New York
Airport ‘Blind’ to El Al Racial Profiling
By Jonathan Cook
Anti-war.com
April 20 2010
Two Israeli Arab brothers have won $8,000 in damages from
Israel’s national carrier, El Al, after a court found that their treatment by
the company’s security staff at a New York airport had been "abusive and
unnecessary."
Abdel Wahab and Abdel Aziz Shalabi were
assigned a female security guard who watched over them at the airport’s
departure gate for nearly two hours, in full view of hundreds of fellow
passengers, after they had passed the security and baggage checks.
Later, El Al’s head of security threatened to bar Abdel Wahab,
43, from the flight if he did not apologize to the guard for going to the toilet
without first getting her approval. Abdel Aziz said he had been humiliated and
"cried like I’ve never cried before in public."
Although surveys of Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of
Israel’s population, show that most have suffered degrading treatment when
flying with Israeli carriers, few bring cases to the Israeli courts.
The brothers are now planning to sue El Al and its New York staff
in the United States over Israel’s racial profiling of passengers in a country
where the practice is illegal.
"I’d rather go to New York by donkey than fly with El Al again,"
said Abdel Aziz, 44. "We will keep fighting this case until Israel is
embarrassed into stopping its policy of discriminating against its Arab
citizens."
The brothers, who live in northern Israel, were the only Arabs in
a party of 17 Israeli insurance agents on a two-week business trip to Canada and
New York in 2007.
They arrived four hours early at John F. Kennedy airport in New
York for their return flight with Israir, an Israeli charter company, to allow
time for the additional checks they expected from El Al’s security staff.
El Al has special agreements with most countries’ airports to
carry out its own security checks for passengers flying with Israeli airlines.
The brothers said they were questioned, searched, and had to wait
two hours while their bags and carry-on luggage were subjected to lengthy
inspections.
"The Jews with us went through in minutes," said Abdel Aziz, in
his home in the village of Iksal, near Nazareth. "The difference in treatment
was very clear."
After they had passed the checks, an El Al security guard, Keren
Weinberg, was assigned to them until they boarded the plane. They were told to
make sure she could see them at all times.
When Abdel Wahab visited a toilet without her permission, a noisy
argument broke out between the two, with Ms. Weinberg accusing him of "roaming
freely." He said he told her to "either arrest me or go away."
Ilan Or, the head of El Al security, was
then called and issued him an ultimatum that he apologize or be prevented from
catching the flight. Abdul Wahab told a magistrate’s court in Haifa this month
that he broke down in tears and finally said he was sorry.
"I was in shock. One minute I was made to feel like a terrorist
and then the next like a naughty child," he said.
Judge Amir Toubi said the security staff had admitted that
neither brother was deemed a security threat and that Israeli law did not allow
checks to continue after passengers had passed the security area.
"With all due understanding of security needs, there is no
justification for ignoring the dignity, freedom, and basic rights of a citizen
under the mantle of the sacred cow of security," the judge ruled.
El Al told the court that it had been "asked by the state to
conduct security checks abroad on behalf of [charter companies] Arkia and Israir
airlines, and is acting under the security guidelines set by official bodies of
the state."
Abdul Wahab praised the court’s decision but said the damages
were minor and would not act as a deterrent against El Al repeating such
behavior in future. He said the brothers would appeal to a higher court in
Israel and were planning to initiate a legal action in New York, too.
"I will not rest until we get an apology from El Al and they
acknowledge that what they did is wrong," he said. He called on all Arab
citizens to boycott El Al until it committed to stop its discriminatory policy.
A 2007 report on racial profiling by Israeli carriers, published
by the Arab Association for Human Rights and the Center Against Racism,
concluded: "This phenomenon is so widespread that it is hard to find any Arab
citizen who travels abroad by air and who has not experienced a discriminatory
security check at least once."
The two groups found that Arab and Muslim passengers typically
faced long interrogations and extensive luggage searches, and were also
regularly subjected to body and strip searches, had items including computers
confiscated, were kept in holding areas, and were escorted directly on to the
plane.
The report noted that foreign countries that allowed Israel to
carry out its own security checks at their airports failed to supervise them and
preferred to "ignore their discriminatory nature and the human rights violations
committed on their own soil."
New York’s JFK airport was one of the airports that refused to
answer questions from the groups about incidents of discriminatory treatment of
Arabs and Muslims.
Israel has also come under harsh criticism for the standard
racial profiling policies it uses against its own Arab citizens and foreign Arab
nationals at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv.
The practice of putting different color-coded stickers on Jewish
and Arab passengers’ luggage ended three years ago. However, airport guards
still write a number on uniform white stickers indicating the level of security
threat. Critics say higher numbers are reserved for non-Jews.
Faced with a lawsuit from Israeli human rights groups, Menachem
Mazuz, the attorney general at the time, instructed the airports authority in
early 2008 to implement "visible equality" by ending discriminatory screening
policies.
However, observers have noticed no change in practice. "This was
a very cynical exercise. ‘Visible equality’ simply means making it look like
there’s equality when the inequality persists," said Mohammed Zeidan, director
of the Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth.
In December an airport official told the right-wing Jerusalem
Post newspaper: "Profiling makes the biggest difference. A man with the name of
Umar flying out of Tel Aviv, whether he is American or British, is going to get
checked seven times."
Two years ago Israel’s racial profiling policy made headlines
when a member of an American dance troupe with a Muslim-sounding name was forced
to dance at the airport to prove he was who he claimed.
The incident with the Shalabi brothers follows on the heels of a
diplomatic crisis between Israel and South Africa over revelations that spies
posing as El Al staff have been operating at Johannesburg airport, gathering
information on non-Jewish passengers visiting Israel.
El Al has threatened to close the route after South African
officials stopped providing the airport guards with diplomatic immunity.
South African TV reported last month that two of the Mossad
assassins suspected of killing a Hamas commander in Dubai in January may have
used Johannesburg airport to fly back to Israel.
A
shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae),
published in Abu Dhabi.
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