IfNotNow Founder Detained For Hours At Israeli Border

Image by Twitter
Simone Zimmerman, an American Jewish activist, was held by the Shin Bet security service at the border between Israel and Egypt for at least three hours on Sunday evening, Israel’s Immigration Authority confirmed.
Shin Bet agents asked Zimmerman which places she had visited in the West Bank and what she thought of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she said.
Zimmerman is a founding member of IfNotNow, a movement to end the American Jewish community’s support for the Israeli occupation.
While still detained at the Taba border crossing, Zimmerman wrote on Twitter that she and fellow activist Abby Kirschbaum were being questioned only about their political views and activities related to Palestinians. According to Zimmerman, among the first things she was asked were: “Why did you come here to work with Palestinians? Why not with Jews?”
Kirschbaum was asked about which protests against Israeli policy she had attended in the Palestinian territories and with which organizations, Zimmerman said. She was also asked if she wished to travel to Gaza and whether she had been at violent demonstrations – and what she thought of Netanyahu.
In 2017, Zimmerman, who resides in Israel and has a work visa, published a video criticizing an Israeli law barring entry to foreigners who support boycotting Israel or its West Bank settlements.
Zimmerman briefly served as the Jewish outreach coordinator for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary campaign before being fired over an old Facebook post surfaced in which she referred to Netanyahu as a murderer.
Responding to Sunday’s incident, lawmaker Mossi Raz said “the persecution of human rights activists at the country’s borders is another testament to the abyss into which we are descending.”
The Shin Bet did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Zimmerman’s questioning came less than a week after an Israeli citizen who lived in the U.S. for several months was detained by Shin Bet agents at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv for a “cautionary conversation” because of his involvement in left-wing organizations.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
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. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
Fast Forward A Palestinian man in Philadelphia served kosher bagels for decades. Then customers found his Facebook profile.
- 3
Opinion Is this new documentary giving voice to American Jewish anguish — or simply stoking fear?
- 4
Fast Forward Trump’s antisemitism chief shares ‘Jew card’ post from white supremacist
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The Supreme Court is taking on 3 cases that could help reshape American Jewish life
-
Books Why Jews were like everyone else — only more so — during slavery and the Civil War
-
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
-
Yiddish לאָמיר פֿאַרגלײַכן צוויי רוסישע נוסחאָות פֿון באַשעוויסעס ראָמאַן „דער שאַרלאַטאַן“Comparing two Russian versions of Bashevis’s novel ‘The Charlatan’
איין איבערזעצונג קלינגט אויף רוסיש גאַנץ נאַטירלעך, און די צווייטע — נישט. וואָס טוט זיך דאָ?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.