A Government representative today voiced the first public expression of regret over recent attacks against unoffending Jews by individual members of British forces. Replying to a protest by a delegation from the Jerusalem Jewish Community, District Commissioner Edward Keith-Roach said further incidents of the kind would not be tolerated, whether soldiers or police were involved.
Meanwhile, the Mea Shearim quarter of Jerusalem was put under 48-hour curfew in punishment for the slaying of an Arab there yesterday morning. Jewish cafes and cinemas in the district were ordered closed for two more nights.
Major-Gen. Richard N. O’Connor, in a statement explaining the punishment, said that a Jew had murdered the Arab in full view of other Jews who had not attempted to intervene and had subsequently refused to give evidence. “Lip service to non-violence is useless,” he declared, “if the Jewish community does not act to check its criminals or to assist the authorities.”
In a sharp reply to the statement, the Laborite newspaper Davar said the Government “which never showed a capacity to maintain order places the responsibility upon a people without the means of governing.”
The refugees who landed illegally from a Greek schooner near Naharia yesterday were revealed today to have been transferred for the most part from the Greek ship Assimi, which several weeks ago had put back to sea after being seized off the Palestine coast and held ten days in Haifa harbor. Their number is put at 245.
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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.
