El Al’s Warsaw to Tel Aviv flight 5102 diverted to Antalya, Turkey on Sunday due to a passenger with a medical emergency. According to El Al,
El Al flight LY5102 from Warsaw to Tel Aviv made a landing at the airport in Antalya following a medical incident of one of the passengers. After consulting with the doctor who treated the passenger on the plane, it was decided that it should land urgently in order to evacuate the passenger to the hospital as soon as possible.
Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas, non-stop flights between Israel and Turkey have been halted. Passengers were not permitted to deplane and Turkey would not permit El Al to refuel so that it could return to Israel.
Refueling was delayed initially because “permits were required to refuel” which El Al lacked. Then “local workers refused to refuel the El Al plane.” The standoff lasted for hours.
Fortunately the aircraft had sufficient fuel on board to fly to Rhodes, Greece which is 155 miles away. The flight, originally scheduled at 3 hours 40 minutes, will have passengers on board the Boeing 737 for more than 11 hours.
The condition of the passenger with the medical emergency was not known, so I certainly won’t second-guess the decision to put the plane down as quickly as possible – even though that meant Turkey. And I would have thought that even Turkey in a situation like this would take a more humanitarian view. I was wrong.
Turkey is problematic from a human rights perspective, as well as questionable as a democracy. It extracts a tax from NATO and is shaky as an ally. Refusing to allow a commercial airline flight in distress the opportunity to refuel is an abomination, even in the context of the Erdogan regime’s support for Hamas against Israel.
Lots of big words with zero connection to reality.
Genocide? in Rafah there were 1.4 million Palestinians in an area of about 60 square kilometer. Had Israel wanted – all would be dead within 10 hours.
apartheid? 11% of Israel’s judges, including one supreme court judge, are Arabs. about 23% of Israel’s medical is Arab – from doctors to pharmacists, techs, etc.
Keeling civilians – very possibly and truly sad, but when a Hamas hides behind them, there is no other choice. According to international law, when a hospital is used to conduct war – it is a legitimate military installation. It can be legitimately destroyed. But Israel did its best to minimize civilian casualties.
And just to mention: Are you referring to the innocent civilians that celebrated in the streets on October 7 when an Israeli female with blood on her pants from being raped by Palestinian (Hamas or civilians) was pulled by her hair in the streets of Gaza? or those that shouted praise to Allah when the bodies of Israeli civilians were dragged behind cars in the streets? The same civilians that elected Hamas at 70%? Or the kids that a hamas proud father filmed heating a 5 year old Israeli while their father declares happily ” My kids got a Jew! Allah Hu Akhbar!” Those innocent citizens?
How many American citizens were killed by Nazi Germany? ZERO. How many German civilians were killed by American forces? hundreds of thousands if not millions. Following the “””logic””” of @GU and his ilk the world would be speaking German but he would likely be happy as it will be without Jews.