WATCH: Former Sanders Staffer Simone Zimmerman “Outraged” At Israel Travel Ban
Simone Zimmerman, briefly the Jewish outreach coordinator to Bernie Sanders, blasted Israel’s new travel ban targeting supporters of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement.
“I’m outraged there’s a chance I might not be allowed into this country,” Zimmerman said in a video by Israeli daily Haaretz. It has been shared 1,000 times.
Zimmerman, an activist was briefly Jewish outreach coordinator for the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign, but lost her position after a Facebook post surfaced in which she swore at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called him “arrogant, deceptive, cynical.”
The travel restrictions, passed in early March, instruct Israeli border officials to deny entry to travelers who “has called for a boycott of Israel in any public media or who committed to participate in such a boycott.”
In her criticism of the travel restriction, Zimmerman joins a chorus of American Jews.
“I’m not a member of BDS movement, but I believe that BDS is a legitimate, non-violent tactic and I personally support economic and diplomatic action and pressure against the occupation,” she said.
She said it will be “devastating” if she is not let into Israel, and urged Jewish Americans to be “outraged that this law is going to most likely disproportionately affect Palestinians and other Arab and Muslim folks.”
Contact Daniella Cheslow at [email protected].
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO