Still Missing: One Arab Altalena… by Gerald A. Honigman
It’s been quite some time since I thought about this tragedy. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent comments brought it back onto my brain’s front burner…
YNet News reported on July 8, 2018 that seventy years after theAltalena Affair, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated “not only were the Etzel (Irgun) fallen not traitors, they were patriots of the first degree and acted in the benefit of the State of Israel, with immense effort and great sacrifice.”
The June 1948 confrontation was a nightmare which saw some twenty precious Jewish soldiers lost in patriot-on-patriot fighting for the heart and soul of the newly resurrected Jewish State.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s backtrack a bit…
Even though he’s been out of the picture since 2004, polluting the soil from Jerusalem sprinkled onto his coffin in Ramallah, nothing has really changed regarding the two peoples struggling over rights to this land.
The problem has always extended beyond Yasir Arafat himself. He was simply carrying yet another local banner for a wider, age-old Arabism which–as I like to remind readers–rejects the rights of any (i.e., not just Jews) of the scores of millions of non-Arab peoples who were conquered in a region Arabs call purely Arab patrimonyand the Dar ul-Islam… among other things, the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell.
To expand on this important point (especially for those who specialize in singling Israel), Arabs have treated all would-be national competitors similarly–with, admittedly, a bit more disdain for Jews. The latter were subjected to additional vilification in the Qur’an and other religious teachings of Islam for rejecting, from the very beginning, Muhammad’s religio-political claims–despite his overtures to the Jews (like praying towards Jerusalem) in the date palm oasis founded by them in Medina to which he fled from enemies in Mecca (the Hijra)… Geez, now why does that sound somewhat familiar? Ponder that a bit.
During the years of President Clinton’s 1993 “gift” of the so-called Oslo peace, in which only Israel was pressured to yield hard tangibles like disputed territory, from which attacks against it were repeatedly launched and in which Jews had thousands of years of history, Arabs were supposed to, in turn, curtail terrorism and prepare their people for acceptance of a Jewish State in the neighborhood. Instead, the more Israel gave, the more Jews bled.
Indeed, since Arafat’s passing, the “moderate” Palestinian Authority (PA) of Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and latter day Arafatians has proved to be no different than Hamas or Islamic Jihad on these crucial matters, despite some sweettalk to the West to keep Infidel money coming in. The schools, mosques, media, websites, and other potential sources for good have continued to simply be used to nurture rabid hatred of Jews instead. Just open a textbook, or pay a visit to a child’s camp or kindergarten for a glimpse of thisThat brings us to two of Arafat’s successors to get an idea of what I mean.
Mahmoud Abbas–Abu Mazen–and Ahmed Qurei’–Abu Alaa–are former chief marionettes of th- now dead master puppeteer. Even with him gone, his legacy still works the strings.
Both Abus have been referred to by a wishful-thinking West as “moderates.” And it may even be worse than that…
Knowing the rejectionist (and bloody-handed) nature of the Arafatians–as well as the Hamasnik types–the American State Department Arabists and their counterparts abroad havedeliberately (not out of naivete), for decades, painted a false picture of the former–including Arafat himself—as the “good cops” that Israel was to be pressured to play ball with as opposed to the latter “bad cops.” While there are some good signs with President Trump and his Secretary of State Pompeo that this might be coming to a halt, it still remains to be seen in the long term.
True, at times Abbas and his buddies nominally condemned suicide/homicide bombers and such…but so did Arafat. Yet, they have been a bit more vocal about this and openly admitted their reason: bad press. Besides, it pays well to be an Arab “moderate.” Arafat’s Swiss bank accounts are legendary
Deliberately disemboweling or beheading Jewish babes and other innocents was/is not the concern, nor living up to the terms of Oslo or any other agreement with the Arabs’ killers of prophets and sons of apes and pigs–Jews.The bad public relations that these incidentsmight cause was and is the issue yielding any relative “moderation” here.
When Arabs of the Palestinian Authority domain slit the throats of the Fogel family in their sleep years ago, on the one hand, President Abbas went on Israel Radio to condemn the killings (decapitation) of the infant, other young children, and parents. On the other hand, a day after, Abbas’ own Fatah participated in an official ceremony in the Judean/West Bank town of Al-Bireh for a town square dedicated to Dalal Mughrabi, an Arab involved in killing 37 Israelis in a 1978 bus hijacking on Israel’s coastal road.
The PA continues to pay the perpetrators of such bravery or their families significant sums of money for such “heroism” and refuses to stop. Good thing they’re the moderates…
Abu Mazen, like his colleagues, refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish (as in English, Polish, Swedish, etc.; or as in the nation of the Jews seen in this Roman Judea Capta coin on the front cover of my book http://q4j-middle-east.com ) State. Both Abbas, Qurei’, and the rest of the Abus (except for my daughter’s Yorkshire Terrier) worked closely with Arafat for decades for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.To this day, the “good cops” still aim to flood Israel with millions of alleged “returning” Arab refugees. Recall the latter were created as a result of the invasion of Israel by a half dozen Arab states in 1948, and that half of Israel’s Jews are from refugee families from “Arab”/Muslim lands but without almost two dozen other states–as Arabs have–to potentially choose from.
Nobody accuses the Arafatians of stupidity. So they tell the West what it wants to hear–even if most of these nations really don’t care, but want to a least go through the motions so that after Auschwitz and Munich they can feel better about the consequences of their new actions.
As is well known, the alleged model moderate that the PA has showcased over the decades was the late Faisal al-Husseini. He spoke of any peace dealings with Jews as being merely a Trojan Horse that would lead to Israel’s total destruction as a Jewish State and the creation of an Arab Palestine “from the River to the Sea.”
Take a close look at the maps of “Palestine” on and in the good cops’ websites, insignias, maps, textbooks, and so forth. They cover all of Israel–not just the disputed, non-apportioned (not “purely Arab”) lands of the original 1920 Mandate on the West Bank and in Gaza. Arafat and others repeatedly called Oslo a modern “Peace of the Quraysh,” the temporary hudna ceasefire the Prophet Muhammad agreed to in the 7th century C.E. until he gained enough strength to deal the final blow to his enemies.
And again, unfortunately, nothing has changed with Arafat gone. Any reasonable compromise is still out of the question for Abbas & Co…and we’re not even discussing the Hamas bad cops.
Any final peace agreement which allows a viable State of the Jews is deemed beyond the pale. So, forget about Israel getting the promise of the architects of the final draft of UNSC Res. 242 in the wake of the 1967 War that it would not have to return to the ’49 UN-imposed Auschwitz/armistice lines (not official borders) which made it a mere 9-15 miles wide at its waist, where most or its population, infrastructure, and so forth are located. Most folks travel farther than that to go shopping or to work. President George W. Bush said that Texas had driveways longer than that.
Any Arab leader who might truly want peace with the Jews–not that the Abus actually do–would not long be of this world in this rejectionist, bloodlust milieu. Just the perception that a leader might be contemplating something beyond rejection of Jews is enough to get him killed.
While the predicament of such leaders is understandable (think Egypt’s Sadat, for example), Israel cannot be asked to do what any other nation would not be expected to do to accommodate such folks…National suicide is not an option.
Given this murderous mindset (polls show that if Israel withdrew from every inch of the disputed territories, most Arabs would still support terrorism and Israel’s destruction anyway), Israel can yield no further concretes until the Arabs’ own leaders display a willingness to deal forcefully with the rejectionists in their midst and seek a true peace, not a hudna, for which Israel is expected to give away the store.
Here we are, half way through 2018, awaiting President Trump’s peace plan, and it’s still the Arafatians’ same old same old…
By not dealing forcefully with its own murderers and wannabes and applauding and rewarding them instead, the PA leadership reveals its own true colors as well.
Other nations are not expected to give away strategic assets to enemies sworn to their demise for the sake of sometimes nice but confusing, empty words backed up with no action. It is unreasonable to expect Jews, in their sole, minuscule nation, to do this as well.
If the current Abus and future Arab leaders are serious about ending this tragic conflict and creating a better world for their own people–instead of just trying to butcher more Jews and setting their tenderly-nurtured land on fire and such–let’s now take a look at what really needs to be done…
Early in May 1948, surrounding Arab countries, armed to the teeth with weaponry left over by the Brits in World War II, invaded a reborn Israel to nip it in the bud. Transjordan’s army was even led by British officers.
Since we’re on the subject, it needs to be stated yet again, for the sake of any newcomers…
Purely Arab Transjordan (all the land east of the Jordan River) was created itself in 1922 from almost 80% of the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine, formed after World War I with the breakup of the four century-old Ottoman Turkish Empire. Later, Arabs rejected the 1947 partition plan which would have given them about one half of the 20% of the Mandate that was left after having already received the lion’s share in 1922.
So, Arabs of different stripes would have wound up with some 90% of original 1920 Palestine–not exactly how Arabs tell this story. But my version is well-documented–not deliberate Arab deceit,Taqiyya. At issue now is thus the creation of the Arabs’ second, not first, state in “Palestine”–almost two dozen Arab states to date on over six million square miles of territory…So much for the Arab claim that Jews got all the land. Question: Since Jews also come “in different stripes,” do they get to have multiple states as Arabs do? How about some forty million Kurds?
Yet, in addition to the Arab assault in 1948, Jews next had no choice but to further emerge out of the shock of the Holocaust in order to deal with another blow…
David Ben-Gurion, leader of Israel reborn, made countless historic decisions during his lifetime, but one particularly controversial and painful one that haunts Israel to this very day involved the ship I began this essay with…the Altalena.
Altalena was a pen name for Ben-Gurion’s Labor Zionist Party’s rival, the late Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky. Unlike many of his Labor critics, Jabotinsky was less head-in-the-sand and starry-eyed about what could and couldn’t be achieved with the Arabs, who were as rejectionist back then as they are today regarding any compromise over “purely Arab patrimony.”
Jabotinsky’s heirs (Etzel, the Irgun) were determined to repay Arab slaughter of Jews in kind and to hasten the end of British rule and anti-Israel policies by any means necessary. Among other things, they purchased an American ship and landed it near Marseilles, France. It was expected that it would make repeat trips between France and Israel carrying arms and new recruits gathered from the survivors of Europe’s nightmare and also the frightened mellahs (ghettos) of the Jews’ kilab yahud (Jew dog) existence in “Arab” North Africa and the Middle East.
Israel desperately needed the arms and manpower aboard the Altalena. But Ben-Gurion insisted that there would be but one unified command.
On June 20, 1948, Ben-Gurion made a highly controversial, heart-wrenching decision to resist the Irgun’s challenge concerning the ship’s precious human and material cargo. It still tortures souls to this very day–over seventy years later.
In the ensuing tragic battle (which some still insist was not really warranted), Jews were killed by Jews for the sake of shaping the infant state’s future and character.
Up until recent years, Hamas was Hamas and the Arafatians were Arafatians.
Both played assorted games (with Hamas at least being more honest) to get Jews to yield unilateral concessions which only resulted in the deliberate spilling of more innocent Jewish blood. Neither faction had any intention of arriving at a settlement in which a viable Israel would exist on the morrow. That has been proven over and over again, and there’s no need to repeat the evidence about Camp David 2000 and Taba, etc. and so forth.
A better tomorrow for both Jew and Arab alike–and, hopefully, other peoples abused by Arabs, Turks, and Iranians as well–will not arrive unless new leaders arise in the would-be 22nd Arab state with the power and will to make the decisions a stateless and millennially persecuted people and its leaders–at the end of their collective rope–made seven decades ago, when I was born and Israel re-born within a week of each other.
What will such Arab leaders do the day after another Israeli bus, restaurant, or shopping mall is blown up; another Jewish family is attacked in their home or in their car; missiles and mortars are launched against innocent civilians; and so forth?
Unfortunately, as recent history has shown, probably nothing…except awarding the murderer and his/her family.
Until Arabs make clear their intent to accept a tangible, reasonable compromise and live peacefully–not just in temporary hudnas designed to further their overt destruction-in-phases goals–alongside a secure, Jewish Israel (with non-Jews as citizens as well), then Israel should not be expected to become a party to its own demise by caving in to Arab demands and those of the hypocrites elsewhere who support them.
Even though all the dots don’t connect precisely, one of the lessons of the above story dating back to the days of Israel’s rebirth is that peace will come only when Arabs are willing to confront their own rejectionist attitudes and problems head on the way millennially-persecuted and decimated Jews did seven decades ago…
What’s missing, you see–the same as it was when I first put my thoughts down about this some fifteen years ago–is one ArabAltalena.
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