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Netanyahu’s in trouble and it’s less than a month until polling day. He desperately needed voters to feel that he’s the one who can protect them. Then, right after the Fairford incident, a plane full of Israelis was nearly flown into the ground. Fighter jets were scrambled as he held emergency talks. Within hours, he was suggesting it was a terror attack and praising the Israelis who stopped it. “We know that he underwent radical Islamist indoctrination,” he said. He figured that out quickly, didn’t he? Suddenly, the news cycle switched from Netanyahu’s legal problems to “they’re still trying to kill Jews.” We’ve heard a million different versions of this story. Here’s what we’re now being told: An aircraft left Dubai with about 180 people on board and a couple of hours in, transmitted an emergency squawk and a hijack code. This was odd because planes are meant to be hijack-proof. Now consider that it happened right at the moment when tracking data would be public and phones were recording. Passengers captured the moment the plane plummeted by 17,000 feet. It manoeuvred erratically before stabilising and safely landing at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. Both pilots were hospitalised and some of the passengers and crew suffered minor injuries. The story has changed multiple times, but initially it was that the plane plummeted, and then the captain was stabbed by the co-pilot who yelled “Allahu Akbar”, and then passengers broke into the cockpit and saved the day. This made no sense, not least because the cockpit door’s reinforced. From the outside, it can only be opened with a code—and that request has to be accepted or rejected by the pilot. The story was updated so that the stabbing took place first, and then the plane plummeted and the injured captain managed to open the door. Some claims are that he used his foot, which would seem unlikely. The opening mechanism needs to be pushed down and twisted. Also, the attacker would’ve seen him doing this because it lies between the chairs. Surely the attacker would’ve stabbed the captain in the jugular from behind, and then stabbed him a couple of more times to make sure he was dead, and then flew the plane into the ground. How did he do such a bad job? And how did that knife make it past screening into a cockpit? To add to the confusion, Netanyahu has suggested the weapon was an axe rather than a knife, contradicting witnesses. Let’s assume the co-pilot made a poor attempt at the stabbing/axing. In that case, why did the plane plummet? If the captain was not incapacitated and in a position to fight back, surely the co-pilot wouldn’t have been in charge of the controls. We’re told the captain used the last moments of his energy to open the door, somehow without the co-pilot noticing, and then slumped in front of the door, blocking it. Passengers then had difficulty opening the door because he was in the way. When passengers entered the cabin, they restrained the co-pilot (without anyone being stabbed/axed), gave him a beating and tied him up. A plumber then took control of the plane, using knowledge gained from watching accident-investigation programs! From what I’ve gathered, the plumber stabilised the plane and then two off-duty pilots conveniently took over. A passenger says he had to shake those pilots and tell them to get to the front. I’ve no idea why they needed prompting. Some media outlets told us the captain and co-pilot were Russian and Ukrainian, which doesn’t fit the Jihadist narrative. The story was later updated so that they were Indian and Omani. The problem is that Omani pilots aren’t allowed under existing arrangements with Israel. Let’s examine all the footage to see if it helps. The video of the dive is the least convincing piece of evidence. Did someone just happen to be filming in a plane at the time of descent? Or did they suddenly start filming when everyone else was screaming and flailing? Either way, it’s certainly odd behaviour. It gets odder when you consider there are multiple videos of the dive. The best evidence is a pixelated video of the injured captain. You can’t see anything graphic, but the actions and speech of the passengers seem natural enough. A shorter video shows glimpses of the captain’s unpixellated body, but I couldn’t find a video showing stab wounds. No evidence has been presented of a terror connection and some Israeli officials are saying the co-pilot acted alone. Others are still pushing the Iran narrative. This is a pattern that we see again and again: Israelis politicise an event before they know what took place. Either it’s shameless opportunism or it’s pre-planned. If it was a terror attack, it was a hopeless effort, just like Fairford. We have no deaths, a bunch of heroes, and a narrative that paints a picture of Israel being under threat. Netanyahu's taking every photo opportunity and treating it as a PR exercise. Regardless of whether this was real or a false flag, it benefits him.