JetBlue Rant Victim Reveals She Is Jewish, Not Palestinian
Image by courtesy of wpbf
The victim of a verbal attack by a Jewish doctor on a JetBlue flight from Palm Beach admitted that she is not a Palestinian, but is Jewish.
The woman, who did not divulge her name, made the admission in a phone call to Queens gynecologist Dr. Lisa Rosenberg, who recorded the conversation, and in an interview with the New York Post, the newspaper reported Sunday.
The Brooklyn woman, who said she is a third cousin of late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, told Rosenberg that she identified herself as Palestinian in order to stop Rosenberg from continuing what the woman called a “hate-filled diatribe” against Palestinians.
Rosenberg was kicked off her July 7 flight from Palm Beach International Airport to New York’s Kennedy Airport.
Rosenberg claimed that the other passenger started the fight after overhearing a phone conversation in which Rosenberg was discussing the Israel-Gaza conflict. Amidst an “ugly, racially driven altercation,” Rosenberg said, the other passenger called her a “Zionist pig.” Eventually, crew members ejected Rosenberg from the plane, which was still on the ground in Florida.
Two internal JetBlue reports obtained by airline industry blogger and consultant Steven Frischling “both squarely paint Dr. Rosenberg as the sole instigator of the events on board Flight 454,” according to Frischling.
The reports show that Rosenberg accused the other passenger of being a “Palestinian murderer” and that “her people are all murderers and that they murder children.” As Rosenberg continued to rant and tried to move closer to the other passenger, onlookers began to express concern for their safety, the reports said, according to Frischling.
Rosenberg denied to the New York Post that she accused her fellow passenger of having explosives with which to blow up the plane, and denies that she refused to stop arguing and sit down when asked to by a flight attendant.
JetBlue’s corporate communications manager, Morgan Johnston, said earlier this month, “A crew member may request a customer to deboard and be re-accommodated if the crew member feels as though the safety of the plane or customers on board is impacted, or the customer on board is unable to comply with in-flight instructions or obstructing a crew member’s duties.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
