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'{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2013}} [[File:Lahav forest Joe alon center.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The Joe Alon Center, a regional studies institute in the [[Negev]] opened in his honor<ref>{{cite web|title=About the Joe Alon Center |url=http://www.joealon.org.il/Content.aspx?itemId=18 |accessdate=2011-09-11 |deadurl=yes |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120119035500/http://www.joealon.org.il/Content.aspx?itemId=18 |archivedate=January 19, 2012 }}</ref>]] '''Yosef (Joe) Alon''' ([[Hebrew language|Hebrew]]: יוסף (ג'ו) אלון), born '''Josef Plaček''' known also as Joe Alon (July 25, 1929 – July 1, 1973), was an [[Israeli Air Force]] officer and military attache to the U.S. who was mysteriously shot and killed in the driveway of his home in [[Chevy Chase, Maryland]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Assassins Unknown: CIA, FBI documents provide clues to 1973 killing of Israeli diplomat |url=http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/assassins_unknown |agency=Associated Press |date=June 27, 2007 |accessdate=2009-03-02}}</ref> ==Early life== Alon was born Josef Plaček on kibbutz [[Ein Harod]] to Jewish immigrants from [[Czechoslovakia]]. When he was two, his family returned to Czechoslovakia. On the eve of [[World War II]], Alon's father sent his 10-year-old son to the [[United Kingdom]] as part of the [[Kindertransport]] program. Most of his family was wiped out during the [[The Holocaust|Holocaust]]. Following the war, he returned to Czechoslovakia and attempted to start a career as a jeweler. In 1947, he volunteered for the first pilots' course in the [[Sherut Avir]], the [[Haganah]]'s nascent air corps. Soon afterward, he moved back to Mandate Palestine, changed his name to Yosef Alon, and upon Israeli independence in 1948, was among the founding members of the [[Israeli Air Force]].<ref name=joe>[http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/2.294/who-killed-joe-alon-1.353481 Who killed Joe Alon?]</ref> ==IAF career== Alon fought in the [[1948 Arab–Israeli War|Israeli War of Independence]] as a fighter pilot and early member of the nascent Israeli Air Force, and would go on to complete 75 missions. When Israel formed its first [[Mirage (aircraft)|Mirage]] fighter jet squadron, Alon was assigned its commander. In 1970, then a colonel, Alon was chosen to be the assistant [[Air attaché|air]] and [[naval attache]] at [[Israeli embassy in Washington, DC|Israel's Embassy in Washington, DC]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/07/01/papers_shed_light_on_envoys_73_killing/ |accessdate=2009-03-02|title=Papers shed light on envoy's '73 killing |publisher=Boston News |author=Adam Goldman and Randy Herschaft |date=July 1, 2007}}</ref> Installed in what should have been a three-year assignment, Alon advocated strongly on Israeli arms procurement, especially regarding the [[F-4 Phantom]].{{citation needed|date=May 2013}} ==Assassination== On the night of June 30, 1973, Yosef Alon and his wife Dvora went to a dinner party organized for a departing embassy staffer. After two and a half hours of socializing and drinking, at roughly 12:30&nbsp;am on July 1, the couple entered their [[Ford Galaxie]] and drove home to [[Chevy Chase, Maryland]], arriving about a half-hour later. Dvora exited the vehicle and walked a few dozen feet to their porch while Alon gathered up his sports jacket on the back seat. At this moment, Alon was shot five times by a foreign-made .38-caliber revolver, one shot fatally hitting his heart. Dvora rushed inside and called the police, seeing only a light-colored car drive away, and then returned to the front yard and attempted with her 18-year-old daughter Dahlia to stem his bleeding with towels. Alon was taken to a hospital, where he died at 1:27&nbsp;am.<ref name=arutz/> ==Aftermath== ===Radio broadcast=== Later on July 1, the Cairo-based [[Voice of Palestine]] broadcast that "After the assassination of martyr [[Mohammed Boudia]]<ref>Boudia was killed that June 28. For more see [[Operation Wrath of God]].</ref> at the hands of the Zionist intelligence elements in Paris, Colonel Yosef Alon...was executed...His is the first execution operation carried out against a Zionist official in the U.S." ===Investigation=== The [[FBI]] investigation, "Murder of Assistant Air Attache Col. Joseph Alon" (MURDA), quickly focused on a possible link with Arab terrorism, including following leads given by the [[Shin Bet]], but was ultimately closed in March 1976 without discovering the perpetrators, according to the [[Associated Press]]. Sometime later, the [[CIA]] was reported to have been told by "Fedayeen senior official" that on the orders of [[Black September (group)|Black September]], two students, using [[Lebanese passport|Lebanese]] or [[Cypriot passports]], had passed across the Canada–US border and come to Washington, where, with the help of a local professor, they had rented a car and got the weapons for the assassination. Afterwards, the students were reported to have abandoned the rental for another, which they used to get to [[Dulles International Airport]]; from there they flew on to the West Coast, East Asia, and finally the Middle East. This information was passed to the FBI in February 1977, but they could make no new progress, and the investigation was closed. The following year, the collected evidence for the case was destroyed by the Baltimore office of the FBI.{{citation needed|date=May 2013}} Dvora Alon died in 1995 without knowing the identity of her husband's killer.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2007Jun30/0,4675,AssassinsUnknownFamily,00.html|accessdate=2009-03-02 |title=Family's Long Battle to Find Alon Killer |author=Adam Goldman and Randy Herschaft |publisher=Fox News |date=June 30, 2007}}</ref> ====Theories==== In his book ''Chasing Shadows'' (Palgrave Macmillan), [[Fred Burton (security expert)|Fred Burton]], former deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the [[U.S. State Department]]'s [[Diplomatic Security Service]] and Vice-President of the private intelligence and consulting firm [[Stratfor]], concluded after a lengthy investigation that Alon's killer was an agent from Black September who was killed by [[Mossad]] in 2011.<ref name=arutz>[http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/148704#.UsZhyvRDsjo Was Alon Killed Because He 'Knew Too Much?']</ref> In the documentary film ''who killed my dad'' by Liora Amir-Brmetz aired on the [[Channel_1_(Israel)|first Channel]] in Israel on April 2011. The historian [[Uri Milstein]] and Colonel [[Yakov Agassi]] have presented a theory which said that Alon had been assassinated because he unwillingly learned about the conspiracy theory (the ''Kissinger plan'') for the [[Yom Kippur War]] which involved collusion between the US, Israel and Egypt and was designed to allow entre for the US into the region as a "savior" (and future power broker)for both Israel and Egypt by stopping the fighting after previously agreed upon objectives had been achieved.<ref>https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/22/what-really-happened-in-the-yom-kippur-war/</ref> [[Ezer Weizman]] answered for the question that "Jo was killed because he knew something he should not know about" it was because he was getting drunk. The film also describe that [[Shmuel Gonen]] had said to [[Adam Baruch]] which wrote in his book that he was killed by one of our own because he knew something he should not know about. [[Uri Bar-Joseph|Uri Bar Joseph]] had rebuffed the theory and the findings<ref>https://www.haaretz.co.il/1.1170857</ref> ===Renewed investigation=== Due to a lead developed years earlier by journalist [[Adam Goldman]], the FBI reopened the case in January 2017.<ref>http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.763883</ref> The new investigation involves information recently given to an agent by Venezuelan terrorist [[Carlos the Jackal]] that sometime after 1970 three American veterans sympathetic to the Palestinian cause,<ref name=GoldmanCaseRevived>{{cite news|last1=Goldman|first1=Adam|title=I Wrote to Carlos the Jackal, and an Israeli's Assassination Case Was Revived|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/us/politics/carlos-the-jackal-yosef-alon-assassination-israel.html?_r=0|accessdate=10 January 2017|publisher=New York Times|date=8 January 2017}}</ref> one of them a "prominent former [[Black Panther Party|Black Panther]]," approached Mahmoud Ould Saleh, a Mauritania-born manager of the Arabic Bookshop on the Rue Saint Victor in the [[Latin Quarter]] of Paris and member of the extremist Palestinian "rejection front" (killed in 1977.)<ref name="PalestinianMilitant">{{cite news|title=PLO Accuses 'zionist Agents' of Killing Palestinian Militant|url=http://www.jta.org/1977/01/05/archive/plo-accuses-zionist-agents-of-killing-palestinian-militant|accessdate=10 January 2017|publisher=JTA|date=5 January 1977}}</ref><ref name="Bookstore">{{cite news|title=Former PLO Aide Killed Leaving Bookstore|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/04/archives/former-plo-aide-in-paris-killed-leaving-bookstore.html|accessdate=10 January 2017|publisher=NewYorkTimes|date=4 January 1977}}</ref> Saleh put them in touch with suspected [[Black September]] militant Kamal Kheir Beik (later killed), known to have managed terror attacks including 1975 [[OPEC siege]].<ref name=GoldmanCaseRevived/> Every sale of the gun identified as the murder weapon, a .38-caliber revolver, that was sold east of the Mississippi has previously been identified by the FBI, which is now tracing the purchasers of those guns.<ref name=GoldmanCaseRevived/> ==References== {{Reflist}} https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/22/what-really-happened-in-the-yom-kippur-war/ ==Further reading== *{{cite book |author=Burton, Fred and John Bruning |title=Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Collegeville, MN |year=2011 |isbn=0-230-62055-8}} ==External links== *[http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2007/07/killing-col-yosef-alon-cia-had-lead.html Killing Col. Yosef Alon : CIA had a lead] *[http://ghostsofdc.org/2012/01/19/israeli-diplomat-murdered-in-front-of-bethesda-home/ Israeli Diplomat Murdered in Front of Bethesda Home] *[http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/6/daughters-quest-find-who-shot-their-father/?page=all Unsolved mystery: Who shot Israeli military attache Joseph Alon outside home in D.C. suburb?] {{Terrorist attacks against Israelis in the 1970s}} {{Palestinian militancy attacks in the 1970s}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Alon, Yosef}} [[Category:1929 births]] [[Category:1973 deaths]] [[Category:Assassinated Israeli diplomats]] [[Category:Assassinated Jews]] [[Category:Assassinated military personnel]] [[Category:Czech Jews]] [[Category:Deaths by firearm in Maryland]] [[Category:Israeli Air Force personnel]] [[Category:Israeli Jews]] [[Category:Israeli murder victims]] [[Category:Israeli people of Czech-Jewish descent]] [[Category:Unsolved murders in the United States]] [[Category:Israeli expatriates in the United States]]'