Yasmin Ochayon says her daughter’s survival was a miracle she could barely process.
The Jerusalem single mother, whose son Eviatar was murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, nearly faced a second unthinkable loss when her daughter Miryam Ochayon, 24, was aboard a hijacked flydubai flight on Sept. 30. Miryam had been traveling through Mongolia, India and the Philippines for nearly a year when she booked return passage to Israel for her brother’s memorial. She chose flydubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, a route that would plunge into terror 30,000 feet above the Arabian Peninsula.
Omani co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami stabbed captain Smit Machchhar and attempted to crash the aircraft carrying mainly Israeli passengers. The plane plummeted “out of control” as panic spread through the cabin, Miryam told The Post. She turned her shaky camera on herself amid blood-curdling screams, quietly repeating: “It’s going to OK – I’m not going to die. I’m going to see my mom.”
She gripped the hands of her row six seatmates, the young children of passenger Tzvika Manes, who helped subdue al-Hammami and save all 182 people aboard. Her calming refrain served as much to steady herself as to soothe the terrified Manes girls.
“They screamed so strong, it felt like it was Oct. 7,” Miryam said. “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 shared. “I’m going to go home and see my mom. If she lost me, she couldn’t go on.”
Yasmin, completely unaware of the unfolding horror, was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport for her daughter’s arrival. Miryam reached her only after an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
“She told me that the plane was close to crashing, that they were close to dying,” Yasmin recalled. “To lose a son is crazy, but to happen to her too… I couldn’t even imagine that.” The shaken mother said it took her days to fully absorb the ordeal.
“I thought, ‘Eviatar watched over us,'” the grateful mother added.
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 Hebrew name signifies success in life, was the oldest of six children. His sister called him “the most talented, the most beautiful, the bravest” soul with an “enormous heart.”
At last Sunday’s memorial at Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery, Miryam sobbed over her brother’s grave, supported by two of her brothers. She had prayed to survive precisely for this moment.
“I’m not going to die today – I’m going back to my brother’s memorial,” she told the assembled family and friends, her voice carrying both joy and pain.
“I stood next to him, and I couldn’t believe I’m alive. It felt like a miracle,” she continued.
“I know Eviatar played an incredible part in this,” she told the packed crowd.
“I’m standing here, looking at your grave,” she said as her brothers comforted her, “and not looking at you from above.”
Yasmin spent Oct. 7 this year alone at her son’s grave for a private moment of grief.
“Every year is hard, but emotionally it was different this year,” she reflected. “God took my son, but he gave me back my daughter. He took life and gave life. We feel the miracle.”
“I’m still in shock, but it’s a miracle she’s alive,” Yasmin told The Post. “It’s half shock, half joy.”