El Al Airlines captain Doron Ginzburg was reportedly summoned to a pretermination hearing on Wednesday due to an outrageous statement that he made over the plane’s loudspeaker. As he prepared for takeoff on Tuesday morning from Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport to JFK in New York, the Israeli pilot had used the public-address system to promote his political agenda.
He did this by linking the somber occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Hashoah) to the protest movement that’s been taking to the streets to decry the policies of the government in Jerusalem. Beginning his announcement in Hebrew before repeating it in broken English, he said, “[T]hings 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.”
“[T]hings 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.”
Doron Ginzburg
Thanks to the wonders of wi-fi, a cellphone recording of Ginzburg’s unwelcome commentary promptly hit the Internet and went viral on social media. It was then picked up by the conventional press, causing even many loyal customers of Israel’s national carrier to declare a boycott on its services.
Fearing this very outcome, El Al swiftly released a statement of condemnation, asserting that the company doesn’t 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.”
This sort of behavior is unacceptable, the statement read, “particularly on such a meaningful and sensitive day for the people of Israel. This irregular case, which does not reflect the people and values of the company, will be thoroughly examined by the senior officials of the company, [which] bears the Israeli flag on the back of its planes and, as such, reflects the entire mosaic of Israeli society.”
Meanwhile, honchos on the ground must have contacted Ginzburg in the course of his nearly 12-hour journey and commanded him to rectify the situation without delay. According to a Channel 12 report, this admonition was accompanied by a threat of dismissal.
What did the El Al pilot say upon landing?
THE REMORSE he expressed by the time he landed in the Big Apple suggests his remarks were in reaction to the above turn of events. Addressing his audience, he shifted his previously proud demeanor to one of humility.
“Honorable passengers, shalom,” he said, probably reading from a written script that sounded as though it had perhaps had input from the air carrier’s legal department. “As the son of Motti Ginzburg, a survivor of the death camp Buchenwald, I’m aware of the importance of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. On this day, we all unite and are united with the memory of the Shoah and its victims.”
He went on, “I would like to clarify that I had no intention whatsoever of hurting any passenger with the things that I said [earlier]. I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart to anyone who was offended by my remarks. Thanks for your attention.”
It was too little, too late, however. The storm that erupted hasn’t subsided and it’s no wonder.
One of the most abhorrent aspects of the “resistance” movement is its mantra that the coalition’s proposed reforms, aimed at restoring the balance of power between the appointed judiciary and elected legislature, are actually part of a perceived plot to transform the democratic Jewish state into a Nazi-like regime. Ginzburg, who seemed to have forgotten that he was on duty in a cockpit and not marching at a rally with fellow opposition-sympathetic protesters on his own time, was simply parroting the vile propaganda.
It was bad enough that he abused his microphone privileges to voice his opinion on anything other than upcoming turbulence and cabin pressure. Far worse was his boast – in the context of mourning the genocide of 6 million Jews – that he and his like-minded ilk were working to prevent Israel from theoretical steps toward emulating the Third Reich.
NOR DOES his status as a second-generation survivor grant him immunity from scorn. On the contrary, it makes his insinuation about the country’s current leadership all the more inexcusable.
He would have done well to listen to President Isaac Herzog highlighting this very point during a speech the previous evening at Yad Vashem.
“The Nazi abomination is an unprecedented evil, unique by any measure,” Herzog stressed. “We must remember, repeat and emphasize again and again: These, and only these, are Nazis. This, and only this, is the Holocaust. Even when we are in the midst of fierce disagreements on our destiny, calling, faith and values, we must be careful about and guard against making any comparison, any analogy, to the Holocaust and the Nazis.”
The trouble is that it doesn’t dawn on the likes of Ginzburg that this message applies to them. Their default argument is that though Israel doesn’t resemble Nazi Germany at the moment, it’s headed in that direction, thanks to the “fascist” right-wing government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This belief, or pretense of one, is what instilled in Ginzburg a sense of moral superiority, along with the elevated social status he already enjoyed as a pilot. This is why he didn’t realize that sharing his concern about Israel’s future with travelers on his plane was not only out of line but illustrated extreme presumptuousness.
Indeed, given the outcome of the November 1 Knesset elections, it’s statistically probable that at least half of his passengers were on the side of the forces against which he averred to be battling on behalf of democracy. Talk about impaired judgment on his part – of the kind that ought to make his employers question his professional fitness.
WHICH BRINGS us back to El Al and the demand from some outraged consumers that it fire Ginzburg for his egregious error. Channel 14 anchor Boaz Golan, for example, snipped up his frequent-flier card and vowed not to patronize the airline until it removes the pilot in question from its roster.
Yet there are those who wouldn’t consider his ousting sufficient cause to let the airline off the hook. They were fuming at El Al crews for weeks before Ginzburg became a household name.
The reason for the disgust was that none of the company’s pilots volunteered to fly Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, to Rome for a scheduled March 9 state visit. El Al denied rampant reports that the pilots’ refusal to step up to the task was due to their stance against judicial reform and aversion to the premier pushing for it.
But since the issue was only resolved after Transportation Minister Miri Regev said that she would issue a tender for the job to the other two Israeli airlines, Arkia and Israair – and reminded the country’s flag carrier of its dependence on government loans and guarantees – El Al’s protestations weren’t taken seriously by the rumor mill.
In fairness to El Al, the above incidents didn’t occur in a vacuum. Israeli Air Force pilots have been leveraging their special expertise to blackmail the government into halting judicial reforms with impunity.
Still, if the airline doesn’t want to lose business, it has to show fortitude in the face of staff members who view their wings as badges of entitlement.