With the streets of the cities gradually assuming a normal aspect, the cinemas reopened, people going about as usual until nine or ten o’clock in the evening and motor traffic between the principal centers practically normal, it is possible to survey the scene and say what went unharmed during the recent disaster.
Tel Aviv was never actually attacked, not a single house was damaged. Most of the inhabitants in the threatened quarters have returned to their homes.
In the orange groves in Judea and Sharon not a single tree was cut down in all the colonies. With the exception of Hulda and Ekron, which suffered partial damages, the colonies were unharmed. The Ekronites are returning home. The orphans’ village. Ben Shemen, was undamaged. The children, after spending a week in Tel Aviv, returned to the village.
Contrary to previous reports, no Jewish settlement in the Valley of Jezreel or the Jordan Valley was destroyed or burned. Ruttenberg’s power houses are working normally. The damage caused to Rosh Pinah and other Upper Galilean colonies was not severe. Resod Hamalah and Mishmar Hayarden near the Syrian frontier which were raided, looted and evacuated, were subsequently reoccupied No machinery of the Novomejsky plant at the Dead Sea was damaged and the workers have returned to their posts.
Most of the refugees are reoccupying their homes in the evacuated parts of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Sharon Plain, as well as at Acre and Hittin, and Mitzpah near Tiberias.
Gdud Ha’avodah, the settlement of the labor battalion on the outskirts of Jerusalem near Talpioth, returned after losing one man and about £5,000 worth of property. Eleven houses were completely looted and one house was burned. Talpioth, which was evacuated, is gradually being reoccupied. (Continued on Page 4)
Mekor Chaim, another Jerusalem suburb, was fired.
In Motza a few houses were burned, including the one where the Makleff family was murdered and burned. All the other houses were looted. All buildings were destroyed or burned at Hulda. The settlers have not yet returned there. In addition to the school house at Hartuv being burned, several houses were looted. The inhabitants have not returned.
Kastinia, an isolated point in the south, was severely damaged. The huts of the girls farm on the outskirts of Haifa were burned Shops and houses in the Jewish quarter of Haifa were looted, while a large estate on the Haifa Bay was burned and plundered. The damage here alone amounts to more than £15,000. In the following colonies in the Valley of Jezreel the granaries were wantonly fired: Beth Alpha, Mishmar Ha’emek, Jedda, Nachlath Jacob and Geva, while many head of cattle were stolen from the colony Mescha.
The damage to Beisan, Safed and Hebron is already known.
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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.
