Uncategorized
Over flight intercom, El Al pilot links Israel’s judicial reform to the Holocaust
(New York Jewish Week) — A pilot for El Al, Israel’s flagship airline, took to his plane’s public address system on Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, to express solidarity with anti-government protests in his country.
Speaking on a Tuesday morning flight from Tel Aviv to New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, pilot Doron Ginzburg referenced Yom HaShoah and said, according to recordings published on social media and the Israeli press, that “Things like the Holocaust are potentially to be occurring in a dictatorship, and we are fighting in Israel to remain a democratic country. Thank you all and have a nice flight.”
The flight took off around 10:30 a.m. in Israel and is expected to land before 3 p.m. in New York.
The statement seemed to endorse the massive protest movement that has swept across Israel this year in opposition to the right-wing government’s proposed judicial overhaul. The changes would sap the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power and independence and, critics say, endanger the country’s democracy. Supporters of the legislation say it will curb judicial overreach.
In a statement on Tuesday, El Al condemned Ginzburg’s remarks, and said that the airline does not permit “political statements of any kind, by any of its employees as part of their work, and certainly not on its planes, which cannot be a platform for this type of activity.” Such activity, the statement said, should be avoided “particularly on such a meaningful and sensitive day for the people of Israel.”
“This exceptional case, which does not reflect the people and values of the company, will be thoroughly examined by the senior officials of the company,” the statement said. It added that the company seeks to represent “the entire Israeli mosaic.”
Ginzburg declined to comment to the New York Jewish Week, citing “company restrictions.” But Israeli Channel 12 reported, before the flight landed, that Ginzburg had apologized after learning he could be suspended or fired for his remarks.
This isn’t the airline’s first bout with activism this year. Last month, El Al pilots initially declined to volunteer to fly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on an official visit to Rome, in an apparent protest against his government.
The office of Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev, a close ally of Netanyahu, also criticized Ginzburg’s remarks in a statement reported by Israeli media. “Time after time, the pilots are acting as if they are in charge,” the statement said. “This reality cannot continue, something bad is happening there… Maybe the flight paths are clear, but apparently the direction of the company is getting lost.”
Shany Granot-Lubaton, who has organized protests in New York City against the judicial overhaul, defended Ginzburg to the New York Jewish Week. She said she believes the pilot “chose to say these things out of genuine concern for the fate of our country, and out of Zionism and love for Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
—
The post Over flight intercom, El Al pilot links Israel’s judicial reform to the Holocaust appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage
(JTA) — The head of BBC and its top news executive have quit amid allegations that the network misled viewers in coverage of President Donald Trump and the Gaza war.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday after a leaked report by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser to the broadcaster, who accused it of anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias. The memo was published in the right-leaning British newspaper The Telegraph last week.
Prescott accused the BBC of selectively splicing footage of Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in an episode of its documentary show “Panorama.” He said the show patched together sections of the remarks to suggest that Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
These words came from two parts of the speech spoken almost an hour apart, omitting a part in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” After Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, in which he said the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol.
Prescott’s memo accused BBC Arabic of choosing to “minimize Israeli suffering” to “paint Israel as the aggressor” in Gaza. The BBC previously faced backlash over failing to identify the narrator of a Gaza documentary as the son of a Hamas government official, along with using a contributor who said on social media that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did.” The network was also criticized for livestreaming a Glastonbury performance of the punk group Bob Vylan that included chants of “Death to the IDF.”
The BBC has been scrutinized from all political sides over its coverage of Israel and Gaza. Presenter David Yelland called the resignations of Davie and Turness a “coup” by members of the BBC Board who had “systematically undermined” Davie’s team.
Some insiders have raised concerns about Prescott’s friendship with Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC board who played a key role in Prescott’s appointment as BBC adviser, according to The Guardian. Gibb was the director of communications for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May between 2017 and 2019.
Both Trump and the Israeli government applauded the resignations in social media statements.
Israel’s foreign ministry said Davie’s resignation “underscores the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel” but said the problem was not limited to the broadcaster.
“Far too many news outlets are promoting politics disguised as facts, amplifying Hamas’s fake campaigns,” it tweeted. “The time has come for real accountability to restore integrity, fair and factual journalism.”
The chair of the BBC Board, Samir Shah, is expected to apologize for the editing of Trump’s speech on Monday, in a move meant to blunt potential damage to the U.K.-U.S. relationship.
The post BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Hamas returns remains of hostage held for 11 years as attention deepens around postwar planning
(JTA) — Hamas returned the remains of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier it murdered and kidnapped in 2014, to Israel on Sunday, bringing the number of hostages whose remains it still holds in Gaza to four.
All four were killed when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The number has shrunk steadily in recent days as Hamas has repatriated the remains of half a dozen hostages, including Itay Chen, the final American-Israeli held in Gaza.
The repatriations have come as Hamas has faced steep pressure, including from U.S. President Donald Trump, to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that ended fighting in Gaza last month. As part of the deal, Hamas agreed to return all living and deceased hostages immediately, but while 20 living hostages were freed at one time last month, the group has located and released deceased hostages more slowly, sometimes with snafus that have drawn allegations of ceasefire violations.
Now, with the central demand of the first phase nearly satisfied, attention is increasingly turning to what happens next in Gaza, which has effectively been partitioned between areas under Israeli control and areas under Hamas control.
Trump’s plan calls for Israel to fully withdraw over time, but the United States has so far fallen short of convening an “International Stabilization Force” that would run Gaza and allow for its reconstruction. Israel has rejected Turkish participation and on Monday, the United Arab Emirates announced that it had ruled out joining for now.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law who has played a key role in negotiations toward ending the war, is back in Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. No details of their meeting were immediately disclosed.
Trump, meanwhile, is meeting with a different foreign leader in Washington on Monday — Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa. Al-Sharaa, who seized power last year, has sought to project a moderate profile after rising to prominence as an Islamist leader and has permitted Jews and representatives of the Syrian Jewish diaspora to visit Syria, though the tiny number of local Jews remaining say they are not optimistic about a resurgence of their once-mighty community.
Trump has suggested that Syria could join the Abraham Accords, normalization deals with Israel that expanded last week to include Kazakhstan, but that possibility feels far off.
The post Hamas returns remains of hostage held for 11 years as attention deepens around postwar planning appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage
The head of BBC and its top news executive have quit amid allegations that the network misled viewers in coverage of President Donald Trump and the Gaza war.
The BBC’s director general Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness resigned on Sunday after a leaked report by Michael Prescott, a former standards adviser to the broadcaster, who accused it of anti-Trump and anti-Israel bias. The memo was published in the right-leaning British newspaper The Telegraph last week.
Prescott accused the BBC of selectively splicing footage of Trump’s speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, in an episode of its documentary show “Panorama.” He said the show patched together sections of the remarks to suggest that Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
These words came from two parts of the speech spoken almost an hour apart, omitting a part in which Trump said he wanted supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” After Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, in which he said the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol.
Prescott’s memo accused BBC Arabic of choosing to “minimize Israeli suffering” to “paint Israel as the aggressor” in Gaza. The BBC previously faced backlash over failing to identify the narrator of a Gaza documentary as the son of a Hamas government official, along with using a contributor who said on social media that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did.” The network was also criticized for livestreaming a Glastonbury performance of the punk group Bob Vylan that included chants of “Death to the IDF.”
The BBC has been scrutinized from all political sides over its coverage of Israel and Gaza. Presenter David Yelland called the resignations of Davie and Turness a “coup” by members of the BBC Board who had “systematically undermined” Davie’s team.
Some insiders have raised concerns about Prescott’s friendship with Robbie Gibb, a member of the BBC board who played a key role in Prescott’s appointment as BBC adviser, according to The Guardian. Gibb was the director of communications for former Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May between 2017 and 2019.
Both Trump and the Israeli government applauded the resignations in social media statements.
Israel’s foreign ministry said Davie’s resignation “underscores the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel” but said the problem was not limited to the broadcaster.
“Far too many news outlets are promoting politics disguised as facts, amplifying Hamas’s fake campaigns,” it tweeted. “The time has come for real accountability to restore integrity, fair and factual journalism.”
The chair of the BBC Board, Samir Shah, is expected to apologize for the editing of Trump’s speech on Monday, in a move meant to blunt potential damage to the U.K.-U.S. relationship.
—
The post BBC execs resign amid scandal over Trump interview edit and Gaza war coverage appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.