TODAY THE WORLD WITNESSED A MIRACLE.
A MIRACLE! .
170 people took a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv expecting a normal experience.
They expected to Land at Ben Gurion and Go home.
Instead, one pilot from Oman attacked the other from India inside the cockpit and the aircraft suddenly plunged more than 14,000 feet in roughly 30 seconds. Passengers and crew intervened, the attacker was subdued, reserve pilots aboard the aircraft took control, and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia.
Read that again.
FOURTEEN THOUSAND FEET.
Thirty seconds.
There are moments when numbers stop being numbers.
That is one of them.
That is your stomach disappearing.
That is screaming.
That is praying.
That is wondering whether the person sitting next to you is about to become the last person you ever see.
That is parents thinking about children.
Children thinking about parents.
That is Israelis sitting inside a commercial aircraft suddenly realizing they may be seconds away from becoming another terrible date in Jewish history.
And somehow they lived.
Today was a freaking miracle.
AND THEN THE PASSENGERS FOUGHT BACK
This is the part I cannot stop thinking about.
People on that aircraft didn’t merely sit there waiting for history to happen to them.
They acted.
Passengers and crew got into the cockpit and helped overpower the attacker. Other pilots took control of the aircraft and brought everyone down safely.
There is something so ridiculously Israeli about this that if it were written as a movie script, a producer would send it back and say:
“Tone it down. Nobody will believe this.”
Plane plunging out of the sky?
Israeli passengers:
“Absolutely not.”
These people didn’t wake up expecting to become heroes.
Nobody packed:
Passport.
Phone.
Charger.
Emergency cockpit assault skills.
They were passengers.
Ordinary people.
And when an extraordinary moment arrived, ordinary people did extraordinary things.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW CLOSE THIS CAME TO A DISASTER?
I need people to understand something.
We could be having a completely different conversation tonight.
We could be staring at wreckage.
We could be watching television stations display photographs.
Name.
Age.
Name.
Age.
Name.
Age.
We could be watching families receive the phone call every human being fears.
Instead, those passengers are alive.
Their families get them back.
Someone gets to hug their father.
Someone gets their mother back.
Someone’s child walks through the door.
Someone complains about luggage.
Someone complains about the flight delay.
Someone gets home and discovers there is nothing to eat in the refrigerator.
Beautiful.
Complain.
Complain about everything.
Complain about the airline.
Complain about the airport.
Complain about Saudi Arabia.
Complain about the sandwich.
Because you are alive to complain.
That is the miracle.
AND PLEASE, SPARE ME THE LECTURE ABOUT ISRAELI “PARANOIA”
Israel scrambled fighter aircraft because authorities feared the plane was being hijacked. The aircraft had transmitted emergency signals associated with unlawful interference.
And inevitably someone somewhere will still ask:
“Why are Israelis so security conscious?”
Seriously?
What exactly would satisfy you?
Should we wait until the aircraft hits the ground before becoming concerned?
Maybe Israel should replace its Air Force with a committee.
That should work beautifully.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have received reports of an aircraft potentially being hijacked.”
“Excellent. Has anyone drafted a resolution?”
“No.”
“Then obviously we cannot respond.”
Israel didn’t survive by developing excellent meeting minutes.
Israel survives because when something looks dangerous, Israelis have developed the outrageous habit of taking it seriously.
Funny how that works.
I AM A JEW. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN A HISTORICAL VACUUM.
This is the part people outside the Jewish world sometimes struggle to understand.
When Jews hear about an aircraft full of Israelis suddenly dropping out of the sky during a violent cockpit incident, we don’t process it entirely like everyone else.
We carry baggage.
And for once I don’t mean El Al’s baggage fees.
We carry history.
A lot of it.
Too much of it.
Jewish history has conditioned us to understand that catastrophe sometimes begins while everyone else is still explaining why we are overreacting.
“Don’t worry.”
“It isn’t that serious.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“They don’t really mean it.”
And then a Jewish cemetery gets another monument.
Forgive us if our patience for that routine has expired.
Actually, don’t forgive us.
We don’t require permission anymore.
THAT IS WHY ISRAEL EXISTS
People endlessly debate Zionism as though it were an obscure philosophical puzzle.
It isn’t.
Today explained Zionism beautifully.
A plane filled largely with Israelis was in danger.
And there was a Jewish state paying attention.
A government.
An Air Force.
Security agencies.
Diplomats.
Military planners.
People whose job description included one enormously important question:
What is happening to our people?
For most of Jewish history, there was no Jewish government asking that question.
Think about that.
No Jewish Air Force.
No Jewish embassy.
No Jewish military operations room.
No Jewish state capable of responding.
Jews were minorities living under somebody else’s protection.
Sometimes that protection worked.
Sometimes the protector became the threat.
Our Yelp review of that arrangement would be approximately one star.
“Beautiful continent. Security unpredictable. Would not repeat.”
So we came home.
And now we have fighter jets.
Apparently this offends people.
Dead Jews, everyone understands.
There are museums for dead Jews.
Memorials.
Candles.
Violins.
Speeches.
Everyone becomes extremely emotional about Jews once we are safely dead.
Living Jews with an Air Force?
Suddenly everybody becomes nervous.
“Do they really need F-35s?”
Well…
Today an aircraft carrying Israelis suddenly plunged thousands of feet during a violent cockpit attack.
I am leaning toward yes.
AND YES, I AM A SETTLER
Since we are apparently confessing shocking information tonight:
I am a settler.
There.
Somebody alert The Hague.
I live in Judea and Samaria.
I own a house.
I raise my family.
I pay bills.
I go grocery shopping.
I prepare for Shabbat.
Sometimes I forget something and have to go back to the supermarket ten minutes before everything closes, which is arguably the most dangerous activity I regularly undertake.
I am not a geopolitical concept.
I am not a UN resolution.
I am not a fucking dot on somebody’s map.
Sorry. Almost made it.
I am a person.
And somehow I need to keep saying this:
STOP TRYING TO KILL ME.
Apparently this is now considered an aggressive Zionist position.
I thought it was fairly moderate.
My political platform is basically:
Please do not murder me.
Please do not murder my family.
Please do not murder other civilians.
We can argue about everything else afterward.
Radical stuff.
Really pushing the boundaries.
THE WORLD HAS AN ISRAEL OBSESSION
Israel is tiny.
Tiny.
You can drive across significant portions of this country in less time than it takes two Israelis to finish arguing about where to eat dinner.
Yet somehow Israel occupies an astonishing amount of global political oxygen.
The UN Human Rights Council has a permanent agenda item specifically devoted to Israel and the Palestinian territories. No other country receives that unique treatment. Even the British government said this year that the arrangement “unfairly and uniquely singles out” Israel and creates disproportionate focus.
Think about the planet.
North Korea exists.
Iran exists.
Syria exists.
Sudan exists.
Russia exists.
China exists.
And apparently the international bureaucracy still has enough spare energy to put Israel permanently on speed dial.
Israel could sneeze and somewhere in Geneva someone would request an emergency session.
“We condemn the Zionist nasal aggression.”
Vote: 146-3.
Eight abstentions.
Belgium requests an independent investigation into the tissue.
Meanwhile somewhere else a dictator has misplaced another 40,000 political prisoners.
“We’ll circle back next quarter.”
AND THEN PEOPLE WONDER WHY ISRAELIS HAVE STOPPED CARING ABOUT INTERNATIONAL LECTURES
Because eventually the hypocrisy becomes comedy.
Not funny comedy.
More like the kind where you laugh because screaming has started alarming the neighbors.
Israel gets attacked.
“Show restraint.”
Israel responds.
“Disproportionate.”
Israel waits.
“Why didn’t Israel prevent this?”
Israel prevents something.
“Why is Israel militarized?”
Pick a lane.
Apparently Israel is simultaneously expected to prevent every attack, protect every civilian, defeat every terrorist, never make a mistake, never inconvenience anyone, never frighten anyone, and accomplish all of this without doing anything resembling warfare.
Fantastic.
Perhaps next week the IDF can defeat terrorism with strongly worded greeting cards.
TODAY, HOWEVER, I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THEM.
I want to talk about us.
I want to talk about the fact that those passengers came home.
I want to talk about the people who acted.
I want to talk about the pilots who got that aircraft onto the ground.
I want to talk about families who spent hours wondering whether the people they loved were coming back.
I want to talk about how incredibly thin the line between ordinary life and catastrophe can be.
And I want to say something Jews have been saying for thousands of years:
Baruch Hashem.
Thank God.
Thank God that airplane landed.
Thank God those passengers fought.
Thank God other pilots were there.
Thank God someone’s father is coming home.
Thank God someone’s mother is coming home.
Thank God someone’s child is coming home.
Thank God tonight we are arguing about what happened instead of counting bodies.
That is not a small thing.
That is everything.
TODAY WAS A FREAKING MIRACLE.
And tomorrow Israelis will do what Israelis always do.
Wake up.
Take the kids to school.
Go to work.
Drink terrible office coffee.
Sit in traffic.
Complain about politicians.
Argue about absolutely everything.
Prepare for the holidays.
Go to synagogue.
Go to the beach.
Build homes.
Start companies.
Plant trees.
Have babies.
Live.
That last one matters.
Live.
Because Jewish history contains a long list of people who preferred another outcome.
They failed.
The Jewish people are still here.
Hebrew is spoken again.
Jerusalem is full of Jewish children.
There is a Jewish flag flying over a Jewish state.
There are Jewish pilots in the sky.
There are Jewish soldiers protecting Jewish families.
And tonight there are more than 170 people who experienced something terrifying aboard an aircraft and still get another sunrise.
So forgive me if I am not interested tonight in being restrained.
Forgive me if I refuse to whisper.
Forgive me if I am emotional.
Actually, forget it.
Again.
I don’t need forgiveness.
I am grateful.
I am furious.
I am shaken.
And I am unbelievably happy those people are alive.
Today could have been a national tragedy.
Instead, tonight families are getting their people back.
Sometimes history kicks the door down and reminds you just how fragile life is.
And sometimes, against every terrifying possibility, the door opens again and everyone walks through alive.
Today was a freaking miracle.
In your face, death.
Am Yisrael Chai.
A wonderful piece, replete with the truth, bathed in humor only another of our tribe could conjure up. Especially like the ironic "“We condemn the Zionist nasal aggression.” when an Israeli sneezes, and other quips to lighten the severity of Jewish life.
I have a suggestion for every person on board that plane:
They might immediately go into their Sukkah (or a neighbor's if they don't have their own), take a Lulav and etrog and shake in four directions, say a Shehekiyanu, and thank HaShem for this MIRACLE. I will tonight in America for the Jews on THAT plane who are our family. Ahm Yisrael Chai.
Please pray for the pilot