﻿After World War II, thousands of Europe’s Jewish refugees found a new home in the
Middle East where the United Nations had agreed to split British-controlled Palestine
between the Jews and the Arabs. -Transfer of power in Palestine will bring bloodshed.
-The call for the holy war against the Jews went out from Cairo. Arab nations opposed the U.N. plan. And the
leader of what was about to become the state of Israel knew what was coming.
-David Ben-Gurion understood. If Israel declared itself a state it was going to have a war. None
of the neighbors would accept it and it would have to fight for its existence.
So Israel was in desperate need of arms. But the U.S. imposed an arms embargo on the
entire region, hoping to stave off a full-fledged conflict.
-Now the problem is, the British were providing the Egyptian army. The British
are providing the Iraqis. So the only one who is not getting anything through
official channels are the Jews in Palestine. So, Israel turned to sympathetic Americans.
-The cause to me was clear. We had to do it. We don’t have a choice.
Al Schwimmer, then a 30-year-old TWA flight engineer, volunteered to launch a secret operation
to smuggle arms to Israel. With money raised from American Jews, he bought decommissioned military
transport aircraft – from the U.S. government. -The war was over, they didn’t need them anymore.
So they put ‘em up for sale and we bought ‘em. Schwimmer gathered up 13 cargo planes at airports
in California and New Jersey, and enlisted dozens of American World War II veteran aviators.
-One day I got a letter. Do you want to fly munitions to Palestine? If so, call this number
and ask for Swifty. I didn’t waste a second. It was the idea of getting back into action.
-They weren’t all Jews. There were many who agreed to fly with us because they knew me
personally. We’d flown together in World War II. I trusted them.
Many of the men who joined the operation were moved by scenes from the Nazi death camps.
-My page one in my family album is a picture of my grandmother, who at the age of 70 was
shoved into the ovens of Auschwitz. I felt that the remnants of the Holocaust had a
right to life and some chance of happiness. -I’m not Jewish. I just did it because I saw
how they looked in the concentration camps. I just felt that something had to be done.
Others like Leon Frankel, a torpedo bomber pilot, wanted to help create a Jewish state.
-When I informed my mother where I was going and what I was doing, she just completely fell
apart. She had just gotten her son back from three years of war. All of a sudden
I’m taking off again. We came for different reasons. A guy like Leo Nomis, for example,
was more or less a soldier of fortune. He fought in the Eagle Squadron in the RAF. Could’ve gone
to the other side. But he came to us. Many of the men involved knew the
smuggling operation violated U.S. law. -That was cloak and dagger. There were FBI
agents spying on what they were doing. -We broke the law. There’s no two ways
about it. We broke the law badly. After Czechoslovakia agreed to sell
Israel arms, Schwimmer and his men headed out. Taking a circuitous route to avoid detection,
they hopscotched across the globe to pick up the weapons – some of them originally
built for the Germans during World War II. -They were really Nazi weapons. If you look
closely into the metal, you will see the German eagle. But you know what, I never saw anybody
who complained they were using a German weapon. We were just happy to have weapons, period.
Included in the deal were 25 fighter planes with rickety engines. But
Schwimmer’s men volunteered to fly those, too. -I started it up and I figured, ‘Oy vey iz mir!
We’re in trouble.’ I was checked out after a 35-minute flight. In the American Air Force,
in order to get checked out in an airplane, you get about 100 hours.
Then, in May 1948, as war broke out between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Schwimmer’s
crew started delivering the weapons to Israel. But the invading forces appeared unstoppable.
-We got information that the Egyptians had an armored column driving up the coast and our
people had nothing there to stop them. -A jeep roars up and he says, “Listen,
the whole Egyptian army is six miles from the airbase here. If we don’t stop them tonight,
they will be in Tel Aviv tomorrow morning and the war is over; we’re finished.”
That’s when Lenart and three other pilots launched Israel’s first aerial attack.
-The most critical thing was surprise. The Egyptians had no idea that we had airplanes.
-I turned the airplane upside down, which is a split S, because when you dive bomb,
the closer you get to a 90-degree angle, the better your aim is.
Although the aerial attack caused little physical damage, it spooked the Egyptians into abandoning
their march on Tel Aviv. -And the Egyptian column
never moved north after that. Throughout the 9-month war,
Schwimmer’s pilots took part in combat missions, bombed Cairo and ferried supplies to besieged
Israeli soldiers in the desert. They helped the Jewish state survive its first challenge.
-It was a feeling of having accomplished something. For once in my life.
But the war was costly, with thousands of lives lost on both sides and more than
700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes on land that became part of Israel.
As for the Americans who took part… -The United States put an order out to
arrest us. But they were never able to catch up to us. Until in the end,
when we went ahead and gave ourselves up. Schwimmer and ten others were charged with arms
smuggling and breaking the Neutrality Act. One man went to prison, and others were fined $10,000.
-America has never flinched from its commitment to the state of Israel.
-It’s a special relationship. But over the decades, as the U.S.
became Israel’s strongest supporter, three American presidents would issue pardons
for some of the men, including Al Schwimmer. -I have no grudge against the United States. They
did what they had to do. I did what I had to do to help create a state of Israel. That was the goal.