Klawe Rzeczy for BI
One night last October in Tel Aviv, Danny Schwimmer hid with his family in an alley as rockets rained around them. They'd been out for a quick bite when the fighting broke out. "Just keep your head down," he told his daughter and his mother, Rina, who sat dazed in her wheelchair. "Now we got to wait." As he spoke, Israeli military jets streaked overhead, racing to counterattack against Hamas.
To the Schwimmers, the planes represented more than protection. Were it not for the late patriarch of their family — Danny's father, Al — there would be no Israeli Air Force, or perhaps even an Israel. As the country's founder and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once declared, "America's greatest gift to Israel was Al Schwimmer."