SINATRA HELPED SEND GUNS TO ISRAEL

But, for the Jewish state?

Yep, ole Blue Eyes himself played a role in smuggling arms to Israel in 1948, according to Brian Greenspun, whose father, Hank, was a Las Vegas media and real estate magnate who helped lead … gun-smuggling effort.

The younger son related the account last week to a Washington, D.C., fund-raising dinner for Israel’s Rabin Center, an institute that promotes democracy and pluralism. Greenspun, who said he heard the story from his father, later confirmed it with Teddy Kollek, the late Jerusalem mayor.

According to the account, which Greenspun said he was making public for the first time, Kollek (mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, and founder of the Jerusalem Foundation) who in 1948 was heading Israel’s arms-smuggling effort in New York – got to know the singer while staying in hotel 14, atop the old Copacabana nightclub where Sinatra headlined. Kollek needed to pay the captain of a ship a cash bribe to smuggle the weapons out of New York Harbor, but knew he was being watched by the FBI because the United States was adhering to an arms embargo of all parties to the conflict.