Customers at both Heathrow and Stanstead have been told by managers that the security staff scanning their bags and doing body searches are allowed to wear Palestine Flag badges. This is despite Heathrow's Director of Services confirming that unauthorised badges are not allowed.
At Stansted Airport, an Israeli passenger travelling to Greece on 17 January 2024 noticed a female member of the security staff wearing a Palestinian flag badge. He was extremely upset to see this, given the horrific massacre of Israelis by Hamas and other Palestinian groups on 7 October. When he asked to speak to a manager about the Palestine Flag badge, he was told by the manager "they are a private company and they are allowed to wear anything they like."
UKLFI has written to Stansted Airport to query this policy, pointing out that it constitutes harassment against Israeli and Jewish passengers in breach of the Equality Act 2010, but has received no response.
At Heathrow on 26 May 2024, a Jewish traveller had his bag pulled over for a second security check by a lady wearing a Palestinian flag badge. The customer wrote to Heathrow Airport, querying why the security guard was allowed to wear this divisive political badge. It is particularly inappropriate for security staff to be seen supporting a particular side of the Gaza war at this time, or indeed to display their political affiliations.
Heathrow's passenger customer support department replied.
''We can confirm that no nationality, religious or political items can be worn by any Heathrow staff whilst present on duty as part of our uniform standards. The exception is that if a person speaks a language or dialect from a certain region as a secondary/tertiary language, a flag representing the region or country would be present which is provided by Heathrow. This is not a compulsory requirement to display this information and is at the staff members discretion, so that foreign travellers may know who to approach should it be easier to communicate in their own language. The flag is used to be more easily identifiable from a distance than for the language to be written in script.
UKLFI has written to query this explanation. Rather than apologise for the fact that the member of security staff was wearing a Palestine flag, or say it was against Heathrow policy, Heathrow's Customer Service Adviser justified the badge being worn, saying that it indicated to passengers that the member of staff spoke Arabic.
Caroline Turner, a director of UKLFI, commented:
"This explanation defies belief. Any passenger seeing the security staff member wearing a Palestinian flag would assume that it was there to indicate his or her support for Palestinians, or for Hamas's actions, and it may also indicate his or her antipathy to Jews and Israelis.
It now appears that workers are allowed, and even encouraged to wear Palestinian flags, if they are Arabic speaking.
The effect of the security staff wearing the flag is to create an intimidating, hostile and offensive environment atmosphere for Jews and Israel supporters.
The explanation is also at odds with that of Heathrow's Director of Services, who had previously written to UKLFI saying "wearing any non-approved badges did not form part of our standards/policy.'"
Heathrow's Service director has now commented:
"I understand that the correspondence sent on 5 June 2024 was intended to provide context around where badges were worn by Security Staff/other Heathrow Colleagues – where Country badges were approved. These do NOT include the Palestinian badge, however do include certain countries where flags may appear similar in colouring and patterning.
We will carry out further review to establish the circumstances around this complaint and will ensure our internal process and policies will have been followed in relation to this complaint. …
I can confirm that the position as set out in my letter of 21 June 24 being that non-approved badges do not form part of our standards/policy and that we take proactive and (if required) remedial action to ensure that colleagues are aware of this and comply with our standards/policy.
Thank you for your continued correspondence on these matters and I can assure you that we continue to remind our colleagues of and enforce our uniform standards/policy."
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