Coexisting with the “Palestinians”

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bof Arabs. The situation in the outlying neighborhood of Bayit bV’Gan was especially critical. All the women and children were bevacuated and the defenders concentrated in homes near the bwoods. All the other homes were looted by Arabs from Ein bKerem, Malha, and Walaja. Three Jews—a student, David Vil- bnai; a guard, Mordechai Ben-Menashe; and a policeman, Gudel bYudelevitz—were killed.

bThe fighting continued for days. Saturday night, August b24, the first seventeen Jewish victims were taken from Hadassah bHospital to be buried. The British had provided only three po- blicemen, who were weary and nervous. The burial ceremony was bhurried as it came under attack from Arabs in Talpiot.

bThe next day, Arabs from Bet Tzefafa, Tzur Bahir, and bother villages overran, looted, and burned to the ground the set- btlement of Ramat Rahel on the southern border of Jerusalem. bNever had there been such a lengthy and widespread pogrom in bJerusalem. Coexistence was not working, despite the absence of ba “legitimate grievance” known as “the occupied territories.”

bJust outside Jerusalem, astride the road to Tel Aviv, sat the bsmall Jewish settlement of Motza. For decades its residents bthought that they had enjoyed the best of relationships with the bneighboring Arab village of Kolonia. On Saturday night, Au- bgust 24, as the Jews of Jerusalem were being buried, thirty vil- blagers from Kolonia, longtime acquaintances, “visited” the bhome of the Maklaf family (the house was the last one in the bsettlement). They slaughtered everyone, including eighty-five- byear-old Rabbi Zalman Shach, a guest for the Sabbath. The bwomen were first raped and then murdered, and the house was bburned down.

bThe small settlement of Hartuv was wiped off the face of the bearth. Friday night, August 23, as the men huddled together in bone house (the women and children had been evacuated), a mob bof Arabs from the nearby villages of Dir Aban, Eshtaol, and bTzar’a attacked. They looted everything in the spacious farm of bY. L. Goldberg. Cows, horses, wheat, furniture—everything bwas plundered by the crazed mob. At midnight, two British ar- bmored cars arrived to rescue the men from a massacre. The set- btlement was left for the mob, who literally razed it to the ground.

bDestruction was also the fate of Migdal Eder, between bBethlehem and Hebron, as well as Kfar Uria near Hartuv. The b