The flydubai attack succeeded - Israel was just lucky - opinion

In a normal country, a minister receives a government portfolio and is expected to devote all their talent, energy, and capabilities to it.

The education minister focuses on education; the welfare minister on welfare; the transportation minister on transportation. The aim is to advance the ministry and its objectives, and to benefit the citizens of the country.

In the State of Israel, however, a minister receives a government portfolio and exploits it – along with its resources, the jobs it offers, and the levers of influence and control it provides – to advance their own interests.

That is precisely what it looks like. The deeper one delves into the Dubai plane incident, the more evident the neglect and disarray become. The state comptroller wrote about this explicitly. Two years ago, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman warned of the need to reexamine the security arrangements for foreign aircraft entering Israel, to clarify the division of responsibilities among the relevant bodies, and to adopt an “integrated approach.”

Do you think anyone there actually adopted an integrated approach? In a well-run state – in a ministry where the director-general is a professional appointee and a transportation expert – a team would immediately be established to implement the comptroller’s report.

Incidentally, the report contains classified sections that were not released. One wonders if they specifically address flights from Dubai following the Abraham Accords.

Be that as it may, Ben Zaken preferred to craft an “integrated approach” tailored to his minister’s needs – needs that focused primarily on endless trips to obscure conferences in various overseas destinations.

Traffic jams? They’ll clear up eventually. Road accident fatalities? The families will get insurance payouts. An aviation disaster? Let’s hope for a miracle.

It turns out that, in the end, this approach was right. After all, there was a miracle.

And now, we can state with certainty: a major failure occurred here – a massive one. A pilot – one whom Oman grounded for becoming radicalized and whom Morocco barred from flying due to his extremist Islamist views – found himself flying hundreds of Israelis to Israel.

And not for the first time. Someone in the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) needs to take a hard look at themselves. I know – they take risks regarding Gadi Eisenkot’s security too – but when hundreds of passengers are involved, it’s going too far.

People say Shin Bet Director David Zini is messianic. That might be true. Perhaps he even knew in advance that there would be Israeli passengers on the plane who refused to accept their fate, and that everything would end safely.

The Mossad has no way of knowing about every single jihadist who decides to kill Jews, provided that individual isn’t linked to an organized group or acting on orders from somewhere. If that is indeed the case, the Mossad bears less responsibility here.

What about the political leadership? The transportation minister? The prime minister? Don’t even mention them. We’ve learned our lesson. What do they have to do with it? They have no connection whatsoever. Shame on you for even entertaining the thought.

When something bad happens, they have nothing to do with it. So, our Miri can keep jet-setting around the world, hoping the incompetents in her office are ensuring no Omani pilot flies her.

Netanyahu can keep posing for photos with heroic survivors while ignoring the fact that they were forced to save themselves because he failed – for the hundredth time – to do his job.

And finally: our security agencies, which failed miserably, ought to treat the attempted downing of the flydubai plane as a successful attack – an event that actually occurred, resulting in 174 fatalities (in a best-case scenario).

This is exactly what happened on November 28, 2002, in Mombasa, Kenya, when two Strela shoulder-fired missiles were launched at an Arkia plane packed with Israelis shortly after takeoff. The two missiles whizzed past the plane and missed; the pilots saw them.

Within Israel’s security establishment, that incident was logged and classified as a successful attack – an event that actually took place, resulting in the deaths of 260 Israeli passengers and crew members (in a best-case scenario).

WHY SHOULD it be recorded as a successful attack? Because, from the attackers’ perspective, it was a success. The Omani pilot managed to outwit every screening and security system in both the UAE and Israel, gaining the keys and the means to bring down the plane.

Zini needs to tell himself: I failed. Mossad chief Roman Gofman needs to tell himself: I failed. Miri Regev needs to tell herself – though, of course, she won’t – that she failed. The same applies to the head of the ministry’s security division and the head of MAMLAT – the Aviation Security Operations Center. I don’t know what operations he has carried out recently, but I know for a fact that he failed to perform his actual job.

At the time, following the attack in Mombasa, that was the prevailing view: security officials determined through internal inquiries that the attack had succeeded and they had failed. The fact remains that two terrorists fired two shoulder-launched missiles at a plane full of Israelis.

You have to understand: wherever Israeli flights take off from, there are always Israeli security personnel responsible for perimeter security. “Our boys” are supposed to be at the “Mombasa station” just as they are supposed to be at the “Dubai station.”

They operate alongside deep intelligence support, cooperation with local security forces, the vetting of anyone coming into contact with passenger security, and so on. They were there, and yet – it happened.

The Arkia plane was saved thanks to one small detail: the terrorists didn’t know how to launch the Strela missiles. Such a missile homes in on engine heat. They needed to wait for the plane to pass overhead and then fire the missile in its wake; it would then lock onto the engines and detonate against the aircraft.

Instead, they fired from the side as the plane was taking off, and so the missiles didn’t lock onto the engine; they merely flew past the plane and continued on.

Pilots Rafi Marik, Itzik Shani, and Uri Sapir could have waved hello from the cockpit at the missiles meant to shatter their aircraft, one of them told me this back then.

In Mombasa, the plot succeeded but failed due to luck. In Dubai, it succeeded but failed thanks to the heroism of five Israelis. Will anyone be held accountable? Of course not. Quite the opposite. Netanyahu has inserted himself into the event as if he were the plumber who saved everyone. He is celebrating it as if he had just declared, “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”

The truth is the exact opposite: Netanyahu is the one responsible for the clog and the flood that nearly killed everyone. Hayoun – the plumber – along with Tali and Tzvika Menes and the others who simply took matters into their own hands, saved the day.