Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim declared on Wednesday that any Israeli citizen discovered inside the country will be deported immediately, as federal investigators examine allegations that Israelis holding dual citizenship joined a technology startup community built on reclaimed land across the strait from Singapore.
“If we find any Israeli, we will deport them immediately because we do not recognize Israel,” Anwar told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
The Network School Investigation
The controversy centers on Network School, a co-living community for startup founders and remote workers established in 2024 by former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan. The community sits inside Forest City, a Chinese-backed development built on reclaimed land in Johor, just across the water from Singapore. A promotional video describing the project as an attempt to build “Silicon Valley outside Silicon Valley” drew wide attention online, along with criticism from users who called it cult-like. Johor’s state government subsequently called for a federal investigation into the community’s activities and the nationalities of its residents.
Malaysia’s Immigration Department has since inspected 266 foreign nationals from 40 countries at the Forest City site. Every person checked held valid travel documents, according to the department’s director-general, Datuk Zakaria Shaaban, who told the New Straits Times that “so far, we have not found any evidence to verify the allegations regarding the presence of Israelis in the Network School program.” Officials said broader checks into identity, travel documents, and visa compliance remain ongoing, and Anwar has ordered a separate review of the project’s business licenses, accommodation arrangements, and land use.
No Diplomatic Relations, No Exceptions
Malaysia has never established diplomatic relations with Israel and bars Israeli passport holders from entering the country without written approval from its Ministry of Home Affairs. Malaysian passports carry an inscription stating they are valid for travel to every country except Israel. The current investigation turns on a narrower question: whether dual citizens entered Forest City using passports issued by other countries, a workaround that Malaysian authorities acknowledge is sometimes used and are now scrutinizing directly.
Anwar has built his tenure on an outspoken pro-Palestinian foreign policy and open contact with Hamas. Following the terrorist group’s October 7, 2023, massacre, in which roughly 1,200 people were murdered in southern Israel, Anwar telephoned Hamas’s then-political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, to express what he called his “unwavering support for the Palestinian people.” He has since accused Israel of genocide in Gaza and described Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.” Bloomberg reported last year that Anwar’s own advisers had urged him to soften his rhetoric to avoid provoking tariffs from President Donald Trump, whose administration Malaysian officials feared could target the country’s semiconductor and AI data-center industries.
A Response From Washington
Congressman Greg Landsman, a Democrat representing Ohio’s first district, issued a statement condemning the deportation order in blunt terms. “They’re kicking Jews out of Malaysia,” Landsman said. “We’ve seen this all before. The purge of Jews has begun. Predictable, and just the beginning. We know where this leads.” Landsman noted that Israel remains the one state guaranteed to accept any Jew expelled from another country, and said his office was reaching out directly to the Malaysian embassy, while cautioning against penalizing the Malaysian public for their government’s policy.
Malaysia Is Far From Alone
Malaysia’s stance, while unusually blunt in ordering deportation rather than simply denying entry, places it among a defined group of countries that formally bar Israeli passport holders. As of mid-2026, Israeli citizens are barred outright from Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen, in addition to Malaysia itself. Six of those countries, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, extend the ban to any traveler, regardless of nationality, whose passport carries evidence of a prior visit to Israel.
Several other countries permit Israelis to enter only under narrow conditions. Saudi Arabia admits Israeli citizens for religious pilgrimage or specific business purposes but otherwise maintains a ban. Oman allows Israeli nationals to pass through only in transit. Iraq bars entry nationwide but makes an exception for the Kurdistan region in the north.
The most recent addition to the list came from the Maldives, which reinstated a formal ban on Israeli passport holders in 2024, citing Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, after decades in which Israeli tourists had traveled there freely. The move made the Maldives the first country in years to add a new restriction rather than simply maintain a longstanding one, and travel industry trackers have since folded it into the same roster as the older Middle Eastern and North African bans.
What distinguishes Malaysia’s announcement is the direction of the threat. Most countries on this list simply deny Israelis entry at the border. Anwar’s government has gone further, threatening to actively remove Israeli citizens already living and working inside the country, a step that few governments have taken in recent years and one that lends Landsman’s warning about historical patterns of expulsion its immediate force.
