The State Journal-Register · Springfield, Illinois · 16 March 1948
CP-1948-064
Haganah Invades 4 Arab Villages
Transcribed from the clipping
“Jerusalem, March 15 (INS)—Haganah threw strong forces today into a series of punitive expeditions against Arab villages from which snipers have been shooting up Jewish highway traffic. Four Arab villages have been invaded by the Jewish militiamen since Saturday in scattered parts of Palestine.
Theses attacks, coupled with Arab attacks on Jewish settlements, helped make last week the bloodiest of the Arab-Jewish partition war. A total of 420 persons were killed or wounded in the seven days ending at midnight Sunday. This brought the number of casualties, since the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, to 5445, including 1970 dead.
A British constable was killed and two soldiers wounded today when a booby trap went off in a Jewish house in Haifa.”
Context added by this archive
Two months before the state was declared, a news agency printed the word for it: punitive expeditions. Not reprisals, not operations. The villages are four, and not one of them is named.
The people in them are not counted either: the casualty figures in the next paragraph are for the whole week and the whole war, so a reader learns that 420 were killed or wounded somewhere and cannot tell how many of them were in the four villages. Named in the clipping: a British constable. “Theses” is the paper’s spelling.
Cite this clipping
"Haganah Invades 4 Arab Villages," The State Journal-Register, 16 March 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-064. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-064
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- Jewish Reprisal Raids On Two Arab Villages Take Toll of 8 LivesThe News Journal · 1 January 1948
- Palestine Blasts Rip Arab OfficesThe New York Times · 5 January 1948
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1948-064.
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