Israeli mom whose son was murdered on Oct. 7 nearly lost daughter in hijacked flydubai terrorist attack

An Israeli mom whose son was murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre cheated a second devastating tragedy when her daughter survived the attempted hijacking aboard a flydubai flight last week.

“I’m still in shock, but it’s a miracle she’s alive,” mom Yasmin Ochayon told The Post. “It’s half shock, half joy.”

Yasmin’s daughter Miryam Ochayon, 24, was traveling the world with stops in Mongolia, India and the Philippines for nearly a year when she decided to return to her native Israel to attend this year’s memorial for her brother, Eviatar.

She booked a Sept. 30 trip aboard flydubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv — a horrifying near disaster when Omani co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, stabbed the captain, Smit Machchhar, and attempted to crash the plane full of mainly Israelis.

The plane plummeted “out of control” as passengers started to panic, Miryam told The Post. 

Miryam turned a shaky camera on herself in a harrowing scene capturing the passengers’ blood-curdling screams, as she quietly repeated: “It’s going to be OK – I’m not going to die. I’m going to see my mom.”

Amid the chaos, Miryam gripped the hands of her row six seatmates, the young children of hero passenger Tzvika Manes, who helped subdue the suspect and save the 182 souls aboard.

She repeated her calming refrain as much to reassure herself as it was to soothe the young Manes girls.  

“They screamed so strong, it felt like it was Oct. 7,” said Miryam. “We were 30 seconds away from crashing and I knew I had to stay alive for my mother.”

She described “feeling death in the air” as she prayed to her 22-year-old brother from her seat.

“I said to Eviatar, ‘I’m not going to see you up there,’” she said. “I’m going to go home and see my mom. If she lost me, she couldn’t go on.”

Completely in the dark about the terror unfolding onboard her daughter’s flight, Yasmin, a single mom from Jerusalem, was already at Ben Gurion Airport anticipating her arrival. 

Miryam called her mother after making an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

“She told me that the plane was close to crashing, that they were close to dying,” recalled Yasmin. “To lose a son is crazy, but to happen to her too… I couldn’t even imagine that,” said the shaken mom, who added that it took her days to process the horrific ordeal.

“I thought, ‘Eviatar watched over us,” the grateful mom said.

Eviatar, an ambulance driver in the elite Golani unit and a talented artist, was fighting at the Kissufim military outpost on Oct. 7, 2023, when a Hamas terrorist threw an explosive into the shelter, killing him and five fellow soldiers. It was supposed to be his final day of active duty.

Blue-eyed Eviatar, whose name in Hebrew signifies success in life, was the oldest of six children, and his sister calls him “the most talented, the most beautiful, the bravest” soul with an “enormous heart.”

At the memorial service last Sunday at Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, Miryam sobbed over her brother’s grave, held up by two of her brothers. She said she had prayed to survive so she could make it to his gravesite. 

“I’m not going to die today – I’m going back to my brother’s memorial,” she recalled at the memorial in front of her bereaved family and friends with a mixture of joy and pain.

“I stood next to him, and I couldn’t believe I’m alive. It felt like a miracle,” she added.

“I know Eviatar played an incredible part in this,” she said at the packed memorial. 

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“I’m standing here, looking at your grave,” she said as her brothers comforted her at the memorial, “and not looking at you from above.”

Meanwhile, Yasmin went alone to her son’s grave on Oct. 7 this year for a private moment.

“Every year is hard, but emotionally it was different this year,” she said. “God took my son, but he gave me back my daughter,” Yasmin said. “He took life and gave life. We feel the miracle.”