256
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
moved on, hugging walls when I could, and racing across open
spaces. I passed a movie house—the Orion Cinema. The last
film it had shown was Something to Sing About, with James
Cagney. The poster was still up in English and Hebrew. Retracing my steps to the Pantiles, I peeked through a slit in the
concrete wall built along the street as partial protection from
snipers and bombs. Jerusalem looked placid from this height,
but bloody hand-to-hand fighting was in progress in the streets
below, while from the hills beyond them twenty-five-pound
bombs were being lobbed into the New City.
A mortar shell had landed in front of Terra Sancta College,
maintained by Franciscan monks not far from the Pantiles,
and had ripped up the sidewalk. I paused to inspect it and
photograph a small British flag thrown into the shell crater.
Trampled Union Jacks were strewn over the streets and tangled in the coils of rusted barbed wire—flags that but a few
hours ago were symbols of the law of the land.
MEDINAT YISRAEL
SINCE the Mandate ended officially at midnight, May 14,
tomorrow, the 15th of May, was the proper day to proclaim
the birth of Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel. But the 15th
was Saturday—Shabbat—and the rabbis would allow no transaction of official business, historic though it was and awaited
for nineteen centuries. So, at four o'clock in the afternoon,
before Shabbat began at sundown, David Ben-Gurion, till
then chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive Committee,
now prime-minister-to-be, made a simple and moving announcement from the Museum Hall in Tel Aviv:
. . . Pursuant to the decision of the U.N., and based on our
historic and national rights, we hereby declare the establishment of the Jewish State. . . . The State of Israel will open
its gates to immigration of Jews from all lands. It will strive