Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

El Al Flight Crew Instructed Not To Address Netanyahu Directly

On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, left for Germany, France and England. As always, El Al won the bid to fly them. The flight attendants were given a page of guidelines about how to comport themselves vis-a-vis the prime minister and his wife. A series of dos and don’ts.

Among the don’ts, one instruction stood out: Under no circumstances are you to address the prime minister directly. Every approach to him is to be made solely through his wife. If the flight attendant wishes to ask Netanyahu what he’d like to drink, whether his passion is for chicken or for beef, or whether to fill his cup with tea or coffee, he or she must direct the question to Sara, sitting next to him, at a distance of a few centimeters.

This anecdote will strike a chord with people knowledgeable about the history of the relations between Bibi and Sara. The two first met in the 1990s on an El Al flight. He was deputy foreign minister in the government of Yitzhak Shamir; she, a stewardess, “blonde with a bob haircut and shy eyes,” as journalist Ben Caspit writes in his recently published biography of Netanyahu (in Hebrew).

For its part, El Al says that it is not its practice to comment on matters related to its passengers, for that reason, there’s no way of determining who decided that the cabin crews are in need of such guidelines.

The guidelines don’t state explicitly that the attendants are prohibited from making eye contact with the Leader, or that they must lower their eyes if, heaven forbid, their gaze crosses. In olden times, mere mortals were forbidden to look directly at the emperor. Violation of the order was liable to result in execution. We’re not there yet; maybe in another term or two in office the protocol will be honed.

Contact Alyssa Fisher at [email protected] or on Twitter, @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.