About 50 people gathered outside of San Francisco International Airport on Thursday morning to rally for two Palestinians from the West Bank who were coming to speak across the Bay Area but were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection the previous day.
Among the rallygoers was Phillip Weintraub, a member of Piedmont’s Kehilla Community Synagogue, which was sponsoring one of three local public appearances scheduled for the men as part of a national speaking tour.
“There’s a lot of energy, a lot of singing, a lot of support,” Weintraub told J. about the rally, which went on for hours. “We are hoping our voices are heard by our two friends.”
By Thursday afternoon, however, the two men’s tourist visas had been revoked and they were on a flight back home, according to Kehilla. The incident comes amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign visitors and immigrants, including escalations over the past week in Los Angeles that have led to large-scale protests.
Congregants, including members of Kehilla’s Face-to-Face: A Jewish-Palestinian Reparations Alliance, had been looking forward to the arrival of the two Palestinian men since they started planning the visit in November.
Instead, congregants were feeling “devastated and heartbroken,” Weintraub said in an email sent Thursday afternoon.
For the past three or so years, Kehilla members have met almost monthly over Zoom with the men. They have told the congregants about their lives in the hills south of Hebron and described how their communities have been impacted by an increase in violence from Jewish settlers since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, said Weintraub, who heads Face-to-Face.
In keeping with the name “Face-to-Face,” the group’s members were eager to finally meet the men in person, according to Kehilla congregant Rachele Kanigel, who occasionally covers local news for J.
“We were so looking forward to really meeting these men, being able to see them and having them see us, not on a computer screen, not on a Zoom meeting, but face to face,” she told J. “It just feels heartbreaking that we’re being deprived of this because of some notion by some government official who doesn’t want this kind of connection to happen.”
Weintraub, an immigration attorney, told J. that he and other members of Face-to-Face helped to fund and coordinate travel for the two men, whose names they withheld out of concerns for their safety.
He had arrived at SFO around 1 p.m. Wednesday to pick up the two men. When they did not emerge from customs and did not respond to their phones, he became concerned.
“I’m worried about the situation of our friends: What’s happening? Why is this happening?” he said, describing his reaction. “I’m deeply disappointed that we’re not able to see them. I’m outraged that folks that are coming here on a humanitarian mission can’t meet with their friends, can’t share about their life.”
At around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, Customs and Border Protection officers called Weintraub to confirm that the two men were still detained at SFO, he said, although they refused to disclose the reason for the detentions.
According to Kehilla’s event page, the two men are cousins, one an artist and the other an English teacher.
“They’re entirely dedicated to nonviolence.… To have people like that getting attacked, terrorized and threatened is grossly unfair,” said Kehilla emeritus Rabbi David Cooper, who has met the two men in person on visits to their village, Umm al-Khair, on several visits since 2017.
Kehilla, a Renewal congregation, has long been involved in progressive activism, including in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Established in fall 2021, Face-to-Face was inspired by Kehilla’s late founder, Rabbi Burt Jacobson, who sought to build direct connections between Israelis and Palestinians in order to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and to promote Palestinian liberation, according to Kehilla’s webpage about the group.
One of Face-to-Face’s first projects involved sending food packages to every family in Umm al-Khair.
“That was something that felt special, because it was really something from our community to every family in that village,” Kanigel told J.
More recently, Face-to-Face has raised funds for a children’s summer camp in the area.
Kehilla has several groups related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its Chavura for a Free Palestine offers resources about the “impacts of Zionism” and activism on behalf of Palestinians. Its Middle East Peace committee seeks to increase understanding of the conflict with “respect for the dignity and rights of all people in Israel/Palestine.”
Kehilla Senior Rabbi Dev Noily told J. that the congregation was looking forward to hosting the men in return for their hospitality toward Noily and other Kehilla members when they visited Umm al-Khair.
“I’m just really worried for their safety, and for their families who also don’t know what’s happening with them,” Noily said. “We’re all human beings, and the way that we can live together in the world is by getting to know each other, and caring about each other.”
Kehilla’s event for the two men, co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area, IfNotNow, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and the Rebuilding Alliance, is a fundraiser for a children’s summer camp in the West Bank.
Two events are still scheduled to take place, one at 6 p.m. Thursday at Kehilla and one at 6 p.m. Friday at Uptown Body and Fender in Oakland. The events are free but registration is requested.