Those who promote or engage in violence against the United States and its allies and interests should be denied entry into our country. That should be obvious.

The Trump administration’s decision on Monday to revoke a visa granted to the Bob Vylan band was appropriate and demonstrates a commitment to this evidently good policy.

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Performing at the Glastonbury music festival in the United Kingdom on Saturday, the band’s singer, “Bobby Vylan,” shouted “Free Palestine!” and added, “Have you heard this one though? Death, death, to the IDF! Death, death to the IDF!” The singer led the crowd in repeatedly chanting for others to kill Israeli soldiers, before concluding, “Hell yeah, from the river to the sea, Palestine must be, will be, Inshallah, it will be free!” In other words, the musicians provoked a crowd (of nitwits) to call first explicitly for murder, then backed it up with the popular and noxious little rhyme demanding genocide.

IDF stands for the “Israeli Defense Forces,” the armed forces of Israel, a close military ally of the U.S. that is waging war against terrorists responsible for some of the bloodiest ever terrorist attacks on Americans. The slogan “from the river to the sea” refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing land that includes the internationally recognized state of Israel. The slogan is a call to extinguish the Jewish state. This is sometimes denied by those who use it, but the claim is disingenuous and should be seen as allied to the explicit Hamas terrorist mission to kill all Jews for being Jews.

With his U.S. visa, Vylan would have been able to earn lucrative sums performing across the U.S. later this year, and would have been able to bring his bigotry and illegal incitement of murder to our nation. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau observed that “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

This prudent approach underlines Washington’s commitment to thwart those who call for the death of American allies. Vylan also performed a song on Saturday that includes the lyrics “We the people in the street got the gammons on retreat and their blood boils over when we speak.” The word “gammon” is British slang for white people. So his racial and ethnic bigotry is not directed only against Jews but also against the white people of his own country. He’s a repellent character and there is no reason why he should be granted the privilege of visiting these shores.

The Trump administration has taken appropriate action. It is legitimate to debate the degree to which lawful visitors on U.S. soil should be allowed to speak freely on sensitive political issues. But the government has every right to deny access to visitors who explicitly call for violence against American or allied interests. 

Similarly, Washington should draw a red line to exclude Israeli settler extremists who inflict and promote violence against innocent Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The West Bank is disputed territory taken back from Jordan by Israel in the 1967 war. It includes Israeli and Palestinian settlements. The majority of the international community regards Israeli settlements as illegal, but this is highly debatable given that the territory was until then part of the remnant of the British Mandate and was illegally occupied by Jordan in 1948. Whatever the true legal position, however, most serious analysts believe any future Arab-Israeli peace settlement will require formal recognition of many Israeli settlements.

The West Bank is fraught with growing violence. Hamas poses the main threat to Israel from Gaza, and both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group pose threats to Israel from hideouts in the West Bank. These terrorists and others aligned with them have attacked Israeli civilians many times in the past. It should go without saying that Palestinians, including Palestinian Authority officials who offer rhetorical support for these terrorist attacks, should be denied visas.

But that’s only one side of the coin. Some Israeli settler fanatics are also guilty of extreme violence against Palestinian civilians and the IDF. These attacks often involve attempts, some successful, to burn down Palestinian homes. Three Palestinians were killed in clashes last week, and IDF soldiers were subjected to stone-throwing attacks by Israeli settlers this weekend.

This settler violence undermines U.S. interests for the same reason as precipitous Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. The close U.S.-Israeli alliance leads America’s regional allies and Muslims globally to perceive Israeli tolerance for settler attacks as American enabling of violence against Palestinian civilians. This is a significant source of anti-American propaganda and an enduring tool for terrorist recruitment by groups seeking to do harm to the U.S.

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While the Trump administration should push Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to take more robust action against settler fanatics, it should also introduce visa restrictions against those settlers known to have engaged in attacks. The Biden administration used overly broad sanctions against settlers, but the Trump administration should take targeted action against those who threaten civilian and IDF lives.

This would set a clear moral position that anyone who promotes extremism in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not welcome on U.S. soil.