Above and Beyond is a most moving documentary, telling the true story of how US (and other foreign) volunteers, and Israelis, used unimaginable courage and ingenuity to build the foundation of the Israeli Air Force, and how against all odds they won the Arab war of 1948 to drive the Jews into the sea and eliminate the new State of Israel.
With stunning visuals, the film makes the point that when the Arabs were tired of fighting they could simply go home, but the Jews had no such choice because they were fighting *for* their home. Impossibly outnumbered and out-gunned, the Jews knew that if they didn't win the war being waged against them by five invading Arab armies, they would be slaughtered in another Holocaust.
I defy anyone to watch this film with a dry eye. Dani Shapira, a young Israeli pilot, receives his wings after the war, as he emotionally says: "In the Israeli Air Force. In my air force. In my country." Leon Frankel, an American Jew who'd fought in the second world war, says with equal emotion: "We have a great word in Yiddish, that's 'bashert.' It's fated. It's meant to be. Maybe God spared us in World War II so that we could come to Israel and help the remnants of our people survive . . . I knew then and there that was the reason that I came."
Above and Beyond is available on Netflix.
