Recently the jewish section of the international media has been in uproar about some airborne anti-Semitism after Daniel Eleff of ‘DansDeals’ publicized an alleged ‘anti-Semitic incident’ aboard an Air France flight from Mauritius to Paris.
We read that:
‘Last week, DansDeals reader Divora Marinelli reached out about fake kosher meals her family received from Air France on a flight from Mauritius to Paris. She has now shared her experience on DDF as well.
She had ordered kosher meals in advance from Air France, but when she checked in for her flight, they told her that her kosher meals were not available.
She was traveling with 8 people, ranging from 3 to 73 years old, and they were upset that they weren’t told in advance that their 12 hour flight wouldn’t have kosher meals.
After takeoff, the flight attendant served them meals with “KSML” written on them, which is the industry abbreviation for a kosher meal.
Divora soon realized that the flight attendant had merely taken a regular meal and written KSML on it and told them it was their kosher meals.
She quickly went to tell the others in her party not to eat the meals, but some of her kids had already started to eat the meals. Her son even asked the flight attendant if the meal was kosher and she responded that it was.
She went to speak to the lead flight attendant, who investigated, and confirmed that another flight attendant had just scribbled KSML on the meals and gave it to them. The lead flight attendant wrote up a report, but all Air France did was send them a 30 Euro voucher each for not having the meal.
If this were a nut allergy situation, Air France would have a major PR disaster and lawsuit on its hands. Should kosher meals be different?
Air France did not say they would retrain or even speak to the flight attendant involved or whether they would retrain other crewmembers about kosher meals.
We reached out to multiple Air France contacts last week, but none of them responded to this story, even after repeated requests.
It’s a good reminder to always assume that the airline won’t have your kosher meal and to only eat a kosher meal if it is properly sealed.’ (1)
Marinelli’s claims were also publicized by Gary Leff at ‘View from the Wing’, (2) but all is not quite what it seems since while Marinelli has been shrieking that this was – in effect – some kind of ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy’ but in truth this is merely an attempt by Marinelli to get compensation from Air France and/or to set up some kind of law suit against them as we’ve seen in previous cases like this. (3) Similarly on the side of institutional jewry the motivation to shriek about this is very simply money; since kosher meals are expensive (as well as only provided by a few jewish organizations/companies) and need to be provided separately to each passenger requiring one as I have explained before. (4)
Now what has gotten lost in all this jewish shrieking that Air France served them a ‘non-kosher meal’ is what Air France actually did, which Air France promptly investigated and explained:
‘Air France is aware of this experience of customers regarding the non-compliance of their kosher meal on a flight from Mauritius to Paris CDG. Due to a supply shortage at the local caterer, customers were informed when they arrived at the airport that their special meals would be unavailable and that vegetarian product trays would be provided as a replacement. Once on board, these trays were served to them, marked by the local caterer KSML, purely so that they could be identified by the crew to facilitate service. Air France regrets this confusing identification and points out that the crew never intended to mislead customers about the quality of the tray offered and that customers were well aware of the vegetarian meal served.
The crew also did its utmost to offer them suitable catering items to enable them to eat. In accordance with the company’s commercial policy, customer service proactively sent compensation to customers on arrival at their destination, due to the unavailability of the pre-booked meal.’ (5)
So, in summary, what actually happened was that the Air France’s local catering services didn’t have any certified kosher meals available so instead they provided Air France with a vegetarian meal which they believed (correctly) was an acceptable substitute for a passenger who wished to keep kosher. The flight crew also communicated this to Marinelli – who predictably claims they didn’t and that ‘she would have refused it had this been communicated’ – (6) who accepted the meals.
Now you might wonder why the supplier didn’t just say ‘sorry can’t supply’ and this was then communicated to Marinelli along with some kind of compensation, but you see if you know anything about kashruth and how jews keep kosher. Then you’ll know observant jews often use vegetarian food as a simple substitute for kosher certified food when they cannot be sure of its status; this is because vegetarian food is what they call ‘kosher by ingredient’ (7) and the laws of kashruth that impact vegetarian food are unlikely to be present in nearly all cases.
For example, if egg is used that egg is unlikely to breach kashruth rules around eggs (i.e., it isn’t perfectly round or perfectly oval) and if milk is used then while it isn’t Chalav Yisrael (milk from a kosher animal - like a cow - where the milking was done by an observant jew) normal dairy milk (Chalav stam) is almost universally acceptable.
As Rabbi Daniel Lapin explains:
‘Many of the laws of keeping kosher relate to the source of the food as well as the separation between meat and milk products. All fruits and vegetables are kosher, while beef, fish and poultry have many limitations. Dairy products, too, are not universally kosher.’ (8)
Put another way: Air France provided Marinelli with the broadly correct kosher substitute for a kosher certified meal and there is no reason she couldn’t have eaten it other than she was being deliberately picky and upset they didn’t have precisely what she ordered/wanted.
Also let’s be frank when Eleff writes:
‘If this were a nut allergy situation, Air France would have a major PR disaster and lawsuit on its hands. Should kosher meals be different?’ (9)
He is simply being dishonest and fatuous: a nut allergy can kill people while if there was a tiny bug on a salad leaf – which renders it treif (non-kosher) according to the strict rules around kosher certification that Marinelli is trying to claim she scrupulously adheres to – then it isn’t going to kill someone and won’t even render them spiritually unclean in Judaism unless they are being that ridiculous and nit-picky!
So yes: this is yet another attempt to manufacture an ‘anti-Semitic hate crime’ out of nothing in order to get financial compensation and/or set up a lawsuit against the airline concerned in order to get a large pay out.
References
(1) https://crownheights.info/jewish-news/898265/shameful-beware-of-fake-kosher-meals-on-air-france/ also https://www.dansdeals.com/more/news/airline-news/shameful-beware-of-fake-kosher-meals-on-air-france/
(2) https://viewfromthewing.com/air-france-forgot-to-load-kosher-meals-faked-some-instead-roundup/
(3) For example: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/hoax-confirmed-the-anti-semitic-airline
(4) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/lufthansa-air-crew-revolt-against also for context see: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/how-us-prisons-disprove-the-kosher and https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-kosher-food-to-the-us
(5) https://x.com/airfrance/status/1894452237176639723 also https://www.dansdeals.com/more/news/airline-news/shameful-beware-of-fake-kosher-meals-on-air-france/
(6) https://www.dansdeals.com/more/news/airline-news/shameful-beware-of-fake-kosher-meals-on-air-france/
(7) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_by_ingredient
(8) https://rabbidaniellapin.com/is-a-vegetarian-diet-kosher/
(9) https://crownheights.info/jewish-news/898265/shameful-beware-of-fake-kosher-meals-on-air-france/