Aaron Sorkin to write and possibly direct film on Al Schwimmer's daring legacy

Aaron Sorkin is channeling his talent as one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters/directors into a new screenplay about Al Schwimmer, who helped build the Israel Air Force and was the founder and first CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). 

Warner Bros. Studio has made a deal with Sorkin for him to write the film and possibly direct it.

Schwimmer was an American-born aerospace engineer who became a flight engineer during World War II. Following the war, he became the ringleader of a group of World War II veterans who smuggled 125 military planes and weapons into Palestine in 1948, in defiance of a US embargo, during the War of Independence. 

The brave veterans were aided by an unlikely group that reportedly included Meyer Lansky, Milton Rubenfeld (the father of Pee-Wee Herman), and Frank Sinatra. 

In 1950, Schwimmer was convicted of violating US law for the plane smuggling, stripped of his voting and veterans’ rights and fined, although he did not have to serve prison time. At the request of Israel’s founder and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, he returned to Israel to start IAI. 

'America's greatest gift to Israel'

When Schwimmer retired in 1988, the company was valued at $1 billion, worth $2.67 billion today.

Sorkin’s screenplay will be based on an article for Business Insider by David Kushner called, “America’s Greatest Gift to Israel,” which describes Schwimmer’s efforts to found the IAF as “one part Argo and one part Mission: Impossible.”

His exploits and those of the other American World War II veterans who helped him have been chronicled in several documentaries, including Roberta Grossman’s Above and Beyond, produced by Nancy Spielberg, and the PBS documentary, A Wing and a Prayer by Boaz Dvir.

David Mamet has also used the story of the IAF’s founding in his works: the unproduced screenplay Russian Poland, and the novella The Handle and the Hold. 

Sorkin won an Oscar for the screenplay of The Social Network. In recent years, he directed several movies, including The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos. He is best known for writing and creating the television series The West Wing and for writing the screenplay for A Few Good Men, which featured the iconic line, “You can’t handle the truth!”

In 2023, Sorkin left Creative Artists Agency after his agent, Maha Dakhil, posted on social media labeling Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack that left 1,200 people dead as “genocide.” In response, Sorkin said, “Maha isn’t an antisemite; she’s just wrong. She’s a great agent, and I’m very proud of the work we did together over the last six years.” 

Although Dakhil later deleted her posts and apologized, Sorkin moved on to the William Morris Endeavor (WME) agency.