Operation Opera (Hebrew: אופרה‎), also known as Operation Babylon was a surprise Israeli air strike carried out on 7 June 1981, that destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq.

In 1976, Iraq purchased an "Osiris"-class nuclear reactor from France. While Iraq and France maintained that the reactor, named Osirak by the French, was intended for peaceful scientific research, the Israelis viewed the reactor with suspicion, and said that it was designed to make nuclear weapons. On 7 June 1981, a flight of Israeli Air Force F-16A fighter aircraft, with an escort of F-15As, bombed and heavily damaged the Osirak reactor. Israel claimed it acted in self-defense, and that the reactor had "less than a month to go" before "it might have become critical." Ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian were killed. The attack took place about three weeks before the elections for the Knesset.

The attack was strongly criticized around the world and Israel was rebuked by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly in two separate resolutions. The destruction of Osirak has been cited as an example of a preventive strike in contemporary scholarship on international law.

Ilan Ramon (June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003; Hebrew: אילן רמון‎, born Ilan Wolferman) was a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, and later the first Israeli astronaut.

Ramon was the space shuttle payload specialist of STS-107, the fatal mission of Columbia, in which he and six other crew members were killed in the re-entry accident. Ramon is the only foreign recipient of the United States Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Ramon was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, and grew up in Beersheba. His mother and grandmother were survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His first name, Ilan, means "tree" in Hebrew. Ilan changed his last name from Wolferman when he joined the IAF just as many other Israeli aviators.

Ramon graduated from high school in 1972. In 1987, he graduated with a B.Sc. degree in electronics and computer engineering from Tel Aviv University.

Ilan Ramon was a Colonel (Aluf Mishne) and fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, with thousands of hours flying experience. In 1974, he graduated as a fighter pilot from the Israel Air Force (IAF) Flight School. From 1974–76 he participated in A-4 Basic Training and Operations. 1976–80 was spent in Mirage III-C training and operations. In 1980, as one of the IAF's establishment team of the first F-16 Squadron in Israel, he attended the F-16 Training Course at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. From 1981–83, he served as the Deputy Squadron Commander B, F-16 Squadron.

Yehuda Avner (born 1928) is an Israeli former prime ministerial advisor and diplomat. He served as personal secretary and speechwriter to Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Golda Meir and Levi Eshkol, and as Israeli Ambassador to Australia and the United Kingdom.

Yehuda Avner (originally Haffner) was born in Manchester, England in 1928. He was active in the Religious-Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva, and was committed to helping build a Jewish State in Palestine. In his book The Prime Ministers, he recalled the antisemitism he saw and experienced in Britain, including antisemitic rioting in the aftermath of the Sergeants affair. Upon high school graduation in 1947, moved to Jerusalem, then part of British Mandatory Palestine to participate in the second Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz.

Avner fought in the Siege of Jerusalem during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1949, he was amongst the founders of Kibbutz Lavi, a religious kibbutz located in Israel's Galilee region. He temporarily moved back to Britain to work for the Bnei Akiva movement as National Director (Mazkir) before returning to Israel in 1954.

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."

Zeev Maoz is a professor of Political Science and director of the International Relations Program at the University of California, Davis, as well as Distinguished Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel. He is the President of the Peace Science Society (International) during 2007-08. Before coming to UC-Davis he was head of the Graduate School of Government and Policy at Tel-Aviv University. He also served as the Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies (1994–1997), as the Academic Director of the M.A. program of the National Defense College of the IDF (1990–1994), and as Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Haifa (1991–1994). Maoz received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He also held visiting appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Rice University, and the University of Michigan.