Jerusalem - El Al has issued a clarification stating that it never laid blame for the incidents during now infamous flight 002 from New York to Tel Aviv on either charedi passengers on board the plane.

Despite this claim, the fist statement issued on behalf of El Al after the incident claimed specifically that “a group of haredim… used heavy and violent pressure against the [flight] staff,” in seeking to disembark from the plane before it took off.

In El Al’s “clarification” released on Monday morning, the airline said that “similar to the clarification on November 19, the company did not place blame on the secular, religious or haredi communities for the reported events.”

“Any statement to the contrary was not done with the knowledge of El AL,” adding that “El Al does not distinguish between its customers on the basis of sector, gender, or nationality,” continued the airline.

The statement said that “the El Al management supports and appreciates the flight and ground crews who worked on this flight in an admirable manner.”

The airline said it would be compensating all 400 passengers on board the flight a free return flight to a European destination due to the “discomfort caused to the company’s customers.”

Almost as soon as El Al issued its statement, Rabbi Shalom Ber Sorotzkin, an influential haredi leader who was aboard flight 002, negotiated with the airline’s management after the incident and who called for a boycott of El Al only yesterday afternoon, was pictured boarding an El Al flight to New York on Monday morning.

Sorotzkin and several others went to Ben Gurion on Sunday afternoon to cut up their platinum frequent flier cards and declare a haredi boycott of the airline. Read more at JPost