Two to One

Flung into a melon market near the Central Police Station on the waterfront at Haifa, Palestine's chief port, an exploding bomb last week killed 14 Arabs. A riot developed. Blood-hungry Moslems, convinced that a Jew had hurled the missile, began to pummel and stone Jewish passersby. Shots were fired into the predominantly Arab crowd, increased the casualties to 21 Arabs killed, 92 wounded; six Jews killed, eleven wounded.

For the land that is holy to the Christian, Jewish and Moslem world these latest, severest incidents of Palestine's long terror struck two novel notes. For the first time in recent history the Jews had definitely become the aggressors. In the casualties, they had come out ahead. For every Jew killed two Arabs met death. That young Palestinian Jews might one day decide to fight Arab terrorism with Jewish terrorism had long been feared by leading Zionists. Jews and the governing British alike believed last week that loose in Palestine was a band of young, venge ful Jews, popularly known as Revisionists, who were out to slit Arab throats in reprisal for the 20-year-old Arab hostility to the Jews making the predominantly Arabian Palestine their "homeland." For firing on an Arab bus last spring, a young Revisionist was hanged last month at Acre, calling out the name of Revisionist Leader Jabotinsky, and singing the party song as he mounted the scaffold.

At Jerusalem's busy Jaffa Gate last week a bomb thrown into a bus loaded with Arab fellaheen killed four, wounded 36. Police arrested three Jews, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl alleged to be the bomb-thrower by the Arabs. Two Arab peddlers were killed by a bomb in Jerusalem's Old City on the same spot where a Jewish father and son had been killed a few days before, a much-photographed lemonade vendor was killed in the new city. Near Tel Aviv an Arab taxicab was fired upon, with one killed, two wounded.

To these acts a stunned Arab population retaliated, in kind. From the window of a passing train a bomb was thrown into a Jewish crowd at Tel Aviv. Arab warriors fought with British soldiers on the Palestine frontier where 13 Arabs were killed. Near Tel Aviv two Jewish boy hikers were stabbed. Casualties in ten days of terrorism mounted to: Arabs, 45 killed, 145 wounded; Jews, 23 killed, 81 wounded.

Considered the money-dispensing leader of Arab terrorists, Haj Amin el Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, remained in exile in nearby French-mandated Lebanon. But in London the much respected Times blared forth against him: "It is impossible to expect an early termination of this tragic state while the Mufti is using French-mandated territory for his operations. . . . Meanwhile, young Jews, with their patience exhausted and with the obvious inability of the British to protect them, are having a fling at their Arab enemies! cost them what it may."

Revisionist Leader Vladimir Jabotinskv, Russian-born journalist, poet, essayist, who operates in Poland, preaches terrorism, believes in a militant Zionism to be defended by Jewish arms. Banned from Palestine, having left the World Zionist Organization three years ago, frequently called the Jewish fascist leader, Jabotinsky and his methods were decried by official Palestinian Jewry. Zionist-supporting Hebrew newspapers called for self-restraint, the chief rabbinate of Palestine condemned reprisals, the Jewish Agency for Palestine asked that Jews practice "discipline and constructive work" as the "best reply to Arab terrorism." Before London's House of Commons, Secretary of State for the Colonies Malcolm MacDonald praised the Jewish community for its long forbearance under trying circumstances.

Twelve-hour curfew was enforced in Jerusalem. Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The British battle-cruiser Repulse steamed into Haifa Harbor, landed marines. Eleven air squadrons stood by for bombing work. From Egypt arrived 1,600 British soldiers. With violence continuing, the British ordered the nth Hussars, an armored-car regiment, from Egypt to reinforce the 10,000 soldiers, police and constabulary.

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