Arab-Israeli Actress Detained by Security Personnel at Ben Gurion Airport
Entry Denied: An officer patrols Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, where some Muslim and Arab Americans appear to have been turned back on ethnic grounds. Image by Getty Images
An Arab-Israeli actress was detained for more than two hours by security services at Ben Gurion Airport.
Samar Qupty was traveling on Wednesday night to the Colombia Film Festival to promote her film “Junction 48.”
Qupty said in a post on Facebook that she showed the security personnel the invitation to the film festival and its program, but they were unswayed. She was allowed to board the plane after agreeing to leave her luggage behind. Security gave her a small bag in which to place her essentials, a photo of which she also posted on her Facebook page.
“You didn’t know how I even dared to think that I deserve to fly to Colombia,” she wrote in the post.
“It’s not clear to you what an Arab woman is going to do there alone, even though it’s already been explained to you that I’m going to represent my movie ‘Junction 48’ at the film festival there. And even though I have the invitation and the program and everything necessary to prove that this indeed is the intention, you suspect me.”
Qupty added that two of the security officials recognized her from the movie and acted like fans.
“‘Junction 48’ is the love story of two young Palestinian hip-hop artists who use their music to fight against both the external oppression of Israeli society and the internal repression of their own crime-ridden, conservative community,” according to IMDB.
Qupty wrote at the end of her post that the incident “reminds me how much I am not welcome here.”
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