Sabba – I very much doubt the veracity of the claim. Perhaps it was his attitude which got the bank to deny him their services. I am only speculating here but it would not too far fetched to suppose that he perhaps entered the bank like he entered an occupied territory, that he demanded a bank account to be opened, that he acted arrogantly, aggressively, obnoxiously, ‘jewishly’ towards the bank representative whose job description does not include taking abuse from customers, even if they are jews. I simply can not believe that a bank in general and a German bank in particular would ever refuse to service someone only because he is israeli.
A miscommunication: he didn’t want an account at the bank. He wanted the bank.
Love the comment, Ariadna.
Apart from that, to the article itself, I would say that this is a set up in retaliation for the bank having rented out a room to an anti Israel speaker six months earlier.
The form the retaliation took was for the Israelis to insert an intern – recall Monica Lewinsky, who was told to respond like this when this Israeli turned up to open an account.
They would have known each other by sight, and he would have sought to approach her in preference to another teller.
That is to say, that in the event that a client aide had directed him to someone else, he would have had some decoy business which didn’t involve him having first to be a customer of the bank.
He might already have come on other days, until the round in the chamber was aligned with the barrel.