Palestine 1930-1948 - Documentary (198X?)

Speaker 1: The British took a Western view of Palestine. To them, it was the Holy Land. It was seen in much the same way as by this early silent film made by Edison for an American audience.

Speaker 2: You felt you were very much part of the original Palestine, that you might find Rebecca at the well or the woman of Samaria coming out from Sychar. It was very biblical and very beautiful. You had that feeling that the Holy Land was still holy. Certainly, most British were very devoted to Palestine— interesting people, interesting problems, if Some insoluble. And one felt a certain dedication to its historical, religious associations and that sort of thing. There I was in one of the most primitive parts, more or less God Almighty.

Speaker 3: And it went to my head. It was the white man's burden.

Speaker 2: I think perhaps one rather underestimated the ability of the people to govern themselves in those days, but that was probably characteristic of the Empire as a whole. But one definitely had, I think, a sense of mission, and that's why one went into it rather than into some other walk of life.

Speaker 4: The British imperial duty was good government, sound justice, economic development.

Speaker 1: The country prepared for Western democracy. The Jews saw Palestine differently.

Speaker 5: It was a desert land, devastated by hundreds of years of neglect. The herds of goats and sheep destroyed all the growth. All the trees were fuel for the roving Bedouins. Very little cultivation. Swamps, endemic diseases, malaria, Many, many others. Very small townlets, little small harbours, jetties for the export mostly of melons and this kind of things.

Speaker 1: To the Jews, Palestine was a land to be redeemed, a land promised them by God. In exile for 2,000 years, it remained their religious home. Persecution, particularly in Eastern Europe, had hardened their resolve to return to the one place where they felt they could live freely as Jews. 100,000 came to Palestine in the 1920s. Financed by Jews throughout the world, they systematically bought land and founded settlements. Jews would be farmers again, but the land was to be redeemed by Jewish hands alone.

Speaker 4: Arab labour was excluded.

Speaker 1: The Arabs' vision of Palestine was different again.

Speaker 6: Idyllic, I would have thought. From the social point of view, it was a well-integrated society. We had no social problem. Economically, we weren't very developed, if you want, but the Jaffa orange was marketed and well known.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Speaker 6: Before Jewish immigration began, the Hebron grapes have been known for centuries. The olives of the mountainous region in Palestine have always been there. And as I say, it was a simple life, not very complicated, but it was a good life.

Speaker 1: Nearly all the Arabs were settled in towns or villages. Most were farmers. They saw Jewish immigration as a threat to the land they had farmed for centuries. From the start, they had objected.

Speaker 5: Kill them!

Speaker 1: Violence had broken out in 1929. The flashpoint: religion. Arabs attacked and killed 133 Jews. It was the end of any real hope for a peaceful solution. The Arabs rebelled in the '30s, the Jews in the '40s. 1933 was an ominous year.

Speaker 4: October, Jaffa.

Speaker 1: An Arab demonstration against Jewish immigration was confronted by armed British police and degenerated into a riot.

Speaker 3: Jaffa!

Speaker 1: Tel Aviv, the same month. The Jews demonstrated for exactly the opposite reason, demanding more Jewish immigration. Both demonstrations were directed at the British.

Speaker 7: Unser Führer, der Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler!

Speaker 1: Berlin, February 1933. Hitler had come to power. The Jews of Eastern Europe had always been persecuted. The German Jews had not. But under Hitler, antisemitism was to become institutionalized, Their businesses were boycotted. They were banned from holding important jobs, blamed for Germany's economic ills. Jews were no longer free in Germany, or safe.

Speaker 2: The Jews were attacked personally, physically.

Speaker 8: In the press, there were articles and so on against the Jews.

Speaker 2: There were always feelings against Jews, and I think if living for 40 years in Germany, Freedom and peace, you must go to Palestine. Everywhere where we have been, we have been refugees and people who weren't wanted.

Speaker 1: And here, it's the first time that somebody said, welcome and home, to me.

Speaker 5: I didn't think about anything else than coming to Israel and settle here. And participate in building my own country, which was promised to us by God and by the English people.

Speaker 1: Jewish immigration into Palestine soared from 4,000 in 1931, 9,000 in 1932, to 30,000 in 1933. Most of them still came from Eastern Europe, especially Poland, but now they were joined by Jews from Germany. Small in numbers, but great in impact. They were professional, skilled people with the cultural interests of Western Europe. Priority was given to those with £1,000 or more. Capital and skill combined to produce an economic boom in Palestine. In all, the German Jewish immigrants brought in £63 million.

Speaker 5: Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Speaker 1: Industrial firms grew from 6,000 to 14,000 in 7 years. The workforce trebled in the same period. The population of Tel Aviv, the city the Jews had created on the coast near Jaffa, trebled in 4 years, as did the Jewish population of Haifa. In a few short years, Palestine was industrialised.

Speaker 5: Now, with the start of the immigration from Germany, there came the major modernization of commerce and industry. They brought more the notions of Western Europe as against the former notions of Eastern Europe. Also in the arts, tremendous upswing by the great talent which came over now from Western Europe in quantity and in quality, which of course gave a new fillip to the University of Jerusalem, The stone was laid already in 1925, and Israel put itself on the map. But in our mind, it was, it was already the State of Israel under the cloak of the British mandate, the British regime.

Speaker 2: The British are the enemy.

Speaker 1: Tel Aviv, 1935. A sophisticated Western town. But for the weather, it might have been on the south coast of Britain.

Speaker 7: I'm a Muslim.

Speaker 1: There was, of course, an Arab economy in Palestine too. With the exception of the Lebanon, it compared favourably to those of other Arab countries. The Arabs felt the effects of the boom. British development of the railways, ports, and the building industry created new jobs. To Arabs in neighbouring countries, Palestine looked attractive. Several hundred Arab immigrants entered each year. Mostly taking casual and seasonal work, some of them across the Allenby Bridge from Jordan. Others entered illegally. As the boom subsided, there was unemployment. The Arabs viewed Jewish development with growing hostility. In particular, they were concerned by Jewish land purchase. Jews now owned 5% of Palestine. The Arabs did not have money, experience, Or technology, and they could not match Jewish investment, organisation, and development in those years.

Speaker 9: Economically, the 2 communities were distinct. Zionist economic activity was governed by certain principles, which were enshrined in the constitutions of their central financial organisations, like the Karen Kayemet and Karen HaYisod. And one of these principles was the boycott of Arab labor. The other principle was that land acquired or purchased from the Arabs was inalienable and could not be repurchased by the Arab. The Zionists were not an Arab philanthropic organization. They did not go to Palestine They went there to benefit themselves at the expense of the Arab. If any benefits accrued to the Arabs, they were entirely incidental and certainly unintentional.

Speaker 1: Germany, 1935. The Nuremberg Laws. Jews were declared to be racially inferior to Aryan Germans, banned from marrying or having sexual relations with Germans, disqualified from citizenship of the Reich, Palestine, 1935. In that year, 62,000 immigrants came to Palestine. The annual rate of Jewish immigration had increased sixfold in 3 years. The Arabs grew restless. At this rate of immigration, there would be a Jewish majority in Palestine within 10 years. Under the Mandate, Sir Arthur Walcott, the High Commissioner, was obliged to move towards self-government. With the Arabs in a majority, any legislative assembly would block Jewish immigration and the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. That too was a British obligation under the Mandate. 2 of its central features were irreconcilable. There were, however, municipal elections, this one in Tel Aviv. In 1935, Walcott proposed an assembly with 12 elected seats. 8 Muslim, 3 Jewish, and 1 Christian. The balance was to be held by members appointed by the British. The Arabs were prepared to consider it. As they considered, the House of Commons rejected the proposals. Without a majority in Palestine, the Jews opposed it.

Speaker 8: There was a problem of principle involved. The Mandate had been given to the Jewish people and not to the Jews who were living in Palestine at that time. The argument, therefore, was that the Jewish Agency, representing the Jewish people all over the world, could not possibly agree to having— to being represented in a legislature in Palestine where only the Jews of Palestine would be represented. So the normal establishment of representative institutions were militating against the whole concept of a Jewish national movement.

Speaker 9: The opposition in the British House of Commons to a legislative proposal that gave 70% of the population less than 50% of the seats. The House of Commons was opposed to this on the grounds that it gave too much to the Arabs. Now, that was the unmistakable signal of the lack of will on the part of London to be— to do justice, to play fair.

Speaker 1: April 1936. The Arabs felt they had to act now. Palestine was immobilized by an Arab general strike. The constitutional scheme was forgotten. The strike lasted 6 months. The violence began. The railway lines and the oil pipeline were the favourite targets. Arab bands formed in the hills and attacked government property, army, and police. Convoys were ambushed. Individual Jews, as well as their shops and factories, were victims of bomb and sniper attacks. In Jerusalem, the British evacuated the Jews from the Old City. The inevitable, the 4th but extremely able Royal Commission, was chaired by Lord Peel.

Speaker 7: I am well aware that we have to deal with difficult and delicate problems.

Speaker 1: Lord Peel was not given to exaggeration. The commission left London to begin hearings in Jerusalem in November 1936. The commission was deeply attentive as it took evidence.

Speaker 2: Our right is as old as the Jewish people.

Speaker 6: It was only the—

Speaker 2: —into Palestine as long as Palestine can absorb.

Speaker 10: —independence and a categorical refusal of the Zionist policy.

Speaker 2: My answers are immigration, land, labor, and the question of self-government. Then the abandonment of the experiment of the Jewish national home, which originally— Our goal is to make the Jewish people master of its own destiny.

Speaker 1: Peel's analysis was radical.

Speaker 11: The situation in Palestine has reached deadlock. We cannot, in Palestine as it is now, both concede the Arab claim to self-government and secure the establishment of the Jewish national home. It is fundamentally a conflict of right with right.

Speaker 2: I think if you read the terms of reference, you will see that the expectation still was that the mandate would be continued, but that the commission would recommend reforms within the mandate which would remove the grievances and make for better administration. So in Questioning the Mandate itself and saying that it was no longer workable, the Commission were indeed a radical body.

Speaker 1: They had come to the conclusion that there was no land available for Jewish settlement except near Jerusalem. They felt obliged to urge the prohibition of land sales to Jews in certain areas, and that immigration should be restricted to 12,000 a year and then reviewed after 5 years. These, they said, were at best palliatives and held out no hope that they would cure the trouble. Their alternative was revolutionary.

Speaker 11: Partition seems to offer at least a chance of ultimate peace. We can see none in any other plan.

Speaker 2: There was no hope of peace in the country as long as these 2 national communities were held apart and didn't have their own right of self-government. And the only way the Commission could see of giving this right to self-government was to give each a state in a part of Palestine.

Speaker 1: Palestine, a country the size of Wales, was to be partitioned. The Jewish state was centred on the areas where they had bought land. It contained 250,000 Jews and almost as many Arabs. This was the proposed Arab state. In it, there were over 500,000 Arabs, and 1,250 Jews. Jerusalem and a corridor to the sea was to remain British. Another commission appointed the following year to finalise partition could find no single satisfactory plan. The British awaited reaction.

Speaker 8: There was a very large minority who opposed this completely because they said into this small area of Palestine you couldn't possibly absorb the Jewish immigrants who would want to come. On the other hand, the whole of Palestine was our patrimony. You— this was our right. You couldn't just give it away by agreeing to partitioning of Palestine. The majority tended to say, look, we are in an awful situation. This is 1937. Jews are being persecuted, driven out. Then we need someplace. Let's accept the British proposal, not as it stands. Yes, but with certain additions.

Speaker 9: They were horrified because from their point of view, partition was vivisection. They were horrified at the idea that an alien state would be established on their soil. They were horrified at the concept of Jewish sovereignty on Arab soil against Arab wishes at the point of the gun. They were horrified at the extent of the territory granted to the Jewish community by Peel. The Jewish population in Palestine at this time owned about 5% of the territory of the country, but Peel gave the Jewish state about 45% of the territory. They were horrified at the Peel recommendation that in the last analysis, the Arabs who fell into the Jewish state would be transferred forcibly from their lands.

Speaker 1: Autumn 1937. The Arab rebellion re-erupted. The British arrested and deported the Arab leadership, but the rebellion continued. Rebel arms were brought out of hiding. A band of 200 rebels came in from Syria. Railway stations were destroyed. Arab bands controlled most of the roads and many of the towns. There were 176 attacks on Jews. Their crops and orchards were attacked. Jewish Defence, in Hebrew, Haganah, tolerated but not acknowledged by the British, organised self-defence to protect Jewish property and settlements.

Speaker 5: They were fortified, they were trained, they had projectors, they had barbed wire entanglements, positions, concrete, and so on. And the Arab people didn't dare to penetrate. In the first 6 months of the rebellion, during the strike, the general strike, there was only one case in the kibbutz in Tel Yosef where they penetrated. And—

Speaker 3: What happened?

Speaker 5: They were repelled even then, and not a single casualty. Single casualty.

Speaker 1: They established new settlements on undeveloped land by erecting towers and stockades in a single day. In 1938, they put up 37. The British armed and trained 20,000 Jews as the Jewish Settlement Police to protect the Jewish settlements. Their best-known British adviser was Orde Wingate. He trained special night squads designed to preempt Arab attacks. British reinforcements were needed urgently. Because of the situation in Europe, they were not available until autumn 1938. By then, 20,000 British troops were in Palestine.

Speaker 2: We got to this stage when the whole fabric of government seemed to be collapsing, and whilst the army might restore order, they could never, never restore peace. Possibility of telling them that Jewish immigration would cease, or that the purchase of land would stop. So we had nothing really constructive to put forward. We were trying to deal with violence without being able to deal with the causes of it.

Speaker 1: British troops tackled the Arabs with a will. Once reinforcements arrived, they quickly regained the initiative. The efforts of an exiled Arab leadership to direct the rebellion from Damascus The British were too determined. As the rebellion collapsed, Arab rivalries emerged. The British exploited the divisions. Informants enabled the RAF to bomb a meeting of rebel leaders in September. By May 1939, the rebellion was over.

Speaker 9: This was a reconquest of Palestine by the British. In the process, they smashed the Arab unity movement. The Palestinian political organization—they dispersed, exiled, or imprisoned the top leadership of the Palestinians. They broke the backbone of the military organization. They initiated a systematic and thorough policy. of disarmament, of the disarming of the Palestinian population, which extended well, well beyond the end of the rebellion, so that they were suspended in a kind of political limbo for the next decades after the end of the rebellion.

Speaker 1: The Arab Rebellion made the British question the Mandate and the Jews defend the national home. What the Arabs had failed to wrest What they had not got from the British by force, they were now to get for other reasons. Berlin, 1939. Hitler returns after his annexation of Czechoslovakia, belligerent and expansionist. Appeasement had failed. Europe moved towards war. The British began to consider Palestine in the light of war. Britain's routes to the Empire must be assured, Britain's interests in the Middle East maintained, the Arab states placated. British policy in Palestine was to be determined by considerations outside Palestine.

Speaker 12: I think that our policy was perhaps a little bit cynical. It had a touch of cynicism. We knew that if it came to war, the Jews would be on our side, whatever happened. They had no choice. The great question was, would the Arabs be on our side? They had been our allies before. They were still our allies. But if we supported a situation in the Middle East Palestine, for the building up of the Jewish national home, beyond a certain point, then the Arabs would be pushed into the war against us.

Speaker 1: The Mufti, the religious and political leader of the Palestinian Arabs, seen here in Jerusalem, was now in exile, as were many of the rebellion's leaders. The Arabs of Palestine were to remain without effective leadership. The Mufti looked to the Axis powers for support. During the war, he was to court Hitler, a policy that finally was to discredit him. With war approaching, British troops in Palestine would be needed elsewhere.

Speaker 12: We had 20,000 of our troops in Palestine keeping the rebellion suppressed, and if it came to war, we would have to withdraw them. So we wanted peace, no Arab rebellion in Palestine. A second reason was that our communications with India and with the Far East in war depended on our air force being able to fly through the Near East and the Middle East and so on. And the whole of the Middle East was going to be a matter of— an area of strategic importance in the war, and we wanted the Arabs on our So in February 1939, MacDonald called a conference in London. Part of the purpose of the conference was to sound out and see whether we might get them to agree. But I had already determined, and the Cabinet had agreed, that if, as we expected, the conference failed, then the policy which we had already more or less decided upon, Before the conference opened, should be put into operation firmly.

Speaker 1: As expected, the conference failed. The British unveiled a policy to appease the Arabs in a White Paper in May 1939. Jewish immigration was to be severely restricted, and after 5 years be dependent on Arab consent. Land sales to Jews to be severely curtailed.

Speaker 11: It concluded: His Majesty's Government now declare unequivocally That it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish state.

Speaker 1: Ben-Gurion and Weizmann returned to Palestine with little choice. They would fight the war as if there were no White Paper, and the White Paper as if there were no war.

Speaker 5: Of course, of course, emotionally, you should have answered with a rebellion. On the Arab scale, open warfare against Britain. And there was a very strong minority who advocated this line of policy. Fortunately enough, under the leadership of Labour and the progressive Liberals, and a tiny, tiny portion also of the religious group, we rejected that idea. And we accepted the muzzling of our emotions, suppression of our emotions, and the answer in act which should put the British in the wrong.

Speaker 8: And now you had a situation where Jews in their own national homeland were supposed to be able to buy land in only 5% of the area. So Ben-Gurion then said, well, look, this is outside of Nazi Germany, and Perhaps Tsarist Russia. There is no other place where Jews are not— as Jews are forbidden to buy land.

Speaker 5: We couldn't accept it, and we didn't. So one of the first acts against this, 5 days after the publication of the white paper, on the 22nd of May, we decided that in a few days we erected 5 settlements in one night.

Speaker 1: This policy of erecting settlements in a day Had been developed during the Arab Rebellion. The settlement was carried out by— carried out by lorry in sections and then assembled. A wooden stockade fortified with stones surrounded the site. This film, taken in 1939, shows the process underway in daylight. From then onwards, it was usually done at night while the British slept. What was a bare patch at nightfall was a settlement by dawn.

Speaker 4: I'm a refugee from Somalia.

Speaker 1: Its centerpiece, a wooden watchtower. But they had another purpose. Settlements were strategically placed to mark out the hoped-for borders of an eventual Jewish state.

Speaker 9: It was realized very clearly that we are heading towards a struggle, a bitter life-or-death struggle, and we realized that the Jewish state will not be born but through blood, and that its borders will be determined by facts, not by papers or any contracts. We understood not only intuitively but every measure of analysis that we should try to define the future boundaries of the state by starting regions, new regions, Which we would like to see within the boundaries of the future state.

Speaker 1: This was one strategy against the British restrictions on the development of the national home. Another concern was immigration. For the Jews of Europe, there was little alternative but Palestine. At an international conference on refugees in 1938, no country except the Dominican Republic was prepared to increase its immigration quotas to help European Jewry. This newsreel about immigration of Jews to Australia reflects the prevailing hostility.

Speaker 7: 63 on this ship, and others have come or are coming. Political problems in Europe caused the influx, but the influx creates new problems for Australia. Will alien immigrants displace Australians or lower the standard of living? Will they form blocks of foreign race, as has already occurred here? We need population, but to what extent should it include non-British stock? These questions are being asked and must be faced. As far as the present immigrants are concerned, they declare they wish to become good Australians, and in that spirit and with sympathy for their past misfortunes, Australia welcomes them.

Speaker 5: And so Palestine was Eretz Israel. Our Eretz Israel was almost the only open possibility to emigrate, to escape, to escape. For— to save our life.

Speaker 2: While the Germans wanted the Jews to get out, there was nobody who wanted the Jews to come in, except we, the Jews in Palestine. And we, the Jews in Palestine, were prevented by your government of that time from saving our own brothers and sisters.

Speaker 1: With disinterest amounting to hostility in most of the world, and antisemitism With the Nazis becoming rampant in Central Europe, free immigration to Palestine became urgent. A few came under the British quota, these by rail in cattle trucks from the Balkans in 1944. Elsewhere, shiploads of refugees hopelessly sought refuge somewhere. 2nd of June, 1939. Antwerp, 17th of June. Palestine, 22nd of August, 1939. 1st of September, 25th of November, 1940. The British ship Patria. On it, illegal immigrants from Europe awaiting deportation to Mauritius. Haganah planned to cripple the ship to keep them in Palestine. Their plan misfired. Their bomb blew a large hole in her side. The Patria sank. 250 immigrants drowned.

Speaker 4: 1940. War in Europe.

Speaker 1: Precautions in Palestine. In June 1942, Palestine was threatened by the German advance in Egypt. The Palestinian Jewry gave Britain full support in the war. But it was an alliance of necessity. Britain had proved a feckless ally of the Zionist cause.

Speaker 9: The Zionist establishment felt that the British government had reached saturation point as far as its susceptibility to Zionist pressure. They felt that the British had delivered about as much as they could deliver.

Speaker 1: A significant shift in Zionist policy emerged from a conference at the Biltmore Hotel, New York. The Jewish cause in Palestine needed a new patron. It would be America. It also saw power pass from Weizmann to the young and perceptive Ben-Gurion.

Speaker 9: The Biltmore Conference indicated The shift of the strategic fulcrum of Zionist effort and pressure from one metropolis, London, to the new metropolis, Washington.

Speaker 8: Ben-Gurion and Weizmann agreed, more or less, not quite, that the Jewish demand should be openly stated because after the war the peace conference would meet, everybody would put in its claim, and the Jewish claim had to be put in now. And the claim was for the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth by mass immigration, which would turn it into a country where the majority of the population was Jewish. This was based on the idea, you see, that the Jews in Europe would become homeless. There would be 5 million homeless Jews. And these people, some of them at least, would have to turn outside of Europe. Nobody else wanted them. It was quite clear that the Zionist movement then would provide a solution.

Speaker 7: The whole of Europe has turned into one big cemetery for millions of Jews.

Speaker 11: For the remains of Jewry in Europe and Jewry from the countries of the East, there must be quick and complete transfer to the land of Israel. I emphasize by saying not immigration but transfer, not slow but fast, not partial but full.

Speaker 7: לא חלקי אלא מלא. Dachau, Europe.

Speaker 1: The day the Germans surrendered.

Speaker 5: It must have been clear we are fighting to save the survivors of Hitler, of the Holocaust, the bit of Jewry which was left. We were fighting for our right To live in one spot on the earth after having been destroyed in Europe. In other words, for land. We were fighting now for Jewish independence, after it's been proved again that a people without a land, without a government, without an army, without an economy, has no standing, has no say, is lost.

Speaker 8: The Holocaust Provided a frightening kind of proof, if proof was needed, for the Zionist position. It destroyed completely, absolutely, all the anti-Zionist Jewish ideologies.

Speaker 1: The American and British armies set up displaced persons camps. The American President Truman ordered Eisenhower to accept the Jews escaping from Eastern Europe. There were now 250,000 displaced Jews in Europe. They said that they wanted to go to Palestine. The Haganah was already organising illegal immigration. In August, Truman asked Britain to allow in 100,000 immediately. Britain refused, fearing that it would provoke the Arab states. October 1945, Tel Aviv. The Jews of Palestine demonstrated, demanding their 100,000 now. To the Jews, there seemed little alternative. Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, no Western nation had opened its doors to European Jewry or significantly relaxed its immigration quota.

Speaker 6: People in need of a home, people in need to be removed from concentration camps, people in need to be removed from the oppression under which they were suffering, the first thing that you think of is to try and find them a refuge in which they can live decent, respectable lives. The West had plenty of opportunity. America is a large country. It's a rich country. It could have supported many, many Jews. It— Britain could have done the same. Many other countries could have done the same. This did not happen because there was a political motive behind it all. What political motive? And the political motive was un— well, perhaps it was partially related to the human need of these people, but that human need was also used in order to inundate Palestine with new immigrants and so achieve a political objective in Palestine.

Speaker 1: American Jewry campaigned for the Zionist cause. In America, there were over 5 million Jews, a strategically placed constituent of the electorate. Many supported Zionism. Other Americans did, too— those who knew their Old Testaments, religious fundamentalists, and those who admired the pioneering spirit of the Jewish settlers. Among them was President Truman.

Speaker 4: February 1947. Palestine, a land disputed by 2 peoples, Arabs and Jews, a land ruled by the British. In Palestine, there were more than a million Arabs, over half a million Jews, and 80,000 British troops. During the First World War, Britain had pledged support for a Jewish national home in Palestine and Arab independence throughout Arabia. With peace, they became the administrators of Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. When the British encouraged the development of this national home, they had faced an Arab revolt. The British had then restricted its development and now faced a Jewish revolt. In Palestine, the British found Arab demands and Jewish demands irreconcilable. Despairing of a solution, the British had referred the problem back to the international community. The United Nations. Britain was abdicating. Winter 1947. Britain was war-torn and near bankrupt. America was supporting Britain economically. America was also supporting the Jewish, the Zionist cause.

Speaker 1: A cause Britain was frustrating.

Speaker 4: Palestine was not only intractable, it was embarrassing. Attlee and his Labour government had problems enough rebuilding the economy, effecting social change. Bevin, Foreign Secretary, had received repeated requests from the American President Truman to admit 100,000 Jews to Palestine.

Speaker 13: Mr. Truman had thrown himself strongly behind the Zionist cause, as it was referred to in those days. He insisted upon large immigration of Jews into Palestine at a time when that was very difficult for your people in Palestine. And the pressures from Mr. Truman The pressure on Britain, I think, came to be such that your government took that into account when they decided to throw it into the United Nations to see what the United Nations could do about it.

Speaker 4: The United Nations was less than 2 years old, a forum for the peaceful solution of the world's problems. Palestine was to be one of the earliest tests of its potential. The Jews and Arabs of Palestine would now have to present their case to an international forum.

Speaker 8: The Jews did not want to go to the United Nations because at the United Nations there were the Russians, and the Russians were anti-Zionist. There were the Americans who would probably not vote against the British proposal, at least not outright. And there were the Latin American states who would be— who would tend to take the line that the holy places could not be turned over to Jewish government. There were the Arab countries. There were Britain's traditional allies in Western Europe. So there was good cause, really, for British politicians to think that if they handed the whole thing over to the United Nations, the Jews would have to give in.

Speaker 9: I think the Arabs, by and large, felt that at the United Nations, their case, if it were considered on its merits, would win the support of the majority of the nations of the world.

Speaker 4: Oil dominated the thinking of the diplomats at the Foreign Office in London and the State Department in Washington. Oil supplies must be assured, the Middle East kept stable, the Arabs placated. It was the Jewish refugees in Europe that affected people in the West and motivated Truman. As these pictures show, the survivors of Hitler's death camps were now well cared for, but still in a Europe of memories. Still in the place where 6.5 million of their fellow Jews had been slaughtered, cold-bloodedly, systematically, by the apparatus of the Nazi state. Half a million were alive. No country would have them in significant numbers. So they said they wanted to go to Palestine. New York, May 1947. The appointment of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. It was to be known as UNSCOP. Its members left for Jerusalem on the 10th of June in search of solutions. The British were restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine. So, the Jews were shipping Jewish refugees to Palestine illegally, to dramatise their plight before the world, to put pressure on the British. The ships, hardly fit for a Mediterranean crossing, were almost always intercepted. This film is from The Illegals, made by Maya Levine, a Jewish war correspondent and filmmaker.

Speaker 5: We are going to Palestine.

Speaker 3: Well, as a war correspondent, my specialty had been the fate of the Jews, and I'd seen the survivors, I'd seen the death camps. And so I felt it was so urgent, this problem, these people still in the camps, that perhaps the most effective way, rather than writing about it, would be to write with a camera. For example, if there had been a camera in the time of Moses, it would have been a crime not to have recorded what happened. And so this was another Exodus.

Speaker 4: His film followed the refugees across Europe and the Mediterranean. The routes were well established, the journeys planned and organized by the Jewish underground.

Speaker 9: Ah!

Speaker 4: In 3 years, 75,000 refugees were brought out of Europe this way. Levine's film is eloquent for the Zionist cause. What follows are extracts with Levine's comments.

Speaker 14: Un avion britannique les avait repérés au large de la côte égyptienne. Un navire de guerre anglais n'allait certainement pas tarder à apparaître. On prépara un pavillon turc. Ils espéraient espérait encore être pris pour un cargo ordinaire. Le bâtiment anglais se montra bientôt.

Speaker 3: Everybody, of course, had been sent down into the hold, and the hatches were covered, and it was just suffocating down there. It was a very tense time. They knew they were caught. They— by this time, the routine had been established of these ships that they would Apprehended and followed and taken to Haifa Harbor and then sent to Cyprus.

Speaker 7: Une voix se fit entendre du navire de guerre.

Speaker 14: What are you?

Speaker 7: Turkish. I wish to send a boarding party to verify your identity. That is impossible. I believe you are Jews. When you enter Palestine waters, I shall use the overwhelming.

Speaker 3: We were told that the British knew that these were Jews on the ship, and so the order was given for that they might come out because there was no use in their stifling there since it would be the same result anyway. It would be followed and boarded.

Speaker 14: We were all very tired and bewildered by the long hours spent in the hold, nauseated by the smell of gasoline. Ils savaient que les Anglais ne les laisseraient pas passer, qu'ils les emmèneraient à Chypre. Pourtant, ils étaient venus parce qu'ils ne pouvaient plus vivre en Europe. Et après tout, Chypre se trouvait aussi sur la route de la Palestine. Les bateaux illégaux continuèrent d'arriver jusqu'à ce que les camps d'immigrants de Chypre furent surpeuplés.

Speaker 3: Secret at the time that the ships were constantly in radio communication with someone in Palestine. And the order had been given for this ship not to resist because the political situation at that moment was such that it had been decided there would be no resistance offered on this ship, and so they were really restrained by their own group leaders.

Speaker 14: Le bâtiment anglais ne les quittait pas d'huile frire le bateau d'abordage. Les soldats anglais n'aimaient visiblement Visiblement pas à ce genre de mission et était soulagé lorsqu'il n'avait pas à combattre les réfugiés désarmés.

Speaker 5: We could afford to confront the British openly and to present the real, real tragedy of the Jewish people and the moral strength of that struggle in the eyes of the world quite clearly and openly. I believe the calculation was quite right. Developments were tragic, of course. Many people paid for it with their lives. But I believe it broke eventually, this really inexplicable, inexplicable attitude. of disinterest and coldness to the survivors of Hitler.

Speaker 7: After being emptied by the Navy, the illegal immigrant ship Exodus 1947 entered Haifa Harbor under escort. As the President Warfield, the vessel had done good war service, but now she had on board some 5,000 Jews who'd hoped to enter Palestine illegally. When she was boarded at sea by the Navy, a fierce battle was fought on her decks, resulting in many casualties on both sides.

Speaker 4: In fact, there were 4,500 refugees on Exodus, and 3 Jews were killed. She was intercepted outside Palestine waters and boarded. In the end, gas and machine guns were used. Exodus was rammed.

Speaker 2: There was terror. People were crying, yelling. There was much excitement, and I would say much fear.

Speaker 4: Boarding party went on board the Exodus from the destroyer.

Speaker 2: As far as I remember, perhaps about 4 dozen of us, 50 of us. Grappling hooks were thrown over. We scrambled over the wires onto the Exodus. They had barbed wire on the Exodus, or the President Warfield, as we knew it then.

Speaker 4: And our instructions were to take the bridge, of course, and take the engine room, and in effect, to take command of the ship.

Speaker 9: And all the time, the destroyers banging, hitting the ship, pieces of wood falling into the sea.

Speaker 2: It was a very terrifying experience.

Speaker 9: From our side, There were used water hoses and 2-gallon tins of tomato juice.

Speaker 2: And to the credit of the British should be said that the first boarding party went only armed with sticks.

Speaker 9: The shots came later.

Speaker 4: I'm a member of the Exodus was towed listing into Haifa Harbour. The Jews intended the Exodus to be a cause célèbre. The world witnessed these scenes. So did UNSCOP. Its chairman is in the white hat. It was more effective, more dramatic, than Arab demonstrations warning UNSCOP of a full-scale revolt unless justice Bevin decided to make an example of Exodus. Usually illegal immigrants were shipped to and interned in Cyprus. These were to be returned to Europe, back to Marseille in France. This 8mm home movie was filmed on board a British transport ship that took them back.

Speaker 5: Prisoners under guard, Well, on the whole, they were perfectly all right, because they were very tired and fed up and weary.

Speaker 13: On the other hand, there were isolated instances of my soldiers being cursed and spat on.

Speaker 2: And maybe it happened more than I saw, but I did see one of my soldiers called a Nazi bastard and spat on. I remember one of my soldiers being called a Nazi bastard and spat on. And he just wiped the spittle off his face, and he looked his persecutor in the eye and went on. And this was a soldier who dropped it on him.

Speaker 4: At Marseille, most refused to disembark. On to Hamburg, Germany. From here, to an internment camp in Purpendorf.

Speaker 5: It was rainy and gray and dark. dreary. You know, it seemed like the weather and the scenery pictured our inner feelings. It seemed the circle has closed, that it is the end of the road, road, and there is no way out of it.

Speaker 2: There was bitterness when I saw again Germans, when we heard again the German language.

Speaker 5: Here I found myself behind iron bars, while I saw the Germans walking around free.

Speaker 4: Between Between 1945 and May 1948, Jews sent 63 ships to Palestine. Only 5 got through. The British intercepted the rest. 1947, 9th of February. 17th of February. 15th of April. 17th of May. The British feared that the mass immigration, the 100,000 now demanded by Truman and the Jewish leadership, would spark the Arabs into open rebellion. The Arabs feared that the Jews would take over Palestine. Why Palestine? the Arabs asked. Why only Palestine?

Speaker 9: Surely it wasn't beyond the resources of the United States or the Dominions, if the issue was one of relief, to admit these people into their countries. But from the Zionists' point of view, the issue was not relief, not specific— not overriding the relief. In fact, not relief at all at this point. The issue was to denounce the British administration Palestine to show how iniquitous the White Paper policy was, since it seemed to prevent these wretched survivors of the gas chambers from reaching their only hope of salvation. Why was it their only hope of salvation? Why couldn't they have gone to the States?

Speaker 4: UNSCOP in Palestine. Because it was to consider the Palestine problem in the context of the refugee problem in Europe, it was boycotted by the Arabs. Jewish terrorism continued. Jerusalem, 1st of March, 1947. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 2nd of March. 31st of March, 4-day blaze. 22nd of April.

Speaker 5: 25th of April.

Speaker 4: The Jews sought to impress UNSCOP with their achievements. Here, the committee visits the Hebrew University. Before the committee, the Jews argued for partition.

Speaker 8: There was no other way of resolving the Palestine impasse but to partition the country. Which they had hinted at in 1946, and then they said it outright in 1947 to Anscombe. And the idea was that unless the Jews had a national government in Palestine of their own, immigration would not happen, because somebody else would not allow the immigration of Jews. And this was the essential point. Jews had to come because they had no other place to go. That was the basis of it.

Speaker 4: The Palestinian Arabs gave no evidence.

Speaker 9: Well, they had given evidence to Palin in 1920, Haycraft in 1921, Shaw in 1929, Hope Simpson in 1931, Peel in 1937, Woodhead in 1938. They had gone to the '39 White Paper Conference in London. They had appeared before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. And even the Palestinian Arabs by that time began to suspect that commissions of inquiry were really simply a means to buy time and fudge issues and initiate policies that were dictated by considerations other than the merits of the case.

Speaker 4: UNSCOP weighed the arguments.

Speaker 2: Since the Balfour Declaration was issued, violation started. It is the homelessness of the Jewish people.

Speaker 5: Demand, and then that grows bigger and bigger.

Speaker 11: The trouble, worry, and persecution which has beset the Jews throughout history.

Speaker 2: The safeguarding of the Arab character of Palestine.

Speaker 11: It concluded, Palestine within its present borders shall be constituted into an independent Arab state, an independent Jewish state, and the city of Jerusalem.

Speaker 4: A majority report proposed the partition of Palestine: a Jewish state in areas where there was Jewish settlement, an Arab state elsewhere, to include the port of Jaffa. Jerusalem to be an international city. In the proposed Jewish state, nearly half of the population was Arab. In the Arab state, hardly any was Jewish.

Speaker 8: There was great fear that the United Nations would take an anti-Jewish line, attitude. And here was a majority report, not a unanimous one, a majority report by UNSCOP advocating the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state in a partitioned Palestine. And the hope was that this majority report would be adopted by the United Nations.

Speaker 9: They were horrified, literally horrified, particularly as the 1947 proposals territorially included even more Arab territory within the confines of the state, the Jewish state to be.

Speaker 4: The British knew that this solution would have to be imposed on the Arabs. At the United Nations, they announced they would not implement it. Without a settlement acceptable to both sides, Britain would abandon Palestine.

Speaker 7: I have been instructed by His Majesty's government to announce with all solemnity that they have consequently decided that in the absence of a settlement, they must plan for an early withdrawal of British forces And of the British administration from Palestine.

Speaker 4: A decision fully supported by British public opinion, recently outraged by the Jewish terrorist hanging of 2 sergeants.

Speaker 2: The 2 sergeants kidnapped as hostages were hanged as a reprisal, the sort of cruelty once commonly indulged in by the Nazis.

Speaker 7: Until the appalling situation in Palestine is cleared up, unspeakable outrages may well continue.

Speaker 13: There was no element of bluff in the decision. We, the government, were quite determined that they would carry out the decision as they stated it to the UN. But there was great skepticism about it. The Russians were skeptical.

Speaker 2: They thought that we were trying to find some way of holding on to supposedly important strategic positions in Palestine.

Speaker 13: The Americans thought that we were bluffing in order to put pressure on the United Nations to reach a clear decision, and that we could be persuaded, if the worst came to the worst and the United Nations failed, we could be persuaded to prolong our stay in Palestine.

Speaker 7: After years of strenuous but unavailing effort, His Majesty's Government have reached the conclusion that they are not able to bring about a settlement in Palestine based upon the consent of both Arabs and Jews, and that the Mandate is no longer workable.

Speaker 4: The United Nations debated partition. To lend its authority to the idea of partition would need a 2/3 majority. The vote would be close.

Speaker 7: The fact that after 25 years of international action in relation To Palestine, culminating with months of consideration by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The vote was postponed.

Speaker 4: November 27th was Thanksgiving Day. November 28th, they debated but adjourned again. November 29th, Jewry in Palestine held its breath.

Speaker 7: I declare open the 128th plenary meeting of the General Assembly. Yesterday, as you recall, we voted to adjourn The consideration of the question before us for 24 hours. This delay was provided in order to make it possible for some measures of conciliation to be taken by interested members.

Speaker 5: I remember this night as if it happened yesterday.

Speaker 7: I respectfully submit, Mr. President, that we should proceed to the vote.

Speaker 5: I will remember it forever. I'll never forget it.

Speaker 7: You all know now how to vote. Those who are in favor will say yes. Those who are against will say no. And the abstainers, always, they know what to say.

Speaker 5: We were sitting close to the radio and listening to the nos and yes.

Speaker 2: And everyone had some papers.

Speaker 7: Argentina? Abstention? Australia? Yes?

Speaker 15: We had somebody with the earphones on and our good radio writing it down, calling it out and writing it down.

Speaker 7: El Salvador? Abstention? Ethiopia? Abstain?

Speaker 5: Oh, it was a remarkable night.

Speaker 7: Friend? Yeah?

Speaker 4: France had been expected to abstain.

Speaker 7: I call on the public, and I hope that you will not have any interference on the voting on the debate. I am confident on the way you will behave in a so serious decision taken by this assembly, because I am decided. Not to allow anybody to interfere in our decision.

Speaker 15: And when Gromyko said, da, yes, well, we knew it was through.

Speaker 7: Soviet Union? Yes. United Kingdom? Abstain. The United States? Yes. Uruguay? Yes. Venezuela? Yes? Yemen? No? Yugoslavia? Abstain. The resolution of the DAC Committee for Palestine was adopted by 33 votes, 13 against, 10 abstentions.

Speaker 15: I think it was the biggest day in our lives. We never thought We never thought we would have our own country so quick.

Speaker 5: Tens of thousands of people were already in the streets. Youngsters, old people, children, mothers with their small kids were dancing in the streets and singing. We were so happy, we were overwhelmed. The speaker announced the results. I started to shiver, and I couldn't keep quiet.

Speaker 2: Maybe that is— it was a forefeeling for the so many lives and so many blood that will be shed in future wars.

Speaker 5: Wars.

Speaker 4: The United Nations was now committed in principle To a Jewish state and an Arab state in a divided Palestine.

Speaker 5: For us, it was of vital interest to get international support and to have the stamp of international legality for the fact which was already there, created by ourselves. So the establishment of the State of Israel was not dependent We would have declared and proclaimed it under all circumstances, but our legal standing in the world and the possibility of getting aid from the world in that struggle which was ahead of us made this international recognition of vital importance.

Speaker 6: We were a small people.

Speaker 2: We had a few extremely good people, but we were a small people.

Speaker 6: Advocates, if you want, of the Arab cause, and they did what they could. But they did it how? By making a speech perhaps at the United Nations or by writing an article in the press if it gets accepted, which wasn't always the case. As against that, you had a situation in which the communications media was controlled, in which everything else was effectively manipulated by the other side. There really was no fair comparison between the potential of the Palestinian Arabs to make their voice heard in the world as compared with the potential of the Zionists to make their voice heard. No comparison. It doesn't mean that we had a weaker case. On the contrary, we had a strong case, but people did not hear it, and I rather suspect that even for people who heard it, they were not interested.

Speaker 9: Partition vote would not have been won. I'm absolutely, absolutely certain of this. If the United Nations— States had taken a standoff attitude. It was won only as a result of arms twisting, strong-arm tactics, enormous pressure, enormous pressure generated by the White House. Absolutely no doubt about this. Absolutely no doubt about this, on the smaller states, who were all very vulnerable to American pressure.

Speaker 4: In the White House, there had been intense diplomatic activity. Among the states that changed their votes late in the day were the Philippines, Haiti, Liberia, New Zealand, Holland, and France.

Speaker 8: There was no American lobbying. At all. There was a very clear statement by the White House to its delegation at the United Nations that no steps should be taken to support the Jews. There was a Jewish attempt to influence delegations. It was a pretty desperate attempt because in fact the Jews didn't pull that much weight. Some delegations thought that if the Jews approached them, the Americans must be behind it. They were not, in fact. Other delegations were released from certain obligations by the fact that, for instance, the Vatican did not have a clear line on the establishment of a Jewish state. Others just were not really concerned with the whole issue and listened to arguments from all sides. Lobby is an organized, long-term This wasn't really a lobby. It was an ad hoc collection of individuals who had contacts with different delegations and who tried to approach and influence them. How many votes do you think they swung? I wouldn't say very many, but you could make out a case to say that the few that they did swing made all the difference.

Speaker 13: I think in a sense the Arabs Needed a good lawyer to represent— help them represent their views more effectively. See, the principal thing you had on both sides were 2 powerful feelings in direct opposition to each other. On the one side, what I call the apocalyptic sense among the Jews, particularly after the experience in Germany. On the Arab side, They felt that the majority of the people in Palestine were being ignored for the imposition from the outside of a Jewish state. They felt very strongly that the Arabs should not be required to pay for the crimes of Adolf Hitler, and they completely rejected the notion that somehow the Books of Moses constitute a land title in the 20th century without regard to all of the intervening history. So, um, the— it's very hard to describe the intensity of these feelings on both sides.

Speaker 16: It was an irresponsible resolution. We refused it.

Speaker 2: Russia, Britain, or the United States can't ask for half my land.

Speaker 16: Why should I give it to them? I don't owe them anything. We refused partition because it was unjust and unfair.

Speaker 4: The Arab world erupted in protest. There were demonstrations in Baghdad, seen here, Tripoli, and Beirut. In Aden, more than 80 Jews were killed.

Speaker 16: We lived in Palestine for thousands of years, from the time of Muhammad until now. Why should we give it to the Jews and the British? We didn't agree to it. That's why there was continuous rebellion.

Speaker 4: In Jerusalem and elsewhere, Arabs attacked the Jews.

Speaker 16: They divided a land which was not theirs, it was ours. So how could they give it to others?

Speaker 4: Within the week, 79 Jews and 23 Arabs had been killed. Palestine was descending into chaos.

Speaker 2: The position really in the last months, indeed the last year, became almost impossible. The police were at the end of their tether. The civil servants were living behind wire and had to be taken under escort to their offices. The, the local staff were in too much of a state of hysteria to come to their offices at all. I think in the last months at least 9 government departments in Jerusalem were not even functioning, were not open because no one came to them. Jews who in the past had worked happily with Arabs in the same department and Arabs with Jews were no longer prepared to meet one another or talk, and the position was really terrible. Then continual acts of terrorism were going on throughout the country.

Speaker 4: In this atmosphere of violence, the British planned their withdrawal.

Speaker 17: There were 4 principles laid down. One was that it was vitally important to maintain the security of Haifa, which was going to be the main port for the evacuation of our troops and stores. The second one was to cooperate closely with the civil administration, and the third one was to Make quite sure that there was no interruption to our lines of communication, whether to Haifa or to Egypt. And the last one was we would have to stay in Jerusalem until the end of the mandate.

Speaker 4: As the British withdrew, in the north towards Haifa, in the south to Egypt, Arab and Jew were left facing each other.

Speaker 5: I'm a Jew.

Speaker 4: A war between Arab and Jew now seemed inevitable. A war between Arab and Jew now seemed inevitable. December 1947, Tel Aviv. The Haganah, the Jewish underground army, started to mobilize. The Jews were short of weapons. They had some 15,000 rifles and several score of machine guns. In secret, they made their own and armor-plated their buses. Hidden in Palestine, they had heavier equipment broken down into parts. In Europe, they had arms they would ship in when the British left. They could call on some 10,000 fully trained and mobile men. 30,000 others could be called to arms. The Haganah planned its strategy.

Speaker 10: Well, the strategic thinking was in 2 completely categories. One was to exist. Just to defend the, the soul in the settlements, and this was a tremendous job because our settlements were scattered between the Arabs. And so the local defense plus a little bit of the central strategy was to help them, particularly to keep the roads open to these settlements. The second problem was how to stand against the Arab invasion, and I would say that particularly since November, In 1947, when we saw that the war is coming, our main problem was to maintain and hold the area which was allotted to the State of Israel according to the partition. That was the main basic problem.

Speaker 4: The armies of the Arab countries totalled 15,000 men, the most professional in Jordan.

Speaker 5: Although there was no firm commitment, both the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs And the impression we were under is that armies were armies, and whatever the Jews had in the way of arms would never be able to face armies.

Speaker 13: Never.

Speaker 4: We never saw the Arab armies in any battle, so we couldn't judge, but we were confident that they could defeat the Jews.

Speaker 2: Overcome the situation.

Speaker 4: There was a force of some 2,500 Arabs, some seen here posing for Movietone cameras, in and around Jerusalem. Elsewhere, the Arab Liberation Army, consisting of volunteers from neighbouring Arab states, could marshal nearly 4,000 men, of whom a quarter were Palestinian. Palestine was an armed camp.

Speaker 7: I am aware of the unfortunate and deplorable incidents which have been occurring in Palestine recently. I'm also aware of the fact that disorders of this Another committee was in session discussing how to implement partition.

Speaker 4: It was now becoming clear to them, as it had been clear to the British, that it would require force. The British, as the rulers of Palestine, sent advisers.

Speaker 2: Its main recommendations, which were largely based, of course, on information which they got from us and from other sources, no doubt, was to the effect that it would be quite impossible for them to operate in Palestine and to carry out their task of implementing the partition proposal unless they were backed up first by a fairly large administrative staff and then in addition by a very large, one presumes, protective force.

Speaker 13: Well, we were not prepared to use force in the area. We were in a high state of demobilization. By that time. By 1946, we did not have a single division in our Army or a single air group in our Air Force that could be rated ready for combat. Our defense budget had come down to $11 billion in the fiscal year 1947. So, um, we were not in any position to think about using force to impose a solution on the Middle East. Now, had there been a United Nations trusteeship, and that required some forces, and several countries contributed forces, then I'm sure we would have contributed forces to that. But we were— we never thought about trying to impose our own solution by our own forces in the Middle East. That was just not, not in the ballgame.

Speaker 7: The United States Would be ready to consult under the Charter.

Speaker 4: American policy was ambivalent.

Speaker 7: As may be necessary to maintain international peace. The general security position in Palestine has degenerated very seriously since the resolution of the General Assembly was passed on November 29th last year.

Speaker 4: British policy remained firm.

Speaker 7: Military withdrawal and the winding up of the civil administration are both being carried out against a background of increasing violence.

Speaker 17: I think it might be of interest if I were to read the exact words which were sent to me in an order which came from the War Office, signed by Mr. Emmanuel Shinwell, the then Secretary of State for War, in which he said that you have overriding military jurisdiction in certain areas specified by yourself, but you should exercise it only insofar as it is essential for the protection of our forces and for the orderly progress of the evacuation. And he goes on to say, you have no responsibility for the preservation of law and order in any part of Palestine except as required by you for the protection of our forces and for the purpose of evacuation. And that is the basis of why, when these many incidents of violence between Jews and Arabs took place, we did not interfere unless it was necessary for the protection of our forces during the process of evacuation.

Speaker 7: Jerusalem's main Jewish business thoroughfare, Ben Yehuda Street, is a heap of smoking rubble. From all parts of the city, people run to the scene of the shattering explosion, and rescue work is carried out by all men of goodwill— British, Arab, and Jew. But an early reaction of the Jewish population to this act of terrorism is to brand the British as its perpetrators. Feeling runs so high that police and army relief squads are ordered to withdraw.

Speaker 5: We are not going to let the British get away with this.

Speaker 13: As we approached the termination of the British mandate, we had this interim period between May 14th and October, when the partition plan was supposed to go into effect. And every prospect was that there would be war if something else were not done. And so President Truman and Secretary Marshall agreed that under certain circumstances, we would propose trusteeship for an interim period within which we would— could look for a solution that would be more acceptable to both sides.

Speaker 7: To this end, We believe that a trust— temporary trusteeship for Palestine should be established under the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. Such a United Nations trusteeship would be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned, or to the character of the eventual political settlement, which we hope can be achieved without long delay.

Speaker 4: When the partition vote had been passed, The United States had expected a swift partition of Palestine. This had not happened. The State Department, which had been unhappy with President Truman's pro-Zionist, pro-partition stance, believed that partition must be quietly dropped, or at least postponed. Their trusteeship proposal was unenthusiastically received by other delegates. The Jewish delegation was astounded by this change in American policy.

Speaker 7: Both the president of the United States and the secretary of state have repeatedly, within recent weeks, maintained that the position of the United States on partition remained unaltered. We are at an utter loss to understand the reason for this amazing reversal.

Speaker 8: Within 2 weeks, it had become fairly obvious that the The Americans would not provide any armed forces to implement such a solution, and nobody else would. By the end of April, the United Nations had no— there was no way to reach a majority for the American proposal, and they had to go back to the partition.

Speaker 4: Fighting between Jews and Arabs intensified in March and April. Mishmah HaEmek, a Jewish settlement, was attacked early in April by Syrian irregulars. The Jews countered with an attack on a neighbouring Arab village. A renewed Arab attack was defeated. It was one of several such actions. But Jerusalem was to be the heart of the battle. The situation in Jerusalem was grave. The Jewish community was besieged, their water cut off, their food running short. The British retreated to their garrisons, which the Jews called Bevingrads.

Speaker 15: My father happened to be in Tel Aviv at the beginning of all of this, and he never got back, and he had no way of knowing what was happening. Not knowing whether any of us were alive or not.

Speaker 5: It wasn't a tension of, we give up. It was a tension that every day that we carry on.

Speaker 15: I suppose the real problem for everybody was that food and light and water jammed up on us.

Speaker 4: The lorries bringing relief from Jewish Tel Aviv had to make the hazardous journey up through the gorges to Jerusalem, accompanied by guards and improvised armoured cars. By March, Arab snipers in the hills overlooking the road became more and more effective. The convoy system was in danger of collapse.

Speaker 15: There was a 17-mile convoy came up You could see it snake up round and round and round, all those curves to Jerusalem, and it was an unbelievable sight. But it had taken a week's battles and something like 40 or 50 dead to clear snipers from the hills that overlooked that road and to bring that convoy up. And again, without that convoy, Jerusalem couldn't have survived because that brought up the food, that brought up flour and oil. And milk powder for babies, and a certain number of peas and beans, and the barley.

Speaker 10: Well, the Battle of Jerusalem, I would say, was the most decisive perhaps in the whole planning to— and eventually in the war. Everybody knew that if Jerusalem falls, then there will be a Jewish state without a head, without a heart. I would say that the turning point as far as the battle for Jerusalem was in the beginning of April '48, when Jerusalem was completely cut off, and we went for— in the open for the first time. We fought with the whole brigade, and the idea was to occupy key positions to the road to Jerusalem, even if the British objected.

Speaker 4: Strategically, Castel, a hill dominating the road, was the key. The Haganah took it on the 3rd of April. They lost it 2 days later to an Arab force of Iraqi irregulars and Arab villagers. The counterattack on the 9th was a big operation, 1,500 men with newly acquired Czech guns. It fell. The Haganah rushed relief to Jerusalem, but the battle continued for the road. On the same day that Castel fell, the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization, attacked an Arab village on a nearby hill, Deir Yassin.

Speaker 2: I'd been out that day. And I got back about tea time, and my G1, GS01, caught hold of me and took me to the telephone and said, look, you must talk to General Macmillan at once, which I did. I said, why, what's it about? He said, oh, there's been an incident up the road. What incident? So I got on to General Macmillan, and he said categorically, there's been an affray amounting to a massacre at a place called Deir Yassin. It's in your divisional area, and I'm giving you a definite order that you will not intervene there in any event, at any cost.

Speaker 15: You will leave it alone.

Speaker 7: What was the reason for that?

Speaker 2: I, of course, did what I was told.

Speaker 16: When they entered the town, they started shooting with mortars and machine guns. In the first house were 25 people, 24 women. A family raised their hands in surrender. The Jews threw hand grenades and shot them with machine guns. 11 people were killed, among them old people and babies. They incinerated the baker and His son in their oven. They ripped open the stomachs of the women they captured. In the village center, they started to massacre everyone—man, woman, and child. They threw hand grenades in the houses where they thought there were people. You couldn't surrender. You couldn't escape. If you ran, you were shot. If you stayed, you were shot.

Speaker 5: To take bracelets, they severed arms.

Speaker 16: To take rings, they severed fingers. They ripped earrings from ears. They were acting like savages.

Speaker 4: 254 men, women, and children were massacred. This is the place where Deir Yassin once stood. The Jewish leaders denounced the massacre. Arabs fled the area. It was a turning point. The reprisal, directed at a convoy taking medical staff and supplies to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, came 4 days later.

Speaker 2: 10 Jewish vehicles had been stopped. Some were turning around and going away. 4 were trapped and remained. 6 of them went back to Jerusalem. Arabs were shouting and yelling in the houses beside the road, a distance perhaps 30 or 40 yards away, and were shooting at the convoy. We could see part of the convoy on the road and didn't move. As it took more and more time, we could see many Arabs running from the Old City Running to the main road, to the road which we knew the convoy is passing. Hundreds of Arabs were coming up in the usual Arab way, shouting and yelling, firing their rifles in the air and so on. Arabs, we heard all the time, there Yassin, there Yassin, there Yassin. That means that they did everything against the convoy because we did This was the rumor, and this is what I heard all the time. And we heard a lot of shooting— machine guns, rifles, and people shouting, more coming. Many Arabs were down in the— behind the houses. I could see many people killed on the ground. And then, and both sides standing, many Arabs standing with knives, with rifles. They tried to take out from the people the money from the pockets, to look whatever they have, and the clothes, to take out whatever, to run away. The Arabs put petrol or paraffin or something that got fire, and they put it to 2 buses in, in fire. Some ran out. They were killed. But those that remained in the buses, they were all burned. We couldn't recognize even the faces, who is which, who is Mo— Moses, who is Abraham, who is—

Speaker 7: you know.

Speaker 4: 77 doctors, nurses, and students were massacred. This is the place where the convoy was ambushed, where the dead are remembered. The British knew of both massacres. The official policy held: no intervention. Towards the end of April, the British stepped up the tempo of withdrawal.

Speaker 5: The Arabs were very dispersed. And their military organization appeared to me to break down, whereas the Jews were highly organized, knew exactly what they wanted to do, and they had the organization to do it. So when they were left face to face, it only was clap hands for Daddy, and they were there, and they took over the areas they wanted.

Speaker 4: There had already been sporadic fighting in Haifa, Some Arabs had already left. In the middle of April, the Jews ambushed the Arab military convoys, and Arabs led from outside Palestine attacked the Jews of Haifa. The Jews counterattacked on the Arab Quarter and demanded the withdrawal of foreign Arab forces. Haifa fell to the Jews.

Speaker 2: As the Jewish action against The Haifa Old Town stepped up from acts of terrorism to mortaring of of the area. Then many many of the Arabs started to evacuate the town, as indeed the Jews wanted them to do, and they they headed for the safety of the Lebanese border, which was about twenty miles to the north.

Speaker 5: المناطق العربية كلها أكثرهم راح.

Speaker 16: I saw Arabs running through Acre Gate.

Speaker 5: Barefoot women in their nightdresses, some of them carrying children screaming and crying.

Speaker 2: They started out by private car, lorry, and bus, and one saw them loaded up with all sorts of their household belongings— carpets, mattresses, cooking material— all hanging onto the buses and, and the trucks.