One of Palestine’s most prominent moderate Arab leaders, Hassan Sidky Bey Dajani, was found dead this morning, while three Jews and three other Arabs died, and five Jews and two British soldiers were wounded in continuing disorders.
Dajani’s bullet-riddled body was discovered in an Arab village near Hebron after he had been kidnaped last night while traveling to Jaffa from Jerusalem, from where his wife had left for Cairo as a member of a Palestinian delegation, headed by the American-born Mrs. Mathilda Maghonnon, to attend a Pan-Arab Congress opening Saturday.
a member of Jerusalem’s Municipal Council, a well-known lawyer and “unofficial ambassador to Jerusalem” of Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, Dajani had opposed the extremists headed by the now-exiled ex-mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini. He had formerly cooperated with the Jews, but broke off these relations because of terrorist threats.
“Things have come to a pretty pass,” he recently remarked to a J.T.A. correspondent, “when I, Dajani, am afraid to walk down the street.”
A Yemenite Jew working in a grove near Ness Ziona was shot dead from ambush by an Arab band. A detachment of Jewish supernumeraries rushed to the spot and engaged the band. Gabriel Daniel was killed and Joseph Wilner, 25, of Poland, and Herzl Yakar, 21, a native of Palestine, was injured. Casualties among the bandsmen were not immediately ascertained.
The third Jewish fatality was Shaul Menashe, an Oriental Jew, who died of wounds suffered when he was attacked near Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate. The Arab victims were two Moroccan Moslems, whose severed heads were found this morning near the Jaffa Gate, and another Arab who was found dead in the Old City quarter. A Jewish-owned truck was fired upon north of Jerusalem and its driver, Nissan Benjamini, 28, was reported missing.
Three Jews and two British soldiers were wounded in attacks in the Haifa area. Two Arabs each threw a bomb at a truck carrying Jewish workers employed by the military authorities in Haifa, severely wounding Zev Wolkowinski, 24, and David Altman, 23, both immigrants from Poland, and slightly injuring Gustav Steinhardt, 28, an immigrant from Germany. Lieutenant Rooke of the Royal West Kent regiment was slightly injured by shooting while on night patrol in Haifa. A British sapper was wounded when a land mine exploded on the Haifa-Lydda line.
Fire set by Arab terrorists destroyed Palestine’s biggest tobacco factory, Maspero Freres in Jaffa, valued at more than $750,000 and owned by the British American Tobacco Company. The Maspero Company, which is not Jewish, recently completed a second factory in the Jewish city of Tel Aviv employing Jewish labor exclusively and had negotiated for the affixing on its cigarette packages of the “Kofer Hayishub” Jewish self-tax stamps for defense. Bandits uprooted 8,000 trees in a Jewish grove near Ashdad and 3,000 in the Nashashibi grove near Yidna.
A military court sentenced to death three Arabs who were captured two weeks ago with guns in their possession after an engagement in which a police inspector was killed.
A scheduled meeting of the Jewish National Council to discuss the security situation and the political threat to the Jewish homeland’s future was postponed for a few days. Moshe Shertok, Zionist political chief, indefinitely postponed a scheduled trip to London.
As the country continued in the grip of terrorism, the authorities announced the institution of voluntary registration by identity cards to be issued to male inhabitants 16 years old or more. The cards, it was explained, are intended to assist holders in their relations with the civil and military authorities.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
