In a shocking development, a German court has ruled that Israelis can legally be banned from passenger aircraft landing or taking off at the Frankfurt airport. The case involved whether a Kuwaiti airline could ban Israeli passengers from flying on their airline while transiting to/from Germany (first link and second link). This ruling is sure to cause an uproar, given Germany’s Nazi past. The mayor of Frankfurt disavowed the ruling, saying that if the Kuwaiti airline refused to accept Israeli passengers, then Kuwaiti Airlines should be banned from the Frankfurt airport. The mayor has it right.

It is truly breathtaking that a German court could get this case so wrong. Since Germany does recognize Israel as a nation and since Frankfurt is sovereign German soil, German law should apply to this case, not Kuwaiti law. In my judgment, this is a “no-brainer.”

In August, 2000, I flew to Israel via Frankfurt and had an eight-hour layover in Frankfurt each way. The number of national airlines I observed from all over the world was amazing. While I was waiting for my flight back to America, an Iranian airliner was boarding at a nearby gate. The German court ruling made me wonder about something. Think where this precedent could lead. Iran is another nation which does not recognize the nation of Israel. If, for example, Iran decides to pass a law based on Nazi laws that all Jews in Iran had to wear a yellow star-of-David on their arms, will a German court also rule that all Israelis or Jews flying on an Iranian airline be required to wear Nazi-era, star-of-David armbands? What about Jewish citizens carrying American passports or Jewish citizens of all the EU nations? If the Iranians were to rule any Jew (from any nation) has to wear a yellow Nazi-era, star-of-David armband before flying an Iranian airline, will a German court force Jews to wear Nazi-era identifiers if some anti-Israeli nation decides to require such a thing?  Since the German court ruled that the laws of other nations apply on German soil and that German law does not govern matters on German soil, all kinds of bizarre circumstances could result from this line of reasoning. This could even open the door to Sharia-law being enforced anywhere on German soil. Now that a German court has ruled that the laws of other nations must be enforced on German soil instead of German laws, it opens the door for Sharia law to be imposed on German soil in other German jurisdictions.

I expect some other court to be heavily pressured to overrule this wacky German court ruling, but I wanted readers to know about this matter.

  1. http://www.reuters.com/article/germany-court-kuwait-airways/german-court-rules-kuwait-airline-is-allowed-to-ban-israelis-idUSL1N1NM1NJ
  2. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42017874