The Israeli Air Force operates as the aerial warfare branch of the Israel Defense Forces. It was founded on May 1948, shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence; as of August 2017 Aluf Amikam Norkin serves as the Air Force Commander. The Israeli Air Force was established using commandeered or donated civilian aircraft and obsolete and surplus World War II combat aircraft. More aircraft were procured, including Boeing B-17s, Bristol Beaufighters, de Havilland Mosquitoes and P-51D Mustangs; the Israeli Air Force played an important part in Operation Kadesh, Israel's part in the 1956 Suez Crisis, dropping paratroopers at the Mitla Pass. On June 5, 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force performed Operation Focus, debilitating the opposing Arab air forces and attaining air supremacy for the remainder of the war. Shortly after the end of the Six-Day War, Egypt initiated the War of Attrition, the Israeli Air Force performed repeated bombings of strategic targets deep within enemy territory.
When the Yom Kippur War broke out on October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian advances forced the IAF to abandon detailed plans for the destruction of enemy air defences. Forced to operate under the missile and anti-aircraft artillery threats, the close air support it provided allowed Israeli troops on the ground to stem the tide and go on the offensive. Since that war most of Israel's military aircraft have been obtained from the United States. Among these are the F-4 Phantom II, A-4 Skyhawk, F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon; the Israeli Air Force has operated a number of domestically produced types such as the IAI Nesher, the more advanced IAI Kfir. On June 7, 1981, eight IAF F-16A fighters covered by six F-15A jets carried out Operation Opera to destroy the Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osiraq. On June 9, 1982, the Israeli Air Force carried out Operation Mole Cricket 19, crippling the Syrian air defence array; the IAF continued to mount attacks on PLO positions in south Lebanon. On October 1, 1985, In response to a PLO terrorist attack which murdered three Israeli civilians in Cyprus, the Israeli air force carried out Operation Wooden Leg.
The strike involved the bombing of PLO Headquarters by F-15 Eagles. In 1991, the IAF carried out Operation Solomon. In 1993 and 1996, the IAF participated in Operation Accountability and Operation Grapes of Wrath, respectively, it took part in many missions since, including during the 2006 Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead, Operation Pillar of Cloud and Operation Protective Edge. On September 6, 2007, the Israeli Air Force bombed an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor in Operation Orchard; the Israeli Air Force states the following as its functions: To protect the State of Israel from aerial attack and to defend the IDF's zone of operations To achieve air supremacy throughout the IDF's zone of operation To participate in the fighting on both ground and sea To hit targets deep in enemy territory To create the aerial intelligence picture and participate in the creation of the general intelligence picture and its assessment To transport troops and weapons systems To carry out search and aerial evacuation missions To execute special operations To continually build and improve itself, as part of the general plan for improving the IDF and in accordance with the authority vested in it The insignia/roundel of the Israeli Air Force consists of a blue Star of David on a white circle.
Aircraft carry it painted in six positions – on the top and bottom of each wing, on each side of the fuselage. A low-visibility variant – a blue Star of David without the white circle - exists, although its use is rare. Squadron markings go on the tail fin. Forerunners of the Israeli Air Force were the Palestine Flying Service established by the Irgun in 1937, Sherut Avir, the air wing of the Haganah; the Israeli Air Force formed on May 28, 1948, shortly after Israel declared statehood and found itself under attack. The force consisted of a hodge-podge of commandeered or donated civilian aircraft converted to military use. A variety of obsolete and surplus ex-World War II combat-aircraft were sourced by various means to supplement this fleet; the backbone of the IAF consisted of 25 Avia S-199s, 60 Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk IXEs, the first of which, "Israel 1", was locally assembled from British abandoned spare parts and a salvaged engine from an Egyptian Air Force Spitfire with most of the rest purchased from Czechoslovakia.
Creativity and resourcefulness were the foundations of early Israeli military success in the air, rather than technology. The majority, 15 out of the first 18 pilots in 101 Squadron, of the IAF's first military-grade pilots in 1948 were foreign volunteers World War II veterans who wanted to collaborate with Israel's struggle for independence, with the rest of the military-grade pilots being Israeli WWII veterans, whereas pilots from Sherut Avir were locals who flew light civilian aircraft for supply and makeshift ground attack with hand-thrown light bombs and hand fired light machine guns. Israel's new fighter-arm first went into action on May 29, 1948, assisting efforts to halt the Egyptian advance from Gaza northwards. Four newly arrived Avia S-199s, flown by Lou Lenart, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman and Eddie Cohen, struck Egyptian forces near Ashdod. Although damage to the
David Elton Trueblood, known as "Elton Trueblood" or "D. Elton Trueblood", was a noted 20th-century American Quaker author and theologian, former chaplain both to Harvard and Stanford universities. Elton Trueblood was born December 12, 1900 in Iowa, the fourth of five children, was graduated from William Penn College in Iowa in 1922, he did graduate study at Brown University, Hartford Seminary, Harvard University before finishing his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in Philosophy. During his career, Trueblood held faculty and chaplain positions at Haverford College, Guilford College, Harvard University, Stanford University, Earlham College, he settled in the Quaker community of Richmond, Indiana intending to help spur the growth of Earlham College from a small regional religious school into a nationally recognized institution of higher learning. He was a founder of the Earlham School of Religion, a Quaker seminary in Richmond, contributed to a renaissance of American Quaker thought and action spurred on by the common experiences of Quaker intellectuals as conscientious objectors during World War II.
He sought to mentor younger Quakers into his nineties. Trueblood founded the Yokefellow movement and supported Stephen Ministries, his Yokefellow funders included some of his past students, such as planned community developer Charles Samuel Coble, whom Trueblood taught and coached in track in the late 1920s at Guilford College. He was a political conservative who supported Nixon's foreign policy, including the Vietnam War, gave the invocation at the 1972 Republican National Convention. Nonetheless, he was known for maintaining an internationalist perspective, serving for many years as the permanent representative from the global Quaker community to the World Council of Churches, an organization he helped bring into being. In the 1950s, he served as a senior advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who created a post for him as Director of Religious Information at the U. S. Information Agency. Time magazine profiled him in this role on March 15, 1954. During the Nixon Administration he again served as an adviser to the President.
Elton Trueblood wrote 33 books, including: The Predicament of Modern Man, Alternative to Futility, Foundations for Reconstruction, Signs of Hope, The Logic of Belief, Philosophy of Religion, Robert Barclay, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish, The Idea of a College, The People Called Quakers, The Incendiary Fellowship, The Trustworthiness of Religious Experience, A Place to Stand, Your Other Vocation and The Humor of Christ. Trueblood's short book, The Predicament of Modern Man, received much attention near the end of World War II for the way it addressed a widespread interest in finding spiritual meaning and morality in the face of such extreme suffering during World War II. In the book he asserted that searching for morality without a foundation in religion was a futile effort, using the analogy of trying to make cut flowers in a vase live forever. Elton wrote a shorter version of this basic thesis for Reader's Digest, which generated volumes of mail; some reviewers have considered Trueblood's books The Logic of Belief and Philosophy of Religion, among his most rigorous intellectual contributions to the field of philosophy of religion.
Trueblood's book on Abraham Lincoln caught the attention of Nancy Reagan, who talked about it in an interview with Good Housekeeping in September 1981. It was reissued in 2012 by Phoenix Press with the title Abraham Lincoln: A Spiritual Biography. Trueblood told several students and reviewers that he sought to provide the general audience with many readable works to promote a depth of religious thought among his readers. One of his final books was an autobiography titled While it is Day, which traced his personal journey from boyhood in Iowa and placed his personal history in the context of the history of his family's long connection with Quakerism. Trueblood became a lifetime friend of President Herbert Hoover, a Quaker, they first met when Elton was the chaplain and a faculty member at Stanford University and Hoover had retired to Palo Alto, California. They lived near each other and struck up a friendship that lasted for decades; when Hoover died in 1964 while Trueblood was traveling in southeast Asia, the State Department flew Trueblood back to the United States to perform the funeral service at the request of Hoover's family.
Trueblood was friends with Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, he had four children with his first wife, who died in 1955. Trueblood was remarried in 1956 to Virginia Zuttermeister in ceremonies held at the Washington National Cathedral. Trueblood retired from Earlham College in 1966, but lived in Richmond, for nearly the rest of his life. For many years he maintained a summer home on Lake Paupac, a Quaker retreat in the Pocono Mountains near Greentown, PA, he continued to give public speeches in retirement. Trueblood died on December 20, 1994, his obituary was featured in The New York Times. Elton Trueblood. While It Is Day: An Autobiography. Richmond, IN: Yokefellow Press, 1974. Newby, James R.. Elton Trueblood: Believer and Friend. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Newby, Elizabeth, ed. A Philosopher's Way: Essays and Addresses of D. Elton Trueblood. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1978. Newby, James R. ed. Basic Christianity: Addresses of D. Elton Trueblood. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1978.
The Best of Elton Trueblood, An Antholo
Raja Sourindra Mohun Tagore or Sourindro Mohun Tagore CIE was a Bengali musicologist who came from an upper-class family from Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. He published extensively on the topics, he founded the Bengal Music Bengal Academy of Music. A staunch supporter of the British Empire and its agencies in India, he was commissioned to set Indian translations of God Save the Queen to Indian tunes. Sourindro was the son of Hara Kumar Tagore and a younger brother of Jotindro Mohun Tagore belonging to the Pathuriaghata branch of the Tagore family, his family owned extensive lands including the battleground of Plassey and the pilgrimage site Ganga Sagar. He studied at the European-model Hindu College in Calcutta and took an interest in music, both Indian and western, he published a book on music at the age of fifteen, developed a system of musical notation for Indian music and set up the first Indian music orchestra in Calcutta. He donated many to museums across the world, he received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Oxford.
In 1877 the declaration of Queen Victoria as Empress of India led to the creation of the national anthem of "God Save the Queen". In 1882 a National Anthem Committee was created at the suggestion of Francis Harford. In 1883 he wrote On the Good That May Result to England and India from the Establishment of "God Save the Queen" as a National Anthem in Her Majesty's Eastern Empire. A translation of the wording of the anthem was made by Mirza Mohammed Bakir Khan of Bishop's College, Calcutta into Arabic and Persian; these were further translated into many other Indian languages. The problem of singing the anthem in a style that would suit Indian musical taste was however vexing and the committee chose the foremost authority on Indian music to help- "a letter will be forwarded to Dr. Sourindro Mohan Tagore, of Calcutta, the principal authority upon Hindu music, requesting him to secure the services of the best native composer, a melody which shall at once suit Oriental taste and the measure of the translated hymn."
The idea was supported by others like Sir Henry Rawlinson. Sourindra Mohun produced no less than twelve different variations of the anthem based on lum jhijhiti and nagara kirtana styles. In one variant he chose rag sahana which he claimed was the "favourite melody of the Mahomedan Emperors of India." Tagore claimed that Indians always supported rule by Kings and he published a book, Hindu Loyalty, with extracts from old Sanskrit sources on the need for rule by Kings. He dedicated the book to Augustus Rivers Thompson and supported the ideas of Canon Harford that the anthem would help earn loyalty, it has been noted that a major motivation for Sourindra Mohun to work with the National Anthem Committee was to align his family and social group with that of the colonial rulers. He set some poems by Lord Lytton to Indian tunes in A Few Lyrics Of Owen Meredith Set to Hindu Music, with Added Words and Signs Noting the Two-Part Form of the Tune in Hindustani Music and a Tal Pattern, he published on The Caste System of the Hindus and noted its antiquity and justified its role in Indian society.
Among Sourindra's published works was a translation of Kalidasa's Malavikagnimitra. He founded the Bengal Music School in 1871 and the Bengal Academy of Music in 1881, he was made Fellow of the University of Calcutta and a Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire in 1880 apart from being given the title of Raja. He was decorated Knight Commander of the Royal Order of the Crown of Italy and several other Royal recognitions from Sweden, Netherlands and Austria. In 1877, he made an initiative to renew musical ties with Japan by sending three musical instruments to the Emperor Mutsuhito of the Meiji Era to help bring the musical traditions of two nations together. Musica instruments donated to the Metropolitan Museum Bharatiya Natya Rahasya: Treatise on Indian Drama The Caste System of the Hindus Victoria-Giti-Mala. Yantra Kosha or a Treasury of musical instruments of ancient and of modern India, of various other countries English Verses set to Hindu Music in Honor of his Royal Highness The Prince of Wales Six principal rágas, with a brief view of Hindu music Hindu Music from Various Authors.
2nd edition A few lyrics of Owen Meredith The Orders of Knighthood and Foreign, with a brief review of the titles of rank and merit in Ancient Hindustan Mani-mala or A treatise on Gems. Part II; the Ten Principal Avataras Of The Hindus Fifty Tunes - dedicated to Ashley Eden. Hindu Loyalty: A presentation of the views and opinions of the Sanskrit authorities on the subject of loyalty Jātīya saṇgīta vīṣayaka prastāva