Survivor suing El Al over request to change seats

A HOLOCAUST survivor is suing El Al for discrimination in what could be a precedent-setting case.

Renee Rabinowitz, 81, has accused Israel’s national airline carrier of making her swap seats after a Charedi man refused to sit next to her.

Ms Rabinowitz, a retired lawyer who made aliyah a decade ago, claimed that a “distinguished-looking man in Chasidic or Charedi garb” was assigned the window seat next to her but did not want to sit next to a woman, so a flight attendant offered her a new seat.

Despite this seat being “better” and closer to first class, Ms Rabinowitz said she “felt minimised”.

“For me, this is not personal,” Ms Rabinowitz added. “It is intellectual, ideological and legal. I think to myself, here I am, an older woman, educated, I’ve been around the world, and some guy can decide that I shouldn’t sit next to him. Why?”

The Israel Religious Action Centre, an advocacy group that is suing El Al on Ms Rabinowitz’s behalf, has report- edly been looking for an appropriate test case on seat-swapping for two years. What made Ms Rabinowitz’s case so compelling was the allegation that the flight attendant actively made the switch.

“We needed a case of a flight attendant being actively involved,” said the group’s director, Anat Hoffman, “to show that El Al has internalised the commandment, ‘I cannot sit next to a woman.’”

The Israel Religious Action Centre is seeking $13,000 (£9,000) in compensation for Ms Rabinowitz.

El Al offered Ms Rabinowitz a $200 (£142) discount on her next flight and said in a statement: “El Al flight attendants are on the front line of providing service for the company’s varied array of passengers. In the cabin, the attendants receive different and varied requests and they try to assist as much as possible, the goal being to have the plane take off on time and for all the passengers to arrive at their destination as scheduled.”

‘For me, it’s not personal. It’s ideological and legal’