Movie actress Elizabeth Taylor offered herself as a hostage for the more than 100 Air France hijack victims held by terrorists at Entebbe Airport in Uganda during the tense days before the Israeli rescue raid last July 4. That disclosure was made here by Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, at a Jewish National Fund gala honoring Ms. Taylor and her husband, John W. Warner, for their devotion to the land reclamation work of the JNF and other humanitarian causes.
Dinitz, who presented the couple with a certificate for a forest to be planted in their names within the American National Bicentennial Park near Jerusalem, said that Ms. Taylor’s offer was “appreciated” and “the Jewish people will always remember it.”
More than 1200 friends and supporters of the JNF attended the event which was addressed by Moshe Rivlin, the JNF’s new world chairman who flew in from Jerusalem for the occasion. “We hate to destroy, we love to build, and it is the common desire of the people of Israel for peace no matter what party is in power,” Rivlin said.
Ms. Taylor said “The trees we planted with our own hands in Israel symbolize a new hope that the whole world, Christian, Jew and Arab, will live as one in harmony and under one God.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
