Letter to a BBC Jerusalem correspondent – from 1948
In February 1948 two successive bombings rocked Jerusalem. Three people were killed at the beginning of the month when the building housing the offices of the Palestine Post (later to become the Jerusalem Post) was attacked by means of a car bomb. Three weeks later another car bomb was detonated on Ben Yehuda Street killing over fifty people and injuring dozens more. Both attacks were initiated by the commander of Arab forces in the Jerusalem area and were carried out by two British Army deserters.College Students Honor Convicted Palestinian Bomber
Shortly after the second bombing, the founder and editor of the Palestine Post Gershon Agron wrote the letter below to the BBC’s correspondent in Jerusalem at the time, Richard Williams, with whom he had previously engaged in an apparently heated conversation.
There are also a number of quotations that point out that the BBC was too hasty in discovering that the people who threw a bomb at The Palestine Post offices (on February 1, 1948) were either Arabs or Jews. But the Post quoted the BBC news item from London that some 300 British citizens left England to join the Arabs. This news item was never denied, even after it was proven to be false.
But this February we were the bad boys again. The BBC announced that “Jerusalem was quiet after a great Jewish anti-British demonstration.” This was the day after Ben-Yehuda Street was bombed. Jerusalem was not particularly quiet on this very day and night. A search was going on for the bodies of the 66 persons killed in this bombing. To show that in Jerusalem only the British are killed is a sham. But this was, perhaps, what the British listener wished to hear.
All this indicates that everybody falsifies and some do it on purpose. The British try to show that each murder (isn’t this a norm?) was committed by Jews. And why? Because the particulars of the murder do not explain what happened before. It may be understood that somebody wishes to see himself to be just in his own eyes. But why claim that this is the whole truth, and not something that depends on other factors?
If we arrive at a day when we all agree that the Jewish nature will show the way to the Jewish people, exactly as the British try to square things according to the British point of view, we will be able to live in peace, each respecting the other in this not entirely easy country. As one of my friends said yesterday that “only in peace we will find confidence and mutual prosperity.”
Students at DePaul University are rallying behind a woman who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a bombing in Jerusalem.
Rasmieh Odeh was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine when the group killed two students in a bombing at a market in 1969.
Odeh, now in her late 60s, was released in 1995 as part of a prisoner exchange and came to the United States.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) held a fundraiser for Odeh’s legal defense after a federal jury found that she lied on her immigration papers by answering “no” to the question of whether she’d been convicted of a crime.
Seth Winberg, an Orthodox rabbi and executive director of Metro Chicago Hillel, talked to Brian Kilmeade this morning about his group’s effort to protest the SJP’s actions.
Irony: Saudi UN Rep Can’t Condemn Israel On Women’s Rights Without Hijab
NOT A JOKE: The Saudis are now investigating why one of its top female envoys spoke at the U.N. without a head scarf. Irony: Manal Radwan’s speech to the U.N. Security Council condemned Israel for violating women’s rights. Maybe Ms. Radwan will want to speak next time in the Israeli parliament, where she can condemn anyone without having to hide her hair or face.Saudis investigate UN envoy for speaking without veil (condemning Israel on women's rights)