By Anum Istafa
There are moments when the most important question is not what happened but how quickly everyone decided what happened. The Flydubai FZ 1073 incident is one such moment. On September 30, a Flydubai flight travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv experienced a terrifying incident. The Co-Pilot allegedly attacked the captain, the aircraft lost altitude dramatically and passengers and crew intervened before the aircraft was diverted to Saudi Arabia. The basic facts are horrifying enough but the circumstances surrounding the Incident raise questions that deserve answers before conclusions are turned into headlines. Within hours, the language surrounding the incident became remarkably definitive. Israel’s Defense Minister described it as an attempted “Jihadist terror attack” yet at the same time the precise motive was still under investigation.
Even Benjamin Netanyahu initially acknowledged that it was too early to determine the motive, while later saying Israeli authorities had information suggesting Islamist radicalization. And this is where my question. How quickly does an alleged attack become an ideological verdict? The moment the alleged perpetrator’s identity becomes associated with Islam, does the investigation stop being about one individual and begin becoming a story about an entire religion? Reports now say that Omani co-pilot had previously been barred from flying by Oman amid concerns relating to extremism before later being employed by Flydubai. If these Reports are accurate then the obvious questions are: what did the vetting process identify? What did it miss? Which agencies and authorities had access to his previous record? Was the information available but overlooked, or was it never available to those responsible for his clearance? How could a person allegedly carrying a history of extremist concerns obtain a position in which he had direct access to an international passenger aircraft? These are questions about aviation security, not religion.
And then comes the timing. One day before the Flydubai incident, Nethanyahu had warned that Israel’s enemies might attempt attacks before the country’s October 27 election. The following morning the aircraft incident occurred. Opposition leader Yair Lapid subsequently said that nothing resembling the aircraft incident had appeared in the security briefing Nethanyahu had given him the previous evening. It does make the political timing impossible to ignore. Israel is approaching an election in which security, terrorism and national survival are inevitably powerful political themes. Al Jazeera reported that Nethanyahu was using the episode to reinforce his warnings about threats to Israel’s. The uncomfortable question is: Does an incident have to be manufactured to become politically useful? Perhaps not. An unresolved incident can be enough. Then Iran enters the picture, this is where the dots become even more intriguing.
The Flydubai incident occurred against the backdrop of a deeply strained U.S-Iran relationship. At roughly the same time, Washington and Tehran were struggling to revive negotiations, reports also suggest that the U.S is increasing its military presence in the Middle East by pulling out troops from Iraq and placing them in Jordan instead of calling them back. Suddenly the vocabulary becomes familiar, terrorism, Iran, security, military preparedness and regional threat. One incident, multiple narratives, rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. That is where skepticism becomes legitimate. But where does Israel fit into this?
The real political weapon is not the event itself. Maybe it is the narrative building because once the word Jihadist enters the headline, an alleged individual’s actions can rapidly become associated with millions of Muslims and once Iran is introduced into the narrative, an aviation incident can potentially be transformed into another argument for military pressure, and once Israel’s security is placed at the Centre of the story, the incident can become another reminder to voters that they are supposedly living under permanent “existential threat.” That is where i remain deeply skeptical. If this was terrorism, prove it, if it was Islamist extremism then who is responsible? If there was Iranian involvement then establish the connection, if there was a security failure, explain it and if someone is suggesting a false flag then that allegation too must meet the same standard of evidence. Facts First. Narratives Later.