Airbnb bans Amsterdam host for alleged anti-Israeli discrimination

Airbnb has banned an Amsterdam owner from its rental site as she reportedly did not want to welcome Israelis, according to The Algemeiner Jewish newspaper in America.

The rental broker removed a host two hours after hearing a report that she rejected four Israeli tourists saying: ‘I support the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement and will therefore not accept guests of Israeli citizenship until there has been a significant change in the question of Palestine.

‘So unless you are well documented activists who work for a peaceful solution to the problem (for whom I will be very happy to make an exception) you will have to look elsewhere.’

Airbnb confirmed the action to DutchNews.nl, saying: ‘Discrimination like this has no place on the Airbnb platform and our policies prohibit hosts from declining a guest because of who they are, where they come from, how they worship or whom they love. We acted to permanently ban this host from our community approximately two hours after we learned of this incident.’

A spokesman added that all Airbnb users will be asked to agree to its community commitment to treat all community members ‘without judgment or bias’

The paper says that an Israeli posted the email from the host on his Facebook page, saying: ‘Four university students were simply looking to rent an apartment in Amsterdam, and this is the response we got.’

Dutch law prohibits discrimination on racial grounds. The Algemeiner could not reach the former host for comment and DutchNews.nl was unable to find the source of the Facebook post.