The unexpected and shocking explosion of the space shuttle Columbia, killing all seven astronauts on board, including Col. Ilan Ramon, Israel?s first man in space, seems to be an event riddled with strange ironies and tragic mishaps. Some of the ironies coming out of the ill-fated mission seem to warrant deeper thought and analysis.
The flight originated as an American gesture to the state of Israel to help boost the doomed Oslo peace process, shortly before it went haywire. Ironically, the news of Ramon burning up on re-entry evoked the horror of a suicide bomb attack, with army rabbinical chaplains rushing to America to search for body parts.
As parts of the Columbia, whose name connotes America, rained down on a tiny, insignificant dot on the map called Palestine, Texas, the whole ordeal took on a surrealistic tone, causing many people to ask themselves whether this was really happening, and, if it was, what could it all mean?
The post disaster revelations of negligence at NASA, of an ageing spacecraft, built back when Ramon was training for his mission to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor, put the failed mission into a morbid post-mortem, much like state of the failed peace process it was designed to boost.
Yet, maybe the strangest irony of all was that the Holocaust became a motif of the mission. Ramon, whose mother beat the odds to survive Auschwitz, took with him on the Columbia a drawing depicting the earth as seen from space, sketched by a 14 year old boy, Peter Ginz, who didn?t survive the Nazi death camp.
At the same time, the Columbia got off the ground thanks to technology developed by Werner von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist and former SS officer who was brought to America after the war, in order to form the nucleus of the United States space program. Von Braun?s work for NASA (he developed the rocket that propelled man to the moon) was based on his work for Hitler, designing and building a weapon of mass destruction called the V-2 rocket, at Mittlewerk, a German a slave labor camp. Ironically, thousands of Jews died working on the V-2, developing the basic technology that put Ilan Ramon into space. Many of them were incinerated at Buchenwald.
The same America that gave Ramon an opportunity to ride the Columbia, didn?t bother to bomb the death camps during the war, something that may have saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, including (ironically) the life of Peter Ginz whose drawing became a symbol of the mission. Ironically (again), the U.S. did bomb Mittelwerk, though not because Jews were being killed there. Rather, they mistook the camp to be a munitions depot of the German army.
One powerful symbol did manage to survive the fiery break up of the Columbia: a blue Star of David on an Israeli Air Force flag that Ramon took up into space.
That flag may be carrying a message of comfort to Israelis that, despite the Holocaust and the tragic death of Ilan Ramon, ?the nation of Israel lives.?
It may also be, ironically, sending a warning to the millions of Jews still on board the ship called ?America.?
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Shabtai Alboher is an attorney who formerly served as legal counsel to the IDF Judge Advocate General.
The flight originated as an American gesture to the state of Israel to help boost the doomed Oslo peace process, shortly before it went haywire. Ironically, the news of Ramon burning up on re-entry evoked the horror of a suicide bomb attack, with army rabbinical chaplains rushing to America to search for body parts.
As parts of the Columbia, whose name connotes America, rained down on a tiny, insignificant dot on the map called Palestine, Texas, the whole ordeal took on a surrealistic tone, causing many people to ask themselves whether this was really happening, and, if it was, what could it all mean?
The post disaster revelations of negligence at NASA, of an ageing spacecraft, built back when Ramon was training for his mission to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor, put the failed mission into a morbid post-mortem, much like state of the failed peace process it was designed to boost.
Yet, maybe the strangest irony of all was that the Holocaust became a motif of the mission. Ramon, whose mother beat the odds to survive Auschwitz, took with him on the Columbia a drawing depicting the earth as seen from space, sketched by a 14 year old boy, Peter Ginz, who didn?t survive the Nazi death camp.
At the same time, the Columbia got off the ground thanks to technology developed by Werner von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist and former SS officer who was brought to America after the war, in order to form the nucleus of the United States space program. Von Braun?s work for NASA (he developed the rocket that propelled man to the moon) was based on his work for Hitler, designing and building a weapon of mass destruction called the V-2 rocket, at Mittlewerk, a German a slave labor camp. Ironically, thousands of Jews died working on the V-2, developing the basic technology that put Ilan Ramon into space. Many of them were incinerated at Buchenwald.
The same America that gave Ramon an opportunity to ride the Columbia, didn?t bother to bomb the death camps during the war, something that may have saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews, including (ironically) the life of Peter Ginz whose drawing became a symbol of the mission. Ironically (again), the U.S. did bomb Mittelwerk, though not because Jews were being killed there. Rather, they mistook the camp to be a munitions depot of the German army.
One powerful symbol did manage to survive the fiery break up of the Columbia: a blue Star of David on an Israeli Air Force flag that Ramon took up into space.
That flag may be carrying a message of comfort to Israelis that, despite the Holocaust and the tragic death of Ilan Ramon, ?the nation of Israel lives.?
It may also be, ironically, sending a warning to the millions of Jews still on board the ship called ?America.?
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Shabtai Alboher is an attorney who formerly served as legal counsel to the IDF Judge Advocate General.