The discovery this week of the sunken arms ship the Altalena, which almost sparked an Israeli civil war just one month after the fledgling state was created in 1948, has become a political battle ground for right-politicians seeking support in advance of the October 27 elections.
“There is no more mobilizing ethos on the right than Altalena,” Udi Lebel, a leading scholar of the affair at Bar-Ilan University, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The ship’s detection, he said, bolstered what he viewed as efforts by both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Otzma Yehudit to campaign in this election on identity and victimhood rather than policy.
The Altalena had arrived from France in June 1948 carrying about 900 Jewish immigrants and a large shipment of weapons acquired by the Irgun, the more militant pre-state paramilitary group led by Menachem Begin. Its rival, the Haganah, was the largest military organization in pre-state Israel and formed the main foundation of the newly established IDF.
Begin wanted 20% of the weapons on board the Altalena for Irgun forces in Jerusalem, while then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion insisted that armed forces and weapons come under the authority of the newly established state. Sixteen Irgun members and three IDF soldiers were killed in the fighting, during which a shell hit the ship setting it ablaze as it was moored off the Tel Aviv shore.
Until the battle, the Irgun had been a separate force from the emerging national army. The Altalena shelling established the authority of the army over all military forces, ensuring that the right-most flank of the war effort would be subordinate to the new leadership.
The burned-out vessel remained there for more than a year before being towed farther out to sea and deliberately sunk. Its precise location was subsequently lost, prompting repeated searches over the decades. The story of the ship has remained embedded in Israel’s national consciousness as a warning of how internal discord can spiral toward civil war.
Otzma Yehudit ministers announce discovery of Altalena
In a joint statement Monday, Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, both from Otzma Yehudit, announced that the vessel had been located at a depth of about 1,650 feet, roughly 12 miles offshore.
The search, commissioned by the Heritage Ministry and carried out by the government’s mapping body called the Survey of Israel, which operated in this instance without involvement from the IDF, used a specially equipped ship with advanced sensors and underwater mapping systems, the ministers said, adding that the wreck was found largely intact.
Lebel questioned whether the wreck had been located in its entirety, saying the government had yet to produce clear photographic evidence and citing archival records he said documented repeated efforts under Ben-Gurion to destroy and sink the vessel. He also noted that no American naval experts had been brought in, despite the vessel’s origins as a World War II US Navy landing ship.
Monday’s announcement of the discovery quickly became part of the election campaign, with Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir invoking Begin’s legacy to make competing appeals to right-wing voters.
Ben-Gvir publicized the find without first informing Netanyahu or Defense Minister Israel Katz, surprising both men, according to Israeli reports, a detail that quickly fed speculation about tensions between the coalition partners. Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir later delivered separate remarks at Tel Aviv’s Etzel Museum, which is dedicated to the Irgun, with the prime minister avoiding a joint appearance with his far-right coalition partner.
It was not the first time Netanyahu had kept his distance from Ben-Gvir on the eve of an election. In October 2022, less than two weeks before that year’s vote, Netanyahu waited for Ben-Gvir to leave the stage at a holiday event rather than be photographed alongside him. Reports at the time said the two were nevertheless meeting regularly and coordinating their campaign and media strategy.
Netanyahu used his remarks on Monday to focus on Begin’s decision not to retaliate after the ship was shelled, saying the Irgun leader had “stopped the fight” and prevented the nascent state from descending into civil war.
“That’s the lesson of the Altalena,” he said, before tying the episode to his own campaign pledge to form a “broad national government” after the upcoming October 27 election.
“We are brothers. Political rivals, yes, but we are brothers. We are of one nation, one future, one fate,” he said.
Ben-Gvir described the Altalena as a symbol of the historic marginalization of Israel’s right, drawing a parallel between his own treatment and that of Begin, Ben-Gurion’s bitter political rival. The vessel’s recovery, he said, closes “an open wound.”
“Begin knew the taste of persecution, what it was like when people did not want to be photographed with you on the same stage,” Ben-Gvir said.
Begin went on to found Herut, the forerunner of Likud, and led Likud to power in 1977, ending nearly three decades of Labor-led rule. Ben-Gvir’s early political career was tied to extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whom both Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, ostracized from the mainstream right.
Ben-Gvir’s allies explicitly linked the photo-op snub to his repeated claim that Netanyahu plans to form a government after the election with Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the centrist Yashar party and the prime minister’s main rival in recent polls, saying it was “exactly what they did to Menachem Begin,” according to the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper.
Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir splitting voters in Altalena contest
The confrontation has been widely interpreted in Israel as part of the contest between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir for the same pool of right-wing voters. Haaretz political columnist Yossi Verter described Ben-Gvir’s handling of the Altalena discovery as “genius.”
Veteran political commentator Ben Caspit offered a similar reading, writing in Maariv that Ben-Gvir had effectively hijacked one of Likud’s most potent historical symbols and turned it against Netanyahu, “snatching from under the prime minister’s nose” the legacy of Begin. Caspit wrote that Ben-Gvir was relishing his appearance at the museum, while anyone familiar with the prime minister could see “how much he was suffering” by being there.
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, rejected that reading altogether, describing the apparent rupture between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir as a political ruse coordinated between the two to mislead voters and shore up support for another right-led government.
“This is not a genuine fight, and there is no real estrangement,” Talshir told JTA. “They are coordinating with each other because they share the same goal of increasing turnout on the right.”
Talshir said the apparent split allows Netanyahu to present himself as a more moderate figure to wavering Likud voters, who she said are “very troubled” by the country’s political divisions, while Ben-Gvir can present himself as the right-wing partner being pushed aside.
“Netanyahu is using the rhetoric of a broad national government to create the illusion among right-wing voters that he wants to repair the divisions within the country,” she said, noting that he was deliberately avoiding the word “unity,” which would suggest a commitment to govern with opposition parties.
She added that there was “no chance in the world, under any possible election results, that Netanyahu would prefer a government with even one component of the current opposition over an extreme-right coalition like the one he had and still has.” One reason was Netanyahu’s ongoing criminal trial, which she argued made him unlikely to choose coalition partners for whom the rule of law is a central principle.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States who served under Netanyahu, rejected the idea that the Altalena clash was a coordinated ruse. He also disputed Talshir’s view of Netanyahu’s coalition preferences, saying the prime minister has historically preferred broader governments that allow him to occupy the political center. Oren pointed to Netanyahu’s 2009 government, which included former prime minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party and embraced a demilitarized Palestinian state, saying that kind of ideologically diverse coalition was “comfortable” for him.
“The nightmare of the last four years is that he’s been the leftmost person in his coalition,” Oren said. “He would love to get [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and Ben-Gvir out” of his government.
Oren said Netanyahu could ideally seek what he called a “Zionist government” that excluded both Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties. The difficulty, he said, is that opposition parties have expressed their refusal to join a government led by Netanyahu, raising the question of what role he could play in such a coalition.
“He needs to be prime minister because it’s existential for him,” Oren said, particularly in light of his ongoing corruption trial. “If he’s not prime minister, he’ll have to appear in court as citizen Netanyahu. That’s a potentially dangerous situation for him.”
Altalena used to manipulate right-wing voters
Lebel said the Altalena story was being used to revive among right-wing voters a sense that they were again being delegitimized and persecuted.
He also called Netanyahu’s invocation of Begin’s vow to prevent civil war “politically manipulative,” arguing that Begin made the statement during a genuine internecine confrontation in which his movement was treated as illegitimate, a reality he said bears little resemblance to Israel’s political divisions today.
“Begin made his pledge during a confrontation in which there really was another side that did not want to see him or his supporters in power and viewed everything he represented as illegitimate,” he said. “Netanyahu today is not confronting another side that refuses to accept him, because he himself is the elite and controls the entire public administration.”
Talshir argued that Netanyahu’s invocation of Altalena also ignored the principle at the heart of the original confrontation. Netanyahu, Talshir said, gave Ben-Gvir control of the police and empowered him in ways that undermined that principle.
“Netanyahu can keep saying until tomorrow that he opposes civil war. But in practice, he is the person who created Ben-Gvir politically and gave him the power to establish militias that are personally loyal to the minister, and that frequently challenge the police’s professional chain of command,” she said.
“Netanyahu’s presentation of the Altalena is just another part of a false campaign that he is trying to sell to the public, specifically to Likud voters,” she said.
