Just three weeks ago, we were in a state of war. The south was pummeled by hundreds of rockets, until the next day, when a cease-fire was reached. The day after that, it was on to the next story.
It's no secret that in the crazy world in which we live, media stories have a shelf life of at most two days. But an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv has managed to remain in the headlines for over a week and a half, and not just because the airline refused to apologize to the haredi passengers they portrayed as violent in an incident that turned out to be nothing more than fake news.
El Al's apology, if one can call it that, was not exactly refined. Verbal acrobatics aside, by succumbing to pressure from the haredi sector and issuing an apology, the airline basically admitted the truth. A week and a half after El Al's vice president went on TV to detail the violence witnessed on the flight and announce the airline would file a complaint with the police against the offenders, the official statement, awkward and convoluted as it may have been, finally made it clear there had been no violence on the flight.
Anyone who witnessed the exemplary behavior of the haredi passengers on that flight could not sit idly by in the face of El Al's problematic conduct and the company's accusations that passengers threw punches at flight attendants and a passenger broke into the cockpit.
On Monday, the long-awaited correction to the story finally came.
There is much to learn from the El Al flight affair and that should be taught in courses on communication and media crises, decision-making workshops and lectures on stigmas and stereotypes in Israeli society. I will take two main conclusions with me from this incident: We must fight, and we can change. The most obvious conclusion though: Truth is more important than anything, and truth will always prevail.
