Israel Activist Detained At Airport In Act Of ‘Political Persecution’
Jennifer Gorovitz, vice president of the New Israel Fund. Image by jewish community federation
By Naomi Zeveloff February 9, 2017
A senior official at the New Israel Fund was detained at Israel’s airport on Wednesday, in an incident that an Israeli opposition lawmaker slammed as “political persecution.”
Jennifer Gorovitz, the vice president of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based not-for-profit that supports Jewish and Arab civil society groups in Israel, traveled to Israel via Ben Gurion airport in order to participate in the organization’s board meeting.
According to a report in Haaretz, Gorovitz was detained for about 90 minutes, during which she was questioned three different times about the New Israel Fund’s activities.
Gorovitz said that one of the people questioning her was holding a large document about her, which included the word “BDS,” shorthand for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. Gorovitz told the questioner that NIF opposes BDS.
Israeli parliament member Tamar Zandberg, of the left wing Meretz party, asked Interior Minister Aryeh Dery to look into the legality of the incident.
“This is political persecution, harassment and an attempt to silence those who fight for Israeli society,” she wrote in a letter to Dery. She called what happened to Gorovitz “harassment and political labeling.”
Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
