Operation Balak
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During the chaotic period of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Operation Balak was the smuggling of arms purchased in Europe, awoiding various embargoes and boycotts, to the Zionists. Of particular note was the delivery of 23 Czechoslovakia-made Avia S-199 fighters, the post-war version of Messerschmitt Bf 109 produced for the German Luftwaffe.
A former British soldier named Gordon Levett, who served in World War II, joined the Israel Machal (the overseas volunteer unit) early in 1948 along with a few Jewish pilots from Britain. Levett was given the task of flying Avia S-199 fighters, supplied by Czechoslovakia from the Žatec military airfield (code-named Etzion Base, seventy-five kilometers west of Prague), to Aqir aerodrome code-named Ekron, formerly RAF station close to Rehovot now Tel Nof Israeli Air Force Base. The Žatec base had been put at disposal of the Haganah by a new Czechoslovakian foreign minister Vlado Clementis (a prominent Slovakian member of Czechoslovakian Communist Party) and was under the command of Yehuda Ben Chorin. Operation Balak lasted several months, during which time Levett managed to airlift tons of arms, ammunition and personnel (Rothkirchen, 2006, p. 287).
The name is a reference to the Balak, king of the Moabites, son of Zippor, whose name is mentioned in Numbers 22:2. By extension, the name came to mean 'Destroyer.'
See also: Arms shipments from Czechoslovakia
[edit] References
- Rothkirchen, Livia (2006). The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-3952-1
- Eliezer Cohen (Ceetah), The sky is not the limit, Ma'riv Books, 1990
