A photo circulating online alleges an American Airlines flight attendant was wearing a keffiyeh in uniform to show support for Palestinian resistance. The bigger issue is power: crew members control whether you fly and whether you get labeled disruptive. Political signaling from the people in charge of the cabin is a problem. It’s also against airline rules.
In the photo, a man is standing in the aisle wearing a red-and-white checkered scarf with tassels draped over his shoulders:
So a good friend just took off on an @AmericanAir flight.
This is his flight attendant.
Not normal. Not ok.
But a sign of the times.
How is this allowed?! pic.twitter.com/1YXupSgRhS
— Hillel Fuld (@HilzFuld) January 30, 2026
This is reportedly a flight attendant, who has authority over passengers – including Jewish passengers. Some in social media thinks this is great, and are thrilled that Jewish passengers are subjected to this. There are numerous antisemitic insults hurled in the comments of this post on Twitter.
There’s a real concern with front line airline employees voicing political positions and aiming those at passengers. The issue is asymmetric speech. Airline employees exercise power over passengers – power over whether they’ll board and fly, or whether they’ll be considered “disruptive” for expressing their own contrary opinions. And bringing politics into the cabin is already enough of a problem with passengers doing it.
When Democrats were in power, United supported a flight attendant wearing a Palestine flag pin, absurdly claiming it was to indicate language skills. The flight attendant wasn’t from Gaza or the West Bank, and does not speak ‘Palestinian’. They were also confused, wearing both a LBGTQ+ rights pin alongside the Palestinian flag, not ralizing that these rights are respected in Tel Aviv but not in Gaza.
Then, once United began wanting things from the Trump administration, they began restricting flight attendant pins to the American flag.
