Hollywood powerhouses Warner Bros. Studios and Jewish screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing", "The Social Network")have announced that they are working on a new film that will deal with one of the central figures in the history of the establishment of the Israeli Air Force, winner of the Israel Prize and founder of the IAA, Al Schwimmer.
Schwimmer, a Jewish American who declined to use his birth name Adolf, was a pilot in World War II and became a central figure in the establishment of the Israeli Air Force by leading a secret and complex operation to smuggle fighter planes and weapons to the young country in 1948. At the time, the United States - which feared exacerbating tensions in the Middle East - prohibited the supply of weapons to Israel. In response, Schwimmer founded a smuggling ring that could easily fill the pages of a Hollywood spy movie script.
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Al Schwimmer, a Jewish American pilot in World War II, became a central figure in the establishment of the Israeli Air Force by leading a se
(Photo: Courtesy of the David Rubinger Archive)
He purchased a fleet of 30 American planes left in military inventory after the war, transferred them through a fictitious airline operating in Panama, and recruited volunteers - most of them World War II veterans - to transport the planes to Israel. The list of helpers also included dubious figures such as the gang of the Jewish mobster Bugsy Siegel, Meir Lansky - another American Jewish mobster, and, according to some claims, Frank Sinatra and Milton Rubenfeld, the father of the actor Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman).
Despite the challenges, and the investigations by the FBI, Schwimmer and his men managed to transfer to Israel no less than 125 fighter planes and 50,000 weapons, some of which came from Czech warehouses from the Nazi era. This contribution, according to historians, changed the balance of power in favor of Israel in the War of Independence and ensured its existence during the critical years of the establishment of the state.
Schwimmer paid a price for this, and in 1950 his American citizenship was revoked due to a violation of the United States Neutrality Act. On David Ben-Gurion's recommendation, he returned to Israel to establish a company that would specialize in the production and maintenance of commercial and military aircraft. By the time he retired from his position in 1988, the company he founded, Israel Aerospace Industries, had become the largest in the country and its value was estimated at $1 billion.
In the 1980s he also served as a special advisor to the prime minister at the time, Shimon Peres. As part of his position, he acted as a mediator between the United States and Iran during the hostage crisis. Only in 2001 – years after he refused to ask for amnesty – did he get back his American citizenship from the U.S. President Bill Clinton. He continued to lead the industry in Israel and was one of the founders of the aeronautics department at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and in 2006 won the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement. He died in 2011, on his 94th birthday, was buried in the Savion cemetery and left behind a wife, a son, a daughter and grandchildren.
The film will be written by the award-winning Sorkin who, according to reports on industry websites in the U.S., may also direct and try to bring this story to the big screen in a way that will earn him a place of honor in cinematic history, just as Schwimmer's name was given a place of honor in Israeli history.
The inspiration for the script comes from an article published in Business Insider last March called "America's Greatest Gift to Israel" - a quote from Ben Gurion about Schwimmer.
This is not the first time that Schwimmer's story has received a film adaptation: in 2015, a documentary called "A Wing and a Prayer" by the Israeli-American filmmaker Boaz Dvir was released, in which Schwimmer himself and the veterans of the Air Force participated. In addition, other films such as "Above and Beyond" and "Where I Stand: The Hank Greenspun Story" dealt with Schwimmer's smuggling efforts and their impact on Israeli history.
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