67 Minutes To Blame The Jews: The Flydubai Incident And The Online Mob

I went looking through social media after the flydubai incident with a fairly simple question: what really happened?

It didn't take long before I discovered something almost as disturbing as the conspiracy theories themselves.

I looked at one post blaming Israel. Then another. Before long, the algorithms apparently figured out what had captured my attention. My feed began filling with accusations that Israel was behind the incident, that Mossad was involved, that it was a "false flag," that the entire thing had somehow been staged.

And underneath those posts were thousands upon thousands of comments.

People weren't simply asking questions. Many had already reached their conclusions. They were agreeing with one another, supplying additional theories and offering supposedly obvious reasons why the official story couldn't possibly be true.

This was one person's social-media feed after briefly exploring the subject.

Imagine that process multiplied across millions of phones.

It provides a disturbing glimpse into how conspiracy theories can explode across the internet today—and how an ancient habit of blaming Jews for the world's problems has been given a distribution system unlike anything previous generations possessed.

The latest example came after the September 30 incident involving an Israel-bound flydubai aircraft.

Whatever investigators ultimately establish about precisely what happened, something remarkable was occurring online almost immediately.

According to the Combat Antisemitism Movement's Antisemitism Research Center, researchers identified 2,963 posts on X during a 12-hour monitoring period that attributed the incident to Israel, Mossad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zionists or Jews.

The first such accusation appeared just 67 minutes after the aircraft transmitted its initial distress signal.

Think about that.

Sixty-seven minutes.

International aviation incidents can require weeks, months and sometimes years of investigation. Authorities examine communications, flight data, cockpit recordings, security records, crew backgrounds and countless other pieces of evidence.

But portions of the internet apparently needed little more than an hour.

The Jews did it.

Researchers tracked 4,136 posts containing the phrase "false flag" and reported that approximately 72 percent promoted conspiracy claims blaming Israel or Jews. During the final two hourly monitoring periods, that proportion reportedly climbed above 80 percent.

Oliver Marks, a researcher with the organization, identified what may be the most important lesson from those numbers.

The narrative wasn't necessarily being created because of evidence emerging from the flydubai incident. It looked more like a preexisting script waiting for another event to which it could be attached.

Evidence is supposed to produce conclusions.

Conspiracy culture increasingly begins with the conclusion and searches afterward for evidence.

There is nothing new about blaming Jews when catastrophe strikes.

For centuries, Jews have been accused of causing plagues, manipulating economies, starting wars, controlling governments and secretly engineering social upheaval.

The subjects change. The underlying accusation survives.

Even the September 11 attacks eventually became incorporated into this universe of conspiracy theories. Claims that Israel, Mossad or Jews secretly orchestrated or knowingly permitted 9/11 have circulated for decades despite the absence of credible evidence supporting them.

Then came October 7.

Following the Hamas massacre in Israel, social media became flooded with claims questioning atrocities, accusing Israel of deliberately killing its own citizens or suggesting elements of the attack had somehow been allowed to happen for political purposes.

Again and again the same remarkable pattern emerges.

Jews can become the victims of an attack—and then somehow become responsible for the attack against themselves.

CyberWell, which monitors online antisemitism, describes this phenomenon as a form of conspiratorial "self-victimization": Jews or Israelis are accused of orchestrating attacks against themselves in order to manipulate public opinion.

It creates a conspiracy theory that is almost impossible to disprove.

If Jews are attacked, they staged it.

If Israel responds, that supposedly proves why they staged it.

If authorities deny the allegation, they're participating in the cover-up.

If investigators find no evidence, that demonstrates how sophisticated the Mossad must have been.

Every possible outcome becomes additional "evidence."

There is another uncomfortable question that deserves examination.

How much of what we're seeing online is actually organic?

Researchers have documented for years how automated accounts can amplify misinformation, political propaganda and low-credibility material online. Bots can rapidly repost material, push hashtags, manufacture apparent momentum and help place fringe claims in front of much larger audiences.

That does not mean the thousands of posts surrounding the flydubai incident were generated by bots. There is presently no basis for making that assumption.

But bots don't have to invent a conspiracy theory to make it dangerous.

They merely have to amplify one.

A relatively small number of accounts can push an accusation. Real people encounter it. Some believe it. Others repost it. Influencers discover that the subject generates enormous engagement. Algorithms detect that people are stopping, clicking, commenting and arguing.

Soon the distinction between artificial amplification and genuine human belief becomes extraordinarily difficult for the average person to recognize.

And eventually humans do the work themselves.

This may be the most important part of the story.

Social-media algorithms don't need to believe conspiracy theories.

They don't need political opinions.

They don't need to hate Jews.

They merely need to discover what keeps people engaged.

You stop scrolling.

You read the comments.

You watch the video.

You click another post.

You argue with someone.

You search for another example.

The system learns.

Suddenly your feed begins serving you more of the same.

That is precisely what happened while I was researching this story. After interacting with several posts, I began seeing more and more of them.

Someone experiencing that phenomenon without understanding how recommendation algorithms work could easily reach an extraordinary conclusion:

Everyone is saying this.

But everyone isn't necessarily saying it.

Your feed isn't a neutral window onto humanity. It is a personalized stream constructed partly around what keeps you looking at the screen.

And repetition has tremendous psychological power.

Something encountered once can sound absurd. Encounter it twenty times, from twenty different accounts, accompanied by thousands of approving comments, and suddenly it can begin to feel worthy of consideration.

The algorithm doesn't have to hate Jews to help spread antisemitism.

It merely has to discover that antisemitism keeps people clicking.

None of this means Israel should be immune from criticism.

Israel's government can make bad decisions. Intelligence agencies can deceive. Governments can lie. Propaganda exists. Intelligence operations occur. History provides genuine examples of governments concealing uncomfortable truths.

Christians shouldn't be gullible about governments, media organizations, intelligence agencies—or social media.

But skepticism is not the same thing as conspiracy thinking.

There is an enormous difference between saying, "We don't yet know what happened," and saying, "I don't know what happened, therefore the Mossad did it."

One is healthy skepticism.

The other is prejudice masquerading as investigation.

And Christians ought to be particularly careful here.

Scripture repeatedly warns against false testimony, spreading unverified accusations and joining crowds in wrongdoing. Truth does not become truth because ten thousand people repost it.

Nor does suspicion become evidence because someone puts dramatic music behind it and uploads it to X or TikTok.

The flydubai episode should therefore concern us for reasons extending far beyond one airplane.

It demonstrates just how rapidly an existing worldview can absorb breaking events.

Sixty-seven minutes after the aircraft transmitted its distress signal, the accusations had already begun.

Not sixty-seven days.

Not sixty-seven hours.

Sixty-seven minutes.

That should tell us something.

Many people weren't waiting to discover what happened.

They already knew whom they wanted to blame.

And now those ancient prejudices operate inside an information environment capable of spreading an accusation around the planet before investigators have even begun assembling the facts.

I started researching one incident. Within a remarkably short period of time, an algorithm had introduced me to an entire online universe in which seemingly every road eventually led back to Israel, Mossad, Zionists or Jews.

Multiply that experience across millions of people, billions of recommendations and countless automated and human accounts, and it becomes easier to understand why ideas once confined to society's conspiratorial fringes can suddenly appear mainstream.

The mob has always existed.

What changed is that now the mob has an algorithm.