Arab Israeli actress told to fly without luggage at Ben Gurion

Arab Israeli actress Samar Qupty is detained for hours at Ben Gurion Airport and only allowed to fly once she agrees to leave her luggage behind.

The 27-year-old Qupty, who lives in Nazareth, was heading for a film festival in Colombia when she was stopped and questioned for two hours and made to abandon her bags before she was allowed on the plane, the Ynet news website reports.

The actress posts an angry message on Facebook about her experience, along with an image of the bag she was given when her own luggage was confiscated.

“You didn’t know how I even dared to think that I deserve to fly to Colombia,” she writes on Facebook, in an open letter to the airport.

“It’s not clear to you what an Arab woman is going to do there alone, even though it’s already been explained to you that I’m going to represent my movie ‘Junction 48’ at the film festival there. And even though I have the invitation and the program and everything necessary to prove that this indeed is the intention, you suspect.”

After two hours of waiting, she says, she is told by a security officer that she can fly if she leaves her luggage in Israel.

“After a brief argument, he explains that they have had some kind of indication from my shoes, and therefore I have to leave all my things with them,” she writes.