When Heroes Fear Being Blamed
A headline in the Times of Israel on October 4 is remarkably revealing of Israeli self-awareness. It read: “New footage shows Israeli passengers filming aftermath of flydubai attack for fear of arrest in Saudi Arabia”. The article reported:
“New footage from aboard flydubai Flight 1073 shows Israeli passengers who subdued the Omani terrorist worrying that they could be arrested and blamed for the violence upon landing in Saudi Arabia, Channel 12 reports […] Dr. Shota Musayev, one of the Israeli passengers who helped overpower the attacker, urges the others to document what happened, fearing Saudi authorities would not believe their account when they landed […]”.
It is an interesting psychological inversion that illustrates the psyche, perhaps the collective one, of Israelis who exercise self-defense and fear being blamed for it. The facts are well known: an Islamist Omani co-pilot tried to crash a plane full of Israelis, but he was neutralized in time by his intended victims. And yet, after averting disaster (with due credit also to the pilots who successfully landed the aircraft), they felt no relief. They were left uneasy at the prospect of being accused themselves of having been the aggressors.
This episode reflects a dynamic that is indeed at play on the broader stage of geopolitics, diplomacy, the press and Israel’s relationship with the entire world. The events of October 7, 2023 laid it bare with painful clarity. Israel suffered an inconceivably sadistic act of aggression, the most traumatic attack in its history (a history not devoid of atrocities), the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust (a terrible benchmark). After only a few days of false international sympathy, as soon as Israel mounted its defense, it was widely punished.
The greater the effort its army made to protect the lives of the population of an enemy entity ruled by jihadists, the greater the unfounded accusations against it. The genocide libel is especially grotesque in light of Israel’s unprecedented actions, in the history of warfare, to protect civilians in hostile territory. Israel sent millions of text messages, made millions of phone calls and dropped millions of leaflets in Arabic urging civilians to leave combat zones. It coordinated the administration of a million polio vaccines to Gazans, allowed sick children to leave for hospitals in the UAE, and delivered some two million tons of food into Gaza. Something similar happened with the slanders about collective punishment, famine and collateral damage, among others.
It is sadly logical, then, that Israelis who defend themselves against aggression should expect to be accused of aggression themselves, whether on an Emirati plane or in Gaza. That is the suspicion the world has taught them to expect. This has been happening since 1967; over time it has worsened, and it has now hardened into the prevailing narrative on a global scale. This may have forged a collective consciousness in Israel shaped by decades of accusations. As a result, Israelis who had just saved some one hundred and eighty people, most of them compatriots, felt compelled to film the scene as proof that they were the innocent party, the victims of the foiled attack, and not the perpetrators.
Nearly four centuries ago, Thomas Hobbes warned in Leviathan that having done someone more harm than one can or will expiate inclines the doer to hate the one who suffered it. Few observations better explain why, in Israel’s case, guilt does not stay with the aggressor but migrates to the victim. This is how we come to understand why Israelis who had just prevented a massacre in the air felt they had to justify their actions. Those videos are a tragic metaphor for our twisted times.