The Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein has expressed racist, anti-Arab hatred in posts from the New York based organization office. This week, he exposes his hypocrisy by blasting Lufthansa, demanding to know why it “discriminates” against passengers to Israel, but not against Arabs. No mention in his letter is made of how El Al, the Israeli airline and Israeli security discriminate against Christians and Muslims on their airlines
By Ray Hanania
Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America this week sent a vicious letter attacking Lufthansa Airlines asserting that the German Airline treats travelers to Israel differently than it treats travelers to Arab countries.
Although Klein and the ZOA have little credibility — they toss around the A-Word (anti-Semitism) in destructive disregard for the truth — the hint of anti-Semitism is hurtful.
What is the ZOA beef with Lufthansa, one of the most capable airlines in the industry? It comes down to one simple sentence in their lengthy, angry letter: “Lufthansa permits passengers to bring two bags free of charge to and from every country in the Middle East – except the Jewish State of Israel.”
Wow. That’s discrimination? Lufthansa must be Anti-Semitic if they make passengers who travel to Israel pay for that second bag!
Who really cares about Klein or the ZOA? Well, no one. Except that the letter really exposes his hypocrisy on Israel.
Why is it that if Israel is a “Democracy,” Israel can treat Jews with favoritism, while openly discriminating against Christians and Muslims? Most Christians and Muslims who travel to Israel are humiliated at the airport by Israel’s Boarder Guards. Oftentimes, the Christian and Muslim passengers are strip-searched (as I was twice while traveling there over the years.) They interrogate you like you are a criminal, and create huge hassles by forcing Christians and Muslims to sit in small rooms at Ben Gurion Airport, the doorway to Israel’s Apartheid policies and its prison Gulag. The weight can be hours long and sometimes even days.
Klein is silent when it comes to how Israel mistreats Christian and Muslim Americans who travel to Israel and have to experience insults, abuses and bullying, the three words that best describe Israeli culture these days under the extremist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
And, if Israel Border Control doesn’t like you, they put you back on a plane back to where you came from. No reason. No explanation. Just the hassle. They do it because Israel’s government practices it’s own happy-face form of Apartheid, where they smile at you and shove it up your ass (literally in some cases with cavity searches at Ben Gurion airport.)
Klein, the ZOA bully hypocrite, threatens Lufthansa’s Customer Relations representative for North America, Linda Stiene, with veiled but obvious references in the June 15, 2015 letter to the Holocaust and the Nazis:
“If the baggage policy is not so revised, then we will have no choice but to inform the public, the media, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Presidential candidates that Lufthansa – a German airline that should be especially sensitive to discriminating against Jews and the Jewish State – is singling out Israel for different and harsher treatment. We know that they, like us, will have zero tolerance for Lufthansa’s discriminatory practice against the Jewish State of Israel.”
Israel discriminates against Christian and Muslim Americans all the time, but does Klein care? In fact, many American politicians don’t care because they fear having people like Klein and organizations like the ZOA through the A-Word at them like mud pies.
Instead of spending time promoting peace, or advocating for civil rights of citizens inside and outside of Israel, the ZOA acts like a bully, threatening anyone for almost anything that remotely might treat Israel differently or involves criticism of the foreign country.
Oh yea, that’s right. ISRAEL IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY MORTON! This is America. How about doing something for us.
Klein is just another example of the truth, that many pro-Israel activists don’t want peace. They want hate. They want conflict. They want to expel Christians and Muslims from all of the occupied territories including Israel. Their hypocrisy has no bounds, devoid of morality and principle.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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