Israel: The Apple of His Eye by David Dunlap It was near two o' clock on the afternoon of August 16, 1949, when an airplane flown by an American pilot appeared over the Mediterranean coast of Israel. Immediately it was joined by four fighter planes from the Israeli Air Force. Earlier that day, this plane had left Vienna, Austria. It carried the remains of a Jew who had died forty-five years before and whose body had slept quietly all these years, wrapped in the blue and white flag of Zion. The grave in which it had been interred was an ordinary grave like many others there. Above, below, and on all sides of the stone and the railing, there was handwriting in Hebrew, Russian, and German. These writings were not desecrations. Rather, they were expressions of gratitude felt by the thousands of Jews who had visited the grave since 1904. The writings contained requests, hopes, prayers, proverbs, and blessin