Imagine If This Plane Had Landed in Israel

The Flydubai terrorist attack has everything a conspiracy theorist could want. Except, inconveniently, the plane had landed in Saudi Arabia.

Imagine for a moment that Flydubai flight FZ1073 had landed in Israel.

More ominously, imagine that it had crashed.

The jihadi co-pilot attacked Captain Smit Machchhar with a crash axe and attempted to seize control of the aircraft, sending the Boeing 737 into a terrifying plunge. Machchhar, seriously wounded, managed to open the cockpit door. Passengers and crew members rushed in and overpowered the attacker. The aircraft eventually landed safely in Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates has officially described what happened as an attempted terrorist attack. Its attorney general said the co-pilot attacked the captain with a crash axe and attempted to take control of the aircraft. The terrorist was subsequently taken into Emirati custody for interrogation.

So far, so straightforward.

Except that we now live in an age in which straightforward is apparently not good enough.

There are already people insisting that the whole thing was a Mossad operation.

Of course there are.

And this is where the Flydubai attack becomes much more revealing than another story about aviation security, Islamic terrorism or heroic passengers. It becomes a case study in what happens when an audience has decided in advance that Israel must be guilty.

What If the Plane Had Landed at Ben Gurion?

Let’s run the experiment.

The same plane. The same jihadi co-pilot. The same axe. The same heroic captain. The same brave passengers. The same desperate struggle in the cockpit. The same dramatic plunge. The same miraculous recovery.

But instead of landing in Tabuk, the plane lands at Ben Gurion Airport.

What happens next?

The Israeli government announces that a terrorist attempted to hijack an aircraft. Within minutes, news outlets around the world are flooded with claims that Israel staged it.

The co-pilot wasn’t really a terrorist. He was a Mossad asset. The passengers weren’t really passengers. They were actors. The captain wasn’t really a captain. He was part of the operation. The videos weren’t real. The injuries were fabricated. The flight data was manipulated.

The investigators can’t be trusted because they’re Israeli.

And if someone produces evidence proving that the event happened exactly as described?

Excellent. That proves how elaborate the Israeli deception is.

This is the wonderful thing about an unfalsifiable conspiracy theory: it cannot lose.

Nothing Can Stop a Conspiracy Theorist

There is one rather inconvenient feature of the real Flydubai story.

The plane landed in Saudi Arabia.

The terrorist was detained by Saudi authorities. The investigation involves the United Arab Emirates. The attacker was transferred to the UAE. There are passengers, crew members, witnesses, videos, flight-tracking data, an injured captain who survived, people who physically fought the attacker, medical records and an aircraft sitting on the ground.

This is about as inconvenient an evidentiary environment as a conspiracy theorist could possibly encounter.

It is difficult to explain away the entire thing as an Israeli production when Saudi Arabia and the UAE are sitting in the middle of it.

But apparently not impossible. Absolutely nothing can stop a conspiracy theorist.

Israel, after all, is very powerful.

Apparently powerful enough to recruit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, hundreds of passengers, the cabin crew, other pilots, medical personnel and investigators into the production.

And, apparently, the captain himself.

The Captain Who Was Apparently Planted in Advance

This last part is particularly amusing.

Captain Smit Machchhar gave a long interview roughly eleven months before the terrorist attack. It is an excellent interview, and I highly recommend watching it. The interview has now gone viral in light of what happened recently.

He talks about aviation, his career, flying, passengers and the profession of being a pilot.

Then, almost a year later, he becomes an international hero.

Naturally, this creates a problem for the conspiracy theorist.

How could this man already have been publicly introduced to the world before he became important?

Simple.

Mossad must have known.

Perhaps the entire interview was part of the plan. Perhaps they were deliberately establishing Captain Machchhar’s identity in advance.

Think about how convenient this theory is. If the interview did not exist, its absence could be considered suspicious. But because it does exist, its existence becomes suspicious.

The conspiracy has now become so sophisticated that it apparently includes a promotional interview for a hero whose heroic moment is still nearly a year away.

This is no longer merely a conspiracy.

It is pre-production.

When Evidence Doesn’t Matter

A conspiracy theory normally grows because there isn’t enough evidence. Here, the opposite has happened.

There is too much.

The attacker did not disappear. The aircraft did not disappear. The captain did not disappear. The passengers did not disappear. The witnesses did not disappear. The plane landed. People walked off it. People were treated for injuries. People spoke about what happened.

And yet every additional witness can simply be added to the conspiracy.

Every video can be declared staged. Every photograph can be fabricated. Every official can be compromised. Every passenger can be an actor. Every investigator can be part of the cover-up.

This is what I would call conspiracy inflation.

A normal explanation becomes simpler as evidence accumulates: a terrorist attacked a plane, people fought back, the captain and crew helped regain control, and the aircraft landed safely.

The conspiracy explanation goes in the opposite direction. A terrorist was secretly recruited. The attack was secretly orchestrated. The captain was secretly prepared. The passengers were secretly coordinated. The Saudis and Emiratis were secretly cooperating. The videos were secretly produced. The investigation was secretly manipulated.

And everyone involved has somehow kept the secret.

The more complicated explanation somehow becomes the more “obvious” one.

What If the Plane Had Crashed?

This is where the Israel counterfactual becomes genuinely disturbing.

Suppose Machchhar had been killed. Suppose the passengers had been killed. Suppose the plane had crashed somewhere in Israel.

There would be no surviving passengers to describe the struggle, no heroic captain to recount what happened, no people walking away from the wreckage, no Saudi airport receiving the aircraft and no Saudi authorities detaining the terrorist.

There would be a vast evidentiary vacuum.

And into that vacuum, conspiracy theories could flourish.

Israel did it. Mossad did it. Netanyahu did it. It was done to justify a war. It was done to influence an election. It was done to blame Iran. It was done to manipulate American public opinion.

Pick your preferred explanation.

There would be no shortage of people willing to supply one.

The less evidence available, the easier it becomes to invent a story.

We Have Seen This Movie Before

This is not unique to Flydubai.

There are people who believe the Earth is flat. There are people who believe September 11 was secretly carried out by the CIA, Mossad or some combination of the two. There are people who deny that Hamas carried out the October 7 massacre. There are people who claim Israel knew everything in advance and deliberately allowed it to happen. Others go further and claim that Israel actually created the attack itself.

The details don’t matter nearly as much as the underlying premise:

Israel is responsible.

Once that premise has been established, the facts are merely rearranged until they fit.

Show one photograph: “Fabricated.”

Show another: “Edited.”

Produce a witness: “Actor.”

Produce ten witnesses: “All coordinated.”

Produce an investigation: “Controlled by Israel.”

Produce an investigation by another country: “Israel pressured them.”

Produce evidence from a third country: “International Zionist conspiracy.”

Eventually, you discover that the theory isn’t actually about evidence.

It is about Israel.

Perhaps Mossad Wrote This Article Too

And this is why the conspiracy theories surrounding this incident are so revealing.

If the aircraft had landed safely in Israel, people would say Israel staged it.

If it had crashed in Israel, people would say Israel staged it.

If there had been survivors, they would be actors. If there had been no survivors, the lack of witnesses would be suspicious.

If there were videos, the videos would be fake. If there were no videos, the absence of videos would be suspicious.

If Israeli investigators found evidence of terrorism, they would be covering up their own operation. If foreign investigators found the same evidence, they would have been manipulated by Israel.

If Captain Machchhar had never given an interview before the attack, that would be suspicious. Because he did give an interview, that is suspicious too.

There is no winning against a theory like that.

And perhaps that is the real lesson of Flydubai FZ1073.

The world has reached a strange point where an event can be witnessed by hundreds of people, recorded on video, tracked by flight systems, investigated by multiple governments, experienced by a surviving hero and officially identified as a terrorist attack—and some people will still insist that none of it happened the way it obviously happened.

Imagine how much easier it would have been if the plane had landed in Israel.

Imagine how much easier if it had crashed.

And imagine how much easier still if there had been no witnesses at all.

Fortunately, this time there were.

There was a captain.

There were passengers.

There was a plane.

There was a terrorist.

There was an axe.

There was a plunge.

There was a fight.

And there was a miracle.

Reality, inconveniently, survived the conspiracy theory.

But I won’t be surprised if someone calls this very article part of the conspiracy—written by Mossad long before the terrorist attack, perhaps at the same time Captain Smit Machchhar’s interview was recorded. And, of course, I may not even be a real person.

See Also

MH370 and the Logic of Collateralized Suicide