Felix de Rosen at the Harvard Political Review says that Harvard has been unjustifiably silent over the expulsion from Israel of Hebah Ismail, a law student who planned to study the Bedouin human rights situation
Why was Hebah prevented from entering Israel? She had passed security clearance and had a letter from the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School providing details about her research. But she was a Muslim. Airport security forces at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport routinely use ethnic and religious profiling as an index of suspicion; if you look Arab, if you have an Arabic name, or if you wear Muslim clothing, you immediately become suspect. Hebah’s story is just one of countless others that are becoming increasingly commonplace in Israel today, and that we simply never hear about. Every day, men and women are banned from Israel solely because of their religion, the color of their skin, and their veils and skullcaps. And Ben Gurion Airport is one part of a larger program of institutionalized discriminiation. …
What angers me most has been Harvard’s response to Ismail’s case. Not only has one of Harvard’s students been prevented entry into a country, but [Clinical Instructor Ahmad] Amara’s land rights project cannot be completed. Yet Harvard’s Human Rights Program has remained completely silent. No doubt fearing reprisals from various sectors of the Harvard community, not one on-campus group has issued a public statement. Harvard’s passivity in the face of such discriminatory policies is both shameful and disturbing. How can Harvard call itself an institution of academic integrity when it implicitly consents to discriminatory policies that expel one of its students from a country and prevent her from completing her research?
Israeli apologists have desperately responded to this case by justifying the behavior of the Israeli security apparatus.
