Israeli author ‘subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by security’ at Luton Airport

Luton – birthplace of T0mmy R0binson and Kevin Carroll. The EDL started there for a reason. 

From the Telegraph

One of Britain’s biggest airports has launched an investigation after an Israeli author claimed he was subjected to anti-Semitism by staff over a poster promoting a talk on the Oct 7 attacks.

Alon Penzel said he was challenged by an airport security guard while on his way to the departure gate to catch a flight from Luton Airport to Tel Aviv.

At the time he was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan End Jew Hatred and carrying an A3-size black and white promotional sign emblazoned with the title of his book, Testimonies Without Boundaries Israel: October 7th 2023.

The 23-year-old campaigner and journalist had spent a week in London promoting his book, featuring first-hand accounts from Hamas hostages and survivors of the Oct 7 massacre, which killed 1,200 people. He had also been invited to speak at a House of Lords event by historian Andrew Roberts.

Mr Penzel claims that after passing through security checks, a security guard stopped him and told him that his sign was “offensive”.

“I had already been through security and I was walking to the gate when a security man came up to me, and asked me if I was a protester.  I was puzzled. I said ‘no, I’m just trying to catch my flight’. He pointed at my sign and said that some people may find it offensive. I asked why and he said it was offensive because there has been an illegal occupation since 1948. It was then that I realised something else was going on.”

Three other security guards and two police officers arrived on the scene and are understood to have taken Mr Penzel to one side, away from the departure gate, before asking him about the materials he was carrying.

” Ifelt like this was pure anti-Semitism,” he said. “I was telling them I was not a protester. They said they were reviewing CCTV footage of me because protests are not allowed in the airport. Eventually, they let me go. There was no apology, nothing.”

UK Lawyers for Israel, which is representing Mr Penzel, claimed he was harassed and treated in an anti-Semitic manner and is demanding disciplinary action against the staff responsible.

In a letter to Luton Airport, UKFLI stated: “[The security guard] was trying to make his own political point that somehow the massacre on 7 October was Israel’s own fault and was a kind of payback for Israel’s historic wrongs. Moreover he appeared to blame Mr Prenzel for the imagined actions of past Israeli governments. He appeared to be punishing Mr Penzel, on the basis of his own antisemitic attitude, by detaining him. [The security guard] appears to have harassed Mr Penzel, and caused him to be detained for over an hour, on the basis that he was obviously Jewish and Israeli.”

Airport sources say Mr Penzel was initially stopped after security staff monitoring CCTV became concerned a protest over the Gaza conflict was being planned in the departure lounge. An airport spokesman said: “Staff were alerted to the presence of a passenger who appeared to be carrying a placard at the boarding gate for a flight to Tel Aviv. To ensure the safety of passengers, police were asked to attend, before the man was allowed to board his flight and continue his journey.”

The incident is the latest in a series of claims of anti-Semitic behaviour at British airports.