Legal Commentary

?White House Denies Israeli Visa Story?

By Eugene Volokh

Ben Smith (Politico) writes, apropos the newspaper story I noted and asked our readers about a few days ago:

The White House is denying a story in the Israeli newspaper Maariv ... that Israeli nuclear scientists have been denied visas to visit the United States....

White House spokesman Bill Burton flatly denied the report of a change to U.S. visa policy.

UPDATE: National Jewish Democratic Council CEO Ira Forman says in an email statement that he?s checked with Israeli officials, who told him ?Israel does not perceive any change in the U.S. policy regarding this matter.?

UPDATE: The State Department is telling members of Congress, ?The report is inaccurate; there has been no change in administration policy regarding visa issuance to scientists from Israel. We value greatly our academic and scientific exchanges with Israel and will continue to promote these important exchanges.?

UPDATE: I?ve also emailed Ben Gurion University?s Zeev Alfassi, quoted in the original story, for more detail.

Many thanks to Raghav Krishnapriyan for the pointer.