Sparks From Israel

Sparks from Israel

The Alta Lena
This week was the yortzeit of Yitzchak Rabin. There are many memorials and gatherings. The yortziet of Rachel, mother of Yoseph also fell on the same date this year. I wondered if there was a connection. In Ulpan we discussed the Rabin memorial and translated the placards that read ‘we will always remember and we will not forgive.’

After class I went to swim in the waters of the Alta Lena. In the early days preceding the State of Israel, there was a ship called the Alta Lena that after passing through many obstacles finally arrived at the shores of Tel Aviv full of ammunition to help the Jewish army who desperately needed it. There was a conflict however, because it was an Irgun ship (a rival political party). And so David Ben Gurion gave orders to the ‘Holy Cannons’ as he called them to sink the ship and shoot to kill. And kill they did.

Many people think that Itzchak Rabin was the first Jew assassinated by another Jew. The truth is he was the officer who held the trigger of those ‘Holy Cannons’ many years ago and he himself assassinated the ‘first’ Jewish rivals.

It’s hard to believe that Jews would kill their fellow Jews as they tried to scramble to shore but this is history and in extreme situations and times, extreme things happen. And so as I swim through the waters of the Alta Lena I ask myself if there is a place in Israel where Jewish blood has not been shed? And I hear the tears of Rachel, the mother of the betrayed Yoseph praying that our suffering should not be self-inflicted.