Footage shows elderly woman hurling racist abuse at Arab bus driver
An Egged bus driver in Jerusalem obeyed traffic regulations and wouldn’t permit alighting in a prohibited location; his professionalism earns him a barrage insults and threats from a passenger who takes umbrage with his decision.
An Egged bus driver who initially refused a passenger’s request to leave the bus in a location where alighting is forbidden filmed the torrent of curses and verbal abuse that the elderly women rained upon him on Thursday in Jerusalem.
The video taken by Khaled Siyam, the tricenarian driver, shows the irate passenger insisting that she has a bus to catch at 5 and “begging” him to open the door. In Israel, drivers are forbidden from allowing passengers to enter or alight buses anywhere that is not a scheduled bus stop. The bus appears to be stuck in traffic during the video.
Siyam remains silent until the very end of the clip, but the passenger doesn’t take a break from insulting him, calling him, inter alia, a “dog,” “trash” and “a stinking Arab.”
She continued on to make vague threats and implying that she would somehow have him removed from the bus line, which Siyam said that he regularly works on.
“I’ve encountered similar cases, but not at this level. It’s a very serious thing. She hurt me; she cursed me and threatened me.”
He added, “I’m lucky to have a camera on the bus, so the curses were recorded. I won’t be silent about something like this. I informed the company’s management what happened, and I intend to file a police complaint against the woman.
Egged issued a statement on the incident that condemned the passenger’s behavior. It added, “The management backs the bus driver, who was careful to follow the traffic regulations and refused to give in to the pressure of the passenger to let her off somewhere that wasn’t an authorized station.”
The driver “showed remarkable restraint in the face of the passenger’s harsh and outrageous comments, and after the incident, management representatives contacted him, praised him for his actions and listened to his claims,” they added.
“Opening a door in an unauthorized place could result in a fine of thousands of shekels for the driver,” the statement said.
(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
