The United States has fired a Palestinian activist from boycotting Israel´s territory and a senior US official has described it as anti-Semitic.
Omar Barghouthi is one of the founders of the Israeli boycott movement. He was preempted from boarding a flight to the United States where he was scheduled to attend a conference at Harvard and New York universities.
Barghouthi said in a statement that preventing him from entering the United States, although his travel papers are all legal, is to prevent "ideological and political" and is part of Israel´s "growing repression" against human rights defenders from Palestinians, Israelis and internationals within the boycott movement for freedom and justice Equality ".
He said he was going to the United States to attend his daughter´s wedding.
State Department spokesman Robert Paladino said the United States does not justify its decisions on individual visas. Without explaining why he refused Barghouthi´s visa, he stressed that "American law does not approve the rejection of a building visa only on political statements and positions if those statements and positions are legal in the United States."
The boycott movement calls for boycotting Israel economically, culturally and even academically, and particularly calls for a boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The new US envoy to anti-Semitism, Ilan Carr, accused the boycott campaign of being anti-Semitic.
"Someone can decide to buy or not to buy what he wants, but with an organized campaign to strangle Israel economically, this is anti-Semitic," he told the press.
Criticism of a country´s policies was "very normal" under a democratic system, but "criticizing Israel in a way that no other country criticizes in similar circumstances" is "anti-Semitic."
