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Warner Bros has made a deal to develop a film about the unlikely father of the Israel Air Force, and Aaron Sorkin will write the script and possibly direct the film.

The deal includes America’s Greatest Gift To Israel, an article published in Business Insider, written by David Kushner.

Sorkin will script the story of Al Schwimmer, a post-WWII arms smuggler who helped create Israel’s air force, which helped the fledgling country survive.

Schwimmer was a decorated World War II veteran from Connecticut. In 1948 and on the heels of the Holocaust, a homeland for the Jewish State was being carved out of Arab territory, and countries like Egypt and Jordan readied to drive out these new neighbors. America, not eager to inflame the Cold War in Middle East countries, publicly announced it would not provide military aid to Israel. Schwimmer masterminded a covert, illegal, international operation that the article describes as one part Argo and one part Mission: Impossible.” Schwimmer aligned with the Haganah, the Jewish underground paramilitary, and put together a rag tag group of WWII vets who defied an American embargo to smuggle 125 military planes and more than 50,000 weapons to Palestine. The volunteer accomplices included Bugsy Siegel’s publicist, mobster Meyer Lansky, Pee-wee Herman’s dad Milton Rubenfeld, and Frank Sinatra.

Many of the rifles and other arms came from Czechoslovakia, and were used by the Nazis. Accounts say that this action helped save Israel by giving the country a fighting chance in the war by establishing air superiority. Later, Schwimmer and accomplices turned themselves in; most of them were Jewish, and argued that seeing the abject cruelty and genocide perpetrated against the Jews in the Holocaust steeled their resolve to make a righteous moral choice. While they were spared prison terms, Schwimmer and others were fined and stripped of their civil rights. Schwimmer refused to seek a pardon at the time, but was pardoned anyway by President Bill Clinton in 2001. He died a decade later.

Ahem.

Bon.

Une part de moi espère que Sorkin saura insuffler à cette histoire une certaine ambivalence. Je ne m'attends évidemment pas à ce qu'il fasse Munich mais le récit ci-dessus rappelle beaucoup Charlie Wilson's War dans lequel un député US, sincèrement touché par ce qu'il voit en Afghanistan, parvient à filouter auprès de pays de Moyen-Orient pour obtenir des armes et à convaincre le gouvernement américain de subventionner les afghans pour battre leur ennemi commun, l'URSS, mais le film se termine sur la désillusion post-victoire, l'Amérique laissant l'Afghanistan à l'abandon et propice à la montée d'un ressentiment qui accouchera du 11-Septembre.
Si ce nouveau film suivait un arc similaire, le protagoniste filoutant pour sauver son pays mais cette action préfigurant le revers de la médaille, ça pourrait être intéressant.

Mais si c'est un film dans l'unique but de promouvoir le droit d'exister d'Israël, pfooo.

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Oh le projet qui pue annoncé au pire moment.

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CroqAnimement votre

Moi j'aime bien

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Liam Engle: réalisateur et scénariste