Flydubai attack becomes election flashpoint as opponents draw Oct. 7 parallels

The apparent attack aboard a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv on Wednesday immediately became a political flashpoint as government allies claimed the incident vindicated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings of pre-election attacks, while opposition leaders argued it instead recalled the failures that allowed the Hamas-led invasion three years ago.

The clash comes at an already fraught point in the election campaign, less than a month before Israelis head to the polls and a week before the country marks three years since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion. Questions over the security failures surrounding the attack, responsibility for them, and Netanyahu’s handling of the threats facing Israel have remained a central fault line between the government and opposition throughout the campaign.

At the center of the dispute was whether Wednesday morning’s alleged attempt by a copilot to crash the plane, foiled by passengers who managed to subdue the suspected attacker, bore any connection to the threats Netanyahu had warned could materialize ahead of the October 27 election.

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Opposition figures had accused the prime minister yesterday of creating alarm without justification, with some claiming he sought to undermine the coming election. Security officials told Hebrew media outlets they had no knowledge of a specific attack threat. After meeting Netanyahu on Tuesday night, Lapid accused the premier of unnecessarily alarming the public and using security issues for election campaigning.

But Wednesday morning’s incident immediately became ammunition for government allies who argued that Netanyahu’s warning had been borne out — a conclusion rejected by Lapid.

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“Nothing even remotely resembling this morning’s plane incident came up in the security briefing with the prime minister last night. Nothing similar, nothing reminiscent of it, not even a hint,” Lapid said.

“The whole spin that the mouthpieces are pushing now only proves what was already clear yesterday — that once again they are trying to play cheap politics at the expense of Israel’s security. An irresponsible bunch,” he said.

The dispute escalated further after an unnamed diplomatic source told Channel 12 that, “contrary to Lapid’s claims, the military secretariat informed him yesterday of a significant increase in terrorist activity abroad, on a scale not seen in years.”

Lapid responded that the warning cited by the source had existed for more than two years and had nothing to do with “planes or anything resembling what happened this morning.”

“The irresponsible ‘diplomatic source’ — wonder who that could be — is lying again,” Lapid wrote on X, strongly implying that the source was Netanyahu.

“This is the method of this source and his office, another lie and another lie and another lie until everyone gets confused,” he continued, accusing “him” of making “a pathetic attempt to hitch a ride on the heroism of Israelis who prevented a disaster that he, once again, was unprepared for.”

The dispute came just three days after Netanyahu made a secret trip to the United Arab Emirates, where the flydubai flight originated, for an hour-long meeting with Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, following reports that the president had warned Netanyahu ahead of October 7 that Hamas was preparing for war, but that the prime minister had failed to act on the information.

The Associated Press reported that the goal of the visit was to ask bin Zayed to publicly deny the reports, which Netanyahu’s office dismissed as “fake news,” saying the visit dealt with strengthening bilateral ties and regional challenges, while the UAE said the two leaders discussed bilateral relations and ways to strengthen them.

There is no indication that Netanyahu’s visit had any connection to his vague warning about Israel’s security threats on Tuesday or Wednesday’s flydubai incident. But the coincidence placed the latest fight over what Netanyahu knew and how his government responded to security warnings against the backdrop of an already contentious dispute over the same questions in the run-up to October 7.

Government claims vindication, opposition points to Oct. 7

Government ministers and their allies were quick to claim the flydubai attack as some kind of vindication of both Netanyahu’s Tuesday warnings and, more broadly, of their policies toward Israel’s enemies, with some using the apparent attack to call for an intensified military response across the region.

“Thank God and the heroic passengers, but Israel’s security doctrine must be taken to the next level,” far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said, adding that “we must not stop and must continue until achieving total victory in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria,” referring to the biblical name for the West Bank.

“The naive belief that our enemies cherish life and should be shown mercy received another reminder this morning,” the Otzma Yehudit leader, who has said that he will demand the defense portfolio in the next government, added. “Terrorism is an evil with which no agreement should be reached other than defeating it and wiping it off the face of the earth.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich similarly said that “anyone who tried to bring down a plane and murder 180 Israelis should pay as though they had murdered them, as should any country or terrorist organization that sent them.”

There was no indication Wednesday that any organization or state directed the incident.

Opposition leaders, however, rejected the idea that Wednesday’s incident vindicated the government, arguing that if Netanyahu’s warning had in fact been based on intelligence relating to Wednesday’s events, the premier should be answering questions about what he did to prevent it rather than claiming vindication after the fact.

Many also drew direct comparisons to the October 7 invasion, when civilians and local security teams were forced to confront Hamas-led attackers amid the state’s broader security failures, arguing that here, too, ordinary citizens had been left to handle a catastrophe the state failed to prevent.

“I don’t need a government to warn me, I need it to protect me,” former prime minister and B’Yachad leader Naftali Bennett told Channel 12 Wednesday evening.

“You’re not a warning app, you’re the prime minister of Israel. If you suspected there was a danger that a plane would blow up, what did you do about it?” Bennett said. “Start taking responsibility for security. It’s exactly like October 7.”

Democrats leader Yair Golan made a similar comparison, arguing that, as on October 7, ordinary Israelis had been forced to step up in the face of danger.

“As on October 7, exactly three years ago, here too – people looking out for one another, responsibility and human solidarity saved lives and prevented a major disaster,” Golan said.

He also expressed “contempt for the disgraceful attempts by the ‘Hamas is an asset’ government to play cheap politics at the expense of this heroism,” a reference to a 2015 remark by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that ‘the Palestinian Authority is a burden and Hamas is an asset.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman similarly praised the passengers for taking control of the situation under “immense pressure and immediate danger,” while accusing government supporters and political operatives of trying to turn the incident into “political capital.”

“While people were fighting for their lives, they were looking for a way to manufacture spin,” he said, adding that “nothing is surprising anymore when it comes to [this] government.”