As a campaigner for peace in the Middle East, Abie Nathan pursued his goals with unconventional zeal, vision and exuberance. Although some of his opponents viewed him as a crackpot his actions were frequently vindicated by events.

Abraham Jacob Nathan was born in 1927 into a wealthy family in Abadan — then in Persia, now in Iran. He went to a Jesuit boarding school in Bombay, and the rest of the family joined him in India in 1939. After completing his education, Nathan trained as a pilot, taking a job at Air India, and in 1945 he won his wings with the RAF. In 1947 he was charged with transporting Hindu and Muslim refugees between newly partitioned India and Pakistan, but as soon as Israel was declared a state a year later he moved there to volunteer as a combat pilot in the country’s War of Independence, which began immediately afterwards.

Spending the war shuttling planes between Czechoslovakia and Israel, Nathan also carried out bombing raids on villages in northern Israel and the Egyptian army in the south, flying a converted transport plane. Later he visited several of the villages, and the shock of seeing the damage he had helped to inflict was a strong influence on him throughout the rest of his life.

After a period as a pilot for El Al between 1950 and 1959, Nathan opened California, a hamburger diner-style restaurant, in central Tel Aviv. Along with another restaurant, Casit, it became a haunt of the city’s bohemian set, and Nathan’s parties were legendary. However, it was not long before his social conscience and sense of adventure led him to begin a life of campaigning, which he did in typically flamboyant fashion. In 1965 he led a political party, Nes (meaning miracle), in the Israeli general election. Although it missed the threshold set by the list system of proportional representation by 2,000 votes, Nathan had promised that if he received significant backing, he would fly to Egypt — then an enemy country — with a message of peace.

He was as good as his word. He rented an old single-engine plane, named it Shalom 1 and flew across the border. After a forced landing in Port Said he was arrested. He requested a meeting with President Nasser, asking also that he be permitted to deliver a petition with 60,000 signatures. He was refused on both counts and deported to Israel, where he was arrested for leaving the country illegally.

In the next few years Nathan continued to pursue his agenda of peace in the Middle East, meeting Bobby Kennedy, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Pope to enlist their help. In 1967 he again travelled to Egypt illegally, and was jailed for 40 days on his return for “unauthorised contact with the enemy”.

He then changed tack, moving to the sea. In 1973 he acquired a ship — the purchase was helped by John Lennon — and turned it into a pirate radio station, the Voice of Peace. Generally anchored off the coast of Israel, it began broadcasting in 1973, “from somewhere in the Mediterranean”. In its first broadcast, Nathan declared his intention: “Shalom, salaam and peace to all our listeners. The Peace Ship is a project of the people. We hope through this station we will help relieve the pain and heal the wounds of many years of suffering of the people of the Middle East.”

On air 24 hours a day, over the next 20 years its combination of pop music and messages of love and peace attracted a loyal audience. It remained the sole radio station in the area playing international chart music and using English as its principal language, while offering news in Hebrew and Arabic. Nathan sank the ship in 1993, not long after the signing of the Oslo Accords, feeling that his message had been successfully circulated, although he had also run into financial difficulties.

In 1977 Nathan sailed along the Suez Canal, distributing toys and chocolate to Arab children. At the time many laughed at him, but within months Israel and Egypt were at the negotiating table, before a formal peace treaty was signed at Camp David in 1979.

Nathan was always willing to risk his own health and liberty in the pursuit of peace. In 1978 he began the first of several hunger strikes in protest at the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He also served a further jail term in 1991 for illegally meeting Yassir Arafat and other officials of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Eventually President Chaim Herzog intervened, cutting 12 months from his 18-month sentence. Again, though, Nathan’s actions were shown to be prescient — less than four years later the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was shaking hands with Arafat on the White House lawn.

Although most of Nathan’s work related to Israel, he also did much to help those suffering elsewhere. He was involved in organising emergency aid for the starving, flying or shipping emergency supplies to several stricken places, including Bangladesh, Biafra, Cambodia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Nicaragua and the former Zaire.

After suffering strokes in 1996 and 1998, Nathan was left partially paralysed. He was married twice, with one daughter, who survives him.

Abie Nathan, peace activist, was born on April 29, 1927. He died on August 27, 2008, aged 81