(Author: Glenda Woolf, Vol. 78, #1, Summer 2023)
At the age of thirteen Mordecai Chertoff spent a year – 1935-6 – with his family in Palestine. After his return to the US, he went on to receive his B.A. at the City College of New York and then studied for ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He had almost completed his studies when he left New York for Palestine in 1947. Because the British allowed very few Jews to enter the country, he came on a student visa with the avowed intention of studying at the Hebrew University. He became a citizen and stayed through 1948.
While in Palestine/Israel many letters passed between Chertoff and his family. It is on these that his son Daniel Chertoff subsequently based his book Palestine Posts, An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel.[1] They provide a unique picture of events as they unfolded during those fraught times.
When Chertoff arrived in 1947, his previous experience in writing and publishing enabled him very quickly to obtain work on the Palestine Post. In a letter to his family on 23 March, 1947, he wrote: “…. Working as Foreign editor…...going to the office at 7.00 pm…to read and correct… what has already been written…and to … see the paper through two editions.. finishingwork at 2.00 am”(p60).
There is so much in the book that it is difficult to select what to include and what to leave out. The letters reflect the widespread Arab violence, British inability or unwillingness to deal with it, massive official repression of Jewish interests, and violence by the British towards the Jewish populace – on an official and unofficial level. In the midst of all these problems, the letters tell again and again of the bravery of the Jews of Palestine as they worked to preserve a sense of normality, of ordinary life.
Since it is impossible to cover every aspect, only a few selected topics will be portrayed. They include the visit of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), the hanging of the two British sergeants, the UN Partition vote, the death of Alter Rechnitz, the Battle on the road to Jerusalem, the attack on the doctors’ convoy to Hadassah Hospital and the construction of the Burma Road to Jerusalem.
UNSCOP
When the British referred the Problem of Palestine to the United Nations, they appointed a fact-finding committee of eleven members (UNSCOP). The committee was in Palestine from 4-17 July. They met Jewish representatives and toured the country, accompanied by members of the press, among them Mordecai Chertoff.
The delegation came at a tense time, after the British hanging of four members of the notorious underground group, the Irgun, in secret, in the middle of the night (p80). Although opposed to the Irgun, Mordecai was disgusted by the behavior of the British:
May 7, 1947
… And as far as suing the British gov’t for according to the illegal White Paper – don’t be naïve my dear brother. What about making laws retroactive (which the British did after the Gruner execution) and any of the other items – they label it all as “security”- and there you are. Curfew, dispossesses from homes, turning half of Jerusalem into a fortress – are all these legal? (p84)
At hearings Chertoff, with a number of other Jewish reporters, listened as Jewish activists spoke to the delegation, and accompanied them as they toured the country:
July 15, 1947.
……. UNSCOP: I’ve travelled with them. I’ve heard Benny, Chaim, Chertok, Magnes and the communists testify…. the least we will get from them is “kadoches” on toast, the most – a binational state…. Only a few Jews stand to benefit from the enquiry – we journalist who re-saw the country at their expense, riding in comfortable ’47 Hudson’s and Studebakers. But that seems silly now with martial law in Netanya (p117).
Mordecai’s pessimism about UNSCOP’s deliberations will prove to be misplaced. In their final report, published on 1 September, the main recommendation was to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab States – exactly what the Zionists had hoped for (p119).
The Sergeants affair
The sergeants’ affair began when “The Irgun captured two British Army Intelligence Corps NCO’s…… The British had recently captured …. three Irgun members…. during the Acre prison break of May 4…They had been tried and convicted of illegal possession of arms…. these crimes carried the death penalty…. The Irgun threatened to kill the two sergeants …. if the death penalty [against the Irgun members] was carried out…. The men were executed in the early hours of the 29th of July and buried on the 30th………Later that same day, the booby-trapped bodies of the two British sergeants were found hanging in a Eucalyptus grove near Netanya” (p124).
Mordecai (30 July 1947) describes his:
…. dismay that the Irgun had killed the two, that one of whom is really a friend…. two guys whose mother’s milk was still on their chins….. the latest rumor is a 2-hour “spree” to be allowed the soldiers in which to retaliate. (pp125-6)
The vote for partition
In a long letter, (p.182-8) giving the build-up of tension as the United Nations votes are relayed over the radio, sitting in the Palestine Post office, the moment of victory is described…
30 November 1947
…thirty-three [votes]: a great joyous cry and silence, the silence of the moment we’ve awaited for two thousand years. And in the narrow smoke-filled room, heavy with tension and oppressed concern one long sigh of relief and fumbling for cigarettes and pipes. We left the room, each to his work, and within fifteen minutes the first paper went to print. …..
……we heard a tremendous roar from Ben Yehuda Street “David Melech Yisroel chai chai vekayam” and the roar is repeated again and again from the throats of the youth of Jerusalem banding together in a huge hora around an armored police car. (p.184-5)
Chertoff then went with others from the office to join the crowd. People swarming to the Jewish Agency building……and suddenly they started chanting “get a flag, get a flag “and suddenly the blue and white appeared on the balcony and a jubilant fresh “Hatikvah” which we had never dared to hope for and never anticipated erupting from five thousand mouths. And after that “Golda, Golda, Golda…” and she appears and speaks simply and touchingly (pp185-6).
……soon I will go to bed after two days without any sleep at all. But I am not tired. The great miracle stands before me and robs me of sleep –we must be worthy of it (p188).
The elation of that night was soon followed by days of danger and sorrow. The Arabs continued their attacks. The British remained unchanged, showing no regard for the Jewish inhabitants of the land.
“It is clear that Mordecai sees the British as an enemy of the promised Jewish state and judging by their actions, it’s hard to disagree. As he describes, they gave active assistance to the Arabs who were attacking Palestinian Jews and continued their draconian policy of refusing entry to Jewish refugees despite the fact that there would soon be a Jewish state”(p212).
In spite of the Arab atrocities, as noted above, Chertoff was against the Jewish Irgun random attacks on Arabs. In an article he sent to his family, dated, 15 January 1948, he writes (pp222-3):
From a purely military point of view what the Sternists and Irgunists have been doing these last months is almost worthless: the number of dead Arabs will not determine the outcome of the struggle………When the normal human cry for vengeance rises in your throat remember the forty one Jews who died when the I.Z.L. [Irgun] tossed a bomb in the Haifa Refineries and killed six Arabs. Did we gain militarily by those six deaths?
………..The dissidents are daring – but why shouldn’t they be: THEY OPERATE FROM BASES MADE SAFE BY THE HAGANA (ibid.)
Death of Alter Rechnitz (225-232)
Shortly thereafter, the death of Alter Reichnitz, a young man courting his friend Anne Strauss, was an intensely personal matter for Chertoff.
In an article on 20 January 1948, the heart-breaking story unfolds…
….Anne had visited the kibbutz the previous Friday and on Sunday morning, together with her friend she boarded the three trucks that were going in convoy to Jerusalem with crates of fruit and cans of milk. When they were attacked by Arabs….. The driver of the truck they were in was hit and lost control of his vehicle which skidded into a ditch…The young man shielded Anne with his body…. He saved her life and gave his own. (p228)
The bombing of the Palestine Post building, carried out by a Christian Arab and two British army deserters, is graphically told and so is the terrible fate of young Jewish soldiers who were arrested by the British and turned over to the Arabs in the Old city to be brutally murdered (p252). A little later Chertoff writes of the terrible death toll resulting from the Ben Yehuda Street bombing on 24 February 1948 by two British deserters (pp261-3).
Battle of the Roads (p295)
In a front page article, on 25 March 1948, entitled BATTLE OF THE ROADS… the fight to open the roads is described by Chertoff.
The battle of the roads was fought in Palestine yesterday when the Haganah launched a country wide campaign against Arab traffic in reprisal for recent attacks on Jewish vehicles… At the same time, Arabs ambushed convoys on roads near Jerusalem and in Emek Jezreel. The death toll in these actions was 36 Arabs and 17 Jews killed (p295).
After this introduction, the full horror of the day’s events are recalled:
………..a convoy from Jerusalem to Atarot came under continuous attack on its journey and
when the convoy could go no further due to the Arab mob surrounding it…… …Survivors of the massacre reported that there was a police armored car near the scene, but that at no time did it interrupt its signaling…….to help the stranded party (p296).
Help only arrived about an hour later. In a letter to his sister, Mordecai gives an even more detailed and terrifying account of what occurred. As if that was not sufficiently sad news, he tells also of the bomb that exploded in the Jewish Agency building (p300).
The problems on the roads continued and Jerusalem was running short of food. Israel launched Operation Nachson, “whose goal was to open the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem” (p302). The Haganah attacked and took over All-Qastal, the fortress controlling a key highway, on 4 April (p305).
In another operation, the Irgun went to take over Deir Yassin. “The Irgun and Lehi ultimately succeeded in taking over the village, but at a very high cost to both sides” (p310). Since what took place there is hotly disputed, let it be mentioned here that “A recently meticulously researched analysis of the events…….by Professor Eliezer Tauber, [which] emphasizes the consistency of both Jewish and Arab combatants, and concludes that though there were substantial civilian casualties, there was no massacre, no rape” (p311).
Attack on the Doctors convoy (p313)
On April 13 the Arabs attacked a thirteen-vehicle convoy of doctors, nurses and patients on the way to the Hadassah Hospital ”whose only access was via a narrow road through the Arab neighborhood” (p.313). The one British officer who tried to help, Major Jack Churchill, was inexplicably forbidden from using effective weaponry against the Arab attackers by his superiors……The shooting started at ten fifteen in the morning.”
In the afternoon, two British convoys passed by, and later two army ambulances, but no help was given. (p314). “Seventy-eight Jews were murdered that day…… (with) twenty-eight survivors” (p314).
A long letter to his sister (pp315-320), ends with …. We, Europeans, who have accepted the “rule” of International warfare, too often act under the assumption that the Arab also has – and so we lose our doctors and nurses and expose our ambulance drivers in a criminally neglectful way. Someday we will learn that there is no sentiment in war. I hope we are not too late (p320).
After the declaration of the State and the departure of the British, Arab violence intensified. The Jordanian army was led by British General, John Bagot Glubb and other British officers. The situation in Jerusalem was precarious: the city was rapidly running out of food and water. The murders on the road to Jerusalem continued, in spite of Jewish military action. Ben Gurion ordered the army to find a by-pass road.
The Burma Road (pp371-382)
Mordecai travelled to Tel Aviv staying with the Palmach unit tasked with finding a new route between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Once this operation was declassified it became the focus of several articles:
June 22, 1948 . “The Burma Road” story, By Mordecai S. Chertoff
It began with three men on foot, moving down through the Judean Hills in darkness to the thunder of cannon and the crack of rifles in Latrun. Today it is an unpaved road over which lorries climb towards Jerusalem from Tel Aviv with their loads of supplies and solidarity. (p377)
……. The existence of the road is no longer secret. It is the source of infinite satisfaction to the men of “Haportzim” who first established it as a possibility and to the Israeli army and the Palmach units who protected them and brought through the early convoys. (p380).
There is much personal information in the letters home that has not been covered here. There is talk of friendships, of touring the country, of future plans. However, what is not written about during the time of the British Mandate was his membership in the Jewish army, the Haganah, necessarily kept secret, since it was considered by the British to be an illegal organization. However, there are some hints to his role in the organization.
11 January 1948
Unhappily, it’s just the stuff you would like to read that I mustn’t write; only once it has been in the newspaper I’m permitted to talk; until then I mustn’t. (p211)
Is the following also another hint in a letter home on 18 February 1948?
I’m afraid there is no question of my leaving now even for a visit. (p255)
During his two years in Israel, Mordecai did take the time to tour the country.
Wednesday night, June 4, 1947
Dear Family, …It’s a beautiful country all right……. We left Sunday morning in Roy’s46 Chrysler and nipped over to Netanya, the most beautiful beach I’ve even swum….at…then went up to Kfar Vitkin…and form there we went on to Zichron Yacov…. …. From there to Nahariya…
From there to Har Meron….From Meron to Safed and then to Yesod Hamaaleh, a very old Moshava…. (p.95)
The letter tells of who they met, of the beauty of the countryside, and lists many other places they visited including Kfar Blum, Kfar Giladi, Merhavia via Kinnereth, Degania, Beit Alfa (pp95-7).
These letters and articles, written by a brave and talented young man, show as little other literature of the time does the true extent of British activities, both official and unofficial against the Jewish populace, harming them, rather than protecting them. They show also, the day-to-day bravery and resilience of the Jews as they continue their fight for their homeland.
Because Mordecai Chertoff was a reporter, and also a member of the Haganah, his articles and his letters home give a detailed, and graphic picture of events at that time. The full horror of the Arab and British enmity is clearly seen as well as the bravery of the Jewish populace as they struggle, under horrific conditions, to maintain normal life.
Glenda Woolf, a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs, is a novelist and essayist whose articles and stories on Jewish themes have appeared in Jewish publications worldwide. Her novels, published under the name Gita Gordon, include South African Journeys (2002), Flashback (2007), Mystery in the Amazon and Scattered Blossoms (both 2008) and Guest House (2012). Her latest novel, Full Circle, is reviewed by Angela Miller-Rothbart in the current latest issue of Jewish Affairs.
