Maybe I Believe in Miracles After All

I don’t really believe in miracles.

There. I said it.

I’m a logic person. Science. Evidence. Cause and effect. Give me something that can be measured, tested, explained and preferably put into a spreadsheet and I’m comfortable.

Miracles? Not so much.

And then Flydubai Flight FZ1073 happened.

Yesterday, on 30 September 2026, a Boeing 737 was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv carrying 174 people, most of them Israelis, including children.

Just another flight home.

Until the co-pilot stabbed Captain Smit Machchhar and tried to crash the plane.

He attacked him with a knife, screaming “Allahu Akbar”, seized the controls and sent a Boeing packed with men, women and children into a catastrophic dive.

The aircraft plunged thousands upon thousands of feet in a matter of seconds.

Think about that.

One moment you’re sitting in seat 23B wondering whether you’ve got enough battery left on your phone.

The next, the aircraft is dropping violently out of the sky. People were screaming. Parents were holding onto their children. Anything not strapped down was being thrown around the cabin. Israeli fighter jets were scrambled. The aircraft transmitted emergency signals associated with hijacking.

And inside that cockpit, Captain Machchhar was fighting for his life.

One passenger later described the terrifying thought going through his mind:

This is September 11 again.

And this is where my logical little brain starts running into trouble.

Because what happened next sounds less like aviation news and more like somebody submitted a Hollywood screenplay and was told to make it more believable.

Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, had been repeatedly stabbed.

He was bleeding heavily. Badly wounded. Yet he fought back.

And somehow, despite everything that had just happened to him, he managed to unlock the cockpit door.

One tiny action. One door opening. And without doubt, 174 lives saved.

Because when that door opened, people ran towards it. Not trained commandos. Not armed security officers. Passengers.

Yaniv Hayun. Assaf Rajwan. Tzvika Manes. Dr Shota Musayev.

Ordinary people who had boarded a plane to go home and suddenly found themselves fighting to make sure everybody else got home too.

They entered the chaos. They fought. They helped overpower and restrain the terrorist.

Assaf later summed it up beautifully: “Life is stronger than everything, and we decided to fight for it.”

That sentence could almost tell the entire story.

Because while some of them were fighting the terrorist, Dr Shota Musayev was helping the critically wounded captain and trying to control his bleeding.

And Yaniv realised they had another slight problem.

The Boeing was still diving. So he grabbed the controls and pulled back. Yaniv isn’t a commercial airline pilot. How did he know what to do? Possibly my favourite detail in this entire insane story: Air Crash Investigation.

Seriously. He watches the television programme.

Somewhere inside his brain, amidst blood, screaming, fear and a Boeing dropping through the sky, he remembered what he’d learned from watching programmes about aircraft disasters. And he grabbed the controls and pulled.

The aircraft began to recover.

If somebody put that in a film, you’d roll your eyes and say: “Oh come on.”

And somehow… we’re still not finished.

Because travelling aboard this particular aircraft, on this particular morning, on this particular route happened to be… two additional Flydubai pilots.

Not one. Two.

Exactly when a plane full of people suddenly desperately needed somebody who knew how to fly a Boeing 737. Of course there were.

Because apparently G-d, fate, probability, the universe or whoever was organising the roster that morning had decided subtlety was overrated.

They took control. The damaged aircraft stabilised.

And somehow, after everything that had just happened, it was going to land.

Where? Naturally… Saudi Arabia. Because apparently the story wasn’t strange enough already.

Saudi Arabia and Israel don’t even have formal diplomatic relations. Israelis don’t normally pop into Tabuk for a quick coffee and baklava. Yet suddenly there they were.

A plane full of Israelis. Jewish families. Children. A desperately injured Indian captain. Passengers covered in blood. One restrained jihadist terrorist.

And a damaged Boeing that had just survived something it should never have had to survive.

Waiting for them on the ground were Saudi emergency services.

And this is where the story becomes something much bigger than an attempted terrorist attack.

Because amongst the footage were Saudi doctors and nurses caring for the injured.

Saudi women in hijabs tending to Israelis who, minutes earlier, genuinely believed they were going to die.

No politics. No flags. No arguments about governments or borders or history. No social media hashtags. Just human beings.

One person looking at another person who was hurt and thinking: You need help. And suddenly look at everyone standing on the side of life in this story.

An Indian captain fighting through horrific injuries.

Israeli passengers running towards danger.

A doctor treating the wounded while the aircraft is still in crisis.

People called Yaniv, Assaf, Tzvika and Shota fighting side by side.

Flydubai pilots taking control of a damaged aircraft.

Saudi doctors and nurses waiting below to care for whoever came through their doors.

Jew. Muslim. Arab. Israeli. Indian. Whatever each individual happened to be.

For those few extraordinary minutes, none of those labels mattered.

Because there was only one side.

Life. Fight for it. Protect it. Save it.

And that’s what makes this story so bloody beautiful. Because Islamist terrorism wants precisely the opposite.

It wants Muslim against Jew. Arab against Israeli. Us against them.

It wants fear. Hatred. Division. Death.

And one man apparently tried to bring all of that onto an aircraft carrying 174 people.

Instead he achieved the exact opposite.

He created a moment in which people of completely different backgrounds depended upon one another.

He tried to create death. They chose life.

He tried to create terror. They answered with courage.

He tried to divide people. He inadvertently created a story about humanity.

He tried to turn 174 people into victims. Instead he created heroes.

And the bastard failed. Completely.

174 people lived. The children lived. Captain Machchhar lived. Yaniv lived. Assaf lived. Tzvika lived. Shota lived. The passengers lived. The aircraft landed.

And the terrorist lived too. Which, I have to admit, makes me smile.

Because whatever glorious martyrdom fantasy was playing inside his head, it didn’t happen.

No burning wreckage. No mass grave. No 174 grieving families. No parents getting that telephone call. No 9/11 replay. No triumphant ending.

Instead he survived long enough to find himself under arrest in Saudi Arabia.

His exciting journey towards 72 virgins and presumably a complimentary goat had encountered something of an administrative delay. Karma really can be a bitch.

But even that isn’t the important part.

The important part is what everybody else did.

Because somewhere between Dubai, thirty-odd thousand feet above the Middle East and a runway in Saudi Arabia, an extraordinary chain formed.

Smit opened a door. Yaniv pulled back on the controls. Assaf and Tzvika fought. Shota treated the wounded. Pilots took over. Saudi emergency crews waited below. Doctors and nurses treated whoever needed them.

One person did one thing. Then another person did the next. And another. And another.

If one link in that chain had broken, we might be talking about an entirely different story today.

Which brings me back to miracles.

I still struggle with them. I like explanations. I like probabilities. I like knowing why something happened.

But perhaps I’ve been thinking about miracles in the wrong way.

Maybe a miracle doesn’t have to be a sea suddenly parting. Maybe it isn’t a burning bush. Maybe it isn’t something that defies physics.

Maybe sometimes a miracle is a badly wounded captain finding enough strength to unlock a door.

Maybe it’s ordinary people running towards a knife instead of away from it.

Maybe it’s someone remembering a television programme at precisely the moment more than 170 lives depend upon him remembering it.

Maybe it’s two qualified pilots happening to be sitting amongst the passengers of precisely the aircraft that suddenly needs them.

Maybe it’s a damaged Boeing surviving forces it was never supposed to experience.

Maybe it’s Israeli Jews landing unexpectedly in Saudi Arabia and being met by Muslim doctors and nurses whose only concern is keeping them alive.

Maybe a miracle isn’t one impossible thing.

Maybe it’s an impossible number of tiny things going right… at exactly the moment when absolutely everything has gone wrong.

I still like science. I still like logic. I still want evidence. But today?

Today I’m prepared to leave a tiny crack in the door. Because 174 people boarded a plane for Tel Aviv. For a few horrifying moments, they had every reason to believe they would never reach the ground alive. They did. The terrorist failed.

Life won. Light won. Humanity won. And Am Yisrael lives.

עם ישראל חי. Am Yisrael Chai.

And perhaps, every now and again… miracles really do happen.