Iftach Spector is a recently retired Israeli Air Force brigadier general and its second-highest-scoring fighter ace. He commanded a squadron of fighter-bombers during the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. The leader of the flight that attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, he later rose to head the IAF’s Training and War Lessons Section and served as its Chief of Operations. He was one of the eight Israeli pilots who attacked Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirik in 1981.

    In 2003, he was the senior signatory of the famous “Pilots’ Letter,” in which Spector and 27 other Israeli pilots stated their refusal to bomb targets in Palestine where collateral damage would likely be severe.

    Spector is the author of the memoir, Loud and Clear: The Memoir of an Israeli Fighter Pilot (Zenith 2009). His first book, A Dream in Black and Azure (1992; never translated into English), won the Sade Literary Award, given to him personally by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He has a BA in history and Middle East Studies from Tel Aviv University and a master's in political science from UCLA, both with honors. General Spector lives in Ramot-HaShavim, Israel.