60 years ago yesterday, the Exodus 1947 left Marseille, France for Palestine with a cargo of 4515 Jewish war refugees:
[It] arrived at Palestine shores on July 18. The British Royal Navy trailed the ship from very early in its voyage, and finally boarded it some 20 nautical miles (40 km) from shore. The boarding was challenged by the passengers (the ship was in international waters where the Royal Navy had no jurisdiction), and so the British soldiers used force. Three shipmates, including 1st mate William Bernstein, a U.S. sailor from San Francisco, died as a result of bludgeoning and several dozen others were injured before the ship was overtaken. The British then sailed the ship into Haifa port, where its passengers were forcefully removed to three deportation ships.
The passengers were shipped back to, or at least toward, France. Nota bene:
...When the deportation ships arrived at Port-de-Bouc near Marseilles on August 2, the emigrants refused to disembark, and the French refused to cooperate with British attempts at forced disembarkation. Realizing that they were not bound for Cyprus, the emigrants conducted a 24-hour hunger strike, refusing to cooperate with the British authorities. That night an anti-Jewish riot broke out in Liverpool in which Jewish-owned shops were smashed and there were random attack on Jews. Over the next few evenings attacks spread from Liverpool to Manchester and London with the authorities forced to place police guards in Jewish areas across Britain. Within a few days The Times reported that attacks on Jews were now taking place in daylight as well as at night. the Mayor of Liverpool appealed for calm claiming that "not only property owned by Jews is being damaged..." (The Times page 4, August 5th 1947)...
(Sound familiar? It's the same thing the Nazis said to reign in Kristallnacht.)
After three weeks, the ships were sailed to Hamburg, Germany which was then in the British occupation zone and where the emigrants could be forced off the ships and back to DP camps in Lübeck-Pöppendorf. Although most of the women and children disembarked voluntarily, the men had to be carried off by force...
...Then Lt. John Donaldson [6], who served in the British 6th Airborne Division that sent a detachment to escort the deported immigrants, is quoted (Maariv, October 17, 2005) as saying that the escorting soldiers never returned to their units in Palestine. Apparently, the ordeal had such an emotional impact on them that a near mutiny erupted among them. The British army decided not to file any charges and closed the matter quietly, in order to prevent a political uproar in the UK.
The ship's ordeals were widely covered by international media, and caused the British government much public embarrassment, especially after the refugees were forced to disembark in Germany...
BTW, one may recall Columbia's Joseph Massad writing: "Exodus tells the story of the Zionist hijacking of a ship from Cyprus to Palestine by a Zionist Haganah commander."
Maybe the 60 year anniversary is a good time to review the history just a bit.
What about this piece of venal ignorance from Norman Finklestein:
"Finkelstein attacked Leon Uris, author of Exodus alleging that "the chief character was named Ari Ben Canaan because Ari is the diminutive for Aryan."
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=1715
It's of the same scale of stupidity as Massad's allegation that "Zion" is the Hebrew word for penis.
"Ari" is short for Arieh (Ar-yeh) meaning a lion in Hebrew. Its use as the name of Uris' character is supposed to stir our Biblical sentiments.
גור ×ריה יהודה Gur Arieh Yehuda, the lion's cub. It is part of the blessing that the patriarch Jacob bestowed upon his son Yehuda (Genesis 49).
Ah, well. Paul Newman's eyes were the bluest of blue in "Exodus"...