Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday apologized to Israel's ambassador to Panama, a member of the Druze minority after he and his family were subject to a special security screening before departing from Ben-Gurion International Airport last week.
According to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office, Netanyahu told Ambassador Reda Mansour that the Druze community is "close to our heart," and that he will work to "strengthen our brotherly bond."
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Reda wrote about the extra grilling on Facebook on Saturday.
He described how after learning they were from the Druze-majority town of Isfiya, the airport security guard asked the ambassador and his family to step aside and asked to see their passports.
"Isfiya is not a village in the [Palestinian] territories but the place of the central Druze graveyard. The first fallen soldier was my wife's grandfather who was killed in 1938, before the founding of the state. I recommend you take your security managers for a visit to this cemetery so that they learn what sacrifice is and what statesmanship and courtesy is. Go to hell, Ben-Gurion Airport, you make me sick."
President Reuven Rivlin also spoke with Mansour on Saturday.
"It was important for me to talk to you following the emotional turmoil you have experienced," he told the ambassador. "I read the things you wrote, and one cannot remain indifferent to them."
Rivlin said, "I don't want to get into the details of what happened, and I understand that all of the relevant parties are working on investigating the subject. What is nevertheless important is what you feel, and if you felt that hurt, then it needs to be addressed."
"It is important to me that you know that your long years of diplomatic work are appreciated and important for us as a country, and I am confident you will continue on your path. Our alliance with the Druze community is a covenant of life and not a blood pact. We need to make sure that we are deserving of it every single day, every single hour, and not just in periods of crisis and combat," Rivlin said.
The Israel Airports Authority issued a statement saying, "The security check at Ben-Gurion International Airport is [performed] without regard to religion, race or gender, and in an equitable manner. When you meet over 25 million passengers a year, there are those who will choose to be offended by an encounter with a security guard that is doing her job. Even before the debriefing, and from reading the post, there was nothing improper in the way the security guard did her job. Like your friends and family, my best friends are buried in a military cemetery. I suggest that next time, the ambassador tells his daughter that the security guards do everything in their power to protect her and the country."
Following the ambassador's post, Channel 12 News anchorman Shibel Karmi Mansour, also a member of Israel's Druze community, was asked whether he had ever personally experienced discrimination at Ben-Gurion Airport.
"Yes," Mansour replied, saying, "The decision-makers need to make a decision. As a citizen of the state, I don't need to take this. Either you screen everyone in a similar way as they do in the United States, or you don't."
Israel is home to approximately 140,000 Druze, a secretive sect that splintered off from Shiite Islam in the Middle Ages. Members of the Druze community take great pride in being fiercely loyal to the state of Israel and routinely serve in the military and the Israel Police. Currently, the highest-ranking Druze officer in the IDF is Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon, the coordinator of government activities in the territories.
Still, the members of the Druze community have felt alienated since Netanyahu's government passed a controversial nation-state law in 2018 that emphasized Israel's Jewish character.
