A religious Leftist

[IsraeliGovtAreKapos]

Anyone who uses the Communist excuse of "preventing a civil war" (an outright blood libeling lie made to excuse the elimination and enslavement of the right wing and religious Jews) for the massacre of the heroine Irgun Holocaust survivors is an auto anti-Semite and a compelete ignorant maniac whose right to exist is questioned.

[Yaakov Mendel]

If today you cherish the existence of the State of Israel so that for the first time in two thousand years, the Jewish People, here and now during your own lifetime, may return to our ancestral Homeland and have our own military forces to defend us, then you have no choice but to accept both the good along with the bad that created the State.

Your reasoning could make sense if sacrificing the Irgun fighters was absolutely necessary to create the state of Israel. But it wasn't. On the contrary. What happened was murder in cold blood. The Irgun fighters had a deal with Ben Gurion. They came to supply needed weapons and to participate in the war. Killing them weakened the chances of the newly created state of Israel to survive.

[Ulli]

Looks like he just got out of atheist church (the bar).

bulls eye

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "What happened was murder in cold blood. The Irgun fighters had a deal with Ben Gurion. They came to supply needed weapons and to participate in the war. Killing them weakened the chances of the newly created state of Israel to survive. "

I happen to agree with you.

But this is precisely what happens when people fight a war for national liberation.

It's a dirty, crooked, bloody mess, and no one seems to come out of it with clean hands.

Perhaps it is true that the Religious Zionist Nationalist Camp never would have committed an act as heinous as firing on the Altalena.

But if this is indeed the case, then what they proved is that they lacked the required determination to win at any cost, for by their insistence on holding the moral high ground they lost the struggle for the political leadership of the national liberation to the Marxist Camp which had long established their ruthless character and complete dishonesty.

How could anyone in seriousness "cut a deal" with Ben Gurion, knowing who he was and what he represented, and then trust him to keep it?

A strong case can be made here that the "right" wing leadership lost the struggle because they lacked the political sophistication necessary to understand the evil nature of their enemy.

And in defeat, they also lost the chance for historians to accurately record their struggle for Jewish National Independence in its true light, for the Labor Zionists let the Irgun bleed for them, double crossed them, and seized the reins of power just as victory was achieved, and then wrote the "official" histories of the War of Independence which condemned the Irgun as "terrorists" and "fascists".

War makes no allowances for honor, truth, or doing what's right.

The Romans knew this well - This is why they conquered and held Judea and the rest of the known world during their time.

The British Empire was founded on this very same lack of morality.

The politically sophisticated -  those intent on winning and achieving power - learned long ago that being "good" and "fighting with honor" are impediments to victory.

Don't misinterpret my words as advocating amoral behavior.

But if you're willing to bleed and suffer and die for a noble cause, yet willing to suffer defeat at the hands of your enemies because you refuse to play dirty like them, then why not just stay out of the fight altogether?

What good is it to sacrifice the best young men and women around, fail to reach your goals, and then be branded the bad guys by history books read by your grandchildren?

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "What the hell?  Who would think that? "

"Baby Milton" Margolis.

[Ari Ben-Canaan]

Indeed, the picture I posted is of Baruch Goldstein [ZK"L].

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "Let me put it to you this way, Massuh:  If you really think that Ben Gurion and Rabin fired on the Altalena in order to save the yishuv and all of the people living there from a civil war that would have enabled the Arabs at that critical moment in history to murder them all  (of course in addition to saving their own political hegemony), then what makes it "heinous?"

I don't know how you think that question has anything to do with anything I wrote.

I think the Labor Zionists were concerned with their own power grab and nothing else.

Of course, everyone in the world lives in a state of "denial" whereby they convince themselves that all of their motives are pure and all of their actions are for the benefit of others, but in fact everyone is motivated only by their own selfish interests.

Or...perhaps I'm just a jaded cynic unable to see how one side of an argument is always good and the other side is always bad.

Or....if one side of a jaded cynic makes an argument about another side not being bad or good, but rather somewhere in between, does that mean that another point of view could be viewed as both positive if it wasn't already seen as being negative?

What the hell is going on here?

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "Anyone who uses the Communist excuse of "preventing a civil war" (an outright blood libeling lie made to excuse the elimination and enslavement of the right wing and religious Jews) for the massacre of the heroine Irgun Holocaust survivors is an auto anti-Semite and a compelete ignorant maniac whose right to exist is questioned. "

Go tell it to your Israeli leadership who made up that lie.

[Kahane-Was-Right BT]

Re:  "Let me put it to you this way, Massuh:  If you really think that Ben Gurion and Rabin fired on the Altalena in order to save the yishuv and all of the people living there from a civil war that would have enabled the Arabs at that critical moment in history to murder them all  (of course in addition to saving their own political hegemony), then what makes it "heinous?"

I don't know how you think that question has anything to do with anything I wrote. 

You made a parallel between the actual Altalena, and a hypothetical you created which was supposed to mirror the situation, only with the other faction as the group in power.   You said the following:

And had Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir then become aware that a refugee ship was approaching which was concealing the Communist/Socialists David Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres so that they could enter the land, unite the entire Marxist camp behind them and overthrow all of the Nationalist Zionists in hopes of creating a Marxist Israel aligned with Stalinist Russia ... 

I added bold emphasis.

It appears you suggested in this thread with multiple comments that the attack on the Altalena by Ben Gurion really was a self-defense against overthrow of the governing regime/civil war/etc.    If not, then the parallel doesn't really make sense because it's two different situations.   (As noted, Begin's ship was not coming to overthrow the labor zionists - its crew actually came to join the fighting forces under Ben Gurion's command!  And the survivors did just that).  What actually happened vs. the hypothetical you present is not the-same-thing-only-with-the-sides-reversed.   In your hypothetical, it's a whole different equation where the safety of the entire yishuv and the defense against the arabs is in jeopardy due to the arrival of the ship.  So in that case why would one consider the "hypothetical" actions shamir or begin might have taken as equally heinous or even lamentable at all?   In the situation as you describe it, they'd probably be justified.

Another comment you stated reflects this as well:

I seriously doubt that Begin and Shamir and Stern would have allowed themselves to be defeated and sent back to Germany and Poland rather than take the lives of fellow Jews.

Is that really what Ben Gurion and Rabin were facing when THEY decided to murder other Jews by firing on the ship?   They're only facing going back to Germany and Poland if one assumes that the Altalena ship was an attempt at revolution or civil war (at a time when it was impossible to wage one and also defend against the open warfare with the Arabs which had already begun).

So perhaps you were unclear with what you wrote, if you think I misinterpreted all that.




And the way you first presented this hypothetical... You set it up with this: 

However,  "had the shoe been on the other foot" ...

Had the nationalist right wing camp been thoroughly entrenched in the seats of power and influence inside Eretz, in collusion with the British occupiers, 

I took issue with another aspect of this hypothetical because it doesn't make sense to suppose that leaders of the underground, if their faction was in power, could be assumed to be in collusion with the British.   The whole reason for the underground's existence was opposition to the British presence.  Such a hypothetical ceases to make rational sense.     

And then you said that I want to view them as faultless, no one else in the world has principle except my heroes,  willful suspension of disbelief, and other irrelevant insults.

The question of "Menachem begin the person" is not as important as what that person stood for and for what purpose his actions were intended (and the faction that supported him).   Clearly he was of the principle that British foreign presence must be expelled from the land.  All his actions and those of his followers reflected this.  If you deny it, you deny history.   The labor zionists also had principle, but their principles included that Jews will have a bigger piece of the pie by not fighting the british but by allying with them and letting them run the show to their satisfaction and then beneficently granting Jews rewards for obedience.  Anyone can look historically at that situation and determine which is better policy.   That doesn't make any person into a superman or someone who can't do wrong.    But to imagine that the faction ideologically opposed to british presence would be in cooperation with them is nonsensical - then they're really the labor faction only with different men in charge or different names.   It has no meaning.

Now, the situation as you do present it in your hypothetical - and you suggest that Begin and Shamir would then sink the ship - I don't think that calls into question their character if they do.   Why wouldn't they respond that way?    They should allow the entire yishuv to be endangered and possibly all the Jews to get murdered by multiple Arab nazi states for the sake of not responding with violence to "fellow Jews" who are leading a Marxist uprising in the middle of war for survival with the Arabs?   If they killed ben gurion and fellow crew on the ships, they would be doing so in self-defense like anyone is entitled to - IF the hypothetical is as you present it.

I don't have a problem pointing out things Begin or anyone else did wrong, but let's talk about real things, not imagined scenarios which never happened.