The Holy City
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Aboutor and join us. Zaki was placed in charge of Osborne
House while we prepared to leave for Cairo.
But before we left Jerusalem two outrages—one Jewish, the
other Arab—shocked the conscience of every decent Jew,
Christian, and Moslem. The first occurred at Deir Yassin a
small Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. For years the
Arabs there had lived at peace with the Jews. Then suddenly
the Arabs began to snipe and stage vicious attacks on isolated
Jewish settlements. After several warnings the Stern group
told the Arabs to evacuate their women and children because
it intended to retaliate in kind. The Arabs refused, counting
on the presence of women and children to prevent the Jews
from attacking. The Sternists, in turn, believing the families
had been evacuated, staged an all-out attack, determined to
silence those Arabs who had been massacring Jews for weeks.
When the Arabs put up stiff resistance, the Sternists called
in the Irgun, whereupon the Arab warriors fled. In the melee,
the innocent suffered: the women, the children, the aged. The
slaughter reached a toll of 150. Bodies were piled on street
corners. Others were thrown into wells. Despite the heat of
war, the massacre was as senseless as it was hideous. Every Jew
I met was horrified and ashamed. The fact that this was the
only instance of its kind in the history of Jewish-Arab relations, or that the Arab leaders of Deir Yassin had been
warned to evacuate their women and children, does not excuse
its vindictiveness.
The dark gods that guided the destinies of the Holy City
took quick revenge. On April 1 3 a convoy of nurses, doctors,
medical students and scholars set out for the Hebrew University and the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, above
Jerusalem. The British had been duly informed of the nonmilitary nature of the convoy, and the Jews had requested
their protection. But instead of the British, the Arabs came—
hundreds of veterans of Nebi Daniel and Mount Castel. First
they set up roadblocks, then they knocked out the first in the