Posted on 07/08/2008 5:32:58 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
In a fight lasting four hours British troops fought a band of 600 Arabs said to have just crossed the border from Trans-Jordan, east of Palestine and a part of Britain’s Palestine mandate but governed by a local Arab administration. Five Arabs wee reported killed and eight wounded. There were no British casualties.
The total casualties in two days of rioting and battling in Palestine were 33 killed and 111 wounded.
A number of Arabs were said to have succeeded in entering Palestine and to have joined their comrades in the hills fighting for “Arab independence.” The tribesmen were said to be massing south of “Tegart’s Wall,” the $500,000 electrified fence recently completed along the Syrian border, north of Palestine, to keep trouble-makers out of the country.
A spokesman at military headquarters said 8,500 British troops now were in the Holy Land. Police and other units brought the security forces to 10,000. Sailors and marines from the cruisers Repulse and Enterprise would augment Great Britain’s armed might by 1,700 men.
Pointing out that the rioting resulted in the death both of Jews and Arabs who were innocent of creating disorders, Jewish leaders warned that civil war was “imminent” should the Jews “give up self-restraint for the acts of revenge which dishonor the Jewish name and undermine progress toward a national home.”
Since the first of the year nearly 300 lives have been lost and hundreds have been wounded in bombings, ambushes and pitched battles.
The British cruisers Enterprise and Emerald have arrived at Haifa, which is now being strongly guarded. Despite this, Arabs early today stoned a Jewish-owned omnibus and a party of laborers near the Shell Bridge at Haifa, wounding seven.
A homemade bomb was thrown from a housetop into an Arab vegetable market on David Street, Jerusalem, near where two Jews were shot dead Tuesday. One Arab was killed by the explosion and five others were wounded, including a woman.
At Jaffa an Arab policeman was stabbed while trying to arrest an Arab, who was inciting others to disorder.
Two armed Arabs were killed when attacks upon two Jewish colonies were being repelled.
Three bombs were thrown into billets near the police station at Nablus.
Two Jews were wounded when an omnibus was attacked near Nazareth.
Corrected figures were issued today showing twenty-seven persons killed and 103 wounded at Haifa. The outrage there was the worst in more than two yeas of unrest. It comes as a grim comment on the report of the Royal Commission, published a year ago today.
The trouble at Haifa began at 6 o’clock last evening, when a bomb was thrown from a passing car into an Arab melon market near the central police station in Kingsway, a new boulevard along the waterfront. As there had been several well planned reprisals, it is considered highly probable that this also was an act of reprisal.
So powerful was the bomb that an Arab police inspector a hundred yards from the explosion was among the casualties.
Almost simultaneously a second bomb exploded within a few yards of the first, inflicting more casualties.
Panic ensued. Arabs pelted passing cars and omnibuses and there was shooting, some of which probably was done by Jewish drivers licensed to carry arms.
Police of the Central Station were almost immediately on the scene and opened controlled fire. Within half an hour order was restored, but the scene of the riot resembled a battlefield, strewn with dead and wounded. Curfew was immediately imposed and enforced by police and the military.
Reports that some Ghaffire [police] lost their heads and that ten of them are under investigation are authoritatively denied, as is a report that regular police arrived late at the scene. Most of the casualties were caused by explosions of bombs and by stone-throwing, although it is established that there was some shooting from housetops and from passing cars.
Dr. Waschitz, a leader of the Revisionists at Haifa, was arrested.
The twenty-one Arabs killed included twelve victims of bomb explosions, two slain by explosions and bullets and two by bullets. Two of the six Jews were killed by bullets and four in other ways. Of ninety-two Arabs wounded, fifty-two were taken to hospitals and the remainder were treated and sent home. Of eleven Jews wounded, five were hospitalized.
Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, former Mayor of Jerusalem; Moghannam Effendi and others among the few Arab leaders left in Jerusalem today visited High Commissioner Sir Harold MacMichael to protest vigorously against premeditated attacks by Jews on Arabs and to urge that the government take immediate measures to prevent the situation from growing worse and to show no discrimination in tracking down and punishing those guilty of outrages.
They also discussed the political situation and asserted that a change in policy would be the only remedy. They departed assured that the government had the situation under control and would be impartial.
In additions to Dr. Waschitz, an associated bookseller named Steimatsky and several of their followers in the Revisionist party have been arrested.
An automobile driven by an Arab was fired on this morning near Ramathgan on the coastal road between Tel Aviv and Haifa. One passenger, an Indian Moslem from Bombay, was killed, another Moslem from Muscat was dangerously wounded and a third passenger was slightly wounded.
The chief rabbinate and Jewish National Council have issued a manifesto calling on Jews for restraint, not to allow the situation to deteriorate into a civil war and to carry on the peaceful work of building up a Jewish State.
The Partition Commission sat in camera for three hours yesterday hearing evidence from the Bishop of Jerusalem and Archdeacon Stewart, who were the first Christians to testify.
Simultaneously two battalions of British troops were ordered to leave Egypt for Palestine at the earliest moment. [A battalion is normally 800 men.] Already there are two divisions of troops in Palestine and a third was promised by the end of the year, but preparations for its arrival in the shape of barracks are being accelerated on orders from London.
Although Captain A. W. S. Agar, in command of the Emerald, went ashore at Haifa, he has not yet notified London that he is landing marines.
Apart from packing the country with troops, the British are not expected to take further political action until the technical commission sent to Palestine to report on practical problems of partition under the Peel scheme has completed its work. Until now most of the outrages have been committed by Arab terrorists, but now Jews seem to be arming and some of their wilder youths to be organizing counter-terrorism.
Bids were opened June 18. There were two bids, one from the Eastern Air Lines, Inc., of New York, whose bid was “zero” cents a mile, and the Braniff Airways, Inc., of Oklahoma City, whose bid was .00001907378 cent.
The Braniff Airways contended that the government could not accept voluntary and gratuitous service. The Solicitor decided that the bid of eastern Air Lines was responsive to the advertisement and legally acceptable.
After dangling for several minutes from the sixth floor window of the Hotel Belmont Plaza, Lexington Avenue between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, while a male friend held her by the wrists, Miss Muriel Strohm, 24 years old, of 229 West Ninety-seventh Street, was saved early this morning from almost certain death by firemen who caught her in a life net after hearing cries for help.
The young woman, who said later that she had tried to jump out of the window and who was listed by the police as an attempted suicide case, escaped with a broken left leg and injuries to her left knee and left arm, suffered when she bumped into open windows on the fifth and fourth floors in plunging from the window sill to the roof of a tow-story hotel extension on which the firemen were standing with the life net. She told the authorities not to place any blame on her friend, Sidney Smith, who came here recently from Los Angeles to do some electrical work for the United States Navy.
The near-tragedy occurred about 12:20 A. M. just as Fireman William Stewart of Hook and Ladder 2 was about to go to bed in the dormitory of the firehouse at Lexington Avenue and Fiftieth Street, which cuts into the hotel. Hearing calls for help, Stewart looked out the dormitory window, saw Miss Strohm dangling from the hotel window-sill and notified Battalion Chief James McBride, who turned in a silent alarm that summoned two lieutenants and ten men.
With the life net Battalion Chief McBride, the lieutenants and the ten firemen hurried to the roof of the hotel extension. After the net had been spread McBride shouted to Smith to let go of the young woman’s wrists.
On the way to the City Hospital, Miss Strohm was quoted by the police as saying that when she tried to jump out of the window of Smith’s room, she got caught in some manner in the center-bar of the window and her friend grasped her wrists in time.
“Don’t hold him,” she said. “It’s all my fault. I tried to jump.”
She said she was formerly an employe of the hotel.
The young woman…escaped with a broken left leg and injuries to her left knee and left arm, suffered when she bumped into open windows on the fifth and fourth floors in plunging from the window sill to the roof…
Ouch.
After the net had been spread McBride shouted to Smith to let go of the young woman’s wrists.
I guess they could have just gone up and pulled her back inside the hotel room, but heck, how often do you get a chance to try out your life net?
It is no mistake. They spelled “employe” with one e at the end back then. And “postoffice” is one word.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
History you won’t see anywhere else. Thanks for posting this.
I don’t know about that. Did you catch their analysis of the situation in China that I posted yesterday? Pure fantasy. Ditto their coverage of the Spanish civil war from the same period.
Yes, their fawning coverage of the economic miracles in the Stalinist USSR (while meanwhile famine was sweeping the country) certainly enhanced their credibility.
As useful idiots.
Just Google the name Walter Duranty.
My point was made as a generality, with that Soviet coverage as a notorious exception. It was also an implicit comparison to today's Times, which fails to separate news from editorial opinion all too often.
BTW, the Times in the 1930s was generally considered a "Republican" newspaper editorially, albeit Eastern Establishment Republican. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be surprised if they ever endorsed FDR for president.
I will keep an eye peeled for their endorsements as we move toward the '38 mid-term elections.
Jordan IS the 'Pal-Arab nation' not Israel.
A number of Arabs were said to have succeeded in entering Palestine and to have joined their comrades in the hills fighting for “Arab independence.” The tribesmen were said to be massing south of “Tegart’s Wall,” the $500,000 electrified fence recently completed along the Syrian border, north of Palestine, to keep trouble-makers out of the country.
Apparently it is only when Jews/Israelis build a security fence the world is up in arms about it. Hypocrites, the lot of them!
The violence over Palestine hasn’t changed much, has it? I suspect that in 2038 the headlines will still be familiar.
That's right. Any nation confronted with daily terror attacks from mentally unstable Islamic serial killers would construct a national security barrier to prevent the same type of lunatics from murdering their citizens.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.