Israel’s Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli said on Tuesday that he had recommended barring anti-Zionist activist Linda Sarsour from entering the country.
Sarsour had been planning to visit Israel early next month, the ministry said in a press release, adding that the Immigration and Population Authority had accepted the recommendation and blocked her entry.
“We continue to uncompromisingly implement the policy I have set out at the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism: Anyone who incites and supports boycotts against the State of Israel will bear the consequences and be boycotted themselves,” said Chikli.
His statement described Sarsour—a Palestinian-American activist who co-founded and leads the Muslim advocacy group MPower Change and gained national prominence as a co-chair of the Women’s March—as “one of the most prominent figures in the anti-Israel boycott movement in the U.S. and a leader of the violent pro-Hamas protests following October 7th.”
In a separate post on X, the minister noted that Sarsour was “a leading figure in the BDS movement and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization whose factions openly celebrated the October 7 massacre.”
“She has incited students on American campuses, led campaigns to sabotage Microsoft’s defense contracts with the IDF, and specifically targeted Unit 8200,” he added, referring to the Israeli military’s signals intelligence unit. “Her central goal is to isolate and weaken the Jewish state.”
Sarsour in an Instagram post claimed her entry was banned due to her “advocacy for justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.” She denounced the Jewish state as a “brutal apartheid regime,” saying America must “stop arming and funding them immediately.”
