“A bloody shame” said Israeli peace pilot Abie Nathan when he learned from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that the plane he piloted to Egypt on a one-man peace mission shortly after the Six-Day War was destroyed by fire Friday night while on display in a Ramat Gan park. Nathan spoke to the JTA from his peace ship, “Peace” which he hopes to sail to the Middle East in June to beam peace broadcasts to Israel and the Arab states. The “Peace” is docked in West New York, N.J. on the west shore of the Hudson River opposite Manhattan.
Israeli police took two 16-year-old boys into custody for setting fire to Nathan’s plane, named Shalom I. They indicated that fire was an act of vandalism by a group of youths who were having a “good time” at the park and decided to start a bon fire.
Nathan flew the plane to Egypt in July, 1967, landing at Port Said on the second of his one-man peace missions. He flew his first peace mission to Egypt in a different plane in Feb. 1966. In both instances he was released by Egyptian authorities and allowed to leave the country with the aircraft. “They even refueled it,” Nathan told the JTA today.
He said the single engine, two-seater Auster, a British plane similar to a Piper Cub, had originally belonged to King Hussein of Jordan who got it as a gift from Queen Elizabeth II of England. Hussein donated it to a flying club in Lebanon which sold it to a flying club in England where Nathan said he purchased it for $5000. He said the plane was worth much more now because it was an antique.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
