Words from the Exodus and the Iran War

Old Haifa Coastal Cemetery
Restored Grave site of Bill Bernstein
Exodus -47

Tel Aviv, June 15, 2025

Israel Defense Spokesperson:  “Goal in Iran op is not regime change but removing their capabilities to annihilate us.”

~~~~~

Marseille, France, April 21, 1947

Bill Bernstein, the American, Los Angeles-born, second officer of the dilapidated Chesapeake Bay Steamer, the President Warfield, wrote to his family.

Three months later, on its way to British Mandate Palestine, the President Warfield was renamed the Exodus.  The Exodus was ferrying ~4,500 desperate, stateless survivors of Hitler’s Final Solution, the annihilation of world Jewry.  The Exodus’ bow pointed towards British Mandate Palestine.  A British Battle Flotilla shadowed the Exodus.  The British considered the survivors of the Shoah illegals.

On July 18, 1947, the British attacked the Exodus in international waters.  Bill Berstein was killed defending the wheelhouse.

~~~~~~

In 2016, the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation restored Bernstein’s severely deteriorated grave site, located in the Old Haifa Coastal Cemetery.

“Dear Moe:

Today is our last day in Marseille….we sail tomorrow for Italy. From what I understand, we’ll pull into some small port in Northern Italy and remain there for about five weeks while berthing facilities are put up. We’ve already loaded the lumber and other materials here in Marseille. Incidentally, the Italian government doesn’t permit these “goings on” ever since the British Council was blown up in Rome about 6 months ago.

As a consequence, we have to go into port as a “black” ship – – i.e. unregistered, uncleared and unentered. We do it by paying off the local small-time petty customs officials and politicians. The money for all this graft comes from the black market sales of the stripping of the ship. In other words, we strip the ship of everything that isn’t absolutely essential for the functioning of the ship and sell it.

Our people have only one burning desire – – – the second deliverance to Eritz Israel. The first migration was supposedly the handiwork of God; the second one, we fight for!!

Three days ago, the Jews here in Marseille and aboard our ship, celebrated the fourth anniversary of the resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto. Everyone of the 60,000 Jews were massacred there, defending a street with small arms against the Germany Army. We held it for five days…..only five days of resistance in 4000 years of persecution! Something we should be ashamed of. However, the time isn’t far off when we’ll redeem our honor.

Perhaps you and I won’t be around when it happens but I can see it taking shape. The base of the pyramid is slow being built but the pinnacle comes quickly.

I was at the refugee camp on the outskirts of Marseille yesterday. I saw practically all young men and women…They all speak Jewish; some speak Hebrew and all will eventually be in Eritz raising “sabras” on good communal farms stolen from the desert. A good many of these kids have numbers tattooed on their arms as proof of the life they lived for four years.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to mail any letters in my next port so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. I’m feeling fine — say hello to everyone.

Regards,

Bill”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, Iran’s funded, armed, and religiously inspired surrogate, burst from Gaza into Israel. They killed without mercy, they raped, they kidnapped.  It was the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

October 7 was not a simple wake-up call.  It was a violent shaking of Israeli and Jewish memory, from their willful somnambulism to historical reality.  Hamas’ (Iran’s) repeated stated goal, to annihilate the “Little Satan”, had begun.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khameneh’s, ultimate vision is the annihilation of the “Big Satan”,  America. The Iranians lacked one remaining step: Nuclear Weapons.

For decades, Israel has been warning about the Iranian State and the mullahs’ efforts to build nuclear weapons.  Netanyahu repeatedly spoke before the U.N. and Joint sessions of Congress, only to be denigrated and dismissed by blind politics and antisemitism.

~Eighty years earlier, the world was warned about Hitler. The warnings were callously dismissed.  Jews were the canaries in the coal mine of Europe.  No one carried.  Jewish interests were not Europe’s coal mines. Jews were not their canaries.

Instead, the world put their faith in Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and his 1938 Munich Peace Agreement with Hitler. Chamberlain proclaimed “Peace in Our Time” when his plane touched back down in Britain.  To Hitler, it was a meaningless but convenient piece of paper.

One year later, World War II began, and ~ 70-85,000,000 people died.  Six million of them were Jews, systematically exterminated.

On July 24, 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu again addressed a Joint Session of Congress.  He clearly characterized the struggle Israel was engaged in as a clash between Civilization and Barbarism. Traditionally, the Vice-President attends. Vice President Kamala Harris, refused to be present.

~~~~~~

Bill’s words have again taken on renewed significance 78 years on.

“Our people have only one burning desire – – – the second deliverance to Eritz Israel. The first migration was supposedly the handiwork of God; the second one, we fight for!!”

~~~~~~~

June 13, 2025, after acquiescing to President Trump’s required sixty days to negotiate a non-nuclear option with Iran expired unsuccessfully, Israel was left with no choice.

Iran was within weeks, possibly even days, of possessing up to nine nuclear bombs. Israel preemptively attacked. Iran had missiles capable of raining nuclear death on Israel, Europe, and anywhere it wanted.

Death to “Israel,” death to “America,” Iranians chanted.

Israel listened. Israel believed them.

Little Israel is paying in blood the price for it and for the world to live.