I open those few lines with a ‘from the press’ quotation:
….”Iranian-born Abi Nathan passes away at Tel Aviv after long illness. He served in Israel’s first air force squadron, founded the ‘Voice of Peace’ radio station and fought relentlessly for peace – flying solo to Egypt and serving jail time for meeting with Arafat”…see here.
I remember his flying peace adventure to Egypt (1967).The upstir in right wing parties and his enjailling in Israel for collaboration with Egypt, then the dreadful enemy. Today this is all forgotten matter and if not for his dead, whoever would have pay attention to his heroic personal battle for peace.
The term peace, which for him was unambiguous and clear as spring water, is today full of ambiguity and fuzzy meaning. When in Georgia the Russians are considering themselves as peace makers by invading a neighbour country and Iran’s strive for nuclear power for “peacefully goals” is considered by most Arabian countries as a threat to their very existence, then ‘peace’ is a not secure place.
Now with this perspective in mind, Abi Natan, the Iranian born Israeli ‘peace activist’, interfered, in what he saw as the Israeli incompetence and inability to talk to Egypt. Flying with his Cessna plane to meet Abdel Nasser was a revolt and a start , if not talks then at last a gesture of hand shaking.This was the deed of a lonely man in midst’s of a sea of disbelievers. In essence it was naive peace activism at his best.
From this narrow point of view of a lonely crusader, the today term ‘peace activist’ is almost an insult to Abi Natan, because a great part of today activism is part of the media warfare, done by well funded individuals and groups with a strategy and a tactic complementing real physical warfare of the state, terrorist’s groups, economic and cultural boycott, pointed to overcome the other side, not to make a bona fide peace.
The coincidence that Abie Natan was born in Iran and that Iran’s attitude towards Israel is not one of great friendship, does not exclude the hope to find an Iranian ‘Abi Natan’ flying a Cessna plane to visit Israel in a gesture of peace…
This is surely a crazy idea. But in Iran there is a man like Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, Ahmadinejad VP I quote …”Speaking at a tourism convention in Tehran, Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei said: ‘No nation in the world is our enemy, Iran is a friend of the nation in the United States and in Israel, and this is an honor. We view the American nation as one with the greatest nations of the world’ “, see here
This is perhaps not a Cessna flying act of peace a la Abi Natan and on a first scrutiny it is nice to see and hear such a statement. But on a second scrutiny this is a fake peace: how to use pseudo peace rhetoric on July 19 and on August 20, 2008 to hear a top Iranian general sayng:
….” ‘ Any attack against us will lead to world war. The unbridled greediness of the American and Zionist leadership is pushing the world to the edge of the cliff,’ Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said in relation to the crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and Georgia, ‘should such a (conflict) erupt, the phony and artificial regimes will be annihilated.’
Brigadier General Jazayeri, the deputy head of Iran’s Armed Forces Headquarters, did not specifically mention Israel, but the Jewish state is often referred to by Iranian officials as a “phony regime”, see here.
What we have here is the good cop and the bad cop. But is anyone willing to attack Iran? The simple naive answer is: don’t simultaneously threat to wipe out Israel, and perhaps other neighbouring countries, and shouting every fresh morning that you enrich plutonium to made nuclear weapons,.. then nobody will attack you.
In the same way there are the pseudo activist, their inverse image being Mother Theresa and Albert Schweitzer who dedicated their life for a great cause and succeeded. Abie Natan is not to be compared with those great figures. But on the Israeli-Arab conflict scene he is unique, his great follower is Egyptian President Anwar Sadat flying to Jerusalem on November 7, 1977, 30 years after Abie Natan’s flying to Port Said. Abie Natan was the peace forerunner and Anwar Sadat signed the Peace traity with Israel.
And what is the great achievement of the hot pseudo peace activist: the Gaza blockade breakers. They bring 5000 balloons, cooperating with the Hamas propaganda machine, not adding a tidbit of real help to the Gaza population, but promising to come back..perhaps with another 5000 balloons, see here.
A talkbacker on the site resume very well the feelings of many he Palestinians in Gaza ..””Sounds like the Gazans will have to feed the activists while they’re on tour.”.. see here.
korzacsol 
