House Divided

The old LST nosed in toward the shores of Israel. She called herself the Altalena now, and aboard were 750 supporters of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi and enough weapons and ammunition (so the Irgun boasted) to arm a brigade of 6,000. In defiance of the U.N. truce and of the Israeli government, the Irgun intended to land the arms.

"Bitterest Blow." On the beach at Kfar Vitkin, 20 miles north of Tel Aviv, waited slight, sharp-eyed Menachim Beigin and a force of his bully boys, to help unload. But Haganah, now Israel's official army, was waiting too, with orders to stop them. Result: a short, sharp civil war of Jew against Jew, which Israel's Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion last week described as "the bitterest blow."

The terrorists got part of their arms ashore at Kfar Vitkin. But in the fight they lost six killed, 20 wounded, while Haganah suffered two dead, three wounded. Beigin boarded the ship, ordered it southward. At midnight the Altalena rammed on to the beach at Tel Aviv for another attempt. When noon came, an assault boat with a few steel-helmeted Irgunists ventured toward the beach, and despite Haganah fire set up a small beachhead. But when Haganah turned mortar fire on the Altalena, and smoke began to pour out amidships, the rest of the Irgunists jumped over the sides, swam for shore.

"If We Go Down ..." Correspondents and U.N. observers had been watching from deck chairs on the balcony of the beachside Kaete Dan Hotel. Many departed hastily, expecting the Altalena to blow up. Other civilians were evacuated from the waterfront. But boxes of ammunition went off without serious damage. Next morning the Altalena was a smoldering hull.

Ashore, the fighting stopped. Irgunists withdrew to their grey stone fortress headquarters in Tel Aviv. Then they got orders from Beigin to go underground. From a secret radio Beigin screamed defiance at the "mad dictatorship" of the Ben-Gurion government, called on Irgunists to leave Israel's army. "If we go down," shrilled Beigin, "we will see to it that the state of Israel sinks with us! If I am killed, the fury of my soldiers will know no bounds . . . They will avenge me, and I fear that the youth of Israel will be wiped out in a single night."

Irgunist Beigin had embraced the philosophy of violence years ago as a law student in Poland, there had joined the youth organization of the Zionist Revisionists. In World War II the Russians arrested him as an "antisocial element" in Poland, exiled him to hard labor in Siberia, later released him to join the Polish army. When his unit reached Palestine, Beigin deserted and went underground with the Irgun. The British put a price of -L-2,000 on his head.

Moderates of Ben-Gurion's socialist party, the strongest in Israel, had been willing to accept a limited Zionist state in the hope of achieving peace and order. Revisionists scorned, such compromise, demanded all of Palestine and Transjordan. The insignia of the Irgun (an outgrowth of the Revisionists) flaunted an arm holding a rifle above an outline of the old double Palestine-Transjordan mandate. Proclaimed its motto: Rak Kach (Only Thus). By terror and sabotage, the Irgun argued, the British could be driven from Palestine and the Arabs restrained.

Unended Danger. The problem for Ben-Gurion was not just to suppress terrorism, but to convince Israelis that the terrorists' promises of victory through violence were deceptive. Last week he demanded and got a vote of confidence (24-7) from the Council of State. Said he: "The incident may be closed, but the danger hasn't ended ... It would be a mistake to depend upon the army alone [to suppress terror]. The entire people of Israel are called upon to overcome the danger." Terrorists had flourished during the British mandate. Now, said Ben-Gurion, Israel must unite to eradicate them.

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