This is the BDS viewpoint. The Israeli viewpoint is that BDS's singular focus on Israel to the exclusion of other human rights violation is a form of anti-Semitism. Though I am weary of endless Israeli claims of anti-Semitism, looking at the founders of BDS, this viewpoint is not without a kernel of truth. Without endorsing either view, it's important to recognize that for the Israelis, this is "banning hate speech" not "banning certain political views." Many many countries (including the US and UK) ban foreigners with a record of hate speech from entering their country.

> Banning people because they don't agree with your politics is exactly what Saudi is doing.

No. Saudi Arabia bars all Jews and Atheists from entering the country, regardless of their political ideas. Disbelief in God is not a political viewpoint by any normal standard.

This is called "whataboutism" btw and is a recognized logical fallacy. It can be used against any group who tried to raise awareness of a specific injustice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Edit: a different explanation - it's true that "what about other human rights violators" is a logical fallacy in the context of Israeli human rights violations. But, our topic is immigration bans, and Israeli belief in BDS anti-Semitism and the corresponding ban on individuals entering the country is not necessary fallacious just because this point is irrelevant to the topic of Israeli human rights violations.

Ad hominem / Appeal to motive?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

In some cases, the leaders of BDS made anti-Semitic comments before joining/founding BDS. When a bunch of white supremacists join together to create an organization that accuses Afican countries of human rights violations, we acknowledge that that it's about a bit more than human rights.

For example, Omar Barghouti,the BDS founder believes that Jews don't have a right to self-determination, opposes the two-state solution (instead, he supports a single Palestinian state), and has no plan or suggestion for where Israelis should relocate. The UN recognizes that all people have a right to self determination.

My own experience is with the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who threw rocks at the heads of Israeli students on my college campus and then published anti-Semitic fliers "to measure student viewpoints." SJP and BDS are closely associated.

I agree that people can be motivated by racism. I also think it is pretty clear that unfortunately Israel is pretty backwards with regards to human rights like a lot of the other Middle East countries.

You do not have to read BDS material to see that, just check Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or any number of other international human rights organizations. Although I am sure you can play, if you wanted to, ad hominem bingo with those groups as well.

Here is a testimony of a man who wrote "Jewish" under the religion item of the visa application and received his visa and visited

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/my-saudi-sojourn...

Please do not downvote me. I am the only one who provided a source for my claim of who is and is not denied visas.

> Saudi Arabia has denied a report that it would begin allowing Jews to work inside the Gulf kingdom.

> In an official statement, the Saudi Labor Ministry denied a report last week in the Saudi al-Watan newspaper to the effect that non-Israeli Jews would be able to receive guest worker visas for the first time, the UK Middle East Eye reported Friday.

First page of Google results for "Jews Saudi Arabia"

Banning people because they don't agree with your politics is exactly what Saudi is doing.

No, it is what Israel is doing and Mozilla is doing as well. And Germany is doing with Nazi party, and so on. All are going to say it's because the given issue is that major for them. But what Saudi is doing is banning someone for being born in a country. Playing chess has nothing to do with agreeing with someone's politics.

It isn't. Israel is doing it. Saudi Arabia is retaliating. There isn't a BDS on Saudi Arabia though, so they ban players from Israel. Being born in a country is one thing, but all Israelis (all Jewish, 18+ year old Israelis) also participate in the IDF and along with that they are a bit more complicit in any human rights violations they may commit and in furthering the political agenda of Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory as a result.

Technically that isn't true. Modern Saudi Arabia is discriminatory when it comes to other religions.

Being born in a country and playing chess is not "disagreeing with your state's politics".

And even that description is purposely flippant, and doesn't capture the real main reason why eg Mozilla fired its CEO or Germany bans the Nazi party. Or why many countries ban seditious speech (China, Jordan, and so on).

The reason is that they consider such speech to be dangerous to the security of the state itself. In that, if it spreads, it will undermine the current stability of the state. Also there are considerations from human rights point of view - that people could be threatened and suffer. For example gay partnes might have their equal right to visit each other in the hospital infringed. Israelis would be attacked as they were in Hebron in 1929. Nazis could wreak havoc and go on murderous rampages again. And so on.

What happened to freedom of speech? Well, it's not absolute in many places.

And anyway, equating Saudi Arabia to Israel on freedom of speech is rather silly. Israel allows all religions to come and worship openly. Saudis suppress all non-Muslim religions, and outlaw many types of observance. Israel allows gays to openly hold parades, and much more. Saudi Arabia executes gays and atheists for exactly that. A bit beyond "banning" for "disagreeing with politics". So keep a sense of proportion when you equate things.

Earlier this year for instance: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-ar...

> Luckily this nonsense hasn't spread to Europe and North America for the most part.

Umm, you have it backwards: there are people still alive who were subject to such rules in the Europe and North America (famously up into the 1940s, but also through 1990s in Balkans at least) and there are large numbers of people trying to revive such rules, some of whom are in governments (e.g. Hungary, Poland, Austria, USA...)

I could have sworn that is what the BSD movement is all about...

The Middle east is full of countries that act backwards. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, to name just the worst...

Israeli Arabs, like all Israeli citizens, can vote in Israeli elections, and do. Israel is the only place in the Middle East Arabs regularly vote.

As the saying goes, Israel wants to have its cake and eat it too.

So far I think Egypt is the only neighbouring country that isn't formally at war with them anymore.

Given those circumstances I kind of understand why they wont give away anything gor now.

Nobody said that. A good start would be to cease construction of new settlements on illegal land. I am sure many neighboring countries would see that as a move in the right direction.

> So far I think Egypt is the only neighbouring country that isn't formally at war with them anymore.

That is false. None of the Middle Eastern countries are "at war" with Israel. On the contrary, some countries like KSA has begun trying to normalize relations with Israel, which is something many of its citizens do not agree with.

Isn't that what Trump's "Muslim ban" is?

Actually you are correct, Trump promised this in his campaign and has tried to enact it in a few different ways. I am unsure why you are being voted down.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-calls-for-total-an...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/supreme-court-travel-...

People will dishonestly refer to it as a 'Muslim Ban' despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, in the end it only diminishes the credibility of those who want to allow immigration from those countries.

Also, it is inaccurate to claim there is "overwhelming evidence" that the ban is not a Muslim ban, and it is an unhelpful ad hominim attack to call anyone who thinks it's a Muslim ban dishonest. The US District Court in Hawaii held that "EO-3 plainly discriminates based on nationality in the manner that the Ninth Circuit has found antithetical to ... the founding principles of this Nation."[3] I.e., it's a Muslim ban. And the Ninth Circuit recently upheld this opinion.[4]

The Supreme Court might overturn the Ninth Circuit decision, but you might want to edit your comment so it's less wrong.

[1] read the article you linked to!!

[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120417zr1_j4... and https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120417zr_4gd...

[3] http://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015f-2bab-d519-a57f-7fabf1...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/us/travel-ban-court.html

I stand by this statement, as 'Muslim ban' is semantically false; Muslims are not banned from the US. If you can disprove this let me know.

If somebody says that a certain travel ban was thrown out for being a Muslim ban, and you respond that a different travel ban was upheld, then that's just going to mislead people.

Free speech but when free speech doesn't work ban the other speakers and live in a bubble. Awesome.

This strikes me very much as a classical cognitive failure: An inability to understand that other people actually, truly think differently than you do. E.g. Other people actually believe that God is real. Actually, truly, like he's really there. And they'll act like it.

And to your point, even though it is an incorrect analysis of the situation - what makes you think that people just do what is inherently good and right? Prisons exist in every country for a reason.

My spouse is an Iranian national and affected by the ban. I'm from Germany, where we live. Why can't the Trump administration vet her, given that previous administrations could and did?

Previous administrations may have extended that trust, but that doesn't prove they were correct to do so.

Why haven't they done it nearly a year later? Probably a good indicator not to blindly trust autocrats who run election campaigns on xenophobia.

Not comparable, but we get up to shenanigans from time to time, too [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/11/nasa-chinese...