I want you to put yourself in a less than pleasant scenario for a moment...
You're in the cockpit of a large, commercial jetliner.
Your name is Captain Smit Machchhar. You have spent years learning and earning the right to sit in the captain's chair and fly that huge plane. On Wednesday you're in charge of FlyDubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with 174 passengers trusting you with their lives.
And then the man in the seat next to you - - - your own co-pilot - - - pulls a blade and starts stabbing you.
The plane drops 1400 feet in less than a minute. Passengers are screaming. A woman is heard yelling that somebody is trying to kill the pilot. A group of them force their way into the cockpit and wrestle the attacker down, and two off-duty FlyDubai pilots who happened to be on board land the plane safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
You survive. Barely. You've lost a great deal of blood, and you're lying in a Saudi hospital bed.
And here is how some of the biggest newsrooms on the planet first described what happened to you:
An "altercation." A "fight." A "struggle." A "brawl" between pilots.
Really?!?
The Reflex
The Bible has a word for putting the man holding the knife and the man bleeding from it on the same side of the scale. That word is abomination.
Proverbs 17:15 says it plainly: "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD."
First of all, we do need to be fair here. Some of that early language came straight from FlyDubai's own statement, which said only that "an altercation occurred in the flight deck." And by now most outlets are reporting the stabbing for what it was. I'll at least give them that much.
But their first instinct tells you everything.
When the facts were still coming in, the reflex of the Lame Stream Media was to make the attacker and the victim equals - - - two grown men who just couldn't get along. And they held that line until it was absolutely impossible to hold it any longer.
Let me ask you something: If the attacker had been a white Christian from Texas, stabbing his captain on a flight full of Muslim pilgrims, how many hours do you think the word "brawl" would have survived? I'm pretty sure you already know the answer.
We've seen this reflex before. Last December in Southampton, England, an 18-year-old university student named Henry Nowak was stabbed five times. His killer told police that Henry had racially abused him - a lie the court later exposed for exactly what it was. So officers handcuffed the boy who had been stabbed.
Henry told them he'd been stabbed. He told them he couldn't breathe. He died there in the street. Unconscionable.
Once again, we see the exact same reflex. Only this time it didn't just make the victim and the attacker equal - - - it swapped them.
Why Tel Aviv
If you ask me, I think this is the part their choice of the word "brawl" was built to hide.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the co-pilot underwent "Islamist radical indoctrination." An Israeli official says the man's social media "talks about killing Jews." Israel scrambled its own warplanes while that jet was in the air.
Admittedly, the investigation is still ongoing. Facts are still being found... But I'm gonna be up front with you about what I believe. I firmly believe that plane was never meant to just fall out of the sky. I believe that Islamic killer intended to [a] at the very least, kill a plane full of Jews or [b] at the absolute worst, turn a jetliner full of Israelis into a weapon aimed at Israel itself - - - and it's very likely the only reason he didn't succeed is that ordinary passengers refused to sit still and die. (Thank God 9/11 taught us something!)
That is Jew-hatred. It has a word: anti-semitism. It is the same ancient hatred that drove Pharaoh and Haman, only now it's flying under a different flag.
Friends, God has never been neutral about His protection over the Jewish people. "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee" (Genesis 12:3).
He has also mentioned that in the last days, the whole world would turn against Israel in a way that had never been seen in human history. In Zechariah 14 it is said that all nations will gather against Jerusalem to battle (v. 2). This is also echoed in Revelation 19 as well.
An Unrighteous Witness
This is what happens when a culture loses His Truth as its standard. When there is no fixed measure of what is true, or no ethical journalistic discipline in waiting until more info is available before pushing 'whatever you have' out there first - - - reporting stops being a true and genuine witness and becomes a narrative to be managed, an angle to be pushed.
Let's just go ahead and admit it, America's Main-Stream Media is rife with this 'type' of journalism. If I could be so bold, I'll tell you right now this exact methodology is what will help the antichrist rise from obscurity to world-domination. (It worked with pushing COVID-19, and it will work when installing the 'son of perdition' too.)
Exodus 23:1 commands, "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness."
A headline that puts the attacker and the victim on equal footing is an unrighteous witness - - - no matter how neutral and professional it sounds.
So yes, I'll say it. If they refuse to report the truth, they ARE fake news. And Americans have noticed. That's why apps like Telegram are exploding - - - independent journalists have found a way around big, captured media, and people are hungry for someone who will just tell them what happened - honestly.
I'll also mention this: Trump is justified in kicking the captured media out of his pressers until they decide they're gonna play fair and honest with the news. Believe it or not, he is far from the first president who has done this - Obama did the same exact thing during his administration. Strangely enough, you could only hear crickets when it was FoxNews on the receiving end of Barack's wrath.
As a pastor, I must remind you God already built an independent channel for the truth. Paul calls the Spirit-filled, Christ-honoring church "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). But even that title can only apply if we are reading, studying, meditating on, and applying His truth, the Holy Bible. "Thy Word is truth..." is what Christ openly stated in John 17:17.
So let us be the ones who say it plainly. Call the knife a knife. Call the attacker an attacker and the victim a victim. Call Islam the violent religion that it is. Let's also pray for Captain Machchhar's full recovery, thank God for the passengers who rushed that cockpit, and stand with Israel out loud - - - not just when it's convenient.
The world's headlines may stay neutral or even slant towards evil. They will probably continue to run cover for those who seek to destroy the Jews. I testify before you today that Heaven... never... will... "For he that toucheth you (Israel) toucheth the apple of his eye" (Zechariah 2:8).
Signed,
The 174 Passengers Who Would Never, In A Million Years, Call It a "Brawl"