The Pledge

Plot

This is the story of the secret American underground that after World War II helped arm the new state of Israel for its war of independence. It involved hundreds of Americans from every walk of life—millionaires and students, longshoremen and ex-GIs, Protestants and Catholics as well as Jews; an epic that turned idealists into adventurers, cynics into idealists, respectable businessmen into smugglers.The story of this incredible and dramatic race against time—to provide a state not yet born with an army that was still illegal—is told in one of the most suspenseful works of history ever published. It was an epic that contained heroism, farce, endless contradication: the Israeli air force was supplied with old Nazi fighter planes bought from Communist Czechoslovokia with money solicited from a real-estate magnate on the urging of a Socialist farmer.Operating out of a Manhattan hotel known for its tall chorus girls and little old ladies, this same amateur underground bought a surplus U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and prepared to sail it halfway around the world in a vest-pocket replica of D-Day…Yet somehow, this dedicated band of conspirators mangaed to create an armed force out of nothing.

I cannot possibly put into words how much I think anyone with even a passing interest in Israel should read this book. I would suspect that even the average politically active Zionist, even Israelis or Americans, has never heard of Rudolph Sonnenborn, the operation that this book describes, or most of the people in it. And frankly, that's pathetic. Not only is this a great and well-written story, real-life smuggling and covert operations at their very best, but it illuminates a lot of the dry facts that are found in basic histories of the War of Independence. Afterwards I was reading Howard Sachar's massive and bone-dry A History of Israel, and it was great to see mention of smuggled planes or illicit factories now that I actually knew the story behind them. This is quite seriously a must-read; quick, tense, well-written, and fascinating both as a story and as history.