jason, I dont wish to dampen your spirits BUT if you are NOT already CONFIRMED in BF for your trips DO NOT COUNT ON IT even if you purchased a "Y" fare. I just did the same and my flight in 2 weeks is already way oversold. CO has really cheap BF fares that orginate in TLV so they arent giving anything away for nothing. My outbound from EWR I learned has all of 2 Free BF seats filled and 2 were upgraded. Now theres no way to know if those 4 people got it by paying with double miles or not. sorry for the bad news.
In GENERAL if at the time you're buying the tkt they cant confirm you in BF with an up then buy the cheapest possible tkt you can since its NOT gonna happen (the up) so you should save the bucks. Many Arabs use CO since they dont want to fly on ElAl as wellas Israeli's who want to fly on Fri night/Sat which ElAl doesnt so CO fills its flights up to TLV almost all the time, even if its not a Fri/Sat flight.