PALESTINE: Nekkamah

On Christmas Day there was peace, if not good will, among men of the Holy Land. Then, two nights after Christmas, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Tel Aviv felt the shudder of bombs.

In Jerusalem the target was the central police building. Amid a rat-tat-tat of diversionary Tommy-gun fire, terrorists hurled bombs through a window. A whole section of the building collapsed in the explosion. A similar, simultaneous assault was made on the Jaffa police station. In Tel Aviv one objective was the Royal Engineers’ Armory. Terrorists and troops (both sides wearing British uniforms and steel helmets) fought a swift, confused battle in the dark. In the three attacks at least ten were killed and 13 wounded. The two senior police officers of Palestine barely escaped with their lives.

British troops patrolled the streets in armored cars, carried out the biggest mass arrest (approx. 2,700) in Palestine’s troubled history. In the Bezalel section of Jerusalem every male under 60 was rounded up. The Eden Hotel, the city’s second largest, was emptied of its guests. Jails and compounds bulged with Jews, most of whom were later released.

The motive of last week’s eruption was not yet clear. But many Jews regarded it at nekkamah (revenge) against the recent British deportation of 55 young Jews to Eritrea. The official Jewish Agency told the new High Commissioner, Sir Alan Cunningham, that its “capacity to cooperate in combating these excesses” had been “reduced to futility by the Palestine policy pursued at present by the British Government.”

This view also had its protagonists in the U.S., which, with Britain, will next week begin an investigation into the Palestine problem. To the U.S. went a word of warning this week from Denis W. Brogan, who likes interpreting Britons and Americans to each other. Investigation, said Brogan, is not government, and basically the Palestine problem is a problem of government, a responsibility the U.S. does not share.