Israel, Omar, and Tlaib: No One Is Above the Law
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

To those seeking to make a scandal out of Israel’s decision to bar Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from a private visit to the Jewish State, The New York Sun says this: No one is above the law. The two solons were denied visas under legislation in Israel to protect it from those who support the movement for boycotts, divestment, or sanctions, known as BDS. Why must Israel honor special pleading?
That’s not going to stop the Democrats from trying to exploit the decision for political gain. Speaker Pelosi called Israel’s denial of a visa to the duo “a sign of weakness.” Senator Sanders called it a sign of “enormous disrespect” to Congress. Senator Schumer vowed it would “only hurt the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Senator Kamala Harris called it an “affront to the United States.”
Senator Harris has it particularly backward. Israel was reluctant to apply its law against Ms. Omar and Ms. Tlaib. Its envoy in Washington had even suggested it would make an exception for the pair. Mr. Netanyahu moved to enforce Israeli law only after America’s head of state, President Trump, urged him to do so. Mr. Trump knows the two congresswomen are pursuing policies opposed by the United States.
The fact is that there is good reason for America to oppose BDS. No person can look the heirs of King Solomon in the eye and claim high-minded intentions for the BDS movement. It is designed to end Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. Its apologists may claim otherwise, but Israel doesn’t believe them and neither do the vast majority of members of Congress and millions of other Americans.
We don’t recall, moreover, Mrs. Pelosi, say, or Mr. Schumer or Ms. Harris objecting when the Obama administration banned a member of Israel’s Knesset from coming here. That happened as recently as 2012. The spurned visitor was Michael Ben Ari, who was given but scant explanation by the United States. Haaretz reported that he believes it was his former membership in Kach, a right-wing party.
The visa denial prompted Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, to fire off an angry letter to the U.S., calling the party to which Mr. Ben Ari currently belonged, National Union, “a completely legitimate faction of the Israeli parliament.” It’s not our intention here to untangle that knot, only to remark that we don’t recall the firm of Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders & Harris rising to Mr. Ben Ari’s defense.
We understand that denying a visa to another country’s lawmakers can lead to ironical situations. America once denied a visa to the head of the largest political party in any democracy, maybe in any country in the entire Milky Way. That was Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party in India. Now he’s the elected premier of the world’s largest democracy.
For that matter, we’re told, Britain once denied a visa to a young Knesset member named Menachem Begin, who’d been on a British wanted poster. He grew up to be not only prime minister but also a Nobel laureate in peace. Could such a reversal of fortune happen to, say, Ms. Omar or Ms. Tlaib, whose proposed travel would, at least in spirit, break the very boycott they claim to support?
Rarely, our editor likes to warn, say never. The big tragedy, in our view, is for the Democratic Party itself. It has heroically supported Israel over many years. Surely it has many members seething at how their party has emerged in the van of those moving away from the Jewish state. It’s shocking that President Trump was the only leader to suggest that Israel has no reason not to enforce its own democratically enacted law.