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Jerusalem Center for Security
and Foreign Affairs
DAILY ALERT
Tuesday,
October 6, 2026
In-Depth Issues:

Flydubai Copilot: "The Dream Was to Crash into Ben-Gurion Airport" - Idan Kweller (Jerusalem Post)
    Hamam al-Hammami, the copilot accused of trying to hijack and crash a Flydubai aircraft bound for Israel, stated during interrogation: "I planned the operation even before I was accepted by the company. The dream was to crash into Ben-Gurion Airport."
    In recent months, Hammami had been frequenting Ben-Gurion Airport in his work as a pilot.
    In July he flew a plane to Israel, intending to crash it. However, due to his closeness to one of the crew members, he postponed the attack.
    Israeli authorities are working on the assumption that Hammami was a "lone wolf" acting on his own initiative, rather than at the order of any terror group.


NAZA: The Real Story - Roi Danino, Ariel Averbuch and Hagay Gutman (nazadocumentary.com)
    This 48-minute Israeli documentary includes interviews with senior IDF commanders and intelligence officers who ran operations in Gaza. It was made with their cooperation.


U.S. Senate Remembers America's Oct. 7 Victims - Ruby Chen (Fox News)
    On Oct. 7, 2023, my son Itay was 19, an American Israeli soldier stationed at Nahal Oz protecting the border, when Hamas terrorists kidnapped and murdered him.
    They held his remains in Gaza for 760 days - deliberate, unimaginable psychological warfare against my family - before he was finally returned home in November 2025, the last American hostage.
    The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan resolution, led by Senators Rick Scott and Jacky Rosen, honoring the 46 Americans murdered by Hamas during the Oct. 7 war.
    The resolution reaffirms America's commitment to seek legal justice on behalf of our families.
    Families of the fallen will soon gather in the nation's capital for Honoring American Victims of Hamas since October 7, the first time the U.S. government will formally recognize its own citizens killed in the war.
    I have advocated for this day because most Americans have no idea their country endured one of the deadliest days of terrorism against its own citizens since Sept. 11.
    Together with the Senate vote, this tells grieving families something we have waited three years to hear: Washington sees us.
    These were not foreign casualties in someone else's war. They were American sons, daughters and grandparents, murdered by extremists.


Many Israelis, Scarred by Oct. 7, See Gaza Only as a Threat - Cara Anna (AP-San Francisco Chronicle)
    Three years after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and abducted 251 others, a visit to the communities attacked that day made clear: It's too soon for many residents to see the Palestinians next door as anything other than a threat.
    Everywhere in Israel - at train stations, beaches - are dozens of stickers in memory of the hundreds of soldiers killed on Oct. 7 and in the ensuing war.
    The highway running parallel to Gaza, where militants gunned down people trying to flee, is dotted with memorials.
    Victims' smashed and bullet-pocked cars are assembled elsewhere, rusting and piled a half-dozen high.
    One resident, Deganit Bar Hay, said she still can't barbecue because the smell of burnt flesh - "the smell of hell" - is a trigger.
    There is rebuilding in the Israeli communities where militants went home to home, burning and shooting. There is also the insistence on keeping Oct. 7 memories alive.


Hundreds of Anti-Israel Protests Planned Worldwide around Oct. 7 Anniversary - Zev Stub (Times of Israel)
    As Israeli and Jewish communities around the world mark the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught, 262 anti-Israel protests and events have been identified in 37 countries, Israel's Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry said.


Britain Should Be Proudly Standing with Israel in Its Hour of Need - Editorial (Telegraph-UK)
    The failed attempt to crash a Flydubai jet headed for Israel is a fresh reminder that, almost three years after the genocidal pogrom of October 7, Israeli civilians continue to live under the constant threat of terrorism.
    Britain should be proudly standing with Israel. Instead, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has left the relationship between our two countries at an all-time low with a new package of sanctions on Israel.
    This comes in the wake of the Labour party shamefully recognizing Palestinian statehood last year, in return for precisely nothing - an act hailed by a senior Hamas official as a "victory."
    Israel contributes immensely to the UK's national security, and we share common enemies in Iran and Islamist extremists.
    A government serious about protecting Britons would treat Israel as an ally.
    Appealing to those voters for whom despising Israel is an article of faith only weakens us all.


The 1929 Massacre that Explains the Middle East Today - Yardena Schwartz (New York Post)
    On Aug. 24, 1929, more than 3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes and machetes marched through the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron, then part of British Mandate Palestine.
    They slaughtered 67 Jewish men, women and children, and wounded dozens more. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors.
    Infants were murdered in their mothers' arms. Young women were raped. Those who survived had fingers and limbs severed and eyes gouged. The massacre bore striking similarities to Oct. 7.
    Many victims of the Hebron massacre knew their assailants by name. The rioters had been their friends, neighbors, coworkers and landlords.
    Most of Hebron's Jews were natives of the land who spoke Hebrew and Arabic.
    This was the world's oldest Jewish community, dating back to the days of Abraham and Sarah, who are believed to be buried in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.
    What led thousands of Muslims in Hebron to turn on their Jewish neighbors was a campaign of disinformation initiated by the first leader of the Palestinian people: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini.
    He claimed that the Jews of Palestine were conspiring to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Hamas named the Oct. 7 attack "The Al-Aqsa Flood."
    The writer is the author of Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
  • Saudi-Led Coalition Providing Air Support to Anti-Houthi Offensive in Yemen - Amr Mostafa
    Saudi-led coalition spokesman Maj.-Gen. Turki Al Malki said Monday that 100 fighter jets were taking part in an anti-Houthi offensive, providing round-the-clock air support to Yemeni armed forces on the ground, with operations against moving targets continuing. He said hundreds of "high-value" Houthi targets had been destroyed in the offensive.
        Yemen's armed forces also began a "strategic offensive" on the Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Monday, said their spokesman, Col. Majed Al Nuzaili. "We are using advanced capabilities," he said. Houthi-run Al Masirah TV has confirmed attacks on Sanaa.
        Rashad Al Alimi, head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, said Operation Yemen Dawn had been launched to restore state institutions, retake Sanaa, and end the Houthi "coup." Saudi Arabia, which arms and trains Yemeni government forces, is backing the current military campaign to push back the Houthis, restore free traffic in the Red Sea, and end the group's attacks on its territory. (The National-UAE)
  • Potential Iranian Drone Attack Led to Exit of U.S. B-1 Bombers from British Air Base - Eric Schmitt
    The U.S. abruptly withdrew all 12 B-1 Air Force bombers from RAF Fairford air base in southern England based on information about a potential drone attack ordered by Iran, according to U.S. and British officials. Several hundred American personnel were stationed at the base. (New York Times)
  • Iran's Top Security Official Warns of Dire Economic Crisis - Erika Solomon
    Iran's national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, told a high-level government meeting on Saturday that the rapidly deteriorating economy has plunged the country into one of the most difficult periods in its history.
        In recent days, government and private sector employees, including nurses and teachers, have taken to social media to say they were quitting their jobs because their salaries could no longer support them. Iranian media have reported that retired government employees have held protests in the past few weeks because they had not received their full pensions. (New York Times)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
  • Israel Honors Oct. 7 Victims, Heroes at Mount Herzl Ceremony
    Israel's official state ceremony to remember the victims and heroes of the Oct. 7 massacre was held at the monument for fallen terror victims on Mount Herzl on Monday. President Isaac Herzog said, "On the map of grief of October 7 there are communities and towns, kibbutzim and moshavim, fields and bomb shelters. And there is also one road - Route 232" - which connects communities along the Gaza border and became one of the central sites of the massacre.
        Herzog noted Israelis who drove toward the attack, to rescue strangers. "Private citizens whom no one had called raced into the inferno, some of them for people they had never met. They dropped the survivors off in a safe place, then turned around and went back in, into the danger." Herzog said that while Israelis remembered Route 232 as "the road of blood," it should also be remembered as "the road of heroism."
        That heroism belonged to civilians, IDF soldiers, police officers, and rescue teams who "looked danger in the eye" and entered the fighting because other Israelis were still there. "From their heroism, we discovered one of the great truths about Israel: When someone is left by the side of the road, there are Israelis who are incapable of simply driving on as though they had not seen them."
        "We will forever remember what happened that day. We will forever remember the homes that became graves, the terrible atrocities we might wish to forget, but will remember forever. All of them."  (Jerusalem Post)
  • The List of Israel's Dead from Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas War
    This list of 1,982 civilians and soldiers killed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the subsequent Israel-Hamas war includes their names, photos, and descriptions. (Ha'aretz)
  • IDF Military Intelligence: 2/3 of Gaza Terrorists Who Invaded Israel Have Been Killed - Amichai Stein
    Of the 6,000 Gazans who infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, 4,000 have been killed, Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder, head of IDF Military Intelligence, told a security cabinet meeting on Sunday. "There are 2,000 remaining, and we will get to every last one of them," Binder said. (Jerusalem Post)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:

    October 7 - Three Years Later

  • Israel's Top Forensic Pathologist Reveals Oct. 7 Evidence - Ariela Ayalon
    Prof. Chen Kugel, director of the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv, shows us hundreds of photographs from the autopsy rooms after Oct. 7. "Here we see the body of a person who was burned. We know he was burned alive: When we open his airway, we can see soot inside. That means he inhaled smoke while he was being burned."
        A week after the deadliest attack in Israel's history began, large numbers of bodies started arriving at the center. "We received about 3,000 bags, most of which contained body parts and burned bones....Ultimately, we handled more than 900 bodies at the institute." The identification work continued from morning until night, including on weekends. The goal was to remove the uncertainty for the families and allow them to bring their loved ones to burial.
        "We were dealing with thousands of bodies, body parts and objects. There were also people whose faces had been deliberately mutilated, or whose remains had been obliterated and virtually erased, or whose bodies had been gnawed by animals. We also saw bodies of people who had been abused before they were murdered, and sometimes afterward as well. In one place, people were tied up and shot, including in their genitals. We saw decapitated bodies, including the heads of children."
        Kugel told us: "We saw things that were unprecedented. Evil incarnate. You can't call it cruelty, because that word does not adequately describe the situation....Children who were shot and decapitated as well, like a girl of about 12 who was shot in the head and then decapitated." We were shown the body of a girl about five years old who had been shot throughout her body, from her skull to the soles of her feet.
        "The whole world knows what happened, and yet they compare what happened here with what happened in Gaza, as though it were the same suffering. No Israeli burned bodies."
        Months after the main work of identifying the victims was completed, Kugel was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. (Ynet News)
  • They Spent Weeks Identifying the Dead after Oct. 7 - Tom Levinson
    One after another, the trucks entered the base. Then the doors opened. Piles of dead bodies, one on top of the other, and intertwined. This was the scene at the Sde Teiman army base a few days after Oct. 7. While the bodies of soldiers and civilians were brought to the Shura army base in central Israel, the bodies of people thought to be terrorists were brought to Sde Teiman.
        According to Naor Paz, a reservist, one time, the body of a member of a community's security squad was found. He had apparently taken the Kalashnikov off a dead terrorist and himself fell in battle. In another case, the body of an Israeli woman was found among bodies of Gazans removed from a vehicle that, on Oct. 7, was hit by a combat helicopter while on its way back to the Strip.
        Paz said that in a search for several people classified as missing, "We had to tear the shirts off the bodies and take everything out of the pockets, because some [Gazans] had stolen things from Israelis. We found necklaces, wallets, maps of kibbutzim, soldiers' IDs." And there were also weapons: grenades, magazines and explosives. During this round, remains of two Israeli civilians and two foreign nationals were found: an agricultural worker from Thailand and an asylum seeker from Eritrea.
        A special unit was responsible for extracting remains from burned vehicles. "They used special vacuums," one officer says. "The ash was taken for DNA tests. Several mysteries were solved that way. Israelis, that's all that was left of them: a little ash." There were also bodies of five Gazan workers who were in Israel on Oct. 7 and were murdered by Hamas. (Ha'aretz)
  • Nova Rescuer Saved 120 People - Lihi Gordon
    On Oct. 7, 2023, Oz Davidian of Moshav Maslul saw a message on the family WhatsApp group from his sister Dikla, who was near the Nova music festival site. She said several terrified young people had reached her husband, who owns a farm in the area, and were asking for help. Davidian threw a six-pack of water into his pickup truck and drove out, driving through open terrain instead of taking the roads. That decision may have saved his life.
        After he encountered terrified young people who had fled the festival, he decided to load everyone up. He knew the terrain, had a four-wheel-drive pickup, and went in "to get the kids out." He went back in again and again, encountering terrorists, relentless gunfire, explosions, and young people running for their lives. Whenever he saw them, he stopped and called out: "My name is Oz. Come, I'm here to get you out."
        They crowded into his truck and he drove them to safety, sometimes under fire. Davidian also handed his phone to the young people he rescued. "I told them: Everyone gets 10 seconds on the phone. 'Dad, Mom, I'm alive. I'm on my way to Moshav Maslul or Moshav Patish.'"
        Meanwhile, more locations began arriving on Davidian's phone. Survivors passed his number to friends still hiding in the area. Davidian says he went to every one of them. At some he found people alive. At others he found bodies. He entered and left the danger zone 15 times and rescued 120 people alive.
        Three years later, that number has not erased the thoughts of those he could not save. He remains in treatment today for post-trauma. The young people he rescued share a WhatsApp group, and Davidian calls them "my children."  (Ynet News)


    • Israeli Resilience

  • The Exceptional Courage of Israeli Society in the Face of Jihadist Terrorism - Amb. Freddy Eytan
    Israelis have given the international community an extraordinary lesson in bravery and exemplary solidarity. These heroic reflexes have been demonstrated during wars, terrorist attacks, and most recently during a jihadist terrorist's attempt to cause a mass crash on a Flydubai flight.
        Jihadist organizations view Western culture and the liberal world as the complete antithesis of their religion and way of life. They despise democratic values, secularism, the modern world, and above all, human rights. For Islamists, the terrorist will always become a martyr and a national hero, and his family will receive a prize and financial aid for his barbaric act.
        Resilience and exemplary courage have been a constant characteristic of our people since the rebirth of the State of Israel. Unlike our enemies and detractors who propagate the cult of hatred, terror, and death, Israelis cultivate hope, happiness, and the joy of life. Faced with daily threats from our enemies, our collective and individual reflexes are now dictated by the instinct for survival.
        It took ten years for the Americans to eliminate Osama bin Laden, despite all the military resources and the abundant and sophisticated capabilities of American intelligence.
        The objective of Arab terror has not changed for more than a hundred years. Its aim is to sow fear among the Jewish civilian population and to expel them from their land. Palestinian Arab terror, like jihadist terrorism, targets indiscriminately women, the elderly, and children.
        The writer, a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, is a former Foreign Ministry senior adviser who was Israel's first ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.  (Israel Hayom)
  • For a Few Terrifying Minutes, Israelis Were Heroes Again - Dan Perry
    A Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv on Wednesday that could have ended in catastrophe instead became one of those extraordinary stories in which ordinary people discover that the few seconds available for a decision are the only seconds that matter.
        Put 180 Israelis in a metal tube in the skies and you have a statistically improbable concentration of people who have served in the military, treated patients, handled emergencies, and developed the conviction that whatever has gone wrong can probably be fixed if everyone stops panicking and starts doing something.
        That quality has long been part of the national mythology. The country was built around the idea that its people would have to improvise their way through circumstances that seemed to offer very little room for error. In the military, it is the officer who shouts "after me" rather than leading from behind.
        Sadly, Israel has been widely and wildly vilified around the world - by antisemites of every stripe and activists who have made Zionism a dirty word. Israelis have been seen increasingly through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A plane full of passengers offers a different perspective. They were ordinary. They were resourceful. Some of them were brave. And the world was reminded of another side of Israel.
        The writer is the former London-based Europe-Africa editor and Cairo-based Middle East editor for the Associated Press. (Forward)
  • Those Amazing and Heroic Israelis - Melanie Phillips
    On Wednesday, four ordinary Israelis on a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv averted a new 9/11 by overpowering the co-pilot who was attempting to crash the plane. Only the Israelis could behave like this - regular people displaying raw courage, heroism and the lion-hearted, can-do Israeli spirit.
        Alerted to an existential threat, these ordinary guys immediately took matters into their own hands, neutralized the danger and saved countless lives. What an amazing, wonderful, heroic country. What a statement of defiance against a Western world now consumed by a deranged agenda to wipe this country out.
        The writer is a columnist for The Times-UK. (JNS)


    • Israel and the West

  • Anti-Israel Rallies on Oct. 7 May Be Legal. They Are also Morally Indefensible - Cynthia Yacowar
    Oct. 7 marks the third anniversary of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Across Canada and around the world, anti-Israel rallies and events are once again being planned for that very day. In Toronto, several anti-Israel student groups planned an Oct. 7 event at the University of Toronto under the banner "Honoring Our Martyrs." While the university subsequently announced that the event could not proceed, in Montreal, at least two anti-Israel rallies remain planned.
        There is something profoundly disturbing about holding such rallies on the anniversary of a massacre - a day on which families remember loved ones who were brutally slaughtered, raped, burned alive and taken hostage. Invoking "martyrs" and "resistance" on Oct. 7 appears to glorify the barbaric violence that the families of those murdered and taken hostage that day are mourning.
        Freedom of expression may protect speech that many of us find deeply offensive. But Canadian law does have limits. Publicly inciting hatred against an identifiable group, where that incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace, can constitute a criminal offense.
        If rallies held on Oct. 7 glorify or celebrate the atrocities of that day without crossing the criminal threshold, that does not make them morally defensible. There is a vast territory between what is criminal and what is morally acceptable. Some things may fall short of criminality and still deserve unequivocal condemnation. When we become afraid even to make that distinction, we don't become more tolerant. We become morally indifferent. (National Post-Canada)
  • Britain's Anti-Israel Turn Is Becoming a Threat to Itself - Ben-Dror Yemini
    Britain's Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents hundreds of thousands of nurses and nursing staff in the country, has decided to join the BDS movement and to sever all ties with Israel's Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest generic drug manufacturer in the world. Have they lost their minds? Teva makes medicines that save lives.
        Step by step, they are embracing the Islamist logic: It does not matter how much we hurt ourselves, as long as Jews are harmed, even slightly. That was the logic behind the Oct. 7 massacre.
        Britain's Green Party approved a resolution declaring that "Zionism is racism." It also expressed opposition to a two-state solution while voting in favor of "a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital." The party has decided to join the Islamist, jihadist, Hamas-style imperialism that is fighting to turn the entire world, including Britain, into part of an Islamist caliphate. Have they gone mad?
        Too many figures in a country that once knew how to stand up to the Nazis of the past, who called for the extermination of Jews, are kowtowing to the Nazis of today, who likewise call for the extermination of Jews. (Ynet News)
Observations:

The Vacation from Jewish History Is Over for Americans - Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)
  • American Jewry, a population that achieved almost complete acceptance in virtually every sector of society and business, is now starting to be treated with disdain, suspicion and hostility in the same way their great-grandparents and every generation of Jews for 2,000 years had taken as the normal state of affairs.
  • Most Americans still reject the demonization of Jews and Israel, even as they are deluged with such messages by biased media that have normalized blood libels about "genocide" in Gaza. Add to that their social-media feeds, which are flooded with conspiracy theories about Jews being responsible for all the ills of the world.
  • The progressives and Marxists who make up a bizarre red-green alliance with Islamists, along with their apologists, have captured the institutions of American education as well as the arts and pop culture. They falsely brand Jews - the most persecuted minority in history - as "white oppressors."
  • Activists have used the war being waged against the Jewish state in the past three years not merely to stigmatize, shun and intimidate Jews, but also to begin to erase them from sectors of society like higher education, publishing and other cultural pursuits where they had flourished.
  • It is one thing for European nations to turn on the Jews; almost all countries on that continent have at various times in their histories expelled or persecuted Jewish people. But the U.S. has always been a place where Jews have almost never experienced official discrimination or persecution, and where they were, from the very inception of the republic, equal partners.
  • That is as good a reason as any to fight via defiance in the streets and public discourse, as well as legal and political action, to preserve this country as a safe place for Jews and non-Jews alike from the dangerous lunacy.
  • Yet there is no avoiding the fact that Jewish life in the U.S. is undergoing a transition that is leaving behind the post-Holocaust honeymoon in which Jews were popular and universally accepted. The armed security guards and other methods by which they are turning their synagogues, schools and community centers into fortresses - in marked distinction from the way other ethnic and religious groups live - are just the most visible evidence of this.
Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs
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