Omar Barghouti, who was banned from entering the US, says Israel makes Washington do its bidding in suppressing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but it only results in greater grassroots support.

Last week, Barghouti was prohibited from traveling from Israel to the US by the American immigration authorities despite having a valid visa. Speaking to RT, the activist said the US was adopting “McCarthyite” policies to please Israel.

“We see this as Israel outsourcing its McCarthyite anti-democratic repression against the BDS movement for human rights in Palestine to the United States,” he said. “The US administration has been mobilized now to do Israel’s bidding in trying to silence Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders, who are active in this extremely effective and very important non-violent BDS movement.”

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Barghouti said the travel restriction resulted in him missing several events in the US, where he intended to advocate the BDS cause. He added that the attempts by dozens of US states to ban the movement were a clear violation of the First Amendment.

“As far back as 1982 the US Supreme Court ruled that boycotts for political, social, and economic change are considered free speech,” he said. “All those 27 states are following Israel’s orders, basically, while violating their own constitution.”

There is a lot of outrage at the audacity of the US administration, this xenophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab – and anti-Jewish – US administration that is hiding behind its support for Israel to cover up its own violations of human rights around the world, including its suppression of democratic rights of the American citizens themselves.

The attempts to undermine the BDS movement “from above” in the US have so far been in vain, he believes. “It has miserably failed to stop the immense growth of the movement at the grassroots level among trade unions, churches, women’s groups, LGBT groups and so on and so forth.”

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