I n 1948 just after David Ben-Gurion became the head of the new Israeli government he gave the order to shell the refugee ship Altalena docked just outside of Tel Aviv harbor. The ship he suspected contained arms for a rival faction in the new state plus about 1 000 Jewish volunteers for the rival forces.
The command to Jews to fire upon fellow Jews was extremely controversial then and now. Whenever we look at the giant bust of Ben-Gurion in Israel’s airport many of us are pained and offended. We demand that the airport be re-named and the bust removed. We also demand that the name of Yitzhak Rabin Square in Tel Aviv be changed because it was the young Rabin who carried out the order to fire on the ship and it was he who many years later approved the disastrous Oslo Accords.
And while we are at it we demand that the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument be taken down. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were slave owners which is very repugnant. And Grant’s Tomb in New York: Did he not among other things ban Jews from territories under his control? As for Lord Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square his politics were hardly in accord with 21st-century norms and his monument should also be removed — as should the memorial to Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris. And yes what about the pyramids? Are they not the ultimate monuments to slavery?
It has been going on for a long time now this removal of Confederate monuments throughout the American South. It all came to a head last month in Charlottesville Virginia where a violent confrontation took place at the statue of Civil War General Robert E. Lee. Amid the hysteria of the Civil War-monument controversies it is helpful to insert some civil discourse.
