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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2014. Sam Bahour writes that Israel's inclusion in the visa waiver program with "special ally" privileges and exemptions to the rules of entry to the program, the US would give Israel the green light to continue to mistreat American citizens legally under the pretense of "security."

(Ronen Zvulun, Associated Press )

Preferential treatment of Israel has, sadly, come to be expected in the United States. Too often, the United States turns a blind eye as Israel discriminates against American citizens, then rewards Israel for this unacceptable behavior.

The so-called

would reward Israel by allowing Israelis to travel to the United States without a visa — a privilege that is supposed to hinge on Israel reciprocating the gesture.

The bill’s main co-sponsor, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, has defended a key provision of the bill that would allow Israel to continue discriminating against U.S. citizens. The provision, absent from the agreements that the United States has with all 37 other countries participating in the visa waiver system, gives Israel a green light to deny entry — on its own terms and for its own reasons — to any Americans whom it deems as “jeopardizing the security of the state of Israel.” No need to justify why. No need to explain. Just blanket U.S. capitulation to Israel’s discriminatory policies.

In other words, being American will count for nothing at Israel’s borders, and Israel will be free to continue discriminating against Americans it unilaterally deems unacceptable.

Mostly Arab-Americans are affected, many of them born in the United States and tracing their roots to historic Palestine. But when they try to visit the land of their ancestors, these American citizens are humiliated at Israel’s ports of entry, and many are turned away (or given abbreviated visas) by Israel, our "closest ally" in the Middle East.

I am an Ohio-born, American citizen, and for 45 years, each time I’ve traveled to visit my family in the West Bank, I’ve cringed at the possibility of being turned away. But even as I’ve dreaded this challenge, I am more disturbed by the prospect that the United States could extend special travel privileges to Israeli citizens — all while overlooking the discrimination Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans face.

Thousands of travelers to Israel have endured invasive email searching, strip searching and detention in a facility for "security threats" at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. (In fact, the estimated number of harassment cases is 120,000, according to a July 2006 report by the Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem.)

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to this Israeli practice by vowing in 2006 "to do everything in my power . . . to ensure that all American travelers receive fair and equal treatment." Yet instead of making good on that promise, my government is giving tacit approval to Israel's unfair and unequal treatment of Americans whose last names and skin complexions resemble my own.

Make no mistake: By including Israel in the visa waiver program with “special ally” privileges and exemptions to the rules of entry to the program, the United States would give Israel the green light to continue to mistreat American citizens legally under the pretense of “security.” This would send the wrong message to Arab-Americans — not to mention all Americans — and effectively invite other countries to discriminate against U.S. citizens.

The only country in the world that refuses to recognize me as an American, my only citizenship, is Israel. Once Israel defines you as a Palestinian, by way of issuing you residency status to live under their military occupation, no other paperwork matters to them, and your fate, American citizen or otherwise, becomes lumped together with all other Palestinians living under military occupation: that of collective punishment.

With America signaling its concern over human rights abuses in Syria and even threatening military action there, standing on the wrong side of Israel's abuses would send yet another wrong message to the world. American credibility in the Arab world and beyond continues to suffer, thanks to consecutive U.S. governments’ stance toward Israel.

While the Israel visa waiver bill might seem like an innocuous piece of legislation, it exposes a double standard in American foreign policy that our government should not espouse. It is simply unconscionable to reward Israel's discrimination against American citizens with even more unwarranted privileges. The Obama administration should know better, and American citizens who are bankrolling Israel to the tune of over $4 billion annually deserve better.

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant from Youngstown living in the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of "Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians" (1994) and blogs at www.epalestine.com.