In a shockingly ignorant tweet, Óscar Puente Santiago, the Minister for Transport and Sustainable Mobility in Spain, called on Spanish “patriots” to stand with Vueling against the “Israeli brats” at the center of a controversy over anti-Semitism on a flight to Paris.

Spain’s Witless Minister Of Transport Urges Support For Vueling, Fumes Over “Israeli Brats”

Puente posted the tweet over the weekend, calling “patriots” (patriotas) to support Vueling over the “Israeli brats” (niñatos Israelis).

¿Los patriotas estarán con Vueling?¿los de la Ley y orden con la seguridad aérea?, ¿los xenófobos estarán con la compañía española? ¿o todos juntos haciendo piña estarán con los niñatos Israelis?

In English:

Will the patriots stand with Vueling? Will the law and order supporters stand with aviation safety? Will the xenophobes stand with the Spanish airline? Or will they all stand united behind the Israeli brats?

He has since deleted the tweet.

Why?

Well, maybe because he realized that these students were not Israelis, but French Jews…

Calling Jews “Israelis” or “Zionists” may play well to a xenophobic base, but what a crass mistake, the sort of mistake that gets to the heart of his worldview and exposes a shocking level of bias.

I wrote about this incident in great detail last week and we continue to see two narratives emerging. If anything, I’d say the narrative of the students was weakening since there does not seem to be agreement over what the students were doing. Were they singing? Were they making noises? What was going on?

That still isn’t clear…we are still missing clear video of what transpired onboard.

Did all flight attendants and the captain really rally together to say, “Let’s throw off these kids because they are Jews?”

It’s hard to accept that premise…

Yet why would he police demand (and apparently succeed) in getting the kids to erase their videos? And when I hear tripe like the “Israeli brats” quip from the Transport Minister, I do have to wonder whether it was just anti-Semitic bias, whether explicit or implicit.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, this entire ordeal is still a mystery. I’m waiting for video or for other passengers to emerge that will either corroborate the student’s version of events or Vueling’s version. Here, the truth is so far apart that I cannot imagine the truth being somewhere in the middle. It appears to me that someone is lying…and Óscar Puente’s lying statement does not make me more sympathetic to Vueling.