Channel 13 correspondent Neria Kraus set off a storm on X (Twitter) on Tuesday after she claimed that a group of haredi Jews on a United Airlines flight tried to ask her to switch seats "because I'm a woman" and even claimed the flight crew yelled at her and threatened that because of her the plane would not take off.
However, Daniel Amiram, an Israeli news blogger, caught up with the passenger, a well-known Brooklyn native, who was confronted by Kraus, and he told an entirely different story.
"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. I had a cap on, and when I took my cap off, she saw my yarmulka, at first, she was friendly, but when I took my cap off, she started screaming, 'Is this because I'm a woman you want me to move?' And she said, 'discrimination discrimination!'"
The haredi 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 explained that, while at the beginning, the passenger did not want the story to be published, after some coaxing, he agreed that his side of the story be published. Amiram also 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 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."
Kraus, for her part, is staying with her narrative, writing: "Despicable and harsh lies are being spread about me. It's open season on me. It's amazing that hours later, they do admit that they pressured me to move seats, but the best thing is that they made up a fake story that doesn't line up with the simple facts.
The first lie: They claimed that they only wanted the two friends to sit together. In practice: they had two seats to themselves next to me and another separate seat. That is, the two could have sat together, but next to me, And they didn't want to sit next to a woman. To be clear, it was clearly said that they didn't want to sit next to me. Therefore the pressure began for me to move. No, there is nothing nice and polite in pressuring a woman to switch seats. Fact: When I didn't agree to move, they continued to search and found a woman to sit next to me so the two young friends could sit next to a man. The worst lie: hatred of haredim. Every time a woman complains about discrimination, they attack her that she's against Judaism. That's a lie. There is no connection between humiliating women and Judaism. Lies, slander, and a total fake," she added.
Later she posted a video of a conversation between her and a flight attendant, which she claims proves her narrative. "These are blatant and harsh lies," Kraus told Israel National News, "You can see the facts in the video."