At least 290,000 Jews from all walks of life across American gathered together Tuesday at the National Mall in Washington DC to show their support for the Jewish State in its fight for survival against Gaza’s Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist organization.
NOT among them, however, were the 300 Jews who traveled on a chartered flight from Detroit for the event, but were then prevented from attending by the antisemitic bus drivers who called a mass “sick-out” to avoid having to drive their Jewish passengers to the pro-Israel rally.
The Jews were left helpless on the tarmac at Dulles Airport for some 11 hours before being forced to return home to Detroit after having missed the entire historic event.
A total of 900 Jews had flown to Washington DC on three private planes chartered by the Jewish Federation of Detroit, which also booked the buses to transport the group to the March for Israel.
But a third of the reserved buses never showed up when the planes landed, a Federation spokesperson said. And because the buses did not arrive to the tarmac, the passengers were not allowed to leave the site.
Under Dulles Airport regulations, chartered flights are not allowed to depart the tarmac without pre-organized vehicular transportation. As a result, those who were left without transportation were forced back on to the plane.
“We learned from the bus company that this was caused by a deliberate and malicious walk-off of drivers,” Federation spokesperson David Kurzmann told reporters at a news conference.
One of the organizers of the March for Israel, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations CEO William Daroff, confirmed “The bus drivers refused to take them to a pro-Israel event.”
Despite the obvious antisemitism at play, the Federation repeatedly refused to name the bus company. It’s not clear why.
“In the way that this action prevented proud Jewish Americans from exercising their freedom to speak, protest, assemble gathered today at the nation’s capital, that to me was a malicious act. It was an act targeting the Jewish community as far as their participation in this rally,” said federation spokesperson David Kurzmann.
With any luck, the unnamed bus company and at least some of its employees will be subject to a flaming lawsuit for the actions of its antisemitic drivers, according to Brooke Goldstein, founder of The Lawfare Project and a human rights attorney.
Goldstein told the NY Post that any company that “so blatantly refuses to provide services to Jewish people engages in unlawful discrimination. The scale of what allegedly happened to these Jewish people is outrageous; on a day when hundreds of thousands of allies gathered to spread a message of unity with, and support for, the Jewish community, and to demand the release of hostages taken by barbaric terrorists, we see firsthand the discrimination that Jewish people face on a daily basis in the United States.”
Just out of curiosity, this writer wonders: What would the response have been, had a group of company bus drivers dared to try the same stunt with pro-Hamas demonstrators heading to a national anti-Israel rally, or with Black Lives Matter supporters during the George Floyd demonstrations?
I think we all know the answer to that question.
