Twenty years ago last Tuesday, Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut, died aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Early in his life, Ramon had served in the Israeli air force, and took part in the daring 1981 raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. His friend and former flight instructor, Amos Yadlin—who flew alongside him in the Osirak mission—discusses his recollections of Ramon in an interview with Menachem Butler.

Ilan . . . was the only unmarried pilot [of the eight who flew to Iraq]. He said, “You all have wives and kids. Give me the most dangerous place in the formation.” And that was position number eight. Number one came by surprise; number two was still a surprise. And as eight airplanes dive [on the target], the last one [in the formation] is the one most likely to be shot down. So, Ilan volunteered for the eighth position. . . . He did [so] out of friendship and camaraderie, and because of the amount of training time we had spent together.

If Murphy’s law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong, that night it was the other way around. Everything that could have gone wrong went right. Every surprise was for the good. The airplane’s fuel consumption was better than we thought it would be. The [Iraqi] MiGs did not take off to engage us. The air defenses were pointed to the east, and they did not pick us up until very late. Basically, all the airplanes were faithful airplanes. None of them had a malfunction. So we thought maybe we got some help from the Almighty that this important historic mission went on without malfunctions.

Yadlin also recalls a conversation he had with Ramon in Texas in 2001 or 2002, when he was preparing for spaceflight with the rest of the Columbia crew. At the time Yadlin was a senior air-force officer, and he had come to tell Ramon that the IDF had run out of the funds to sponsor his participation in the space mission:

I told Ilan we would have to recall him. His answer was very interesting and touching to me. He said “Amos, we are good friends. Yes, the air force has sent me here, but I’m no longer only an air-force representative. I represent, here, the state of Israel and the Jewish people. You cannot recall me.” And then he invited me to meet the whole team. And I had a very touching, emotional conversation with them. They all spoke highly of Ilan, and the need to keep him on the team. I came back to Israel and we found the budget for the continuation of his training in the U.S. Yes, sometimes I’m sorry that we found the budget, but this is how it is.

How did Qatar, an American ally, become the nerve center of the leading Palestinian jihadist organization? Natalie Ecanow explains.

When Jordan expelled Hamas in 1999, Qatar offered sanctuary to the group, which had already become notorious for using suicide-bombing attacks over the previous decade. . . . Hamas chose to relocate to Syria. However, that arrangement lasted for only a decade. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the terror group found its way back to Qatar.

In 2003, Hamas leaders reportedly convened in Qatar after the IDF attempted to eliminate Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, following a Hamas suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed seven people, including two American citizens. This episode led to one of the first efforts by Qatar to advocate for its terror proxy.

Thirteen years and five wars between Hamas and Israel later, Qatar’s support for Hamas has not waned. . . . To this day, Qatari officials maintain that the office came at the “request from Washington to establish indirect lines of communication with Hamas.” However, an Obama White House official asserted that there was never any request from Washington. . . . Inexplicably, the United States government continues to rely on Qatar to negotiate for the release of the hostages held by Hamas, even as the regime hosts the terror group’s political elite.

A reckoning is needed between our two countries. Congressional hearings, legislation, executive orders, and other measures to regulate relations between our countries are long overdue.