by the ISM media team, November 15th
Scottish postal worker Theresa McDermont, who came to volunteer for Rabbis for Human Rights during the olive harvest, is to be deported after a judge today rejected her appeal against denial of entry. She is the first volunteer with Rabbis to be deported, according to spokesman Rabbi Arik Asherman.
According to the judge, Theresa ‘should have known’ she wouldn’t be allowed in after being previously denied entry, and a recent change of passport was used as further grounds for denying entry.
Consistent with previous Israeli court decisions, the judge specifically mentioned that involvement with ISM is not reason enough to deny entry to Israel. The Israeli police appear to be in defiance of their own court system, as police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said in the Jerusalem Post on Monday that “just mentioning the ISM” offers enough suspicion to deny someone’s entry into Israel.
Rosenfeld made the further unfounded allegation that the ISM had “provided terrorist groups with financial aid”. The Israeli authorities have never accused the ISM or its volunteers of funding terrorism in open court. Furthermore, ISM volunteers have not been charged with a crimes in Israeli courts. The ISM has contacted the editors of the Jerusalem Post, but they have yet to publish the facts, maintaining the demonstratively false accusation against ISM on their website, without a reply from ISM.
Israel consistently uses a quasi-legal facade of “secret evidence” in court, and spreads lies in the press in an attempt to discredit the ISM and other human rights groups that support Palestinians.