By Edna Adato and Efrat Forsher
Israel Hayom
“Not even a lawmaker would imagine that a young girl would be so humiliated by a bus driver on a school field trip only because of the color of her skin and ethnic background,” the complaint says.
An 11-year-old Israeli girl of Ethiopian descent has filed a lawsuit against a school bus driver who humiliated her and made disparaging racist remarks during a class field trip to a swimming pool.
The lawsuit, filed at the Jerusalem Municipal Court with assistance from the Justice Ministry’s legal aid department, emphasized the importance of a case highlighting such “extreme” defamation.
The complaint details the bus driver’s offensive actions, saying that at one point he took the microphone and said to the girl, “Hey you, the monkey in the back.”
Later, when she was outside the bus taking her bag from the baggage compartment, the driver called out, “Where is the monkey?”
When she returned to the bus, the driver said: “There you are. You will not behave this way on my bus. You can act like that in your parents house. What difference will it make? They are monkeys anyway, so you can go to that zoo.” The remarks were made in front of the girl’s friends.
“Not even a lawmaker would imagine that a young girl would be so humiliated by a bus driver on a school field trip only because of the color of her skin and ethnic background,” the complaint read.
The complaint also said the fifth-grader also feared that the driver would hit her.
The bus company Pituach Mateh Binyamin released a statement saying that “the claims were brought before all relevant bodies. We were surprised to hear about the lawsuit because we have not been summoned to court.”