Tonight begins
Israel’s Independence Day. We celebrate Israel’s 67th birthday. Here’s
an abbreviated story for you about that ‘independence’. It’s from an essay by
Miriam Elman (“1948 – How American Jewish Pilots Helped Win Israel’s War of
Independence”, Legal Insurrection, April 21, 2015). I’ve edited it—and re-written
portions of it:
On May 30,
1948—fifteen days after the fledgling Jewish state was invaded by the armies of
five Arab nations—Milton Rubenfeld, a former stunt pilot who served in the British
Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force in World War II, flew on a critical
combat mission that stopped the advancing Iraqi army.
When his
plane was hit by enemy fire, he bailed out, landing in the field of an Israeli
kibbutz. Since no one at the time knew that Americans were flying for Israel in
its War of Independence, Rubenfeld was mistaken for an enemy pilot by the
rifle-brandishing kibbutz members. Hands raised in the air, Rubenfeld—who spoke
not a word of Hebrew—identified himself to the Israelis and saved his life by
shouting what little Yiddish he knew—“Gefilte fish”, “Shabbos”, and “Pesach”!
This
little-known true story is recounted by Rubenfeld’s widow and his son, the
actor Paul Reubens (better known as Pee-wee Herman), in a remarkable new feature-length
documentary “Above and Beyond”.
Produced by
Nancy Spielberg (sister of Steven Spielberg—yes, that Spielberg) and directed
by the accomplished Roberta Grossman, the 87 minute film tells the tale of the
American airmen who, just three years after the liberation of the Nazi death
camps, volunteered with Rubenfeld in the 1948 war.
“Above and
Beyond” has won rave reviews and multiple awards on the festival circuit. It’s
scheduled for an April 28 VOD release including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and
other platforms.
It features
the mostly Jewish American pilots who at great personal risk smuggled planes
and war materials out of the U.S., trained on old Me-109 fighters (the mainstay
of the German Luftwaffe) in secret behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia,
and flew dozens of missions in the summer and fall of 1948 for the Israeli Air
Force’s (IAF) newly created 101 Squadron.
In mid-May
1948 the Jewish defense forces (the Haganah) had roughly 35,000 troops, no air
force, almost no artillery, and very few tanks.
There can be
no doubt that the Arab armies had a major edge in weaponry.
The Israelis
had nothing.
Except that
they had Al Schwimmer.
Schwimmer
worked for TWA and had been a flight engineer for the U.S. Transport Command in
World War II. When he learned of Israel’s need for aircraft, he single-handedly
bought some thirty surplus Messerschmitt fighters and recruited the pilots to
fly them.
The U.S.
State Department’s hostility toward the new Jewish state and the arms embargo [by
the US and Britain] of the entire Middle East made his activities a chancy
business. These all had to be clandestine flights. Schwimmer formed a bogus
Panamanian airline and had pilots hopscotch around the globe to get to Israel.
The U.S.
government threatened to revoke the citizenship of anyone who participated in
the war. But Schwimmer wasn’t intimidated.
To evade
detection by the authorities, he resorted to scouring military records for
former World War II airmen in the N.Y. area with “Jewish-sounding names” and
sending them cryptic telegrams. Mysterious instructions for secret rendezvous
would include “meeting a guy with a flower in his lapel on 57th street”.
Schwimmer
was indicted after the war for violating the U.S. Neutrality Act. He lost his
U.S. citizenship and stayed in Israel. But that loss was his gain: he made a
fortune as the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries. In 2001, he was pardoned
by President Clinton.
The movie, “Above
and Beyond”, includes archived war footage and stunning aerial reenactments,
accomplished with special effects created by Industrial Light and Magic, which
reportedly donated its time and expertise to the project.
But it’s the
interviews with the still cocky nonagenarian airmen that make the film exciting
to watch (Nancy Spielberg noted in an interview that the youngest was 88 at the
time of filming). As one movie reviewer put it, “the film’s heart is the
interviews with the pilots themselves who recall their exploits with infectious
bravado”.
With the
exception of Lou Lenart, the pilots were all second-generation Americans who
knew little about Zionism and weren’t particularly proud of their Jewishness.
My favorite pilot
is Gideon Lichtman. He was a former U.S. Army Air Force pilot. He shot down an
Egyptian Spitfire on June 8, 1948 and went on to fly more than 30 missions
during the war.
“I was
risking my citizenship and possibly jail time,” he says of fighting for Israel.
“I didn’t give a sh*t. I was gonna help the Jews out. I was going to help my
people”. Other pilots had similar feelings. They came to Israel to help their
people.
While Jewish
forces were often successful in the fighting, they suffered painful defeats. At
one point in the fighting, this is what David Ben-Gurion reported to the
Zionist Action Committee that:
Hebrew Jerusalem
is partially cut off all the time. For the past 10 days, it has been completely
isolated and faces a serious danger of starvation. Almost all other roads are
in disarray. Jews cannot set out without risking their lives”.
Across most
of the fighting lines, the Arabs often took the initiative with forces greatly
superior to the defending Jewish army. The war was, quite literally, a matter
of life and death for hundreds of thousands of Jews.
When General
Yigal Yadin, the Haganah’s chief of operations was asked by members of Israel’s
provisional government about the chances of standing up to the expected Arab
attack his reply was a sobering “Fifty, fifty”. Most company commanders at the
time also saw this as a grave assessment based on truthful calculations.
To defend
itself, Israel had meager forces along strung-out lines utterly vulnerable to
Arab attack. But while the Jewish armies struggled to survive, these airmen
pulled off miracles. In one incident, a Jewish American pilot and his buddies
flew four “junk airplanes” for a country that had no actual air force, and managed
to convince a large Egyptian force,
encamped only 30 miles outside Tel Aviv, that there was enough “competition in
the sky” to warrant aborting their advance.
There can be
no doubt that these volunteers helped turn the tide of the war.
Most of the
American volunteer pilots featured in “Above and Beyond” survived the 1948 war.
Those who survived went on to lead productive lives in the U.S. and Israel.
Two of the
airmen—U.S. Army Air Force pilot Coleman Goldstein and Lou Lenart, a U.S.
Marine who served in the Pacific theater during World War II— became pilots for
El Al Airlines.
Harold
Livingston, who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps’ transport squadron, became a
novelist and a Hollywood screenwriter, authoring Star Trek: the Motion Picture
(one of the best films of all time, in my humble opinion).
But two from
this courageous band of brothers didn’t make it. Stan Andrews and Bob
Vickman—both UCLA art students in 1948 who had been stationed in the Pacific in
the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II—were killed when their IAF planes
were shot down in separate incidents in July and October 1948.
As told in
“Above and Beyond” by the pilots who fought with them, Andrews and Vickman came
up with the logo for the 101 Squadron, scribbling the Angel of Death on a
cocktail napkin at a Tel Aviv bar in June 1948.
It’s a
design that still appears on Israeli F-16s today.
--
My comment:
read the full essay. Get the movie when it comes out.
Happy 67th
Israel Independence Day.
Here's a special Independence Day offer-- You might be interested in a new Yom Haatzma'ut and Yom Yerushalayim Machzor (prayer book especially for these two days) published by Koren.
This Mahzor is the first-ever English-Hebrew prayer book for Israel's national holidays. It includes complete services for Israel's Independence Day and Jerusalem Day according to the practices established by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. The mahzor features an introduction by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, translation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, commentary by Rabbi Moshe Taragin and Rabbi Binyamin Lau. It includes a collection of essays by leading scholars in the world of Religious Zionism.
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