German airline Lufthansa should take stronger measures after its apology earlier this week over an incident where staff members refused to allow several Jewish passengers to board a connecting flight to Budapest, Danny Danon, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, tells Newsmax.
According to reports, the passengers were blocked from traveling after two ultra-Orthodox Jewish men refused to don masks, as the carrier requires, which led the airline to refuse all visibly Jewish passengers from coming aboard.
"It's pure antisemitism when [they] labeled a group of people because they looked Jewish in Germany," Danon said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
"We heard about the apology, but I think we should learn the lesson for the future."
Several passengers were not allowed to board the connecting flight from the Frankfurt, Germany, airport to Budapest.
Danon said he thought it was even initially a mistake to forbid the two Orthodox Jews from being on the plane without a mask, but that is the airline's policy, and "we should accept it."
But the rest of the group was banned because "they looked exactly like those two passengers who were not willing to put the mask on and that is outrageous," said Danon.
The passengers who were banned were not all traveling together, as it was a "very big flight," so the airline should "check the policy and maybe deal with the employees who made the terrible mistake," Danon said. "You have those employees were actually deciding by themselves about the policy of their country, of their airline. We should not accept that, and I think the airline should take stronger measures in the apology."
Danon has written a new book, "In the Lion's Den," in which he details stories from behind the scenes at the United Nations during his five years there.
"I was there when President [Barack] Obama pushed the resolution against Israel," he said. "I was by myself at the Security Council fighting not only the Palestinians in the EU but also the U.S. administration," Danon said, adding that he was also in office when former President Donald Trump moved the embassy in Israel.
He also called it the "best show in town" when Trump would come to speak in the General Assembly, as "everybody wanted to hear his speech … it was a great period for the state of Israel. We have a strong bond, also with this administration and the Obama administration, but it was different. We didn't ask for support. It was just there."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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