Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
2, 2003
Arundhati
Roy
Day of the Jackals
Norman
Madarasz
Behind the Neo-Con Curtain: Plato,
Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom
Alain
Frachon and Daniel Vernet
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Strauss and Wohlstetter
Anthony
Gancarski
Anti-Imperialism, Then & Now
Standard
Schaefer
Wasted at the Pentagon
Jason
Leopold
Rocky's Advice to the Dems
Guthrie
& Albert
HUAC 58 Years Letter
Steve
Perry
The Politics of Terror Alerts
May
31, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
A Whiner Called Horowitz
Gary Leupp
The Frauds of War
Dave
Lindorff
Clinton, Bush, Lies and Impeachment
Tom Stephens
Does It Matter that the Bush Administration Lied?
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
Who Is Next?
Joanne
Mariner
Trivializing Terrorism
Wayne
Madsen
Ayatollah Ashcroft's Busy Week
Larry Magnuson
Is a Television a Radio or a Billboard?
Elaine
Cassel
Wake Up, America!
Gila Svirsky
Waiting for the Lament to End
Susan
Davis
Kitchen Dreams
Chris Clarke
Barbra Streisand: Environmental Hypocrite
Chris
Floyd
Bush Locates Source of World Evil: God
Adam Engel
Gravity's End Zone
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Orloski, Albert
May
30, 2003
Ben
Tripp
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda
Neve
Gordon
The Bad Fence
Todd
Steiner
Endangered Ocean
Robert
Freeman
Bush's Tax Cuts: a Form of National Insanity
Sean
Carter
Utah Gets Fired Up for Executions
Daniel
Bacher
How Bush's War Violated International Laws
Tariq
Ali
Re-Colonizing Iraq
Steve
Perry
Bush Wars
Web Log
May
29, 2003
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Jason
Leopold
Despite Thin Intelligence Reports,
US Plans Overthrow of Iran Regime
Ron
Jacobs
Popular Uprising, Inc.
Michelle
Ciaccorra
Bush's Nuclear Policy: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
Yves Engler
The Economics of Health Care in
America: Pay More to Die Sooner
Kimberly
Blaker
Vouchers for Jesus
Harry
Browne
Stakeknife: Britain's Army Spy at
the Top of the IRA
Stew
Albert
Cops of the World
Steve Perry
Greens 04: In or Out?
May
28, 2003
David
Vest
DubyaCo.: It's Not So Funny Any More
Dave
Lindorff
My Grandfather's Medal
John
Stanton
America's Dying: Arts and Philosophy Hold the Key
Bernard
Weiner
A PNAC Primer
Robert
Jensen
Texas Dems Set a Standard for the Rest of the Party
Ahmad Faruqui
The Oil Business of Regime Change:
the CIA and Iran
Hammond
Guthrie
Disarming Conundrums
Steve Perry
What If There's No Such Thing as Al-Qaeda?
May
27, 2003
Kurt
Nimmo
Condoleezza Rice: Huckstress for Israeli
Myths
Anthony
Gancarski
Hillary: a Dem the NeoCons Could Love?
Patrick
Cockburn
Terror, Bush and Joseph Conrad
John Chuckman
an Interpretation of Bush's Character
Kathleen
Christison
What Sharon Wants, Sharon Gets
Jeffrey
Blankfort
AIPAC Hijacks the Roadmap
Steve
Perry
Trouble in the Hinterlands
May
26, 2003
Franklin
C. Spinney
Test Anxiety: Star Wars, Punctuated
Epistimology and the Triumph of Medievalism
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Sacrifice
Sam
Hamod
When Trained Killers Return Home
Stew Albert
The Final Conflict
May
24 / 25, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Philosopher Kings: Leo Strauss
and the Neo-Cons
Uri Avnery
The Hannibal Procedure
Diane
Christian
Who's the Real Enemy?
"Just Cause" or "Kill the Bastards"
Alexander
Cockburn
Derrida's Double Life
William
S. Lind
Is Saddam Really Out of the Game?
William
Cook
Road to Nowhere
David Krieger
Bush's War on the Poor: Economic Justice
Ilan
Pappe
Academic Freedom Under Assault in Israel
Wayne Madsen
American Idle
Noah
Leavitt
Slowing Sowing Justice in the Killing Fields
Walt Brasch
Americans are Liars
Lenni
Brenner
John Brown and Dutch Bill
Mickey
Z.
Hope, Crosby & Al Qaeda
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Grievous Harm Here and Abroad
Adam Engel
Towers of Babel
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Guthrie, Alam, Orloski
May
23, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Lifting the Sanctions: Who Benefits?
Ron
Jacobs
Long Live People's Park!
Michael
Greger, MD
Return of Mad Cow: US Beef Supply
at Risk
Elaine
Cassel
Tigar to Ashcroft: "Secrecy is the Enemy of Democratic Govt."
Sam
Hamod
The Shi'a of Iraq
Christopher
Greeder
After the Layoffs (poem)
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog 5/23
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
June
3, 2003
The Altalena Affair
The Sacred Cannon
By URI AVNERY
Good advice to Abu-Mazen: Keep clear of Altalena!
He is going to get tired of the sound
of this name in the near future. Every Israeli he meets on the
way to Aqaba and back will demand that he do to Hamas what Ben-Gurion
did to this ship. But this will be a treacherous request. A short
analysis will show why.
On the eve of the founding of the State
of Israel, there were three armed Jewish organizations in Palestine.
In private conversations, Israeli security experts compare the
present Palestinian organization to these.
The largest was the "Hagana"
("Defense"), which was a semi-official and semi-clandestine
militia of the Zionist leadership. It can be compared to the
Fatah (Tanzim).
The second was the right-wing nationalist
"National Military Organization" (for short, "Irgun")
of Menahem Begin. It split in the 30s from the Hagana and conducted
bloody actions against the Arabs and the British occupation forces.
It can be compared to the military wing of Hamas.
Even more extreme were the "Fighters
for the Freedom of Israel", commonly known as the "Stern
Gang" (after its founder, who was killed by the British
police.) It split from the Irgun in 1940, after that organization
had consented to a "armistice" with the British at
the outbreak of World War II. There is some similarity between
the Sternists and Islamic Jihad.
The elected Zionist leadership under
David Ben-Gurion detested the two "dissident" groups.
First, because they prevented it from conducting the policy it
considered right. Every time a compromise with the British authorities
was under discussion, they undertook some spectacular action
against the British, such as the blowing up of the British headquarters
in the King David hotel, the murder of Lord Moyne or the hanging
of two British sergeants. Second, the dissidents threatened the
 leadership's authority. Third, the leadership
was leftist, while the Irgun was on the extreme right. (The ideology
of the Sternists is harder to define.)
Ben-Gurion and his colleagues tried everything.
At the end of 1944 they even started an operation code-named
"Saison" (hunting season). Hagana men were sent to
kidnap Irgun members on the streets and at home and to hand them
over to the British police, which interrogated them under torture
and put them in prison.
It was Menahem Begin, the Irgun commander,
who prevented a bloody civil war. He did not shrink from shedding
Arab and British blood, but shedding Jewish blood was abhorrent
to him. He forbade his men from reacting, and even during the
worst days of the Saison, Irgun members did not defend themselves.
His rival, Stern leader Nathan Yellin-Mor,
gave different orders. As he told me years later: "I had
a clandestine meeting with the Hagana leader, Eliyahu Golomb.
I put my revolver in front of me on the table and said: Every
one of us will open fire on whoever tries to kidnap us."
The Hagana wisely decided not to act against his group.
The Saison did not prevent the three
organizations cooperating with each other only a few weeks later.
They set up the "Hebrew Revolt Movement", which did
not remain in existence for long.
So what about the Altalena?
When Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment
of the State of Israel in May, 1948, he was determined to put
an end to all the armed organizations except the Hagana, which
became the IDF (official Hebrew name: "Israel Hagana Army").
He waited only for a suitable occasion.
It came when the Irgun sent a ship to
the new state loaded with fighters, arms and ammunition. It was
called Altalena ("see-saw", the pseudonym of Vladimir
Jabotinsky, the spiritual and political father of the Likud).
The details of the "Altalena Affair" are still clouded
in mystery, but the outcome is very clear: Ben-Gurion demanded
that all the weapons be turned over to him, Begin refused. Fire
was opened on the ship, which had reached the beach of Tel-Aviv.
Yitzhaq Rabin commanded the attack. Menahem Begin, who had boarded
the ship, was pushed by his men into the sea and escaped. Some
of the Irgun men were killed, the ship sank with all the arms
in its hold. Ben-Gurion publicly praised the "holy canon"
that sank it.
All this happened in the middle of the
war against the Arabs. By acting resolutely, Ben-Gurion put an
end, once and for all, to the existence of private armies in
Israel. (He destroyed the Stern Gang three months later, using
as his pretext the murder of the Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke
Bernadotte, by Sternists.)
Those who now demand that Abu-Mazen "repeat
the Altalena Affair", are using dangerous demagoguery. The
request sounds reasonable, but the circumstances are quite different.
Among other things:
* Ben-Gurion began to destroy the Irgun
after the British had left and the State of Israel had already
been established, both formally and in fact. Abu-Mazen is being
asked to do this while the State of Palestine does not exist
and the Israeli army controls all the occupied territories.
* Ben-Gurion, like Yasser Arafat today,
possessed the necessary moral, legal and practical authority.
Abu-Mazen does not.
* At the disposal of Ben-Gurion was a
large and disciplined army, which was already battle-tested.
(I was a soldier at the time, and my company had an indirect
part in the affair.) Abu-Mazen has nothing. During the last two
years, the Israeli army has systematically destroyed the installations
of the Palestinian security forces, including their prisons and
data-bases. When Israeli soldiers see an armed Palestinian policeman
they kill him on the spot, in violation of the Oslo agreements
that created an armed police force.
There is no similarity between this situation
and the background of the Altalena Affair. Arafat and Abu-Mazen
are now behaving exactly as Ben-Gurion did in a similar phase:
putting moral and practical pressure on the "dissidents",
arguing and threatening them.
The elimination of our armed underground
was possible only because the vast majority of the Israeli population
understood that with the establishment of the state the national
aim had been attained, and the actions of the armed groups could
only endanger that achievement. When the State of Palestine is
established, and the majority of the Palestinian people realize
that their national aim has been achieved, it will not be difficult
for their leaders to overcome the armed organizations that try
to obstruct them.
Before that, no Palestinian "sacred
cannon" will open fire.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He
is one of the writers featured in The
Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He can be
reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
Today's
Features
Arundhati
Roy
Day of the Jackals
Norman
Madarasz
Behind the Neo-Con Curtain: Plato,
Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom
Alain
Frachon and Daniel Vernet
The Strategist and the Philosopher: Strauss and Wohlstetter
Anthony
Gancarski
Anti-Imperialism, Then & Now
Standard
Schaefer
Wasted at the Pentagon
Jason
Leopold
Rocky's Advice to the Dems
Guthrie
& Albert
HUAC 58 Years Letter
Steve
Perry
The Politics of Terror Alerts
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|