The mix-up might trace to Qantas’s frequent flyer program, which allows passengers to use miles on El Al.
Melbourne, May 21 – Australia’s national air carrier faces a barrage of opprobrium the from Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement this week, with demands that the airline axe its route from Melbourne to Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport. The activists dismiss the airline company’s protestations that it has never flown to Israel.
A now-deleted post on the X social network claimed on Wednesday that Qantas was “sneakily launching” a Melbourne–Tel Aviv flight to “prop up Israel’s war machine.” The post featured an image of a Qantas 787 photoshopped to appear among El Al aircraft at Ben-Gurion, though aviation enthusiasts quickly identified the original image as coming from Dubai. Nevertheless, the post metastasized into the #DropTLV campaign, complete with 1.5 million views and a legion of emoji-warriors spamming Qantas’s X feed with accusations of support for genocide.
On Thursday, some 250 protesters swarmed Qantas’s Melbourne office, wielding placards screaming “No Roo to Zionism!” and a papier-mâché Qantas jet. One demonstrator in a kangaroo costume waved a sign that read, “Hop Off Apartheid.”
Protest leader Zara Mahmoud, undaunted by Qantas’s lack of Tel Aviv service now or in the past, delivered a megaphone manifesto: “Qantas is complicit through its silence! If they’re not flying to Tel Aviv now, they’re probably plotting it in a secret boardroom!” When a reporter pointed out that Qantas’s Middle East footprint is basically a codeshare layover in Dubai, Mahmoud snapped, “Codeshares are just colonialism with extra legroom.”
Qantas issued a statement in response to the brouhaha. “Qantas Airways does not, and has never, operated flights to Tel Aviv. Our focus remains on delivering safe, reliable service across our actual network.” One Qantas executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted the airline’s execs see the ordeal as a temporary unpleasantness that will end within days. “We’re too busy launching Perth–Paris to deal with this,” they insisted.
Aviation analyst Dr. Tim Wu from RMIT University voiced confusion over the demands. “Qantas flying to Tel Aviv? Their network is Asia, Europe, the Americas—Tel Aviv’s not even on the radar.” Wu suggested the mix-up might trace to Qantas’s frequent flyer program, which allows passengers to use miles on El Al flights, but added, “If that’s complicity, then every SkyTeam member’s guilty, and singling out Qantas seems arbitrary.”
Online, the #DropTLV hashtag remains a circus of chaos. BDS diehards flood Qantas’s X posts with “Divest or Die” screeds, while detractors fire back with memes of kangaroos in keffiyehs captioned, “When you boycott a flight that doesn’t exist.” One X user, @FlightPathFrenzy, posted, “BDS just invented a route to protest. Next they’ll picket Qantas for not canceling its Jupiter hub.” The saga has spawned AI-generated protest art, including an image of a Qantas plane circling the Dome of the Rock.
Undeterred, BDS organizers are doubling down. A petition with 20,000 signatures demands Qantas “swear off Tel Aviv forever” and donate its frequent flyer miles to “Palestinian climate refugees.” Plans for a “runway sit-in” at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport are brewing, though Mahmoud insists it’ll be “non-disruptive, unlike Qantas’s moral failures.”
Meanwhile, the airline has hunkered down until protesters tire themselves out before they start boycotting its routes to Atlantis.
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