Harel, Leader of Israel's New Exodus, Dies at 90

The commander of the Exodus, the ship that carried Jewish immigrants to Palestine a year before the state of Israel was established, has died. Yossi Harel passed away yesterday after suffering a heart attack. He was 90.

Twenty-five thousand Holocaust survivors packed onto four ships under Harel's command between late 1945 and early 1948. They sailed to Israel in an attempt to overcome British-imposed immigration limits on Jews. It was known as the 'Aliyah Bet' ('Aliyah B') movement - a phrase derived from the term 'Aliyah Aleph' ('Aliyah A'), which was given to the limited legal immigration permitted by Britain, which then ran Palestine.

The most famous of these ships was the Exodus, which was immortalized in the film of the same name directed by Otto Preminger and starring Robert Newman.

Harel's daughter, Sharon, described her father as one of a 'generation of giants' who rarely spoke about his career in the Israel Defence Forces and the secret service, Mossad.

As a young man Harel became involved with the pre-Israel independent Haganah forces, a role that would see him be placed in charge of the effort to smuggle Jewish immigrants past the British blockades. The Exodus set sail on 11 July 1947 from a small harbor near Marseille. There were 4,554 Holocaust survivors jammed on board, none of whom were able to get immigration permits.

The British fleet attacked the ship with gas bombs, forcing it to retreat and its passengers to return to the German camps from where they had come. Harel later said that every one of the people on board had an 'equivalent story'. One boy he described had dug tunnels from a Nazi-guarded ghetto to the city outside. His father wanted his sister to escape but she refused to leave her parents. The boy later told Harel: 'I never saw my father, my mother, my sister; they went to heaven through the chimneys of Auschwitz.'

In a biography of Harel, the novelist and journalist Yoram Kaniuk argues that his efforts led to the formation of Israel: 'The state of Israel was not born on 15 May 1948, when it was formally declared at the Tel Aviv Museum. It was born a year earlier, on 18 July 1947, when a battered American ship, the 'President Warfield,' renamed 'Exodus 1947,' limped into the port of Haifa,' he wrote. Others have likened it to the 'Boston Tea Party', which led to the American War of Independence.

Kaniuk paints a picture of Harel as a bold, adventurous and responsible man whose family had settled in Palestine in the 18th century. He joined the Haganah at the age of 14.

In 2007 Harel was awarded a prize, that was given the name of Exodus, by the Italian government for his efforts to promote peace and humanitarianism. The award is presented every year in La Spezia, Italy, where the ship was renovated for its mission.

In the last few years of his life, Harel spent time collecting Russian art and pursuing business ventures. He will be buried on a kibbutz tomorrow.