Las Vegas Sun

February 15, 2012

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Sun editorial:

Righting a wrong

A hero who helped in the fight to create Israel receives a posthumous pardon from Bush

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2008 | 2:05 a.m.

In the wake of World War II, Charles Winters settled in Miami and ran a business exporting produce with surplus military airplanes. A Protestant, he would soon join a friend in the effort to create a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

In 1948 Winters dispatched his planes around the world to collect and carry weapons to Jewish fighters in Palestine, flying over the British naval blockade. Because he was a Protestant, his planes could fly in and out of the region without interference.

Winters served as a government purchasing agent during World War II and drew on that experience to help acquire two surplus B-17 bombers for the Israeli Defense Forces. He personally flew one across the Atlantic Ocean to deliver it.

He was later prosecuted by the federal government for violating the Neutrality Act, which banned citizens from taking part in foreign conflicts if the U.S. was not involved. He, along with his friend Al Schwimmer and Las Vegas Sun founder Hank Greenspun, was convicted of helping arm Israeli fighters. Winters was the only one sentenced to prison.

“Rules are rules, but it’s interesting that my dad was the low man on the totem pole in the operation, but he’s the only one who had to serve time,” Winters’ son, Jim, said.

Schwimmer, Greenspun and Winters were rightly hailed as heroes in Israel, but when Winters died in 1984, he was still a felon in the United States. On Tuesday, President George W. Bush pardoned Winters, an act that was long overdue. Greenspun was pardoned in 1961, Schwimmer in 2000.

Winters’ friends and family said he didn’t profit from his work. Reginald Brown, a lawyer who represented Winters’ family on the pardon, said Winters felt the establishment of Israel was a “moral imperative.”

“He did a heroic thing and, at the time, the law didn’t reflect our values,” Brown said. “The pardon is a way of the law catching up with the history.”

It is. We are grateful for men such as Charles Winters, who did the right thing no matter the cost.

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