A cruise liner carrying about 300 Jewish passengers docked in the Israeli port of Haifa yesterday in a symbolic re-enactment of an attempt by European Jews to settle in British-run Palestine 60 years ago.
The story of the ship Exodus, which was intercepted by the Royal Navy in 1947, helped draw world attention to the efforts of Jews to flee Europe after the Nazi Holocaust and became an important episode in the founding of the state of Israel.
The British mandate government of Palestine prevented many Jewish migrants from settling in Palestine and turned them away, worried by Palestinian Arabs' hostility to the newcomers and by Jewish militants' attacks on British officials.
The passengers were mostly French but some came from Britain, Portugal, Italy, Hungary, the US and other countries. Some, including the captain, were on the original ship. "This re-enactment shows that the Zionist enterprise is not yet over," Haifa mayor Yona Yahav told them on arrival. "We have a lot of work to do and without you, we would not be able to do it."
The liner set sail from the Cypriot port of Larnaca on Wednesday.
"We decided to leave France for Israel, to make the trip to coincide with the anniversary of the Exodus mission," said Samuel Nasicimento, 38, who was moving to the Jewish state with his wife and two daughters.
"This is a trip in honour of our brothers back then, and now I am fulfilling the wish of my father," he said.
The original Exodus sailed from a port near Marseille in July 1947, carrying about 4500 Jews. It was stopped by British ships before reaching Palestine and towed to Haifa, where the migrants were forced on to ships that deported them back to Europe.
About 52,000 migrants were interned on Cyprus, which was then a British colony, between 1946 and 1948, when the state of Israel was founded.
The fact that some of the Exodus passengers were deported to Germany added to embarrassment over the episode for Britain, which was struggling to keep order between Palestinian Arabs and Jews seeking a state in the Middle East.
Exodus was made famous by a Leon Uris novel and a 1960 Hollywood film of the same name, starring Paul Newman.-Reuters/AP
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