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No, the Telegraph – a load of teenagers were not kicked off a plane because they were Jewish

Spanish airline Vueling have explained that a group of French-Israeli teenagers were removed from a plane for safety reasons. However, right-wing media, including a number of Israeli outlets, have reported that the passengers were ejected for being Jewish.

In a statement, Vueling said:

During flight VY8166, a group of teenagers engaged in disruptive behaviour and adopted a confrontational attitude in breach of Article 41 of Air Safety Law.

The company went on to detail how the teenagers tampered with passenger safety equipment, disrupted the safety demonstration, and “repeatedly disobeyed crew instructions.” Cabin crew gave “increasingly serious warnings” before resorting to assistance from the flight deck. There, due to safety reasons, the decision was undertaken to request support from the police.

However, despite the clear unacceptable behaviour of the students, The Telegraph still ran the story with the headline:

Jewish schoolchildren kicked off plane after ‘singing Hebrew songs.’

French-Israeli Teenagers kicked off plane

The Telegraph repeated allegations that the French-Israeli teenagers were removed from the plane for “singing Hebrew songs.” However, the Spanish police, the Guardia Civil, said:

We deny that the incident was related to the singing of songs. The minors repeatedly tampered with emergency equipment and interrupted the crew’s safety demonstration, ignoring the crew. The pilot, believing they were endangering the flight, ordered their removal.

Israeli minister, Amichai Chikli, made the remarkable claim that:

The @vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they are now in Valencia, waiting to return to France.

He then concluded that:

In line with Hamas’s campaign of lies echoed by Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and others, we are seeing numerous severe antisemitic incidents recently; this is one of the most serious.

It remains unclear why Hamas or Al Jazeera would target Vueling of all people, but far be it from us to question Hamas’ strategic intelligence.

Rumours abound

Rumours have circulated on social media that the “Hebrew songs” were in actual fact the chant “death to Arabs.” These rumours have not been confirmed by the airline or the police, as yet. However, Euro-Med chairman Ramy Abdul shared:

Quds News Network alleged that one of the students spat at a passenger:

And, journalist Craig Murray pointed out the misinformation:

Right-wing propaganda

It is remarkable that right-wing media have chosen to portray this story as one about students being persecuted for being Jewish. Regardless of any rumours on social media, the verifiable fact is that these students behaved in a dangerous and unacceptable manner. Any airline would have had them removed from the plane, particularly given their repeated contempt for cabin crew.

However, the real kicker is how the likes of The Telegraph have jumped to claim antisemitism. As ever, such journalism is harmful to genuine examples of antisemitism. Their propaganda has even less credence as soon as they echoed the remarks of an Israeli minister without question. The Zionist regime and the MSM have once again attempted to spin the appalling behaviour of Israelis as other people’s antisemitism.

Featured image via Unsplash/Pourya Gohari

By Maryam Jameela

This post was originally published on Canary.