeli law bans entry to anyone who calls for Israeli soldiers to be prosecuted in international court.
This month, Israel blocked two left wing European parliament members from visiting the West Bank, saying they called for international prosecution of Israel and accused Israel of committing genocide. Israeli entry denials have risen sharply in the past year, says lawyer Adi Lustigman.
ADI LUSTIGMAN: It's a tremendous change. It's been like almost daily or at least weekly that we receive complaints by people denied entrance to Israel from all sorts of the most slightest reasons of so-called suspicious of unsympathy towards Israel.
ESTRIN: Some were denied entry, she says, for being part of an organized tour of the West Bank or because they had Palestinian activists numbers in their phones or because they didn't have active social media accounts.
LUSTIGMAN: They were denied entrance for the suspicious that they might have deleted their social media before entering Israel.
ESTRIN: Israeli lawyer Yotam Ben-Hillel also represents Americans and international travelers who are deported.
YOTAM BEN-HILLEL: It's very common almost in every interrogation to ask about do you support Hamas? Do you think what happened in October 7 was good? They're afraid they don't know what to answer. If, for instance, they said something at the beginning, and then they said something a little bit different, this itself is a ground to deny someone's entry into the country.
ESTRIN: Israel's interior ministry told NPR, since last year, it has denied more than 21,000 travel requests from Americans, Europeans and others from visa-exempt countries. It said it was unaware of the claims of an entry ban phenomenon and said all travelers face the same rules. The U.S. State Department in a statement defended Israeli entry denials as protecting against security threats. Another group of Americans turned away at the Israeli border this month, a multi-faith group that signed up for a tour of the West Bank in Jerusalem with a Palestinian Christian organization. Tour participants David Small and Kaleb Drew described the interrogation by an Israeli border agent.
DAVID SMALL: She said, you're here to see what we're doing to the Palestinian people.
KALEB DREW: Truly, you know, to the Israeli agent's point, we are concerned about what is happening to the Palestinian people.
ESTRIN: The tour organizer emailed the U.S. ambassador to Israel, who promised to look into it. But the American multi-faith group is still banned from entering Israel.
Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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