Today it seems we witnessed both the toxic power of Jew hate and the searing heroism of ordinary Jews. On that insane flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, the murderous bigotry of the extremist came head to head with the Jewish people’s love of life. Mercifully, the latter won. The Jews were victorious. Once again, they thwarted their enemies.
I, for one, feel moved by the resilience and valour displayed on that flight today
The footage from that flydubai flight is terrifying. What we know is that one of the pilots viciously attacked another pilot, with a knife or perhaps an axe. He then “apparently tried to crash the plane”, says Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The plane plummeted 17,000 feet in just two minutes. Imagine the horror of that. In one of the clips you can hear wails of terror as the plane falls from the sky.
Then came the brilliant, brave fightback. The passengers weren’t ready to die. According to one passenger, “three to five guys” stormed the cockpit and subdued the attacker. “We took control of the flight [from] an assailant with a knife”, said another passenger. This was by all accounts an act of resistance against the culture of death.
Much is still unknown about the events on that flight. A flydubai spokesperson says the “motives behind this event” remain “unknown”. But Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, is calling it an attempted “jihadist terrorist attack”. We will see. Yet whether it was an act of suicidal lunacy or of jihadist hate, the fact remains that Israelis fought back against barbarism in the skies and landed a beautiful blow for humanity over hatred.
If this was an attempt to kill Israelis, can we really be surprised? Hatred for Israel is out of control. It has become a global pox. From the hipster bars of the West to the febrile coffeehouses of the East, the cry goes out: “Israelis are genocidal scum.” Israelophobia unites the plummy keffiyeh-wearer of the leafy campus and the conspiratorial cab driver in Kabul. It’s the great moral blight of our times.
In such a fevered climate, assaults on Israelis, and on the Jews of the West too, are naturally going to spike. If this does turn out to have been an attempted mass murder of Israelis, I don’t want to hear one word of sorrow from our activist classes who have spent the past three years demonising Israel as the wickedest state to ever exist.
I expect the response of the left to the heroism we saw today will be muted and churlish. Heaven forfend we praise Israelis! Perhaps they’ll even accuse the Israelis of being heavy-handed. Aren’t Israelis meant to just suck up suspected jihadist attacks on their way of life and never fight back? That’s effectively been the rallying cry of progressives since the pogrom of 7 October.
I, for one, feel moved by the resilience and valour displayed on that flight today. In one clip, the passengers sing “Am Yisrael Chai” – “The people of Israel live” – as their plane successfully touches down in Saudi Arabia. How wonderful. In an era when many in our own societies have sided with extremist thugs who chant “Allahu Akbar”, what sweet relief it is to hear the life-giving chant of “Am Yisrael Chai”.
That’s the civilisational divide right there. Do you side with the swirling anti-human hatred for the Jewish state, or with the Jews’ determination to survive against all the odds? I know whose side I’m on.
Comments