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  "path": "/opinion/heathrows-palestine-badge-grift-andy-jones",
  "publishedAt": "2026-07-01T12:43:13.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gbnews.com",
  "tags": [
    "Membership",
    "Heathrow security official Zara Saiyed",
    "The GB News Editorial Charter"
  ],
  "textContent": "\n\n\nIt’s an employee dispute that involves the Holy Trinity of legal grifts - allegations of hurt feelings, an imported grievance and someone who thinks they know the employee rulebook inside out. It also inevitably involves the pet project of the professionally aggrieved: Palestine.\n\nHeathrow security official Zara Saiyed launched - and lost - a legal action against Britain’s largest airport, arguing that colleagues had discriminated against her race and religion because they asked her to take off a Palestine badge attached to her lanyard. She said that being asked to remove it - such badges are against Heathrow security staff policy - was as offensive to her as being told to remove her hijab.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nWho knew that the hijab - an article of religious faith, designed for wearers to observe the modesty of Islamic teachings - was the same as a metal badge depicting the flag of just one of the fifty-plus Islamic nations on Earth. Why is the flag of Palestine more essential than, say any of the other Islamic nations who are suffering war, like Sudan?\n\nPalestine - which as a word doesn’t feature once within the Quran itself - is sacred for Muslims principally because it houses the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. But if so, why not also wear a badge for Saudi Arabia, the site of Mecca, the holiest Islamic site of all? The real reason is that this was a political statement about a war and not a religious one.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nTRENDING\n\nStories\n\nVideos\n\nYour Say\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nLaughably, an employment tribunal heard that Ms Saiyed - who, of course, had previously been a Unite Union representative - also accused Heathrow Airport Ltd of being “complicit in the killing of Palestinian babies.” Why, because the airport entirely legally allows flights to Israel? That people might actually fly to the place she resents so much?\n\nThe tribunal heard that she went on to raise numerous grievances and complaints - including the airport’s decision not to publish a Ramadan video in which she had appeared. The hearing unanimously dismissed all of her claims, with a judge describing Saiyed “as not always credible and reliable.”\n\nImagine taking your employer to court partly because they failed to air a workplace video you “starred” in. Also, think for a moment of being her boss. You’re paid to protect the busiest airport in Europe, handling 84 million passenger journeys a year. The terror threat level is at “severe” and an employee is taking you to task over a badge. Oh, and by the way, she says your workplace is somehow responsible for a genocide in the Middle East.\n\nHeathrow, of course, has to be very strict on this, not just as a place where all cultures collide, but also a place of deep and serious security. The last thing you want is a petty squabble to create an issue at a barrier check.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n###\n\n\n\n\nTellingly, this dispute began in November 2023, when Saiyed was probed by a colleague over the flag badge attached to her staff lanyard. The incident took place, not deep into the appalling and macabre Gaza war, but just a month after the Hamas-led terror attacks in October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. Any war crimes that Israel has since been accused of did not happen until after that date.\n\nIncredibly, this subsequent legal pantomime involved two weeks’ worth of evidence, and more than 1,600 pages of documents with all the above grievances. How many times can you make the same case that, “I’m a victim looking for a payout?”\n\nIn 2006, in another case, a British Airways employee Nadia Aweida was first asked not to wear her cross to work and then suspended after refusing to remove it. In 2013, after an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, this was reversed because a crucifix is clearly, undeniably a symbol of religious significance in a way that a national flag is not.\n\nMany other major corporations should take note. By all means, welcome reasonable free expression, but when well-meaning employers prostrate themselves for minority grievances, they don’t promote harmony; they simply create a map for themselves to be hoisted on their own petard at a later date.\n\nOf course, for the accuser of this failed case, there is no financial cost, no blame attached and the opportunity to have a go on the victimhood roulette at another hapless employer sometime in the future.\n\n###\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n**Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter**",
  "title": "Heathrow's battle over a Palestine badge was the Holy Trinity of grifts. Another chancer hoisted on their own petard"
}