{"id":268016,"date":"2026-08-28T12:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T12:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/268016\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T12:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T12:04:12","slug":"benjamin-netanyahus-altalena-campaign-seeks-to-rewrite-israels-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/268016\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Altalena campaign seeks to rewrite Israel\u2019s history"},"content":{"rendered":"

It started with Joseph.<\/p>\n

The expat who made it big in Egypt commanded his people: \u201cYou must carry my bones up from this place\u201d (Genesis 50:25). The Hebrew viceroy\u2019s will was fulfilled to the letter, albeit centuries later, when \u201cMoses took the bones of Joseph with him, because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath\u201d (Exodus 13:19).<\/p>\n

The same thing happened with Theodor Herzl and Ze\u2019ev Jabotinsky, who died abroad and were reburied in the Jewish state they craved, but never saw.<\/p>\n

These precedents came to mind this week as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pompously announced the \u201cfinding\u201d of the sunken Altalena ship<\/a>, and his determination to pull from undersea the boat that starred in a deadly clash between Menachem Begin\u2019s militia and the IDF\u2019s troops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadly, this exhumation \u2013 an expensive and complex operation that will doubtfully happen \u2013 bears none of the spirit of reconciliation and consensus that animated Herzl<\/a> and Jabotinsky\u2019s reburials. In fact, it is their inversion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheThe search for the remains of the Altalena, published August 24, 2026. (credit: HERITAGE MINISTRY)Altalena sailed to aid Begin’s Irgun in War of Independence<\/p>\n

Named after Jabotinsky\u2019s pen name (Italian for \u201cseesaw\u201d), the Altalena sailed from Marseilles on June 11, 1948, carrying some 5,000 rifles, 450 machine guns, and carts of ammunition. The shipment was commanded by Begin\u2019s Irgun, in the declared hope that it would help in the fight of the unfolding War of Independence.<\/p>\n

It had been three weeks since Israel declared its independence and the Arab armies\u2019 invasion of the newborn state. As Begin biographer Avi Shilon noted, the Irgun\u2019s very purchase of arms violated its previous agreement to have the Hagana \u2013 now the IDF \u2013 approve in advance any such deal (Begin: 1913-1992, Am Oved 2007, p. 127).<\/p>\n

Even so, after the ship reached Israel\u2019s shores, a negotiation with prime minister David Ben-Gurion\u2019s representatives ensued. Begin agreed to hand the arms to the IDF, but insisted that one-fifth go to Irgun units, which were still intact. Begin evidently thought, and certainly hoped, he could prolong his units\u2019 separate existence. This, despite an agreement on June 1, 1948, that the Irgun\u2019s fighters blend into the IDF.<\/p>\n

The road from this bargaining to bloodshed was short. On the political level, Ben-Gurion presented an ultimatum, which the Irgun rejected. On the military level \u2013 shots were fired.<\/p>\n

Who fired the first shots is a subject of debate till this day; all testimonies were partial. There is no argument about the location: the violence began north of Netanya<\/a>, whence the vessel sailed to Tel Aviv \u2013 now with Begin himself on board. And there, opposite today\u2019s Dan Hotel, rifle shots made way for the cannon fire that disabled the boat. By day\u2019s end, 19 Israelis were dead, 16 from the Irgun and three from the IDF.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Altalena showdown was turned by Begin into a big myth, a clash between a brutal Ben-Gurion and a magnanimous Begin, who \u2013 in this narrative \u2013 held his people back with the call \u201cno to a civil war,\u201d broadcast on radio after the battle had ended.<\/p>\n

The opposite camp, needless to say, had its own narrative. Hundreds of Begin\u2019s followers were defecting from their IDF units and thronging to Tel Aviv\u2019s beach, spawning suspicion of a gathering revolt. And Begin\u2019s brave call not to fight came only after he had been knocked out.<\/p>\n

This is besides the sequel to the clash that Begin and his people conveniently ignored, namely, Ben-Gurion\u2019s equally resolute dismantlement of the Palmach, the left-leaning crack units that spearheaded the IDF\u2019s victory in the War of Independence.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gurion understood the need for unified army<\/p>\n

Ben-Gurion understood that if Israel is to be a real state, it must monopolize violence, which meant one army with one command. To understand the alternative, one need only look at Lebanon\u2019s two armies, or to the Kurds\u2019 multiple militias, and understand that this is no way to build a nation.<\/p>\n

The Altalena\u2019s wreck became a public hazard, drawing children to dive unsafely into the Mediterranean\u2019s waves from its rusty rails. Heeding a call from Tel Aviv<\/a>\u2019s municipality, Ben-Gurion had the navy drag the ship\u2019s remains west and dump it undersea. And that\u2019s where the lies that animated this week\u2019s farce begin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Altalena was not \u201cfound,\u201d because its location, 20 km. offshore and 500 m. undersea, was well known. Still, saying it was \u201cfound\u201d is designed to create the impression that Benjamin Netanyahu has just discovered Atlantis.<\/p>\n

That is besides the insinuation that the wreckage can teach us something we didn\u2019t know, the way US president Zachary Taylor\u2019s body was exhumed in 1991 following suspicions he was poisoned (he wasn\u2019t), or the way the grave of John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was opened in 1981 to verify it actually contained him and not a Soviet spy.<\/p>\n

Retrieving the Altalena\u2019s decomposed skeleton would shed no light on what happened in June 1948. It would, however, be used to cultivate the myth that civil war was waged out of the blue by Ben-Gurion, and prevented by the man who, in fact, had provoked it.<\/p>\n

But to Bibi, the facts are immaterial. What he cares about is the chance, no matter how slim, to change the approaching election\u2019s subject, which is his role in Israel\u2019s worst-ever catastrophe. That is why he emerged near the Altalena battle\u2019s location, stared into a camera, and with the Mediterranean azure behind him declared: \u201cCivil war \u2013 never!\u201d<\/p>\n

This eye-rolling sanctimony comes to us from the man who consciously pitted us against each other; inciting against the courts, the police, and the media; sending the serving population to unending wars while exempting a multitude of his supporters from any service; and libeling the serving \u201cLeft\u201d for having \u201cforgotten what being Jewish is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exhuming the Altalena would therefore not be about yesteryear\u2019s civil war, but about today\u2019s, and it would not be about unearthing history, but about fleeing its verdict \u2013 the verdict that will soon be issued by the people Netanyahu divided, and read to his ashen face between his era\u2019s last dusk and the following morning\u2019s dawn.<\/p>\n

www.MiddleIsrael.net<\/p>\n

The writer, a Hartman Institute fellow, is the author of the bestseller, The Jewish March of Folly (Yedioth Books 2026), now available in English on Amazon.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It started with Joseph. The expat who made it big in Egypt commanded his people: \u201cYou must carry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[72152,41,1303,37,19306,81,25987],"class_list":["post-268016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-altalena","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-elections","tag-israel","tag-menachem-begin","tag-politics","tag-theodor-herzl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117173044416781254","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}