A California mother found a handwritten anti-Israel slur inside her checked suitcase after flying from Seattle to Tel Aviv last weekend.
Noa Sabar Dvoskin, 48, discovered the note while unpacking on Monday following her Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Los Angeles and connecting El Al flight to Israel. The Los Angeles native, who moved to Israel two years ago, was returning from a family vacation in Seattle with her three children, aged 9 to 16.
“I felt really scared and uneasy,” she told JNS on Thursday.
Dvoskin inspected her luggage for damage before photographing the note, which read “F*** Israel” in all capital letters.
“I had a feeling of disgust,” she said. “It felt like something filthy.”
She said she kept the note hidden from her children, who range from 9 to 16 years old.
“I never thought about this kind of thing happening on an airline,” she added.
Dvoskin reported the incident to multiple authorities, including Alaska Airlines, Los Angeles International Airport, the US Transportation Security Administration, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US embassy in Israel.
The US-based StopAntisemitism NGO raised the stakes of the incident in a statement. “What if the next time the same person puts an explosive in a suitcase when the opportunity arises,” the organization asked.
Alaska Airlines, which maintains a codeshare agreement with El Al, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
In the viral moment that preceded this broader pattern, an El Al flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv was delayed six months earlier when ground staff discovered “Free Palestine” stickers on airport equipment. That March incident prompted the flight to depart without passengers’ baggage amid security concerns about possible tampering. Law enforcement reviewed security camera footage and identified a third-party contractor employee who was subsequently fired.