haaretz.com

JERUSALEM (JTA) — El Al will “immediately” remove any passenger who refuses to sit next to another passenger for any reason, its CEO announced, but not before a major Israeli tech company announced it would no longer fly its employees on the airline.

NICE System’s CEO Barak Eilam on Monday announced via posts on social media that “At NICE we don’t do business with companies that discriminate against race, gender or religion. NICE will not fly @EL AL Israel Airlines until they change their practice and actions discriminating women.”

Eilam’s announcement came days after an El Al Airlines flight from New York to Israel was delayed by more than an hour after four Haredi Orthodox men refused to take their assigned seats next to women. Two women eventually agreed to change their seats in order to allow the flight to take off.

An account of the incident was posted on Facebook by a passenger, Israeli rapper Khen Rotem.

Following the incident on Thursday evening, El Al apologized in a statement and added that: “Any discrimination by passengers is absolutely forbidden. El Al flight attendants do everything that they can to provide service to a wide range of passengers and various requests and try to assist.”