Taxi driver fired after refusing former Israeli lawmaker whom his relative tried to assassinate

Yehuda Glick complained to Gett after recognizing the last name and the company reacted swiftly.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A taxi driver who refused to take Yehuda Glick to his destination was fired Wednesday after the former MK complained, having recognized him as a relative of the man who had attempted to assassinate him years ago.

The driver, whom Glick had ordered through the Gett app, asked before his passenger got in whether he was Yehuda Glick. When the ex-Likud backbencher replied in the affirmative, the driver said, “I’m not taking you,” and zoomed off.

Ten minutes later, he returned to the spot, saw Glick still waiting there, and commented, “See! I’m not the only one not taking you, no one wants to take you.”

Glick said he checked the driver’s name tag and saw that his last name was Hijazi. A short investigation brought to light that he was related to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who had tried to murder him nine years ago, Mutaz Hijazi.

Gett acted swiftly upon receiving the complaint, saying, “Our company condemns the described behavior of the driver. Immediately after the customer contacted the service center and the issue was clarified, the driver was blocked from using the application.”

The Betzalmo human rights organization would like to see the driver punished further.

CEO Shai Glick wrote to the Transportation Ministry that “This is a very serious incident. The taxi driver should immediately lose his driver’s license forever. It cannot be possible for a person to withhold service from another person based only on his political views, his hatred of Jews, or anything else. This man should sit in prison, but should at least have his license revoked.”

In 2014, when Glick was simply an activist for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount as he is today, Mutaz Hijazi shot him four times in the chest as he was leaving a conference, wounding him very seriously. Glick said that the terrorist had stated before he fired that it was because the rabbi was “an enemy of Al-Aqsa,” the Arabic name for the Temple Mount, even though Glick believes in all people having freedom of worship at the holy site.

Hijazi was shot and killed in a subsequent shootout with police.