The Gaza flotilla and echoes of The Exodus
Linda Grant, in today’s Graun, on why the Gaza flotilla should have jogged the memories of Israel’s political leaders and military:
“Against the single image of a ship full of Holocaust survivors being beaten by squaddies, the British had to set a complex narrative, too complicated for a public looking for a simple story of victims and oppressors. The British spoke of the needs and wishes of the existing Arab population of Palestine; a new Jewish state implanted in the Middle East against the will of its native inhabitants was not to be the happy ending of a tragic Jewish story. Yet the Exodus was to be instrumental in cementing support later that year for the UN partition vote which divided Mandate Palestine, and the largely erroneous novel and film of the same name in the late 1950s would create a lasting mythology. The image of the boat had greater power than the warnings from the Foreign Office or the pleas of Arab leaders.”
(Picture: The New York Times) The “Exodus 1947,” a ship filled with Jewish Holocaust survivors who wanted to immigrate to Palestine, after it was seized by the British Navy in a deadly struggle at sea and brought to Haifa in July, 1947.
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