Los Angeles gangster Mickey (the ”Boss”) Cohen has donated fifty thousand dollars toward the seventy-five thousand dollar purchase price of an American ship, renamed the Altalena.

All together, Cohen and other gangsters contribute one hundred and twenty thousand to the Irgun or to the Bergson Group, the Irgun's American lobbying organization, between 1939 and 1949.

During the Arab-Israel cease-fire of June 1948, Ben-Gurion's proclamation of a unified military structure is challenged by Begin's Irgun, which sails the Altalena, a ship carrying arms, into Tel Aviv harbor in June.

Ben-Gurion orders Haganah troops commanded by Rabin to fire on the ship, which is set aflame on the beach in Tel Aviv.

Eight-two people are killed in the action; Begin is one of the survivors.

Among the dead is Abraham Stavsky, a Revisionist who had been a suspect in the unsolved 1933 murder of Labor leader Chaim Arlosoroff.

With the two camps on the verge of civil war, Begin orders his troops not to fire on the Haganah.

The Irgun and Palmach—the regular fighting force of the Haganah— finally consent to the unified command, but relations between the Labor movement Ben-Gurion had established and its right-wing opposition, founded in Jabotinsky's Revisionist Party, will be poisoned for years.

The Altalena affair unifies the IDF but will remain a bitter memory for Begin and the Irgun.