Barred Democrats want colleagues to see ‘cruel reality of occupation’

St Paul, Minnesota:  US Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have sharply criticised Israel for denying them entry to the country and called on fellow members of Congress to visit while they cannot.

Omar, of Minnesota, suggested President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were suppressing American representatives’ ability to carry out their oversight role.

“I would encourage my colleagues to visit, meet with the people we were going to meet with, see the things we were going to see, hear the stories we were going to hear,” Omar said at a news conference. “We cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us.”

At Trump’s urging, Israel denied entry to the first two Muslim women elected to Congress over their support for a Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions global movement. Tlaib and Omar, who had planned to visit Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a tour organised by a Palestinian group, are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Tlaib, a US-born Palestinian-American from Michigan, had also planned to visit her aging grandmother in the West Bank. Israeli officials later relented and said she could visit her grandmother after all.
Read the article by Steve Karnowski in The Sydney Morning Herald.