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The US president has enlisted Benjamin Netanyahu in his campaign for re-election. That is an alarming development for both countries
Benjamin Netanyahu does not care for criticism, and his increasingly rightwing governments have sought to stifle it. But the decision to refuse entry to Ilhan Omar, and to offer Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, entry only on humanitarian grounds and with conditions, is an unprecedented step which has rightly provoked widespread alarm in both the US and Israel. Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, normally one of Mr Netanyahu’s most loyal defenders and a critic of the two Democratic congresswomen over their remarks on Israel, attacked the decision.
That the interior ministry, after initially saying that it would bar entry to both women, offered Ms Tlaib the chance to visit her elderly grandmother in the occupied West Bank on humanitarian grounds might have seemed a concession. But if anything it hardened the original decision: she would have been allowed in not as a politician and on the basis of her rights, but in a personal capacity, because the government had granted her a dispensation, after she promised to respect any restrictions and not to promote boycotts during her visit. No wonder she rejected the offer and will stay away. Continue reading...