The First Day

For one reporter, there was more agony than ecstasy when statehood came.

by Marlin Levin
Special To The Jewish Week

Editor’s Note: Marlin Levin emigrated from America to pre-state Palestine, where he was a reporter for The Palestine Post (the precursor of The Jerusalem Post) and later a correspondent in Jerusalem for Time magazine. He says he wrote this remembrance this week, in part, in contrast “to the usual ecstasies that are written” about Israel’s first day of statehood.

Jerusalem had enough rations left for a few more days and we were famished. A few noodles, two pieces of bread and an occasional sardine kept us alive. That, and a spoonful of chocolate syrup before going to bed.
We were exhausted. We were existing on a few liters of water doled out daily in the streets. There was no electricity, no

gas. We could not use our radios so we had little news of what was happening outside of Jerusalem. The 25-pound shells that the British-officered Arabs were throwing at Jewish Jerusalem burst around us day and night, killing us and fraying our nerves.
In the city room of our newspaper, The Palestine Post, we had piled unsold copies against the windows as a safeguard against shrapnel. During the frequent shellings that targeted our building, we would sit on the floor under a table with typewriters on our laps to write our stories.
This was the Arab siege of Jerusalem on May 14, 1948. Starvation, captivity and worse faced us unless the Palmach (the unofficial army of the Jews) could break the steel ring that the enemy had clamped around the Jewish sections of the city. That night we went to bed not knowing that historic events had unfolded in Tel Aviv. Early next morning, Shabbat, I was awakened by someone who was outside knocking on the iron shutters of our bedroom.
“Marlin, Marlin wake up! Ben-Gurion has proclaimed the birth of the State.” It was Roy, my journalistic colleague.
My mind was a haze. Was I dreaming or was this real? When I did not reply, Roy rapped excitedly on the shutter. An Arab shell exploded in the distance followed by machine-gun fire. I knew I was not dreaming because my dreams were dominated by thick steaks and juicy hamburgers.
I struggled out of bed, staggered to the window and muttered to Roy, “Uh, huh.”
What was I to do? Dance a hora? Sing “Hatikva?” It was Shabbat and I would not go to work. No coffee to make, no food to eat, no radio to tune into — nothing but terror. With a silent prayer of thanks to God that he had answered our 2,000-year-old prayers, I could do nothing but take my weary body back to bed and to sleep — to sleep and to dream of a day when we would live at peace with our neighbors. For me, it was the best way to ignore hunger and shellings on the first full day of the birth of our state.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization