Free Republic

During 1940, three of the most significant Zionist leaders in the world – Chaim Weizmann, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and David Ben Gurion , all visited the United States , hoping to gain a measure of American Jewish support or US government support for the creation of a Jewish army to help fight the Nazis. Rick Richman's new book, Racing Against History, provides an interesting and very carefully researched history of these visits, the leaders' goals, what they accomplished, and what prevented greater success. Richman's book is a fascinating look at a moment in time, different seemingly from our own, but with...

Press Release – FAA Statement–FAA Lifts Flight Restrictions for Ben Gurion International Airport The FAA has lifted its restrictions on U.S. airline flights into and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport by cancelling a Notice to Airmen it renewed earlier today. The cancellation is effective at approximately 11:45 p.m. EDT. Before making this decision, the FAA worked with its U.S. government counterparts to assess the security situation in Israel and carefully reviewed both significant new information and measures the Government of Israel is taking to mitigate potential risks to civil aviation. The FAA’s primary mission and interest are the protection...

Sirens sounded in the Tel Aviv area on Friday morning at approximately 10:45 a.m., in what Hamas claims to be its first attack targeting the Ben Gurion International Airport. The Iron Dome anti-missile defense system shot down three rockets over the Tel Aviv area, according to the IDF Spokesperson's Office. However, shrapnel from the intercepted rockets has fallen in multiple places throughout the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, including one near a gas station; no injuries or damage have been reported. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, boasting that this is the first time they have specifically targeted Ben Gurion Airport,...

British student Gary Spedding was deported from Israel on Friday because his social media activity allegedly posed a "security threat." Spedding is an activist against anti-Semitism and in favor of finding a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to Sky News, Spedding arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday on a flight from London's Luton Airport. At immigration, he was taken to an interview room where he was subjected to a full body search and interrogation. Immigration officers took Spedding's phone and went through its contents for four-to-five hours, copying content from it, according to Spedding, who kept his...

I’ve been asked by several followers to share my experiences and thoughts on Israeli airport security and how it stacks up against the TSA here in the U.S. First let me detail my experiences with Israeli security. We arrived to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv via a local taxi. The car was stopped at the gate to the airport and a security guard armed with an M4 rifle asked the driver a few questions in Hebrew. He then walked around the car and opened the rear door to ask me where I was going. I responded I was going...

On Monday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel’s state archive released the 53-year-old transcript of the Cabinet meeting at which then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion informed his ministers that Adolf Eichmann had been captured and was held in Israel. The transcript offers a unique and entirely candid look at one of the key moments in Israel’s history. One of the ministers, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, was so flabbergasted by the news that he blurted out in Yiddish, “Ve macht man das?” How does one do that? The Cabinet meeting took place on May 23, 1960. Twelve days earlier, a Mossad team captured Eichmann outside of...

About 240 immigrants from Ethiopia - half of them children - are scheduled to arrive in at Ben-Gurion International Airport, Monday afternoon, on the opening flight of Operation Wings of a Dove, organized by the Jewish Agency, following the government's decision, in July, to speed up the pace of aliyah and close the bringing of the Falash Mura to Israel. A total of 600 Falash Mura are slated to be absorbed at the Ivim Absorption Center in the Sha'ar Hanegev Council region. The rest will be spread among the 16 absorption centers operated by the Jewish Agency and the Absorption...

At a panel discussing the life of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, President Shimon Peres said Monday that Ben-Gurion was a “religious Jew.” Peres said that Ben-Gurion “did not fight against the religious, but against the attempt to turn religion into a bureaucracy. Ben-Gurion saw himself as a religious mam. He was the greatest diplomat of them all, and he had a prophetic vision. “He did not make a mistake in anything...

Police detained two leftist activists Sunday at Ben Gurion International Airport Sunday afternoon after they held up signs that said "Welcome to Palestine." Forty anti-Israeli activists were refused entry into Israel in the hours between Saturday night and 3:00 p.m. Sunday. They were all taken to questioning in the Interior Ministry office at the airport, pending their repatriation. The two leftists unfurled the signs immediately after Police Central District Commander Maj. Gen. Bentzi Sau gave reporters a briefing on the situation. As they were led away, nationalist Israeli activists shouted at them: "Go see what is going on in Syria!"...

The Israeli government has issued an official “welcome” letter to the pro-‘Palestinian’ “flytilla” activists who plan on arriving in the country on Saturday and Sunday. It reads as follows: “Dear Activists, "We appreciate your choosing to make Israel the object of your humanitarian concerns. “We know there were many other worthy choices. “You could have chosen to protest the Syrian regime’s daily savagery against its own people, which has claimed thousands of lives. "You could have chosen to protest the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent and its support of terrorism throughout the world. "You could have chosen to protest...

As hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London's Heathrow Airport in 1986 comes to mind. It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing one Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland. While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to "get rid of the thing," he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in "the Holy Land." He also insisted on their...

While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification. That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threats with far less inconvenience. "It is mind boggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He has worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world. "Israelis, unlike...

JERUSALEM – Israeli fighter jets were scrambled to escort a Delta Air Lines plane flying from New York to Tel Aviv after the pilot activated a hijacking alert by mistake. Transportation ministry official, Dani Shenar, told Israeli media Saturday that nobody was hurt in the incident. He said two jets hovered briefly over the plane carrying over 100 people and escorted it safely to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. A technical malfunction had prevented the pilot from communicating with the airport's control tower. The transportation ministry said it will launch an investigation.

Ben-Gurion Airport security stops vehicle carrying four Arab passengers just 100 meters before entrance to newly-constructed terminal 3 Ben-Gurion Airport security stopped Sunday a taxicab carrying four Arab passengers just 100 meters (about 330 feet) short of the entrance to the newly constructed terminal 3, just moments before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was scheduled to leave for Europe. The taxi, which busted through the checkpoint at the airport’s entrance at around 3:45 p.m., raised the alert of security personnel, who quickly set up another checkpoint near terminal 3. Guards aimed their weapons at the passengers as the taxi approached, ordered...

Peres pays tribute at Ben Gurion's Polish birthplace Mon Apr 24, 12:01 PM ET PLONSK, Poland (AFP) - Former Israeli premier Shimon Peres has travelled to the Polish town of Plonsk, birthplace 120 years ago of David Ben Gurion, to pay tribute to Israel's founding father and first prime minister. "I'm very moved at being here in Plonsk, the town that gave the Jews Ben Gurion," Peres said Monday during a meeting with municipal councillors in the town, 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Warsaw. "Ben Gurion was the leader of a state that had never existed before, of a...

OK. So I understand that you are ticked off at Israel, and in love with the Palestinians. That's fine with me, as long as you have truly weighed up all the facts. So, you want to boycott Israel? I'll be sorry to miss you, but if you are doing it - do it properly. Let me help you. Check all your medications. Make sure that you do not have tablets, drops, lotions, etc., made by Abic or Teva. It may mean that you will suffer from colds and flu this winter but, hey, that's a small price for you to...

Palestinian terrorist organizations have been making great efforts to attack flights at Ben Gurion Airport. To date, the Israeli security services have prevented nine attempts to down flights taking-off or landing at the airport. These attempts are behind Israel's insistence on building an extension of the counter-terrorism barrier that is designed to protect the airport from the east and prevent shoulder-fired missiles or other weapons from being aimed at flights, similar to the Al Qaeda attempt to down an Arkia flight in Kenya. Security officials predict that a successful attack or even an attempt that reaches the final stages would...

The 30th anniversary of the death of Israel's first Prime Minister and the man who declared the State of Israel's independence, David Ben-Gurion, was commemorated today in the Negev community Sde Boker. Ben-Gurion, who saw the flowering of the Negev as one of the major challenges of his generation, moved to Sde Boker in 1953, after the first of his two resignations from Israel's top office. Before his death at the age of 87, he asked that the epitaph on his tombstone say only that he immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1906. Today's official state ceremony was attended...

A cheap alternative to the lasers used in surgery has been devised using an energy source that is free and abundant - sunshine. The working prototype made by Israeli physicists concentrates sunlight down a fibre-optic cable to provide a tool for surgeons. Jeffrey Gordon and his colleagues at Ben-Gurion University in Israel hope it might one day replace the expensive surgical lasers used in operations such as the destruction of tumours in the liver. The light for the surgical "suntrap" is gathered by a parabolic mirrored dish, 20 centimetres across. This concentrates the light, which is then focused on to...

An El Al plane landed safely at Ben Gurion International Airport after reporting a problem with it's hydraulic system. The craft was bound for New York and returned just over an hour after it had left Israel. The airport was put on the highest level of alert - code red - with 20 ambulances, fire and rescue crews placed on standby. A spokesman for El Al said that the passengers and crew were not in any danger. The 747 circled over the sea for about an hour to dump its 13 tons of fuel so that it could come in...