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| Israel bars UK Jewish left-wing activist from immigrating, orders him to leave by Sunday |
| 2024-09-22 |
| [IsraelTimes] Doctoral student Leo Franks arrived in April as a tourist and began the aliyah process. But after arrests in the West Bank, his passport was confiscated, and now he’s being deported When Leo Franks landed in Israel in April, he could see the next stage of his life taking shape. A British Jew, Franks, 25, had recently started his doctorate in history at a prestigious American university. He came to a country whose legal history he hoped to make the center of his research. Franks had been to Israel many times before and even had an Israeli girlfriend. On this trip, he hoped to make aliyah — to become an Israeli himself. Entering the country on a tourist visa, Franks, a graduate student at the University of Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, Berkeley, quickly began the paperwork to exercise his rights under Israel’s Law of Return, the guarantee of citizenship to Jews around the world that is at the heart of the country’s national identity. He then moved in with his girlfriend and prepared to start his new life. Now, five months later, Israeli immigration authorities are showing him out. Franks’ immigration troubles don’t stem from any doubts about his Jewishness, an obstacle that some aliyah applicants face. Rather, the problems began after Franks’ left-wing views took him to a West Bank flashpoint and an anti-government protest in Jerusalem, where he was briefly detained. Franks believes he was deliberately punished for his political activism and prevented from making aliyah by officials in Israel’s Interior Ministry, which handles immigration and citizenship. "The story here is that the courts have given the Ministry of Interior free rein to make decisions about who can be a Jew in Israel on the basis of his politics," he said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Or maybe you're just too much of a pain in the ass and a future provocateur that they made the call to avoid the obvious future issues? The degree to which Franks’ activism factored into his immigration troubles — his citizenship application was mysteriously closed and he currently faces an order to leave the country by Sunday — is not clear. The Interior Ministry did not respond to questions from JTA. While it raised concerns about his entanglements with law enforcement and about his motivation for being in the country in communications with Franks, the ministry did not directly say it was ordering him to leave because of his political activity. Still, he and his attorney, as well as a number of others who have been tracking the Israeli government’s handling of left-wing activists, believe there is a strong connection. "Was the ministry targeting him because he is some kind of activist? I can’t say. It’s clear the police want these activists to leave the country, and that was the end result of the ministry’s actions," said Franks’ Israeli immigration attorney, Ira Rozina. At this point one begins to wonder what — and how — Mr Franks was protesting at UC Berkeley. Israel has enough Antifa cadres here — it doesn’t need to import more anti-Israel terrorists, however much one might prefer to attack the police and those who disagree with them at the source of such things. Lots more detail about thr handling of his case at the link. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |