Tension Rises in Galilee As 5 Jews Are Murdered in New Attacks

Three Jews were slain from ambush early today, making five Jewish fatalities in the Galilee in 24 hours — the largest toll of lives in any one day since the sanguinary disorders of 1936.

Gedalia Geler, 36-year-old Polish Jew, and Moshe Zalman ben Sassoon, 33, also of Poland, were killed as they left the Jewish settlement of Yavniel in the Upper Galilee for Beit Gan. Later, Yehuda Eliovitz, son of a Yavniel colonist, was killed in the same place.

From the distance Yavniel settlers saw Eliovitz struggling with Arabs, but they escaped, leaving behind a gun. Eliovitz was 28 years old and born in the Galilee.

Earlier, two shepherds, Shlomo Gafni, 28-year-old Polish Jew, and Hanoch Metz, 21-year-old German Jew, were found dead near Nazareth and their flock of 400 sheep gone. Police, suspecting Arab brigandage, announced a $5,000 reward for capture of the murderers.

Gafni and Metz, grazing the flock, were missed when another shepherd went to relieve them. An alarm was raised at the nearby Jewish colony of Kfar Hahoresh. Metz’s body was later found battered and stabbed, and Gafni’s body a kilometer away, bearing knife wounds.

Aaron Moladi, a worker in a Jewish grove at Kfar Saba, was stabbed. Shots were fired at Kiryat Samuel, Tiberias and Mishmar Hayarden.

The new violence raised tension in the Galilee area, especially in the vicinity of the Dagania colony. The murders followed a conference of Arab agitators held near the Palestine-Syria frontier.

High Commissioner Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope will return by airplane from a leave in London on March 19, the Palestine Post reported.

Army post at Haifa costing $2,500,000 were revealed, the Havas News Agency reported. Construction will be started in the Bet Galim sector next April, when work on the enlargement of the port is scheduled to begin, it was stated.