Wreckage of Altalena Arms Ship Found 78 Years After It Was Sunk by Israeli Forces
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Tel Aviv (Terror Monitor) — Israel has announced that the wreckage of the arms ship Altalena, which was sunk by Israeli forces in 1948, has been found 78 years later.
The sinking occurred shortly after Israel’s establishment and highlighted a deep political and military divide within the newly formed state, the effects of which are still felt in Israeli politics today.
The Altalena had arrived in Israel from France carrying weapons intended for the Irgun, a Jewish armed organization that had carried out attacks against British colonial authorities and the local Palestinian population before Israel’s establishment.
In June 1948, just one month after Israel was established, Israeli forces opened fire on the ship off the coast of Tel Aviv on the orders of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, sinking it. Ben-Gurion sought to place all armed forces in the new state under a centralized military command and opposed maintaining any parallel armed organization.
Sixteen Irgun members and three Israeli soldiers were killed in the operation. Following the incident, Irgun leader Menachem Begin ordered his fighters to surrender their weapons to the Israeli authorities. He famously argued that there should be no civil war inside the country while an enemy remained on its borders.
The dispute later became a symbol of the two major political camps in Israel. On one side was the socialist political movement led by Ben-Gurion, while on the other was Begin’s nationalist right-wing movement. Begin became prime minister in 1977, and his victory helped establish the foundation for the rise of the Israeli right.
According to Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, the wreckage was found about 503 meters beneath the sea west of the Israeli coast and remains largely intact. He described the Altalena affair as a “deep national wound” and said Begin had demonstrated historical responsibility by preventing a civil war.
In 2008, Israel also built a memorial on the Tel Aviv coast for Irgun members killed in the Altalena incident. The wreck had been searched for over many years. It remains unclear where the recovered wreckage will ultimately be kept or whether it will become part of a museum.
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