Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urged for flights from the United States to Israel to resume, suspecting that politics, rather than safety motivated certain airline companies’ choice to put them on hold.
“I think it is time for American airlines to resume flights to and from Israel. At this point, with every day that goes on, it appears more and more to be a politically motivated boycott instead of a genuine safety concern,” he said on an episode of the “Nothing but the Truth” podcast. “It was one thing right at the outset of the war when it was unclear what was going to happen. It was one thing to take a step potentially in terms of preserving safety. It’s another thing now.”
Cruz, who serves as chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said “you have regional airlines in Europe that are flying regularly to Israel,” using the United Arab Emirates as an example. “Every indication is that this is a politically motivated boycott.”
In December, he charged U.S. President Joe Biden with turning a blind eye to the stopped flights.
“The Biden-Harris administration was lax in pursuing why some airlines will not fly to Israel,” Cruz said. “Indeed, they may have been worse than lax, and the State Department may have become inappropriately entangled in deliberations over safety and subverted the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration].”
