Jews Dynamite HQ of Arabs’ High Command

By Eliav Simon, United Press, Jerusalem

Transcribed from the clipping

“Jerusalem, Jan. 4 (U.P.)—Jews dressed as Arabs slipped into all-Arab Jaffa today and blew up the crowded headquarters of the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab underground army Najada with a truckload of dynamite hidden in orange crates. An official British report said 14 Arabs were killed and about 90 wounded, 20 seriously. The British said many of the victims were Arab refugees, including a number of children, who had been sheltered temporarily in the building… Witnesses reported that two trucks and a limousine were involved. One truck was filled with dynamite or gelignite concealed in orange crates. Both trucks, it was said, drove up to the two-story well guarded headquarters building and parked. The Jews in the truck filled with explosives entered the other truck or the limousine and sped off. A few moments later Jaffa was shaken by the most violent explosion in Palestine since the King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem in 1946. The front of the building was torn off. All windows were smashed. Doors were buckled. Shops all around the headquarters were badly damaged. Barclay’s Bank next door caught fire. Besides children, the victims included members of some of the most prominent Arab families in Palestine. Clocks around the headquarters stopped at 12:40 P. M. (5:40 A. M., New York time), apparently the time the bombs went off. Scores of men dressed as Arabs but ‘suspected of being Jews’ were rounded up by Jaffa police for questioning.”

Context added by this archive

The New York tabloid version, by the same correspondent who filed the Haifa lull story in December. It drops the word dark-skinned, keeps Arab refugees, and its last sentence is scores of men rounded up for being suspected of being Jews. The subheadings are “Jaffa’s Wildest Day” and “Worst Since King David Blast.” It runs beside a Queens borough president trying to dynamite Robert Moses out of three jobs.

Cite this item

"Jews Dynamite HQ of Arabs’ High Command," Daily News, 5 January 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-119. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-119

Elsewhere in the archive

Jews Steal Into Jaffa, Set Blast Killing 14 Arabs and Injuring 90Times Herald · 5 January 1948 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
Jews Blow Up Arabs’ HotelPortland Press Herald · 5 January 1948 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
15 Arabs Die In Jaffa BlastTerre Haute Tribune · 5 January 1948 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
Ninety Wounded In Truck Blast At HeadquartersThe Beaumont Enterprise · 5 January 1948 · the same dispatch, carried by another paper
8 Die as Arabs, Jews Burn, Riot in PalestineDaily News · 3 December 1947 · the same newspaper
Tank kills Palestinian family of 20Daily News · 27 July 2014 · the same newspaper
JEWS TAKE TWO FORTS FROM ARABSMt. Vernon Register-News · 1948 · the same year
Jewish Reprisal Raids On Two Arab Villages Take Toll of 8 LivesThe News Journal · 1 January 1948 · the same year

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

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-1948-119.

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