Hayun, Heroism, and Israeli Initiative on Flydubai
Like any good Jewish family, we make copious use of our WhatsApp chat to send each other anything remotely amusing that we happen to find on the internet.
Sometimes, however, that funny meme we sent actually conveys a deeper, more poignant message.
It was on the 30th of September that my dad sent our family a cartoon on WhatsApp which instructed people experiencing a terror incident on a plane to “locate the nearest Israeli.” Clear the aisle, let them take care of it, and “enjoy your safe landing.” After briefly chuckling to myself, I started thinking about how this “locate the nearest Israeli” idea came to be. Is there any other nation in the world that has amassed such a reputation for bravery and self-sacrifice, to the point where one could make a joke (or even half-joke) that finding your nearest member of that nation is your best chance of survival in a terrorist attack?
First, the context. At 7:05 AM Dubai time on September 30th, flydubai flight FZ1073 took off from Dubai International Airport en route to Tel Aviv. The Boeing 737 MAX plane was carrying 170 passengers, almost all Israeli. At around 9:21 AM, the plane dropped 17 000 feet in about two minutes. At 9:31 AM, the plane declared a general emergency, and at 9:38 AM it declared a hijacking. At 10:58 AM, the plane landed safely at Tabuk International Airport in Saudi Arabia. Reports immediately emerged that the co-pilot on the flight, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, stabbed the pilot, Indian national Smit Machhar, and planned to crash the plane into Ben-Gurion Airport’s terminal, causing a mass casualty event. In the end, a group of Israeli passengers and the stabbed pilot overcame al-Hammami and successfully landed the plane in Saudi Arabia.
While Emirati investigators are still sorting everything out, al-Hammami has already admitted that he had long been planning a terrorist attack on Ben-Gurion Airport, and that the 9/11 terror attacks had inspired him to become a pilot, so that he could carry out a similar mass casualty event in the name of violent extremism. But al-Hammami had not accounted for one mitigating factor in his master plan: Israelis.
Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli passenger on board the flight, managed to safely pull the plane out of its rapid descent without having undergone any formal aviation training. Hayun pulled back on the yoke hard enough to recover the plane, but not so hard as to cause more damage. If he had hesitated for even five more seconds, the plane’s descent would not have been able to be stopped. How did Hayun know how to do this? In a meeting with [former if he loses the election] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that he learned how to pull back the yoke from watching the Canadian aviation docuseries Mayday. Former fighter pilot Steve Ganyard told ABC News that it was astonishing that Hayun would be able to pull off such a critical manoeuvre simply from seeing it on TV.
Hayun’s actions take a combination of several important qualities: bravery, of course. A willingness to risk your own life to achieve your goal is essential when you’re trying to salvage a falling aluminum cylinder in the sky. But Hayun also demonstrated a certain amount of hubris. I’m willing to bet that 99% of the people who watched Mayday would not have the gall to attempt to stop a high-speed dive in a situation where one small miscalculation could kill scores of people. But Hayun had confidence that he could get the job done. Most importantly, Hayun, and the other passengers who helped rescue the plane, demonstrated a quintessentially Israeli quality: initiative. A sense of personal responsibility to rectify the situation in which they found themselves. Hayun did not wait for one of the two off-duty pilots on board to take control of the plane. He saw that something needed to be done, and he did it. In a way, Hayun embodied that famous line from Pirkei Avot: “It is not up to you to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
People like Yaniv Hayun, the other passengers on that plane, the people who drove down to the Gaza envelope to defend Israel on October 7th, the people who advocated around the world for the plight of the hostages, the many people who checked in on their vulnerable neighbours through countless missile strikes and rocket launches, and the 80% of the country who voted in the elections- these are all the reasons why my dad’s WhatsApp meme resonated with me so profoundly. At home and abroad, Israelis continue to demonstrate remarkable courage, resolve, and a quiet (or not-so-quiet) instinct to step up and take action where the situation demands it, rather than passively waiting for somebody else to act. We can all stand to be inspired by the remarkable Israeli character that the passengers of flydubai flight FZ1073 displayed that fateful morning.
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