Israeli Passengers Save Flight

A flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Sept. 30, 2026, became a terrifying struggle for survival when the co-pilot of Flydubai Flight FZ1073 attacked the captain and attempted to take control of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. 

The aircraft, carrying approximately 174 passengers, was approaching Israel when the attack began. The co-pilot, identified several days later as Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national, attacked Indian Captain Smit Machchhar inside the cockpit. 

The United Arab Emirates has officially said it was a terrorist attack, although investigators are still determining the precise motive and whether anyone else was involved.

The airplane then plunged more than 14,000 feet in less than a minute; passengers described a terrifying descent in which some believed they were about to die. 

Despite being seriously wounded and losing blood, Machchhar fought back and managed to reach the cockpit-door release. He opened the door, creating the opportunity for passengers and crew members to enter the cockpit and confront the attacker. 

Several Israeli passengers immediately jumped into action: Yaniv Hayoun, Tzvika Manes, Asaf Rajuan and Dr. Shota Musayev were among those who helped subdue the attacker. Hayoun, a plumber, grabbed the controls while the airplane was still descending.

 The passengers and crew wrestled the co-pilot away from the controls and restrained him, reportedly using headphone cords and other materials. Two additional pilots who happened to be traveling aboard the aircraft then entered the cockpit, stabilized the plane and diverted it to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where it made an emergency landing. 

Although gravely injured, Captain Machchar knew the aircraft was going down and he needed to give someone else a chance to take control – opening the cockpit door saved everyone on board. 

Dr. Musayev, the dentist who helped subdue the attacker, also treated the wounded captain and attempted to control his bleeding. Machchhar was taken to a hospital in Saudi Arabia and later transferred to the United Arab Emirates, where he has been reported to be recovering. 

The passengers were ordinary people who suddenly found themselves responsible for one another’s survival, and they answered the call. Families were aboard the flight, including parents traveling with young children. Among the passengers was an Israeli boy traveling for his bar mitzvah. 

When the survivors eventually returned to Israel, they were greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by relatives and others who had gathered to welcome them home. 

The image of Israelis returning home after an attack on a flight bound for Israel—takes on a deeper meaning when placed alongside what Israeli Hebrew teacher Inbal Amit describes as the long history of antisemitism and the Jewish relationship with Israel. 

Inbal says that antisemitism repeatedly changes its language while retaining the same underlying hatred. She teaches that the vocabulary has shifted historically from religious accusations against Jews, to racial theories, and in the modern era to language surrounding Zionism and Israel. She says that the central question is not simply what words people use, but whether those words are being used to deny Jews the same right to safety, identity and national existence afforded to other peoples.

Israeli officials initially questioned whether Iran could have been involved, but subsequent reporting indicated that the available information was pointing more toward a lone-wolf attack. Investigators are examining the attacker’s background, including reports that he had previously been removed from flying duties in Oman because of concerns about extremist views and that his social-media activity included jihadist imagery. 

Antisemitism, terrorism, political opposition to Israel and the broader wars involving Israel are not interchangeable concepts. The circumstances of this attack inevitably place it within a region where Israeli civilians have repeatedly faced attacks and where questions about Jewish safety and Israel’s right to exist remain contested.

This is one reason Inbal places emphasis on October 7, 2023, and what she calls “October 8”—the international reaction that followed. October 7 was an attack in which approximately 1,200 people were murdered and 251 were taken hostage, and Inbal notes that the response of some people outside Israel shifted almost immediately from mourning the victims to justifying the attack. That response illustrates what she teaches is one of the central problems in recognizing modern antisemitism: hatred can present itself in political language while still targeting Jews because they are Jews.

She makes a similar assertion when discussing the word genocide, emphasizing that the legal concept requires an intent to destroy a people. Her larger point is that words such as genocide, apartheid and colonialism have specific, deeper meanings and should not simply be used as political labels. October 7 demonstrated explicitly Hamas’ genocidal intent.

Her discussion then reaches Zionism, which becomes particularly relevant to a plane filled with Israelis trying to return home. Inbal describes Zionism in its most basic sense as the belief that the Jewish people have the right to return to and live in their ancestral homeland. She connects that understanding to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish history and Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which promises Jewish immigration while also declaring commitments to freedom, justice, peace and equality for all citizens regardless of religion, race or sex. 

For Inbal, that connection between Jews, Israel and Hebrew is especially important. She points to the revival of the Hebrew language as evidence of a people returning to a language associated with its ancient homeland after centuries of dispersion. This history thwarts descriptions of Jews as foreign colonizers in Israel, because Hebrew was the language of the ancient Jewish people and was revived as a spoken language in the same land. 

The Flight FZ1073 passengers were, in a very literal sense, going home. They were vacationers and families returning from Dubai to Israel, traveling on an Emirati airline created by the new relationship between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. That relationship itself is significant. The Abraham Accords opened a new chapter in which Israelis could travel openly to countries that had previously had no formal diplomatic relationship with Israel. On this flight, an Indian captain, Israeli passengers, Emirati aviation personnel and other pilots from different backgrounds ultimately worked together to prevent a catastrophe. 

That fact provides an important counterpoint to the violence.

Inbal teaches us that survival and peace are not necessarily opposites. She points to Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and to the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco as examples of Arab states establishing relations with Israel. She says when countries choose recognition and cooperation, peaceful relations are possible. 

The flight from Dubai demonstrates this.

The airplane was a product of that new relationship; people of different nationalities and backgrounds became responsible for saving one another.

Indeed, the passengers aboard that plane didn’t ask one another which political party they supported, what they thought about Gaza, whether they agreed about Iran, or whether they had the same interpretation of Zionism. 

For Israelis and for Jews, the question of survival is not an abstract historical argument. It is experienced through the memory of generations of persecution, through October 7, through continuing security threats—and, on Sept. 30, 2026 when an airplane suddenly plunged toward the ground while Israeli passengers fought to keep one another alive.

The passengers survived because the wounded captain refused to give up, because ordinary people moved toward danger to help, and because people of different nationalities worked together when it mattered most.

For a people whose history is so deeply intertwined with the question of survival, the significance of those actions is clearly defining.