In 1962, this famed songster visited Israel for the first time, performing in six cities as part of his multinational World Tour for Children. 

He sang at the official Independence Day event in Tel Aviv and sat beside Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Gen. Moshe Dayan on the reviewing stand.

In 1964, he dedicated the Frank Sinatra Brotherhood and Friendship Center for Arab and Israeli Children in Nazareth.

Sinatra returned to Israel often over the years, even celebrating his 80th birthday in Eilat along with friends including Lee Iacocca and Walter Matthau.

But his first brush with Israel was in March 1948, when future mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek was in New York on a clandestine mission to send weapons to the fledging state, which was under attack from five Arab nations, despite a US arms embargo.

A ship full of munitions was waiting to sail, but how could Kollek transfer the cash needed when federal agents were tailing him?

Spontaneously, he shared his secret dilemma with Sinatra, whom he met one night at the bar of his hotel.

“And in the early hours of the following morning I walked out the front door of the building with a satchel, and the Feds followed me,” Kollek told the authors of the biography Sinatra: The Life: “Out the back door went Frank Sinatra, carrying a paper bag filled with cash [estimated at $1 million]. He went down to the pier, handed it over, and watched the ship sail.”