Sunken ship sparks fight on Israel’s right over militia’s violent legacy

A race has emerged in right-wing Israeli politics over who can more closely associate themselves with Irgun, a militia implicated in the killing and torture of dozens of Palestinians during the ۱۹۴۸ war that led to the Nakba, the forced displacement of more than ۷۵۰,۰۰۰ Palestinians during the formation of the state of Israel.

On Monday, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced the discovery of the wreck of the Irgun’s cargo vessel, the Altalena. The ship carried weapons from France to the paramilitary group before being sunk on the orders of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, in June ۱۹۴۸.

Alerted to news of the vessel’s discovery, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party claims descent from the paramilitary group, was reported to have rushed to the Etzel Museum – named for the Irgun’s Hebrew acronym – near Jaffa. At the site on Monday, Netanyahu released a rival video address from the same building as Ben-Gvir, trying to reclaim the wreck’s symbolism for his own right-wing base.

Netanyahu has been struggling in the polls ahead of October elections described by many as critical both to Israel and Netanyahu’s own future. Facing a potential prison sentence on corruption charges dating back to ۲۰۱۹, as well as an official reckoning for his government’s own failures ahead of the Hamas-led attack on October ۷, ۲۰۲۳, the stakes for the Israeli premier could hardly be higher.

The sinking of the Altalena – triggered by a dispute over whether the Irgun or the Israeli military should control the weapons onboard – had led to fears of a civil war between Israelis.

Invoking that episode, Netanyahu recalled how Irgun commander and future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had ordered his fighters not to fire back after Israeli forces fired on them. Netanyahu then appeared to draw a parallel between Begin and himself by denouncing what he called the “absurd” attacks against him and the Likud party.

“During the [annual ceremony to mark the Altalena’s sinking], I hear calls of incitement against us by political rivals standing outside the ceremony and simply desecrating it,” he said. “Have they not learned the lesson? We are brothers – political rivals, but we are brothers, sons of one nation with one future and one destiny.”

Massacres

In the eyes of many historians, the schism between Irgun and the main body of the Israeli military represents a faultline through Israeli politics that is still visible today.

Along with another right-wing militia, the Lehi, the Irgun were responsible for some of the worst violence of the Nakba.

In April ۱۹۴۸, Irgun fighters, alongside the Lehi, massacred more than a hundred villagers, including women and children in Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, despite the village having reached a non-aggression pact with the nascent Israeli forces. Weeks later, the Irgun turned its guns on Jaffa, shelling the city’s edges and contributing to an offensive that emptied it of the vast majority of its Palestinian population, who fled by sea and by road as the fighting closed in.

Even before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Irgun had waged an insurgency against British forces stationed in the territory under a League of Nations mandate, hanging captured soldiers and, in ۱۹۴۶, killing more than ۹۰ people in its bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

“The Irgun was a fascist, anti-Arab organisation that also used violence against the British Empire, causing the deaths of many Arabs and Britons,” Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera, referencing the ۱۹۴۸ massacre at Deir Yassin.

However, he maintained, placing all responsibility for the worst of the Nakba on the Irgun misses the point.

“The forces principally responsible for carrying out the Nakba were the Zionist paramilitary organisations associated with the Labour movement,” he said. “This is why I have always argued that there is no real left within Zionism. What is called the Zionist ‘left’ has repeatedly functioned as a fig leaf for a settler-colonial movement organized around Jewish supremacy.”

Politics

According to the most recent polls, Netanyahu’s Likud is consistently trailing his principal rival, former Israeli military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar Party. Voters on the far right of Israel’s politics – including those that have been supportive of Ben-Gvir – could be decisive in the election.

But “the story of finding the Altalena is only important to the battle between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir”, Tel Aviv University’s Daniel Bar-Tal said. “It does not have any importance for most of the voters.”

Bar-Tal said Ben-Gvir appeared to have wrong-footed Netanyahu by taking control of the announcement, before further highlighting their rivalry by making it known that the prime minister had declined to be photographed with him.

Ben-Gvir, who has played a pivotal role in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, compared himself to Begin. “He [Begin] knew, intimately, what it tastes like when others don’t want to be photographed with you on the same stage.”

“Ben-Gvir is out-Netanyahuing Netanyahu,” Yossi Mekelberg, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, said. “Much like populists everywhere, both of them need to be seen as the most victimised and sinned against in order to appeal to their base.”

Mekelberg said references to the threat of civil war, at a time of growing political violence in Israel, were largely rhetorical and designed to generate headlines. But, he warned, that did not make such language any less dangerous.

“Netanyahu has been here before,” Mekelberg said, referring to longstanding accusations that Netanyahu contributed to an atmosphere of incitement in the run-up to the ۱۹۹۵ assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “He likes to throw these hand grenades into Israeli society, to keep the sense of crises going and then to claim to be its saviour.”