The view of the tragedy is too kind to Ben Gurion. He orderred the ship to be attacked and Rabin volunterred to do it. The arms and munitions were sorely needed. Had they been allowed to land, Israel would have been able to take all of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem at that time, yet Ben Gurion preferred a “unified command”. Many Jews were killed by Rabin’s forces and much of the cargo destroyed. Begin on the other hand ordered his men not to fight back. He didn’t think Jews should kill Jews. Ted Belman
This Week in History: The sinking of the ‘Altalena’
By MICHAEL OMER-MAN
On June 20, 1948, just over a month after the State of Israel was established and shortly after the first cease fire in the War of Independence, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave one of the country’s most controversial orders ever – to take the Altalena by force.
Prior to the establishment of the state, several armed Jewish militias protected early Jewish settlers and fought against the British and hostile Arab forces. The largest of these groups were the Hagana and the Irgun Zva’I Leumi (Irgun or IZL). The Hagana, led by Ben-Gurion, became the Israeli Defense Forces once the state was declared in May 1948 and the Irgun was under the command of Menahem Begin.
In mid-May 1948, during the War of Independence, Ben-Gurion ordered the various militias disbanded and integrated into the IDF in order to create one army under a unified command. While some of the militias willingly sent their fighters and weaponry to the IDF, others were unwilling to relinquish the established paramilitary organizations they had built. Notably, the Irgun, for both ideological and political reasons, was unwilling to put itself under Ben-Gurion’s command.
Begin and other Irgun commanders were still attempting to ship significant amounts of weaponry and fresh immigrant fighters into Israel in the last days of the British Mandate. The Irgun organized a large ship carrying weaponry and fighters from France, scheduled to arrive on Israel’s shores in mid-May. Due to logistical and operational factors, however, the departure of the Altalena was delayed.
By the time the ship was ready to sail, loaded with nearly 1,000 immigrant fighters and thousands of tons of materiel, the first ceasefire in the War of Independence had already been reached and importing weaponry would have constituted a violation of it. The Jewish state, however, was in need of weaponry and ammunition, so when Begin approached Ben-Gurion to inform him of the shipment, the two attempted to negotiate a deal that would see the ship’s cargo safely unloaded.
In order to evade detection by United Nations observers overseeing the ceasefire, the Irgun and the newly anointed leaders of the state and its army decided that the Altalena should be offloaded at Kfar Vitkin, near Netanya.
Negotiations between the Irgun and Ben-Gurion were complicated by Begin’s insistence on transferring most of the ship’s cargo to Irgun units operating within the newly established IDF, a condition to which Ben-Gurion could not agree. The new leader of Israel was already wary of having non-state controlled armed forces operating independently of the army and believed that directing the weaponry to IDF units from the Irgun would lead to an “army within an army.”
The fighting begins
As the ship began its final approach to Kfar Vitkin, IDF forces were ordered to surround the area in order to seize the payload. Following failed negotiations, the government decided to issue an ultimatum. The military commander on scene sent Begin a clear message: “I shall use all the means at my disposal in order to implement the order and to requisition the weapons which have reached shore and transfer them from private possession into the possession of the Israel government… You have ten minutes to give me your answer.”
Small-scale fighting between the two sides broke out at Kfar Vitkin, but Begin and the Irgun, aware of their numerical and tactical disadvantage, decided to send the Altalena south to Tel Aviv where more fighters could be assembled and the army was not yet situated to intercept the ship. Irgun fighters who had already joined the IDF began defecting from their commands and headed to Tel Aviv to fight for their weaponry.
As the two forces descended on Tel Aviv, fighting erupted along the shore and throughout the city, “mainly in the center and the south,” The Palestine Post reported in the aftermath of the clashes. The Israeli navy and artillery pieces on shore fired warning shots at the ship in a last-ditched attempt to force a surrender, but eventually hit the ship, setting it ablaze. Ultimately, over 20 Irgun fighters and more than a handful of IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting between the two Jewish forces. The Altalena was eventually brought out to sea and sunk.
Ben-Gurion has been both praised and disdained for his decision to take the Altalena by force. Fearing a civil war and a lack of government legitimacy based on the concept of a monopoly of force, Ben-Gurion ultimately decided that he could not tolerate Begin’s brazen refusal to put himself, his fighters and weaponry under the state’s command. Following the Altalena incident, however, Irgun and other militia forces were integrated into the IDF and the non-democratic challenges to the state’s legitimacy came to an end.
Nonetheless, the decision to order Jewish soldiers to act against fellow Jews – who too were fighting for the infant state’s survival – has never been forgiven by some who view it as a betrayal of the very purpose of a Jewish army. Until this day, the Altalena is invoked at times when state security forces are pitted against Jews, albeit not with the deadly consequences of June 1948.
It is a great crime that the heroes of the Altalena were ruthlessly murdered. These are the patriotic Jews that would NEVER surrender one inch of Holy Land to the barbaric enemy. They would never have ethnically cleansed Jews from Gush Katif, Gaza. They would never give half of holy Israel and Jerusalem to PLO/PA/Hamas Muslim terrorist organizations.
Rest in peace, Altalena heroes. You will never be forgotten.
Rabin had an easier time to fight Jews than take on the Arabs in the War of Independence. He also boasted about how he ****ed the men while they were in the water. He murdered Jews in cold blood and in turn was murdered in cold blood.
We’ll never know how many Jewish lives were lost because of the destroyed munitions. Their blood is on Ben Gurion and Rabin’s hands.
War is declared until The End.
By peace, he (false peacemaker) will destroy many.
Will not Israel bury the dead of our enemies on our hills for 7 months? Ez 39:12
The biggest FARCE is having negotiations with a people which openly declare
their intent to kill every last one of us and take over our land for themselves.
I think we are more insane than they are.
I know from personal experience, that members of Irgun were treated almost like criminals in Israel. My first cousin (a member of Irgun) came to live with us in the US, because he didn’t feel safe in Israel. He didn’t return until many years later. There were also other examples.. The bottom line is, that Ben Gurion, like other leaders, is not without blemishes. There are no saints.
One Truth and Not Two
by Uri Zvi Greenberg
(interpreted from Hebrew by Laurence Cramer)
Your Rabbis taught: A land is bought with money
You buy the land and work it with a hoe.
And I say: A land is not bought with money
And with a hoe you also dig and bury the dead.
And I say: A land is conquered with blood.
And only when conquered with blood is hallowed to the people
With the holiness of the blood.
And only one who follows after the cannon in the field,
Thus wins the right to follow after his good plow
On this, the field that was conquered.
And only such a field gives nourishing and healthy bread
And the house which arises on its hill is truly a fortress and a temple,
Because in this field there is honorable blood.
Your Rabbis taught: The messiah will come in future generations:
And Judea will arise without fire and without blood.
It will arise with every tree, with every additional house.
And I say: If your generation will be slow
And will not grasp in its hands and forcibly mold its future
And in fire will not come with the Shield of David
And in blood will not come with its horses saddled –
The Messiah will not come even in a far off generation.
Judea will not arise.
And you will be living slaves to every foreign ruler.
Your houses will be straw for the sparks of every wicked one.
And your trees will be cut down with their ripe fruit.
And a man will react the same as a babe
To the sword of the enemy –
And only your ramblings will remain – yours…
And your statue, an eternal curse.
Your Rabbis taught: There is one truth for the nations:
Blood for blood – but it is not a truth for Jews.
And I say: There is one truth and not two.
As there is one sun and as there are not two Jerusalems.
It was written in the Law of Conquest of Moses and Joshua
Until the last of my kings and my traitors have consumed.
And there will be a day when from the river of Egypt until the Euphrates
And from the sea until the mountain passes of Moav my boys will go up
And they will call my enemies and my haters to the last battle.
And the blood will decide: Who is the only ruler here.
Dov Gruner
Hero of Israel
The following is the final letter of Irgun soldier Dov Gruner to Menachem Begin:
The only way that seems, to my mind, to be right, is the way of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the way of courage and daring without renouncing a single inch of our homeland. When political negotiations prove futile, one must be prepared to fight for our homeland and our freedom. Without them, our very existence of our nation is jeopardized, as we must fight with all possible means. This is the only way left to our people in their hour of decision: to stand on our rights, to be ready to fight, even if for some of us this way leads to the gallows. For it is a law of history that only with blood shall a nation be redeemed.
Dov Gruner was hung by the British on April 16, 1947.