Palestine Post Bombing

Palestine Post Bombing - The Palestine Post was a Jewish Palestinian newspaper that had been established in 1932. The Palestine Post building also housed the offices of several other periodicals. On February 1, 1948, slightly after 11:00 PM, the building and adjacent ones were bombed by what was apparently the first car bomb in history, prepared by Palestinian Arab terrorists during the first phase of the Israel War of Independence. (Palestine War of 1948 Nazi trained Arab explosives expert Fawzi el Kutub prepared the device.

It was the third Arab terrorist bombing in Jerusalem that day, though the others had apparently caused no injuries. Just after 11 PM, Abou Khalil Genno and two British deserters, Eddie Brown and Peter Cameron, parked a stolen British police van loaded with half a ton of TNT in front of the Palestine Post building. They left the truck. Genno, following in a Vauxhall, went over to the truck and lit the fuse with a cigarette. One person was killed and many were injured in the bombing. The offices of the paper were in shambles, and the presses destroyed. Adjacent buildings, including a clinic, suffered damage as well. Foreign correspondents on the scene helped evacuate wounded.

The linotypist was injured and would lose an eye. Nonetheless, using borrowed equipment, a two-sided one page edition was put out the next day. See Palestine Post Bombing for a clipping from this edition.

The "Column One" editorial began, "The truth is louder than TNT and burns brighter than the flames of arson."

The same Fawzi Kutub, and the same British deserters, who were not caught by the British, carried out the subsequent Ben Yehuda Street Bombing.

Collins, Larry, and Lapierre, Dominique, O Jerusalem!, Pan Books, N.Y. 1973, pp 161-163.

Porath, Zipporah, Letters from ý Jerusalem 1947-1948, AACI, 2005.

'H - ('het) a guttural sound made deep in the throat. To Western ears it may sound like the "ch" in loch. In Arabic there are several letters that have similar sounds. Examples: 'hanukah, 'hamas, 'haredi. Formerly, this sound was often represented by ch, especially in German transliterations of Hebrew. Thus, 'hanukah is often rendered as Chanuka for example.

ch - (chaf) a sound like "ch" in loch or the Russian Kh as in Khruschev or German Ach, made by putting the tongue against the roof of the mouth. In Hebrew, a chaf can never occur at the beginning of a word. At the beginning of a word, it has a dot in it and is pronounced "Kaf."

ah- used to represent an a sound made by the letter hey at the end of a word. It is the same sound as a. Haganah and Hagana are alternative acceptable transliterations.

th - (taf without a dot) - Th was formerly used to transliterate the Hebrew taf sound for taf without a dot. However in modern Hebrew there is no detectable difference in standard pronunciation of taf with or without a dot, and therefore Histadruth and Histadrut, Rehovoth and Rehovot are all acceptable.

q- (quf) - In transliteration of Hebrew and Arabic, it is best to consistently use the letter q for the quf, to avoid confusion with similar sounding words that might be spelled with a kaf, which should be transliterated as K. Thus, Hatiqva is preferable to Hatikva for example.

Palestine Post Bombing - Definition