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 1948 war that led to the Nakba, the forced displacement of more than 750,000 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 1948.
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 2019, as well as an official reckoning for his government’s own failures ahead of the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, 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. We are brothers – political rivals, but we are brothers, sons of one nation with one future and one destiny.” 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 1948, 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 1946, killing more than 90 people in its bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
However, he maintained, placing all responsibility for the worst of the Nakba on the Irgun misses the point. What is called the Zionist ‘left’ has repeatedly functioned as a fig leaf for a settler-colonial movement organized around Jewish supremacy.” 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.
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