History
On 16 January 1948, a convoy of 38 men was sent by the Haganah to deliver supplies to the four blockaded kibbutzim of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, following an Arab attack on January 14. Thirty-eight Haganah members set out on foot from Hartuv at 11 p.m. on January 15, commanded by Danny Mas. They took a detour around the Palestine Police station, a Tegart fort, to avoid detection by the British. Three were sent back because one man sprained an ankle, and two accompanied him. The remaining 35 were killed by Arab villagers between Jaba and Surif.
The fate of the 35 was reconstructed from British and Arab reports. The six hours of night that remained did not suffice for the trip. About an hour before the convoy reached their destination, it became light. Not far from the village of Surif, near Gush Etzion, they met an Arab shepherd, and instead of killing him they let him go. The shepherd hurried to sound the alarm. A large number of armed villagers from Surif and other communities gathered to block the way. The battle was fought in two stages, four hours apart, with hundreds of Arabs from a nearby training base taking part. The Haganah force battled until it ran out of ammunition. The last of the 35 was apparently killed at about 4:30 p.m. Amongst the dead were three members of the Hebrew Communist party; an American former GI, Moshe Periman; and Tuvia Kushnir, one of the country's leading botanists.
A phone conversation about the battle was intercepted by the Irgun, in which it was heard that many were killed and some were wounded. After no word of the 35 had been received for a long time and wounded Arabs started arriving at Hebron, the British dispatched a platoon of the Royal Sussex Regiment to investigate. After threatening and exhorting the village mukhtars and notables, the British were led to the site of the battle where they found the bodies of the 35. According to some reports many of the bodies had been mutilated, some beyond recognition.
Read more about this topic: Convoy Of 35
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)