'Artwashing': Warner Bros faces backlash over biopic of Israel air force founder

Warner Bros has announced plans for a film about Adolph "Al" Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran and the founder of Israel Aerospace Industries, with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin set to write the script and potentially direct it, according to Deadline.

The announcement has ignited scathing backlash on social media, where critics have accused the project about the "father of the Israeli air force" of perpetuating a biased narrative about Israel’s founding and glorifying Schwimmer’s controversial legacy as “heroic”.

According to media reports, the film will be based, in part, on the article "America's greatest gift to Israel" by David Kushner, published by Business Insider.

In 1948, in violation of an international arms embargo, Schwimmer smuggled military planes and over 50,000 weapons via Czechoslovakia to the Haganah, one of the three underground Zionist militias at the time. The operation aided militias involved in the 1948 Nakba, or the Catastrophe, in which 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed to make way for the creation of Israel.

The smuggled planes are considered pivotal in Israel's creation, with Boaz Dvir, professor and author of Saving Israel remarking: "Without Al's operation, Israel would have never survived its first war."

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