Finner en glimrende opinion i NYTimes av Ethan Bronner, som nettopp inneholder den innsikt en så sårt savner hos menn som Sunnanå og Pilger. Før selvstendigheten var det også forskjellige israelske militser. De ytterliggående Irgun og Stern drev terror. Ben Gurion forsto at han måtte bringe dem under kontroll, hvis ikke ville den fremtidige staten være truet. Det skjedde ved våpenmakt. Palestinerne står nå ved samme veiskille, mener mange israelere. De må treffe et valg. Saken er så viktig og interessant at vi klipper fra artikkelen:

Palestinians study the milestones of the Zionist movement for guidance and often speak about the Israeli political system, with its freewheeling debate, as a model for their own.

There is one milestone in particular that bears study today — David Ben-Gurion’s fateful decision in 1948 to end Jewish terrorist activities and bring armed splinter groups under government control.
In the final years of the British mandate in Palestine, there was not one Jewish militia but several, just as there are competing Palestinian groups today. The 2_kommentar one, the Haganah, was led by Mr. Ben-Gurion. A more violent and radical one, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, often called simply the Irgun, was led by Menachem Begin. The Irgun, along with an even more radical group, the Stern Gang, was responsible for a massacre of more than 200 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948.

A month later, after the British walked out of Palestine and Mr. Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel, Arab armies attacked. On June 1, the Haganah and Irgun agreed to merge into the Israel Defense Forces, headed by Haganah commanders. The accord called on Irgun members to hand over arms and terminate separate activity, including arms purchases abroad.

But there re2_kommentared the question of an old American Navy landing vessel bought by the Irgun’s American supporters and renamed the Altalena. The ship, whose purchase had predated the June 1 agreement, was packed with 850 volunteers, 5,000 rifles, 3,000 bombs, 3 million cartridges and hundreds of tons of explosives.

Mr. Ben-Gurion wanted every soldier and bullet he could get and ordered the ship to dock. But Mr. Begin said the arms should go to Irgun troops. Mr. Ben-Gurion refused; at that point, Irgun men headed to the beach to unload the arms.

Mr. Ben-Gurion realized the challenge he faced. As he put it in his memoir, «I decided this must be the moment of truth. Either the government’s authority would prevail and we could then proceed to consolidate our military force or the whole concept of nationhood would fall apart.»

He ordered the Altalena shelled. Dan Kurzman, in his biography of Mr. Ben-Gurion, «Prophet of Fire,» describes the old man sitting with his cabinet just before his decision, «his eyes inflamed from sleeplessness, his hair in even wilder disarray than usual,» and saying, «The state can not exist until we have one army and control of that army.»

After the volunteers disembarked, Mr. Begin boarded the ship, as did other Irgun fighters. The shelling began. When one hit and the Altalena burst into flames, Mr. Begin was hurled overboard by his men and carried ashore. The ship sank, along with most of its arms and more than a dozen Irgun members. Others were arrested, and the Irgun’s independent activities were finally put to an end. «Blessed be the cannon that shelled that ship,» Mr. Ben-Gurion declared, providing his political enemies on the right with a rallying cry against him for the next generation.

In his 1953 memoir, «The Revolt,» Begin says he had known hunger and sorrow in his life but had wept only twice — once, out of joy, when the state was declared, and the second time, in grief, the night the Altalena was destroyed.