Begin and Ben-Gurion—1948-1953

In this lecture, Professor Gordis analyzes two important events during Israel's early years. In both, Menachem Begin clashed with the Jewish establishment and helped to shape the contours of Israel's moral conscience. In the Altalena affair, in which Irgun operatives brought a ship of illegal arms to Israel, the vessel was attacked by the newly-formed Israeli army. Boarding the ship off the coast of Israel, Begin found himself personally under fire. Despite this, he ordered his fighters not to shoot back, preventing a Jewish civil war within months of Israel's founding. A few years later, Begin waged a vigorous public campaign against accepting German reparations for the Holocaust.