Jewish-American Activist Says Israel Barred Him Over West Bank Solidarity Work

Sam Sherman, a Jewish-American activist, says Israel has barred him from re-entering the country because of his work supporting Palestinians facing settler violence in the occupied West Bank.

Sherman told Al Jazeera the decision followed years of activism documenting attacks on Palestinian communities by Israeli settlers, a phenomenon rights groups have tracked with rising alarm across the West Bank. He said the bar will not end his work.

"Settler violence is state terror," Sherman told Al Jazeera.

Israel has not issued a public explanation for the decision, according to Al Jazeera's reporting. The network's account rests on Sherman's own statement; there is no independent Israeli government confirmation of the grounds for his exclusion in the record so far.

Entry bans have become a recurring tool used by Israeli authorities against foreign nationals, including American citizens, who engage in Palestinian solidarity work or document conditions in the occupied territories. Israel's Interior Ministry and the Population and Immigration Authority hold broad discretion to deny entry, and decisions are frequently issued without detailed public justification, leaving those barred to reconstruct the reasoning themselves, as Sherman has done.

The case adds to a pattern activists and legal observers have flagged for years: foreign nationals, journalists, and researchers who work alongside Palestinian communities in the West Bank facing exclusion, detention, or deportation at Israeli border crossings, often coinciding with periods of intensified settler activity in the areas where they worked.

Sherman's account has not been independently verified beyond his own statement to Al Jazeera, and Occupation Watch could not confirm additional documentation, correspondence, or an official Israeli response describing the basis for the bar. The claim that his activism, rather than some other administrative reason, triggered the decision remains his own characterization.

What is established is narrower: an American activist who worked with Palestinians facing settler violence says he has been denied re-entry, and the Israeli government has not publicly explained why.