Four days after more than 50 Jewish summer camp participants from France were forcibly removed from an airplane at an airport in Spain, it is still not clear exactly what happened, as dueling narratives of the incident paint starkly different pictures of the sequence of events.

Officials in Spain, France, and Israel have taken to social media to spar publicly, even as witnesses and airline officials dispute whether the youths deserved to be removed from the flight, or whether they were the victims of antisemitism.

Vueling, the low-cost Spanish airline on whose aircraft the incident happened, has stated that the youths acted recklessly on the plane, mishandling emergency equipment, disrupting the pre-flight safety demonstration, and putting the flight’s safety at risk.

However, numerous testimonies from members of the camp said they were doing nothing more than singing, and stopped immediately after they were warned by the crew, raising accusations that their forced disembarkation was motivated by anti-Jewish bias.

Those accusations were later stoked by the revelation that the captain of the plane, Iván Chirivella, was the aviation instructor who had trained two of the terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Vueling acknowledged Chirivella’s history, but denied any connection to the disembarkation. Chirivella has been cleared of having any knowledge that he was training terrorists at the time.

Video from last Wednesday’s incident showed a woman, said to be the Jewish group’s director, being violently pinned down and handcuffed by security agents.

The woman who was arrested and beaten is the director of the Kinneret summer camp.

Fifty Jewish French children, aged 10 – 15, were singing Hebrew songs on the plane.

The @vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they… https://t.co/V78PEHB58B pic.twitter.com/HizF6SZoaD

— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) July 23, 2025

On Saturday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he contacted the CEO of Vueling, Carolina Martinoli, to demand an explanation as to why 44 minors and eight adults were removed from flight V8166 on July 23, and whether it was connected to their being Jewish.

“Ms. Martinoli assured Mr. Barrot that a thorough internal investigation was underway and that its findings would be shared with the French and Spanish authorities,” the ministry........

© The Times of Israel