CHAPTER FIVE- Israel Awakens To The Invasion
During the spring of 1980,I was a soldier in the anti-aircraft brigade of the Israeli Air Force.My duty was to operate two types of anti-aircraft missile. My unit was on training manoevres in the bleak Sinai Desert and private Adam Reuter was on skywatch.While staring into the western skies with his binoculars,he called me over,saying,”I think I’m looking at a UFO.”
He handed me the glasses and I saw a large,well lit, silvery object. Circling it were red objects that occasionally flew into the silver one,seemingly melding with it. One by one members of the unit were called to observe the sight until most had stopped digging their foxholes. Our officers intervened and everyone went back to their mundane military exercise.Everyone but Adam and I,who were severely reprimanded for slagging work. Nonetheless,we could not take our eyes off the sky.
Over the next three months, strange lights passed over our base.We had been trained to identify jets and helicopters of all kinds and how not to confuse them with satellites. What we were seeing was nothing like anything taught in our skywatching classes. These were highflying,soundless dots in the upper atmosphere that flew in squadrons,stopped in the middle of their flight,joined together then split off in different directions and turned at impossible angles.They were best described as manually controlled satellites. Since such a fleet of vehicles did not exist,we had no explanation for what we were seeing.
As the summer wore on,Adam and I were the sole advocates of the UFO theory and I especially was subjected to mockery. The most common theory among the unit was that a new weapons system was being tested but over time, that explanation did not suit even the most hardened critics.
One morning at assembly,the unit asked our officers to request an explanation from the Air Force. A few days after the request was submitted,a colonel from the Meteorological Division addressed us. His message was simple,” We don’t know what you are seeing but we request that you do not tell outsiders since that only spreads rumors.”
So the arguments over the lights continued and as strongest advocate of the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis,I was ribbed ruthlessly. This would not happen today. Back in 1980,very few Israelis had seen UFOs.
The only major sightings were in Haifa in the early Fifties.Since then,Israel was mostly ignored by outworldly civilizations.
Despite the irritating kidding I was receiving,I began a little investigation. I was serving at a large air force base and pilots would occasionally lecture us on tactics for aiming and shooting our missiles.
Once the lecture ended,I approached the pilots and asked them if they had ever chased UFOs.
Because I was a fellow soldier,the pilots let down their guard. Two admitted that they had chased ships of unexplainable origin. One was glowing blue and the pilot chased it over Haifa until it tired of the pursuit and sped off over the Mediterranean at a speed the pilot’s state-of-the-art Phantom could never hope to achieve. The other chase was over Jerusalem. The object was twice as large as a Phantom,red and, “disappeared before my eyes.”
I am told that I was privileged to squeeze any information out of Israeli Air Force pilots. The person who told me so was Julie,a reporter for the official air force magazine,distributed to personnel throughout the country’s air bases. We crossed paths in January,1994.
She was doing a story about the UFO wave for the magazine and we were interviewing the same people. She told me outright that there is a special unit within the air force investigating UFO incidents but as far as anyone was concerned,it was non-existent. The air force would not help one of its own journalists get near the unit or its files. And pilots were ordered not to answer her questions.
There is,however, a former air force radar operator,who lives near Kadima and was briefly referred to before, who has been telling ufologists a few interesting things. For instance he told me,”The operators often get strange blips on their screens such as objects flying at impossible speeds which shouldn’t be there or objects making gravity-defying turns. These are reported and planes scrambled to chase them. I was personally responsible for two reports that led to chases. I saw the pictures the pilots took. They were of cigar shaped craft.
The air force feels these craft are intruders and a security risk so will not publicize incidents,partly to avoid panic and in part,because there is no answer to them if they turn hostile.”
Because the air force had effectively covered up UFO encounters and because there were so few sightings,until the late 1980s,almost all Israelis viewed UFOs as pure science fiction.
Then in 1988,two UFO incidents were well-filmed and documentary evidence was presented to the public.
On the 26th of February,1988,Rosetta Kalphon was having a gathering at her apartment in Haifa on Israel’s northern Mediterranean coast. Including among her fifteen guests was a professional photographer from Ashdod who had brought his video-camera with him.
As the evening drew to a close,all sixteen people stood on Rosetta’s balcony and watched a spectacular UFO,while for seventeen minutes,it was filmed professionally. Shortly after,journalists were invited to Rosetta’s apartment to view the film.
Though I missed the occasion,I saw a frame of the film that was reproduced in a local paper called Kol Bo.The shot is outstanding,far clearer than Doron Rotem’s blowup of Eli Cohen‘s videotape. The UFO is somewhat umbrella-shaped and on the side shown in the shot were eight smallish orange lights and in the middle of them,an orange light twice their size.
I found the picture in Avi Grief’s files while interviewing him in Haifa and hoped to see the original film while I was in the city. I managed to get Rosetta on the phone in the early evening. I told her I was writing a book on Israeli UFO experiences and her voice became very animated.
“It happened again,”she said.”Two weeks ago,my apartment was filled with light and I went on the balcony. Opposite me in the same place as in 1988 was a silver UFO as big as a house. I thought I was going crazy. What do they want with me already?”
On the 26th of June,1988,the Israeli papers carried the account of Yossi Ayalon. Two nights before, at 1:30 AM,he stood on his balcony in Herzlia,ten miles north of Tel Aviv and saw a point of light appear on the horizon out of nowhere.
“I called my wife out but the light had disappeared by then. Suddenly it reappeared as big and bright as the sun at dawn.I knew I was seeing something I’d never witnessed before so I ran inside for my video camera and started filming.”
Yossi did not call the police but rather,sent the film to Israel Television for public scrutiny.He,however, refused to appear on television,explaining,”I never believed in UFO stories and I don’t want to become a joke. But I just can’t ignore what I filmed and saw.”
Nor could many viewers. Yossi’s UFO is clearly round and like many of the Israeli UFOs,emits a bright orange light.The roundness is broken by a dark colored square from the rim to the middle,taking up about 20% of the ship’s size.
Thus,in 1988, two UFOs were videotaped in Israel and this evidence is important to me. The purpose of this work is to prove that UFOs and aliens visited Israel in its ancient past and returned again in 1987. Only by gathering the strongest physical evidence of the present,could the more difficult biblical thesis be made plausible.
Although there are a number of UFO contactees in Israel,I vowed not to include their stories unless they were backed with physical evidence or corroborated by disinterested witnesses. Thus,with great dismay,I sat down to interview a UFO witness in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv,only to discover that he was a follower of an Indian mystic and made contact by putting himself in a trance. I politely turned down the offer of a sitting to meet the aliens via his mind.
Doron Rotem directed me to someone with,”quite a story.” On the phone he told me he would not grant an interview until he had received permission from “them.” As fascinating as his experience must be,I decided it would be out of context with the direction of reporting.I chose to concentrate on the physical to the almost complete neglect of the metaphysical. One of the most remarkable of the physical stories involved a chase right out of the movies.
Just before 3:AM on the morning of December 6,1991,Yossi Ben Maos was driving in a taxi outside the city of Bet Shean,in the Jezreel Valley approximately halfway between Haifa and Tiberius.It was then that he noticed a strange vehicle emitting,”a pleasing light,” was pacing the taxi 150 meters opposite it.
Yossi thought the craft must be some sort of glider carrying terrorists from Jordan,ten miles distant,to an attack. He and the driver decided to follow the glider to its destination and then call for the police. The craft stopped and hovered above the industrial zone of Bet Shean and there Yossi found a phone to make his report.
A squad car quickly arrived,the policeman took a look at the large object dangling in the air and immediately called his superior,Chief Inspector Yitzhak Mordechai at home,woke him up and implored him to rush over.
Mordechai told the policeman he was on his way and ordered him to call the army,air force,border guards and to alert the local kibbutzim.
By the time Mordechai arrived,the industrial zone was filled with armed men.
The UFO began moving slowly toward the Jordanian border trailing a convoy of jeeps and police cars beneath it.The craft reached the border and turned back toward Israel.
After a half an hour of this eerie chase,the UFO settled in one spot,150 meters in the air above Kibbutz Maoz Chaim. Beneath it,were about a hundred armed men, many of whom thought it was a terrorist invader though most understood by then,that this was no earthly object.
At about 5:00 AM someone gave the order to shoot.The shots were heard throughout the area and could not be covered up. The next day the police blamed the army for shooting at the craft while army personnel accused the police of ordering the attack.The craft was not damaged by the fire and just at sunrise,an hour later,it rose into the sky and disappeared. Thus,Ben Yossi Ben Maos and the unnamed cabbie,witnessed the UFO for over three hours,while dozens of cops,soldiers and kibbutzniks stood under it for almost two and a half hours.
Doron Rotem interviewed a reserve soldier who as at the scene and his account is more expansive. According to soldier,it wasn’t just a few bullets that were shot but long rounds of small arms fire and shoulder-harnassed anti-aircraft missiles.
Yoram Torbatian says,”A lot of information about the Bet Shean attack is being covered up. The morning after the encounter Mordechai was telling the media what happened,truthfully. Later in the day,he was told to watch himself. After that he wouldn’t talk to anyone and won’t to this day.”
If Chief Inspector was open,it was for the public good. The UFO was witnessed by hundreds of Israelis and dozens had called radio stations demanding to know if a war had started,if there was a terrorist attack or just why they saw what they saw. Mordechai gave a now famous radio interview,assuring the public that he had chased a UFO.”It wasn’t a plane,it wasn’t a helicopter or a meteor.It was a UFO.”It is not known if his blunt report actually comforted the public but it certainly was blatant official confirmation of UFOs over Israel.
Reading Mordecchai’s press quotes of that day is illuminating.In the morning,he told reporters,”After Yossi Ben Maos called the police,a squad car arrived and the policemen identified a mysterious glowing object moving eastward. At this point I had a car sent to me and began chasing the object until it stopped above Kibbutz Maoz Chaim.We stayed with it until almost six o’clock. When the run rose,it left.
“The object was glowing and bright,it flew 200 metres above the ground and stood out clearly in the background of stars.It tipped from side to side until it balanced itself and then stayed in the same position,circling on its axis from left to right until it became steady.Then it stopped and hung in the sky. I don’t believe it had hostile intents.
“The craft seemed very curious about us.To tell the truth,I don’t know what is was but I saw what I saw and not for an instant but for two and a half long hours.”
The official description of the night’s events were reported in the Bet Shean police reports as,”A UFO incident.”
Later in the day,Mordechai sat for an interview with Gabi Nitzan,a reporter for the daily,Chadashot. Already he was under scrutiny as Nitzan reports:
During the interview,Mordechai, under strict supervision from the spokeswoman of Israel Police’s central headquarters,who,’just happened to be with us,completely by accident,’tried to obscure the incident…Before the spokeswoman could warn him about correct talk,Mordechai admitted being deeply affected by the event.
Keeping in mind that Mordechai was under close scrutiny,his testimony is all the more important.
“A lot of policemen arrived,squad cars,patrol cars,security people from the kibbutzim,border guards,and army jeeps…It was a powerful experience,the first time I’ve had to deal with anything like it.And make no mistake about it, a shot of men shared my experience.There’s no doubt about what happened.”
Nitzan got down to the question of who shot at the UFO,probably the main reason why the police spokeswoman was in the room. Mordechai gives no answer so Nitzan asks,”Maybe it was the UFO that shot?” Mordechai answers as if there is no sarcasm in the question,”It never moved. Most of the time it just hung in the air above Kibbutz Maoz Chaim.”
Spokeswoman or not,the police chief inspector of Bet Shean describes a large military operation and the use of armed force against the UFO.
Israel’s weapons seem to have had no effect on the UFOs whatsoever. Barely a month later on Jan.14,1992 a couple from the southern city of Beersheva,Liza and Babar Alon, released a videotape of a UFO they had filmed two weeks earlier. The film clearly shows a glowing disc,dark in the middle,with a light circle following the rim,hanging above the skies of the Negev Desert.What distinguished the film was its length.The couple had managed to film the craft for a full forty-five minutes.
At 10:PM on January 24,1992,Israel was treated to the greatest UFO display of all. Israeli ufologists call this UFO,”the mother ship.” It traversed the country for two hours,beginning in the Haifa region,making appearances all along the densely populated coast,flying over Beersheva and the Negev before disappearing over Jordan. Thousands of people witnessed the ship.What choice did they have? Reports put its length at that of two jumbo jets. Circling it were smaller craft that occasionally joined it,then were ejected into different flight patterns.
The best way to approach this incident is to quote some of the many reports printed in Israel’s newspapers.
Ephi Sarid,photographer for Yediot Ahronot who spotted the craft outside the Galilee city of Sfat;”I saw a huge light and circling it were smaller lights.The length of the object wasn’t clear but I estimated its width at 30 meters. It moved at high speed about 2 kilometers up. It was noiseless and lit up the whole sky.”
Liran Shor,16,from Haifa;”It flew low above the houses.It made no noise and that caught my attention. It was ellipsoid-shaped and huge,the length of two jumbo jets. The light was like burning embers and it left an orange trail behind it. It lit up the whole street.”
David Butrashvili,32,highschool physics and astronomy teacher;”It was ellipsoid-shaped,the length of two jumbo jets and travelled between 50 and 80 kilometers an hour.”
Aran Mishelli,13,Haifa;”It left a red,glowing trail behind it inside of which there were two rockets spitting fire. Afterward,the big body split into three parts,two small,one big. They were white and left a red trail.”
Pini Shechter,17,Tiberius;”A small white ball flew ahead of the big ship and was connected to it by a white strip of light.The big ship left a fiery trail. The craft was about 35 meters in length and nine in height.Its color was white or red.”
Tal Moran,27,Haifa;”It was a huge ball of fiery light. Circling it were smaller balls and it left a trail of light. It was as big as several buildings and its predominant colors were red and white.”
Rina Green,42,Karmiel,” The craft was enormous. It flew at an altitude of a kilometer to a kilometer and a half and passed right over us.It’s length was 200 meters and left a gigantic,fiery trail behind it.”
Danny Kushner,17,Rishon LeTzion;”I saw five lighted bodies flying in an arrow formation.Each left a white trail behind it.”
Tel Aviv police patrolman;”I saw a huge,lit object falling from the skies over Tel Aviv.It split into three parts and disappeared.”
Reserve soldier,stationed in the Negev Desert;” I saw seven huge red balls leaving trails behind them. They flew in formation with one leading them.The white vapor trails lit up the whole desert.”
Menachem Shizef,Kiryat Shmoneh (Galilee region);” I saw a huge object made up of shiny points of light. It seemed like an enormous submarine constructed of sparkling lights.”
The testimony,while often contradictory,agrees on a number of points. The UFO was enormous and left a bright trail behind it.Israeli ufologists call it the mother ship because of the reports of smaller craft circling,joining,separating from or following it.
The ship took its time investigating Israel.It was reported as ten to twenty times larger than any other previous Israeli sighting. Yet the Israeli Air Force reported that it had not appeared on any of its radar screens.
However,the same military minds could not deny the observations of thousands of people.
UFOs had been inspecting Israel for the past three years and now the mother of all UFOs made her appearance without shame. What was the mission and was there a message? A Haifa auto mechanic,Amiel Achrai,thinks there is both.