PALESTINE AS PRESENTED TO MIDDLE AMERICA IN SEPTEMBER, 1948

Put together by Duane Magee
MAY 9, 2003                                              

I received an article that I  published on this web site.  It deals with the Arab 'refugee' problem from 1948 and whether or not they 'left' Israel or were exiled by the Israelis.  This article led me to conduct a search of newspaper articles covering the May 1948 independence of Israel and the events surrounding it.

What I found was extremely interesting.  One small town newspaper had articles about "Palestine" just about every day during April and May 1948.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1948	SEPTEMBER 18, 1948	SEPTEMBER 20, 1948
DP'S The striped-pants boys of the State Department have crossed swords again with Gen. Lucius Clay, this time over the tragic DP  problem. In an effort to get the thousands of Jewish DP's  out of their squalid camps,  the US occupation commander authorized  transportation to the German border  for all desiring to migrate to Palestine.  He took this stand on the ground it was humane and also would help reduce occupation costs. But the State Department is now demanding that Clay lock the DP's in their camps; that is, to make these camps concentration camps. At the bottom of this move is the British Foreign Office.  The British are refusing to allow any Jewish DP's  under their control to go to Palestine.  More than 12,000 are being held behind barbed-wire stockades in Cyprus, admittedly without legal authority, and many more thousands have been locked up in British camps in Germany. The British are pursuing this policy as part of their pro-Arab tactics.  And the State Department, over Clay's vehement protests, appears to be playing the British game. The Palestine truce does not bar Jewish immigration.  Only men under arms or undergoing military training are prohibited from entrance.  This is the only restriction and it was written into the agreement at French insistance.  However, from the day the truce went into effect, the British have done everything in their power to block Jews from going to the Holy Land. Note-General Clay has warned Washington a ban on immigration may lead to serious disturbances in the DP camps due to the breakup of many families.  Parts of families have already reached palestine, while other members are still in the German camps.	HOLY LAND IS POWDER KEG JERUSALEM, Sept 18.-(UP) The Stern Gang boasted today that its assassins killed Count Folke Bernadotte "because he worked for the British and carried out their orders." The government of Israel outlawed the Stern Gang and rounded up hundreds of its members.  They were charged with incitement and conspiracy against the security of the state.  At Tel Aviv, where the jails overflowed with arrested suspects, tension erupted in a flurry of violence.  Demonstrators attacked the Soviet's ambassador's car, ripped away its flag, and damaged it before police dispersed them. The assasination of Bernadotte by Jews racked the young nation to its foundation.  A Tel Aviv dispatch called this "Black Sabbath"-the Jewish Sabbath- and said the government and the people agreed that the assassination might have the gravest impact on Israel. The government, throwing all its resources into the manhunt and its ramifications, posted a strong guard around the home of James McDonald, American delegate to Israel.  He called on Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok last night and told him that he had been warned to leave the country. McDonald reported that youths came to his table at a Ramat Gan cafe and told him "you are not wanted here,"  He told Shertok that he would leave for home at once if he was not wanted.  Shertok assured him that everything would be done to guarantee his safety and within 10 minutes his house in Ramat Gan outside Tel Aviv was surrounded by military police. The Sternist admission of the assassination, a customary procedure after acts of underground violence, was made public by Hazit Hamoledet, head of the so-called "splinter" group of Sternists.  He sent foreign diplomats in Tel Aviv a note reading: "We killed Bernadotte because he worked for the British and carried out their orders." United Press correspondant Eliav Simon reported from Tel Aviv that some 200 top Sternists were rounded up in the country-wide sweep of their hideouts. Haifa, to which the bodies of Bernadotte and the French officer killed with him were taken, reported that the bodies would leave for Rhodes by plane tomorrow, rather than today as planned.  The Frenchman was Col. Andre Serot. PARIS, Sept 18.-(UP) The United Nations security council was summoned into an emergency session at 3 p.m. today to consider Count Folke Bernadotte's assassination. UN diplomats feared the trsgedy might break up the uneasy truce in Palestine nad(and) make it impossible for the forthcoming general assembly to work out a permanent Holy Land peace. The council also will study reports on Bernadotte's murder, although it was not certain what the council could or would do about his tragic death. One of the first definite actions, however, will be to name a successor to the Swedish nobleman who could carry on his work. Dr Ralph Bunche, 48, grandson of an American slave, was named temporary head of the Palestine truce commission, pending action by the council. Bernadotte's permanent successor might be Paul Van Zeeland of  Belgium, alternate choice at the time the security council chose Bernadotte as the Palestine mediator.	STERN GANG TO BE OUTLAWED JERUSALEM, Sept, 20.-(UP) More than 200 Stern Gang members arrested in the wake of Count Folke Bernadotte's assassination will be impressed into the Israeli army, it was reported today. The Israel cabinet, meeting into the early hours today in Tel Aviv, approved emergency legislation outlawing all terrorist organizations in the Holy Land.  The laws are expected to be promulgated this afternoon. The first group of 200 Sternists rounded up over the week-end were transferred yesterday to Jaffa prison. They will be held there until they are absorbed into the army. A heavy artillery and mo(r)tar bombardment rocked Jerusalem last night, with many shells falling in the residential area of Jewish-held modern Jerusalem. Observers said it was too early to predict whether the shelling heralded the renewal of large scale warfare in the Holy Land which some expected as a result of Bernadotte's assassination last Friday.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1948	SEPTEMBER 23, 1948	SEPTEMBER 28, 1948
UN ASSEMBLY MEETS UNDER WAR SHADOWS Somber Background Casts Spell Over Paris Session PARIS, Sept, 21.-(UP) The United States urged the third general assembly of the United Nations today to seek an end to Arab-Jewish warfare in Palestine by supporting the proposals of the assassinated mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, which provided for recognition of the Jewish state of Israel. U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall formally proposed acceptance of Bernadotte's report even before the general assembly meeting against a somber backdrop of expressed fear of another world war, had completed its organization. Arabs, Jews and the 58 nations of the U.N. , Marshall said in a official statement, should accept Bernadotte's recommendations in their entirety "as the best possible basis for bringing peace" to the Holy Land. The general assembly convened in the plush Palais de Chaillot overlooking the Seine amid the gravest crisis since the war, in which attention of most delegates centered upon the cold war between Russia and the western powers rather than on lesser problems such as Palestine. Only three hours after the assembly opened foreign ministers of the United States, Britain and France were to meet at the Quai d'Orsay, possibly to agree on showdown action in the dispute with the Soviet Union which has its focal point in the Berlin crisis. But Marshall seized upon the interest in and concern for the Palestine situation which followed the assassination last Friday in Jerusalem of Bernadotte to issue a formal statement in which he said that the Swedish mediator's conclusions regarding the Holy Land "are sound" and expressed hope that both sides would accept them in the spirit of fair compromise. Bernadotte's recommendations were contained in a 135-page report which reached the UN almost  coincidentally with the news of his death.  The report was made public yesterday. The temporary assembly president, Juan Bramuglia of Argentina, opened the assembly. Before the leaders of both sides of a cold war which appeared to have reached the showdown stage, Bramuglin said: "We are confronted with a threat of new and dreadful human conflict." Even as he spoke, the foreign ministers of the western powers, meeting without Russia represented, were weighing the Berlin crisis and apparently preparing to turn it over to the UN. Bramuglia appealed to all nations to shun force and to abandon all thoughts of resorting to war, even in the cause of re-establishing peace. "I call upon you to reflect.  I call you to peace." While the west gathered its strongest diplomats, Russia was represented by the weakest delegation in the history of the UN.  Molotov elected not to come here, at least for the time being.  Even the famous enuneiator of the word  "no" Andre Gromyko, former UN delegate, will not be on hand. The Soviet position will be stated by Vishinsky, the famous purge prosecutor who recently rode  roughshod over the western powers at the Danube conference.  The other Soviet delegates were almost unknown.	DEATH took Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator for Palestine, at the hands of Jewish terrorists in Jerusalem last Friday.  With him was also shot and killed the French Colonel Sterot, also of the United Nations staff.  Bernadotte was a  Swedish official and nephew of King Gustav of that country... From Palestine comes information that Arabs ambushed a United Nations-sponsored Jewish convoy en route from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, killing one American and three citizens of the Jewish state.  The American is believed to have been John Locke Lewis of Philedelphia.	EGYPTIANS OCCUPY HILL AT JERUSALEM JERUSALEM, Sept. 28.-(UP) Jewish sources claimed today that Egyptian forces had advanced to positions southwest of jerusalem, occupying a hill near Jebel El Rab in the no-man's-land south of the Holy City. The Israel army, claiming a United Nations truce violation, filed a protest against the occupation with the UN.