Israel

Film: ‘Steal the Sky’

Steal the Sky is a 1988 HBO movie directed by John D. Hancock and starring Mariel Hemingway and Ben Cross. The film is based on the true story of Iraqi fighter pilot Munir Redfa, who defected by flying a MiG-21 fighter jet to Israel in 1966. 

In the film, a beautiful American-born Israeli spy Helen Mason (Mariel Hemingway) is sent to Iraq to coerce an Iraqi pilot into hijacking a Soviet-made fighter jet for Israeli defense research. She seduces Munir Redfa (Ben Cross) in order to blackmail him. There are unexpected results when Helen finds herself falling in love with him, endangering the mission, while he is torn between his love for her and his loyalty to Iraq.

Sadly, Ben Cross, best known for playing a runner in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire, died in 2020 in Vienna, Austria. He was 72.

It’s available on YouTube

TV Series: ‘The Honourable Woman’

‘The Honourable Woman’ is a 2014 British political spy thriller miniseries in eight parts. It was directed and written by Hugo Blick for the BBC and SundanceTV.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is the beautiful, immaculately dressed star of the series. She portrays Nessa Stein, a London heiress whose father was a big-time arms manufacturer and Zionist. Gyllenhaal, an American, does a convincing job of portraying an English woman.

Most of Nessa’s family perished in the Holocaust. She and her older brother, Ephra (Andrew Buchan), are dual citizens of Israel and Britain. On top of this, their mother died in childbirth and their father was murdered in front of their eyes in Jerusalem when they were young children.

The story includes the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict, kidnapping, rape, chronic trauma and high stakes philanthropy and investment.

The New York Times called the series a “smart, moodily complex thriller” and a “lavish homage to John le Carré.”

It’s among the best TV series I have seen.