Years before writing “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” Harold Livingston flew jets and weapons to Israel.
He wrote the screenplay for “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” episodes of “Mission Impossible” by the handful and novels that explored the changing world in the aftermath of World War II. But Harold Livingston had his own starring role in a real-life adventure in 1948 as a risk-taking pilot, funneling weapons and aircraft into a still-young Israel as Egypt and other Arab nations pounded Tel Aviv at will. To many who had survived the Holocaust, the bombardments from their neighbors felt like history was already repeating itself. As part of a small pack of American pilots — many freshly returned from war — Livingston’s heroics helped Israel fend off its attackers and gave birth to the Israeli Air Force. “Honestly, they were all we had,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would say years later of the foreign volunteers. As a young Jewish man, Livingston understood the irony that the war-torn German fighter jets he was flying into Israel had been used by the Nazis. “The Egyptian pilots got the shock of their lives the first time the Messerschmitts took off to meet them,” Livingston told The Times in 1994.
