Pressure on El Al over ‘bullying and intimidation’ of female passengers
The pressure on Israeli carrier El Al to do something about the ‘bullying and intimidation’ of female passengers is gathering pace.
Sharon Shapiro, a Chicago blogger, has started a petition to end the harassment by ultra-Orthodox men, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures so far.
The issue came to a head after an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv was delayed when Orthodox Haredi male passengers refused to sit next to women.
Ultra-Orthodox Haredim have a strict policy of gender segregation.
After some requests to other passengers to swap seats were denied, several Haredim stood in the aisles and refused to take their assigned seats, causing ‘chaos’, according to some other passengers.
Shapiro’s petition asked the airline to ‘reserve a few rows of separate sex seating on every flight, where for a fee, those passengers who need such seating can pre-book their seats and not annoy or coerce other passengers before take-off’.
"If a passenger was openly engaging in racial or religious discrimination against another passenger or flight attendant, they would immediately be removed from the plane. Why then, does El Al Airlines allow gender discrimination against women and why does it permit female passengers to be bullied, harassed, and intimidated into switching seats which they rightfully paid for?" it said.
Elana Sztokman, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and a regular El Al customer, said it was not an isolated incident.
"Anyone who’s ever travelled on El Al has experienced this," she said.
After the incident El Al responded by issuing this statement: "El Al does everything it can to give its passengers the best possible service year-round and the company will examine the complaints and if some passengers are found to have acted out of line the company will examine its future steps."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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