About
As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots-Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators-to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia. For the crime of arming Israel with basic war instruments and battle-ready planes, including Messerschmitt fighters and B-17 bombers, Schwimmer and key members of his team paid a heavy price. They lost their civil rights after being convicted of breaking the arms embargo and America's Neutrality Act. Years later, three presidents would pardon three of them. The operation members risked their lives, freedom, and US citizenship to prevent what Boaz Dvir is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker who produced and directed the PBS documentary A Wing and a Prayer, which tells this story and which won best feature documentary at the 2016 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and has screened around the world at such venues as the American Jewish Historical Society in New York, Columbia University's Global Center in Paris, and the Library Film Festival in India. Dvir teaches journalism at Penn State and has also produced and directed the documentaries Jessie's Dad, Discovering Gloria, and Cojot, about a French banker who sets out to kill former Nazi Klaus Barbie. His films have been covered by the Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Post, Haaretz, the Miami Herald, Stars and Stripes, and other publications. Dvir has written for Newsday, the Miami Herald, the Tampa Bay Times, the Jerusalem Post, the Times of Israel, and Explore magazine.