I wonder if there’s a legal difference between discriminating between someone because of their national origin as opposed to basically hassling them on whether or not a driver license is valid.
If the renter believes that he was treated differently simply because he’s from Israel, then sure, sounds like he has a great case, even if the validity of his license was just a pretext to deny him from renting a car. On the other hand, I’m not so sure that rejecting a government document due to questions about its validity is necessarily an act of discrimination. Sure, it is wrong, because the law is clearly on the renter’s side in this case – Israeli licenses are as good as any other – but that doesn’t mean he was the victim of discrimination.
Take, for example, a young driver who travels to New York in his own car. Surely we can agree that New York State Police are not allowed to arbitrarily discriminate against people from, say, South Dakota just on the basis of the person being from that state. But South Dakota can issue driver licenses to kids as young at 14. New York does not have to accept that the 14 year old South Dakotan has a driver license that is valid in New York. Furthermore, if police prevented him from driving, that doesn’t necessarily make it a case of discrimination against South Dakotans. I think there’s a rough analogy to the case of questioning Israeli driver licenses, even though it is totally clear that the rental agency was totally wrong.
I’d bet you that’s the issue. I can easily see myself as a rental car clerk, and some guy coming in and giving me documents printed in Cyrillic or Hebrew or some other script and language, and claiming that it’s a drivers licence, and me saying “Sorry, but you have to show me a drivers license that I can read before I’ll accept it.”
I’d also be willing to bet that the “we don’t take Israeli documents” was either misquoted or a bad choice of words- probably something that was meant to be “We don’t take documents printed in Hebrew.”
The man had an Avis “Wizard” card. So, it’s obvious to me that he had no problem renting from Avis before and had the proper documentation with him.
I can see a rental company refusing to rent to someone who only presented a non USA driver’s license. But that would have to apply to DLs from ALL non-USA countries.
I don’t know. I get the feeling that there’s more to the story than we get from the Observer story.
For one thing, Avis most certainly does not have any anti-Israeli policies, and in fact has at least one branch in Tel Aviv.
For another, the story seems a bit slanted. From the story:
The Upper West Side may or may not be the “heart of Manhattan’s progressive activist community” (I would have thought the heart of New York’s “progressive, activist” community was Park Slope), but it has long been the heart of New York’s Jewish community. It seems like an unlikely place to encounter anti-Israel feeling.
The story quotes Avis as saying:
If I had to guess, I’d guess that someone showed up at Avis with an expired license or something (as someone pointed out below, maybe it was in Hebrew and unrecognizable as a license to the clerk), and tried to bluster his way through it, hoping that if he was aggressive enough with the clerk, she’d give in and rent him a car.
Since it says, in English, “Driving Licence / State of Israel” at the top, in English, I don’t agree that your speculation (or more accurately, your adoption of someone else’s speculation) is likely to be the case.
Then maybe it was expired. Who knows. I’m just saying that, as presented, the allegation that Mr. Bergwerk and his wife encountered an Avis branch (on the Upper West Side!) with anti-Israeli policies seems unlikely, especially since Avis corporate seems to be backing up its employees.
Now, it may be that more facts emerge. But given that all I’ve seen is this story, it doesn’t ring true to me.
I Googled, and came up with the same story, slightly reworded, or two other kinds of sites:
(1) Racist sites that focused on the fact that the Avis manager at the branch is black and/or somehow managed to make this about Obama;
(2) Jewish sites that insist that this is evidence of an anti-Israel policy on the part of Avis.
Neither of those seems worth taking seriously. I’m betting this is a case of an angry customer without proper documentation (hey, I’ve rented cars overseas many times, and the rental companies always want more than just a license) who got angry when he couldn’t rent a car.
I’m not sure if I missed something. In the article, it appears he did not present the required 2nd piece of ID (passport or international driver’s license.) If this is the case, it doesn’t really matter if he rented there before-- presumably he either had the required ID then, or he had a clerk that was willing to bend the rules.
. You can’t even drive with a junior license issued by NYS in the five boroughs of NYC.
Now I’m sure that Mr. Bergwerk is over 16, so that’s not specifically the issue. And the manager certainly shouldn’t have changed the story when speaking to corporate (if she did) But it’s possible that there was some issue other than the fact that it was an Israeli license. I’m looking at the image of an Israeli license, and sure enough, it says “Driving License” in English at the top. But there’s other information I have to assume ( such as that 21.12.1957 is the birthdate and that 1.5.2014 is the expiration date) and still other stuff I have no idea about. Does Israel issue different classes of license? If so, what are the classes? Is this license valid to drive a car or is it only valid for a motorcycle? etc.
I also noticed that according to Avis’s statement either an International Driving Permit or a passport must be presented with a foreign license. But Mr Bergwerk’s account does not actually mention him providing his passport. He says he provided his “driver’s license, reservation number and “Wizard” loyalty card” , he says that corporate said he could “show his passport to ameliorate any ID concerns the on-site employees had.” but it never actually says he provided the passport, or that the employee refused to look at his passport. You would think if either of those happened it would have made it into the story.I’m with Saintly Loser - I think he didn’t provide the proper documents and then got angry. And it’s entirely possible that corporate told the manager that she could rent to him without seeing the passport or IDL ( because he was a"Wizard" or whatever , but she still refused because of how he treated the employees.
After I finished writing the above, I found the following, new statement on the the Avis Facebook page-
Which pretty much can explain everything. It would explain why they would’t rent him the car, and also why he might have gotten upset enough at the “rules changing” to treat the employees poorly.
Basically, “We apologize profusely for letting you break our rules in the past, and for not allowing you to take this previous mistake on our part as a free pass you could exploit without any further incident.”
But don’t you understand!!?? They were STRANDED in Manhattan, stranded. Because of the lack of a car. In Manhattan. I mean, how could they possibly use Metro-North like the plebs or hire some sort of shudder taxi service. Their trauma is truly unimaginable.
That’s sort of my point. As a clerk, I could assume that 4a is the date of issuance and 4b is the expiration date, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m also not sure what the stuff at the bottom means. Maybe it says “Restricted for DUI/Interlock use only.” Again, I’m not sure.
Being a good employee I start flipping through the handbook to see what to do in this situation. Aha! It says I should ask for a passport or an International Driving Permit.
If I don’t ask for the passport or the IDP and the guy ends up having a suspended license and wrecks the car, I lose my job.
So I ask for one and the guy acts like a self-entitled ass. Then I am accused of racism in the national press. All for doing what I am supposed to do.
ETA: How did he get to a US airport from Israel without a passport? He probably had one but was acting like a major douche by not presenting it.
I noticed that. I saw where I needed a Cayman Islands Drivers License and I’m thinking I’m going to have to do the whole written and driving test like when I was sixteen. It is just an add-on fee at the rental agency; no card or anything.
But after a day of driving on the left side of the road and nearly killing myself and several others (you think it’s easy? Make a left turn from a multi-lane road onto a multi-lane road and resist the urge to stay right ) I think there actually should be the requirement of a brief test.
That’s the rule for being on the road. I assume that private companies can make their own rules before handing you an item worth tens of thousands of dollars.
I saw where I needed a Cayman Islands Drivers License and I’m thinking I’m going to have to do the whole written and driving test like when I was sixteen. It is just an add-on fee at the rental agency; no card or anything.