222
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
The Palestine Post ran a daily column listing casualties. By
May 1, 1948, 5,014 had died (189 English, 1,236 Jews, 3,569
Arabs) and 6,632 had been wounded.
I strolled over to the Public Information Office and wandered into the small canteen operated there for the correspondents. Jewish and Arab newspapermen still mixed:
coolly, suspiciously. The Jewish boys came mainly to get a
good meal. Ahmed, the Arab counterman, served eggs, milk,
beer, potatoes, and coffee, and had cigarettes for sale—all rare
in the New City. When Jews tried to buy food to take home,
Ahmed would say: "If I sold it to you the Arabs would cut
my body into small pieces." I met an Arab here, named Nassib
Boulos, working for the British as a propagandist, and at the
same time serving as a string correspondent for Life magazine.
Boulos always hovered around the American newsmen, trying
to get a line on each one. He came over to my table.
"I hear you're a Zionist."
"I don't know what Zionism is. I haven't seen enough of
the Jews."
I had a premonition that Boulos would cross my path later
on, and make trouble. In the days that followed, a series of
nasty anti-Jewish booklets and leaflets began to circulate
among correspondents, anonymously signed "AMO"—the
Arab Military Organization, an adjunct of the Mufti's Arab
Higher Committee. Addressed to "British Soldiers! British
Policemen! British Civilians!" they sought to incite non-Arabs
against the Jews. One of the leaflets was in doggerel:
Put a bomb in the [Jewish] Agency Buildings
Wipe the Synagogues all off the earth,
And make every damned son of ZION
Regret the day of his birth.
From the lampposts hang all the RABBIS
But hang HERTZOG1 highest of all
And when you have hung all the Jew-boys
1
Israel.
Dr. Isaac Halevy Herzog, then Chief Rabbi of Palestine, later Rabbi of