How Flying Has Become a Risk For Jews

An airplane is a floating fortress of authority. From the moment you pass through security until the wheels touch the ground, you enter a world governed by hierarchy, uniforms, and unwritten codes that operate like a panopticon - a system of total visibility and quiet control.

In this environment, visibility can swiftly become vulnerability. And for Jews, that reality is no longer subtle.

Ever since the onset of strict and unreasonable Covid-era regulations - and even more so since October 7 - reports of random Jewish passengers being targeted or singled out by airline staff have shifted from rare exception to trend.

A family removed over an undefined compliance issue. A man quietly praying mid-flight while the seat-belt sign is off, then escorted off without explanation. A passenger wearing a shirt with Hebrew writing, subjected to degrading comments and treated like a second-class citizen.

The growing number of unsettling videos showing airline-induced escalations - where Jewish passengers are ordered to deplane or subjected to heightened scrutiny without warning - must be understood in context: Jews are statistically among the least disruptive and least violent populations per capita in any criminal demographic worldwide. The contradiction between these facts makes one thing unmistakably clear. There is a serious problem.

It would be easier to dismiss these as isolated incidents if they did not so clearly form a pattern. Since 2020, the airline industry has adopted a noticeably harsher posture toward its passengers. Flight crews wield broad and virtually unchecked authority. A captain can remove anyone without cause. A flight attendant can claim you made someone uncomfortable by simply looking at someone the wrong way, and that alone is enough.

For Jews with visible markers of identity, a rigid system lacking clear standards or transparency becomes fertile ground for bias. The invocation of "safety" - often a euphemism for total obedience - serves as a convenient mask for an environment where order is prized above fairness. And in that environment, those who stand out are the first to be targeted.

When was the last time you heard of a Jewish passenger actually endangering the safety of a flight? Now compare that to the dozens of documented cases in recent years where Jews have been removed from planes. The contrast is impossible to ignore. The airline industry has a Jewish problem, and it is time to call it what it is.

It is not just flight attendants wearing Palestinian flag pins, or the antisemitism scandal that rocked Delta in 2020, or the bizarre incidents we witnessed this year on JetBlue and United. What we are seeing is the normalization of a Kafkaesque reality, playing out within a sealed system of power that answers to no one.

Jewish culture does not always conform neatly. We ask questions. We practice openly. We pray in places and at times that may seem inconvenient. Some of us are more visibly unconventional than others. But in a space obsessed with control, silence, and uniformity, that difference is not tolerated. The result is often humiliation, removal, or both.

What makes it worse is the silence around it. The quiet nods. The clapping passengers. The downward glances from closet Jews who are too afraid to speak. You begin to understand that above the clouds, rights do not apply.

Wearing a kippah or a shirt with Hebrew script should not make you a threat if you open your mouth or stand in the wrong place for too long on the plane. Symbols and practices that connect us to our heritage are now treated as red flags in the air.

Jews are becoming an inconvenience, a disruption, a problem to be managed.