Author: admin

By Alan MacLeod, reposted from MintPress News, June 18, 2026

If you are a Christian living in the Western United States, you have almost certainly been targeted with pro-Israel, anti-Palestine propaganda, paid for directly by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Your searches, location, and internet activity is being monitored by Israel, and your algorithms and search results across multiple platforms are being manipulated by Israeli government in what its American partner calls the “largest geofencing and targeted Christian digital campaign ever.”

Amid a massive drop in support from the Christian community, Israel is spending millions of dollars to target individuals entering churches or Christian colleges with ads, and paying pastors across the country to promote propaganda and false “anti-Palestinian” narratives every Sunday, documents filed with the United States’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) show. 

The 86-page disclosure reveals that Israel is recruiting Hollywood celebrities and sports stars to promote the country, while also manipulating Christians’ social media feeds. And they are doing it by spying on you through your phone. 

MintPress explores this explosive story, largely ignored in corporate media. 

Propaganda Storm

In September, Show Faith by Works LLC, a San Diego-based company led by conservative activist Chad Schnitger, filed a sworn document with the U.S. Department of Justice. The declaration revealed that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was paying Show Faith by Works $4.1 million to carry out a massive, covert, digital surveillance operation targeting Christian communities across multiple states, including California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. 

The document noted that all students at every Christian college and every congregant at “every major church” in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado has been spied on through their phone’s location data, and targeted with propaganda extolling Israel’s “moral superiority” and “linking the Palestinian population with extremist factions.” The campaign estimates that it has reached well over eight million Americans.

Show Faith by Works itself divides its messaging into two themes: “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian”. Its primary goals, in its own words, are to “combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the Nation of Israel,” by “using biblical arguments to highlight the importance of Israel and the Jewish People to Christians.” It also wishes to “educate Christians on the historical importance of Israel and its significance in the region,” and to “counter new and evolving pro-Palestinian messaging as the global narrative shifts.”

Many of their anti-Palestinian talking points are highly controversial, dubious, or even blatant falsehoods. Their principal messaging on Palestine is that there never was (or should be) a Palestinian state in history, that “Palestinians shelter terrorists” and “hide weapons in their schools and hospitals,” and that they are not a trustworthy actor, as the Palestinians’ goals are “genocidal.”

They also share ads and messages with American Christians claiming that Gazans kill U.S. Christian aid workers distributing food to them, and that “Israel is the birthplace of Jesus.” (In fact, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, in the Palestinian West Bank.)

The overall message, then, is one extolling Israel’s supposed virtues, encouraging Americans to visit, while dehumanizing Palestinians (including the 12.5% of historic Palestine who were Christians themselves) as genocidal terrorist intent on destroying the world. 

Show Faith by Works projects that this content will receive 47 million impressions across the United States in its first twelve months in operation. 

Hi-Tech Targeting

Show Faith by Works and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs are able to carry out this sophisticated operation by taking advantage of a technology called “geofencing.” Geofencing creates invisible digital boundaries around real world locations (in this case, hundreds of churches and universities).

Any phone or smart device entering a church on Sunday or a college during term time is logged and recorded. The operation then begins sending targeted advertisements and messaging to each device through ad networks, promoting Israel and demonizing Palestine. These messages appear in Google searches, on social media, and on any number of apps and platforms. 

Your behavioral data – how you respond to the ads, what you click, or how long you watch for, is fed back into the operation in order to tailor messaging to each individual, making future targeting more effective. Over time, the system builds up an enormous amount of data on each individual – their locations, beliefs, preferences, and actions, in order to better manipulate them. 

Once you enter a church or college targeted by Israel, there is almost nothing you can do about it. They are paying to manipulate your search results, news feeds, and algorithms. What you see online will be decided by Israel, not by you. And virtually none of the millions of people affected are aware this is happening. 

Is Your Pastor a Secret Israeli Agent?

The operation admits that it has “digitally target[ing]” every large church in four western states. This includes 219 in California, 39 in Arizona, 32 in Colorado, and 14 in Nevada. Some of these megachurches boast congregations of up to 45,000 people, helping reach an estimated 3.9 million individuals. It has also geofenced hundreds of smaller churches across the country, reaching a further 3.8 million Christians, primarily in urban locations. 

A wide range of Christian denominations has been targeted, including some traditionally associated with the conservative right-wing, such as the Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, generally associated. But the operation also focuses on others, such as the United Methodist Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Churches of Christ, and the American Baptist Churches USA. 

A full list of confirmed churches and Christian colleges likely targeted can be found at the end of this investigation. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described the battle for American public opinion to be the “eighth front” of the war, comparing it to the seven-front campaign he is already waging. In order to win this crucial struggle, Israel is employing Show Faith by Works to insert its messaging directly into the sacred sanctuaries of American churches. 

The company was involved in the 1000 Pastors Project, an endeavor that saw some 1070 American clergymen accept an expense-paid trip to Israel in December in order to equip them with the ability to serve as unofficial ambassadors for the country. Thousands more pastors are expected to be invited on a similar trip this year. 

Show Faith by Works has designed, published and distributed “pastoral resource packages” to hundreds of churches, packages that include “pro-Israel educational materials,” like the ones discussed previously, information “debunking pro-Palestinian popular arguments,” and helps to  organize group travel trips to Israel. They also recruit pastors to write newspaper op-eds, and produce 3-5 minute pro-Israel video lectures designed to be played in churches across the nation. 

There is also a special effort to reach minority communities, with content specifically aimed at young women, Catholics, and Hispanic Christians being produced, while their pro-Israel material is also translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian. 

American Colleges Get “the October 7 Experience”

Young American Christians are moving away from their traditional positions on the Middle East. A 2021 poll found that support for Israel among evangelicals aged 18-29 had dropped from 75% to just 34% over the past three years. 

To that end, dozens of Christian colleges, with a total student body of well over 100,000 students have been geofenced. The Israel/Show Faith by Works project goal is to establish a major presence at Christian universities and seminaries, including making connections with professors, and hiring student representatives to spread the word and hand out specially designed merchandise. 

The campaign includes creating an interactive travelling virtual reality exhibit called the “October 7 Experience” that will tour campuses, showing “atrocities from 10/7” and explaining the difficulties that the Israeli Defense Forces face while “fighting bad guys in hostile territory.”

Celebrity Agents of Israel 

According to the documents, the October 7 Experience would be constructed by the company’s (unnamed) Hollywood coordinator, who would use their Tinsel Town connections to build a five-star exhibit. The coordinator’s job also included making connections with “top-tier Hollywood talent to book Christian celebrities and Christian athletes to deliver pro-Israel messaging.” 

Among the names floated as possible hires include actors Jon Voight and Chris Pratt. From the world of sports, they aim to recruit former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow, three-time World Series winning pitcher Clayton Kershaw, and NBA star, Stephen Curry. Curry has expressed a deep interest in Israeli culture, has told the press that he is learning Hebrew, has two Hebrew tattoos on his wrists, and has invested heavily in Israeli defense corporations founded and staffed by IDF officers. For more on the NBA’s connections to Apartheid, see the MintPress investigation, “From Dunks to Drones: The NBA Has an Israel Problem.”

Another key category of influencers the project was looking to recruit was celebrity megachurch pastors. These included Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, and Greg Laurie. Together, it was hoped that this stable of prominent Christians could use their power to influence the opinions of millions of followers nationwide, shoring up Israel’s sliding approval ratings in the United States. 

Manipulating the Media

The Israeli government considers the online war as important as its military attacks against Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and beyond. The documents show that Show Faith by Works planned to flood the internet with digital content – websites, social media posts, podcasts, and videos – in order to overwhelm both search engines and ordinary users with pro-Israel content. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) – the practice of enhancing media’s visibility in search results – is a key part of this. As the document explains, the group will “optimize SEO traffic so that favorable coverage is increased and unfavorable information is decreased,” by “redirect[ing] nearly all web traffic to friendly sites based on key [search] terms,” “ensur[ing] that [our] website is the top of all search results,” and “prioritiz[ing] our information to key demographics.” 

A less well-known tactic the group is using is generative engine optimization, or GEO, a new technique aimed at influencing how A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude “learn” in order to make them espouse pro-Israeli views. Show Faith by Works planned to deluge the internet with fake questions and answers written by them, in order that A.I. will parrot their talking points to users across the world. 

Other media projects listed included starting Christian podcasts designed to sneak pro-Israel messaging to listeners, paying for pro-Israel ads and messages to be read out on other faith–based shows, and hiring a pastor to “keep up with Isreal [sic] news and to highlight pro-Israel, anti-Hamas news.”

They also plan to pay Christian influencers on social media to post about the virtues of Israel and “counter pro-Palestinian propaganda with response videos.” This strategy is similar to that of a similar Israeli campaign called the Esther Project, which paid influencers a reported $7,000 per post that supported Israel. None of the individuals receiving the money, however, has followed the law by filing as a foreign agent under FARA, leading to rampant speculation online about who has become rich accepting cash from Tel Aviv. 

In short, then, the project’s goal is to create an enormous astroturfed wave of support for Israel in the Christian community by paying pastors, celebrities, and influencers to espouse their support and admiration for the country, its society, and its geopolitical goals. 

Unbeknownst to the tens of millions of Christians seeing these messages in their ads, search engine results, chatbot answers, or in their churches and universities, none of this is natural. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate and designed strategy to manipulate their thoughts and opinions into supporting a state carrying out a genocide – including against Christians. 

Israel’s War on Christians in West Asia

Palestine was once a land where large numbers of Christians and Muslims lived side by side in relative harmony. Today, that is not the case. During the Nakba – the 1948 establishment of Israel, Israeli ethnically cleansed 90,000 Palestinian Christians, and shut down dozens of churches.

Since 2023, the attacks on Christians have greatly increased. Every church in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. This includes the historic Church of Saint Porphyrius, the third-oldest Christian place of worship in the world. The site has been targeted multiple times by Israeli forces, leading to the partial collapse of the religious building, which can trace its history back to 425 A.D.

Also targeted was the Al Ahli Church and Baptist Hospital, where repeated Israeli strikes pulverized the complex, killing hundreds. 

Inside Israel, attacks on priests, pastors, and other clergy are a regular occurrence. Last month, footage of a 48-year-old French nun in East Jerusalem being pushed to the ground and kicked by a settler went viral, as did images of Israeli soldiers gleefully desecrating a church and taking a sledgehammer to a statue of Jesus in Southern Lebanon. 

For decades, Christians have had to endure the common practice of Jews spitting on them. This sort of overt daily hostility towards Christians has proved to be a problem for pro-Israel conservative American church groups traveling to the region. Last year, conservative commentator and podcaster Brandon Tatum drew international ridicule, when, in an interview with Netanyahu, he thanked the Israeli prime minister and revealed that his Christian group was “only spit on once” during their trip to his country. 

One of Show Faith by Works’ key talking points that it promotes, however, is that “Israel protects Christians like no other nation in the Middle East.”

American Christians Losing Faith in Israel

Support for Israel among Christians is crashing. This is reflective of a broader trend across the country; an April poll conducted by Pew Research found only 37% of Americans see Israel in a favorable light, as opposed to 60% unfavorably. 

For decades, Israel has enjoyed widespread support from American Christians, particularly Evangelical Protestants, as many believe its existence is a prerequisite for the end of days, when Jesus Christ will return to Earth to establish his heavenly kingdom. 

Nevertheless, its popularity, especially among younger Christians, is cratering, falling to just 34%. This age discrepancy is partially down to different patterns of media consumption. Elderly Americans continue to get their news from TV networks owned and controlled by billionaires such as Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch, both of whom are extremely close personal friends and passionate supporters of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s expansionist policies. Younger Americans, by contrast, rely primarily on social media as their number one source of news. 

Explaining this phenomenon, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of pro-Israel pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League, stated that “we have a TikTok problem…a Gen-Z problem.” 

To that end, Israel has poured vast amounts of resources into targeting Americans. The government’s yearly public relations budget has ballooned to $730 million – a roughly 100-fold increase on pre-October 7 levels. And it is Americans that are the prime targets of Israel’s focus. Indeed, the word “target” appears 44 times in the 86-page document, indicating that Show Faith by Works sees them as threats to be neutralized. 

Christians report that being singled out like this in their sacred place of worship feels like a violation. Millions of American Christians are being secretly spied upon, and bombarded with propaganda. Christians in Palestine, Lebanon and the broader region, meanwhile, are surveiled, harassed, and bombarded with drones and missiles. In both cases, Israel is carrying out a coordinated, sophisticated and sustained attack on the Christian community. In Palestine, however, they are paying for it with their lives. 

Wadi Foquin is a village of 1,300 people about 5 miles southwest of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. It lies in a rich agricultural valley on the Green Line—the Israel-Palestine border—with the Israeli town of Tzur Hadassa overlooking it on one side and two Israeli-only settlements, Hadar Betar and Betar Illit, on the other side, in Palestinian territory. Betar Illit has a current population of 50,000 and is planned to eventually accommodate 100,000.

Like many other villages in the West Bank, Wadi Foquin is losing generations-old farmland due to settlement construction and extension of Israel’s separation barrier, both illegal under international law. Since 1948, in fact, fully three-quarters of the village’s land has been expropriated by the Israeli government. Dynamiting for settlement construction has also dried up many of the natural springs used for irrigation, and construction debris and raw sewage discharged from Betar Illit have contaminated fields and made them unsuitable for growing. Village life is further constricted by Israeli military checkpoints and Israeli-only bypass roads, which limit access to markets, jobs, schools, and healthcare facilities. 

Friends of Wadi Foquin has worked to provide financial assistance for projects supporting the economic survival of the village, made annual visits to Wadi Foquin, and—as the village has come under increasing threat from settlement expansion—advocated for its survival on Capitol Hill. This community development project is supported by the United Methodist Church, through its General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). Projects include Bee Project, Youth Leadership, Women’s Initiative, Community Center and “Come & See Exposure Trips.”

On March 18, 2024, the radio show, Speaking of Palestine, interviewed Adam Manasara from Wadi Foquin. To listen: https://archive.org/details/speakingofpalestine20240325

Friends of Wadi Foquin website: https://www.friendsofwadifoquin.com/

To donate to Friends of Wadi Foquin: https://www.friendsofwadifoquin.com/donate.html

This is an excerpt from the 4/1/24 “Speaking of Palestine” radio show about targeted vs untargeted Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions actions.

My dearest community,

These past few months have been rough. It seems as though everything I thought to be true of humanity has been challenged. I, and every Palestinian I have spoken to, am living in this very other realm of shock and isolation.

What is happening to the people of Gaza and the West Bank has not only deeply emotionally affected Palestinians everywhere, but has also affected our actual physical safety all over the world. We have watched Palestinian youth being shot and stabbed here in the United States. We have seen Palestinian business owners
being targeted. At this point, each of us has a story of experiencing racism. When our friends ask us the most benign question of “How are you?” we stare blankly, wondering what words we are supposed to use. Simply put, we are not okay. We may never be okay again.

I spoke with a cousin of mine who is a dentist in Amman, Jordan. We are from 1948, which means our family was driven out of our hometown of Al Lydd, Palestine during the first Nakba. I was worried about him and all of my family living in various Arab countries. I asked him, “Are you okay? Are you feeling safe with the war happening so close by?”

What he told me kind of rocked my world. He let me know that of course they are sad and angry, they are feeling all of the feelings that we Palestinians in the States are feeling, but they are more worried about me. Worried about me? I’m on the other side of the world! It didn’t compute. But then he went on to tell me that they have each other, they live in a world where they can openly mourn, openly express enraged feelings about the genocide, but they know that I live here. They know that being Palestinian in America is not an easy thing. They know that I have to hide my pain, my sorrow, my grief, my anger, here, in the land of the free. They know that
America is a country built on racism. He told me that they wished I were there. They would feel better if I were there. They would worry less about me if I were… closer to the war? I have sat with this. Turning it over in my head.

I have come to realize that somewhere deep inside of me I have been holding on to a belief, probably more like a hope, that this country (or at least the progressive circles I move in) stands for justice. Somehow I believed that the same people who have performatively championed the rights of the LGBTQ++ community, and who were aghast at the Mexican children being put into cages, and who planted Black Lives Matters signs in their front yards; these people who have recited land acknowledgments, and who have read all the books on white fragility and who learned to shame other white folks for their colonized mindsets, these people who abhorred Trump and all he stood for, would call out Biden and unwaveringly call for a ceasefire.

 Boy. Was. I. Wrong.

What I have learned of my community is that performative action is fickle. That unless these words have been popularized by celebrities and big box companies, that unless the risk to speak up is calculated in that it will make a person appear risky without any real risk being taken, then silence is the action. “Your silence is violence.” This phrase has taken on a whole different level of meaning for me.

In moments when I allow myself quiet reflections not haunted by the images of mourning mothers holding the bodies of their beautiful children now dusty and broken, limp and lifeless in their arms, I wonder if people understand what it is like to have been born with a political identity. I wonder if people understand the difference between choosing a cause and being the cause.

My sense is that most people do not know that we can never go home, take off the indicators of solidarity, put our keffiyehs away, carefully store our protest signs in the closet, and take rest. Unless you have watched your people continuously be killed by police and military who are never being held accountable, unless you have had to debate the right for your people to exist in humanitarian conditions, you may never really understand what it is like to never have rest.

When your DNA is deemed terrorist there is never a moment of solace. When knowing that children with your name, familiar dinners, and the songs of your childhood, have all been systematically and intentionally destroyed, there can never be rest. Palestine is in us. We are honored to be of those people with great faith and
strength, and it is a heavy burden that we must always carry.

I feel so much guilt in my sadness. I feel so much guilt in my pain. How does racism that I experience here compare to carrying their children’s body parts in bags? How does my exhaustion here compare to amputating their child’s legs without anesthesia? I often wonder if I even have a right to cry.

Someday I want to write a beautiful poem about the freedom of my people. I am saving the words in my heart, dropping them like pennies of hope. I wonder what it will feel like to only write about the beauty of my homeland, of my people. It might feel strange, unfamiliar, to no longer beg for their lives to be seen.

I am wet with grief. Their grief. My grief. It is a part of our identity. Grief and strength. Grief and faith. Grief and food. Grief and music. Grief and dance. Grief and survival.

It is not complicated. Nothing about this is complicated. Killing innocent people is never complicated. Also, racism is not complicated. Othering is not complicated. But what can you say when people refuse to acknowledge humanity? What can you say when people turn a blind eye to images of dead and dying children? I
wonder, “How can I make you see what I see?” Do you know your privilege? I know mine. A bed. Food. Water.

My greatest privilege is my voice. Words. Free Palestine!

Hanan Huneidi is a queer Palestinian community activist and educator.

Support independent media: https://mondoweiss.net/donate

APPLICATION DEADLINE: MAY 16, 2024

www.metapeaceteam.org/international-peace-teams

Not that long ago the Jews were in need of protection from genocide at the hands of the Nazis who were determined to construct a racially pure state by extinguishing all the Jews and the other non-Aryans. But today the state of Israel is committing acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza in its own pursuit to create an ethnically pure Jewish-supremacist state that requires the subjugation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in Gaza and of the Palestinian territories.

In stating this fact I intend no endorsement or sympathy for the horrific Hamas attack on Israel—taking over 200 hostages, murdering 1400 Israelis and injuring hundreds more, most of whom were civilians, and hunting them down in their homes and at a dance festival that was reminiscent of the massacres that happened throughout Jewish history. The savagery of the Hamas attack has awakened primal fears of annihilation that many Jews carry in their psyche and it must be condemned as a war crime. All that said, I understand the deep sense of rage, humiliation, and desperation from which it springs.

The 75-year-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians did not just start that day with this singular event and it is disingenuous to overlook this crucial reality. There is a context and a complex history, much of which has been systematically excluded from the biased Western media that must be understood and confronted.

That crucial history includes among other things the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in the first days of the Jewish state known as the Nakba; the horrific massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin; the brutal 56-year-long occupation of Palestinian land in violation of international law and numerous UN General Assembly resolutions; and the 16-year siege of Gaza with its relentless carpet bombing of a captive civilian population with no place to hide—a siege that is a death-grip on Gaza because Israel controls the amount of food, water, fuel, medicine, electricity etc that the 2.3 millions Palestinians living there are allowed.

It is sheer delusion and magical thinking to believe Israelis can ever be safe and secure as long as Palestinians are living under the Israeli boot. Any oppressed people will naturally seek to obtain their freedom and will resort to violence in their pursuit of that freedom especially if their aspirations are thwarted and denied as they often have been even when pursued non-violently through appeals to conscience and international law. We Jews should understand this given the fact that our desperate plight fell on deaf ears despite the horrendous history of discrimination, expulsions, pogroms and ultimately the genocide of the Holocaust that we endured. As Jews we must rise above our understandable fears and impulse toward vengeance and never sink so low as to exploit our own suffering in order to impose suffering on another. Never Again must mean Never Again for Everyone.

This madness must stop before this conflict becomes a flash point that drags the larger region into a state of war. Because Israel is the vastly stronger party to the conflict due to its overwhelming military power and the iron-clad support of the U.S. government, it

is incumbent on it to reach out and pursue genuine negotiations with the Palestinians who wish to find some common ground before we all perish in the barbarism descending upon us. The most urgent task for the moment is to bring an immediate halt to Israel’s savage bombing of Gaza and get life-saving food, water, fuel, medicine, electricity etc to its beleaguered people.

This tragic conflict can never ultimately be resolved through military might. I think it is impossible at this point to envision the exact contours of any agreement that might bring an end to this bloody conflict. But one thing is for certain—there is no perfect agreement whereby each side gets all of what it wants. The best agreement must affirm the fundamental humanity of both peoples, set aside selective moral outrage, and strive to obtain the fullest possible measure of freedom justice, dignity, security, and self-determination that meets the legitimate concerns and aspirations of both peoples.

David Glick; October 29, 2023 Fairfax, CA 94930

First Monday of the month on KBBF (FM 89.1) NCCP will air a program focussing on different aspects relating to lack of human rights in Palestine.

Link below features an interview of Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal in which she discusses the challenge to students  on university campuses who advocate for Palestinian human rights. Please take a listen and let us know your response.

https://www.radiofreeamerica.com/show/son-del-caribe-2-la-voz-de-su-comunidad

 

Los Angeles Times Article – July 8th, 2017

“There are many reasons people may be barred from entering the state of Israel. If they present a risk of criminal or terrorist activity, for instance. If they tell lies at the border or don’t cooperate with border officials. If they’re suspected of trying to immigrate illegally.

But now Israel has added a new rule — to implement a noxious law passed by the Knesset in March — requiring border authorities to refuse entry also to people who have publicly supported a boycott of the country. These visitors would be turned away not because they are suspected of a crime or pose a security risk, but because they have expressed an opinion in favor of a nonviolent protest movement that is unpopular in the country.

Frankly, this is not an attempt to combat anti-Semitism, as some claim, nor will it end what the law’s backers call the “delegitimization” of the Jewish state. It is, rather, an attack on freedom of expression and on political dissent. It is a disappointing step backward for a country that routinely boasts of its robust democracy and presents itself up as a bastion of freedom in an unfree part of the world.

Truly free countries tolerate peaceful dissent.

The law was passed to battle the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. The loosely organized BDS movement, begun more than a decade ago and modeled on the international boycott campaign that targeted South Africa under apartheid, calls on people and companies to boycott Israel until it ends its occupation of “all Arab lands,” tears down its border barrier separating Israelis from Palestinians, ensures equal legal rights for Arab citizens and acknowledges the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the former homes of their families in Israel.

Some supporters of BDS accept the “two-state solution” in which a secure Israel and an independent Palestine would exist side by side; others don’t. Over time, alternative boycott calls have emerged: Some critics of Israel’s policies, for instance, call for a boycott only of goods produced in Israeli settlements; others would target all Israeli goods. The new law does not distinguish between the two.

It is not entirely clear whether the government intends to keep out only leaders of the BDS movement or whether the law could be applied equally to, say, a college student who has posted a pro-boycott message on Facebook. According to the newspaper Haaretz, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wants to set up a database of Israeli citizens who promote or support BDS; the government already has created an “intelligence unit” to gather information on BDS activists from abroad, the newspaper reported.

Refusing entry to the country’s critics isn’t unprecedented; Israel has turned away travelers for political reasons in the past, including denying a visa earlier this year to a researcher from Human Rights Watch. It has also restricted the foreign travel of Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the BDS movement.

Some other governments have rallied to support Israel. In France, for instance, an appeals court upheld “hate crime” convictions for several supporters of BDS. In the U.S., a number of states have enacted laws barring their agencies from doing business with companies or individuals that endorse boycotts against Israel.

This page has never called for a boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel and has been consistent for decades in supporting a two-state solution. But whether one agrees with the goals of BDS or not, the fact remains that boycotts are a form of speech, a classic tool of peaceful political expression.

Israel, a country that has faced more than its share of wars, terrorism and other violent threats, has over the years built a strong democracy marked by vigorous debate and a tolerance of alternative points of view, at least for its own citizens inside its own borders. It should not backslide.

Truly free countries tolerate peaceful dissent. The 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories seized during the Six-Day War has gone on for too long and must eventually be brought to an end. For Israeli authorities to demonize — or exclude — those who publicly oppose it is a terrible mistake.”

This was a posting we found from the LA Times: