After a flurry of charges and denials and a less than expert PR job it appears that Delta Airlines did not violate US aviation law when it signed an interline agreement, or air alliance, with Saudi Arabian Airlines recently.
Before Delta finally clarified matters, it looked like it was actually thinking of banning Jewish passengers and those with Israel stamps on their passports from boarding flights for Saudi Arabia.
In a clever maneuver of acronymic manipulation on the Huffington Post, Rabbi Jason Miller said of Delta: When it comes to Jewish passengers, its name should become an acronym: Dont Even Let Them Aboard.
That isnt the case, as it turns out. Delta made it clear it has no intention of refusing boarding rights to anybody whose passport reveals an earlier stay in Israel or whose name happens to sound Jewish.
What the Saudis do after that point, however, is another matter.
Caught up in the unseemly flap, the Saudi Embassy last week called the rumors of flight restrictions completely false and insisted that Saudi Arabia does not deny visas to US citizens based on their religion.
As comforting as such words are, the Anti-Defamation League says the truth is different.
The ADL says it has collected reports from US citizens that they were indeed denied Saudi visas based on Israeli passport stamps, and perhaps even their Jewish surnames.
These reports, it should be noted, are relatively recent and fly in the face of Saudi denials. In the past, such Saudi refusals were blatant and not denied. In these apparently more politically sensitive days, even Saudi Arabia doesnt wish to appear intolerant.
But in truth it remains precisely that. Although it might actually allow somebody with an Israeli passport stamp within their borders, the same tolerance is unlikely to be shown to a traveler who makes the mistake of carrying non-Islamic religious materials into the country.
Such items as New Testaments and rosaries, obligatory to many Christians, and Torahs and tefilin equally indispensable to many Jews will either be confiscated by Saudi customs or provide the grounds for an entry refusal.
Since 9/11, Saudi Arabia has been busy trying to refashion its image. It is inching toward democratic reform, it says, and is going so far as to consider the idea of allowing women the right to drive automobiles by themselves. It even likes to depict itself as an active and credible contributor to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
But until Saudi Arabia reaches the minimal state of self-confidence and true tolerance that transcends such petty fears as Israeli passport stamps and ritual items from other religions, such reassurances seem nothing more than empty words.
Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News
