The story of the Altalena
weapons ship is a tragedy that is burned into our national memory, but each one of us differs in his understanding of the incident.
Responding to London
Missing Stalin / By Chaim Misgav
You sank the Altalena, turned Jews over to the British, brought back Arafat, and never apologized for any of it. A response to Yaron London
Some see the attack on the ship and the killing of 16 people as premeditated murder, no less than Cain's biblical attack on Abel.
Others view it is a sad, but necessary, demonstration of authority by an infant country to show it would not allow independent political groups to maintain armed militias.
Proponents of the first view say Menachem Begin's
Irgun
organization struck a deal with Israeli authorities to distribute the weapons carried in the belly of the Altalena, and say that during the fight against the British during the 1940s, members of the David Ben Gurion's
Hagana
group declared " open season" on the Irgun, turning members of Begin's group over to the British authorities. They say Irgun members were instructed not to harm members of the rival organization despite the action.
In contrast, others say it was the Irgun that broke the agreement, and that while fighting the British, Irgun members did not hesitate to kill Jews. They say if Prime Minister Ben Gurion had acted strongly against the Irgun, the nascent country could easily have slipped into civil war.
After 57 years, this dispute continues to glow like coals, and every once in a while someone breathes new life into it.
Full of regret
As we tend to do, we pull out historical incidents in order to argue the critical issues of today. It happened once again last week, at the annual ceremony marking the incident.
Yael Sheraz, the Palmach
member appointed to overpower the Altalena, said she was sorry for the incident, and said that if she had realized the gravity of the order she had received, she would have refused to carry it out.
And the thread continues to our time: today's IDF soldiers must refuse orders to evacuate settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank, they say, lest Jews wind up killing Jews.
Irony today
Ironically, the Altalena story is used by disengagement opponents who demand the new Palestinian leadership to exterminate, once and for all, Hamas before it will enter into negotiations. They reject Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' attempts to conscript the organization into the political framework and tell him to do what Ben Gurion did when forced to disarm the Irgun.
The knockout blow is this: the argument is being used by anti-disengagement camps on opposite sides of the political spectrum – those faithful to Revisionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky, and religious Zionists of the school of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.
According to their world view, our government must not act against activists who threaten our security forces, but demand the Palestinians act strongly to do away with theirs.
The differences between now and then are great, as is the difference between Israeli and Palestinian societies. But on one issue there is no difference: a country cannot continue to exist if extra-parliamentary groups hold veto power over government policy.
The Palestinian Authority will never be able to rule without reigning in the armed militias currently running wild in its territories. But the State of Israel will also not succeed in the long run without flexing its muscles against groups threatening to abort the decisions of the elected government.
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