Jerusalem Embattled: A Diary of the City Under Siege

This diary of Harold Levin which covers the Arab siege of Jerusalem during Israel's War of Independence in 1948 is invaluable to anyone studying this conflict. This document tells in in intimate and human detail the harsh and often deadly conditions endured by the 100 000 Jews of Jerusalem during the 90 day siege. Including starvation, cramped conditions and hourly Arab shelling. Covers the period when the Mufti of Jerusalem's Arab Liberation Army besieged the city and later the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq. The author was both a journalist covering the conflict and a Jewish resident of Jerusalem, the city that has had a Jewish majority since 1860. Levin was also in charge of the underground broadcasting service of the Haganah in Jerusalem, during part of the siege. He witnessed first hand the valiant military operations of the Jews of the Land of Israel at this time, and traveled along the 'Burma Road' built secretly , across the mountains at night by the Jews, in an attempt to break the siege. The human element and the experiences and stories of the author's friends and the men, women and children of Jerusalem is covered extensively in this journal. It is interesting in the light of today's conflict to read of photographs of 50 dead Jews being circulated by the Arabs outside the YMCA and pinned up outside the YMCA building (The YMCA today are still a heavily pro-Arab and anti-Jewish organization). We read of the splendid self-sacrifice of the Jews of Jerusalem, as children not yet of age for the Haganah marched out after school to help build defense works. The author quotes a woman in Jerusalem saying during the deadliest period of the siege "I used to weep because my children in Jerusalem were hungry. Now I pray to G-D that they may be left alive to continue feeling hungry. The author writes of the wretched condition of Jewish evacuees expelled from Arab countries, who had recently reached Jerusalem. He also writes how a Haganah girl captured by the Arab Liberation Army witnessed how she was told by a German officer in the Arab Legion, who told her the Legion would kill every Jewish woman and child in 'Palestine', sentiments still echoed today as violently as ever by the likes of Iran's genocidal President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the terror networks of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Many former Nazi officers served with the Arab Liberation Army, and passed their anti-Semitic poison on to the new Arabs they now served with. The author speaks of Arab demands that in return for a ceasefire the Jewish State must be cancelled and euphemistically observed that this would be like trying to push a chicken back into an egg. He also muses on world indifference to the plight of the Jews in the Holy Land when they were threatened, which is interesting to compare to the hysterical outrage we see from the world whenever the Jews of Israel succeed in defending themselves. We also reads much of the shameful actions of

As the subtitle suggests, this 1950 book provides readers with the personal diary kept by Harry Levin from March 25, 1948 through July 18, 1948. That year included Israel's War of Independence, when seven Arab nations attacked the fledgling Jewish state with the intention of driving her and her 600,000 Jewish citizens "into the sea." Levin then lived in the central, walled city in Jerusalem, and endured the legendary siege, after which the Jewish people were driven out and banned. In the introduction, Levin's diary, he writes, tells the siege story, from his point of view, as a Jew who experienced it, and he notes that his attitude colors the account, which for him is part of the Jewish people's "vivid and tenacious `remembering Zion'..." Levin recorded his feelings at the time, and changed or added nothing afterwards. Levin, previously well-known in England as the Middle East correspondent of the Daily Herald, was in 1950 appointed as Israel's Charge d'Affairs to Australia and New Zealand. His diary recorded the longest siege of Jerusalem since the Crusades, when the Arabs of Palestine and later seven Arab armies, surrounded and embattled the spiritual and physical capital of the Jewish world. He tells here of the grim conditions endured by 100,000 courageous souls during a 90-day period during which they were sealed off from the rest of the world, their entire city transformed into a front line. The South African-born Levin, wedded to a Czech artist, tells of the siege as he, his wife and a student couple living with them, experienced it on Ibn Ezra Street. This is a fabulous account, must reading for all scholars, writers and researchers on the Middle East. --Alyssa A. Lappen