brothers

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.

This is actually a quote from a news story about two Palestinian brothers who have Israeli citizenship who were subject to Israel's policy of

. . . carry[ing] out its own security checks at [foreign] airports [the countries of which] fail . . . to supervise them [Israel] and prefer. . . to “ignore their discriminatory nature and the human rights violations committed on their own soil”.

The airport in question is JFK in New York.

The brothers were part of a larger group of insurance agents who were "in a party of 17 Israeli insurance agents on a two-week business trip to Canada and New York in 2007." Their Jewish counterparts went through in minutes, but the two brothers were under constant supervision, and chastised and humiliated when they went to the toilet without permission. They are Israeli citizens, and they obviously work in the insurance field within Israel.

They "won 8,000 US dollars 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."

Palestinians make up a fifth of the Israeli population, that is, 20%. In most developed nations in the world, particularly the western ones, the rights of such a large minority group would be fiercely defended by most with liberal leanings, and in most western countries there would be rules in place to protect them. I guess one has to determine whether Israel is a western-leaning democracy with fair rule for all, or not, and also question where its ultimate power comes from.

The article was reproduced in Ma'an News Agency (West Bank based), originally written by Jonathan Cook

a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

I first read this article at the Angry Arab News Service. It is an interesting and short read, particularly regarding the flaunting of immunity offered internationally to many Israeli officials, keeping in mind the recent Mossad assassination of a senior Hamas official on Emirati soil. Foreign passports were forged and used at the time.