...While Moustafa indulged in blind-alley flirtation with two Armenian nurses, I strolled through the wards. One of the patients introduced himself to me as Nazar Chalawitch, a former captain in Yugoslav quisling Pavelich's army, now an Arab fighter who was convalescing. I told him I was Gerhard's friend.

"How did you get hurt?" I asked.

"Fighting with the most stupid, the most cowardly, the most inefficient soldiers I have ever seen," Nazar exploded. "The Germans and I gave the Arabs many good ideas to destroy the Jewish villages. They are afraid of anything new. They say it will cost them too much money. They are waiting for Allah to help them!"

Deeply embittered, he went on: "If those Arabs had followed orders we'd have cleaned out the Jews long ago. Take this village outside Gaza [Kibbutz Kfar Daron]. We made a perfect plan to attack it with three columns: 34 Germans and eight Yugoslavs in one column, 210 Ikhwan in another; a hundred Followers of Truth making the third column. We were to assemble exactly at midnight and march from three sides. The Germans were on time. Ikhwan came three hours late. The others -- just before sunrise! We couldn't surprise the Jews. We attacked anyway -- lost about forty men. A bullet went through my hip."

The Palestine Post ran a daily column listing casualities. By May 1, 1948, 5,104 had died (189 English, 1,236 Jews, 3,569 Arabs) and 6,632 had been wounded.

I strolled over to the Public Information Office and wandered into the small canteen operated there for the correspondents. Jewish and Arab newspapermen still mixed: coolly, suspiciously. The Jewish boys came mainly to get a beer, potatoes, and coffee, and had cigarettes for sale -- all rare in the New City. When Jews tried to buy food to take home, Ahmed would say: "If I sold it to you the Arabs would cut my body into small pieces." I met an Arab here, named Nassib Boulos, working for the British as a string correspondent for Life magazine. Boulos always hovered around the American newsmen,. trying to get a line on each one. He came over to my table.

"I hear you're a Zionist."

"I don't know what Zionism is. I haven't seen enough of the Jews."

I had a premonition that Boulos would cross my path later on, and make trouble. In the days that followed, a series of nasty anti-Jewish booklets and leaflets began to circulate among correspondents, anonymously signed "AMO" -- the Arab Military Organization, and adjunct of the Mufti's Arab Higher Committee. Addressed to "British Soldiers! British Policemen! British Civilians!" they sought to incite non-Arabs against the Jews. One of the leaflets was in doggerel:

Put a bomb in the [Jewish] Agency Buildings
Wipe the Synagogues all off the earth,
And make every damned son of ZION
Regret the day of his birth.
From the lampposts hang all the RABBIS
But hang HERTZOG¹ highest of all
And when you have hung all the Jew-boys
Then blow up their damned WAILING WALL...
You will find you are down as the Heroes
Of the Last and the greatest Crusade,
And then you will all go to HEAVEN
And I WILL BE THERE AS WELL.
And we all charge our glasses,
AND DRINK tO JEWS THERE IN HELL.

¹Dr. Isaac Halevy Herzong, then Chief Rabbi of Palestine, later Rabbi of Israel.