1948 Massacre of Medical Convoy to Mt. Scopus
1948 Massacre of Medical Convoy to Mt. ScopusUnknown

Robert Besser is a news editor who has worked in television and newspapers in the United States, Asia and the Middle East.

Seventy-eight years ago this week the 1948 Hadassah Convoy Massacre occurred in Jerusalem, killing 78 Jews.

On April 13, 1948 a convoy made up of two armored cars, two Magen David Adom ambulances, two buses, and four trucks headed towards Jerusalem’s Mt. Scopus. The Jewish passengers included doctors, researchers, nurses, patients and 14 members of the Palmach heading to resupply the isolated Hadassah Hospital.

Also on board was the director of Hadassah Hospital, Dr. Chaim Yassky, a world renowned opthamologist, as well as his wife.

In the months leading up to the War of Independence, vehicles containing Jews heading towards Mt. Scopus were routinely fired upon as they passed nearby Arab enclaves.

As the April 13 convoy passed beyond the current American Colony Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah, a mine was detonated at 09:35 by Mohammed Neggar, a tailor.

The explosion caused a crater to open in the road that was large enough for the lead armored car to fall into, disabling it.

Following the mine exploding, a score of Arab riflemen took aim at the convoy, while the noise of the shooting brought additional hundreds of armed Arabs swarming from nearby villages, as well as from within the Old City.

This, the opportunity to kill Jews, has been eternally embedded in the Arabs since their religion’s creation in 610 C.E., continuing through October 7, 2023, when we saw that the Arabs’ appetite for killing Jews remains insatiable.

On the day of the massacre, British Col. Jack Churchill led the Highland Light Infantry in Jerusalem, which was responsible for ensuring the safety of the two-and-a-half mile road leading to Mt. Scopus.

Arriving on the scene of the attack shortly after being notified, Churchill radioed British military headquarters in Jerusalem at 10:30 requesting permission to shell the surrounding homes that the Arabs were firing from. However, British military authorities denied Churchill permission to help, thus dooming the Jews.

“They don’t realize we’re going to have a tragedy here. If they don’t hurry, nobody’s going to get out alive," said Churchill.

A few vehicles managed to escape to Mt Scopus or back to Jerusalem.

Nearly alone and facing gunfire from the Arabs, Churchill went vehicle to vehicle pounding on doors and telling the Jews to flee to his military vehicles. But the Jews were too terrified to sprint across the open road, as by now hundreds of Arabs were shooting.

Almost six hours after the start of the ambush, the British at last authorized the military to restore order. By then, almost no Jews were alive.

And here is where the story deviates from being simple history. Four months earlier, in December 1947, the British plotted with Arab rioters to murder Jews in Jerusalem.

In response to the UN vote to partition Israel, the Arabs came screaming down Jaffa Rd. on December 2, plunging onto today’s Shlom Tsiyon HaMalka Street to beat and kill Jews and burn their stores after looting them. With the British police and army having been ordered to stand aside, the Arabs killed 184 Jews in Jerusalem and throughout Israel.

Also, during these same days Aleppo, Syria saw 75 dead Jews, Aden in South Yemen reported 82 Jewish dead, Damascus saw 13 Jews killed, including eight children, and over 100 Jews were killed in Libya in December-January.

Indeed, on the day of the December riots, Jewish newspaper reporters were told by British police and soldiers, who were standing down the street and watching the rioting Arabs, that they had received specific orders not to interfere.

Should the Jews have been surprised by the attitude of the British government? Sir Evelyn Barker, who was GOC, general officer commander-in-chief of British forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan from 1946 to 1947, wrote this about Jews in a letter to his Jerusalem lover, the Arab socialite Katie Antonius, “Yes I loathe the lot - whether they be Zionists or not. Why should we be afraid of saying we hate them? It’s time this damned race knewwhat we think of them - loathsome people."

And in an unguarded moment following the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel, which he [regrettably] escaped, Barker ordered that no British soldier may spend money in Jewish stores. "[We] will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them."

During the December attack the British refused to arrest even one Arab rioter, however they did arrest 16 Jewish Haganah members who arrived to protect the defenseless Jews.

Similarly in April, not one Arab murderer was arrested. However, as the massacre was taking place, the British announced they would fire upon any Haganah fighters who sought to save Jews.

Following the December 1947 riot, Palestine Post columnist David Courtney noted that for years the British had repeated that their departure from Israel would “set the region on fire." The question then is, when British troops were ordered not to interfere with Arab rioters in Israel as they killed Jews, was this coordinated by the Foreign Office in London to further British efforts to convince the world that ‘fires’ were breaking out and only the British could maintain order in Israel and the greater Middle East?

What do we know for sure? That in December 1947 and April 1948, the British ordered their police and soldiers to stand by and not interfere as Arabs killed nearly 200 Jews.

What else do we know? That not one Arab rioter was arrested, but only Jews were prevented from offering protection.

Is this a coincidence? I am afraid that life is too dangerous for Jews to have the luxury of believing in coincidences.

Regarding the Hadassah Convoy Massacre:

“Forty-eight hours before, in a bar he frequented, Neggar had been given the date and hour of the convoy's passage by a British officer. Moreover, the Britisher had told Neggar that if his men attacked the convoy, they would not be molested as long as they did not fire on British patrols," wrote Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre in their book O Jerusalem!

During those dark years, Menachem Begin repeatedly said that the Jews’ war in the lead-up to independence was equally to be waged against both the Arabs and the British.

And if we have any doubt that Begin was correct, I am afraid that the treacherous British clearly proved his point.

What is the lesson of these riots for today?

-We saw how the British would coordinate Arab rioting to further their national interest.

-We saw that in reality, there was no morality or sense of right and wrong that guided the British. There was only “realpolitik," which is defined as “politics based on practical and material factors, rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives."

It was also realpolitik when the British, French, Spanish and Italians recently denied the US landing rights at NATO bases in their countries during the ongoing war with Iran. And so it was realpolitik under the pathetic US President Joe Biden, who slowed the delivery of arms to Israel after October 7, ensuring the deaths of Jewish soldiers.

All of these years later, we still divert our eyes from the British obscenities of 1948, when the government in London aided the Arabs in the Hadassah Convoy Massacre and the December massacre of Jews throughout Israel.

But unlike the rest of the world, we do not forget that the British are responsible for the deaths of 78 Jewish doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members, and Palmach and Haganah fighters, who were killed by the Arabs on April 13, 1948, including 23 women.

And we do not forget that following the massacre, dozens of unidentified Jewish bodies, burned beyond recognition, were buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery.

In truth, we knew too well those British men …those stodgy officials who quietly met in London and Jerusalem to agree to further British national interests by directing the Arabs to kill Jews.

Those titled men in their stiff collars, sitting in the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister’s 10 Downing Street, the intelligence communities, and the embassies. Sitting in their London clubs, and in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel bar, quietly discussing how they would allow Arabs to kill Jews, as they sipped the finest scotch. All of those men who clearly learned nothing about ethics or morality during their ever-so-proper Eton and Harrows and Oxford educations.

Again, from O Jerusalem: “Inside Zvi Sinai’s armored car, the Jews’ sole defense against the hundreds of Arabs besieging the convoy, the situation was critical. The first man killed had been the first aid man. Then one of their machine guns had jammed. By now half the men inside the car were dead or wounded. The floor was covered with blood and bodies. The survivors, jumping from side to side to fire their sten guns from their car’s slits, stepped indiscriminately on them. "If they shouted, you knew they weren't dead," Sinai grimly recalled. At the rear end of the car, the only machine gun working was being fed by a man who had already lost half a hand. The wounded, with no one to care for them, sat propped up against the sides of the car, slowly bleeding to death."

“At 3:15, Dr Yasski turned to peer from the slit by the driver's seat of the ambulance. A hundred yards behind him he saw….great sheets of orange flame were sweeping over the two buses crowded with his friends and colleagues. He turned towards his wife. 'Shalom my dear,' he said. 'It's the end'.

“Then Yasski pitched forward and tumbled to the floor of the ambulance. His wife rushed to his side. The director of Hadassah Hospital was dead, He had been struck by a bullet passing through the ambulance slit at the moment he had turned to address his wife."

For months, David Ben Gurion worked feverishly with his colleagues at the Jewish Agency to secure approval from the new United Nations for the creation of Israel.

And now he fought another impossible battle, as he sought international help in arming the Jews for the upcoming war.

In truth, Ben Gurion could not have his mission sidetracked by exposing the British butchers of the Hadassah Convoy Massacre.

Which left it up to Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, Avraham Stern and so many others in the Irgun and Stern Gang to speak the truth.

Begin and Shamir knew that those officials of the so-called civilized world were the real enemies of the Jews, just as much as the Arabs were. And to this day, with their forever conferences, treaties, General Assemblies, Security Councils and European Union, they continue to work, through their calls for ceasefires, withdrawals, international courts and arms embargos, to ensure the destruction of Israel and the Jews.

Yet, among the most important weapons we have in battling these antisemites are not only guns and aircraft, but also our unconquerable Jewish will never to forget, which calls upon us to bless the memory of the 78 Jews who the British and their Arabs killed on the road to Mt. Scopus on April 13, 1948.