It was about this time that I found plastered on the walls of Cairo buildings huge, luridly colored posters, violently anti-Jewish. One of them, showing a bloodstained dagger with the Star of David on its handle, and blood dripping from it, exhorted: "Arm Arabism!" Other posters read: "Don't talk to the Jews...Don't do business with them...Kill their business and they die...Consider them as our deepest enemies."

A large colored placard, printed in English. Arabic, Spanish, French and Italian, showed a sketch that purported to be the desecration of a holy relic in Jerusalem by the Jews, and read:

ZIONISTS' NEW YEAR PRESENT TO CHRISTENDOM

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent letter to the Times, said he would not entrust the Holy Land to the Zionists because he was sure they would lose no time in desecrating every relic of the Christ or the Prophet Muhammad to be found in the Holy Places.

The photo of the statue of the Virgin Mary in Ratisbonne Church, Jerusalem, battered beyond recognition and thrown on the floor of the church, shows that the Archbishop's apprehensions were well-founded. His prophecy has come true.

I was told that this poster was put up by the Arab League.

Certain committees, posing as "patriotic," either mortgaged or bought land from Palestinian Arabs, ostensibly to keep it from Jewish settlers. Arabs who refused to sell at low prices were branded tools of the Jews, and often murdered. Actually, the purpose of these committees was to extend the feudal powers of the landowner. I was told: "The Arab who sold his land to the Jews against our advice was killed at once. Anyone could kill him. No one would know who. The Arab's family and the families of other Arabs would know why he had been killed."

Cairo's mood, the hour before our departure, was one of excitement or terror -- depending on your religion. Jews were imprisoned because they were Zionists, and beaten on streets because they were Jews. They huddled in their homes, afraid to leave, afraid to worship on the Sabbath because the Ikhwan had spread rumors that synagogues were used for "plotting." Newspapers daily whipped up new excitement with news from Palestine: FIERCE BATTLE IN HOLY CITY'S NO-MAN'S LAND...HAIFA EXPRESS BLOWN UP AGAIN...MARTIAL LAW PROCLAIMED...There were celebrations as news of the dynamiting of the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem, by a car carrying TNT and "flying an American flag," was announced, and later when Arabs ambushed a large convoy near Bethlehem, seized scores of vehicles, and killed many Jews. Under Arab League sponsorship, Fawzy Bey el Kawoukjy (who had spent the war years in Germany, marrying there) had begun to attack with his Yarmuk Army of Liberation.

Arabs everywhere were confident of victory. They gloated over their arms, their money, their numbers. "If we Moslems choose to spit on the Jews we could drown them," one said contemptuously. From another: "We are like a ball of snow. We have just begun to roll. We will crush the microbe of Zionism forever."

The Arab Goliath of eight States and forty-five million people would win over a tiny, sausage-shaped, "militarily indefensible" area, encircled by Arabs, and containing 650,000 poorly armed Jews and a fifth column of at least as many Arabs. There was no doubt that the Arabs would win easily. They said so.