Thanks for the heads up on the spelling. It is quite revealing that Makov's article you referenced duplicated the spelling error in the Bernstein piece.

And another thing...

Original post:

"On Nov. 25, 1940, a boat carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe, the "Patra," exploded and sank off the coast of Palestine killing 252 people.



"The Zionist "Haganah" claimed the passengers committed suicide to protest British refusal to let them land. Years later, it admitted that rather than let the passengers go to Mauritius it blew up the vessel."

"Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice the few in order to save the many."
--Moshe Sharett, a former Israeli Prime Minister



The new references you provided (typical example):

"The Haganah leaders decided to prevent the Patria from leaving port by sabotage. A mine was prepared at Haifa, concealed in a cloth bag and smuggled aboard the ship, where it was handed over to one of the Haganah liaison officers. On November 25, 1940, at about 9 a.m. the mine was detonated. The intention was to blast a small hole in the vessel's side so that that it would slowly take in water allowing time to evacuate all those on board. However, the mine blasted a large hole and water flooded into the hold. Within 15 minutes the ship began to list with only a small portion remaining above water. Some 250 people (200 of them Jews, and most of the remainder British soldiers) went down with the ship. This was the largest number of victims of any single operation conducted by an organization since the beginning of British rule in Palestine."

You don't exactly have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to see that these two interpretations of the incident vary considerably. This latter description of a major screwup is one hell of a lot different than the initial take which implies deliberately killing Jewish refugees.