Neria Kraus, the journalist who claimed haredi Jews pressured her to move to another seat on a United Airlines flight, said on Wednesday that the airline called her to apologize.
Kraus conveys that the apology proves her narrative over that of the haredi passenger, who claims he asked her to move so his son could sit next to a friend. "The wave of lies that were published against me was not aimed only at me, by at you (women), at us, for the next time. So we shut up. For us to move in public spaces. It won't happen," she wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Last week, Kraus set off a firestorm after she claimed that haredi passengers asked her to move because she is a woman.
Daniel Amiram, an Israeli news blogger, spoke to the passenger, a well-known Brooklyn businessman. "I was sitting down, one seat away (from Kraus), and my son's friend was sitting in the middle, and I asked, 'Do you mind switching, it was the same aisle seat," he recounted. " I had a cap on, and when I took my cap off, she saw my [black] yarmulka, at first, she was friendly, but when I took my cap off, she started screaming, 'Is it because I'm a woman that you want me to move?' And she said, 'discrimination discrimination!'"
The passenger explained why he asked the reporter to move: "I asked her to move so my son could sit next to his friend, and she was just out of control. All I did was politely ask her to move. You don't want to move, you don't have to move."
Amiram wrote that after Kraus's original tweet made its rounds, people who were familiar with the haredi traveler reached out to the blogger, saying, "There's no chance [this is true], this man hosts mixed families for Shabbat," and "He travels a lot and sits next to women, there's not a chance that he would have an issue."