On Thursday, November 15, El Al Flight 002 from New York to Tel Aviv was scheduled to depart at 6:30 pm but was delayed by over five hours due to the snow. Over the next two days, Israeli media inundated their audiences with stories about the ultra-Orthodox passengers who demanded to be let off the plane when it became clear that it would not be able to arrive in Israel before Shabbat and who, when their request was denied, proceeded to riot. The airline then capitulated to their demands by having the plane make an unscheduled stop in Athens to let off observant passengers. This version of the events, however, turned out to bear only a vague resemblance to the truth, and not only because it omitted the airline’s own unprofessional conduct. Liel Leibovitz writes:

When Yehuda Schlesinger, a passenger aboard Flight 002, . . . saw the viral video that allegedly documented those rascally ḥaredi men flexing their muscles and threatening violence, he recognized the clip because he had shot it with his [own] smartphone. There was only one small problem: the video Schlesinger took was of ḥaredi men singing and dancing to cheer each other up under difficult circumstances; the video shown on Israeli television was edited and given a radically different soundtrack, one featuring men shouting in a menacing fashion. . . .

While Israel’s national airline proved to be incompetent, its media mendacious, and its mandarins seething with contempt for their observant brothers and sisters, there’s another side to the story of Flight 002 that deserves to be heard. Far from being uniformly ḥaredi, as early press reports insisted, the passengers who rushed against the clock in Greece were a wildly diverse bunch: black hatters and wearers of knitted kippot, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, men and women from all across Israel with nothing much in common save for the tradition that has bound us all for millennia. Welcomed by Mendel and Nechama Hendel, the local Chabad emissaries [in Athens], these stranded passengers, according to their own accounts, passed a joyous Shabbat, enjoying each other’s company and the spirit of the holy day despite being separated from their luggage and their loved ones waiting at home.

If Israelis are indeed slouching toward elections, . . . you need only look to Flight 002 to discover the nation’s real divides. . . . Israelis, like Americans, fall squarely into the two camps visible on board the Boeing that snowy night last week. In one corner are those who keep their faith, who come together in times of crisis, and who expect the conversation to remain respectful and those in power to remain accountable. If you’re wondering about their values, just watch Schlesinger’s undoctored video and ask yourself when was the last time you reacted to a major inconvenience by finding some stream of inner happiness and bursting into song in public.

The group in the other corner, sadly, isn’t quite so cheerful.

Israel’s goals of freeing the hostages and defeating Hamas (the latter necessary to prevent further hostage taking) are to some extent contradictory, since Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, will only turn over hostages in exchange for concessions. But Jacob Nagel remains convinced that Jerusalem should continue to pursue both goals:

Only consistent military pressure on Hamas can lead to the hostages’ release, either through negotiation or military operation. There’s little chance of reaching a deal with Hamas using current approaches, including the latest Egyptian proposal. Israeli concessions would only encourage further pressure from Hamas.

There is no incentive for Hamas to agree to a deal, especially since it believes it can achieve its full objectives without one. Unfortunately, many contribute to this belief, mainly from outside of Israel, but also from within.

Recent months saw Israel mistakenly refraining from entering Rafah for several reasons. Initially, the main [reason was to try] to negotiate a deal with Hamas. However, as it became clear that Hamas was uninterested, and its only goal was to return to its situation before October 7—where Hamas and its leadership control Gaza, Israeli forces are out, and there are no changes in the borders—the deal didn’t mature.