Jared Malsin has arrived back in the US after being deported from Israel, and he is starting to fill in some of the blanks around his confusing deportation from Israel. Malsin clarifies that he did not leave Israel on his own accord and was in fact deported.
From Ma’an News:
Upon landing in New York on Thursday, Ma’an News Agency’s Jared Malsin, a US citizen, said Interior Ministry staff pressured him into dropping a legal challenge against his deportation order just two hours after his lawyer left for the day.
After signing a hand-written letter that Malsin said he believed was a "formality," ministry staff sent the paper to District Judge Kobi Vardi, who presided over Malsin’s case, and the judge decided to lift the stay of deportation order.
A motion from Ma’an attorney Castro Daoud, requesting that his client’s hearing continue in his absence, was filed and pending decision as the ruling to expel the journalist was made.
Malsin was subsequently placed onto an El Al flight to New York. "None of this was my decision," he emphasized in a phone interview minutes after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport early Thursday morning local time, rejecting reports that he left Israel voluntarily. "There’s no such thing as a voluntary deportation. I was deported, period."
Hours earlier, in an armored car en route to the plane, Malsin said he was unaware there were legal implications to the paper. "I had no idea I was waving anything, no clue," he said, explaining how Interior Ministry officials coerced him into creating a legal document to withdraw his case without an attorney present, and offered a misleading explanation over what he was signing.
The document apparently indicated Malsin was leaving the facility "without personal coercion." But Malsin said he was under the impression that the papers he signed would allow him to simply leave the airport while his case continued in Israel.
Malsin added, "I thought it was a formality. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t signed it. I believe the prison guards were extremely manipulative, misleading, mendacious in the way they dealt with me."
He should have known better.
I agree; was the document written in Hebrew and he doesn’t read Hebrew? If so, why would he sign it? Oh, yeah, he was in Israeli custody.
I’d bet he was very stressed out when he signed. Perhaps he will go into detail as to how he was handled by the Israelis, up close and personal…
Oh, I now know he wrote a note after an Israeli guy told him it would allow him
to leave Israel while his deportation case was on appeal. He had been confined for 8 exhausting days, and says they manipulated and handled him maliciously. He was told to write the note when he had no access to lawyer. Israel had already denied his girl friend re-entry.
link to americanchronicle.com
so why should the US be the dumping grounds for all the people Israel doesn’t want?
(this half is snark)
Maybe Haitians should write stuff their gov’t doesn’t endorse so THEY can get deported to the US.
(or maybe it’s not snark)
Nary a Zionist apologist in sight on this topic, huh? I guess some things are too idiotic for even our usual suspects to try to stick fig leafs on.
See, you invoked him!
Julian’s not really so much a Zionist apologist as a neocon loser.
A Yale guy and he doesn’t know how to read. How sad.
you know Julian, in front of the Zionist manipulation even Yale guys can get manipulated, i think the commentators here get manipulated sometimes.
Yale and Harvard hold the trophies for early and complete manipulation, especially
regarding Mondoweiss issues.
If you’re being detained for no good reason and you’re offered a way out in return for signing something silly it must need a great deal of will power to refuse. But I suppose that those who antagonise very powerful people should have plans ready so that they don’t fall for predictable tricks.
Contrary to what some may think, journalists are human too. I would cut Malsin a lot of slack here. He was “coerced and manipulated” in what must have been a very stressful situation. He is obviously intelligent and obviously courageous. I’m guessing he’s kicking himself now, more than anyone else could.
Sounds like a story for a Brokedown Palace sequel.
Malsin sounds like a real moron. He lies about his reason for entering Israel. There are thousands 0f anti Israel “journalists” in Israel. Al Jazeera has an entire office. All he had to do was tell the truth. Now he signs legal papers allowing him to leave the country and he states he didn’t know what the papers said. Yeah right.
Looks like his career is over. Probably has rich parents to bail him out. Yale is very expensive and it’s doubtful took a job for a Palestinian propaganda site for the money.
Here’s a bit more on Malsin’s custody:
link to washingtonpost.com
The Washington Post article linked by Citizen contains this relevant paragraph:
“Malsin has worked for the news agency — a nonprofit organization supported by grants from the U.S. and European governments and the United Nations — for 2 1/2 years, relying on a series of three-month tourist visas to extend his stay without a work permit. The technique is used by some foreign employees and volunteers at organizations based in Palestinian areas, who say they face difficulty acquiring work visas from the Israeli government.”
No mystery here: Israel is making it difficult for foreigners to be a nuisance. The view of this blog: Israel deserves all the nuisance that can be dished out.
Define nuisance, WJ. Of course, when you define it, it will be framed ideologically and not universally.
So that word, is kind of meaningless when you [speaking for Israel apparently] say it.
A nuisance – One that is inconvenient, annoying, or vexatious; a bother:
Congratulations. Now, put it in context.
A trivial problem, in other words, as opposed to a major problem like the denial of basic rights?
Cliff, you are being a nuisance by demanding from me to define a word that we both agree upon in reaction to a post of mine that was totally neutral and purely analytical.
potsherd – Mister Malsin has no basic right to stay in Israel. The Palestinians in the West Bank are denied basic rights. (The Palestinians in Gaza are under siege, which in this case is worse than being denied basic rights.)
WJ,
Calling a reporter a “nuisance” is not an example of being “neutral and purely analytical”. Its a value judgment.
And Malsin works in the West Bank. Israel should have no say in who is allowed to work in the West Bank; that should be up to the Palestinians. That the Palestinians have no say over whether Malsin can stay or not is a simply another violation of their rights.
Malsin had no intention of staying in Israel. He intended to return to his workplace in Palestine. By forbidding his entrance into Palestine, the Israeli authorities are denying the Palestinian news service their basic right of freedom of the press, the freedom to hire an editor who can effectively express their message.
WJ, you know exactly what I meant.
You’re making a value judgment about the nature of Maslin’s work (his politics), by calling him a nuisance.
I mean, it’s kind of transparent. You don’t like his politics. Hence, he is a nuisance. Israel would agree, naturally.
So don’t pass off your usage of the word as benign. That was my point, which I thought was obvious.
I am amazed how little you know about the real world. I imagine 90% of the posters here are young college students, so it’s not surprising. Credentialed journalists don’t get 3 month work visas. They don’t work for Israeli companies and don’t need work permits.
Malsin a spoiled rich radical comes off looking like an idiot. Not much nuisance for Israel.
Anyone here can google why objective journalists need to use 3 month work visas simply to aspire to objectively relate what Israel is doing in the land it controls.
I would say that freedom of speech is rather more than a nuisance. But the larger issue is the fact that Israel is controlling the border of the Palestinian territory, deciding who can came and go, and using this power not only to suppress the truth but keep aid from reaching the Palestinians and to pressure them to surrender their rights permanently.
So basically having a journalist highlight the human rights atrocities of the Israeli government is a nuisance.
Ok got it.
Palestinian reporters arrested