The Palestine post, (which can now be read online thanks to its successor the Jerusalem Post and previous sponsor Tel Aviv University,) was an English-language daily newspaper,established in Jerusalem in 1932 as part of a Zionist-Jewish initiative. The target audience was English readers in Palestine - British Mandate officials, local Jews and Arabs, Jewish readers abroad, tourists, and Christian pilgrims. It published the results of English cricket and football matchs as well as covering local sport including games played by the British Palestine Police and the British armed forces. It's literary standard was akin to that of the UK's Daily Telegraph. It did not deny its support of Zionist goal sand disapproved of British policy in Palestine from 1939 onwards,but it did not support the Irgun or Stern Gang and strove to give accurate reports without breaking British censorship rules. By 1944 it reaching a peak circulation of 50,000.
The lower ranks of the Palestine Police seem to have only read the sports pages as they claim to have no knowledge of happenings in their vicinity which were were fully reported in the Palestine Post biut I suppose newspaper reading is not a young man's hobby and so many of the British section recruited between 1947 and 1948 were only 18 years old.
On February 1st/2nd 1948 Arabs blew up the building housing the Post’s editorial offices in Jerusalem was bombed.
It had been a day of explosions in Jerusalem. The first occurred in an empty Jewish shop in the Commercial
Centre at about 8.30 a.m. Sirens sounded soon after. No one was hurt and the All-Clear sounded about 10 minutes later. A second explosion occurred in the same place less than two hours later when the Army detonated a controlled charge because the shop was in danger of collapsing.
Shortly after dusk, the Stern gang blew up two houses on the border of Katamon from which snipers had attacked Rehavia.
About the same time, they also blew up a house in Upper Lifta, and burned a bus. About 9 p.m. Arabs threw four bombs at the Jewish Quarter near the Nissim Bek Synagogue. The army then fired at the Arab attackers.
At 10.45 p.m. Arabs blew up the Palestine Post Building in Hapoelm Street, using the same method as the Stern Gang had used in Haifa to blow up the Police Compound nearly a year earlier. Police helped rescue newspaper workers from the burning offices as well as residents of neighbouring buildings that were also on fire. Police also helped firemen put out fires Three persons died in the bombing, a newspaper typesetter and two people who lived in a nearby block of flats. Dozens of others were injured and the printing press was destroyed. Miraculously, the morning paper still came out, albeit in a reduced format of two pages, produced at a nearby small print shop. Ihe team responsible for this event were to mastermind an even worse tragedy three weeks later
Next- Bombing at Ben Yehuda Street
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