KINSELLA: Jew-haters push vile propaganda in wake of Flydubai hijacking

Even when there is happy ending – many lives are saved and heroes are born – propagandists claim Israel staged the hijacking

Published Oct 03, 2026  •  Last updated 19 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

A flydubai Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft is pictured on the tarmac after landing at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport in Lod on Sept. 30, 2026. Photo by JACK GUEZ /AFP via Getty Images

This week, it was the biggest story in the world.

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A Flydubai passenger jet was hijacked on its way to Israel early on Wednesday morning. One of the pilots attacked the other pilot with a knife – and was trying to crash the plane.

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More than 170 people were aboard.

The Boeing 737 plunged toward Earth – dropping more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds. People started screaming and praying. Luggage flew out of bins. And, at the rear of the plane, parts of the rudder broke off.

Any other plane, experts say, would have broken apart.

Somehow, the pilot – an Indian national, Capt. Smit Machchhar – managed to release a control switch, opening the locked door to the cockpit. Passengers could see him on the floor, covered in blood.

Three of the passengers – a plumber, a dentist and a small businessman – scrambled to the front of the plane, wrestled the terrorist to the ground, and tied him up with headphone cables.

The plumber – Yaniv Hayun – grabbed the controls and tried to stabilize the plane. Two relief pilots were aboard for the flight to Tel Aviv and rushed into the cockpit to take over. Several anxious minutes later, they safely landed the jet in Saudi Arabia – where mostly-Muslim doctors, nurses and emergency personnel tended to the mostly-Israeli passengers.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with one of the flydubai hero passengers, Yaniv Hayun. X

Like something out of a movie

It was like something out of a movie: a bloody hijack attempt, a heroic pilot and crew, courageous passengers and, at the end of the drama, two former enemies coming together in a crisis. No lives lost. There could not have been a happier ending.

So, the antisemites got to work.

As I detail in my new book The Hidden Hand, the forces of Jew-hatred never rest, almost immediately, propagandists in the Middle East and around the world set about rewriting the story of Flydubai Flight 1703.

A sampling, found just on X:

– “It was Jewish terrorism just like 9/11 was.”

– “Sounds like a #TerroristIsraeli False Flag incident.”

– “Do they really think the Goys [non-Jews] believe this bs story for one second?”

– “Lying through their teeth…They don’t even need training. They’re born with it.”

– “Netanyahu expected to use this to stay in power, out of prison and escalate the war.”

– “This is 1000% a FALSE FLAG.”

– “Another pathetic victim card!!”

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– “Everyone’s mocking the comedic lie that Israel posted about the plane topic”

Some of those posts were seen hundreds of thousands of times, and within just a matter of hours. One post has already been seen and/or shared by close to 700,000 people.

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Propagandists claimed Israel staged hijacking

The main themes pushed by the propagandists were that Israel had staged the hijacking, or had hijacked the passenger plane itself. And, that has been the online strategy for the haters for years: blame Jews, blame the Jewish state, minimize terrorism and atrocities.

But it is a strategy that was ramped up dramatically after the horrific events of Oct. 7, 2023.

After that day – when thousands of Jews and non-Jews were murdered, raped, kidnapped and grievously wounded by Hamas – Iran, Hamas and their antisemitic allies commenced a global propaganda war against Israel and the West.

CyberWell is a firm that tracks that propaganda war, and exposes and opposes online antisemitism. Its founder and CEO, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, told me nobody should be surprised by the speed or the venom of the haters: “It’s an ugly reminder of how quickly online antisemitism can distort the facts of an unfolding event.”

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Why do they do it?

Why do they do it, she is asked.

“False-flag conspiracies serve a simple purpose: to turn victims into perpetrators and delegitimize any framing of Jews as victims,” Tal-Or says. “By claiming that Jews or Israelis engineered their own victimization, antisemites erase the crime, discredit the victims, and redirect anger toward the very people who were attacked … The goal of false flag conspiracies is not only to deny what happened, but to make people distrust Jews and Israelis as master manipulators, and ultimately justify hostility toward them.” 

And, since Oct. 7, it is an malevolent strategy that has worked, she says.

“These conspiracies thrive (because of) social media platforms’ failure to confront this conspiracy for what it is: an effort to spread targeted hate against a specific group … It’s high time that social media platforms update their policies and enforcement mechanisms to address this current form of Jew-hatred.”

High time, indeed. Because, even when there is happy ending – even when many lives are saved, and heroes are born – the Jew-haters continue to push out their vile propaganda.

And the social media platforms continue to let them do it.

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