The true story of the real "Exodus" ship--a moving eyewitness account of thousands of Holocaust survivors and the suffering they endured while clinging to their dream of entering the promised land.

The riveting chronicle of Jewish war survivors and their flight on the dramatic voyage of Exodus 1947, the international incident that gained sympathy for the formation of Israel The underground Jewish group Haganah arranged for the purchase of a small American steamer as part of an ambitious and daring mission: to serve as lifeboat for more than four thousand survivors of Nazi rule and transport them to Palestine. Renamed Exodus 1947, the ship and its young crew left France en route to the future state of Israel. The Holocaust survivors aboard Exodus endured even more hardships when the Royal Navy stopped the ship in international waters, used force in boarding (killing two passengers and one crewmember) and eventually deported its human cargo to internment camps in Germany. The death of the ship's captain in late 2009 generated headlines throughout the world. Enriched with new survivors' testimonies and previously unpublished documentation, Operation Exodus is the deeply moving saga of a people who risked all in search for a home.

A biography of a ship, with the focus on its final assignment, a desperate race to Palestine carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors fleeing Europe. it examines the people and organizations at work preceding the birth of Israel, including the haganah, which rescued the ship from the scrap heap for its most important voyage. this episode was but one example of a means of bringing people to the homeland, in keeping with zionist goals.

“Passionate summary of the inhuman treatment of the Jewish people in Europe, of the exodus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to Palestine, and of the triumphant founding of the new Israel.”—The New York Times Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon—the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies—the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorious, heartbreaking, triumphant era. Here is Exodus—one of the great bestselling novels of all time.

This book is the first full-length study of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. Based on recently declassified Israeli, British and American state and party political papers and on hitherto untapped private papers, it traces the stages of the 1947-9 exodus against the backdrop of the first Arab-Israeli war and analyses the varied causes of the flight. The Jewish and Arab decision-making involved, on national and local levels, military and political, is described and explained, as is the crystallisation of Israel's decision to bar a refugee repatriation. The subsequent fate of the abandoned Arab villages, lands and urban neighbourhoods is examined. The study looks at the international context of the war and the exodus, and describes the political battle over the refugees' fate, which effectively ended with the deadlock at Lausanne in summer 1949. Throughout the book attempts to describe what happened rather than what successive generations of Israeli and Arab propagandists have said happened, and to explain the motives of the protagonists.

“The first biography of Yossi Harel . . . offers valuable insights into the Jewish struggle to create a homeland.” —Booklist Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most inventive, brilliant novelists in the Western world,” internationally renowned Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk turns his hand to nonfiction to bring us his most important work yet. Commander of the Exodus animates the story of Yossi Harel, a modern-day Moses who defied the blockade of the British Mandate to deliver more than twenty-four thousand displaced Holocaust survivors to Palestine while the rest of the world closed its doors. Of the four expeditions commanded by Harel between 1946 and 1948, the voyage of the Exodus left the deepest impression on public consciousness, quickly becoming a beacon for Zionism and a symbol to all that neither guns, cannons, nor warships could stand in the way of the human need for a home. With grace and sensitivity, Kaniuk shows the human face of history. He pays homage to the young Israeli who was motivated not by politics or personal glory, but by the pleading eyes of the orphaned children languishing on the shores of Europe. Commander of the Exodus is both an unforgettable tribute to the heroism of the dispossessed and a rich evocation of the vision and daring of a man who took it upon himself to reverse the course of history. “[Yossi Harel’s] remarkable achievements have been engraved in history by the talent of Yoram Kaniuk.” —Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel

A new account of support for and opposition to Zionist aspirations in Palestine in the United States and Europe from 1945 to 1949.