Israel recovers gun-running boat whose sinking caused ‘deep national wound’

JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Monday it had recovered the wreckage of the Altalena, an arms-smuggling boat whose sinking by the Israeli military just after the state’s founding in 1948 exposed divisions that persist today.
The Altalena had set sail from France loaded with weapons packed for the Irgun, the militant Zionist force that conducted attacks against the British colonial authorities and the local Palestinian population in the quest to establish Israel.
In June 1948, Israeli forces opened fire and sank the boat in waters off Tel Aviv on the orders of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. He wanted to exert his authority and prevent the emergence of any paramilitary rival to the Israeli military in the month-old state, which was in the throes of war with neighboring Arab countries.
“At 12:30 am, at a depth of 503 meters, west of the coast of Israel, the Altalena ship was located intact — 78 years after that painful and seminal event that shook the young State of Israel,” Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu said.
Sixteen Irgun members and three Israeli soldiers were killed. Irgun chief Menachem Begin asked his fighters to surrender to Israeli authorities with words that would become famous: “There will be no civil war with the enemy at our gates.”
The conflict pitted against each other the two political blocs that would define Israel. Begin became prime minister in 1977, ushering in the rise of right-wing nationalists and sweeping out the socialist movement launched under Ben Gurion.
Eliyahu, who announced the salvaging of the Altalena, hails from the far-right, which has taken power as part of a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He called the Altalena “the story of a deep national wound, and the story of the historical responsibility that Menachem Begin showed when he prevented a civil war.”
“A country that is not afraid to touch on the painful chapters of its history is a stronger country,” he said.
Israel erected a monument to the fallen Altalena militants in 2008 on the Tel Aviv seafront and has been searching for the wreckage for years, with crews often working in secrecy.
It was not immediately known what would happen to the ship’s wreckage.