Israeli authorities today deported an American journalist who was working as an editor for a Palestinian news agency.
Jared Malsin, who is Jewish and in his late 20s, was detained at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport eight days ago as he returned from a holiday in Prague.
His girlfriend, a Lutheran church volunteer who flew back with him, was deported two days later., but Malsin was held in detention at a cell in the airport while he began a legal challenge to his deportation order.
Early today Malsin, who has worked with the Ma’an news agency for two years as its English news editor, spoke by telephone to a colleague to say he was being deported and was then put on a flight to New York. “He was not in a good place. He sounded very confused,” said George Hale, a staff writer at Ma’an.
Sabine Hadad, a spokeswoman for the Israeli interior ministry, said Malsin had refused to answer questions and co-operate with security staff when he landed at the airport last week. “It is the minimal right of every immigration authority to ask questions or to clarify things that are not clear about every person who wants to enter Israel,” she said. “He refused to co-operate and we told him if he continued to refuse he would not enter Israel.”
Hadad said they did not know Malsin was a journalist until they were contacted by the press about his detention.
However, Hale said Malsin was interrogated repeatedly and was asked about articles he had written from the occupied West Bank that were critical of Israeli policies. Hale said Malsin had briefly overstayed his last tourist visa, but was registered as a journalist with the Palestinian Authority and with the authority’s labour ministry. He had applied for an Israeli government-issued press card, which most foreign journalists here carry, but was told it would not be granted because he was based in Bethlehem, in the West Bank.
“They knew he was a journalist,” said Hale. “We are in contact with Israeli spokespeople going about our daily work and we have never had someone so much as held up, much less deported. My opinion is that this is a mistake. I can’t believe they didn’t call it off.”
Court documents seen by Ma’an showed that Malsin’s interrogators said he was denied entry to Israel at the airport because he refused to co-operate, lied to border officials, gave unclear reasons for arriving and violated his visa terms.
Hale said he was concerned and puzzled about a document that Malsin signed on Tuesday, after his lawyer had left him, in which he annulled his legal challenge to the deportation order. After that the Israeli judge on the case closed the deportation file, meaning it can no longer be challenged.
After Malsin was first held at the airport Ma’an described his detention as arbitrary and “an affront to journalists not only in Palestine, but in Israel and abroad.” Ma’an scrupulously maintains its editorial independence and aims to promote access to information, freedom of expression, press freedom, and media pluralism in Palestine. It has no other agenda,” it said in a statement.
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If you watch YouTube’s videos regarding Palestine from a year or two ago, you’ll see the IDF in a dilemma as to how they can brutally enforce their rule upon the Palestinian resisters, and at the same time, avoid the criticism of the foreign journalists and other witnesses. Today, there are no groups of foreigners there to witness anything. The reason: the isrealis created new laws forbidding foreigners from entering their ‘occupied’ lands without the proper papers, in the interest of ‘israel’s security’.
I just read where the IDF shut down a Palestinian radio station because, although it was broadcasting the truth, it was being critical of israel. The israelis do not have a democracy for anyone but themselves. But then again, what’s the meaning of their “israeli Broadcast Authority”(the IBA).
Everyone should do a thorough study of the jew. If they did, they would understand why they’ve been brutally evicted from everywhere they’ve infiltrated and why Martin Luther, the founder of Lutheranism, broke away from the jew church and wrote a 75.000-word thesis titled, The Jews and Their Lies, wherein he advocated the extermination of all jews. But . . . .by all means – researchers must be very careful as the jew will try to educate ‘you’. Be certain of your sources. Watch YouTube videos of past israeli agression and other human right’s violations. Learn the truth.
As a sovereign country, Israel has the right to determine who can and who cannot enter the country.
Many other countries refuse entry to certain people for various reasons, as is their right. When, say, the United States refuses entry to somebody, we never hear complaints.
Let this creep go into Gaza through one of the tunnels!