Photos & Text: Lydia Aisenberg

With the Israeli Government having recently decided that the time has come to literally dredge up from the seabed the remains of the ALTALENA  - one of the most painfully sensitive pre-State incidents in which Jews battled Jews at the cost of dozens of lives - a visit to the Etzel Museum and Educational Center, just meters from the Tel Aviv seashore, is well worthwhile.

With the green lawns of the Charles Clore Park on three sides and the azure waters of the Mediterranean on the fourth, the stone and black glass Irgun Zvai Leumi ( I.Z.L.) or Etzel Museum building on the Tel Aviv shoreline is impressive.

The blue cloudless sky above and attractive layered Jaffa skyline in the near distance are additional factors making the museum building, with its enormous Israeli flag flapping high above it in the sea breeze, stand out, whilst at the same time blending in with the natural surroundings.

The museum, built over the ruins of a former Ottoman period building, is dedicated to the memory of operations officer Amihai (Gidi) Paglin and 41 fighters of the pre-State paramilitary force, Irgun Zvai Leumi, who fell in the campaign to conquer the nearby Arab town of Jaffa.  It also documents other battles in which Etzel members played a role during the War of Independence.

Active in Palestine from 1931-1948, the Jewish underground organization retaliated against terrorist attacks by Arabs on the Jewish population and rebelled against the British regime’s White Paper policy that imposed restrictions on immigration to Palestine.

Integration of the Etzel fighters into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was brokered in an agreement signed between the then Etzel Commander in Chief, Menachem Begin, and Israel Galili on behalf of the government of Israel.

Even after the agreement was signed there remained a great deal of bitterness between Begin and Ben Gurion and those who supported them, much of which centered around the Altalena affair in which Palmach soldiers attacked an arms-carrying Etzel ship close to the Tel Aviv shore.

There is a map which is accompanied by explanations and documents of the I.Z.L’s response to the partition and to the Arab hostilities that broke out after the plan was announced.

A model of steel-helmeted soldiers defending their post, surrounded by sandbags and barbed wire, greets the visitor at the first corner turned in the museum which is set out in serpentine fashion. An electronic map serves as an introduction to the entire exhibit, showing Etzel positions, attacks and raids carried out, and the capture of Arab villages during the period 1947-1948, including the attack on the village of Dir Yassin in the Jerusalem corridor. Maps, documents and photographs are on display as well as a diorama presenting the heroism of two women fighters of Etzel in the battle for Yehudiya, the ladies having chosen death over surrender.

On the second floor one finds a description of the attack on Ramle in which 51 Etzel fighters died and many were wounded. There is an area that focuses on the training of the fighters and the purchase of arms, as well as several somewhat tongue-in-cheek details of the requisitions of British ammunition which included 20,000 mortar bombs of 81 mm taken from a British train transporting ammunition to Arab fighters in Gaza.

Following the infiltration of a British army camp near Pardes Hanna, Etzel fighters also requisitioned weapons, ammunition and an armored vehicle from a British paratroopers’ station at what is, today, a large IDF training base known as Machane 80, on the main Wadi Ara highway.

A large exhibition is dedicated to battles waged in the liberation of Jerusalem, operations with the Haganah and Lechi (Underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel). Two interesting dioramas deal with a stronghold of the British in the city, Zion Gate and, in the background, the Old City of Jerusalem.

Another section concentrates on operations in the north such as the  Haganah and Etzel in the defense of Safed, and the taking of Wadi Nisnas - an Arab neighborhood in Haifa - which is today the venue for an annual coexistence festival of art, music and culinary delights held during the month of the Chanukah, Christmas and Ramadan holidays.

The last section of the museum deals with the Altalena incident. The Etzel armaments-carrying ship had embarked from the port of Marseilles. Upon arrival at the shore of the newly-founded State of Israel, opposite Kfar Vitkin, Ben Gurion’s demands that the armaments be handed over to the unified Jewish forces were refused. An attack on the ship was ordered and a massive explosion set off by a shell destroyed the ship and cargo. A large encased flag of Israel which had been flown on the deck of the Altalena, hangs on the wall. In the accompanying text one reads that the flag was saved minutes before the ship blew up, an Etzel fighter risking life and limb to rescue it.

Under a model of the ship, photographs and additional text, a large white lifebelt from the ship is propped up against the wall, the name ALTALENA silently shrieking of the tragic circumstances that brought Jews to battle Jews in the State of Israel – appropriately memorialized in a museum just meters from the sea.

The museum, which belongs to the Museum Unit of the Ministry of Defense, was empty apart from the guides who are knowledgeable soldiers and a young security guard. This, on the one hand was useful as nobody got in the way of photographs or obliterated the prolific texts alongside the exhibits, but on the other hand was a little eerie.

On the beach immediately across the promenade from the museum a few dozen young people sunbathed or rode surfboards close to the shore. A foreign television crew was busy setting up equipment in the shade as a municipality worker attempted to clean the pathway around them.