Kuwait Airlines
Photo: Shutterstock
Germany probes Kuwait Airlines for rejecting Israeli passengers
Transport Minister orders investigation after Israeli-Arab claims he was refused boarding after presenting his Israeli passport; 'If you want to boycott Israel, give me your USB flash drives, your phones, your safe-driving cars,' he says in viral video.
German authorities have launched an investigation into an incident in which Kuwait Airways refused to allow an Israeli passenger from boarding one of its flights, a decision that would place the airline in violation of aviation laws.
The investigation was launched at the behest of Germany’s Transport Minister Alexander Dobrindt a month after a short clip that went viral was uploaded to the internet.
It is being conducted as separate from legal proceedings currently underway in Frankfurt after an Israeli citizen filed a complaint that his boarding pass from Germany to Thailand with the airline was canceled by the company due to his nationality.
Nuseir Yassin
Earlier this month, the aforementioned video was published on Facebook by an Arab-Israeli web star named Nuseir Yassin in which he raged over the discrimination he was subjected to by the airline as a result of his Israeli passport.
Planning to fly from New York to India on a Kuwait Airways plane, he was prevented from boarding at JFK Airport.
“It turns out that because I’m an Israeli an entire airline is not allowed to take me on their planes even if I’m not going to Kuwait,” Yassin said on his video posted on his account which has gathered a following of more than 2 million people.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
“Dear Kuwait, if you want to boycott Israel, be my guest. Refuse me service but give me your USB flash drives, your phones, your safe-driving cars, your viber, your Waze or your antivirus. This is also Israel,” he added.
Yassin went on to scold Kuwait for boycotting Israel which he said was having an adverse effect on Palestinian workers.
“If you want to boycott Israel because of Palestine, I don’t think you actually care, because you’re also boycotting 2 million Muslim Palestinian Israelis like me,” he said before holding up his Israeli passport, deriding the “stupid” boycott campaign as “pure politics.”
In “the algemeiner,” it was written that a Jewish American lawyer Brooke Goldstein—the executive director of the Lawfare Project, a US-based pro-Israel non-profit legal group which is providing assistance to the Israeli citizen who filed the Frankfurt case—has praised the German government for looking further into the affair.
Nuseir Yassin
“We commend the German Federal Ministry of Transport for launching an investigation into Kuwait Airway’s discriminatory practices. Our team will continue to pursue legal action until the German Government makes clear that Kuwait Airways must either comply with the law or cease doing business in their country,” he said.
Another senior official in the NGO added: “This incident shows there is no place for discrimination in Germany. Our laws and shared values call on all policy makers in Germany to immediately act in order to end the systematic violations of human rights by Kuwait Airlines in our country.”
In 2015 Kuwait Airlines, the leading airline in the Gulf states, ceased operations between New York and London due to demands by the US Transport Department to end its boycott against Israeli passengers.
Kuwait holds no diplomatic relations with Israel and according to an academic study published this year, it is one of five airlines in the Middle East that forbids Israelis from flying on its planes.
