Standard Speaker · Hazleton, Pennsylvania · 18 May 1948
CP-1948-073
Report 500 Arabs Drowned When Jews Opened Power Dam And Flooded A Plain
Haganah Fighters Drove Into Acre, Arab Seaport North of Haifa
The Associated Press, Haifa
Transcribed from the clipping
“HAIFA, Palestine, May 17 (AP)—A Jewish source said tonight that up to 500 Arab soldiers were drowned when the Jews opened a hydro-electric dam and flooded a plain south of the Sea of Galilee. The source said Arab troops with tanks and heavy equipment were trapped in a rush of swirling water unleashed from a dam near Deganya on the southern tip of the Biblical Sea.
Some of the Arab tanks were mired in the muddy torrents… Haganah fighters drove into Acre today, the old Arab seaport city 12 miles north of Haifa. Their commander said an estimated 4,000 Arabs were penned in the ancient walled area… Acre is just outside of the territory of Israel as defined in United Nations partition plan.”
Context added by this archive
A banner headline carrying a figure attributed to one unnamed source on one side. The story says soldiers; the headline says Arabs.
A correction
The presentation captions this scan 18 May and the other on its slide 16 January. The datelines are the other way round, and both records follow the datelines.
Cite this clipping
"Report 500 Arabs Drowned When Jews Opened Power Dam And Flooded A Plain," Standard Speaker, 18 May 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-073. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-073
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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
- Jews Blow Up Military Post Of Jaffa ArabsMorning Advocate · 5 January 1948
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- Jews Dynamite HQ of Arabs’ High CommandDaily News · 5 January 1948
- 15 Arabs Die In Jaffa BlastTerre Haute Tribune · 5 January 1948
- All 334 clippings from the 1940s →
In these collections
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-1948-073.
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