Tel Aviv, August 9 (RHC)-- The state of Israel will be spying on hundreds of activists and organizations in the country and in the Palestinian West Bank, as part of a new task force charged with eliminating foreign activists from the country who support the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement, or BDS, against Israel. The move was announced by Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan and Interior Minister Arye Dery.

According to the newspaper Haaretz, the joint task force will identify organizations and activists that support BDS with the intention of gathering intelligence on their activities in order to collect enough evidence to present in favor of legally deporting them.

At a press conference, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said the task force “is a necessary step in light of the malicious intentions of delegitimization activists who act to spread lies and twist the reality in our region.”

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Arye Dery said: “We have the responsibility to do all we can to crush the boycott and say clearly that we will not allow the State of Israel to be harmed.”

The Israeli state, which has one of the most right-wing governments in its history, sees critical and leftist human rights groups as organizations seeking to destroy Israel by documenting and uncovering abuses by Israeli security forces.

A senior Israeli official, who attended the meeting and spoke to Haaretz on the condition of anonymity, said that police representatives at a meeting on the task forced agreed that BDS activists are provoking Palestinians in the West Bank to confront Israeli forces and disrupt their operations.

The official further said that many foreign activists have already been identified by the internal spies of the strategic affairs ministry and many of them are entering Israel as tourists. The task force, the official added, will define “the criteria by which a foreign activist will be marked for deportation or barred from entry.”