Locals pray, hope for Israel

Saturday, April 29, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

It was Dec. 6, 1950, in the Negev region of Israel.

Maj. Michael Chalamish was flying his small, single-engine Piper Cub back to his airbase after a surveying mission for the Israeli air force. He passed over a knot of Palestinian fighters on the ground. They fired and hit the aircraft.

Gasoline began dripping over his left wing, Chalamish recalled in an interview in his Las Vegas home this week. His controls went out. But he knew that if he landed, the Palestinians would kill him.

Using his glider experience, Chalamish used the plane's foot controls to coast to the base, where he crash-landed. Somehow, he walked away unhurt.

The incident was just one of many close calls for Chalamish and his wife, Malka, a paramedic at the time. They are Israeli pioneers, having worked for Haganah, an underground organization that worked to create an Israeli state before British forces pulled out of the region in 1947.

Today, as the Chalamishes and other Israeli immigrants in Las Vegas prepare Monday to commemorate Israeli Independence Day, the couple thinks of their home country with a mixture of pride, hope and sadness.

In a ceremony at 6 p.m. Monday at the Hebrew Academy in Summerlin, they will remember all the people they have lost in the struggle to create Israel and keep it secure, and they will pray for its future.

Michael Chalamish, now 82, helped found the Israeli air force and participated in every major war Israel fought between 1948 and 1973. He is also the first of three generations of Israeli airmen - his twin sons and two grandsons continued in the family trade.

After each battle, Malka Chalamish said, he would come home dirty and sweaty and say, "This time is the last time." Each time, he would hope that Israel was secure for his children and grandchildren.

It's a hope he and his family still cling to, even after a suicide bomber killed Michael Chalamish's sister on a bus in Tel Aviv more than 10 years ago. They believe most people are more than ready to coexist, but fanatics on both sides keep Israelis and Palestinians from moving forward.

"There could be peace for everyone if they would just let us live," Malka Chalamish, 77, said.

Michael Chalamish is a native of what was once the state of Palestine himself, and his mother was one of the first Jews to immigrate to Tel Aviv. Malka Chalamish's parents immigrated when she was 5, moving from Poland just as Adolph Hitler began to gain power.

When Chalamish helped start the Israeli air force, his only experience was a love of aviation and some gliding experience. He trained as a pilot in Italy and later became a flight instructor. He was a landing strip commander during the Six Day War in 1967 and provided air cover for Ariel Sharon.

Because of his work as an air surveyor, he has a river, a field and a mountain named after him on Israeli maps. The mountain named for him is one of many that might be the biblical Mount Sinai, where the prophet Moses received the Ten Commandments.

Malka Chalamish moved to Los Angeles in the 1980s to help her son through school, and Michael Chalamish joined her later. They moved to Las Vegas four years ago to be closer to daughter Amira Chalamish.

Malka Chalamish prefers to be close to her daughter, but Michael yearns for home. They are planning to travel back next month to interview for a documentary about his contributions to the Israeli air force.

Monday's memorial is open to the public.

"We hope for peace," said Michael Chalamish, who will recite a poem at the ceremony, dressed in his military uniform.

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