Holland Bars Israeli Cargo Planes | Crashed El Al Cargo Flight Carried Poison, Explosives and Munitions

http://www.israelwire.com/New/990212/9902125.html

Friday, February 12, 1999, 5:04
Holland Bars Israeli Cargo Planes

(IsraelWire-2/12) Israel and Holland are at an aviation crisis: with Holland's team delving deeper into its investigation of the 1992 El Al plane crash into a residential building in Amsterdam, Holland has barred Israeli cargo planes from landing in their country. El Al's director-general, Yoel Feldshaw, has accused the Dutch of anti-Semitism. On Wednesday, the Knesset Finance Committee discussed the current situation.
MK Avi Yehezkel warned Dutch officials that they were opening a Pandora's box and harming the excellent relationship that exists between the Dutch people and Israel.
Minister of Transportation Shaul Yahalom, head of the Civil Aviation Administration Avner Yarkoni, and Holland's ambassador to Israel Korno van-Helnberg Kover participated in the Knesset committee discussion. Finance Committee chairman MK Amnon Rubinstein called for Holland to wrap up the investigation as quickly as possible to avert damaging Israeli-Dutch relations.
Feldshaw told the committee that despite El Al's major role in the cargo business in the Schiphol airport, the company is considering reducing its activity in Holland
Transportation Minister Yahalom asked the government of Holland to work towards ending the defamation of Israel.

http://www.israelwire.com/New/990209/99020916.html

Tuesday, February 09, 1999, 13:36
Crashed El Al Cargo Flight Carried Poison, Explosives and Munitions

(IsraelWire-2/9) It began as a routine, low-key parliamentary investigation to appease a minority who believed the full facts surrounding the worst civil aviation disaster in Dutch history had not come out. And to identify the cause of illnesses suffered by survivors and rescue workers.
Nobody in the Netherlands, a European model of openness and efficient management, priding itself on transparency and accountability, could have foreseen the time bomb waiting to go off.
A stunned public, watching the live televised proceedings of the Bijlmer Inquiry, discovered leading Dutch officials covered up vital information endangering lives after the crash. The Israeli airline, El Al, had received special treatment resulting in astonishing lapses of public safety at the Amsterdam airport and over Dutch airspace.
Five leading officials have already been suspended. The Prime Minister, Mr. Wim Kok, has described the cover-up as "unforgivable" and "shocking", and criminal proceedings are expected to result.
Dutch civil servants, state civil aviation officials and air traffic controllers now stand accused of conspiring to conceal the fact that the jumbo jet which crashed over Amsterdam in October 1992, killing 39 people on the ground and the crew of four, was carrying explosives, poison, gases and munitions.
Flowers, perfume and electronics were the listed cargo, according to the Dutch authorities.
But recorded telephone transcripts in the crash aftermath played to the parliamentary inquiry reveal that a cover-up was agreed between an El Al employee and his Dutch counterparts.
The existence of the transcripts became known only recently. El Al has officially said its investigation into the crash is complete.
It advised the Dutch that the cargo was dangerous and can help no further.
One Israeli military investigator was quoted as saying the crash inquiry was a political smokescreen fuelled by greedy lawyers in pursuit of compensation claims for victims.
The type of poisons and gases being carried aboard is still unclear. The implications, for the hundreds who sifted through the crash debris searching for survivors and clues to the tragedy, many with their bare hands and without protective clothing, and for residents, are ominous.
Also revealed was a 25-page repairs check-list never carried out on the Boeing 747 cargo plane which ploughed into a high-rise apartment complex in the densely populated Amsterdam suburb shortly after taking off.
El Al mechanics testified that they were ordered by senior staff to release aircraft they themselves considered unfit to be airborne and did not want to sign release forms for.
"Sometimes a plane should not have been allowed to fly," said a Dutch senior El Al mechanic, Mr. Carel Gaalman, under oath.
"There were several occasions when an aircraft unfit to fly was taken up regardless. It happened a few times in 1992," he said.
Other airlines also sometimes took short cuts on maintenance, he claimed, and these were known as "grey flights".
The El Al cargo flight, which crashed, was carrying 115 tons of cargo, 15 above the maximum limit.
Witnesses at the Dutch inquiry have testified that planes with up to 120 tons which "could barely get off the ground" were granted permission to fly.
The airline had a unique position at Schiphol airport, enjoying special privileges since the beginning of the 1970s.
Nobody was allowed to inspect El Al cargo or interfere with its procedures, challenge its security or ground staff or speak about anything they had seen, said witnesses, describing the El Al area as a mini-Israel.
According to the defense magazine, Jane's Weekly, until the end of 1996 Schiphol was Israel's most important transit point for military cargo, listed as general cargo or electrical parts, passing through the Dutch civil airport under a shroud of secrecy.
"A generation of Dutch people feel they owe a great debt to Israel, and the irregularities now being uncovered at the El Al disaster inquiry are part of accommodating this special relationship," said the political commentator Mr. Hans Wansink. "Of the 140,000 Jews in Holland, 105,000 were murdered during the war, and our guilt feelings that much more should have been done to save them persist to this day". (Irish Times)