American Airlines cancelling service to Israel over Arab bigotry, not profitability

(JNS.org) - Aviation industry sources claim that the recent American Airlines decision to cease flights to Israel is the result of the U.S. carrier's ties with Arab airlines.

The airline had announced that it would stop its flights from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv beginning in January 2016 due to financial considerations. 

Casey Norton, a spokesman for American Airlines, told Bloomberg News that the carrier has lost $20 million last year on the route alone.

But aviation sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the actual reason for the route's impending closure is the airline’s participation in the OneWorld alliance, whose members include Arab airlines like Qatar Airways and Royal Jordanian as well as Malaysia Airlines (Malaysia is a Muslim-majority nation).

“Profitability wasn’t a problem. The past year hasn’t been easy for the airline industry in general, but that’s far from saying that the route wasn’t profitable. No one would have operated a money-losing route for so many years,” an anonymous industry source said, Haaretz reported.

American's withdrawal of the route will leave only United, Delta, and El Al providing non-stop service to and from the U.S.

MK Uzi Landau addresses substantial Christian market at media convention, NRB

Aaron's shofar blast calls Jesus and friends to a photo opp; Orlando's "The Holy Land Experience at the TBN booth

Israeli Tourism execs, Haim Gutman, MK Uzi Landau meet with tour staff

At the National Association of Religious Broadcasters, Israelis meet with Christians to promote the support of the Holy Land - culturally through tourism and socially through rallying Christian (comprising more than half of Israeli tourist business)  support. Haim Gutin, Israel's Tourism Ministry ("IMOT") Commissioner for North & South America, , clarified Israel's travel picture for us.


Israel's Tourism Ministry usually dominates the Israeli presence at NRB. U.S. Dir. Haim Gutin, Cabinet Minister for Tourism Dr. Uzi Landau, Deputy Oren Drori, El Al Airlines US President Danny Saadon on panel.
  

"BDS in Tourism" M.K. Uzi Landau addresses politics of Israeli tourism at NRB Nashville, Feb 24, '14  

What position ought the government take in encouraging tourists to visit sites in Judea and Samaria? Who gets their business once they get around Arab areas? Tour guide operator, Amnon Weigler, explains the dilemma:
 

How will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau's speech to Congress the following week influence the 2015 National Religious Broadcasters convention, reconvening February 23-26 in Nashville, Tennessee?

Video: "How to overcome the maligning of the Jewish state"- Ariel Univ.'s Prof. Abraham Sion at San Diego Z.O.A.

Prof. Abe Sion challenges anti-Zionist shibboleths in So. Cal

The professor who directs the Center for Law and Media at Israel’s Ariel University says the Jewish state must argue its case more vehemently in the courts of law and public opinion, and to do that it must be willing to invest the money it takes to counter propaganda from the Palestinians and their backers in the Arab and Muslim world.

Prof. Abe Sion spoke before an audience of 60 persons at a meeting of the San Diego chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, on January 27th. The meeting was held in a sanctuary of Chabad at University City. 

Sion said that until recently, Israel had spent only $10 million on hasbara — its public relations message — and of that $6 million went to salaries. That amount, he said, is less than many corporations spend on their public relations.  Today, he added, the numbers are even worse.  He quoted Israel’s consul general in New York, Ido Aharoni, as saying Israel’s public relations budget is only $8 million, with $6 million continuing to go for salaries. Such an amount is far too little, he said, to counter the unremitting propaganda war on Israel by Palestinians, their Arab and Iranian backers and Jewish leftists.
 


After showing a video of pro-Palestinian demonstrators invading a store in Paris, and emptying from the shelves, without paying for them, every product produced in Israel, Sion likened the Arab propaganda wars on Israel and the Jews to the 1930s when vicious cartoons, and a campaign of singling Jews out for derision, preceded the Holocaust.

Sion, whose university sits in Samaria–beyond the 1949 “Green Line” and within the area often described in the media as the West Bank–said supporters of Israel must refute the argument that the territories captured by Israel in 1967 are “occupied Palestinian lands.”  He said when the League of Nations conferred upon Great Britain its mandatory power after World War I, the area called “Palestine” was officially declared a homeland for the Jews as part of that Mandate.  The League also created Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as homelands for Arabs.

Linda Sax (S.D. ZOA chapter Treasurer); author Sabene; Prof Abe Sion,
S.D. chapter Pres. Howard Dyckman; Zionist Christian J.J. Surbeck

Britain, said Prof. Sion, divided Palestine, giving more than a majority of it away to the Hashemite family of Saudi Arabia, thereby creating today’s Kingdom of Jordan.  After World II, the United Nations devised a partition plan for the remainder of Palestine, which the Jews accepted, and the Arabs rejected.  The Arab rejection made the plan null and void, he argued.   International law, if properly understood, should be that Israel, from the Mediterranean Sea to the boundary of Jordan, is a Jewish state, in which proper care must be taken to protect the rights of minorities who live among the Jews.  The 1949 Green Lines were simply lines of the armistice after newly-created Israel defeated invading Arab armies.  Contrary decisions by Israel’s Supreme Court and the International Court at the Hague ignored the guiding legal documents, he said.

Those who call a Jewish state an “apartheid” state should consider surrounding states “double apartheid” states because Jews are forbidden to live within them, and there certainly is no protection for the rights of others, Sion said.