Wreck of ship sunk by Israeli military in Irgun clash found after 78 years

The wreck of the Altalena, a ship shelled by the Israeli military in June 1948, was located Monday at a depth of 1,650 feet off Israel's Mediterranean coast “during a complex naval search operation,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu announced in a joint statement.

The Altalena Affair has over the years become the subject of deep political controversy between Israel's political right and left, with competing narratives over the circumstances that led to the ship's sinking. Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, even invoked the affair to justify his actions.

The showdown that divided Israel

The Altalena Affair was a violent confrontation that erupted in June 1948, one month after Israel's establishment, between the newly created Israeli military and the Irgun, one of the Jewish paramilitary organizations that had fought the British before Israel's independence.

Following Israel's establishment, the three main Jewish underground organizations — the Irgun, Lehi and Haganah — were to be incorporated into the new Israeli military. But the process of integration proved difficult and was marked by clashes stemming from the groups' different political agendas and command structures. The Irgun was expected to disband following the establishment of the state but continued to operate for several months.

The Altalena, a ship purchased and operated by the Irgun under the command of Menachem Begin, was named after the pen name of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, which advocated maximal territorial claims and Jewish settlement on both sides of the Jordan River. Sailing from France toward Israel, the ship carried about 900 Holocaust survivors, a few dozen Irgun members and large quantities of weapons.

As the ship approached the Israeli coast, the new immigrants disembarked. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion demanded that the ship and its cargo be turned over to the newly formed Israeli military. The military ordered the Irgun members aboard to hand over the weapons, sparking a violent confrontation.

Irgun members refused to surrender the weapons, and a deadly exchange of fire broke out on the dock near the shore. The ship subsequently moved toward Tel Aviv, where clashes continued, including on land. Three Israeli soldiers and 16 Irgun members were killed, and the military's fire set the ship ablaze. Rabin, a former commander in the Haganah who had become a senior officer in the newly created military, took part in the fighting.

After the ship caught fire, its wreck remained stuck in shallow waters for several months. In October 1949, the Israeli navy towed the wreck into deeper waters and deliberately sank it, arguing that it posed a danger to the public.

War of narratives

Veterans of the Irgun and members of the Likud party — which Begin headed from 1948 until his resignation in 1983 — have argued that the newly created military showed no hesitation in firing on members of the group and shelling the ship because the military regarded the Irgun as an enemy of the state.

According to this narrative, only Begin's leadership prevented the confrontation from escalating into a civil war. Irgun supporters have also argued that the weapons aboard the Altalena were ultimately intended to be handed over to the Israeli military rather than retained for the Irgun's own use.

Leaders of the Haganah and political figures associated with the country's political establishment at the time of its founding rejected these claims, arguing that the Altalena operation threatened the cohesion and authority of the newly created state.

The affair nevertheless became a symbol of Israel's broader political divide, particularly the struggle between the Labor movement, which governed Israel from its establishment until 1977, and the Likud, which portrayed itself as a defender of the country's geographic periphery and Sephardic Jews against the Ashkenazi Israeli-born elite.

Likud figures including Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have over the years advocated the use of public funds to locate the Altalena wreck.

Locating the ship

In August 2025, Eliyahu's ministry invested 1 million Israeli shekels ($335,000) in efforts to locate the ship, funding a marine research vessel equipped with technology capable of locating the wreck.

Because the wreck lies at a depth beyond the reach of divers, it was eventually located using sonar systems.

According to a Ynet report published Monday, raising the entire wreck to the surface is likely to be impossible because of the complexity of such an engineering operation. Several alternatives are now being considered, including establishing a floating memorial site above the ship or a maritime heritage center. Another possibility would be to recover individual sections of the wreck.