Israel, after initially banning Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from the country under pressure to do so from President Trump, has announced Tlaib will be allowed to visit her grandmother in the occupied West Bank if she agrees in writing “not to promote boycotts” during her trip. Tlaib, however, says that she isn’t going under those conditions, saying in a tweet that “Silencing me & treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me. I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in—fighting against racism, oppression & injustice.”

The Israeli interior ministry had initially approved Omar and Tlaib’s trip, but changed its position after public pressure from President Trump on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a tweet mentioned that Netanyahu would “look weak” if he let them in, and that they “hate Israel & all Jewish people.” Trump was referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which Omar and Tlaib both publicly support, and which seeks to use global economic pressure to coerce Israel into ending its military occupation of the Palestinian territories and otherwise implementing what it argues are Israel’s human rights obligations under international law.

Associate professor of american studies and women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University Sylvia Chan-Malik joins us for analysis.