High Court Overrules State, Allows ‘BDS Activist’ Lara Alqasem To Enter Israel

Lara Alqasem, the American graduate student who was been denied entry to Israel due to alleged BDS activities will be allowed to enter the country, the High Court of Justice ruled Thursday.

Alqasem, 22, enrolled for a Masters degree in human rights at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and was granted a student visa, however when she arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on October 2nd, she was barred from entering the country under Israel’s anti-BDS laws as she had served as president of the University of Florida local chapter of Student for Justice for Palestine, a group that advocates BDS.

Alqasem appealed to the court against the deportation order, saying that she was no longer active in the group, no longer supported a boycott of Israel and had chosen to study at an Israeli university to gain a greater understanding of the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

A lower court upheld the deportation, however Alqasem appealed to the High Court which ruled that there were insufficient grounds to prevent her entry to Israel and said that “the inevitable impression is that the denial of her visa was down to her political opinions.”

Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, whose ministry coordinates anti-BDS activities,  slammed the court’s decision,which he said harmed the state’s ability to fight the boycott movement.

“Once again the High Court has emptied of content Knesset legislation and misused the powers granted it by the executive,” Erdan said. “The court underestimated the extreme and anti-Semitic nature of the organization in which Alqasem played a senior role and ignored the fact that she had deleted and obfuscated her social media activities prior to arriving in Israel, opening the door for other BDS activists to claim in order to gain entry that ‘at the moment’ they do not support the boycott,” Erdan added.

Alqasem’s attorney, Yotam Ben Hillel, told the court that the law applied to persons “currently” involved in BDS activity and that as his client had not been a member of SJP for over a year-and-a-half, there was no justification to deny her entry to the country.

The state however countered that Alqasem was active in BDS circles as late as 2018, presenting her ‘attending’ BDS oriented events on her Facebook profile as evidence,