NAZARETH (PIC)– An Arab member of the Israeli parliament strongly protested the Israeli El- Al airlines’ refusal to carry the body of a Palestinian woman because she was a “Muslim”.
Arab MP Dr. Azmi Bishara addressed a message to the Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz and El Al chief executive officer Haim Romano condemning the semi-official company’s refusal to carry the body of Lamis Jarrar from the USA to her hometown in Akka.
Jarrar who used to work as a lecturer at the Howard University in Washington died last Friday and her relatives wanted to bury her in Akka.
El Al officials told the relatives that they would not allow the body to be transferred aboard their planes and said they don’t carry the body of a Muslim.
The relatives tried to convince them to respect the dead but the officials said “This is of no concern to us look for another airline”.
Bishara expressed resentment at such a behavior which he described as “racist” and “unethical” and asked in his message whether this was the pursued policy.
He said that such an act should be exposed not only on the local level but rather on the international level because people in the world in general and in the West in particular would refuse to fly aboard such an airline if they knew of its “racist stands and behavior”.
