Jerusalem has foiled many other 9/11-style attacks, saving Western lives

A terrorist stabbed a flight attendant and stormed the cockpit of a plane bound for Turkey with 170 people on board. The pilots reported that they were under attack, transmitting the international hijacking alert code. By the time the Boeing 757 landed at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport, the terrorist had already been subdued by two security officers, one of whom had been travelling undercover amongst the passengers. No one was injured. The plot dated back to 2002 and the terrorist, Tawfiq Fukra, wanted to ‘re-enact 9/11’ by crashing the plane into Israel. Shortly afterwards, Israel carried out a simulation: a skyscraper being struck by a plane in the Israeli city of Givatayim. It was the first exercise of its kind, simulating a scenario similar to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

The attack foiled yesterday in Dubai, in which an Omani pilot attempted to crash a Flydubai aircraft bound for Tel Aviv with 180 Israeli passengers on board, has brought to mind numerous attacks thwarted by the Israelis. A 9/11-style attack was prevented at cruising altitude thanks to the intervention of the Israeli passengers. Some call it the ‘militarisation of the skies’. It is a euphemism used by those who live under gentler skies.

Take, for example, the case of the Israeli spy who infiltrated ISIS and provided intelligence regarding a plot to bring down a commercial airliner in Europe using a bomb concealed in a laptop. According to information carelessly revealed by Donald Trump to the Russians, the device had managed to pass through airport security checks undetected. The information was so reliable that the United States and the United Kingdom banned laptops in the cabin on many flights from the Middle East. In this instance, Israel did not stop a single flight that had already taken off: it stopped a method intended for use on dozens of aircraft. ISIS had already claimed responsibility for the attack that, two years earlier, had caused a Russian passenger aircraft to explode over the Sinai, killing over two hundred people.

In 1986, on a flight from London to Tel Aviv, a Palestinian man, Nezar Hindawi, had planted a bomb in the suitcase of a female passenger and his partner, Anne Marie Murphy, who was unaware she was carrying it. The aircraft was carrying four hundred people. That same year, on a flight from Madrid to Tel Aviv, Nasser Hassan al Ali attempted to detonate a suitcase on a flight carrying one hundred passengers. Fast-forward to 2006, when an Israeli aircraft was the target of another terrorist plot. This time, the plan centred on Frankfurt Airport.

In 2017, an Australian citizen sent his brother to Sydney Airport to board an Etihad Airways flight to Dubai, carrying a bomb concealed inside a meat mincer and constructed according to instructions from Islamic State. Khaled Khayat and Mahmoud Khayat, the two terrorists, were sentenced to forty years’ imprisonment. “The Israeli secret services foiled the downing of an Australian aircraft; it would have been an unimaginable massacre,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Australia described it as “one of the most sophisticated plots ever attempted on Australian soil”. A year later, at a NATO summit, Netanyahu revealed that Israel had “thwarted dozens of serious attacks, some targeting civil aviation”, including in Europe, “preventing hijacked planes from crashing into European cities”.

This was political confirmation that the public sees only a fraction of the picture. Israel had warned Belgian officials weeks before the attack about inadequate security measures at Brussels Zaventem Airport. The warning had come from Israeli officials tasked with assessing security standards at airports operating flights to Tel Aviv. The Israelis had identified “significant shortcomings” at the Belgian airport, which was the scene of the attacks just a few days later. One member of the cell had reportedly also intended to target the gates for Tel Aviv and the United States.

Yesterday, it was only thanks to the quick thinking of the Israelis on board that a 9/11-style attack was averted. The Jewish state continues to bring down planes full of survivors.