Let us consider for a moment that very likely world in which Capt. Smit Machchhar was slightly less heroic and could not overcome his stab wound to open the cockpit door. Or one in which passengers Yaniv Hayun, Tzvika Mans and Assaf Rajuan did not burst in in time. Or one in which Yaniv, a plumber by trade, had never watched a docuseries on plane crashes and did not know how to pull out of the dive. Or one in which there were no other pilots on board to land the plane safely. The terrorist crashes the plane into the ground, his motivations utterly inscrutable to international media and obvious to those with an ounce of thought. Today, if the crown prince allowed, Israelis would be on the ground picking through wreckage in search of 174 bodies, 27 of them children. Thanks for reading It's Noon In Israel! This post is public so feel free to share it. The central artery of the Abraham Accords, the 30-plane-a-day flight corridor, would be severed, and the steadily warming relations between the Emirates and Israel would freeze. The day would go down as the second-deadliest terror attack in the country’s history, with nearly five times the death toll of the third. Falling just days before the third Hebrew anniversary of the worst attack, it might have permanently cost the Sukkot festival its traditional name: “the time of our joy.” An outpouring of sympathy would be quickly followed by a return to normal. The world has never understood Israelis well enough to forgive their security, yet almost always understands terrorists well enough to forgive their violence. British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and his ilk would announce further sanctions on violent Israelis, and the international media would rush to cite a myriad of possible motivations for the massacre. As it is, the terrorist can take comfort in knowing that the international media has not stripped him of his wings. He is still “the pilot,” and what he did is still an “incident,” to borrow Miliband’s label. Thankfully, we woke up in the other world: the one where the terrorist failed, the festival goes on, planes continue to fly, and Israel’s will to fight burns hotter than before. It is the world created by Yaniv Hayun, Tzvika Mans, Assaf Rajuan and Smit Machchhar, ordinary people who demonstrated extraordinary courage. To read the rest of today's newsletter click here amitsegal.substack.com/p/its…