Episode Details

In June 1948, mere weeks after Israel's declaration of independence, the cargo ship Altalena steamed toward the coast laden with weapons and Irgun fighters, only to become the flashpoint of a deadly confrontation between Menachem Begin's Revisionists and David Ben-Gurion's provisional government. To Begin and his supporters the vessel represented a vital lifeline of arms for the embattled Jewish forces and a legitimate claim to a share of power; to Ben-Gurion it posed an intolerable threat to the newborn state's monopoly on force that risked civil war while Arab armies still pressed on every front. The IDF's shelling of the ship off Tel Aviv sank it and left more than a dozen Jews dead on both sides, transforming a moment of potential unity into a lasting symbol of fraternal bloodshed that cemented the primacy of a single national army while deepening the bitter divide between Labor and Revisionist camps.