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PM: 'Ramon story represents glory, tragedy of Jewish nation' Sep. 14, 2009 JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST This file photo shows Assaf Ramon, z"l, in 2003. Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski   Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke of the death of Assaf Ramon on Monday morning, having returned from Egypt the previous evening. Ramon died Sunday afternoon when his Israel Air Force F-16 crashed in the South Hebron Hills, and will be buried on Monday at 4 p.m. at the military cemetery in Nahalal next to his father, Ilan Ramon, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster six years ago.   "There's something in the story of the Ramon family that symbolizes Jewish glory and the tragedy of this nation," the prime minister told Army Radio on Monday morning. "The Ramon family is a symbol and an example for the generations, which represents the Israeli identity."   "I got the news when I was on the way to Egypt," Netanyahu said, adding that he had told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the sad news upon his arrival at the presidential palace in Cairo "Mubarak said, 'I know how hard it is to lose a son, or a grandson,'" the prime minister said. The Egyptian president's grandson died suddenly in May.   The prime minister had words of praise for both Assaf and his father, and said that he had called the IAF cadet's mother, Rona Ramon, immediately upon his return to Israel later on Sunday. He recalled attending Ramon's pilot graduation course in June this year, and said "it's very emotional." When asked about the dilemma faced by bereaved mothers who have to sign for their sons upon entry to the Israel Air Force, Netanyahu said, "I have brought up this issue with many ministers… I spoke with the defense minister this morning… it's a hard decision." However, he went on to say that he, his older brother Yoni, who was killed in Operation Entebbe in 1976, and his younger brother Ido, had all served in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit. "My parents didn't know [in which unit] we served, and about the risks we took… but no one stopped us," he said.   The prime minister called both Assaf and his father "Israeli heroes," but lamented, "Now, for Rona, and for Iftach and Tal and Noa… that won't help," referring to the pilot's family. Netanyahu was set to attend the pilot's funeral later in the day. This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804565570&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull   Ramon to be buried next to his father Sep. 14, 2009 Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST The funeral of Assaf Ramon, who died Sunday afternoon when his Israel Air Force F-16 crashed in the South Hebron Hills, will take place on Monday at 4 p.m. at the military cemetery in Nahalal. He will be buried next to his father, Ilan Ramon, who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster six years ago. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu postponed a meeting with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell until Tuesday in order to attend the funeral.   Ramon, 20, was promoted to the rank of captain after his death. The cause of the accident was under investigation and was complicated by the extent of the crash scene, but an initial probe indicated that he blacked out during a sharp turn - possibly at 9 Gs - or experienced vertigo. A less likely possibility is that the plane may have had a mechanical failure that Ramon could not solve, but he was not able to report on his condition. The debris was spread over a large piece of land near the Pnei Hever settlement, east of Hebron, military officials said.   Ilan Ramon, 48, became the first Israeli in space aboard the Columbia, which exploded during its reentry over Texas in 2003. Ramon was a colonel in the IAF and before joining NASA he held a number of staff positions at the branch's Tel Aviv headquarters.   Assaf Ramon announced his plans to follow in his father's footsteps shortly after the Columbia tragedy. In 2006, he enlisted in the IDF and successfully passed the grueling examinations and trials for the prestigious pilot's course. This past June, he graduated at the top of his class and was chosen as its valedictorian.   On Sunday, Assaf Ramon took off from the Nevatim Air Force base, southeast of Beersheba, in the early afternoon for dogfight training with another plane, flown by a veteran pilot. The pair managed to practice three dogfights with the single-seater F-16As but then at about 1:45 p.m., as they were flying at around 19,000 feet, the lead pilot lost eye contact with Ramon's plane. He immediately contacted IAF Air Traffic Control, but Ramon's plane had already struck a mountain. Several months ago, during a routine training flight in an A-4 Skyhawk, Ramon's engine suddenly died. Instead of ejecting, as protocol dictates, Ramon, together with the flight instructor, succeeded in restarting the engine and safely returning to base.   Ramon is survived by his mother, Rona, and three siblings, 19-year-old brother Tal, who is also in the IAF, 17-year-old brother Yiftach, a high school student, and 12-year-old sister Noa.   IAF commander Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan immediately appointed an officer with the rank of colonel to investigate the accident. A large number of military personnel were deployed near the crash site to recover the remains and to study what had caused the accident. Sunday's flight was Ramon's 47th since graduating the pilot's course in June.   "This is a very difficult day for the IAF, especially considering that this is the second time the Ramon family has been struck by a tragedy," said Brig.-Gen. Yohanan Locker, deputy commander of the air force. "The Ramon family lost Ilan, the first Israeli astronaut, and his son Assaf - both exemplary officers and role models for many people in Israel."   The IAF scrambled several helicopters as well as teams from its Unit 669 heliborne medevac extraction force to the scene of the crash, which took almost an hour to locate. Magen David Adom and Israel Police teams also participated in the initial searches, when there was still hope that Ramon had ejected from the plane.   Based on preliminary findings, Ramon did not have time to report any failure and likely was also unable to eject. However, an eyewitness cited on Channel 10 said that a parachute was discovered among the debris, indicating that he may have tried to eject. The fall to the ground from 19,000 feet likely took a matter of seconds. Ramon had participated in a number of training exercises simulating such conditions.   The last fatal F-16 accident in the air force was in March 2000, when pilot Maj. Yonatan Begin, 30 - the grandson of former prime minister Menachem Begin and son of Minister-without-Portfolio Bennie Begin - and his navigator, Lt. Lior Harari, 23, crashed in the Mediterranean Sea, about 20 km. east of Atlit, at the end of a training mission. Netanyahu issued a statement on Sunday evening saying the entire nation was "draped in sorrow over the death of Assaf, who fell from the skies, like his father Ilan, of blessed memory.   "This is a horrible tragedy for Rona and the entire Ramon family. It is a tragedy for the people of Israel. I was moved when Ilan, the youngest of the pilots who destroyed the death generator in Iraq, took with him into space a reminder of the destruction of the Holocaust," the prime minister said, referring to a tiny Torah that survived Bergen-Belsen that Ilan Ramon took with him on the ill-fated Columbia mission, and to the fact that in 1981, he took part in the bombing of Iraq's unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor.   "I was again moved deeply when Assaf continued in the path of his father and completed the pilot's course with distinction. The loss of one of these wonderful people, father and son, is a tragedy by itself. The loss of both brings with it unbearable pain. There is no consolation for Rona and the Ramon family, no consolation for the people of Israel. There are only tears."   President Shimon Peres had this to say:   "What happened today is more than a tragedy. In our worst nightmares we could never had imagined such a heart-breaking accident," Peres said in a statement. He went on to praise both Assaf's father and Assaf himself. "I knew them both, father and son - Ilan and Assaf, fighters, scholars, courageous men, dreamers… As a family they are a symbol for all that is great in Jewish history, all that is courageous in the Jewish state," the president said. Herb Keinon and jpost.com staff contributed to this report. This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804563180&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull   'May never know what happened in F-16' Sep. 14, 2009 JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Investigators on Monday morning resumed their investigation into the Sunday crash of Assaf Ramon's F-16A fighter jet during a routine training exercise. A military source was quoted as saying, "We may never know what happened," although the investigation began to focus on the likelihood of human failure.   The most likely scenario being considered is that Ramon, the son of the late Ilan Ramon, lost consciousness as a result of a high-G turn that he executed at the beginning of the fourth in a series of dogfight exercises.   Such black-outs usually last no more than several seconds, but at the high speed at which Ramon was flying he could have been unconscious long enough for his jet to plunge to the earth without being able to regain control. Investigators suspect that Ramon might have executed the turn at an excessive speed.   On Sunday night, the IAF said that it was difficult to estimate how long it would take to understand what caused the fighter plane to dive to the ground. However, Air Force officials did not rule the possibility that the investigation process, headed by Col. Ilan Boger, former commander of the Ramat David base, could take an extended period. Immediately upon learning of the accident, the Air Force examined the history of the aircraft, which was identified by the tail number 140, the number of squadron. The review revealed no unusual incidents in the history of the aircraft. Initial investigations of the crash site, and the debris spread over a wide area around it, has so far also revealed little about the cause of the accident.   Last Wednesday, human error was found to be the cause of another fatal crash of an IAF jet aircraft. In October 2008, Matan Asa, 24 and his student, Pvt. Ilan Carmi, 19, lost their lives during high-altitude training, and nearly a year of investigation concluded that there were no technical malfunctions that led to the plane's crash. This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804566424&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull Comment: A nation grieves Sep. 14, 2009 Amir Mizroch , THE JERUSALEM POST The day after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry under a blue Texas sky in 2003, editorial cartoonist Mike Keefe from The Denver Post drew six stars and one Star of David on a black canvas, representing the seven astronauts lost in the disaster.   Today we add an eighth star, another Star of David, to that cartoon, in honor of Assaf Ramon.   In our national narrative, Assaf was always going to be our second astronaut. And so we don't just mourn the death of a young, promising pilot cadet, we mourn the sudden death of a national dream rekindled, of a promise unfulfilled.   Assaf was the eldest son of Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut. Ilan, and Assaf after him, represented our finest, our "best of the best." As the youngest member of the squadron that carried out the daring bombing raid on Saddam's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, Ilan Ramon was more than just an ace pilot. He was what many young men, then and now, aspire to be. To many, inside and outside the country, he was the manifestation of the new Jewish warrior, determined never to let evil men attain weapons that could annihilate us.   When Ramon, son of a Holocaust survivor, took an artifact from the Theresienstadt ghetto with him into space, Jewish hearts all over the world filled with pride. "I was born in Israel and I'm kind of the proof for them, and for the whole Israeli people, that whatever we fought for and we've been going through in the last century (or maybe in the last two thousand years), is becoming true," he said.   Ilan Ramon was "our astronaut," our national pride. When he was chosen by NASA, we walked a little taller. We had our very own astronaut - very few countries in the world could boast of that.   For a precious few days, when we saw video footage of him floating through his space ship, we floated a little above the ground, too. When we heard Hebrew songs being played in space, we sang them here on Earth. When he looked down at us through his ship's window and said that little Israel looked so beautiful from space, we felt a little more beautiful, a little bit more special.   Every day he was up there was a gift for Israel. He made us feel better about ourselves, and we loved him for that. He shared his experience with us fully, through video, phone calls, pictures, radio interviews, and, letters to his wife and children. He showed us a place where time and space weren't dotted with the debris of war, twisted metal and tears. He showed us how high Israelis could one day reach.   When we gathered around the TVs to watch his imminent landing, our hearts pounded with excitement. When contact with Columbia was lost, we bit our nails, in denial, tortured in disbelief. Our anxiety slowly turned into angst, our hopes dashed, our hero fallen.   In real time, we all watched our dream shatter into tiny pieces across the Texan sky, over a town called Palestine. When Columbia's hull scattered, our hearts broke into tiny pieces, and we didn't walk so tall for a while. And then came Assaf. Smart, strong, confident, just like his father. As a teenager in a Texas high school, it was clear Assaf was Ilan's son through and through. His grades in mathematics, geography and physics were near perfect.   In 2006, we saw Assaf enter the IAF pilot's course. He was following in his father's footsteps, and we dared to dream again. A little glimmer of that light that went out with Ilan sparked within our hearts.   When we heard news that Assaf had skillfully maneuvered his training jet out of a dangerous, spiraling descent, barely saving his skin but managing to control the massive machine, the glimmer of light grew brighter and warmer. He was destined for greatness; he was a hero in the making. He was a Top Gun.   And on that sunny day just three months ago, when Assaf graduated as the most outstanding cadet in his pilot's class, we collectively burst again with pride.   See, we said to each other, the dream is still alive. The son is taking his father's place. He could take us all the way to the top again, and who knows, maybe he'll go into space, and the whole world will hear our music again. Assaf fit so naturally into the narrative we had written for him. So when rumors started spreading that the pilot killed in a training crash on Sunday morning was Assaf Ramon, our first reaction was one of adamant disbelief. Surely not. Not Assaf Ramon. Not again. We desperately wanted the rumors to be false. And when confirmation finally came, the old wound reopened.   We were mourning Ilan Ramon all over again.   For more of Amir's articles and posts, visit his personal blog Forecast Highs This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804563204&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull