Israel Activist Detained At Airport In Act Of ‘Political Persecution’

Jennifer Gorovitz, vice president of the New Israel Fund. Image by jewish community federation

By Naomi Zeveloff February 9, 2017

A senior official at the New Israel Fund was detained at Israel’s airport on Wednesday, in an incident that an Israeli opposition lawmaker slammed as “political persecution.”

Jennifer Gorovitz, the vice president of the New Israel Fund, a U.S.-based not-for-profit that supports Jewish and Arab civil society groups in Israel, traveled to Israel via Ben Gurion airport in order to participate in the organization’s board meeting.

According to a report in Haaretz, Gorovitz was detained for about 90 minutes, during which she was questioned three different times about the New Israel Fund’s activities.

Gorovitz said that one of the people questioning her was holding a large document about her, which included the word “BDS,” shorthand for the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. Gorovitz told the questioner that NIF opposes BDS.

Israeli parliament member Tamar Zandberg, of the left wing Meretz party, asked Interior Minister Aryeh Dery to look into the legality of the incident.

“This is political persecution, harassment and an attempt to silence those who fight for Israeli society,” she wrote in a letter to Dery. She called what happened to Gorovitz “harassment and political labeling.”

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at zeveloff@forward.com

Naomi Zeveloff is the former Middle East correspondent of the Forward, primarily covering Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

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