Israeli apartheid: Taxi app offers option not to be picked up by Arab drivers

Occupied Palestine (QNN)- An Israeli taxi-hailing app has been sued by human rights lawyers for providing a service allowing users to guarantee they would not get an Arab driver, according to the Guardian.

Gett, which also works with black cabs in the UK, is facing a pay-out of $47 million in damages for providing a function that discriminates against non-Jews. The suit was filed against Gett, its CEO and founder, Dave Waiser, and Mark Oun, the head of Gett Israel.

The app offers users in occupied Palestine the choice to request a taxi that is not driven on the Sabbath, the weekly Jewish day of rest, and some Jewish holidays, which guarantees having a taxi that is not driven by a non-Jewish driver.

The service is labeled as “Mehadrin”, referring to the most stringent levels of Jewish regulations.

A lawsuit that was filed against the firm last week accused Gett’s service of being a cover for a discriminatory service, according to the Guardian.

“They give it a religious title. But, in fact, this is a proxy for a racist service that provides taxis with Jewish drivers,” said Asaf Pink, a lawyer working on the case. “Of course, they can’t just say ‘we don’t want Arabs’.”

According to an investigation conducted back in 2018, Gett’s Jerusalem representative, Herzl Moshe, said he would never sign an Arab driver to the Mehadrin service, even if they agreed to Gett’s terms. “Let me tell you a secret,” he said in recorded comments. “Gett Mehadrin is not for religious [Jews]. It is for people who don’t want an Arab driver. When my daughter wants to travel, I order her a Gett Mehadrin. She doesn’t care if the driver is religious or not because what she wants is a Jewish driver.”