Abie Nathan

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Abie Nathan 1961
Abie Nathan's Shalom 1 , the Stearman , registered 4X-AIA , on October 1, 1965

Abie (Abraham) Nathan ( Hebrew אייבי נתן; *  April 29, 1927 in Abadan , Persia ; † August 27, 2008 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli pilot and peace activist .

Live and act

Nathan spent his teenage years in Bombay , where he was raised by Jesuits. At the age of seventeen he became a pilot in the British Air Force in 1944 . In 1948 he fought as a machal (foreign volunteer) in the Israeli War of Independence and then stayed in Israel. In the 1950s he worked as a pilot for the Israeli airline El Al and in the early 60s he opened the restaurant "California" in Tel Aviv.

In 1965 he ran as chairman of the NES party for the 6th Knesset and only missed the required number of votes by 2000 votes. After the election results were announced, he declared that he wanted to fly to Egypt with a message of peace. On February 28, 1966, he landed in his Shalom 1 aircraft (a Stearman with the registration number 4X-AIA ) in Port Said and was arrested immediately after landing. His request to meet Egyptian President Gamal Abd el Nasser to give him his message of peace was denied and he was sent back to Israel the next day, where he was arrested and released on bail for illegally crossing the border. This "peace flight" changed his whole life. After returning to Israel, he decided to devote himself entirely to working for peace. Peace missions to Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union followed in the following decades . However, many political leaders refused to meet with him. On the other hand, he was taken seriously by other eminent personalities, including Pope Paul VI. , Bertrand Russell , Jean-Paul Sartre and Robert Kennedy .

For more than thirty years Nathan fought for his ideas, collected money and, with the help of international organizations, set up refugee camps for the victims of earthquakes, hunger and war in Cambodia , Bangladesh , Biafra , Colombia and Ethiopia . In Israel he supported organizations such as the Cancer League, Ilan (help for disabled children), Yad Sarah (an Israel-wide network of volunteers to support the elderly, the disabled and those in need of care) and many others.

The radio station Voice of Peace, founded by Nathan in 1973, worked as a pirate station on board a ship in international waters of the Mediterranean. Among others, John Lennon helped Nathan to buy his Peace Ship . The station broadcast around the clock for twenty years, mostly in English, a program that consisted largely of music and promoted peace and understanding between Israelis and Palestinians . In 1993, operations were shut down, partly because of financial problems, partly because after the signing of the Oslo Peace Agreement , the public thought the station's mission had been accomplished and the advertising revenue failed to materialize. On November 28, 1993 the ship was sunk.

Nathan also drew attention to himself through other spectacular actions, such as in 1977 through the public destruction of war toys and in 1978 through a hunger strike against the Israeli settlement policy in the occupied territories .

Since the early 1980s, Nathan met with leading representatives of the PLO . When encounters between Israeli individuals and members of “terrorist organizations” were forbidden by law, Nathan fought for the repeal of this law from 1989 to 1992, including a 40-day hunger strike in 1991, which he broke off only after Israeli President Chaim Herzog intervened . For a meeting with Yasser Arafat , he was sentenced to 18 months in prison on September 18, 1991, of which he had to serve almost six months under a presidential pardon.

After 1993 he mainly focused his humanitarian work on Africa. In 1997 Abie Nathan received the Nuremberg International Human Rights Prize .

In 1997 he suffered a stroke during a stay in the United States, where he wanted to write his autobiography, which left him partially paralyzed. Abie Nathan last lived in a retirement home in Tel Aviv, where he died on August 27, 2008 at the age of 81.

The core thesis that Nathan advocated as a former war participant was that it was possible to change at any time, and that even normal people from the people could perform “miracles”, since a person alone is not powerless, but rather could move a lot.

"Nissiti" (the Hebrew word for German "I tried it.") Reads the inscription on his tombstone.

reception

On January 7, 2014, Eric Friedler's documentary The Voice of Peace - The Dream of Abie Nathan was first broadcast by ARD. Among the contemporary witnesses who comment on their relationship to Nathan and his work are the Israeli President Shimon Peres , the musicians Daniel Barenboim , Zubin Mehta and Yoko Ono , the actors Michael Caine and Yftach Katzur , the author Georg Stefan Troller , the Rabbi Israel Meir Lau , the historian Moshe Zimmermann , the writer and peace activist Uri Avnery and Ruth Dajan , the first wife of the Defense Minister Moshe Dajan .

literature

Movie

  • The Voice of Peace - Abie Nathan's dream. Documentary by Eric Friedler , 2014.
  • Abie Nathan - As The Sun Sets. Documentary by Eytan Harris, 2005.
  • Abie - The Peace Pirate. The ballad of the good citizen. FRG 1979.

Web links

Commons : Abie Nathan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Israeli 'Peace Pilot' Again Tries to See Nasser; Abie Nathan Is Sent Home After Landing at Port Said - Arrested on Return , The New York Times. July 29, 1967, p. 6. Retrieved April 29, 2007. 
  2. ↑ Abie Nathan Biography . Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  3. ^ Racing to Save the Hungry , Time. November 12, 1979. Retrieved April 30, 2007. 
  4. ↑ Clifford D May: Israel Arrives in Ethiopia on Relief Mission , The New York Times. December 18, 1984. Retrieved on May 1, 2007.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / select.nytimes.com  
  5. ↑ Israeli peace pioneer Abie Nathan dies aged 81 ( Memento from August 28, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Allison Kaplan Sommer: Abie Nathan pulls up anchor , The Jerusalem Post. October 1, 1993. Retrieved April 30, 2007. 
  7. ^ Nathan to sink peace ship today , The Jerusalem Post. November 28, 1993. Retrieved April 30, 2007. 
  8. ^ Abie Nathan Mounts 'Protest for Peace' , The New York Times. August 13, 1977. Retrieved May 1, 2007. 
  9. ^ Israeli Peace Advocate Ends Hunger Strike , The New York Times. June 7, 1991. Retrieved May 1, 2007. 
  10. ^ Israel Frees Abie Nathan , The New York Times. March 31, 1992. Retrieved April 29, 2007. 
  11. ^ Abie Nathan's Jail Term Cut Sharply by Israeli President , The New York Times. March 30, 1992. Retrieved April 29, 2007. 
  12. ^ Israeli peace pioneer Abie Nathan dies at 81st The Associated Press, August 27, 2008, archived from the original on September 15, 2008 ; accessed on October 6, 2013 .
  13. ↑ Peace activist Abie Nathan has died. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. August 28, 2008, accessed January 8, 2014 .
  14. ↑ Michael Hanfeld: The pirate who sailed under the peace flag . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 7, 2014, p. 31.
  15. ^ Editor NDR-Film: The protagonists from “The Voice of Peace” ( Memento from September 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 30, 2014.
  16. ↑ Political documentary: Peace is a cool thing , a review by Joachim Huber in Der Tagesspiegel from January 6, 2014, accessed on January 8, 2014.
  17. ^ Film page ( memento of July 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at ARD television, accessed on January 7, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Nathan, Abie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nathan, Abraham; אייבי נתן (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli pilot and peace activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Abadan
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 2008
Place of death Tel Aviv