A group of Orthodox Jewish girls on their way from Amsterdam to New York were barred from two flights last week within a 24-hour span, and their rabbi suspects antisemitism was involved in both incidents, news outlets are reporting.
Yahoo! News reported that the group, which had been visiting religious sites in the Ukraine, was “initially disallowed from traveling on a flight home because of a dispute over COVID-19 protocols on the KLM-operated leg of their journey from Kyiv to Amsterdam.”
A day later, Yahoo reported, Delta Airlines “kicked off the same girls for swapping seats on a Friday morning flight.”
Rabbi Yisroel Kahan, the executive director of Oizrim Jewish Council in Monsey, New York, told Fox News that “I’m not God. I don’t know people’s motives, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
“I’m highly suspicious of the motives,” Kahan said.
Reports say that 56 girls from New York and New Jersey traveled to Eastern Europe on a two-week tour to visit ancient Jewish sites. Their chaperone, a woman named Sarah, told Fox News she attributes the harsh treatment to anti-Semitism.”
“I can’t see any other reason” for them to get booted from the planes, Sarah told Fox News, noting that “a security guard with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, a partner with Delta Airlines, followed the girls of girls two and a half weeks after they first arrived in Amsterdam.”
“I definitely think we were targeted,” Sarah said. “It doesn’t make sense any other way. We didn’t do anything.”
THANK YOU HASHEM
After 72 hours, endless harassment by @KLM, ejected by @Delta for switching seats with a passenger, & BLACKLISTED.
The girls are finally on a plane to NY.
Thank you @SenSchumer @SenGillibrand @RepGregoryMeeks @NydiaVelazquez @SEichenstein @UnitedJewish @Oizrim pic.twitter.com/wnXTAwJYua
— Rabbi Yisroel Kahan (@ykahan) August 8, 2021
A Delta spokesman spoke to Fox News and blamed the girls for the disturbance that delayed the Delta flight for two hours last Friday morning.” {eoa}
Read articles like this one and other Spirit-led content in our new platform, CHARISMA PLUS.
