The flydubai Drama: A Microcosm of the Reality
As we know, a flydubai flight headed to Tel Aviv was seized by an Omani copilot who wanted to crash it and kill everyone onboard—reportedly including 174 passengers, all but eight of them Israelis.
His plans were thwarted by the courage of the Indian pilot—who, stabbed by him and bleeding profusely, managed to get the cockpit door open—and four Israeli passengers who stormed the cockpit, subdued the copilot, gave the pilot emergency care, and enabled another pilot, fortunately onboard, to get enough control of the rapidly plunging plane to land it safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
One of the four Israeli heroes, Tzvika Manes, told Israeli TV: “It was a very difficult scenario . . . but because we’re Israelis, so we responded quickly.”
Yes. Of course it’s possible that, in such a situation, non-Israeli people would respond quickly and effectively. But the chances are higher with Israelis because . . . we’re used to this kind of thing. Our state has been smack in the middle of the Middle East for 78 years. It’s been an ongoing fight for survival, and we have strong survival instincts—and skills.
Of course, whenever fighting breaks out, we get avalanches of criticism—particularly from Western Europe, which hasn’t had a war for 81 years and whose countries don’t have tens of thousands of rockets and missiles targeting them; and from quarters in the US, a very large country bordered by two oceans and peaceful neighbors. Proportion! Restraint! In reality, what happened on the flydubai plane is a microcosm of what happens with us at the national scale—grit and heroism in the face of murderous aggression.
No doubt, largely out of wishful thinking, we screw up sometimes—most notably in the run-up to the Yom Kippur War and to the October 7 massacre. But since that massacre, amid a fog of libels about “genocide” and “starving babies,” we’ve fought effectively—gravely weakening Hamas, Hizballah, and—in tandem with the US—Iran, striking heavy blows against the Houthis. With one exception on June 7, Iran, while continuing to pummel other countries in the region, hasn’t launched missiles at Israel since April. Of course, that can change again—but Iran fears us, for good reason.
Civilian casualties? In reality, we’re good, too, at reducing those. Fighting in Gaza in the most difficult urban warfare environment in history, against Hamas—an enemy taking refuge in hundreds of miles of tunnels while starving and torturing Israeli hostages there, embedding weaponry and command centers in hospitals, mosques, schools, and homes—Israel achieved a combatants-to-civilians casualty ratio no worse than, and probably better than, the US in Mosul and Raqqa.
You see, we live here; we know what we’re doing. For those still not too blinded by hatred to see it, what happened on the flydubai flight is a microcosm of the broader reality.
