This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Exodus is a historical novel by American novelist Leon Uris about the founding of the State of Israel beginning with a compressed retelling of the voyages of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus and describing the histories of the various main characters and the ties of their personal lives to the birth of the new Jewish state.

The first suggests Uris, motivated by an intense interest in Israel, financed his own research for the novel by selling the film rights in advance to MGM and writing articles about the Sinai campaign.

[5][6] Uris would say of his thinking: There is a whole school of American Jewish writers who spend their time damning their fathers, hating their mothers, wringing their hands and wondering why they were born.

Ari obtains a cargo ship, which became the SS Exodus, with the intention to smuggle 302 Jewish children out of the camp for an illegal voyage to Mandate Palestine before being discovered by military authorities.

When the British attempt to gain time by trying to negotiate, Ari announces that every day 10 children will commit suicide on deck for the world to see.

Jewish victory at Safed, incorrectly rumored to be through use of an atom bomb, frightens the Palestinian fighters, who flee to Lebanon.

"[17] Among the characters are "freedom fighters" Ari and Barak Ben Canaan and Dov Landau, whose stories are told in flashbacks.

American nurse Kitty Fremont and German refugee Karen Hansen work alongside them to help defeat the British blockade of Palestine.

According to William Darby, "The leading characters in Exodus only find romantic happiness when they understand that they must conjoin nationalistic, religious and personal aims.

His father, Barak Ben Canaan (formerly Jossi Rabinsky, born in the Russian Pale of Settlement), heads the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

During World War II, he served as an officer in the Jewish Brigade of the British army, and he uses this experience to benefit his activities.

[citation needed] His character most likely was based on Yossi Harel, the commander of the Exodus 1947 operation and a leading member of the Israeli intelligence community.

Grieving for her lost husband and the recent death of her daughter from polio, Kitty develops a maternal attachment toward Karen Hansen Clement, a German refugee in a Cyprus displaced persons (DP) camp.

She eventually becomes irritated at Ari's lack of emotion towards violent deaths, but comes to understand and accept his dedication to Israel.

Internally, he is torn between his sympathies with the Jews he is required to guard and his duties as a British officer; the horrors he witnessed when his battalion liberated Bergen-Belsen is also a factor.

Karen Hansen Clement, described as tall, with long brown hair and green eyes, is a German teenager who was brought up for a while by foster parents in Denmark.

Karen does meet her father again in Israel, but he is a broken man who is unable to communicate or recognize his daughter; the experience leaves her unnerved and shattered.

Dov Landau, described as being blond, blue-eyed, small, and young-looking for his age, is an angry teenager who lost his entire family to the Holocaust; he has not merely survived the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and of Auschwitz, but has learned from them to turn circumstances to his advantage.

After the camp is liberated, he ends up in Cyprus and eventually Israel as part of the escape organized by Ari Ben Canaan.

Jordana is typical of the young native-born girls and, initially hostile toward Kitty—believing that American women are no good for anything other than dressing up prettily—changes her opinion when Kitty saves Ari's life and later becomes more identified with Israel's struggle.

While Akiva's organization bears some resemblance to the real-life Irgun (Etze"l),[citation needed] the character himself may be inspired by Avraham Stern of Lehi.

[citation needed] Near the end of the book, he is shot by the British during the Acre prison break; his brother Barak is later buried next to him.

In 1947 the British seized the ship as it was about to cross into the territorial waters of Palestine and deported all its passengers - Jewish refugees trying to immigrate illegally, many of them Holocaust survivors - back to Europe.

[25] Others credited the book for being an "antidote to the public silence of American Jews" after Israel became a state ten years earlier.

[19] She recalls having to make 300 copies on a mimeograph machine, and by the time tens of thousands had been distributed, the samizdat version of Exodus became a source of inspiration.

"The enormous significance of Exodus to the growth and stimulation of the Jewish movement," writes historian Leonard Schroeter, "can hardly be overstated.

"[19] Historian Aviva Halamish notes that the book describes the emigration of Jews to Palestine with a "heartrending story of genuine, unassuming heroism.

"[25] Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times said the story "cast an emotive, bombastic spell" on readers,[29] while journalist Quentin Reynolds said Exodus was exciting both "as a novel and as a historical document.

[31] Eric Homberger of The Guardian, describing Uris as a "master storyteller" and "educator of the American public in the Zionist interpretation of modern Jewish history," noted some literary license with historical facts and some stereotypical characters.

[35] In addition, Rashid Khalidi has stated that the book has served "to confirm and deepen preexisting prejudices" about Palestinians and Arabs in general.