Here's a little more info about what I believe happened. First of all, he has a US passport and I'm not certain if he is in fact an Isreali. This is a friend of a friend of a friend, basically. He and I are both Captains at ExpressJet in the US. The way the story goes, he got hired there until they found out that his mother is an Isreali Jew, not even him. So, basically, he is half-isreali and half-jew. Then they fired him.
Luckily, he had been gone only a few days from XJT and they brought him back in with his previous seniority/pay, etc. He had been here for 7 or 8 years, from what I understand..so he was very lucky to get his job back without starting over.