New Heavens (23 page)

I summoned the largest taxi I had at the field and told the driver to take them to the Gat Rimon, which was the best hotel in Tel Aviv at the time. As I accompanied them to the vehicle, I dropped behind so that I could have a word with the dark-skinned gentleman. I complained about not having received any indication from headquarters as to what to do with Count Bernadotte. I didn't realize he was the second UN mediator, Dr. Ralph Bunche.

Bernadotte was assassinated shortly afterward near Jerusalem, by the Stern Group, the most radical of the underground forces. Later it was explained to me that they had managed to gain access to one of his diaries and that the Stern Group suspected him of being an anti-Semite, who was planning to sell us down the river to the Arabs. I doubt if there is any agreement about his true role, though in the short time I spent with him he was cold and unfriendly.

My final encounter with the Irgun occurred in June 1948. It was right after the Irgun had reached agreement about joining the newly established Israeli armed forces. In the preceding months, the Irgun had been busy with massive acquisitions of arms in Europe for its units in Israel. The main object of the arms acquisition was for use in the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. The Irgun made a deal with the French government according to which the Irgun would be allowed to load men, arms, and armed cars on a 5,000-ton vessel, the
Altalena
, at port in France. The vessel had been used in World War II as a tank landing craft. The Irgun promised support for France in its conflict in the Maghreb. The French were unhappy at having been ousted from their traditional role in Syria and Lebanon, and were not adverse to helping anti-British forces. Everything was done in absolute secrecy. Discovery of the
Altalena
project by the Arabs would have been a serious blow because it was breaking the Anglo-American embargo on the passage of arms and military personnel to the Middle East.

On the night of 19 June, the
Altalena
arrived off the Israel coast and made for Kfar Vitkin, a settlement forty kilometers north of Tel Aviv. The Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion knew of the ship's pending arrival, but differences between the Irgun and Ben Gurion arose concerning the agreement between the Irgun and the government about distribution of the arms. Because of misunderstandings, which had their roots in the deep antagonism that had existed
for years between the Haganah and the Irgun, a profoundly sad situation developed. The Irgun wanted to use the arms and the personnel for their comrades who were fighting desperately against the Arabs in Jerusalem. They refused to hand over control of the ship and its contents to the legitimate government. Based on mutual distrust, Ben Gurion and the army chiefs feared a coup d'état by the Irgun. A force of 600 soldiers was sent to Kfar Vitkin and the army refused to let the
Altalena
unload its cargo of arms and volunteers. Shots were fired at the Irgun fighters and the Israel Navy vessels fired at the
Altalena
. The volunteers on board the Altalena returned fire.

While all this was going on, I was asleep in the Yarden Hotel in Tel Aviv, exhausted as usual from the endless night flying. I was awakened by someone who told me what was going on and warned me there were rumors the Irgun was about to try to take over control of Israel. The news was so incredible that I believed it only when I saw an armed soldier posted outside my door to protect me, as commander of the main air unit of the country, from the Irgun.

This bizarre situation in which I, as a secret member of the Irgun, was being guarded and protected from the Irgun by the army was untenable. Feverishly, I sought a way out of the dilemma. I got into my staff car and rushed to the headquarters of the Irgun in the former Freund Hospital on Lilienblum Street in Tel Aviv. As I drove alone through the darkened streets of the city, I tried desperately to find a solution. Only an occasional military police vehicle could be seen.

I found the Irgun headquarters in darkness; there were
no guards at the entrance. It seemed deserted, but I found one of Begin's deputies, Haim Landau, seated alone at an old-fashioned switchboard. I said, “Haim Landau, I am being guarded against a supposed coup d'état by the Irgun. What is going on?” He looked at me in astonishment and said, “I don't know anything. It's ridiculous. All I know is that there has been some shooting at Kfar Vitkin, and Begin has gone there to clarify matters.”

I returned to my quarters at the Yarden Hotel, where the night porter told me there was an urgent call for me to telephone general headquarters. I drove to Sde Dov, and from the operations room got on to headquarters. I was ordered to prepare three aircraft immediately to bomb the
Altalena
. Now my predicament was overwhelming. On the one hand, I had to obey orders from my commanders, but no force on earth could have made me bomb the Irgun ship with its complement of Jewish volunteers. Later, I discovered that the former leader of the Irgun forces in Europe, my close friend “Benjamin,” was in command of the
Altalena
.

I set about locating two other pilots, who unknown to anyone in the air force, were former Irgun members. Ezer was not available. Fortune smiled, for two of them were nearby in Tel Aviv and I brought them to Sde Dov quickly. I was not sure what I would do when the order came to bomb the ship. I considered various stratagems such as deliberately missing the target or sabotaging the aircraft before takeoff.

I consented grudgingly when, an hour later, an order came to fly over the ship and circle it while flashing navigation lights without dropping bombs. I took off and made
my way along the coastline in the pitch-black darkness, the sea and the sky merging in the pervading gloom. I thought of my comrades far below in the blackness, surrounded and embattled by their own government's troops. Now they were about to be entombed in their ship at the very moment of their triumph, having finally reached Israel with their desperately needed arms and fighting personnel. I was in agony. No! I could never bomb my fellow Jews.

I circled the doomed ship in an airplane belonging to forces on the point of ordering me to bomb the ship and its Irgun volunteers, some of whom only some months before had been my blood brothers and comrades. Most fortunately, GHQ held back the order to bomb at the last minute. I returned to base and awaited another fateful order to bomb the ship. After some hours of tension, GHQ told me that it had finally decided not to bomb the ship. Believing a demonstration of strength by flying over the ship while flashing my navigation lights would be an effective warning to the men below, I was ordered to do so.

During the confusion at Kfar Vitkin, Begin boarded the ship and remained on it until the end. The
Altalena
did not complete the unloading at Kfar Vitkin and was deliberately beached on the shore of Tel Aviv in full view of the city's population, the UN observers, and the world media. The
Altalena
was fired upon and destroyed after a direct order from Ben Gurion. For months the rusting, blackened hulk on the lovely beachfront of Tel Aviv bore mute testimony to man's folly.

I was relieved when an order came for me to proceed to Czechoslovakia for a conversion course on the Messerschmitt
109. The order came while the
Altalena
was sailing from Kfar Vitkin to the Tel Aviv beach, and I was spared the necessity of being an unhappy star player in the confrontation between the government forces and the Irgun. I heard later that when the Mahal aircrews were told to load aircraft for a possible action against the
Altalena
there was a revolt against being involved in any action against Jews.

The
Altalena
became the target of artillery, and Jews killed Jews on the burning ship or as they jumped into the sea. Sorely needed military equipment was destroyed in the fire, which gutted the ship. The pall of smoke from the
Altalena
was like a funeral pyre in front of where the Dan Hotel now stands in Tel Aviv. It put an end to the saddest chapter in Israel's rebirth. During the confrontation nineteen people were killed, sixteen of them Irgun fighters.

The
Altalena
affair left a deep and lasting schism between the two opposing factions in Israel. Being a secret member of the Irgun but serving in the air arm of the Haganah, I was in a better position than most at the time to make an impartial judgment. My opinion is that both the Irgun and Prime Minister Ben Gurion were unreasonably paranoid about the whole question leading to the dispute. Both Ben Gurion and Begin played their hands badly. Begin's refusal to bow to government authority in Israel was unacceptable and had to be opposed. However, I feel that Ben Gurion's misreading of Begin's intentions was the main cause of the tragedy that followed in plain view of Israel's population and the world media.

My last meeting with Begin was years later in Jerusalem at a party to launch his book
White Night
. By this time I
was an active supporter of the Peace Now Movement, which encouraged a policy of compromise with the Arabs in order to arrive at a peace settlement. During the reception someone told Begin. This news must have been both surprising and distasteful for him, but he took it with equanimity. He came up to me and said, “We are all free people who have their own choice.” He accompanied his statement with a big hug.

Not long thereafter in May 1977, Begin won the elections and became prime minister of Israel, bringing into his government Ezer as minister of defense, Dayan as foreign minister, and Yadin as deputy prime minister, all having been generals during Ben Gurion's reign. For me this closed the gap in my strange allegiance to the two opposing forces.

Following the purchase of twenty-five new Czech-built World War II German fighters, our pilots were sent to Czechoslovakia for training. After seven had completed the first course, I went with the second batch. When we arrived at the Czechoslovak base of Ceske Budejovice, I was encouraged to find my comrades. In the course were South African and American volunteers, a great follow-on to the few men recruited in Johannesburg earlier. Here, too, I met the American volunteer George Lichter, who has been my lifelong friend and fighter-pilot comrade both in Israel and since he returned to his home in New York.

By the time we arrived in Prague, the communists had
infiltrated every facet of the economy. We quickly learned that the Czech expression for the nationalized businesses was “Narodni Podnik.” The best nightclub in Prague where one could get fine steaks and desserts with whipped cream was “Monica,” and it also belonged to the communist administration The hotels had all the appurtenances of a Western capitalist establishment, which jarred with one's image of communism. However, that was no concern of ours and, as long as the Czechs were willing to lend support to our budding air force, we accepted the anomalies in their system happily.

I took with me twenty U.S. dollars, which I changed on the free market at 400 crowns per dollar. The official rate was fifty. The small sum I had brought in dollars, once converted at the free market rate, supplied me with all my requirements—two recorded symphonies, a set of Bohemian glassware, and a number of books about Russia, which were freely and cheaply available in the shops compliments of the Soviet propaganda machine.

eské Bud
jovice was a Czech Air Force training base in eastern Czechoslovakia, and we were outfitted with flying overalls, helmets, and gloves. The irony of the situation was not lost on me, for here we were, Jewish pilots in the Israel Air Force, training on German Messerschmitt 109s, wearing Nazi Luftwaffe flying suits. To top it all, we were flying behind the Iron Curtain. A greater irony was that several of us had flown Spitfires in combat against Nazi Messer-schmitts in World War II and were now about to fly Mes-serschmitts in missions against Spitfires of the Egyptian Air Force.

Our accommodations at the air base were basic but adequate. Tins of food from the Israeli embassy in Prague supplemented the meager Czech military rations. The camp food consisted mainly of suet dumplings with a meat sauce and was not the kind of fare we were used to after an Israeli diet lavishly supplemented with fresh vegetables and salads.