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Home » Ethiopian Airlines » Pathetic: Lebanon Upset Over “Israeli” Ethiopian Airlines 787-9
Ethiopian Airlines

Pathetic: Lebanon Upset Over “Israeli” Ethiopian Airlines 787-9

Matthew Klint Posted onApril 27, 2024April 26, 2024 48 Comments

a large white airplane with a staircase on the side

Lebanese authorities were so incensed at seeing “Tel Aviv” on the side of an Ethiopian Airlines 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft that Africa’s largest air carrier was forced to remove it before it could take off from Beirut. No folks, this is not The Onion….

Ethiopian Airlines 787-9 With “Tel Aviv” Written On Fuselage Not Welcome In Lebanon

I’ll never forget my first visit to Beirut. It was 2011, back when Israel still stamped passports, and my passport back then was as thick and big as…well, it was nice back in the day when instead of a 50-page limit, you could keep adding sections to your passport.

My passport had several appendages and was full of unique stamps and visas. Upon presentation of my passport at the immigration counter after a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, an agent proceeded to spend several minutes carefully looking over every stamp on every page for any evidence of having visited Israel.

If Lebanon sees evidence of visiting Israel, they will deny you entry…which is rather ironic considering they do not believe Israel exists. Kind of hard to block someone from visiting an imaginary country…

Well, I had been in Israel the summer before, but thankfully I had asked that my passport not be stamped and had peeled off my security sticker on the back of the passport, so there were no issues…I was welcomed in.

And let me add here that the Lebanese people are lovely and Beirut is a beautiful city. But Israel and Lebanon are technically in a state of war and Hezbollah terrorists use Lebanon as a launchpad for strikes within Israel.

So when an Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner landed at Rafic Al Hariri International Airport in Beirut (BEY), it was quite a problem when someone noticed that the plane said “Tel Aviv” aside.

First, a bit of backstory. As noted by One Mile At A Time, Ethiopian Airlines has a fun tradition whereby it writes the name of the first city that a particular aircraft flies to when it first enters commercial service. In the case of ET-AXK, a four-year-old 787-9, the first flight was from Addis Ababa (ADD) to Tel Aviv (TLV), hence the “Tel Aviv” name on the fuselage.

But the Directorate General of Civil Aviation in Lebanon did that find that fun or cute or acceptable. Instead, Ethiopian Airlines was told to remove “Tel Aviv” before it took off from Beirut and to ensure that it never flew that aircraft into Lebanon again…

#triggered

Surprisingly, the flight took off 90 minutes later with “Tel Aviv” removed. Was it spray paint or was the lettering just stickers?

Ethiopian Airlines, you have been warned!

CONCLUSION

Lebanese authorities were not happy about an Ethiopian Airlines 787-9 that landed in Beirut with “Tel Aviv” on its fuselage. So upset were they that Ethuopan had to remove it before the aircraft could return to Addis Ababa.

Good thing the 787 did not try to land at a US university…

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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48 Comments

  1. mike Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 8:50 am

    Yes: I agree.

  2. Aaron Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 9:09 am

    “Good thing the 787 did not try to land at a US university…”

    And you call others triggered…

    • Emach Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 9:30 am

      Reminds me of the adage “A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now.”

      Pretty embarrassing that Matt fell for the hasbara hook line and sinker on peaceful protests.

      • Matthew Klint Reply
        April 27, 2024 at 11:30 am

        Yes, those Jews who run the world pull all the strings, don’t they?

        • David Arnett Reply
          April 27, 2024 at 8:46 pm

          The Treasury Secretary, Secretary of State, Homeland Security Secretary, and the Attorney General are all Jews and that’s just the cabinet despite Jews being 3% of the U.S. population. Yes, they really do have a disproportionate amount of power and control. Facebook and Google both were founded by Jews.

          • GUWonder
            April 28, 2024 at 2:26 am

            Who cares what the religion of an American government employee is. And that applies as much to a US cabinet official or nominee who is Jewish as to a US federal judge or nominee who is Muslim or whatever.

            What’s sort of notable and definitely pitiful is how much MAGA fans and Netanyahu fans do have litmus tests and hypocritical “standards” based on the perceived religion of fellow Americans.

          • David Arnett
            April 28, 2024 at 11:20 pm

            It matters that one ethnic group is 3% of the population and lords over everyone but pretends they are persecuted, the victims, and innocent. Religion does matter but this is not a religious issue as Jews are a distinct ethnic group based on genetics and dna. 80% of Jews are leftist globalists pushing all the things antithetical to freedom. They use their disproportionate power and wealth acquired through scheming to push a communist agenda.

          • GUWonder
            April 29, 2024 at 5:33 pm

            There still is anti-semitism in the country and it ought to be considered indecent by all decent people. Anti-semitism and other forms of racism are painful to the people who get hit by it and to those who recognize the pain and insecurity of those minorities subjected to racism and have decency enough to empathize with those who have good reason to fear mobs or a majority obsessed with minorities in their midst and seeking to marginalize or disappear a targeted minority group. And even for those minorities who have managed to achieve or sustain higher socio-economic levels than a majority/plurality demographic group amongst whom they live, that is no guarantee against such minorities being subjected to racism.

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 10:35 am

      @Aaron … Who would be triggered if I mailed a letter to Lebanon with an Israel postage stamp ?

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 10:46 am

      The fastest way to clean out the protesters at US universities is to require them to use deodorant .

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 10:56 am

      @Aaron: Triggered is not the right word. Amused, yes, at clueless students who don’t even know what they are protesting and disgusted by those condemning Israel for its response to terrorism from Hamas.

      What is your thought on Lebanon’s response to this aircraft?

      • Josh Reply
        April 27, 2024 at 1:05 pm

        Come on now, Matthew. You may have your own view on the premise of the current violence in Gaza, but to imply these students are clueless is unfairly dismissive.

        Many of us have seen the images on Twitter of parents collecting the arms and torsos of their children and putting them in plastic bags, children with their skulls crushed and organs falling out, mass graves being dug up, families crying over white body bags, all the direct result of (U.S.-supplied) Israeli bombardment.

        Some of us have been to Israel and Palestine and have observed or directly experienced the discriminatory and apartheid policies Israel has employed for decades. I will never forget visiting with my U.S.-born wife with Arab ancestry, and her getting singled out and held for interrogation for 6 hours upon arriving in Tel Aviv and me getting my passport back immediately, her frequently getting stopped by Israeli police checkpoints while driving, etc. I will always remember the elderly couple on my bus from Ramallah who got separated at the checkpoint coming back to Jerusalem because the husband did not have the appropriate approval to accompany his wife to her cancer treatments and got sent back by Israeli authorities.

        Even prior to Oct. 7, there have been extrajudicial killings (of Americans in some cases) in the West Bank by settlers and Israeli forces.

        These students fully know what they are protesting against and how their universities are complicit through their endowments’ investments in the weapons manufacturers that make the bombs, technology companies that surveil and enforce apartheid policies, and businesses that profit off the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, etc.

        • Matthew Klint Reply
          April 27, 2024 at 1:54 pm

          I just heard an interview of two girls asked why they were protesting and they said they did not know…I’m sure they are not the only ones. I’ve also heard other students blame everyone but Hamas for what is going on and also deny the right of Israel to exist as a nation-state. Those who hold such positions are deplorable in my estimation.

          I’ve seen the images too. Do you think I ignore them? Fellow blogger Ariana has done a great job of showing the carnage in Gaza, some of which is objectively horrible. I’ve also seen the images of the US firebombing of Dresden on Ash Wednesday in February 1945 which killed 25K German civilians. War is cruel. War is nasty. There is no such thing as true victory. But sometimes, when choosing between a bad alternative and one that is even worse, you make a choice that has very tragic consequences…yet is still the right choice.

          Yes, I’ve been to Israel and the Palestinian territories many times myself. To Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, and Jericho. I hope to visit Gaza one day. I’ve broken bread with both Muslim and Christian Palestinians and do not deny their right to exist or their right to a homeland. I’ve even seen the disparate treatment on the bus that you mention…it is indeed quite disconcerting. And yet I make great allowance for a country trying to survive in a region in which its neighbors all want it to collapse.

          As I’ve said before, if the people of Gaza slaughtered their Hamas leaders and Qatar sent the severed head of Ismail Haniyeh on a silver platter to Jerusalem as a peace offering, I would also call for a full cease-fire…

          • Ken
            April 28, 2024 at 11:00 am

            Wow you are just generalizing form two girls’ statement? Anyway this is the real problem of unconditional supporters in this war. They don’t try to get all sides of stories

      • David Arnett Reply
        April 27, 2024 at 9:17 pm

        Liberals are idiots by definition but a broken clock is right twice a day. Liberals were right to protest the Iraq War and government surveillance programs but for the wrong reasons just like they do regarding Israel. They see brown people being attacked whether in Iraq, Vietnam, or Gaza and protest. They don’t care about war, don’t care about wars that kill White people like WWII or Ukraine which could have reached a peace agreement in April 2022 if the globalists did not prevent Ukraine from signing one. They just care about brown people. They protested in 2020 because of BLM but turn a blind eye to millions of Whites who are victims of police abuse or Whites who are killed by police unjustifiably. They support an end to the war on drugs not because it’s an abuse of government power and freedom of body but because they think drugs are cool. They support ab@@tion not because of bodily autonomy, they supported forced vaccinations after all, but because ab@@ting babies is cool.

        These protestors in college campuses are right to protest what Israel is doing. Israel is an occupying force. Israel has terrorized Palestinians and murdered thousands each year and now they are murdering tens of thousands of civilians. Palestinians have a right to fight back against an oppressor. Of course, these protestors are bad on everything else. They should be protesting Israel because Zionists push lgbt, DEI, race mixing ideology, speech control, etc in Western countries. They were the ones who pushed dangerous groups into our cities and 98 genders. If Zionists didn’t exist, these liberals would actually think for themselves and realize all their programming and hate stems from Zionists pitting Blacks against Whites, Muslims vs Christians, and etc.

        • UA-NYC Reply
          April 28, 2024 at 5:40 pm

          Oh look, another low-information MAGA mouth breather living in an alternate reality. There’s a reason why Red states are the takers & Blue states the makers, cuck

          • David Arnett
            April 28, 2024 at 11:15 pm

            You mean Blue states with cities that have turned in third world sewers where kids are taught there are 88 genders and dangerous criminals roam the streets and subways? I’ll take living in a peaceful, calm, and relaxed Red state any day. The only bad areas in red states are where those blue state demographics live.

  3. JoeMart Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 9:13 am

    Isn’t 21% of the Israeli population Arabic? It makes no sense to hold animosities that affect Arabs living in Israel.

    • UA-NYC Reply
      April 28, 2024 at 10:14 am

      12% of the US population is black. Yet a not insignificant percentage of commenters here at LALF are openly racist and bigoted towards them…similar stats for LGBTQ too.

      MAGA nation, Wishing 1950 Forever.

  4. Sean M. Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 9:25 am

    The naming convention has nothing to do with the first city the aircraft operates to. The aircraft are named in advance of delivery and the name applied at the factory before the aircraft even makes a test flight. Aircraft have been named everything from “Tel Aviv” to “Mother Teresa” to “Africa First” to recognise different things.

    If they were named after the first destination of a new aircraft, two-thirds of the Ethiopian fleet would be named either “Dubai” or “Nairobi”

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 10:48 am

      How about Addis Ababa ?

      • Sean M. Reply
        April 27, 2024 at 11:43 am

        @Alert – ET-AOR is named “Addis Ababa”

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 12:38 pm

      @Sean M.: Blame Ben! 😉

  5. derek Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 9:54 am

    Someday, they will accused Ethiopian of having the “i” stand for Israeli!

    Eth-op-an

  6. Mak Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 10:23 am

    Like children. Lebanon is essentially a colony of Iran.

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 4:47 pm

      Not so simple. It’s a political proxy battlefield with the Saudis and most other Arab monarchies holding power over Lebanon in part while the Iranians and Syrians hold power over Lebanon in part. And then we have France and Turkey with fanciful ideas of still being extra relevant to Lebanon’s current game board.

      Iran hasn’t been able to get Lebanese Hezbollah to do everything Iran wants during the last several months. Iran had problems with Hezbollah last year and this year because Hezbollah was thinking a bit too much about Lebanon as Iran saw it instead of more extensively following the interests of Shia high command in Iran.

  7. Joe Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 12:02 pm

    And thats is whay a country like Lebanon is more keen on fighting Israel imstead of fighting their immense huge problems…like corruption, devaluation of their currency, unemployement, failing economy and high prices.
    But as you know stupidity and ignorance in such ethnicities are common. Better search the evil on others than within. That is why they are doomed.

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 4:54 pm

      @Joe … +1 .

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 28, 2024 at 11:22 am

      The Lebanese Army/military is for the most part hands off and not involved in the firing of weapons across the Israeli-Lebanese border. And for reasons peculiar to Lebanon and its history, Hezbollah is not really subject to Lebanese government and Lebanese military control. Hezbollah is basically both a very powerful militia (relative to the Lebanese Army) within a state. It is also a powerful political party in the country due to the demographic breakdown of the country, the identity politics within the country, and how they are played by/with outside elements. Hezbollah is sort of a state within a state, but one that is what it is today largely because of the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic and the history between Israel and Lebanon.

  8. James Harper Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 12:43 pm

    It was insensitive of Ethiopian to send that aircraft to Beirut and I don’t blame the Lebonese for being offended.

    • Suhail Shafi Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 6:53 pm

      Agreed.

  9. Santastico Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 3:03 pm

    Biggest problem with the current US generation in Colleges or just out of it is their complete ignorance. They don’t know geography, history, math but most importantly that there are other countries outside the US that have their own problems. As @Matthew said, most of these morons protesting don’t even know why they are protesting. They are being used by the system, totally brainwashed and swimming in a pool of ignorance. I laugh when these morons talk about reparations from past historical acts. Do they know that there was been wars and conquering of civilizations by others since the world started? Who will pay reparations for the dinosaurs? The level of ignorance is just so amazing that I feel very good for the few smart ones out there. There has never been such an easy time to excel and succeed in history because there is very little competition.

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 4:55 pm

      @Santastico … +1 .

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 28, 2024 at 2:09 am

      If you think historical and geographical ignorance is bad on US university and college campuses — and it is bad — then there is no hiding from reality:

      Historical and geographical ignorance is much worse elsewhere in the country, particularly where MAGA mentality dominates and systematically tries to undercut funding of secular educational establishments from primary school on up, and effectively chases off its more curious, more open-minded and more educational-attainment-seeking youth (more so females than the males).

      The far worse naïveté and gullibility problem in the country is represented by the “Trump for President” supporters who more or less blindly support both a very rotten Netanyahu and Israeli government excesses while having their hatred and dehumanization of Palestinians and of anti-war protesters ramped up by a media and propaganda circus that benefits (or thinks it benefits itself/themself) from doing just that.

  10. Ryan Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 3:24 pm

    At least we know that the ridiculous level of sensitivity over nonsense isn’t a unique issue to the US.

    It is a worldwide phenomenon to be triggered by things which are irrelevant and to make a big show of it so everyone knows just how special you are.

    Oh no. A plane has the name of city on it. How can anyone continue on with their lives in face of such an outrage?! I assume life must be pretty good in Lebanon if this is an emergency.

    Side note- I’ve also been to Lebanon. Beruit and much of the countryside. Lovely country, amazing history, great food, friendly people and some of the best Roman ruins outside Rome. But obviously every country is now hostage to the most idiotic and vocal members of it’s society and being judged based on them rather than the 99% who would never blink at the words “Tel Aviv” on an airplane.

    • Uri Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 4:17 pm

      It’s not even the extremist members of Lebanese society – Lebanon is under Iranian occupation. Hezbollah controls the country, and they take orders from Iran.
      Freeing Lebanon would be a great step toward peace in the middle east.

  11. GUWonder Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 4:35 pm

    Lebanon seems to be inconsistent in many ways. But it’s sort of part and parcel of the sectarian division of power and the way politics goes in the country. Hezbollah, for example, has a sort of outsized influence with BEY, and yet Bibles mentioning Israel(ites) are allowed in at BEY without much issue. One of Hezbollah’s closest allies are the product of a Syrian-backed and Syrian-supporting group of Christians in the country, but that’s not really why they don’t commonly make a big fuss about Bibles being imported.

    Lebanon has a few issues with Israel, including that of ending up as a big refugee host due to displacement of Palestinians from lands since controlled by Israel and of having been a battle playground for regional powers — including Israel as a belligerent both via direct attacks and via proxy war games before, during and after the “Lebanese civil war”.

  12. GUWonder Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 4:54 pm

    Since surely no reasonable person wants a 9/11 style hit on a US university campus with a Boeing or any other plane, I am curious which US universities have on their property a runway available to handle a 787. Anyone here know?

    • SAS Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 6:58 pm

      None.

      • GUWonder Reply
        April 27, 2024 at 7:41 pm

        There are something like 25 university-owned airports in the US. None of them can handle a 787?

        • TAG Reply
          May 2, 2024 at 11:09 am

          https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/28/ethiopian-women-given-contraceptives-israel

  13. SAS Reply
    April 27, 2024 at 6:57 pm

    I see no reason why Ethiopian Airlines would name one of its aircraft after Tel Aviv or any other Israeli city.

    Israel has a large Ethiopian population which is treated horribly by the Ashkenazi majority. They are systematically discriminated against in all sections of Israeli society and suffer police brutality. And that is not even getting into the way the Israelis are genociding the Palestinians.

    • Alert Reply
      April 27, 2024 at 8:31 pm

      @SAS … Evidence ?

      • GUWonder Reply
        April 28, 2024 at 1:42 am

        You mean coverage about problems faced in Israel by Ethiopians and their descendants?

        https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32813056.amp

        While there is plenty of reason to claim that people of Ethiopian background in Israel are significantly better off than they would be if they had remained in Ethiopia, that doesn’t justify the troubling shortcomings in how the Israeli state and Israeli society treat ethnic minorities who are perceived as being African or Arab.

  14. Jerry Reply
    April 29, 2024 at 6:23 am

    Ethiopia’s relationship with Israel is different than that of the West. Beta Israel are discussed in many texts that are indeed considered holy to Muslims. I’m guessing the airport authority didn’t have any understanding of this when they made their decision.

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 29, 2024 at 3:05 pm

      They seem to have taken issue with Tel Aviv printed on the plane. Sometimes they have probably taken issue with print in books and on maps where they may consider the printed material to be a form of cartographic aggression.

      I am pretty sure I have some National Geographic magazines, maps and books that got stamped up for “errors” in the maps as the local authorities saw it, Thought it stupid then and still think it stupid, but insecure nationalists and ideologues of various sorts have a history of taking some stuff way too seriously and overreacting when they don’t like what they see printed.

  15. haolenate Reply
    April 29, 2024 at 7:27 pm

    The fastest way to many Islamic holy sites in the region is to… drumroll.

    Tel Aviv.

    Don’t tell that to Lebanon.

    Israel is one country I have yet to visit, I’ve only been as close as Sharm El Sheik. Honestly I’ve been terrified of visiting, going back to when I was a kid. And hearing stories from friends who fly for American & United tell me how they see regular occurences of rockets (for years) being launched as they come in to land is not comforting at all. Reminds me of the IRA and attacks on London in the 80s and 90s.

  16. BDAGuy Reply
    May 5, 2024 at 6:51 pm

    How does a piece on the naming convention for an airliner degenerate into such a vicious political screed?
    The actual point of the piece is the silliness of the Lebanese airport authorities… OK, perhaps sending a plane tagged Tel Aviv to Beirut was thoughtless and ill-advised (my guess is no one in Addis Ababa gave it a second thought0, it’s a plane not a political statement. In any event, I’m sure it’s a lesson Ethiopian won’t soon forget.

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