Apr 26, 2008, 23:34 GMT
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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