The details are still emerging, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed the early suspicions about what motivated the thwarted hijacker of FlyDubai’s Tel Aviv-bound Flight FZ1073. "We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination," Netanyahu said on Thursday morning, appearing on Fox & Friends, though the investigation is ongoing. Israel’s defense minister had already called it attempted jihadist terrorism.
President Donald Trump said the night before, after speaking to Netanyahu, that the Omani national arrested was "perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job." The evidence is increasingly pointing to the former, though they’re not mutually exclusive. It’s worth quickly recapping exactly what happened. The Omani co-pilot of Flight FZ1073 allegedly attacked his captain with an ax as the jet neared Israel on Wednesday.
The Boeing 737, carrying 174 people to Tel Aviv, most of them Israelis, then plunged some 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds, in an apparent attempt to crash the plane. Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, managed to open the cockpit door despite his severe injuries, a heroic feat followed by the bravery of passengers and crew who flooded in to overpower the co-pilot and take control of the aircraft. Much of what went on was caught on video by passengers.
The bloodied captain, the passengers taking control of the situation, the screams of terrified travelers, many of them children, as the plane nose-dived. Mercifully, the jet was guided to a safe landing in Saudi Arabia, where the co-pilot was detained by authorities, before the flight finally reached its destination in Israel. This incident is many things.
One of them is the stark reality of a phrase echoing around Western cities, including many in the U.S., cheered by progressives and pro-Palestinian activists during Israel’s Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. "Globalize the intifada." For nearly three years the chant has been a fixture of pro-Palestinian protests. Last November, demonstrators shouted it outside a Manhattan synagogue whose senior rabbi survived the Holocaust.
The progressives who defend it call it a cry for justice, not blood. They say it is misunderstood by their critics. Intifada means "shaking off" in Arabic, and the first one, which began in 1987, was fought largely with strikes, boycotts, and stones.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
