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Tired of long waits, hefty fees and unexplained rejections, Israelis hope the US will lift visa requirements
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Bar Shelly is hoping that the fourth time’s the charm when it comes to gaining entry into the United States. The 24-year-old first applied for a visa in 2019, shortly after his release from the Israeli military. He tried again in 2021 and 2022 and was refused each time.
People from 40 countries can enter the United States without a visa. But Israelis without other passports must apply for a visa online and then go through an interview at the consulate in Tel Aviv. One goal of their interviews is for consular officials to make sure they are not admitting people who intend to stay illegally after their visa expires.
Shelly brought ample evidence to his interview showing that he planned to return to Israel: his acceptance letter to an Israeli college, an invitation to an upcoming wedding of a close family relative and pay stubs from his job as a tennis coach. Still, he received a rejection letter saying that he did not demonstrate “strong ties overseas that indicate [his] return” from the United States to Israel.
“I brought all the documents and they didn’t even want to look at them,” Shelly told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview last month.
Undeterred, Shelly applied again and still hopes to make it to watch the U.S. Open in early September. He is part of a Hebrew-language Facebook group with several thousand members who have shared their frustrations with the lengthy and strenuous process they were required to undergo in order to visit the United States.
Like many other Israelis, they are hoping that the path will get easier soon, if the United States decides to approve Israel’s request to join its Visa Waiver Program. Acceptance into the program would add the United States to the list of 126 countries that Israelis can enter without a visa — and Israel could get the green light if it meets all of the requirements by Sept. 30.
“This will simplify the bureaucracy and make the process more accessible,” said Yacov Amsalem, whose tourism firm helps facilitate U.S. visas for Israeli customers. About 70% of these visa requests are for tourists seeking to visit the United States.
While Shelly and thousands of others have complained about rejections at the U.S. consulate, they are in a small minority. Some 97% of Israelis who apply for U.S. visas receive them. Still, the Israeli government has made entering the program a priority, endeavoring to satisfy U.S. State Department demands that Palestinian-Americans who travel to Israel will be able to enter the country with the same ease as other U.S. citizens.
Entry into the program may also be a boon for rank-and-file Israelis who have chafed at the visa application’s fees of at least $160, and the months of waiting and uncertainty they often must endure. Some say that entry into the program — and the elimination of the visa application process — will serve as a symbol of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship in addition to removing a bureaucratic headache.
“To say I have no visa is one thing, but to say I was refused a visa is another story,” said Or Amran, a gemstone seller who has demurred from applying for a visa because he fears the stigma of rejection. “I’ve seen all of Asia. It’s funny that I’ve never seen America, which is supposed to be Israel’s greatest friend.”
Amsalem said the 97% visa approval rate left out some people who haven’t even tried to get a visa to the United States. “In the past, there were many people who were afraid of going through the visa process, which includes personal interviews,” he said.
Or Amran says having a visa application rejected comes with a stigma. (Courtesy of Amran)
Some Israelis whose applications have been rejected have complained of demeaning treatment at the consulate. A visa applicant who asked to be identified by the name Veronika, fearing reprisal from U.S. authorities if she uses her real name, paid a visa processing company more than $400 in addition to the $160 fee to secure an expedited appointment. She hoped to fulfill her teenage daughter’s dream of attending summer school in the United States.
The two woke up at 4 a.m. to make the long journey from the northern coastal city of Nahariya to Tel Aviv in time for the appointment. When they got there, Veronika said, they met with an embassy agent who seemed angry even before they entered his booth. Thrown by his demeanor, Veronika said she mixed up the dates of her daughter’s travel and found herself being cross-examined by the clerk.
“I was crying and really scared of him,” she said, adding that she was told the visa request was denied. “We didn’t understand why. I begged for someone to explain but they kicked us out of the consulate like dogs.”
Veronika later received a letter explaining that she had not provided enough proof that her daughter planned on coming back to Israel, despite a letter from her daughter’s school.
“She’s my only child, why would I send her there forever?” she said. “After this, I don’t want to go to America ever. I don’t want to meet people like that ever again.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Israel declined to comment on Veronika’s case or other Israelis’ claims about their experiences at the consulate, characterizing them as private interactions.
Israel’s quest to join the Visa Waiver Program has been at the forefront of U.S.-Israel relations. One of the last sticking points has been easing entry of Palestinian-Americans in and out of Israel. Israel is piloting a program allowing Americans of Palestinian origin to enter the country through Ben Gurion Airport, rather than overland through Jordan and the West Bank, as they are required to now.
Groups of U.S. lawmakers have sent dueling letters on the issue: One urges the U.S. to find a compromise that would allow Israel into the program by the deadline of Sept. 30. The other asks the government to keep Israel out.
To date, Israel has not met the requirements and still has “significant work” to fulfill them within a short timeline, a U.S. embassy spokesperson told JTA. In the coming weeks, Israel would need to prove it could extend “reciprocal privileges to all U.S. citizens and nationals, including allowing Palestinian Americans to travel to and through Israel.”
“We seek equal treatment and freedom to travel for all U.S. citizens regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity,” the spokesperson said.
As the situation has remained uncertain, Amran, the gemstone dealer, went to great lengths to help Israel enter the visa program. He decided to fly back to Israel to vote in the November 2022 election for the Yamina party, which was headed by Ayelet Shaked, because she had worked on legislation aimed at meeting the visa program’s criteria.
But Shaked’s party did not get enough votes to enter Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. According to Amran, his family still makes fun of him for “wasting his vote” on her.
Rubi Segal’s hopes of flying to the United States serving as the sandak, or godfather, at his American nephew’s bris circumcision ceremony over the summer were dashed with the receipt of a letter last month declaring that the U.S. consulate had “adjudicated and refused” his visa application — with no explanation given.
“I’m not able to pull myself out of this depression. Truly. I also don’t understand why it happened. I’m so sad to miss my brother’s [son’s] bris,” Segal said. “I’m the most normal person in the world — there’s no way they think I want to stay there. I have business here, I own a home, a wife and kids, no debt, no criminal record, I just don’t understand the reason.”
Bar Shelly is on his fourth round of visa applications. (Courtesy of Shelly)
Even if Israel is accepted to the Visa Waiver Program, Segal would still need a visa and an interview. The visa waiver will not apply to anyone who has been denied entry.
Other Israelis are in wait-and-see mode, hoping that within months they will be allowed to skip the unpleasant experience at the U.S. consular office on their way to America.
Shay Rimo, 39, never bothered applying for a visa. “I’ve wanted to go for many years but it just never made sense to pay the money — which isn’t a negligible amount — and go through the whole process. So I always pushed it off.”
Rimo’s sister lived with her now-husband in the United States for three years when they were students, but because of the visa process, none of the family ever went to visit them.
“The second it opens up, I’ll go,” Rimo said. “In the meantime, it’s better to just go to Thailand.”
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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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