A famous hijacking that targeted Jews took place in 1970. On September 6, 1970, the Rosh Yeshivah of Mesivta Chaim Berlin, R’ Yitzchok Hutner zt”l, his daughter, and son-in-law R’ Yonasan David shlita, were on a flight from Eretz Yisroel to New York that was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.
The terrorists freed the non-Jewish passengers and held the Jewish passengers hostage. R’ Hutner was held alone in an isolated location while Jews around the world prayed for his safe release. While the remaining passengers were being held, the hijackers realized that R’ Hutner was a prominent leader in the Jewish world. Although they generally treated him with respect, they did confiscate a bag in which he kept his precious writings of chiddushei Torah that he had accumulated over his lifetime, and they did not return it upon his release. His close followers went to great lengths to retrieve the chiddushim, offering financial rewards for their return. Even though there were several instances when the intermediaries thought they might be successful, nothing materialized and the writings remain lost to this day.
In the United States, there was talk about raising money to ransom R’ Hutner, but R’ Yaakov Kamenetzky zt”l ruled against the move. Although there is a halachic basis for paying an exorbitant sum to save a great Torah leader, R’ Yaakov ruled that this applies only during peacetime, and Israel’s ongoing struggle with terrorism constitutes war.
There were young children traveling alone on this flight. Ten-year-old Yosef Trachtman and eight-year-old Tziporah Moran. As soon as passengers realized the plane was being hijacked, R’ Hutner’s two students on the flight, R’ Yaakov Drillman and R’ Meir Fund, moved from their own seats to sit next to the two unaccompanied children. Eight-year-old Tziporah was carrying documents from both the United States and Israel. R’ Drillman knew that signs of Israeli citizenship would put the girl in danger. He therefore ripped her Israeli documents into tiny shreds and swallowed them.
When Chacham Yosef Harari-Raful shlita, Rosh Yeshivah of Ateret Torah, was given a cup of water on Erev Shabbos, on this hijacked flight, he dipped his shirt into it to cleanse his clothing, in order to do something l’kavod Shabbos!
(Rabbi Yehoshua Alt)
