Words

It should have been an easy story to tell.

A Muslim co-pilot stabbed the Indian pilot on a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv while screaming, “Allahu Akbar!” He then hijacked the plane and began steering it toward the ground—possibly toward an air force base in Jordan with American planes and personnel—which could have killed everyone on board. The wounded pilot and a handful of Israeli passengers acted quickly to disable the co-pilot, stop the descent, provide first aid to the pilot, and find an off-duty pilot who could safely land the plane.

What an amazing story! I can’t wait to see the movie.

And yet, many mainstream media outlets could not bring themselves to tell this story as it actually happened. Their headlines told us that there was an “incident.” There was an “altercation.” There was an inexplicable attack by one co-worker against another. Despite firsthand accounts circulating all over the internet describing the terrorist attack and heroic rescue, news outlets could not bring themselves to identify the pilot as Muslim, the incident as an act of terrorism, or the altercation as a hijacking.

Despite the co-pilot making his motive quite clear, reporters refused to “speculate” about what may have driven him to act in this way. Editors must have been flipping through the pages of their thesauruses, searching for other words to describe what had really happened.

In a world where news organizations regularly make factually inaccurate accusations against Israel, every news outlet outside of Israel seemed reluctant to accuse a Muslim of attempting an act of terrorism on a plane headed to Israel. All of a sudden, these journalists discovered caution. All of a sudden, choosing the right word to describe what happened was important.

This Friday night, we will celebrate Simchat Torah, when we finish reading the Torah and start all over again at the beginning. We read the same words over and over again because we know how important words are. We carefully analyze the biblical text because we know that meaning is imbued in every word.

And we also know that we are different people this year than we were last year. So, when we read the Torah again this year, we will inevitably notice things that we never noticed before.

So, it was impossible NOT to notice the double standard yesterday when it came to word choice. The same news outlets that have no problem accusing Israel of genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing despite evidence that challenges those accusations could not bring themselves to use the word “terrorism” when describing an attack like this one.

Furthermore, the nonstop villainization of Israel has made it virtually impossible for the world to see Jews and Israelis as victims of terrorism.

Politicians and celebrities—Mayor Mamdani, Senator Sanders, Miss Rachel, Macklemore, Mark Ruffalo, to name a few—who tell only one side of the story, and often tell it inaccurately, contribute to this phenomenon. In their world, Israelis are always wrong and deserving of the violence directed at them, while Palestinians are always right and deserving of understanding and compassion.

That is why we must speak out when media outlets refuse to call out acts of terrorism by Israel’s enemies while continuing to peddle false accusations against Israel.

Words matter. Words ultimately shape the way people treat Israelis and Jews.

Let’s hope that one day the media will start over again—just as we start the Torah over again each year. Maybe then, they’ll use the same standard for both sides.