An airport controller at Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport has been suspended for saying “Free Palestine” to the crew of the Israeli airline El Al, the French transport minister Philippe Tabarot announced.
The airport controller is now under disciplinary procedure.
“The sanction must be commensurate with the severity of the facts,” Tabarot said on X on August 12.
He said the employee bypassed safety rules and failed his civil servant duty of discretion.
Tabarot added that such action “would violate the rules of radio-communications, which must be limited to the safety and regularity of air traffic”.
“Furthermore, they would result from a failure to uphold the civil servant’s duty of discretion and would harm the image of public service, ” he added.
Following the incident, the Israeli airline described it as “unprofessional”.
The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF) stated the actions of the controller were “unacceptable”. It said the employee had violated both the requirement for political neutrality and the safety protocols that govern communications between a control tower and an aircraft during take-off.
Israeli media have also reported that France temporarily halted visas for El Al security staff.
This was not the first time such an incident has occurred recently.
On August 5, Spanish airline company Iberia confirmed that some passengers on a flight to Buenos Aires reported “handwritten pro-Palestinian messages” on their meal packaging.
The umbrella organisation of Argentina’s Jewish community called it a “serious act of anti-Semitism”.
Earlier, in July, dozens of Jewish teenagers from France were removed from a Vueling flight departing from Valencia, Spain.
The airline claimed they had engaged in disruptive behaviour, such as tampering with lifejackets and oxygen masks.
Some parents, though, claimed the removal was motivated by anti-Semitism, alleging that the group was expelled after one teenager sang a song in Hebrew.
