Air Canada, the country’s largest air carrier, would still be allowing the map today if it wasn’t for an alert passenger who noticed it. That person, on a Vancouver-to-Toronto flight, noticed the map showed “Palestinian Territories” where the state of Israel should be.
After the passenger informed the company, Air Canada admitted it found the “Palestinian Territories” reference on 40 of its commercial aircraft.
The concept of a Middle East without Israel is a common fantasy among radical Islamists and antisemites because their belief is Israel, and Jews, should not exist there. The “from the river to the sea” chant, heard at anti-Israel protests, carries the same theme of a Jewish genocide.
Asked for their reaction, Canadian-based conservative activists say Air Canada should not get off the hook so easily.
“Air Canada has a history of hostility that they really should do more than apologize,” Dr. Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College, says. “They should do something overt in support of the reality that Israel is a real country and is very important in this world."
Brian Rushfeldt, former executive director of Canada Family Action, tells AFN he suspects it was not just an innocent lack of oversight.
“So to blame a third party for that is absolutely just shrugging your responsibility, in my opinion,” he says. “I can't help but think that there wasn't somebody in Air Canada knew what was going on and ignored it."
AFN found an X post from Dahlia Kurtz, a Jewish journalist, who said Air Canada’s unnamed vendor is Thales, a France-based aerospace company. The reason Kurtz knew about Thales and the “Palestinian Territories” map is airline JetBlue got caught using a similar map last fall.
A story by The Jerusalem Post, published six months ago, described a Middle East map that included Israel but included the same phrase, “Palestinian Territories.” The territory known as the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, is located within Syria’s borders in the JetBlue map.
So there is no excuse or reason, Kurtz reasoned, for Air Canada to not know about the same map made by the same French company.
“You can’t even accept responsibility. Or show contrition,” she wrote.
