Two Jews were killed at dawn today and nine injured, three of them seriously, when a group of Arabs attacked a party of settlers who had begun establishing a new colony in the Huleh area of northern Palestine, near Kfar Blum. Two Arabs were also killed and one injured.
The attack began when the Arabs fired at the settlers who had started ploughing the land and erecting buildings. A battle lasting more than an hour ensued and peace was not restored until the arrival of troops and police. The dead men, one of whom was a member of the Jewish settlement police, are Shlono Ben Yehuda, 38, and Itzhak Ben Tov, 18.
After the Arabs had been cleared from the land, which is owned by the Jewish National Fund, the settlers proceeded with their work and by early afternoon the colony had been completed. It is the seventeenth settlement to be established in the last month. It will be called “Neoch Mordechai.”
The 25 youths who are to remain in residence arrived before dawn in the company of fifty neighbors and 12 settlement policemen. They erected a barbed-wire stockade and one pre-fabricated house and were preparing to continue, when attacked. The Arabs, who claimed that the Jews had enclosed a small section of land which did not belong within the colony’s boundaries, opened fire without warning, killing Ben Yehuda and Ben Tov.
Using sticks and knives they then engaged in a hand-to-hand battle with the colonists until they were driven off, when they established themselves behind trees and rocks and continued sniping. They later withdrew further when the settlement police and several other Jews launched an attack.
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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.
