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‘AP’ says Barbara Boxer is favoring Israeli travelers over American ones

I’m fixated on changes in the mainstream media, and here is another one. The Associated Press put out a story about the visa waiver that Sen. Barbara Boxer is pushing for Israelis who visit the U.S.; and the story openly states that Boxer has a double standard, because Americans would not get “equal treatment” from Israel.

Reporter Bob Egelko of the San Francisco Chronicle interviews Sandra Tamari, the Palestinian-American deported by Israel last year, and Tamari says that Boxer’s bill would create second-class citizenship for Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans. Sydney Morning Herald:

Senator Barbara Boxer is proposing to add Israel to that list [of 37 countries whose citizens don’t need visas to enter the US] – but without requiring equal treatment for Americans travelling to Israel.

Instead, the legislation the Democratic senator has introduced would exempt Israeli visitors from visa requirements as long as the US government certifies that Israel “has made every reasonable effort, without jeopardising the security of the state of Israel,” to admit Americans without a visa.

What that means, according to critics of the Israeli government, is that Israel can continue to exclude Americans who are either Arab or Muslim, or who belong to groups that oppose Israeli policies. Requiring a visa for visitors allows the government to bar them from entering, or to limit their activities or the length of their stay.The main purpose, Senator Boxer’s office said, is “increasing visits between our two countries, boosting tourism and strengthening the economies of both countries.”…

But Jewish Voice for Peace cites the case of a woman who said she learnt from experience that not all tourists are welcome in Israel.

Sandra Tamari, a US-born citizen of Palestinian descent, a Quaker and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in St Louis, said she went with an interfaith group of about 30 people to visit the West Bank in May 2012.

She said Israeli authorities pulled her aside at the airport in Tel Aviv, asked her about her family and her background, then jailed her overnight and put her on a plane back to the US.

While in custody, she said, she telephoned the US embassy. Ms Tamari said the person who took her call asked her immediately if she was Jewish, and, when she said she wasn’t, replied, “Then there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

Ms Tamari said the State Department later told her she must have misunderstood the embassy official…

Regardless of current US policies, Ms Tamari said in an interview last week, Senator Boxer’s bill would change US law and “create a second-class citizenship category for Arab Americans, for Palestinian Americans, for Muslim Americans.”

This is beautiful: Sandra Tamari speaking at length about her ordeal to the Associated Press, which makes Barbara Boxer look like she’s bought-and-paid-for. MJ Rosenberg always said: things won’t change till reporters put politicians on the hot seat over their slavish support for Israel. AP is doing that. 

[Update: This piece has been changed to reflect the fact that Egelko works for the San Francisco Chronicle.]

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”which makes Barbara Boxer look like she’s bought-and-paid-for. MJ Rosenberg always said: things won’t change till reporters put politicians on the hot seat over their slavish support for Israel”…Phil

Well she is bought and paid for. And the politicans are going to have to be nailed to a cross and have a bonfire lit under them.
We have argued and argued with Zionist, keep going round and round in dead end intellectual tug of wars on race/zionism, US interest vr Israel, human rights, international law …..you name it we’ve argued about it.
I give the activist , the net, the various brave souls on this full credit for breakthur that has occured.
But it’s time to step it up and put the Isr problem where it has always belonged and ultimately belongs…on US politcians selling out US interest for personal or career reasons.
Yes, I know the treason and traitor words give some Jews, connected or unconnected to the zionist, the hebbie jebbies but they’re just going to have some faith in the American public, that we can clean up the corruption of our failed political gatekeepers against this kind of corrupton without indicting them as a group in the process.

Bob Egelko definitely did a great job with that story, but I’m afraid Phil’s comments require a couple of clarifications. Bob works not for the Associated Press, but for the San Francisco Chronicle, which ran the story yesterday. The Sydney Morning Herald, to its credit, picked up the piece, at least online, and their site credits AP, so maybe the AP had something to do with distributing it, but it doesn’t appear that it went out over the regular AP wire. I just searched AP.org for “Sandra Tamari” and, separately, for “Bob Egelko,” and neither search produced any hits. And when I searched on Google News for “Sandra Tamari,” the only instance of this story that came up was the Sydney paper.

In other words, this story is not getting the wide distribution it deserves. While there has clearly been some progress in the mainstream media, let’s not get carried away – we still have a very long way to go.

“MJ Rosenberg always said: things won’t change till reporters put politicians on the hot seat over their slavish support for Israel. AP is doing that. ”

Significant change

From the AP article:
‘Ms Tamari said the State Department later told her she must have misunderstood the embassy official.

Department spokesman Mark Toner, asked about the incident at a June 2012 press briefing, said, “We would never deny assistance to any American citizen, regardless of their religious or ethnic background.” ‘

What nonsense. American embassies are often not helpful to any US citizens. I was in Mali, West Africa at a time when the banks stopped accepting American money and travelers’ checks. When I called the embassy, I was just told “Well I guess you’ll be on bread and water for a while.”

Even if it isn’t getting wide distribution through AP, getting coverage in the SF Chronicle is significant. With the previous coverage in the LA Times of George Bisharat’s OpEd and Boxer’s response, the story is gaining legs in the papers of record in both Southern and Northern California. Especially since Boxer lives in the Bay Area, getting this covered in the Chron might help mobilize some pushback to this legislation in Northern California. Even though it is very expensive to run a Senate campaign in a state the size of California, it’s important for Boxer to know that there are many of her constituents who think differently about this issue than the AIPAC donors who lobbied her in DC a few weeks ago.