El Al

El Al   (Airline)
Headquarters	Ben-Gurion Airport, Lod, Centre District, Israel
Type	commercial
Staff	6,000

El Al (meaning skywards in Hebrew) is an Israeli airliner founded in 1948. It is known as the flag carrier of Israel, a term given to the most important airliner of a country, receiving government support. Being headquartered in one of the most fortified airports in the world, the airline - separately from the airport - has a permanent security detail both on board and at other airports located of mostly Shin Bet agents. Being the flag carrier of Israel, the company has the remarkable reputation to be the only one in the world to run with missile-defence systems. It only serves Kosher-meals and does not run on the Jewish Shabbat or Jewish holidays. It has a controversial reputation for a polarizing lack of flight maintenance, specific destinations, extreme security measures and usage for covert operation.

Formation

Chaim Weizmann was planned to scheduled to fly back to Israel during the 1948 Palestine war, but being hit by the embargo surrounding the war, a C-54 military plane was repainted in Israeli colours with a text of the "El Al/Israel National Aviation Company" with extra fuel tanks and flew directly to Ben-Gurion Airport.

During the middle-eastern 'tense' 1950s the company was most noticeably known as the small Israeli airliner known for running operations for Israeli Intelligence, airlifting Jewish immigrants from Iran, Jemen and Iraq. Nazi war figure Adolf Eichmann was the target of extraordinary rendition 1960. After ditching their use of military planes as aircraft and promoting travel to the US - and being backed by the most right-wing political parties - the company began to become popular and well-known in the Jewish community.

Destinations

The company - known to also fly military supplies with cargo planes for Israeli intelligence - has received criticism for their poor state of the aircraft, which is quite strange for a company with the urge to install anti-missile defence systems. The European Civil Aviation Authority even threatened to blacklist the airline in 2009. The company does not fly to Africa (except South Africa), every Latino country south of the US, except the Department of French Guiana, Japan, both parts of Korea, Australia and New-Zealand. El Al blames Saudi-Arabia for not allowing them for using Saudi airspace.

Incidents

The supreme court of Israel dismissed a claim from a civil rights group following dozens of complaints during the 2010s remarking the profiling of Arab passengers in 2014. The FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Interpol and Scotland Yard work in cooperation with Shin Bet members to interrogate and check flight-lists. Shin Bet is known to check all luggage at foreign airports personally, some times even removing passengers from planes or at airports for undisclosed reasons. It has only been the target of a hijack 'once', in 1968. The incident did not result in any deaths, being the longest hijacking in history according go the BBC. Every other terrorist-related incident was resolved by Shin Bet members on board or resulted in attackers striking outside the plane at Israeli airport-terminals.

Drug Smuggling

Antimissile defence-systems, 7 Intelligence agencies checking flight lists, extraordinary rendition at it finest, but drug smuggling utilizing a separate jet bridge is still happening at El Al. Isn't that interesting?

Israeli police arrested senior El Al personnel, a Shin Bet member, and two other men after discovering their involvement in a cocaine deal using El-Al planes coming from South Africa in 2018. The investigations revealed a complex drug-network in one of the most secured airports with at least 35 people arrested, including the head of the security office for Benjamin Netanyahu Beno Shalom.

Mossad and Shin Bet

El Al flight 402 was shot down by Bulgaria in 1955. Anti-aircraft systems shot down the civilian plane en route from London to Lod with a stop in Vienna after it entered Bulgarian airspace. Israel and Bulgaria never agreed why the plane entered Bulgarian airspace and diverted from their route by approximately hundred miles. Much remains unclear. Bulgaria apologized but Israel nor the investigation explained why the plane was there.

in 1986 an Irish Women tried to board the plane with a semtex-bomb, she claimed innocent and blamed her fiancé, Nazer Hindawi, a Jordanian. After months of interrogation Hindawi confessed to being blackmailed by the Mossad. Jacques Chirac told The Washington Times in an interview that he, German PM Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher thought "the Hindawi plot was a provocation designed to embarrass Syria and destabilize the Assad regime ... 'by' ... people probably connected to Israeli Mossad", with Chirac expressing certainty the actual source of the Semtex was concealed. In 1992, Israeli spook Ari-Ben Menashe revealed in 1992 the operation was conducted by former Mossad head Rafael Eitan with the aim of implicating the Syrian embassy of London and expel all diplomats from England. A Jordanian Mossad agent paid #50.000 to Hindawi to put the bomb on the plane.

El Al Flight 1862 crashed into a high-rise neighbourhood in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam in 1992, known as the Bijlmer disaster Multiple witnesses, including police and firemen told the investigators of the Dutch Prosecutor Service they saw "Israeli security agents" on site, some recited the badge, and a police officer recognizing them from shooting practise. Some even said within 8 minutes, they assaulted Dutch police after being denied entry to the site. They did gain access tot the site - being at multiple points the only one allowed to pick-up debris, but not aiding in salvaging or aiding firemen. Nobody is clear how and why. The investigation revealed the plane had Sarin on board but a full cargo list was never released. Many first responders and citizens developed health problems similar to Gulf-War syndrome. Officially a connection with the plane crash had never been made. The inquiry into the crash didn't answer a lot of important questions.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:The plot to blow up El Al Flight 016	Article	6 April 2019	Marianne Colloms Dick Weindling	Two weeks after Nezar Hindawi's trial, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac was interviewed on tape by Arnaud de Borchgrave, the editor of the Washington Times. When he was asked about the attempt to blow up the El Al plane Chirac said he had been told by the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher that they believe it had been set up by Mossad agents to destabilise Syria's Assad regime.

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