Shin Bet to stop asking visitors to Israel about their politics

Published: 2 October 2018

Last updated: 4 March 2024

ONE OF ISRAEL'S top law enforcement officials said last week the Shin Bet security service would no longer ask detainees at border crossings about their political views and that regulations to that effect would be reiterated to officials at the borders, while defending the agency’s detentions and questioning of Israel critics that sparked criticism and a government inquiry.

“It should be made clear that the questioning carried out by the Shin Bet in these situations was not intended to interfere with [political] protest activities, but to prevent violent and illegal actions carried out from nationalistic motives or in relation to terrorist groups,” Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber, who conducted the inquiry over the past month, wrote in a letter last Thursday to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the NGOs that complained about the detentions.

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Shin Bet will no longer ask would-be entrants to Israel about their politics (Times of Israel)

Photo: Peter Beinart, left, marching with other activists through Hebron, in July 2016 (Andrew Tobin)