“Is that an airplane light?” I ask the experienced group of UFO investigators standing beside me in the darkness, on a rugged, towering cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea at the Iris Nature Reserve in Netanya, a coastal city north of Tel Aviv.
During our filmed interview, I spot a strange point of light on the horizon, moving rapidly from south to north before suddenly stopping in front of us. Within seconds, everyone is trying to figure out exactly what we are seeing.
Yoram Torbatian, 69, an energetic defense industry retiree and enthusiastic UFO investigator, gazes at the sky and announces: “I think we’re seeing the same unidentified flying object I saw and filmed right here on Sept. 3.”
Excitement builds among the local UFO enthusiasts, and everyone begins filming. I ask Torbatian whether he is certain it is not an airplane.
“Ninety percent,” he replies, before addressing the mysterious light with a request: “Our brothers from space, if you could come closer, we’d be happy to see you.”
Lior Abulafia, a veteran wildlife photographer who joined the ynet expedition to Netanya’s so-called Alien Hill, studies his camera screen and struggles to contain his excitement.
“Look at my phone. Do you see the energy it’s changing? Look, it’s like a light show, red, green. What is that? It’s strange.”
“Lior, you have a lot of experience photographing nature. What do you think we’re seeing?” I ask.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he replies in astonishment, as our adrenaline reaches its peak.
But not everyone is rushing to declare an encounter with extraterrestrial beings.
A peculiar light seen over Alien Hill
(Photo: Assaf Kamar)
Omri Gilkis, 38, a multidisciplinary artist who practices CE5 meditation, a technique whose followers believe can facilitate communication with extraterrestrials, offers a somewhat less exciting explanation.
“If the light is coming directly toward us, it could be an airplane and we’re seeing its headlight. Judging by the angle of the light, I think it’s an ordinary airplane.”
“It was probably an airplane, not an unexplained phenomenon,” Torbatian, the veteran UFO investigator, concludes with disappointment.
And so ends our first encounter with what, for a moment, appeared to be an unidentified flying object in the skies over Netanya.
Netanya’s Iris Nature Reserve UFO hunters
We rewind half an hour. Unidentified flying objects have recently returned to the headlines in Israel, partly following footage of an unusual aerial object spotted near the Lebanese border that raised suspicions of a drone infiltration.
But at Netanya’s Alien Hill, people are searching for something entirely different.
Joining UFO enthusiasts on Alien Hill
Following accounts from local UFO enthusiasts about bright lights and supposedly unexplained phenomena along the coastline, from Beit Yanai to southern Netanya, we set out after sunset for the mysterious hill beside the Iris Nature Reserve in the southern part of the city.
The makeshift path from the parking area on Dwight Eisenhower Street to the unusual observation point, regarded as a hotspot by UFO enthusiasts, is somewhat uneven. Walking there in complete darkness can be dangerous.
Torbatian, an experienced visitor, leads us through the darkness, sharing fascinating stories of close encounters along the way.
“I’ve been seeing UFOs since my military service and continue to see them today,” he says proudly. “And I’ve been fortunate enough to photograph unexplained phenomena several times, including here.”
The Israeli UFO investigator is convinced there is a very good reason to visit Netanya’s Iris Nature Reserve at night.
“At the beginning of September, we came here and got lucky,” he says with a mysterious smile. “A UFO put on a show for us for 20 minutes. It appeared in the sky, grew brighter, stayed intensely bright and then faded, over and over. We filmed it at night and went home happy and excited.”
What exactly did you see?
“An orange sun,” he says excitedly. “With a glow inside and an orange halo. An object above the horizon, above the cloud base, glowing intensely. It obviously couldn’t have been the sun because it was 20 minutes to midnight. And it wasn’t the moon either, because the moon was behind us.”
According to Torbatian, it was only when he watched the footage on his phone that he noticed details he had been unable to see during the encounter.
“In real time, we didn’t see the reflection of the light on the water, and we couldn’t see the sea or the clouds at all. In the footage, you can see the energy of this object was so intense that its light reflected off the surface of the water.”
The alleged UFO captured by Yoram Torbatian
(Photo: Assaf Kamar)
And what was going through your mind at that moment?
“Great joy,” he says with a laugh. “You take out the cameras and document it. It could be the initial contact with entities from beyond Earth. And around the world, there have been encounters far more dramatic than anything I’ve experienced. Actual face-to-face encounters with beings not from this world.”
Back to the present. After about 20 minutes of carefully navigating the reserve’s dark trails, we reach the rugged sandstone cliff overlooking the sea. Complete darkness surrounds us.
Following our brief, unsettling observation of the flickering point of light — which may simply have been an airplane’s headlight — the UFO investigators prepare for CE5 meditation, which proponents claim encourages contact with beings from other worlds.
Gilkis, an artist and longtime meditation practitioner, combines his search for UFOs with a desire to find tranquility in nature.
“I was meditating here on the cliff along the coastline,” he says excitedly, recalling a personal encounter with what he describes as an unidentified anomalous phenomenon, or UAP.
“I see satellites moving steadily, I see airplanes, and everything is normal. And I’m sitting with a friend,” he emphasizes. “So it’s not just my own hallucination, because there’s another person with me.”
“And we see something in the sky shining almost insanely brightly, a point of light that doesn’t fit the definition of an airplane, and it makes no engine noise. I’m not telling you it’s an alien. I’m saying it’s a UFO — an unidentified flying object.”
“You have something that doesn’t fit the definition of an airplane or a drone. It looks as though one of the stars has suddenly started moving out of position. It can make a figure eight in the air or fly in a zigzag, and it can stop in place.”
But why would aliens be particularly fond of Netanya?
“There’s a claim — and I wouldn’t put my name to it,” he says with a smile, “that certain places in nature are more energetically connected to unexplained phenomena.”
A night on Alien Hill, Netanya
(Photo: Lior Abulafia)
“And I said to myself, ‘Really? Here? At Iris Hill in Netanya?’” he laughs.
“I thought we’d have to travel to Jerusalem or Mitzpe Ramon,” he says, referring to the southern Israeli desert town known for its dark skies. “And we did travel to places like that, and we saw interesting things there, too.”
“But the fact that so many of us have seen and photographed objects right here in the Iris Hill reserve — I think the UFO phenomenon is very closely connected to the sea.”
Aren’t UFOs frightening?
“Not frightening at all,” he says with a laugh. “I think all the fearmongering is almost irrelevant.”
And what if aliens decide to conquer Earth?
“That seems ridiculous to me,” he laughs. “Where’s the conquest been all this time?”
And why don’t they visit the Tel Aviv promenade?
“Tel Aviv is terribly crowded and brightly lit, while here in Netanya it’s a little quieter, especially in the reserve. Out here in nature, the reserve is a kind of secluded pocket, with an unlit beach and a quiet spot.”
Abulafia, who knows the wildlife of the Iris Nature Reserve well, joined us primarily out of curiosity. “I’m the skeptic here,” he says with a laugh. “The truth is, I’ve seen plenty of irises here, and I’ve seen gazelles, jackals, foxes and drones — but I still haven’t seen any UFOs.”
Nevertheless, he is not quick to dismiss the accounts of people who claim to have witnessed unexplained phenomena.
“Trump said there are unexplained phenomena, UAPs, so who knows?”
Did you tell your family you were going to Netanya to look for UFOs?
“Let’s leave my wife’s reactions on WhatsApp and not go into detail,” he says, laughing.
Torbatian refuses to say definitively whether the hill itself possesses special powers or whether it is genuinely a center of unusual activity.
“We don’t have the tools to explain what we’re seeing here,” he says.
“But the fact is that many Netanya residents, from Beit Yanai to southern Netanya, regularly see unexplained phenomena over the sea and lights that don’t behave like conventional aircraft.”
Meditating to make contact with extraterrestrials
It is time for the intriguing practice of CE5 meditation, short for Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind.
Omri is quick to clarify that the technique is not supposed to make a spacecraft land beside us within minutes.
Meditating to make contact with extraterrestrials
(Photo: Assaf Kamar)
“It’s not as though we perform some Harry Potter magic and a friendly E.T. suddenly appears,” he says.
“It’s more of an internal and group process, in which people practice and become accustomed to the whole subject of UFOs and the possibility that they are extraterrestrials.”
“There’s a specific protocol introduced by Dr. Steven Greer that anyone can watch on YouTube. It provides guided imagery in which we invite whoever wants to come. Many groups around the world practice this, and sometimes things happen.”
Greer, an American physician and prominent UFO disclosure advocate, has promoted meditation-based techniques that he claims can facilitate contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.
Torbatian explains how the practice works. “In meditation, you enter a state of relaxation. You imagine yourself leaving Earth, and in your mind’s eye, you see our solar system.”
“You expand outward and transmit, through your subconscious and your awareness, your location in space. And you call upon helpful, benevolent entities to come and reveal themselves to the group.”
At this point, a clarification for loyal readers of our Strange Places series: There is no conclusive scientific evidence that CE5 meditation can summon extraterrestrial beings or cause objects to appear in the sky.
Abulafia, trying CE5 meditation to contact aliens for the first time, makes an effort to remain polite and avoid laughing.
“I think I’m still skeptical,” he declares, before adding a qualification: “But maybe I’m not a good example, because meditation doesn’t really work for me.”
Gilkis, a Netanya resident, is untroubled by the possibility that some readers will laugh at his beliefs.
“Let them not believe me,” he says. “But look at the testimonies of members of Congress, fighter pilots and the American media. There’s a disclosure process underway.”
Torbatian, meanwhile, is pleased with the gathering itself. “It was nice, and I’m glad it happened. Another link in the chain of encounters. We’ll come here again — and he who laughs last laughs best.”
He also invites members of the public to join future meditation sessions.
“The effect of the meditation we did could be greater if more people came here. There’s more power in a group,” he says.
“So anyone interested is welcome to come to the Iris Nature Reserve and meditate with us, watch for UFOs, summon entities and spread the word.”
In the end, we encountered no aliens, and the long-awaited spacecraft never landed on the cliff.
But we discovered that Netanya is home to people willing to devote entire nights to trying to make contact with them.
And if extraterrestrials really are listening, at least they now know where someone is waiting for them.
Warning: Alien Hill is located on a high, rugged cliff along the coastline. Approaching the cliff’s edge at night is dangerous and carries a risk of falling. If you spot what appears to be an unidentified anomalous phenomenon, do not attempt to approach it. Remain at a safe distance and photograph it from afar.