For a few terrifying minutes, Israelis were heroes again

For a few terrifying minutes aboard a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv on Sept. 30, a group of Israeli passengers found themselves with a problem that was considerably more immediate than the usual arguments about Israel. Someone in the cockpit had become violent, the airplane was descending rapidly and the people aboard had to figure out what to do. They did.

According to the emerging account, Israeli passengers helped overpower the attacker and restrain him, while pilots traveling as passengers assisted in getting the aircraft safely onto the ground in Saudi Arabia. Other passengers provided medical assistance. A flight that could have ended in catastrophe instead became one of those extraordinary stories in which ordinary people discover that the few seconds available for a decision are the only seconds that matter.

There is something refreshing about the simplicity of the story. The passengers were confronted with a danger that required immediate action, and some of them acted. Israelis watching the story unfold saw a familiar national trait emerge in circumstances where slogans had very little use.

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Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy captured the comic quality of it perfectly. “Overall, the probability that a plane full of Israelis will contain a trained assault team, two additional pilots, and, statistically, at least one cardiac surgeon, psychologist, lawyer, and diamond dealer is substantially higher than 50%.”

The joke survives the caution that is always needed with stereotypes because anyone who has spent time around Israelis recognizes the type. Put 180 Israelis in a metal tube in the skies and you have a statistically improbable concentration of people who have served in the military, flown aircraft, treated patients, run companies, handled emergencies, argued with authority and developed the conviction that whatever has gone wrong can probably be fixed if everyone stops panicking and starts doing something.

For Israelis, that quality has long been part of the national mythology. The country was built around the idea that its people would have to improvise their way through circumstances that seemed to offer very little room for error. The mythology produced its own cliches: the engineer who can repair anything, the doctor who appears when somebody needs one, the stranger who immediately assumes responsibility because waiting for an official response seems inefficient.

In the military, it is the officer who shouts “after me” – aharai! – rather than leading from behind.

This is the Israel that was admired after the 1967 Six Day War – or for the 1977 commando raid on Entebbe Airport that rescued over 100 hostages held by pro-Palestinian hijackers.

Sadly, much of the world has encountered a very different Israeli stereotype in recent years. Israelis have increasingly become symbols in arguments about war, occupation, nationalism and international law. Israel itself has become increasingly isolated, and Israelis have experienced insults and worse while traveling abroad.

Oct. 7 added another layer to the picture. The country that had spent decades cultivating an image of military competence suddenly had to confront an astonishing failure of intelligence and security. The image of the Israeli who always knows what to do became harder to sustain when the country itself had been caught so badly unprepared.

And Israel has been widely and wildly vilified around the world — by the far left, by the far right, by antisemites of every stripe and activists who have made Zionism a dirty word and have turned Israel into an avatar for everything that is wrong in the world.

Then came the flydubai flight.

The flight’s landing was top news all over the world. CNN reported the event as a miraculous act of heroism. Even The Guardian, not known for its pro-Israel coverage of late, gushed about the “daring rescue.”

That may explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved so quickly to meet the returning passengers. Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu’s politics, his instincts for symbolism are unusually sharp. For a man far behind in the polls ahead of Oct. 27, it was a godsend. He understood the importance of attaching himself to bravery.

There is an old Israeli sensibility that can be difficult to explain to people who have never lived there. It combines self-confidence with improvisation, anxiety with humor and a stoicism before dire circumstances.

The flydubai passengers offered a particularly vivid demonstration of that quality.

But there is a larger lesson here, although it is a modest one. Countries become caricatures when their people are reduced to the arguments surrounding them. Israelis have been seen increasingly through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and sometimes through the actions of the government that happens to represent them. A plane full of passengers offers a different perspective.

They were scared. They were ordinary. They were resourceful. Some of them were brave. And the world was reminded of another side of Israel. PJC

Dan Perry is the former chief editor of The Associated Press in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books about Israel. This article was originally published on the Forward. To get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox, go to forward.com/newsletters.