Altalena – Then and Now…
Tuesday, 12 Elul 5786 [Aug. 25, 2026]
Yesterday we were informed of the finding of the Altalena ship in the depths of the sea, that same ship that was sunk in the early days of the State of Israel while murdering 19 Jews in cold blood by those who pride themselves on love of man, democracy, values of tolerance and peace, and all good things—which reminds one quite a bit of the spiritual heritage of their Soviet patrons at that time. The ship was intended to bring weapons for the battle for Jerusalem in the War of Independence, but those who wanted to establish the State of Tel Aviv preferred to sink their ideological opponents together with the aspiration for Jerusalem, which was contrary to their entire essence and the entire cognitive identity that they sought to pour into the state being established in those days.
Much water has flowed in the Mediterranean Sea since it was stained with the blood of the murdered, and the State of Israel, too, took on a different shape from how those murderers planned it. Jerusalem was liberated against their will 19 years later, after they failed to convince King Hussein of Jordan to refrain from joining Egypt and Syria in an attempt to complete the work of the Nazis and destroy Israel. Menachem Begin—who was the main target in the murder campaign—rose to power, and the aura of Socialist Zionism gradually faded away, as the masses of the House of Israel grew weary of Stalin’s legacy, and slowly but surely—they are returning to their Father in Heaven.
However, within this entire historical saga, there is one very topical fact that it is important to focus on, so that we learn the correct lesson from the legacy of the Altalena and do not fall into another cognitive trap. Many on the Israeli Right pride themselves on Menachem Begin’s responsibility in not returning fire toward the murderers on that day off the shores of Tel Aviv and Kfar Vitkin. According to them, that restraint prevented a disastrous fratricidal war at a time when Arab armies threatened to consume the newly established state. However, whoever draws an analogy from that affair to our present day should remember that a critical difference exists, which changes the face of the picture!
In those days, the tyrannical rule of the Left was indeed achieved through thuggery and all known means taken from the Bolshevik world from which they drew their worldview, but after all—they were indeed the majority. It was a steamrolling, tyrannical, cruel majority, but a majority. This was expressed in the Knesset elections for thirty years, until the political upheaval in 5737 [1977]. By virtue of this majority, they represented the people living in Zion, for better or worse, mostly for worse. In such a reality, everything must be done to reverse the trend, to move the people to a different cognitive state, to change the reality, but as long as it remains as such—one must take into account the fact that they largely embody the face of the nation. Today, by contrast, they are very far from being a majority. The people of Israel in their masses left their path long ago, and even the secular Right no longer speaks to the masses. The young Jew in Israel today wants more Jewish identity, more Torah, more fulfillment of the covenant with the Creator of the World. Heretical education, the bringing of masses of non-Jews through a perforated Law of Return, the treacherous attempt to join forces with the Arab enemy, the attempt to bring infiltrators here who will assist our enemies in pushing back the blessed demographic growth of the G-d-fearing public—all of these failed, and they can no longer speak in the name of the majority!
Consequently, their threat of a fratricidal war is not supposed to impress us. The restraint in the face of the massacre on the Altalena cannot serve as a model for surrender before their ideological heirs, who strive to force their minority opinion upon the nation. When those descendants of the Altalena murderers took to the streets following the judicial reform in order to prevent the faith-based public from governing according to the mandate it received from the public—they should have been handled with an iron fist, perhaps not as they in their murderousness did to us at the time, but definitely not to surrender and allow them to rule here even though the people have grown weary of them. When the government of Israel dismissed the criminal Attorney General and the High Court ruled that this was unreasonable, they should have taken the Attorney General together with the High Court judges and put them on trial for rebellion, with all that this implies. When the limp General Staff opposes the government’s policy, we must exercise the majority granted to us by the public to send them respectfully home and bring under them loyal officers who will express the will of the people.
The remains of the Altalena were found, but that is not enough to fix the wrong done on that day. The Left strives to this day to replicate the murder, and on more than one occasion its spokespeople expressed nostalgia for that shameful event. Ben-Gurion was not ashamed to announce in the Provisional State Council following the sinking of the Altalena—“Blessed is the holy cannon! It will be displayed in the Third Temple!” About forty years later, following an antisemitic pogrom carried out in the city of Givatayim, they wrote in Hashomer Hatzair’s newspaper Al HaMishmar—“How sweet it is to see the leaders of Hashomer Hatzair and Noar Oved brandishing clubs… Joined yesterday to the holy cannon that sank the Altalena was the holy stone that shattered the windshield of Kahane’s car.” And there is no need to mention the thuggery of recent years; everyone knows it.
Let us not be confused: they are no longer a majority; they are a negligible minority trying by force of arm to impose its opinion on the majority. While they look with nostalgia upon that painful affair, we are still steeped in a trauma that grips us with paralysis whenever they threaten a fratricidal war. But if we desire life, we must free ourselves from it as soon as possible. When they were the majority, they could run us over (not only Begin and the Irgun, but all their opponents, including the G-d-fearing public, the immigrants from Eastern countries, and anyone who threatened their hegemony). No more! We are the majority, and the time has come for us to know how to realize it!
The author is Rabbi Yehuda Epstein – Chairman of the Kedushat Zion Association, the association of Haredim demanding Zion on pure holy grounds.