The 50th anniversary of a failed attempt to hijack a plane from Soviet Russia to Israel is being celebrated this week.
Rav Yosef Mendelevich, who was among the failed hijackers, called the celebration "a great holiday" in an interview with Arutz Sheva. "Fifty years ago, my friends and I were arrested at Leningrad airport in an attempt to take control of a Soviet aircraft and flee to Eretz Israel," Mendelevich said.
"But why should our arrest and imprisonment be considered a holiday? Very simply because this was the beginning of an open struggle for freedom of immigration, and after that within six months the great aliyah began." According to Mendelevich, it was the failed takeover attempt that led to the lifting of the ban on immigration from the Soviet Union.
"The story is simple, if we had succeeded it would have been seen as just another escape. But once Elijah the prophet decided that we should be stopped and we sat in jail, we became the symbol of the struggle," Mendelevich added.
"When I sat in jail with Shiransky seven years later, he said it was due to us that he joined the movement for immigration to israel."