News of the rediscovery of the Altalena was headline news across Israel this week.

Seventy-eight years ago, as the Altalena burned on the beachfront of Tel Aviv, the Jewish people were poised on the brink of civil war. In today’s polarizing times, with yet another election looming in Israel, we need to learn from that lesson to ensure that history does not repeat itself.

The “Altalena Affair” reflected the birth pangs of the new nation. Over the first month of the War of Independence, the renascent Jewish State lost 1,176 soldiers. Although no exact statistics are available, the losses of the invading Arab armies were also extremely high. Therefore, both sides readily accepted the UN-brokered truce. They both had valuable breathing space for rest, redeployment, training and planning. It was on the same day as the truce agreement that the Altalena left the same French port the ill-fated Exodus had set sail from the previous year.

On June 20, 1948, amid the cease-fire during the War of Independence, the Altalena, chartered by Menachem Begin’s Irgun (Etzel) carrying, in addition to 940 immigrants, two hundred and fifty light machine guns, five thousand rifles, a large quantity of ammunition and weapons, arrived off the shores of the newly created State of Israel. A few days later, the Altalena was a burnt-out gutted wreck seven hundred meters off the Tel-Aviv seashore.

There are two different accounts as to why the Altalena was destroyed on Ben Gurion’s orders.........

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