The Maldives has banned entry into the country by Israeli citizens and will fundraise for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency which works directly with Hamas in Gaza and some of whose employees participated in the October 7th terrorist attacks.
If the Maldives were concerned with the plight of Palestinians,
- They wouldn’t ban Israeli passports since ~ 21% of Israeli citizens are actually Palestinian.
- They would take tourism dollars from Israelis and use it to fund aid for Palestinians in Gaza. Except, of course, that the aid would never reach the Palestinians because Hamas steals it and sells it.
The Government of the Maldives did not ban Hamas leadership residing in Qatar. They didn’t ban Syrian passports or Sudanese passports. They banned the Jews.
By law, all citizens of the Maldives must be Sunni Muslim. Yet resorts have alcohol and guests dressing immodestly. Since the nation relies on tourism they thread this needle by allowing resorts in ‘uninhabited areas’ and declaring that Islamic law doesn’t apply in those places. Of course all arriving luggage is screened as passengers exit customs. Don’t bring alcohol or other banned substances into the country, and don’t bring an Israeli passport.
The Maldives has not condemned combatants embedding themselves in hospitals and schools, the use of human shields, or rape of civilian hostages. Here by the way are Hamas weapons being uncovered in a UNRWA school.
Make no mistake, this isn’t banning world leaders with whom you disagree, it is banning all citizens of the Jewish state. American passports, of course, do not contain the bearer’s religion.
These actions will not contribute to the furtherance of a just peace settlement. But they only add more urgency to the need for such a settlement, which the current leadership will not deliver.
Actually , we never wanted to go to Mal-a-la-tete in the first place . And now , especially not .
Israel is a better destination for many reasons .
Banning Israeli folks is more symbolic than anything. Being critical of Israel’s military committing war crimes doesn’t mean you support Hamas or hate Jews.
Using that kind of logic, if you believe invading Iraq and Afghanistan were mistakes, you are a supporter of Saddam Hussein, ISIS and the Taliban.
Until they are near/next to bankruptcy and unemployed and then they may think differently of not being inclusive of all folks who are peace loving and spending $$$$$
I would be careful if you have a US passport that states your place of birth as Israel.
After reading this article, I ERASED going to the MALDIVES from my list! I wouldn’t go if I were given a private jet that seated 14 and the most incredible over water suites and $275,000 USD for spending money.
If Israel wanted to commit actual war crimes or genocide, this war would have been over by mid-October.
Hamas’ charter calls for the genocide of Jews.
Israel is going out of her way to protect a people that wish to put her into the sea.
I don’t recall the Maldives banning anyone after the October 7th attacks, guess they were OK with that, just not the response to the attacks.
Disgusting.
I am planning a holiday at a $700/night (low-season) private island resort. My boxing coach is train8ng there.
I suppose the savvy tourist has a portfolio of passports.
I mean passport documents and visa documents are almost as ridiculous as covid documents during the Plague years.. …..
Scratch South Africa and now the Maldives from my list of places to visit
I mean – they actually have Sharia law in place for their citizens. (But, turn a blind eye to whatever very un-muslim things foreigners with $$$ are doing on their islands of course).
Islamic Imperialism and conquests reached all the way to south Asia, which is why of course we have Islamic nations in South Asia. They were at least not Arabized like much of the middle east and north africa, which saw the most brutal forms of those conquests.
I always thought it was way too far to travel anyways. Makes it easier now to pass on going there. Hopefully others follow. From a US citizen
Gary, if this was about being Jewish then I’d agree with you. Since they’re not banning Jews from other countries this is pretty apparently aimed at Israel’s actions, which many people feel are disproportional to the horrific October 7 attacks. Lots of people, including inside Israel now judging from the 100,000 Israelis who just protested to end the fight, see civilians getting slaughtered by the thousands because they literally have no place to go and are on the edge of starvation. Unfortunately, if Netanyahu ends the attacks then his coalition dissolves and he’s back to being a defendant in criminal proceedings so delay and killing more Palestinians is in his direct interest.
More BS from Gary. Maldives have not said Jews are not welcome, they have banned Israelis due to the actions of the Israeli government. Non-Israeli Jews (the majority of Jews) are welcome. Christian/Palestinian(Muslim)/Buddhist/Druze Israelis are banned. Try as you will, this is not a ban on your religion, it is a ban on a country whose leaders’ decisions they disagree with.
Good coverage we won’t see elsewhere….Maldives is off my bucket list and I’ll share your report with my own readers. Perhaps you should add that ‘Palestinians aren’t welcomed in Arab countries’..hah! That’s the ultimate irony, with so many protesting Israel but refusing to let Palestinians even visit much less take-up residence.
@farnorthtrader – in fact, about half the world’s jews live in Israel
My point that Palestinians are banned with this move as well, that you repeat, makes my point about the stupidity – the futility – of this feckless move by the government of the Maldives.
BOYCOTT Maldives. That Racist little country is off my travel list
@Christian “if Netanyahu ends the attacks then his coalition dissolves”
Hamas hides behind civilians, inside hospitals, weapons caches in U.N. schools. This is a terrible humanitarian tragedy BECAUSE OF HAMAS.
The politics in Israel is not unlike that of the U.S. after 9/11, people wanted to be safe. Since 9/11 500k – 1mm civilians were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. 20,000 French civilians were killed at the Battle of Normandy. War is terrible and destructive indeed. Here it is BECAUSE OF HAMAS that these tragedies are occurring.
Thanks for this information, I have now taken this place off my bucket list. Will can el my reservations for next January.
@Kluge
How ironic that you use the term “logic”, when yours is so obviously flawed. But congrats on being the first Hamas terrorist sympathizer to post. Your logical ability aligns with that of most of your comrades.
Banning Israeli citizens is not simply being critical of Israeli war crimes (there are 1000x over more war crimes committed by Hamas, btw…but you aren’t concerned about that, are you?). Remember when Trump said he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the US? I don’t remember leftists like you saying that would only be symbolic.
Western leftists aligning with islamic terrorists, the religion that puts homosexuals to death and gives women no rights, right after they slaughtered over 1000 innocent civilians, raped, took hostages, committed infanticide…not to mention for decades and still currently fire rockets indiscriminately into civilian territory, is truly the most idiotic of alliances. Yet you forget about all that, and naively believe Hamas when they talk about their own civilian casualties, and take what they say at face value (they count their fighters as civilians, so their numbers are inflated by about 1000% at a minimum). You are the most unthinking, malleable, useful idiots in modern history.
We are entering epic clown world times.
It’s a muslim country so this isn’t really a shock.
Maldives is such a terrible travel destination as it has always been surprising to me that people go to such effort, time, and expense to go there to sit on an artificial and/or normally uninhabited island the middle of the ocean where they are more likely to encounter a Bangladeshi worker than they ever will a real Maldivian or any real culture of any kind other than fake luxury marketing. The Maldives is a horrible place that practices an austere form of Islam as it’s official state religion and has a legal system under Sharia law that has long banned and prosecuted homosexuals, Christians, and now Jews. So many nicer, better, more interesting places to go that are closer and far more culturally enriching.
Hopefully we see this trend continue until Israelis are confined inside the borders of their own small piece of land just as Palestinians are. If you look at who has suffered more during the past 75 years, the answer is obvious.
In doing this, they aren’t banning by religion or even saying that members of any religion are not welcome there. But they are sending a message that ordinary Israeli passports won’t be accepted for use to enter into the country — or maybe even also transit via the country — regardless of whether the Israeli passport-user is Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze or any other other religious identity.
Given how the Holocaust-surviving Jewish German co-founder of a major international human rights group has said he has come to believe that the Netanyahu regime is a rogue regime, I am pretty sure he is welcome to visit the Maldives on a non-Israeli passport.
I am opposed to the Maldives’ entry ban for those only having an Israeli passport available for use to travel, but countries playing such games with passport users from one or more “pariah state” is really nothing new.
Doesn’t Netanyahu rule over about an equal number of non-Jewish Arabs as Jews due to the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and Golan? Oh, that is right, a large proportion of the Arabs under Israeli rule are denied Israeli citizenship and Israeli passports — not that many of them want Israeli citizenship as much as they want a sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state in the land of their great-grandparents’ birth.
Well I guess I won’t be spending my money in the Maldives!! Jews not welcome. Nothing new! That’s a very old saying . Really racist
@Gary – Then maybe Israel should take some ownership of the blame. They nurtured, funded, and supported Hamas as a power play against the more moderate Palestinians. That got away from Israel and the monster they created is now fighting for its life. Despite that, the monster didn’t create the civilians that it is hiding within. Didn’t the Jewish people use guerilla warfare against the British before the formation of Israel? I seem to recall some pretty awful things were done prior to WWII that don’t get much mention these days.
None of this is to say that Israel shouldn’t defend itself. It should and must. Problem is, Bibi has yet to spell out any sort of plan for what comes after. That just leaves us with lots of dead or starving civilians and nothing resembling a solution in sight. Do you see Israel presenting any viable postwar scenarios? After over half a year they surely must have some at the ready. Yet they’re not sharing, which means nothing good.
Is this the correct forum to discuss Jews versus Palestinians?
Not sure.
I would say not. But what do I know?
Many a savvy traveler has more than one citizenship and the proportion of the Israeli population that have dual/multiple-citizenship I seems to be very high and probably one of the highest proportions of any country with over 100k US citizens living in it. I assume that the majority of those Israeli citizens who have visited the Maldives previously have a right to a passport also from a county beside Israel.
I am no fan of dual-citizenship for US citizens or those of any country — and thus I refuse to seek or accept citizenship in any and all countries beside that of the country of my birth — but I think that many sensible people should not trust even their own government and thus always have an escape plan available and thus look at even buying citizenship in other countries if not already holding dual-/multi-citizenship status.
Thanks for the information, Gary! The place is now off our bucket list.
“Given how the Holocaust-surviving Jewish German co-founder of a major international human rights group has said he has come to believe that the Netanyahu regime is a rogue regime, I am pretty sure he is welcome to visit the Maldives on a non-Israeli passport.”
Hey, this old guy said it’s a rogue regime, and he’s “Jewish,” so it must be true. It’s funny though how there are quite a lot of actual (or imagined) rogue regimes, but somehow Israel is the only country that get’s singled out for vilification in this way. I wonder why that could be? It is odd.
It’s funny too that you’ll never see people justify the vilification of any other group except Jews, using the opinion of somebody from that group as evidence. This is really an odd feature of debate about Israel that is seen repeatedly by people who don’t want to think of themselves as antisemitic . . . like the now passé rationalization that “some of my best friends are Jewish.”
I knew then it was a place to avoid.
Jihadi holidays in the Maldives; no thanks!
Sept 2018
President Abdulla Yameen said the country’s religious leaders had complained that the sculpture represented idols, which are banned by Islam.
Police armed with pickaxes and power tools have destroyed the world’s first tidal gallery at a holiday resort in the Maldives after it was deemed “offensive to Islam”.
The gallery, at the Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi, which opened in July, featured semi-submerged exhibits that disappeared and reappeared as the tide went in and out.
“My point that Palestinians are banned with this move as well, that you repeat, makes my point about the stupidity – the futility – of this feckless move by the government of the Maldives.”
Sorry Gary, no, it does not make your point, it makes my point. Indeed, if this was to punish all Jewish people, then you would be correct, it would be stupid and futile. On the other hand, if it is exactly what it is claimed to be, a ban on Israeli travelers as a protest against the Israeli government actions, then it is not stupid, although it remains futile as the Israeli government clearly doesn’t care about the country’s standing on the world stage. And I was aware that almost half of Jewish people live in Israel. I specifically said the majority of Jews live outside of Israel and that is factually correct.
Your constant reading into actions well beyond what the actions actually are is becoming tiresome. You read into this action against the Israeli government as an attack on all Jewish people. North Koreans and Cubans are effectively banned from travelling to the US. These are officially atheist countries. Does that mean that all atheists are unwelcome in the US. Of course not. it means that North Koreans and Cubans are unwelcome in the US.
And wearing a Palestine flag pin does not mean that you want to kill all Jewish people or Israelis or even want to displace them from the internationally recognized borders of Israel. It only means you support a country for Palestinians. Do you truly believe that the citizens of the 139 countries that have recognized a Palestinian state support the elimination of all Jews from Israel?
As others gave pointed out, this is not a ban based on religion but on citizenship. @Gary should STOP trying to play religious victim but instead question if the genocidal behavior of the Israeli government warrants a ban.
It is @Gary (and other comment writers’) right to refuse doing business with Maldives in response to this new policy. It is good to see that so many people SUPPORT the concept of BOYCOTTING, divesting, and sanctioning. I look forward to @Gary posting about how BDS is a valid response to behavior we find abhorrent and urging the states that have anti-BDS laws to repeal them!
Mak is off again. People have been referring to what Sudan has done in Darfur in this century as having the intent of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Much the same for China’s approach to Uyghurs. Much the same for Myanamar’s approach to Rohingya. All in the current century. Israel should not be held to a lesser standard — especially not when it’s my tax money being used to primarily kill and to provide diplomatic cover to mostly kill and repeatedly displace a population of civilians which are overwhelmingly women and minor children — the very segment of a nation which is most critical to keep a nation alive and growing.
I always go to a “travel blog” so I can get up to speed on world events. Gary, try to stay in your lane since you don’t seem to cover travel and better than politics.
The people most hated by others on the basis of their religious identity are Muslims nowadays. The non-Muslim antisemites of the world and their successors have mostly migrated to having Muslims as the primary enemy religious identity to insult, remove, keep out and destroy. So while antisemitism has definitely gotten much worse in the last 25 years and more recently than it used to be in the 1980s and early 1990s, Islamophobia has gotten exponentially bigger and more widespread during these years than even antisemitism.
While it is wisely said that the treatment of Jewish minorities are the canary in the coal mine about the state of civilization, the treatment of Muslim and other minorities are also a canary in the coal mine when it comes to the state of civilization.
I am gay. I ban all muslim countries. That’s my choice.
I prefer to give my money to Israel.
Thanks for mentioning this Gary. Eliminating the Maldives from my bucket list made my upcoming trip planning that much easier.
V. odd. I don’t understand why Israelis are associated with the government of Israel. I don’t want to be associated with the US gov.
MAK-Great points but many are deaf and blind —
What would America do if a 10/7 took place By Mexico in L.A. —
To get an idea Take a look at WW2 what UK & US do to DRESDEN
You voted for Hamas – this is what you get
@ Pascal +100%
Here, here!!
A huge proportion of Israelis have served or are serving in the IDF or are reservists for Israeli security forces. The ultra-orthodox Israelis having been the major exception to that along with Israeli Arabs. In such an environment and others, some deliberately and maliciously blend the line between civilian and militant actors embedded in society to try to cover for “collateral damage” deliberately accepted by militant actors — be they militant state actors like Israel or militant non-state actors like Hamas.
Congratulations to @GUWonder for almost the ONLY sensible comments to this unfortunate post. I bear no grudge against Jews (and certainly not towards Mr. Leff) but everyone who spoke up to condemn the Maldivians should pause and think why is it that Israelis are disliked almost universally outside the US and Israel.
11 night December trip to the W cancelled. My $30k will happily be spent elsewhere.
“@GUWonder People have been referring to what Sudan has done in Darfur in this century as having the intent of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Much the same for China’s approach to Uyghurs. Much the same for Myanamar’s approach to Rohingya. All in the current century. Israel should not be held to a lesser standard — especially not when it’s my tax money being used to primarily kill and to provide diplomatic cover to mostly kill and repeatedly displace a population of civilians which are overwhelmingly women and minor children — the very segment of a nation which is most critical to keep a nation alive and growing.”
How many countries ban citizens of Sudan or Myanmar from entering their country based upon the wars of their countries? How many protests on college campuses have there been protesting them? How many Sudanese or Burmese fear for their lives in Europe or North America because of the real genocides going on in their countries? How many Burmese houses of worship have been defiled? How many UN Security Counsel condemnations have their been of Sudan or Burma? How many times has the Prime Minister of the Maldives referenced the 1.2 million Muslim refugees of Burma’s genocide? None of these things have happened – but happen commonly to Israel and the Jewish diaspora around the world – despite these genocides, because nobody cares care about genocide so much as they are obsessed about Jews.
Of course I can go on and on as even these two examples make a far from complete set of mass murders, genocides, and depravities that make Gaza look like the sundry war that it is . . . and one that Israel didn’t start. But I lived long enough in enough places where antisemitism is very common – something that I think North Americans are only starting to become familiar with – to understand that facts have nothing to do with the views of the Israel-Gaza conflict and that this is just a continuation of hatreds that have existed and festered in Europe and the Middle East for 1000+ years.
Europeans have systematically exterminated their Jews in gas chambers, and Jews have been expelled from all of the Middle East and North Africa such that their ancient and once thriving communities are extinct. Of great relevance is that every act of barbarity against Jews was based upon fake conspiracy theories ranging from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jewish conspiracies to kill babies for their blood, Jewish conspiracies against the Aryan race, Jewish conspiracies to overthrow the King, or the various conspiracies imagined against the Arabs. Yet people want to believe that all of this history of antisemitic conspiracy theories that rationalized centuries of antisemitic hatred is merely a giant coincidence and has absolutely nothing to do with the current vilification of Israel.
People like you want to believe that all of those conspiracies were fake, but this one is definitely real and the Jews are conspiring to commit genocide, steal land, and take over the Middle East from the Arabs – against all contrary evidence – unless they are stopped by people of virtue like you? Give me a break. I was not born yesterday. This is just the latest conspiracy theories, as much based in fact as all the others to rationalize the exact same thing.
The Seychelles, Mauritius & Reunion are much more interesting anyway.
I’ve been treated very friendly in all of them, and you will actually interact with the locals.
Tourists, money & capital go where they are treated well.
We should pray the day eventually comes that El Al is allowed to fly to the entire Middle East. The ongoing wars play a great deal in the cause of poverty in non-oil Muslim states.
Many don’t understand that even 0.1% of the IDF response would be an outrage in many of the neighboring countries. But that is something that the Israeli government must negotiate with, especially with the Saudis. It is their responsibility, and should be free of interference from the US or China.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and there are many in high places on both sides who want to deposit migrants from Gaza into the Western lands. This must be furiously resisted.
Bye Felicia Maldives.
They went off my list when they started aligning with China.
And many of their reefs are crap
@Christian ” They nurtured, funded, and supported Hamas as a power play against the more moderate Palestinians. ”
This really does misunderstand Israeli politics, it is also not true. Over and over Israel has offered Palestinians not just a state but territory concessions as well, ~ 97% of the territory they’ve asked for (and land swaps for the 3% they cannot honor, turning over Jewish neighborhoods). These offers haven’t just been rejected, they’ve been met with terrorist violence for decades.
That feeds a conservative politics which has privileged security and so yes those leaders haven’t sought rapprochement.
It was certainly a mistake to think that Israel could live with Hamas on its borders. We’ve now seen what that does. And it explains why Israel now believes it cannot tolerate Hamas any longer. Do you remember the U.S. reaction when Obama finally “got” bin Laden?
@GUWonder “In doing this, they aren’t banning by religion or even saying that members of any religion are not welcome there.”
That’s not a pretext you accepted when Donald Trump did it to Muslims, my friend.