| Revision as of 02:29, 4 December 2006 editAmoruso (talk | contribs)13,357 edits it is WP:RS actually.← Previous edit | Revision as of 05:19, 4 December 2006 edit undoNielswik (talk | contribs)1,872 edits sources did not attribute these claims to the thesis; partisans are not RSNext edit → | ||
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
| A phone conversation about the battle was intercepted by the ], but they did not pass the information to the Haganah.<ref name="ben-yaakov"/>. After no word of the 35 had been received for a long time and wounded Arabs started arriving at Hebron, the British dispatched a platoon of the Royal Sussex Regiment to investigate. After threatening and exhorting the village mukhtars and notables, the British were led to the site of the battle where they found the bodies of the 35. Many of the bodies had been mutilated, some beyond recognition.<ref name="jp"/> | A phone conversation about the battle was intercepted by the ], but they did not pass the information to the Haganah.<ref name="ben-yaakov"/>. After no word of the 35 had been received for a long time and wounded Arabs started arriving at Hebron, the British dispatched a platoon of the Royal Sussex Regiment to investigate. After threatening and exhorting the village mukhtars and notables, the British were led to the site of the battle where they found the bodies of the 35. Many of the bodies had been mutilated, some beyond recognition.<ref name="jp"/> | ||
| According to the thesis done by Yochanan ben Yaakov, there's strong evidence to suggest that some of the soldiers were murdered while being injured and already captured. <ref> Summmary of thesis in Hebrew , {{check}} </ref> These allegations of the killing of disarmed soldiers (first left with stones, then with nothing) were also told at the time <ref> Katz, Shmuel (1968) ''Days of fire'' W.H. Allen ISBN 0491002319, p. 369 </ref> while photos of mutilated bodies were spread, some of them allegdly still alive. | |||
| The story of the 35 was immortalised in an emotional poem "Here Our Bodies Lie" written by ]. | The story of the 35 was immortalised in an emotional poem "Here Our Bodies Lie" written by ]. | ||
Revision as of 05:19, 4 December 2006
The Convoy of 35 (or the Lamed Hey which means "thirty five" in Hebrew numerals) refers to 35 soldiers of the Haganah who were killed while attempting to resupply by foot the Jewish Gush Etzion kibbutzim on January 16, 1948, after a number of convoys had been attacked following the 1947 UN Partition Plan of the British Mandate of Palestine.
On the 16 January, 1948, the convoy of 35 was sent by the Jewish Haganah underground army to resupply the four blockaded kibbutzim of Gush Etzion (the Etzion bloc), south of Jerusalem, following the Arab attack of January 14. Thirty-eight Haganah personnel set out on foot from Hartuv at 11 p.m. on January 15, commanded by Danny Mas. They took a long detour around the police station at Taggart Fort to avoid detection by the British, but this took them close to a large training base erected by Abd el-Kader Husseini.. Three were sent back because one man sprained an ankle, and the other two accompanied him. All 35 were killed outside the Arab village of Surif.
The fate of the 35 was reconstructed from British and Arab reports. The six hours of night that remained did not suffice for the trip. About an hour before the convoy reached their destination, it became light. Not far from the village of Surif, near Gush Etzion, they were detected by an Arab shepherd or by two women (accounts differ) who hurried to sound the alarm. A large number of armed villagers from Surif and other communities gathered to block the way. The battle had two stages, four hours apart, with hundreds of Arabs from the training base taking part. The last soldier was apparently killed at about 4:30 p.m.
A phone conversation about the battle was intercepted by the Irgun, but they did not pass the information to the Haganah.. After no word of the 35 had been received for a long time and wounded Arabs started arriving at Hebron, the British dispatched a platoon of the Royal Sussex Regiment to investigate. After threatening and exhorting the village mukhtars and notables, the British were led to the site of the battle where they found the bodies of the 35. Many of the bodies had been mutilated, some beyond recognition.
The story of the 35 was immortalised in an emotional poem "Here Our Bodies Lie" written by Haim Gouri.
Identification of 12 of the bodies
After the Israeli War of Independence, when the bodies of the Convoy of 35 were returned to Israel, the IDF Chief Rabbinate couldn't verify the identity of 12 bodies. The problem of the identification was due to the mutilation of the bodies. To solve the problem, Rabbi Aryeh Levin was handled the task to perform the 'goral hagra' (hagra = Vilna Gaon), a process in which the reader of the Torah is led to certain verses which give hints as to the subjects in question. This ceremony is unique and rarely performed. This was the best-known example of its use.
References
- ^ Arieh O'Sullivan, A Magnificent Disaster, Jerusalem Post, Jan 16, 1998
- ^ Newspaper interview with Yohanan Ben-Yaakov
- Raz, Simcha (1976). A Tzaddik in Our Time: The life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin. Spring Valley, N.Y.:Philipp Feldheim Inc. ISBN 0-87306-986-2