Israeli Car Rental Company Denies Services to Arab Citizens Based on their Family Name
Adalah: Company policy is arbitrary, discriminatory and unacceptable; the transfer of information from security sources to private companies is worrying and dangerous.
On 23 January 2014, Adalah sent an urgent letter to the Israeli car rental company Cal Auto demanding the immediate cancellation of its policy to refuse to rent cars to Arab citizens with the family names of Jabarin and Ighbariya due to “classified information” in its possession. The policy effectively denies the rental of cars to over 30,000 Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel with those family names.
Adalah sent the letter following a complaint by businessman Ibrahim Jabarin regarding the company’s refusal to rent him a car. Jabarin sought to rent a car from Cal Auto’s branch in Afula on 21 January 2014, but was informed that they could not complete the transaction and that he was prohibited from car rental with the company. When Jabarin tried to clarify the situation, the representative claimed that there is a “general problem” with car rentals to members of the Jabarin and Ighbariya families. Jabarin then called Cal Auto’s branch in Haifa and recorded the conversation (in Hebrew). He was once again refused a car, with the company representative stating the same reasons.
Adalah Attorney Nadeem Shehadeh argued in the letter that Cal Auto’s policy was discriminatory and illegal as it denied equal services to thousands of people on an arbitrary and sweeping basis. He also argued that the practice violated the Prohibition of Discrimination Law in Products, Services and Entry into Places of Entertainment and Public Places.
Company receiving information from security officials
Cal Auto replied to Adalah’s letter. Regarding the response, Attorney Shehadeh stated that: “In recent months, Cal Auto has received intelligence from security officials about members of the Jabarin and Ighbariya families from Umm el-Fahem, which allowed the company to prohibit car rentals to all members of these two families.” Cal Auto also claimed that such relations with security agencies were a common practice in many companies.
Attorney Shehadeh also stated that, “the link between a ‘security official’ and a privately-owned firm is illegal and very disturbing. This is a serious violation of the family members’ right to privacy. Intelligence about them, the nature of which is unclear, as are its sources, is being given to civilian-business agencies.” In this case, the transfer of information allowed for the racist stigmatization of two large Arab families compromising of 30,000 citizens, and presented them as suspects, when the majority have no connection to the matters raised by the security officials. This constituted a smearing of the families’ reputations, and violated their constitutional rights and their right to dignity.
See Ha’aretz’s feature article on the case: “Car rental company blacklists entire families”, 31 January 2013
Listen to the recording of the conversation (in Hebrew) between Jabarin and the Cal Auto representative
