Frank Sinatra and Jewish activism
[5][3] In 1942, when the first reports of Nazi brutality against Jews reached the United States, Sinatra ordered hundreds of medallions struck with an image of Saint Christopher on one side and the Star of David on the other, and had them delivered to U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe as well as friends, business associates, and policemen who had provided security at his concerts.
[3][6] In 1943 he joined the national tour of We Will Never Die, a four-month, six-city dramatic pageant staged by Ben Hecht to focus public attention on the Holocaust.
[3][9] Sinatra was personally involved in a clandestine operation in New York City in March 1948 on behalf of the Haganah, Israel's pre-state paramilitary organization.
The tour, which raised over $1 million for children's charities around the globe, had stops in Japan, Hong Kong, England, France, Italy, Greece and Israel.
Sinatra sang at the official Independence Day event in Tel Aviv and was seated beside Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and General Moshe Dayan on the reviewing stand during the Israel Defense Forces parade.
[9] He also performed for troops at the Tel Nof Airbase[5] and delivered a speech in Jerusalem "urging people all over the world to support Israel".
[9][13] In Nazareth, Sinatra purchased a lot near Mary's Well for the establishment of an intercultural youth center for Arab and Israeli children, to be built by the Histadrut trade union.
[16]Sinatra returned to Israel in 1964 to film a cameo role in Cast a Giant Shadow,[10] a fictionalised account of the life of Jewish-American soldier Mickey Marcus who had fought with the Israeli Defence Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Sinatra played Vince Talmadge, a freelance American fighter pilot commissioned by the IDF who drops seltzer bottles to give the illusion of bombs falling before being killed in action.
"[17] During the shoot, Shavelson faced opposition from the Communist Party of Israel who, amongst other things, apparently considered Sinatra "a symbol of fascist oppression."
[20] According to Eliot Weisman's The Way It Was, Sinatra was at one stage gifted a golden Uzi by Israeli prime minister Golda Meir as a symbol of Israeli-American relations.
In the wake of the Six-Day War in June 1967, he and other Hollywood entertainers pledged a total of $2.5 million to Israel at a cocktail party hosted by Jack L. Warner; Sinatra personally contributed $25,000.
[30] When he found out that the Simon Wiesenthal Center was trying to produce the documentary Genocide, Sinatra told them, "Although I'm not Jewish, the Holocaust is important to me", and offered $100,000 to the project.
[30] In ensuing months, Sinatra made four appearances on behalf of the Center, bringing in $400,000 in funding for the film,[30] which won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
[13] Citing the singer's support of Israel, the Arab League's Israeli Boycott Bureau in Cairo issued a ban on Sinatra's recordings and films in October 1962.
[37] In 2014 NBC News reported that a collection of Sinatra CDs were on display in the March Lebanon office in Beirut, with the note that they were banned for "Zionist tendencies".
[37] In 1966 Billboard reported that the ban was having its effect on Middle East sales of Sinatra's international number-one single, "Strangers in the Night", but the disc was still being delivered to Lebanon from other countries.
