American Activist Who Supported Palestinian Terror Visits Israel Without Incident
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by Chaim Lax
The B. Altman & Company Building housing the City University of New York Graduate Center in New York City. Photo Credit: Beyond My Ken/Wikimedia.
A young American woman posts online about her summer vacation in Israel. She visits Jerusalem, Haifa, and Acre. She goes on a pleasant cruise along the Mediterranean Sea.
Nothing about this would be particularly noteworthy — except that the tourist in question is Nerdeen Kiswani, a rising and radical anti-Israel activist in the United States.
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As someone who once condemned a “normalizing trip” to Israel, what is Nerdeen Kiswani doing gallivanting around the Jewish state?
Kiswani is one of over 2,000 Palestinian-Americans who have taken advantage of a recent loosening of border restrictions by Israel, as it bids to qualify for a US visa waiver program. Under the new regulations, Palestinians with American passports can apply to enter sovereign Israel through Ben Gurion Airport and West Bank crossing points.
Kiswani, who was previously denied entry due to her anti-Israel activities, told reporters that she “decided to use the opportunity” to visit her family.
However, this has not stopped her from continuing to demonize the Jewish state.
In the Instagram posts detailing her travels, Kiswani tags Israeli cities like Haifa, Acre (or, per Kiswani, Akka), and Jerusalem as being in “Palestine.”
While she basks in the Mediterranean sun, Kiswani explains to her followers that she is visiting “historic Palestine,” and that it’s important to visit these places in order to know “what we are fighting for.”
After the hypocrisy of a radical boycott activist visiting the Jewish state was highlighted on social media, Kiswani sought to have her cake and eat it too by claiming that “it is not normalization or crossing a boycott line for Palestinians to visit every single inch of our homeland.”
Despite her attempt to besmirch the Jewish state, Kiswani actually did it a favor. By showcasing her ability to visit the sights and sounds of Israel in peace, she has provided a more nuanced picture of the state to those who otherwise would not be exposed to it.
So, who exactly is this hypocritical activist who visits Israel while calling for its destruction?
Based in New York City, Nerdeen Kiswani helped found the extreme anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL) in 2015.
WOL was devised as a radical organization that would “push the boundaries” of what is acceptable in advocating for “Palestinian freedom.” Soon after its founding, WOL (then known as NYC SJP) generated controversy by openly criticizing the BDS movement for its “pacified rhetoric” and not going far enough in pushing the Palestinian narrative.
The organization advocates for the absolute right of return for Palestinian refugees, the “abolition of Zionism,” and Palestinian resistance against Israel “by any means necessary.”
In its first decade of activity, WOL has repeatedly lauded the activities of Palestinian terrorists (including from the left-wing PFLP and the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas), has teamed up with the PFLP-affiliated Samidoun, and has organized marches where participants call for “globalizing the Intifada.” Some of these protests have been marred by physical violence against supporters of the Jewish state.
In March 2022, WOL was banned from Instagram after it celebrated International Women’s Day by posting a collage that featured the images of female Palestinian terrorists, including Rasmeah Odeh (responsible for murdering two Israelis in a supermarket bombing in 1969) and Leila Khaled (who took part in two plane hijackings).
Aside from guiding Within Our Lifetime’s activities, Nerdeen Kiswani has made a name for herself as a radical anti-Israel activist in her own right.
In 2014, Kiswani shared on social media the PFLP’s justification for a terror attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that left four people dead (two others died from their wounds months later).
Similarly, following a terror attack in May 2021, she liked a now-deleted Instagram post that said in Arabic “Glory to the axe of resistance.”
In 2020, Kiswani shared a video on social media showing her holding a lighter flame to a man wearing an IDF sweatshirt and threatening to set it on fire.
In 2022, during an interview on Iranian Press TV’s Palestine Declassified program, Kiswani referred to Palestinian “resistance” (read: terrorism) as something that is “beautiful” and that “should be celebrated by people in the West.”
For her CUNY law school graduation ceremony, Kiswani was chosen by the student body to give a commencement address. During her speech, she claimed that she was being harassed by “well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military,” condemned the CUNY chancellor for going on a “normalizing trip to Israel,” and accused Israel of “colonization and murder of the Palestinian people.”
A compilation of clips from the BDS leader in New York calling for war against Israel, the eradication of Israel, for violence against any Jew in America that supports Israel, and calling for Jews to be cleansed from New York.
BDS is not peaceful. BDS is violence. pic.twitter.com/SCsiuniF0g
— Ari Ingel (@OGAride) May 14, 2022
In 2022, HonestReporting profiled vocal anti-Zionist Linda Sarsour’s quiet trip to Haifa while she visited with family in the West Bank.
We can only wonder which “avowed” anti-Israel activist will enjoy a visit to Haifa, Jerusalem, or Jaffa next year, all while gaslighting their followers into believing that it is in line with their boycott of the Jewish state.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
