Indonesia has issued 51 calling visas to Israeli nationals. The information did not come from a press conference or a parliamentary debate, but from immigration intelligence data covering applications approved through 30 November 2025. According to that data, Israel ranks fourth among recipients of Indonesia’s most restrictive visa category—behind Nigeria, Somalia, and Afghanistan, and ahead of Liberia and even South Korea, which recorded just one such case. During the same period, 470 calling visa recommendations were issued in total, alongside 22 rejections. These numbers are not incidental. They are policy.

Calling visas are reserved for nationals of countries deemed high-risk across ideological, political, security, and immigration criteria. For states without diplomatic relations with Indonesia—Israel among them—the process is more tightly controlled still. Entry is permitted only through two airports: Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali. Applications are reviewed by a formal coordination team that includes immigration authorities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, intelligence agencies, the police, and the military. Officials stress that there is no discretion involved, no unilateral decision-making, no politics—only procedure.

This insistence on procedure is precisely the problem.

The government wants the public, and the international community, to see the issuance of visas to Israeli nationals as a matter of border management rather than moral choice. It

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