Arab filmmaker wins prize, Israel airline security nabs it

Ha'aretz - Amira Haas
Thirty-five days after returning from Barcelona on a Sun D'Or flight, items belonging to documentary film director Sahera Dirbas, which Israeli security people had removed from her luggage and sent separately, were returned to her. Among them was a bronze figurine she had won at the International Euro-Arab Amal Film Festival in Spain for best documentary - awarded for her film "Stranger in My Home."

The figurine was found and returned on Tuesday, six days after Haaretz requested a response from Sun D'Or regarding its whereabouts. Haaretz was informed that the prize had been found before the company alerted Dirbas.

..."Stranger in My Home" tells the story of five Jerusalemites, refugees from the 1948 war, who lost their homes in West Jerusalem, and a refugee from 1967 who was evacuated from his home in the Old City's Mughrabi neighborhood.

On November 5, Dirbas made her way home from Spain via Barcelona. After answering questions from Israeli security employees regarding her work and the film festivals in which she had taken part, she was asked to enter a separate room for continued questioning, where a female security guard demanded she remove all her clothing. All of her belongings were taken out of her suitcase... The examination took more than two hours.

When she arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport, she could not find the box with the separate items and filed the standard form for lost luggage. Four weeks later, on December 3, after her telephone inquiries went unanswered, Dirbas' lawyer Reem Alhatib, submitted an official complaint to El Al (to which the security company was said to be connected) and a demand for compensation. In the letter of complaint, Alhatib linked the loss of the prize to a "discriminatory attitude and misuse of the security check to abuse, humiliate and hurt an Arab passenger." Full story

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