An ITA Airways (née Alitalia) business class passenger reports that their kosher meal order flagged them as Jewish, which caused the crew to refuse to provide them service – or even water – and when they asked for a napkin they were given toilet paper from the lavatory to use.
>be Jewish
>fly @ITAAirways business
>order kosher meal
>get denied service for entire 14h flight
>ask why
>because water, etc “isn’t kosher”
>ask for a napkin for 3yo
>stewardess goes in bathroom, rips off some toilet paper, gives it to you while looking the other wayAvoid.
— Jonah (@jvb_xyz) July 19, 2026
For avoidance of doubt,
- Unflavored bottled water without additives is kosher. This wasn’t to honor their dietary request.
- An ordinary paper napkin does not render a kosher meal non-kosher, either.
If I were looking to paint this in the best possible light, perhaps it was badly misunderstood kosher meal procedures. The cabin crew might have believed that nothing outside the sealed catered meal could be served. Even water. That would be poor training. The toilet paper as napkins bit cuts against this explanation.
Or it could be like my worst first class flight ever, on Lufthansa where service was genuinely hostile, and a flight attendant refused to serve part of the meal or even provide utensils for all of the dishes. It turned out that the flight attendant was dealing with an undisclosed medical issue of some kind. This could have been a breakdown, rather than religious hostility.
Italian sentiment generally, though, is very hostile to Israel. 20% support refusing to serve Israelis, 18% support antisemitic graffiti, and 15% consider physical attacks on Jews justifiable.
Just as I’ve written about challenges flying while Muslim in the United States, it can be challenging to fly as a Jew in much of the world. There was this last year on Iberia:
Jewish passengers on an Iberia flight from Argentina to Spain were served kosher meals labeled with the words “Free Palestine.”
Writing “Free Palestine” on a kosher food tray does nothing to help Palestinians, but it sure does intimidate Jewish passengers trapped on your plane… pic.twitter.com/sMPSNOR40v
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 5, 2025
In 2023, there was an ITA Airways incident shared by a rabbi about a Rome – New York flight which alleged that:
- ITA staff mocked travelers’ peyot as “golden curls” and made “where are the horns?” jokes.
- Crew reacted badly to passenger prayers.
A friend of mine originally from Italy shared a pretty shocking series of events he witnessed on an ITA flight – including staff mocking Chasidic Jews. pic.twitter.com/bkItALDve1
— Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone (@Mottel) September 13, 2023
The year before, Lufthansa banned Jews off of a New York JFK – Frankfurt flight from continued travel for a 24 hour period, after some passengers on board didn’t comply with mask rules and other crewmember instructions.
- Non-Jews violating mask rules weren’t prevented from taking their connections.
- And the ban included passengers who could be identified as likely Jewish, even if they hadn’t broken any rules.
The German flag carrier scapegoated Jewish passengers and practiced collective guilt. Here’s a Lufthansa representative explaining that it’s Jews that caused problems, so the airline banned all Jews from travel.
Passenger: The non-Jewish people on the flight went. Why are only the Jewish people paying for other people’s crimes?
Lufthansa: Because it’s Jews coming from JFK.
…Passenger: I’m like shocked beyond, never in my adult life. I’ve never heard this.
Lufthansa: If you want to do it like this, Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems.
Lufthansa agreed to a $4 million fine for discrimination based on religion and was ordered to cease similar discriminatory practices in the future.
Lufthansa argued that their actions were based on safety concerns and compliance with mask regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the DOT determined that Lufthansa’s response was discriminatory, as the airline made no effort to identify the specific individuals responsible for misconduct and instead denied boarding to nearly all passengers visibly associated with the Orthodox Jewish community.
Update: an ITA spokesperson shares,
“The airline is aware of a customer’s report regarding onboard service that may not have met our high standards. We want every customer to feel welcomed on board, and enjoy the service and hospitality we strive to provide. We are reviewing the circumstances described and will contact the customer directly to better understand their experience and work toward a resolution with them.”
“Big, If True”
@jacktheladd — Is it time for another round of ‘who’s akbar’ and ‘why’s everyone so upset about hummus’? (Or, is that still in-poor-taste/just not *that* funny…)
Obviously, it’s hard to know whether these Jews were actually suffering discrimination, or perhaps just bad service. But given the current worldwide social contagion against Israel — which seems to be fueling a rise in antisemitism — the airlines need to take the allegations very seriously. Airline staff need to know with certainty that discrimination will result in termination.
From the link provided above; “ROME, Sept 30 [2025](Reuters) – Around 15% of Italians consider physical attacks on Jewish people ‘entirely or fairly justifiable’, according to a survey published on Tuesday.” Darn that’s scary.
WE DO NOT CARE.
@Chopsticks — So, it is possible, certain airlines aren’t treating you or your family poorly, specifically because of your ethnicity, nationality, faith, or appearance; they may just be treating everyone poorly because they’re an awful airline… ya know, that’s actually plausible. Huh.
Harmed Passenger: “Are you being mean to me because I’m Jewish and/or Israeli?”
Bad Airline: “No. We’re not bigots; we hate/mistreat all the passengers, equally.”
Funny how the leftists always blamed right wing extremists for antisemitism. Turns out it was leftists all along. After all, Nazis were socialists.
ITA has no 14 hour flight. This claim seems suspect.
What’s important to remember is how easy it is for seemingly good people to pick up the hate. You would hear from nearly every witness and survivor of anti-semitic attacks, such as the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine, the Hebron massacre of 1929, and the Holocaust, how their neighbors who they were friendly with and played with, worked with, etc. all took part in the carnage and hate with glee.
Don’t be one of those who disgrace humanity.
@Mantis — Oof. Dr. Toboggan, I see you have indeed “drank a shit ton of beer”… (Re: Airlines Save $100 Million A Year If Everyone Goes To The Bathroom Before Boarding, July 19, 2026).
If you believe that you probably be communism really does work.
@Common Sense — Was this actually that though? Bad service akin to Hebron or the Holocaust? That’s a false equivalence to the level of insanity (not common sense, at all). Rather, I take Gary’s ‘best possible light’ approach as more realistic, here. Poor training, more likely than outright hate crimes, or one of the worst genocides in human history. If we must be hyperbolic, Gary’s LH experience must’ve been the 9/11-Titanic-Hindenburg of bad meal services!
ITA Airways literally brought toilet paper as a napkin?
This crew needs a thorough investigation, especially to see if there is antisemitism a foot.
And, if you believe @George Romey, you ain’t never had a Wawa sandwich…
@Common Sense — I got more for you: Are you next going to equate a flight service failure to the Nakba and the systemic suffering of Palestinians, or the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese civilians in the United States during WWII? Shall we also compare a missed meal to the systemic oppression of the LGBTQ community during the AIDS crisis, the brutalization of civil rights activists in the American South, the struggle of 1860s abolitionists, Gandhi’s Salt March, or the decades of state-sponsored brutality under Apartheid in South Africa?
No.
1990: Huh? You totally missed the point.
The point is that you can have seemingly regular people all gang up to join in on the hate and they all think it’s normal and justified.
As an aside, spare me the nonsense of the Nakba and “systemic suffering” if the Palestinian Arabs. The Nakba was a war of attempted annihilation of the Jewish “Palestinians” and the Arabs lost. There is no “systemic suffering” of the Palestinian Arabs. They can stop their suffering any time by simply stopping to attack their neighbors. They choose to attempt their neighbors every time. That’s a choice. That’s not a system that they can’t change. Stop treating them like infants. They’re responsible for their choices. If we treated them like adults and stopped injecting trillions to them, this would have long been over.
@Common Sense — Projecting again? It is you who missed the point. *chef’s kiss* at your attempt at pivot from this specific on-board meal incident with ITA to attacking Palestinians, in general, which I suspect was your aim the entire time. If you really believed that service failures were representative of the same “glee” found in historic massacres, you wouldn’t need to bail on that argument the moment you’re called out for the false equivalence.
1990: No I didn’t. I did not bail out on my point. You were the one who chose to ignore it and you were the one who brought in the falsehoods about the Nakba and “systemic suffering” which I was not going to let slide as that is exactly the kind of propaganda that leads good people to justify anything and everything. It starts with little things and ends up by unspeakable horrors.
Don’t play dumb (and don’t do the meme).
Doesn’t pass the smell test.
Very sad! There’s an awful lot of hate out there. Hate is hate and no amount of “whataboutism” can cancel it out.
It’s almost unbelievable to me how some staff are unable to mentally disentangle ordinary citizens (Israeli and non-Israei Jews) from the government of Israel. I personally despise the conduct and inflammatory and unmerciful rhetorc of some individuals in the Israeli cabinet (like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir), but why would anyone mistreat and collectively punish average people for the Israeli cabinet’s misdeeds? I guess I was naive and overly hopeful in assuming that the world had matured enough that people could simultaneously dislike certain odious governments (Hamas, Russia, Israel, Iran, China, Venezuela, etc) but treat ordinary people from those nations as individuals with kindness and respect.
@Common Sense — More projecting? Sheesh, alright, please do triple-down, as if you’re shift at the Internet Research Agency still has several hours remaining before receiving borscht and vodka rations. Or, do I have the wrong continent; are you stuck in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of Myanmar. Blink twice; we can send help!
Yes, we should all be concerned about the ‘slippery slope’ (or, perhaps, in this case, since it was airline food, ‘slippery slop’…) of how good people turn to hate, but, that’s a real stretch, here. And, the glaring hypocrisy *gestures broadly* is palpable. Using inflammatory, hyperbolic rhetoric to derail any hope of a productive conversation while simultaneously engaging in the very projection you accuse others of is nothing new (not on here, or elsewhere.)
You seem deeply preoccupied with instances of violence you associate with the so-called “left” while conveniently ignoring the substantial evidence of systemic, now, I’d argue ‘institutional’ right-wing extremism in the US (specifically on the rise in the last decade; need I bring up all the specifics, yet again? Shall you re-hash how you think J6 and Kirk’s murder are somehow equivalent?). Not necessarily, but we can if you really want to. So, feel free, keep trying to seize the moral high ground through false equivalences, only to immediately pivot to aggressive, often unrelated political talking points the moment your flawed logic is questioned. What a fun game.
@David — Do you have a preferred ‘whataboutism’? Let’s dig that rabbit-hole even deeper… /s
@1990: That’s a whole lot of random sentences strung together that have absolutely nothing to do with me or with what I said. What do I have to do with J6 rioters? As far as I remember, I have never commented on them.
In any case, please stick to facts, not how you feel. You didn’t dispute how in every circumstance, it was “neighbors” who backstabbed their fellow citizens. You also didn’t dispute that the Arabs living in the British Mandate of Palestine and their fellow Arabs from all over the Middle East started a war of attempted annihilation and lost, yet started propaganda rewriting history and you fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
@Common Sense — Oof. Asking for “facts, not feelings” then peddling blatant revisionism is wild.
You claim you haven’t commented on J6? Fine. But you are the one who initiated this derailment by equating a service failure on an airline with the Holocaust and the Hebron massacre. When confronted with the absurdity of that, you pivoted to an ahistorical, one-sided rant about the Middle East. If you want to talk about “facts,” let’s start with the fact that your initial analogy was a desperate attempt to weaponize tragedy to explain why a passenger didn’t get a glass of water on a flight.
As for the “propaganda” you’re so obsessed with. You are reciting the talking points of those who seek to justify the status quo by erasing the nuance of a century-long conflict. Your “annihilation” argument is an oversimplification designed to ignore the reality of systemic displacement and institutional inequality.
I didn’t “dispute” your claims because they are the same tired, old, weak bad-faith grievances that appear in nearly every comment section; they aren’t historical analysis, they’re just emotional venting. You’re not here for a factual debate; you’re here to proselytize. Keep the “hook, line and sinker” projecting for someone who hasn’t seen you play this game before.
@1990: Read what you wrote and read what you wrote and tell me who is being hysterical and ahistorical.
You keep on injecting leftist talking points into the conversation that have no basis in reality and you claim that I’m the one who is ahistorical.
I’m not going to let your hogwash slide.
@Common Sense — You said basically ‘nothing.’ No new points. As @Mike P would say, “I accept your surrender.” *burp*
@1990. Correct, the joke is and always has been in bad taste and not that funny. But I do not believe you are motivated by animus. I was trying to show you that you are not as liberal as you think you are. I know realize you are not as liberal as I thought you were.
@ Gary. Halal is easier than Kosher (although Kosher is easier to get in the US) & I am not an expert but it is hard to believe someone thinks plain water is not Kosher or that toilet paper is more Kosher than a napkin. I did not understand how a vegetable could be not Kosher until someone explained to me it has to do with microscopic insect parts. No one is praying over the veggies. Not all follow these rules of course. I split a pizza with a reform Jewish friend last week and he asked the server to put the sausage I was not taking on his half.
@jack the ladd — Yeah, it’s a not my best work, that’s for sure. I may prefer the traffic-citation-to-immigration-enforcement-comparison ‘bit’ that I occasionally ‘wheel out’ on here whenever that’s the topic du jour. (You’re technically ‘illegal,’ too, if you speed 1 mph over the limit…) You know the drill. Anyhoo… (And, yes, I am a full-blown ‘autocrat’ within the context of ‘carry-on-only’ as a travel method.)