Underwater search for sunken Altalena ship set to begin

1. The Israeli government at the time was "provisional". As wikipedia writes: "The process of absorbing all military organizations into the IDF proved complicated, and several paramilitary groups continued to be active outside the IDF." In other words, integration into the provisional IDF was still an on-going process at the time. 2. As wikipedia notes: "On June 15, Begin and his comrades held a meeting with government representatives ... Galili informed Begin of Ben-Gurion's consent to the landing of the ship" 3. Ben Gurion lied to his own provisional cabinet telling them that he had just recently found out about the Altalena (contrary to the fact that there had been on-going negotations) in order to trick them into approving an attack on the ship.

The revision of Israeli by the political descendants of Revisionist terrorists has become complete. Those who actually founded Israel are denounced as murderers and traitors who contributed nothing, while those who created endless trouble for those trying to establish Israel as a nation acceptable to, and accepted by, the world are now portrayed ass the men who founded the country. Irgun's Begin wanted to be a war lord with his own army not subject to the control of Israel's government. Had the revisionists succeeded at best Israel would have ended up like Lebanon, at worst it may well have failed. While the Haganah was desperately trying to hold the road to Jerusalem open, the Irgun and Lehi concocted a plan to commit mass murder of civilians in Dir Yassin. Eventually the Haganah had to divert forces to rescue the Revisionists from what turned out to be a much harder task than the simple slaughter they intended. How curious that Israel's right has been able to rewrite it's history by applying the Big Lie technique. Perhaps not that curious for Irgun was the core of Israel's fascist movement in the 1930s and 40s, while the founder of Lehi, Abraham Stern had gone beyond merely fighting the British, but had actually offered alliance to the Nazis.

No sovereign country can have an independent armed force inside it which is not under the control of the government. BG did the only thing any leader of a country could do.

Even as a child I liked begin and did not trust Ben Gurion. The fact he tried to cover this ugly act by sinking the ship tells volumes about the man!

Some important details were not mentioned in this article. 1. 'Altalena' was the pen name of Zeev Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion's ideological arch rival. Even though ZJ died in 1940 and was buried in upstate NY, his body was not allowed to be transferred to Israel until 1964, for fear that is would weaken the Mapai political party. 2. The attack on the Altelana was commanded by Yitzhak Rabin. 3. According to Shlomo Nakdimon's book, "Altalena", Ben-Gurion instructed the Israeli Air Force to sink the ship on the high sea, long before it approached Israeli shores. This would have resulted in much greater loss of life. Gordon Levett, a Mahal volunteer pilot, wrote in his book "Flying Under Two Flags" that Heiman Shamir, Deputy Commander of the Air Force, tried to convince non-Jewish pilot volunteers to attack the ship. However, three pilots refused to participate in the mission, one of them saying, "You can kiss my foot. I did not lose four friends and fly 10,000 miles in order to bomb Jews." Until today, the Altalena affair remains the worst single incident of Jews killing other Jews since the first century. The ship should be raised and placed in a museum to remind us of this tragedy of ‘Sinat Chimam’ and to prevent it from even happening again. Look for a book by Jerold S. Auerbach 'Brothers at War' for the rest of the story. Or, Ben-Hecht's 'Perfidy', banned in Israel for more than 30 years.

Someone can help me find a list of the sbip crewmebers? My father was one of them, he spent almost six years in a hospital recovering from injuries he sufered in the bombardment of the ship.

Give the money to treat kids with illnesses including Arab kids.