Tel Aviv - Yossi Harel, who led a shipload of Jewish
refugees trying to reach Israel after World War II, died Saturday at
his home in Tel Aviv.
He was 90. Harel suffered a heart attack, his family told the
Israeli news website Ynet.
Harel commanded the ship Exodus, which was loaded with 4,500
Holocaust survivors bound for Israel, in a mission that was illegal
according to Britain, the colonial power still holding the UN mandate
in 1947 over Palestine, where Israel was founded a year later.
Enforcing a blockade to keep Jews from entering Palestine, a
British Navy vessel stopped Exodus off the Palestine coast. Three
people on board the converted cargo ship died and dozens were wounded
while resisting British forces, before the ship was forced to return
to Europe, docking at Hamburg, Germany.
The incident became and international cause celeb and embarassed
the British government
A 1958 novel based on the incident, Exodus by author Leon Uris,
fictionalized the story of the voyage. The novel was made into the
1960 film starring Paul Newman and directed by Otto Preminger.
From 1945-48, Harel led a refugee smuggling operation that brought
24,000 European Jews into what would become modern Israel. On an
earlier mission, he led the 1946 voyage by 4,000 refugees from
Yugoslavia to pre-state Israel on another ship, the Knesset Israel.
He was born to a six-generation Jerusalem family in 1919 and as a
teenager was already active in Zionist organizations.
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