Frank Sinatra: Friend of Israel, foe of anti- Semites

By Joe Spier

Joe Spier
Joe Spier

CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — Long before Teddy Kollek became mayor of Jerusalem, he was a gunrunner for the Yishuv, the Jewish community of pre-State Israel. When it became clear that the British would withdraw from Palestine and a war between the Jews and Arabs over Israel’s independence was inevitable, the Jews would need arms in order to survive. The U.S. was awash with weapons, surplus from World War II, but the 1935 Neutrality Act, prohibited the exportation of military equipment to Israel. All armaments would have to be acquired illegally and smuggled out of America. Those involved would be criminals under U.S. law. In October 1947, the Haganah, the Yishuv’s clandestine paramilitary organization, dispatched Kollek to New York to head their illegal arms procurement mission.

The offices of the Haganah in New York were located in the upper floors of Manhattan’s Hotel Fourteen a somewhat seedy hotel, whose basement was rented out to the Copacabana nightclub. The nightspot was noted for its Copa Girls, a chorus line of young ladies wearing only a bit of fake fruit to cover strategic parts. Famous entertainers of the day performed at the Copacabana, which was owned by members of the Italian Mafia. By day, the Haganah operatives went about their surreptitious activities in the hotel above and by night, they hobnobbed with entertainers and mobsters in the Copa below.

In March 1948, Teddy Kollek had a problem. Docked at the Port of New York, he had an Irish ship captain at the helm of a boat full of arms purchased by the Haganah. The boat with fake bills of lading was to sail beyond the three-mile territorial limit of the U.S., outside the jurisdiction of American authorities and off-load its cargo of munitions onto another ship destined for Israel. The boat, however, was going nowhere until the captain received his bribe, which Kollek was carrying in a satchel laden with cash, reportedly about $1 million. But, Kollek fearing he was being watched by the FBI had no way to deliver the cash to the captain.

Kollek went downstairs to the Copacabana where Frank Sinatra was performing. He and Sinatra had met before. Kollek was sitting at the bar when Sinatra came over and the two struck up a conversation. Kollek could not explain why, but for some reason he confided in Sinatra the reason he was in New York and his dilemma. In the early hours of the morning, Kollek left the Copa through the front entrance, satchel in hand and sure enough, the FBI tailed him. Meanwhile Sinatra left the nightclub through a back door carrying a paper bag, travelled to the pier, handed the bag filled with Kollek’s cash to the captain and watched the boat sai

In Sinatra’s words, he did it because “It was the beginning of the young nation. I wanted to help, I was afraid they might fall down.” Later Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin would separately thank Sinatra privately for the service he had performed in aid of the State of Israel.

Years before Elvis Presley was rotating his hips in front of screaming fans and The Beatles music was causing frenzied adulation by riotous devotees, there was Frank Sinatra the idol of “bobby soxers,” whose singing made teenage girls swoon. Sinatra’s singing and acting career spanned 50 years during which he won 11 Grammys for his music and an Oscar for best supporting actor.

Frank Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey, the only son of poor Italian immigrants of Roman Catholic faith. Sinatra was a champion of human rights and a foe of prejudice and discrimination all of his life, likely stemming from his experience as a boy on the mean streets of a mostly Italian – Jewish neighborhood where he was called a “wop” and likewise Jews were “kikes.” Why Sinatra developed a particular affection for the State of Israel and for the Jewish people is not known but may have stemmed from his childhood relationship with a Jewish neighbor. Sinatra was somewhat neglected by his mother and found solace with his neighbour, the elderly Mrs. Golden who doted upon him, fed him and taught him a smattering of Yiddish. Mrs. Golden presented him with a small mezuzah, which Frank wore on a neck chain much of the time even in his later years. After Mrs. Golden passed away, Sinatra would purchase $250,000 State of Israel bonds in her memory.

In 1942, at the height of World War II, Sinatra had hundreds of medallions made bearing the likeness of St Christopher who would protect the holder from danger. At that time, reports of Nazi atrocities against the Jews were first reaching the U.S. On the reverse of each medallion, Sinatra placed a Star of David. The medallions were intended for servicemen overseas as well as Sinatra’s friends and associates.

At the end of the war, Sinatra and two others participated in the making of a short film entitled “The House I Live In” intended to combat anti-Semitism. In the film, Sinatra playing himself comes across a group of boys taunting a Jew. Sinatra explains to them that “we are all Americans” and that one’s blood is as good as another.

Sinatra had a volatile personality, never more so than when someone displayed racial intolerance:

-Once at a party, all of 5 foot seven and one-half inches and weighing 155 pounds, Sinatra punched a newspaperman out for calling another guest, (one source naming the guest as the brother of band leader Benny Goodman),  a “Jew bastard”. Sinatra then had a drink and hit him again as he was carried out.
– When a Palm Springs cemetery official declared that he could not arrange for the burial of a deceased Jewish friend over the Thanksgiving holiday, Sinatra raged that he would punch him in the nose, and if he was too old he would punch his son.
– At the baptism of Sinatra’s son, when the priest balked at the choice of Manny Saks, a Jew, as godfather, Sinatra began to storm out as the chastened cleric backed down.
-At a time when some golf clubs were banning Jews, Sinatra joined the Hillcrest Country Club, a predominately Jewish club, only the second non-Jew to join.

His assistance to Israel began even before Sinatra aided the Haganah’s gunrunning operation. In 1947, while the United Nations was debating the future of Palestine, he performed at an “Action for Palestine” rally supporting the creation of a Jewish State in British Mandated Palestine. Some 20,000 attended the rally.

Sinatra did not visit Israel until 1962, where he gave seven live performances, one at the Tel Nof airbase and one at Kibbutz Ein Gev in the north under sight of Syrian gun positions on the heights above. Sinatra donated the profits from those concerts, $150,000 towards establishing a friendship centre in Nazareth where Israeli Jews and Arabs could congregate together in goodwill. While in Israel, Sinatra filmed a seven-minute featurette in which he declares, “With one hand the people of Israel protect their hearts and their homes and with the other they build a better society.” He made the short movie to support Histadrut, Israel’s Labor Zionist social welfare and health care organization.

Sinatra returned to Israel in 1965 to act in “Cast a Giant Shadow,” a Hollywood movie starring Kirk Douglas whose plot revolved around Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Sinatra played the role of a Machal (foreign volunteer) pilot. In his final tragicomedic scene, Sinatra’s guns jam while being attacked by an enemy aircraft and he absurdly aims a blast from a seltzer bottle at the enemy seconds before being shot out of the sky. While in Israel, Sinatra revisited Nazareth to dedicate the “Frank Sinatra Brotherhood And Friendship Youth Center” and donate a further $100,000, his entire fee for acting in the movie. In 1967, another $100,000 donation was made.

Because of his support for the State of Israel, many Arab countries banned Sinatra’s movies and records.

Donating well over one million dollars, Sinatra had a close and enduring relationship with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1978, Sinatra returned to Israel once again, this time to dedicate the “Frank Sinatra International Student Center,” a place where Jews, Arabs and foreign students would meet in friendship on the University’s Mount Scopus campus. On that occasion, the Hebrew University conferred upon Sinatra the prestigious National Scopus Award, its highest honour, in recognition of his contribution to Israel and the Jewish people. Tragically, in 2002, a Hamas terrorist bomb attack blew apart the cafeteria in the Center killing nine and wounding about one hundred including Jews, Arabs, Americans and South Koreans.  Among those killed was student Marla Bennett, from San Diego.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the famed Nazi hunter, is a global Jewish human rights organization that confronts anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, stands with Israel and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust. In 1979, the Center resolved to produce a full-length motion picture to document the horrors and capture the essence of the lives that were lost in the Holocaust. The intent was to motivate young people, too young to remember the genocide, to study the Holocaust and learn its lessons; in the words of Simon Wiesenthal, “Hope lives when people remember.”

Simon Wiesenthal personally agreed to undertake a national drive to raise the funds required for making the movie. Wiesenthal met Sinatra in San Francisco, the outcome resulting in Sinatra donating the first $100,000 to the project. Sinatra then made four appearances on behalf of the Wiesenthal Center raising an additional $400,000 for the movie. The film Genocide narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor, who donated their services, opened to critical acclaim and won an Academy Award for best documentary. Sinatra went on to serve as a member of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Board of Trustees.

Frank Sinatra died on May 14, 1998, ironically on the English calendar’s 50th anniversary of the birth of the modern State of Israel. On Sinatra’s gravestone the epitaph reads, “The best is yet to come” the name of a Sinatra song. I would have chosen for Frank Sinatra’s epitaph words from a different Sinatra song:

I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.

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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history.  You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments below must contain the letter writer’s full name and city and state of residence. (City and country for those outside the U.S.)