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Report: "Ufologists are at a loss to explain the lack of sightings in Israel's near neighbors—it is as if the aliens, unlike most Earthlings, are aware of Israel's borders."”! The "rationalists" in Israel, like those in the United States, prefer to deny the existence of the phenomenon, claiming the events are a simple case of mass hysteria. Many view the events as a sign from God. Still others believe that the events in Israel portend a toa : 1 sinister influence—a foreboding sign that something ominous is about to happen and that Israel will be its focus. Whatever the case may be, the events in Israel closely follow those that have comprised UFO folklore in the United States for more than 50 years. On the evening of Thursday, March 13, 1997 the state of Arizona became host of one of the most recent and best documented UFO sightings in history. The sighting began at 8:16 P.M. when a retired police officer in Paulden, about 60 miles north of Phoenix, reported "a cluster of five red lights headed south." Minutes later, calls from eyewitnesses in Prescott, Wickenburg, Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Tempe flooded telephone lines at nearby Luke Air Force Base and local police departments. While some described the object as a globe or a sphere, the majority of the witnesses saw an enormous V-shaped object with six leading and one trailing light. Some of the witnesses described the object as a solid, massive triangular craft. Others said that it appeared to be somewhat transparent. Like "a gray distortion of the night sky." Videotapes of the object confirmed its great size and the V-shaped leading edge composed of a bank of six bright lights. The event, which lasted 106 minutes, apparently engendered the attention of nearby Luke Air Force Base. According to eyewitnesses as the object neared the base three F-16 interceptors were scrambled. However, when the jets approached the object it "shot straight up and disappeared like a blink of an eye."*’ Predictably, officials at Luke Air Force Base denied this claim stating that no aircraft were dispatched and they do not tee -ati ia TINA. Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center in Seattle, Washington received hundreds of calls on the sighting and said "the incident over Arizona was the most dramatic I've seen. .. .What we have here is the real thing. They are here." The object was also sighted by numerous local pilots and air traffic controllers. Bill Grava, a pilot and air traffic controller was on duty that night at Sky Harbor International Airport. Although he witnessed the event he disclosed that the object did not show up on radar. When asked about the sighting he stated, "I still don't know what to think, and I have no idea what it was. Something military, I guess." The event was big news in the Arizona press. Local television stations aired the video tapes taken by local residents and radio talk shows were inundated by calls about the 1 W aor 10 1007 a events for several weeks. However, it was not until June 18, 1997, over three months after the event, that the sightings gained simultaneous national media attention when the network news programs on NBC, CNN, MSNBC and ABC covered the Arizona event 13 East. This peculiarity was also noted by Daniel Brynberg, a journalist for the Jerusalem PHOENIX RISING? investigate UFOs.