Avi Shilon on the Legacy of the Altalena

By the spring of 1948, three armed Jewish militias had been fighting and working towards the birth of modern Israel. There was the Haganah, under David Ben-Gurion, which would become the core of the new Israel Defense Forces. There was the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, and a smaller group, the Lehi. Begin agreed to dissolve the Irgun units operating in Israel into the new army, a decision he made in the name of national unity and cohesion even though tensions between the Irgun and the Haganah were deep, and Haganah operatives had previously informed on their counterparts in the Irgun to British officials. Even so, the Irgun had pledged to become a part of the IDF in the newly formed state of Israel.