Torres says US airlines are boycotting Israel by stopping direct flights, FAA is silent

The US airline industry is using what a Democrat called an effective boycott of Israel by suspending all direct flights after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. 2023.

More than one year after the Hamas attack, as the war between Israel and Iran-backed terrorist groups continues in the region, no major US airlines fly from the United States to Israel. Travelers from the United States can only catch a direct flight to the Jewish state on Israel’s El Al airline. Meanwhile, airlines in Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates still fly there.

Attorney Ritchie Torres, DN.Y., described this as an active boycott in a letter to the CEOs of American, United, and Delta in August.

“My understanding is that to go to Israel, the only option is El-Al, which is expensive. Hence the lack of availability of flights from [U.S. airlines] led to an increase in prices. It has made air travel to Israel less accessible and affordable for Americans, which is unfair,” Torres told Fox News Digital.

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Torres said in his letter that “the lack of competition has made air travel to Israel less available and less expensive, putting customers at the mercy of a de facto monopoly.”

Fox News Digital reached out to El Al for comment but they did not immediately respond.

Unlike in 2014, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all American carriers to stop flights to Israel due to security concerns during the fire of rockets towards Tel Aviv, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines decided on their own to stop all direct flights. flights from the US to Israel starting Oct. 7, 2023, attack, no FAA order.

Since August, Torres said his office has been in discussions with the airlines, but has yet to receive a written explanation about the reasons for suspending flights to Israel.

“If the FAA were to conclude that it’s too dangerous to fly to Israel, every plane should be subject to FAA safety inspections. The problem is that the FAA didn’t say anything. The silence was deafening,” Torres told Fox. Digital News. “If the war will end tomorrow, why would you need to extend the moratorium until 2025? And so the moratorium on air travel from the United States to Israel has lasted so long and expanded that it has the practical effect of a boycott.”

“American planes have done far more damage to the Israeli economy than Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. [BDS] A movement against Israel could only dream of doing it. And I worry without a security review from the FAA, without an objective process, a dangerous precedent has been set for the politicization of aviation, to use weapons of aviation as a means of boycotting Israel. And it’s a powerful boycott tool,” Torres said. “In what atmosphere and in what sense is it more dangerous for American Airlines and United and Delta to go to Israel? But is it safe for UAE airlines to do so? As if something is rotten in the American airline industry.”

Torres said he described it as an “active boycott” and not an actual boycott because he cannot speak about the companies’ intentions, but he pointed out that the BDS movement may be involved.

“There has been a concerted effort by the BDS movement to penetrate every sector, every industry of the American economy in the service of boycotting, distancing and punishing Israel. So there is no reason to think – it would be foolish to think – that the American airline industry is immune to the enormous pressures of BDS,” said Torres, speaking at length.

“If you’re going to permanently suspend air travel to an American ally like Israel, you have to give the public an explanation,” Torres said. “I mean, the United States is home to the largest Jewish population in the world, probably second only to Israel. So we owe American Jews an explanation as to why [U.S. airlines] stop air travel to Israel forever.”

When asked about this, a United Airlines spokesperson simply told Fox News Digital, “Our flights to Tel Aviv remain grounded – we look forward to resuming flights as soon as it is safe for our customers and employees.”

The statement did not specify why the flights were grounded.

““Delta is constantly monitoring the evolving security situation and evaluating our operations based on security directives and intelligence reports and will communicate any updates as needed,” a Delta spokesperson told Fox News Digital. El ​​Al is a Delta affiliate airline.

The FAA said in a statement to Fox News Digital that it “has not ordered airlines to stop flights to Israel.”

“Airlines make independent decisions related to flight schedules based on company risk and safety assessments, among other things,” an FAA spokesperson said. “Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) represents a warning issued by the Israeli government.”

Fox News Digital also reached out to American Airlines, but it did not respond.

A United Airlines flight passes two El Al planes after landing at Newark Liberty International Airport on Dec. 2, 2023, in Newark, New Jersey. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images/Getty Images)

After seeing Torres’ letter, Anat Alon-Beck, a professor of business law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told Fox News Digital that he had been looking into whether there was an attempt to “deceive stakeholders, shareholders and regulatory bodies” about the true motives of the airlines. of the US to stop direct flights to the Jewish homeland.

“Is it really a safety issue, or are there other reasons, for example, political bias? Is there bias from directors, management, maybe union pressure?” Alon-Beck said. “So I don’t really know what’s going on. And we have an obligation to look into that because companies have fiduciary obligations. And if companies experience any financial loss, if shareholders are going to be affected, then companies in those cases may. be liable for damages if there is a failure to disclose what’s going on.”

The professor said he is investigating whether there is antisemitic pressure driving discrimination in Israel.

“And if that’s the case, we have anti-BDS laws, we have other laws, and companies should consider promoting profit and not political pressure,” he said. “And our goal is to look at the behavior of companies and hold them accountable.”

Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told Fox News Digital that he has seen “airline unions introduce BDS initiatives into their bargaining processes, leading to unfair practices and coercion, for example, according to our interview.”

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“The union has used BDS-related demands to pressure the management of certain airlines to change flight routes or suspend business relationships or revise operating policies related to Israel. And that pressure undermines the authority of management and forces decisions based on political values ​​rather than legitimate sales,” it said. Goldfeder, without specifying which unions he was talking about.

An Orthodox Jewish man inspects a flight from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on September 29, 2024, amid border clashes with Hezbollah. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)

As Torres noted in his letter, Goldfeder acknowledged that “of course, it is appropriate for airlines to suspend operations based on safety concerns as defined by the FAA,” but the current situation “is imposed by the airlines themselves without any orders or instructions from the US State Department or the Federal Aviation Administration.”

“For now, we cannot say for sure that the planes discriminate against Israel as a matter of law,” Ben Schlager, senior attorney at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told Fox News Digital. “What we know is that the airlines are facing pressure in their organizations regarding Israel and the routes to Israel. That comes from the workplace, from their employees, and that is reflected in the way they treat passengers and their treatment of Hebrew. talking to the Jewish employees of these airlines.”

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“Of course, at this point, it’s fair to raise the question about the differences in Israeli emissions from aircraft, whether these two things are related,” Schlager said. “In the end, nobody benefits because the only people most affected are the passengers and the shareholders. And this has already been proven, at least for some of these airlines, to be a very expensive decision for their shareholders.”