The Hero Returns - Ilan

The Hero Returns - Ilan Ramon, Colonel in the Cheyl Ha'Avir (Israeli Air Force) and Israel's first astronaut, has a long history of heroism.

Nissan Ratzlav-Katz writes about it - and what it means to us in America, as well as in Israel.

Ramon himself exuded tremendous national, local, and Jewish pride. He brought with him into space symbols of his state, his people, and his history, including a miniature Torah scroll, which, he said, "60 years ago a little boy in Bergen-Belsen [concentration camp] received from the rabbi of Amsterdam...." During a press conference from space just last week, Ramon related to a rapt Israel, "That boy, Yehoyachin Yosef, survived the Holocaust, arrived in Israel, fought in the country's wars and then went on to become a distinguished professor of planetary physics." The Torah scroll that survived the European inferno, the Israeli air-force colonel said, "symbolizes more than anything the ability of the Jewish people to survive everything, including horrible periods, and go from the darkest days to days of hope and faith in the future."...

...Ilan Ramon is more than a local Israeli hero, however. If justice is to be done to his legacy, he should be memorialized by all peoples of the free world, but especially by the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. For were it not for Ilan Ramon, and other still-anonymous fighter pilots, the U.S. military would today be facing an Iraq armed with nuclear weapons.

In 1981, Col. Ilan Ramon was one of the eight Israeli pilots who bombed and destroyed the French-built Iraqi nuclear reactor, at Osirak. It was a shocking blow, as brave as it was audacious, and it set back Iraqi plans to acquire nuclear-missile capability by decades. While it provoked the wrath of the world at the time — with the U.S. State Department even condemning the strike as endangering peace in the region — ten years later, the Israeli incursion into Iraqi airspace was a bit better appreciated. Dick Cheney, U.S. secretary of defense during the first Gulf War, wrote to David Ivry, the commander of Israel's air force at the time of the Osirak mission, "For Gen. David Ivry, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 — which made our job much easier in Desert Storm."

As the Middle East heads through perhaps its most difficult time in 30 years, the real status of the Israeli/US relationship will be under stern scrutiny. This incident sets it off.

Posted by Mitch at February 3, 2003 01:30 PM