Settler seeks to sue Airbnb for ‘outrageous discrimination’

A West Bank settler, who in the past advertised an apartment for rent on Airbnb, filed a request Thursday at the Jerusalem District Court for a class action lawsuit against the vacation rental giant for dropping listings in Israeli settlements.

Ma’anit Rabinovich of the Kida outpost said in her filing request that the decision to ban listings located in West Bank settlements constitutes “severe, offensive and extremely outrageous discrimination on the basis of place of residence, country of origin and opinion.”

Rabinovich wrote that she never received an update from Airbnb on its decision, despite having advertised short-term rentals on the website in the past.

“It was way more important to the company to ‘run’ quickly to the media to voice its decision, instead of first updating all the people it was about to harm,” she charged.

The lawsuit also targets Kerem Navot, a left-wing Israeli NGO that helped the Human Rights Watch activism group draft a report on apartment rentals in the West Bank. Rabinovich claimed the group is “an inseparable part” of the movement to boycott Israel and had pressured Airbnb to make its decision.

The lawsuit accuses Airbnb of purporting that its policy was directed broadly at conflict zones, while it “actually is policy directed solely at those living in settlements in Israel in Judea and Samaria.”

Israeli officials, including Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan, have lambasted Airbnb’s decision as “racist” and anti-Semitic,” arguing that it applied a different standard to the Jewish state than to other disputed territories around the world.

Airbnb’s statement Monday noted that 200 Israeli listings in the West Bank would be removed, after the company had concluded “they are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The company said the decision to remove the listings came after “considerable time” was spent consulting experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Airbnb said that, as an industry leader, it “must consider the impact we have and act responsibly.”

The announcement came a day before Human Rights Watch published a report detailing the company’s operations in Israeli settlements.

Amid outcry from settler leaders as well as their allies in the government, Airbnb’s Global Head of Policy and Communications Chris Lehane issued a statement Tuesday saying, “Israel is a special place and our over 22,000 hosts are special people who have welcomed hundreds of thousands of guests to Israel. We understand that this is a hard and complicated issue and we appreciate everyone’s perspective.”

On Wednesday, Erdan called on Israelis to boycott Airbnb in light of the company’s decision, adding that the government was examining “numerous courses of action.”

Also Wednesday, an Airbnb official told The Times of Israel that the company is evaluating whether to drop its listings in the disputed territory of Western Sahara.