And I'm browsin' with some hesitation, you know that I can surely see that I don't want to get caught up in any of those funky tabs goin' down in the city ...
🚨 Breaking: BBC reports that hostile Israeli passengers violently attacked the peaceful pilot who wanted to crash land the plane
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) September 30, 2026
Ed: 'Mostly peaceful.' David wrote more about the Western media's reaction to the attempted jihadist terror hijacking, but it hasn't improved a lot in the hours since. The real question is how many references to the horrors of Islamophobia the BBC inserted into the story. Over/under: Three, and take the over.
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Neria Kraus at The Free Press: I spoke with Yaniv Hayoun, a passenger on the plane, immediately after he landed. Hayoun was one of the people who stormed the cockpit.
“I saw my wife and children and realized I have to do something,” he told me. Hayoun, who works in maintenance and has no background in security, had a split-second decision to make. He told me that he felt compelled to help save his family’s lives, and those of the rest of the passengers on the plane. ...
Hayoun said he saw the entire scene unfold in real time. “There was complete chaos. One of the pilots stabbed another pilot. He tried to crash us. When it leveled out a little, just a little, we managed to get back up. I managed to open the cockpit door with the help of another crewmember. We physically fought with the co-pilot; he was going wild. I put him in a choke hold, took control of him, and dragged him out of the cockpit,” he told me. “Then I called for other Israelis to help restrain him.”
Hayoun then returned to the cockpit. “I went back to the controls and pulled back on the yoke, because there was no one left in the cockpit,” he said.
I asked him how he had known what to do. “I had seen Air Crash Investigation on TV,” he told me, laughing. “I pulled back on the controls, and then another pilot came in and said he was taking control of the aircraft.”
Ed: Be sure to read it all. Despite some earlier speculation that the Israelis had covert security on the FlyDubai flight, it now appears that this was a real Flight 93 counter-offensive against a jihadi terrorist hijacker by civilians who understood exactly what the stakes were. Amazing heroism.
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Anyone find it odd that everyone is celebrating the incredible heroism of the pilot and passengers of Dubai flight 1073 yet no comment from the Twitter accounts of @MarkRuffalo @macklemore @BernieSanders and a certain mayor? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/cd8CveRun5
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) October 1, 2026
Ed: They’re all preparing statements accusing Israelis of ganging up on a mostly peaceful jihadi pilot.
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Charles C.W. Cooke at NRO: Since September 11, 2001, I have concurred with the commonly held view that the tactics the perpetrators used on that day became obsolete the moment that Flight 93 hit the ground. Never again, I assumed, would passengers on a commercial flight believe that their hijackers intended to land the plane safely, and, in consequence, never again would terrorists try that particular move. What happened on Flight FZ1073 yesterday illustrates that I was at least half-wrong in this assessment....
This ought to serve as a reminder that there is nothing new under the sun. Fanatics are fanatics, and they remain willing to entertain ideas that we non-fanatics wouldn’t consider in ten thousand years. We see commercial air travel as an efficient way of getting around; they see it as a potential weapon. If they could crash all the planes in the skies above the United States, or Israel, or anywhere else they believe to be full of their enemies, they would do it. September 11 was so jarring because it had never occurred to most of us that someone would deliberately fly an aircraft into a skyscraper, or the Pentagon, or the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Today, that seems like a possibility. This has made our worldview darker, but it has probably also made it more accurate. In a competition between a bull and a China shop, the presumptive advantage must go to the bull.
There will be a host of questions to answer. How did the co-pilot pass the security screenings that exist to weed out this sort of thing? How did he get a weapon onto the plane (some reports say he had a knife, others an axe)? How did the passengers and stewards get into the cockpit, which, in most circumstances, is supposed to be secure? What was the target? The Israeli equivalent of the Pentagon is a skyscraper. One does not need an overactive imagination to consider how badly this could have turned out.
Ed: As I mentioned in our VIP Gold chat today, this attack shows us that the threat has not changed. We have become aware of it and have mitigated against it significantly, and that is why we have not seen a repeat of 9/11 here ... yet. However, the jihadists have found a way around the protocols by radicalizing the actual pilots, and this may not be the first such instance of a takedown. The Malaysia Air disappearance may have been an earlier such incident, and there was a crash off our East Coast involving an Egyptian pilot years ago that has been suspected of being a suicide attack. The real question is whether we have learned the value of clarity. And the answer is ...
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"our coverage contains all the facts, unlike activists and partisans" is a nominee for most unintentionally hilarious tweet of all time
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 30, 2026
Ed: Just as before 9/11, our media are more concerned about political correctness than clarity. The Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post both published the detailed and accurate accounts of an attempted terrorist hijacking well before the NYT and WSJ caught up to the real story. It would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous.
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Times of Israel: Flydubai announces that all flights to and from Israel will be suspended while the investigation into the attempt by one of its copilots to crash a plane full of Israelis is ongoing.
“This temporary suspension will allow the relevant authorities to continue their work and establish all the facts surrounding the incident,” a flydubai spokesperson says. “We are fully committed to supporting the ongoing investigation and maintaining the highest safety standards across our network.”
Ed: There's a reason El Al stock rose significantly today. FlyDubai was supposed to screen pilot assignments for the Tel Aviv route to ensure that no pilot with nationality from a country that doesn't recognize Israel would be allowed to fly that route. The Israelis insisted on that clause to prevent what happened today. I suspect that FlyDubai is either taking this step before the Israelis yank their access or are announcing a suspension because the Israelis have already imposed one.
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My salute to the Indian pilot Captain Smit Machchhar for his extraordinary bravery.
— Benjamin Netanyahu - ×‘× ×™×ž×™×ź × ×Ş× ×™×”×• (@netanyahu) September 30, 2026
Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air…
Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster.
He saved the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals.
I wish Captain Machchhar a speedy and full recovery.
He is a true hero.
Ed: Indeed. And the American media should be ashamed of themselves for painting this as an "altercation" between the pilots. The terrorist attempted to murder Machchhar. Did the NYT describe Jeffrey Dahmer's murders as "altercations" too?
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Associated Press: The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.2% pace from April through June as consumer spending and business investment came in strong.
Growth in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of a goods and services — decelerated from a 2.5% pace from January through March, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The second-quarter growth number was an improvement on the department’s previous estimate of 1.5%.
Consumer spending — which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity — increased at a healthy 3.8% annual pace, up from 0.7% in the January-March period.
The overall growth number was dragged down by imports. They are subtracted from growth because GDP is only supposed to count domestic production. Imports rose at a 12.6% annual pace from April through June, partly due to a surge in shipments of computer chips and other products that support artificial intelligence investment, and slashed nearly 1.7 percentage points off second-quarter growth.
Ed: This is the final look at Q2, and it shows a decent level of economic growth. This is inflation-adjusted as well, expressed as "real GDP," so the growth is beyond the inflationary impacts of the war. Trump's tariffs clearly aren't putting much of a dent in imports either. The level of consumer spending belies the doom-and-gloom assessments of the economy in this midterm cycle, too.
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Now that I’ve disconnected, to do something fun, let me be clear: from now until Election Day, I won’t give an ounce of energy to addressing anything remotely negative or false & clearly this trend is going to continue.
— Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) September 30, 2026
Instead I will pour into the amazing candidates that have…
Ed: Click through it if you want to read it all, but the bottom line is that there will be no endorsement of James Talarico forthcoming from Crockett. Talarico has not made the sale with her, and it seems very likely that a significant part of the black vote in Texas will take note of that. Speaking of notes ...
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Fox News: To former Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., who served three terms in Congress, the list is clear evidence Crockett is putting personal reservations over the party’s success in the Lone Star State.
"F--- her. That’s all I can say. And that statement has nothing to do with blind loyalty to Dems," Wild said in a post to X. "It has everything to do with her being a narcissistic drama queen who has used her platform (such as it is) only to advance herself. Karma will suck."
Wild’s post is just the most recent controversy surrounding Crockett, a progressive who has called on her party to inch further left through fiery rhetoric that’s garnered national attention during her time in Congress.
Ed: I'm sure this scolding from an Affluent White Female Liberal (AWFL) to a black woman will be just what Talarico needs to make the sale with black voters in Texas. Five stars, no notes.
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‼️ DSA-endorsed LA Mayor candidate @nithyavraman was asked at the Jewish Mayoral Forum why she went on Hasan Piker @hasanthehun podcast knowing he supports terror & hates Jews without condemning him & whether she’d join people who hate Christians, Muslims & Indians
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) September 30, 2026
She doubled… https://t.co/ap5sbJLZiN pic.twitter.com/5EVJpCgE7A
She doubled down! Refused to condemn Piker & said she’d happily appear on podcasts hosted by hateful racists & terror supporters.
Also doubled down (in front of a massive JEWISH crowd!) that Israel is a genocidal state, blaming that assessment on “experts” rather than making her own assessment. Suuuure.
Unelectable.
Ed: In Los Angeles? Don't bet on "unelectable." Raman probably knows her constituents.
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NBC News: Inside the walls of Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey, no one is living quite like inmate #37452-054.
This is how Sean “Diddy” Combs has been living in prison, according to four men who have spent time in the same unit as the disgraced hip-hop mogul. They were granted anonymity to speak freely about life inside the prison.
“This is not some normal s--- you see in jail. This is some rich s---,” said one of the men. “It looks crazy, but again, it’s Diddy.”
Ed: I wonder how many people will take this up as a sign of a two-tiered justice system. It does sound like a scene from 'Goodfellas,' actually.
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UK Terror Suspects Back In Custody After Sharing Meme https://t.co/2cKibqAIq2
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) September 30, 2026
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Last night's lyric: "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor. What a talent.
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