Shashi Naidoo speaks on 10 year Israel ban

Shashi Naidoo spoke to the media at the O.R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg yesterday, where she gave details on her Israel 10 year ban.

In June, she had announced she would go on a trip to the Palestinian Territories following backlash from her pro-Israel views.

Shashi was however refused entry into Israel, and banned for 10 years. She now says that she had been warned prior to her travelling, that there would be complications.

“We know now that I had been flagged before I left, but from the beginning of me walking in, I was targeted.”

Ordeal

“I was made to sit on a chair and then I was searched. And then I went to another area, pulled aside again,”she says, adding that the situation was like “mental warfare.”

She added: “In the beginning I was actually offered a Fanta and I thought, okay this is not so bad. But then we sat down and as the interrogation went on it was clear they obviously knew who I was and what was happening. But it got more and more intense, and after about two hours [of] interrogation, by the end of it I was in tears.”

Shashi was called a liar and accused of wanting access into Palestine to attend a BDS conference.

“I don’t know what travel implications this has for me travelling anywhere else, because obviously whenever you apply for any other visa they ask you have you been denied a visa by another country. So, I think this is going to have huge travel implications for me.”

As much as she did not visit the Palestinian territories, she visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan.

“After seeing what I’ve seen I have had a massive change in perspective. Because you go and you can’t unsee the things that you’ve seen,” she said, describing the state of the camps as “shocking, saddening, and disheartening.”