This is a postcard published by the Israel airline company El Al in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel showing an El Al airplane flying over an illustrated map of Israel.
The map depicts Israel’s cities, towns and villages, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. The airport was called Lydda after the neighbouring city, although today it is called Ben Gurion Airport. Besides the cities, many villages appear on the map symbolized by trees, small houses and tents.
There is a clear distinction on the map between the inhabited and non-inhabited areas. The inhabited area is green while the other areas are yellow, possibly symbolizing the desert areas of Israel. The focus is probably on Jewish settlement, however, since there were no doubt Arab cities and villages in some of the "empty" areas.
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El Al - Founded in November 1948, El Al is Israel’s national airline. The name comes from Hosea (11:7) and means “upward.” Non-military flights using military planes were labelled “El Al” even before the creation of the airline. The most famous of these flights took place in September 1948 when an “El Al” plane was used to bring Chaim Weizmann from Geneva to Israel to become Israel’s first president. Once the airline was officially formed, it began services to Rome, Paris, London, and Zurich. It currently flies to 36 destinations around the world. El Al has participated in missions rescuing Jews around the world such as Operation Magic Carpet which brought Jews from Yemen to Israel in 1949–1950, Operation Exodus which brought hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, and Operation Solomon which rescued thousands of Ethiopian Jews in 1991. El Al, formerly owned by the government of Israel, was privatized in 2005.
