Air Canada investigating complaint about flight attendant wearing Israel-shaped Palestine pin

Air Canada is reviewing a complaint from a Toronto Jewish man about a flight attendant wearing a political pin on her uniform.

The pin was shaped like Israel but illustrated with Palestinian colours and had an image of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem’s Old City) in the centre.

“We are reviewing this matter. We will address it directly with the employee involved, as appropriate,” Air Canada’s manager of corporate communications, Peter Fitzpatrick, told National Post in an email.

The passenger, author and businessman Israel Ellis, told National Post in an email this week that there “is no place for political statements of any kind on a public airline, especially that which identifies clearly with a polarized issue used as a guise for antisemitism.”

This kind of incident “normalize(s) calls for the erasure of the Jewish people,” he said. “A pin depicting Palestine in the stead of Israel is a clear call for genocide.”

National Post shared Ellis’s concerns with Air Canada, requesting comment.

“We have a policy for uniform staff that covers which pins and symbols are permissible,” said Fitzpatrick. “There is a finite list of pins that are accepted, none of them political, as I think you mean it. Instead think of something like a poppy.”

Ellis says the incident unfolded during an Air Canada flight to Atlanta last week, with a headscarf-wearing flight attendant who wore the pin underneath her airline pin.

“I felt her disdain as she shouted at me with a grimace, seeing me and my wife’s Star of David necklaces,” he says.

He shared phone-photos of the flight attendant’s pin with National Post.

After the incident, Ellis wrote to Air Canada to complain but has not yet received a response. Meanwhile, he posted his experience on Instagram , receiving almost 3,000 responses and 1,400 comments.

Ellis says he felt “harassed, threatened, and unsafe in a situation … that should be providing comfort and security regardless of my identity,” adding that “seeing this supported by Air Canada is unnerving and I suppose another consequence of a country that has betrayed its Jewish constituents.”

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