The decision to bar him from entering the West Bank to speak at Birzeit, a Palestinian university, “is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies,” remarked Boaz Okun, the legal commentator of the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in his Monday column. “Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion.”

Just to be clear, this is Yediot Aharanot, not the mildly left-leaning Haaretz.