When Israel turned back Yan Yang and Abdias Muhammad from the airport on arrival in Israel, it obviously caused some controversy and diplomatic chaos between the two countries. Israel, of course, said that they were there to reveal the actions of the military and potentially to carry out some form of counter Israel activity but the two MPs said they were there as part of a parliamentary trip—now that has been backed up by David Lamy, the foreign secretary in the UK, who has said that their turning back was unacceptable and.
This is not something that Israel should do; however, the Israeli authorities immigration authorities said that upon questioning, they were unable to establish any proof that these two women were there in order to carry out parliamentary business and, indeed, that there were no people in the authorities in Israel who were prepared for or expecting their arrival there as part of that process so there is debate and discussion over what the true nature of their trip was and they’re both known to be people who are very critical of.
Israel, of course, does not mean they should be excluded from entering the country but at the same time, others, including Kim Baden, the leader of the opposition conservative party, have said that there is no right to enter a country and every country has a right to decide who should come in and who should not and so she has defended Israel’s decision in turning its back, saying that there is absolutely a justification for that and that indeed, within the Labor Party, she said there are those who have.
Two MPs ‘astounded’ after being denied entry to Israel
been speaking out against Israel in ways that were perhaps not necessarily entirely true or have been paring twisting of what’s been going on in the region so I think that this will unfold over the coming days and it will soon be, uh, really apparent whether or not there truly was parliamentary business that these two MPs were undertaking there or whether there was a more nefarious cause for their trip. And Jonathan, this isn’t necessarily an unprecedented incident either; in fact, there was a similar incident several years ago of an Israeli
politician trying to get into the UK and they were barred from entering indeed so some are pointing to that hypocrisy. I tweeted it earlier on that in 2008, Likud politician Moshe Flagellin was actually barred from entering the UK by a then-Labor government. In fact, he wasn’t even trying to come to the UK so they were saying that he would be banned regardless. He was rather confused by that but they said that his presence in the UK would not be conducive to community harmony and such, and indeed Britain itself.
has barred other politicians in the past. In 2009, the Dutch politician Builders was also turned away at the airport in a similar manner to these two Labor MPs from the UK. He appealed that decision and indeed won. Now, the Israeli embassy in the UK has said that these two Labor MPs were offered overnight accommodation in a hotel that would be paid for for them and that they could appeal to the Israeli court in order to have this decision overturned but they refused that opportunity. So, there is indeed some confusion in terms of how.
The Labor government is standing up for this. Davi
Furious row after Labour MPs denied entry to Israel
d Lamy, the foreign secretary in the UK himself only a few years ago when he was in opposition, actually said that President Trump was not welcome in the UK so the fact that he is now complaining that there should be two Labor MPs, fairly little-known MPs—they’re not household names who are known only really among the Israelis and Jews for being against Israel—who should be automatically allowed entry into Israel when he himself would have turned back the president of the United States is.
Itself being commented on is somewhat ridiculous. Jonathan, on a broader note, if we take outside of this specific incident, does this specific incident then risk causing more tension between some of these UK leaders and some Israeli politicians? Of course it does and there is growing tension. In fact, it might have been the intention of the Israeli authorities to ratchet up that sort of tension because we’ve just seen Benjamin Netanyahu enjoying immunity from arrest in Hungary during that visit and indeed his plane.
has flown over several other countries who supposedly should arrest him according to the ICC arrest warrants. Britain, on the other hand, has said that it would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he landed in the country again. There is this idea that Britain feels that it can make these sorts of comments about Netanyahu despite the allegations of corruption and problems within the ICC itself, that the case itself is not really valid and yet at the same time expects some of its most critical members of parliament to be able to fly into.
British MPs barred from Israel return home, say they’re ‘
Israel with immunity with impunity in order to carry out their activities and as I said, if indeed it’s shown that they were really there or planning to be there for the purposes of carrying out.
