Aloha Bread Lovers – This Sunday (tomorrow) we will be serving up our tangy Shakshuka. For those who may have forgotten, we take tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil and plenty of spices and slow-cook the whole thing over night. When you order it we crack an egg (or 2 – your choice) and bake it in the oven. It is served with a fluffy pita to mop up. Unfortunately we will not have our Uke Jammers to play and sing this Sunday….hopefully next week.
Last week there was drama in the skies worthy of a James Bond movie. A Fly Dubai flight from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates was bound for Tel Aviv with a plane full of Israeli passengers. Unbeknownst to them the co-pilot was an Omani national who after a few visits to Syria had become radicalized and decided to commit a horrendous act of terror with a plan to take control of the plane and crash it into the passenger terminal at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Had he succeeded he would have killed 134 passengers and countless others in the terminal, not to mention the flight crew. He had actually flown that same flight on two other occasions in order to learn the route in preparation for his planned attack. Somewhere over Jordan he grabbed a lightweight axe kept in the cockpit for emergencies and began attacking the captain. The passengers heard the commotion and as the plane went into a nose dive, a group of them managed to reach the cockpit. The heroic captain was able to force the cockpit door open at which point the passengers were able to grab the terrorist co-pilot, pull him out of the cockpit, bind him with a headphone wire and level off the plane. The passenger who grabbed the controls had no flying experience but claimed that he loved watching the show Air Crash Investigation. A trained pilot was also on the flight as a passenger and took over. Another passenger who was a doctor attended to the severely wounded pilot. The plane lost a part of its rudder but was able to land safely in Saudi Arabia – disaster avoided.
I joked with a pilot friend of mine that if he wanted, I could round up a group of Israelis to fly as passengers on his flight as a safety measure. He responded “so glad they reacted and did something!” His response really struck me. The idea of responding, acting and not remaining passive – that is actually a unique mind-set. Had I been a passenger on that flight, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. There are so many far more mundane and less dramatic situations where I have questioned what I could have done, should have done, didn’t do, might have done… The lesson that this group of passengers taught us is don’t just sit there, do something!!! BTW, the fact that a radicalized co-pilot was even allowed to enter the cockpit (he had been previously fired from Oman Air for having been radicalized), let alone fly on two previous occasions to Tel Aviv is in itself a major act of negligence on the part of Israel’s Ministry of Transportation. The minister was actually warned of the possibility of this happening and when given the option, refused to act….quite unlike the passengers.
Mahalo – David and Yael
P.S A Joke – WARNING: Click on this link at your own peril: https://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/2019/01/07/marvin-rachelefsky-the-stolen-bike-499-02
