Death From Above

This is the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Museum. Did I say "museum"? I meant: "candy store". It's a huge tarmac filled with over a hundred mothballed warplanes, anti-aircraft batteries and missile-launchers, helicopters, and various forms of ordnance.

Oh, boys and their toys. I haven't had this much fun since I was a six-year-old in the Transformers aisle of Toys R' Us. I swear to God, there is no better way to entertain a guy than to set him loose in a field of war machines.

"As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young,
spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her
wings..."- Deuteronomy 32:11

The Bible is Israel's favorite source for jingoistic slogans. And it works.

The insignia of the IAF's squadrons. Hornets, dragons, and long-horned rams with wings, oh my.

A Boeing 707 converted into a theatre. Apparently, this was the plane used to transport Israeli troops to the rescue of the Israeli hostages at Entebbe. I was then treated to a short film about the IAF, complete with cheesy, over-synthesized Top Gun music, frizzy 80's haircuts, the usual repertoire of Danger Zone aerial acrobatics, and dull-voiced, recruitment-video narration.

The IAF is probably the most formidable air force in the world, and no amount of cynicism or try-hard humor can downplay its battle-record.

It has destroyed over 1200 enemy aircraft; over 600 in dogfights. And how many has it lost? 15 in dogfights. 15. That's a ratio of 41:1.

The video didn't say anything about aircraft lost outside of dogfights... say, to anti-aircraft fire... which means that this number is likely much higher than 15. Ssshhhhhhhh.

My favorite part of the video? "The Israeli Air Force's actions are consistent with the values of Judaism."

An interviewed pilot also declared: "Of course, we want the kill. But when the fight is over, and the kill is scored, I like to see the [enemy's parachute] canopy open. [Meaning: he ejected and survived.] I think a lot of guys feel the same way."

I think that the point of the video was to showcase (1) the might of the Israeli air force, and (2) the Israeli pilot as a chivalrous, compassionate warrior: one who fights without malice, and kills without losing his humanity.

In other words:

(1) We kill Arabs good.

(2) But we feel bad about it, so it's okay.

Humble beginnings. At the beginning of 1948, the Jews had a tiny, hodgepodge fleet of leisure planes, aircraft parts abandoned by the British, and rickety contraptions left over from the days of the Wright Brothers. They used all of them. The plane above was used on "bombing" missions, meaning: Jews would throw grenades and fire handguns while hanging out the open windows.

A sea-plane donated to the Jews in 1948 by a lawyer. Beggars can't be choosers.

Eventually, the Jews got their hands on real planes. They built them from leftover parts. They bought and begged them from any country that would sell them. They broke them down into parts and smuggled them with grain convoys into Israel. This is a Spitfire, of Battle of Britain fame.

I skipped over an assload of planes to get to the ones that Israel actually used to kill Arabs.This one did the job for two decades (1962-1982).

It's a Dassault Mirage IIICJ, a French warplane. It's not too well-known that for years, the Israelis almost exclusively used jets built by France.

This one scored 13 kills. 8 Syrians and 5 Egyptians, all Soviet-made MIGs of various make. The first in 1967 and the last in 1974.

Here's another 13-killer. If you're wondering about the writing, Israel began to sell off its Mirages to developing world militaries in the 80s. This one went to Argentina. Argentina later sold the old warhorse back to the IAF for $1.

The other member of the IAF's hall of fame: the American-made McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom, Uncle Sam's Cold War workhorse. Israeli Phantoms shot down over 100 enemy planes over the years.

This is a Kfir, one of Israel's attempts at a homegrown plane. They somehow never obtained the fame and scoresheet of the IAF's French and American imports.

In Singapore, I spent a few months, as a 13 year old, in the Air branch of the National Cadet Corps- Singapore's Hitler Youth. They gave us folders listing the specs of all of Singapore's warplanes, and made us memorize them under pain of death.

This busy, bulbous craft was the first I memorized, and I will remember it on my deathbed. It's an A4 Skyhawk- the Kris Draper of the warplane world. It'll fly escort, run ground support, recon, shoot up an SAM, and occasionally, chip in with a dogfight kill. I love you, A4 Skyhawk.

Probably the most modern craft on the field: the McDonnell Douglas F-15A Eagle.

Eagle's asshole.

The IAI Lavi, Israel's last, most spectacular failure at a homegrown product. Despite burning buckets of taxpayer shekels, developers were never able to make the Lavi perform comparably to foreign warplanes. After four years (1982-1986), the government pulled the plug.

The missile mount on the Lavi's wing tip.

The museum had a section dedicated to enemy aircraft: mostly MIGs, since Arab states were supplied by the Soviet Union. For the most part, Israel furnished this portion by buying MIG models used by Egypt and Syria from Soviet-supplied air forces outside the Mid East.

Two exceptions.

The plane above is a MIG-21- the AK-47 of the flying world. It was flown into Israel in 1966 by an Iraqi defector. (You might note that the plane's number is 007.) The Israelis picked it apart, and what it learned gave its pilots the edge on the Arab competition.

Ditto with this one, the MIG-23. In 1989, a Syrian defector flew it into northern Israel.

The remains of an Egyptian MIG.

We sure could use this beast up in the Yukon. The plaque in front of it reported that a chopper of this model once picked up an entire Egyptian radar station and flew away with it.

I have no idea what this thing is, but those missiles are self-explanatory. I had to take a photo of it because it looked like some stereotypical vehicle from Command and Conquer.

The "Gundish". Basically, it's four 23mm cannons mounted on an APC. Cheap, mobile, and surprisingly accurate, it was used by the Syrians to great effect... something like 30% of all Israeli aircraft it hit were shot down.

Some Egyptian donkeydick reassembled by the Israelis. Call me ignorant, but it seems like overkill when a missile is as long as the planes it's intended to shoot down.

This garbled piece of junk looks like it fell off a construction crane. Nonetheless, it's actually a sophistimacated radar detection system and missile launcher, all in one bizarre, alien package. Search and destroy!

I kid you not. An ugly, muddy corner of the Museum grounds housed a caged collection of peacocks, ostriches, hens, geese, and ducks. Above it, a plaque magnanimously declared that Jews must learn to share the skies with birds, even though: "The millions of migrating birds passing over Israel sometimes threaten the safety of our aircraft."

It was called "The Winged Safari".

I'm not sure what I found most funny about this absurd display. Perhaps it was the spectacle of squat, squawking poultry and lithe, striding ostriches bumbling around the same pathetic little dirt patch. Or the anthropocentricism it seemed so comically oblivious to. Or maybe, it seemed to me an appropriate statement about the future of the world, with nature caged behind barbed wire, surrounded by gawking tourists and machines of war.

Perhaps it was simply the delicious irony that the museum of the greatest air force in the world should contain an enclosure completely filled with flightless birds.


A couple of years ago, at a Holocaust memorial ceremony in Poland, Israel flew three fighter jets over Auschwitz. This was despite repeated requests by the Polish government for the Israelis not to do so.

The stated message: if these warplanes had been there 70 years ago, six million Jews would not have died. The real message: Fuck you, Poland. The majority of Jewish Holocaust victims were from Poland, whose citizens could not (some say "would not") lift a finger to prevent the slaughter. Israel inherited the grudge.

The Polish request was not unreasonable. Imagine Australian jets flying over Turkey to commemorate Gallipoli, or German planes over the graveyards of the Somme.

But the Israeli Occupation's last moral trump card is the Holocaust. Israel never misses the opportunity to remind the world that the survivors of Auschwitz should be allowed to do anything.