Airline denies local man flight

By Nirvi Shah, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 25, 2002

PORT ST. LUCIE -- Rick Razick has lived in the United States since he was a preteen. He spent 20 years in the military, both the Army and the Air Force, and earned a Purple Heart and Silver Star for the wounds etched into his head and back while he served in Korea.

On Friday, the 67-year-old was considered too Palestinian to board a flight to Tel Aviv, near the small town where his 86-year-old mother may have only a few days left to live.

After collecting his tickets from an American Airlines counter at Miami International Airport, he went to a Swiss International Air Lines desk to check his baggage and show his passport. His green American military passport.

"The guy looked at it and put his finger on the word Palestine and said 'Uh-oh, we can't send you over there.'

"I've never been so humiliated in my life."

For him, Palestine is only a place of birth printed on his passport.

"I was born outside the United States, but I'm an American," said Razick, who lives in the gated Lake Charles community in Port St. Lucie.

Razick was born to a Palestinian father and Italian mother in Palestine, before the creation of Israel. Before Razick was born, his father, Sam, emigrated to the states and became a naturalized U.S. citizen, earning his son U.S. citizenship.

But in the airport, his U.S. citizenship didn't matter.

A Swiss International employee, Heinz Wild, told Razick the airline would be fined if it allowed someone who was born in Palestine to board the flight, and that Razick would be put on a plane and returned to America immediately after he arrived in Tel Aviv.

Razick flashed his military identification card to persuade the man that he was American. Razick was told to wait while the airline checked with someone in Tel Aviv. After a short wait, he was told again that he could not board the plane.

"The Israeli government is refusing entry, regardless of citizenship or passport," American Airlines employee Judy Richardson said Saturday.

Yet, Razick left Miami on Saturday evening, on tickets American booked for him through Iberia, a Spanish airline.

"Each airline has different rules," Richardson said. "Each airline may not have received" information from the Israeli government.

No one from Swiss International Air Lines could be reached for comment Saturday.

Razick's experience is the latest example of tensions running high about air travel since Sept. 11, tensions that have prompted complaints of racial profiling and discrimination when passengers have been thrown off flights because fellow travelers felt uncomfortable by a brown-skinned man flying along with them.

Razick's wife, Shirley, said she was glad her husband finally managed to leave the country. All day, the Razicks' phone rang with calls of concern from friends and family.

"He got on, and he said they didn't say anything," she said, but she fears he may be stranded in Madrid today if airline officials there share Swiss Air's concerns about his Palestinian birthplace. "And his mom could be dead by the time he gets there."

According to a State Department travel warning issued this month, the Israeli government "may deny entry at Ben Gurion Airport or at a land border to persons it believes might travel to 'closed' areas in the West Bank or Gaza or to persons the Israeli authorities believe may sympathize with the Palestinian cause... "

Since Razick retired from the Air Force in 1973, he has taken more than a dozen trips to the West Bank, most recently in 2000, according to the Ben Gurion stamp in his passport.

He has avoided going back amid the unrest until summoned by the failing health of his mother, Sabaha, who recently fell down eight or nine stone steps. The doctor sent the elderly woman home with family and said to let nature take its course. His mother has visited and vacationed in the United States over the years but always called a small town a few miles from Ramallah home.

"There are two things a person can't help," Razick said, "and that's where they were born and what color they are."

Staff researcher Madeline Miller contributed to this story.

nirvi_shah@pbpost.com

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