By Roger Acuna

A plane bound for Tel Aviv has an emergency. Two pilots are reportedly involved in a violent altercation. The aircraft sends distress codes, diverts to Saudi Arabia, and lands safely. That is serious. That deserves an investigation.

What it does not deserve is the immediate conversion of an unresolved incident into another global performance of Israeli victimhood.

Sorry if I do not feel alarmed.

Sorry if I do not accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s version as gospel simply because he rushed in front of cameras, described an apparent attempt to crash the plane, praised heroic passengers, and turned a still-unexplained airline emergency into a ready-made terror narrative.

The airline itself said the motives were unknown. That should have been the headline. Instead, the international media machine went straight into its familiar routine: possible hijacking, terror scare, Israelis under attack, catastrophe narrowly avoided.

The facts were still being gathered. But the emotional script had already been written.

An Emergency Is Not a Blank Check

Flydubai confirmed that an altercation occurred in the cockpit of Flight FZ1073, which was traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The plane diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and landed safely. Those are the documented facts.

Everything beyond that—the motive, the intent, whether there was an attempted hijacking, whether someone tried to crash the aircraft, whether it was terrorism—is subject to investigation.

Yet Netanyahu did not wait.

He had a dramatic narrative immediately: an Israeli passenger, a brave crew, a violent attacker, a plane in danger, catastrophe prevented. It was politically perfect. A cinematic story of Israeli vulnerability and Israeli heroism, delivered just days after a humiliating scene at the United Nations.

That timing matters.

At the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu faced walkouts, empty seats, protests, and escalating international isolation. Delegates did not line up to validate him. They left. His effort to portray the destruction of Gaza as righteous self-defense met a visible wall of global disgust.

Then comes a frightening emergency involving a plane full of Israelis.

Suddenly the cameras are back. Suddenly Israel is not the state accused by a UN Commission of Inquiry of committing genocide in Gaza. Suddenly it is the threatened victim again.

Convenient does not automatically mean fabricated. But it absolutely means the narrative deserves scrutiny.

Israel Victimhood Propaganda Has an Old Formula

Israel victimhood propaganda does not need to invent every event. Often, it only needs to seize a real event before the facts are known and place it inside a preexisting script.

The formula is simple:

• Something frightening happens.

• Israeli officials assign the most politically useful meaning.

• Emotional footage circulates at speed.

• International outlets repeat the official framing.

• The public is pushed toward empathy for Israel.

• Gaza disappears from the conversation.

That is not investigation. It is narrative warfare. It is typical jewish Hasbara.

Videos from the plane show frightened passengers, confusion, and the aftermath of an emergency. They do not independently establish why the confrontation happened. They do not prove an ideological motive. They do not prove an organized terror attack. They do not prove the claims made by Netanyahu.

But they are powerful images. And powerful images are the raw material of propaganda.

Meanwhile, footage of Tel Aviv or other Israeli sites damaged by Iranian strikes has faced military censorship and reporting restrictions. Israeli authorities have imposed limits on material that could disclose impact locations, military weaknesses, interceptor activity, or sensitive infrastructure.

So the public gets a familiar visual imbalance.

Images that reinforce Israeli vulnerability travel rapidly. Images that expose Israeli military failure, physical damage, or state vulnerability are controlled, restricted, delayed, or stripped of context.

That is how information power works.

Seventy-Four Thousand Palestinians Are Not a Footnote

The Gaza Health Ministry’s reported death toll has passed 74,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023, with more than 175,000 wounded. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

That is the material reality.

Tens of thousands of people killed. Children buried under rubble. Hospitals destroyed. Hunger imposed. Families erased. Journalists killed. Aid obstructed. Homes, schools, universities, mosques, churches, and entire neighborhoods obliterated.

And what does much of the international press do?

It treats the death of Palestinians as background noise. A number at the bottom of an article. A disputed claim. A consequence without an agent. A humanitarian “crisis” with no perpetrator named clearly enough to disturb polite conversation.

Then a still-unexplained incident occurs on a flight to Tel Aviv, and the world suddenly remembers how to cover fear.

Breaking-news banners. Live updates. Passenger videos. Expert panels. Terror speculation. Emotional testimony. Official statements amplified within minutes.

Sorry if that contrast does not make me feel sympathy on command.

It makes me ask why Palestinian death at industrial scale has been normalized while Israeli fear—even before its cause is independently established—becomes an international emergency.

Netanyahu Needed a Story

Netanyahu did not arrive at this moment as a secure leader with universal legitimacy. He arrived after a UN appearance marked by diplomatic rejection and amid a politically competitive environment at home.

He needs a story that restores authority.

He needs Israelis to see him not as the leader associated with international isolation, mounting legal pressure, war without end, and mass atrocities in Gaza, but as the indispensable guardian standing between them and annihilation.

A suspected attack on an Israel-bound flight is tailor-made for that purpose.

Again: that does not establish who caused the incident or why. It establishes why Netanyahu had every political incentive to speak first, speak dramatically, and define the story before investigators could.

A responsible press should have led with the known facts:

Flydubai confirmed a cockpit altercation and emergency diversion. The cause and motive remain under investigation.

Instead, too much coverage sprinted toward the Israeli government’s preferred frame: a terror plot, an attempted catastrophe, another proof that Israel lives under permanent existential threat.

That is not neutral journalism. It is the reproduction of power.

Sorry If I Do Not Feel Sorry for You

I do not celebrate fear. I do not celebrate an emergency on a passenger aircraft. I do not wish harm on civilians.

But I also refuse compulsory empathy for a state that has made Palestinian suffering invisible, routine, and acceptable to much of the world.

I refuse to be emotionally manipulated by officials who demand instant mourning for a possible attack while treating more than 74,000 Palestinian deaths as the price of policy.

I refuse the theatrical demand that everyone panic first and ask questions later.

If investigators determine what happened aboard FZ1073, the facts should be reported. If a crime occurred, the evidence should be examined. If the official narrative is accurate, it should be demonstrated—not simply announced by Netanyahu and echoed around the world.

Until then, I will not confuse an unverified terror narrative with truth.

And I will not allow one dramatic incident to eclipse the genocide in Gaza.

Sorry if I do not feel empathy for the real terrorists.