High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Operation Balak was a smuggling operation, during the founding of Israel in 1948, that purchased arms in Europe to avoid various embargoes and boycotts transferring them to the Zionists. Of particular note was the delivery of 23 Czechoslovakia-made Avia S-199 fighters, the post-war version of the German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109.