The Hadassah convoy massacre took place on April 13, 1948, when a convoy, escorted by Haganah militia, bringing medical and military supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, was ambushed by Arab forces. Seventy-eight Jewish doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members and Haganah fighters, and one British soldier were killed in the attack, including twenty three women. Dozens of unidentified bodies, burned beyond recognition, were buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery.
The Jewish Agency claimed that the massacre was a gross violation of international humanitarian law, and demanded action be taken against a breach of the Geneva Conventions. The Arabs claimed they had attacked a military formation, that all members of the convoy had engaged in combat, and that it had been impossible to distinguish combatants from civilians. An enquiry was conducted. Eventually an agreement was reached to separate military from humanitarian convoys. It was undertaken as a retaliation after the Deir Yassin massacre five days earlier on 9 April, in which Zionist militant groups of Irgun and Lehi massacred at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children.
Mount Scopus blockade In 1948, following the UN Partition Plan and anticipating Israel's declaration of independence, Arab troops blocked access to Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. The only access was via a narrow road, a mile and a half long passing through the Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah,Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem!, 1972, pp. 284–285, Simon & Schuster, New York; which the Arabs had seeded with mines that could be detonated by electrical triggering at a distance. The Haganah had used Mount Scopus as an outpost and a base for a raid on the village of Wadi al-Joz on February 26, as part of the struggle between Jewish and Arab militias over control of transportation routes in north Jerusalem. Meir Avizohar, מוריה בירושלים בתש"ח (Moriah in Jerusalem, 1948), chapter 3, Mahbarot Lesafrut, 2002. The area covered by the Hadassah hospital had great strategic importance, since it allowed one to take the Arab lines from their rear.
At 2:05 pm March 2, the operator at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem received a phone call from an Arab caller who warned that the hospital would be blown up within 90 minutes, but there was no bomb.The Convoy , Hadassah.Marlin Levin,It Takes a Dream: The Story of Hadassah, Gefen Publishing House, , 2002 p. 22
At a press conference on March 17, the leader of the Arab forces in Jerusalem, Abdul Kader Husseini, threatened that Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University would be captured or destroyed. He went on record as declaring, "Since Jews have been attacking us and blowing up houses containing women and children from bases in Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University, I have given orders to occupy or even demolish them.""Husseini Threatens Hadassah", The Palestine Post, March 18, 1948, p. 1. Husseini was subsequently killed on April 8 while reconnoitering the Kastel to block relief convoys to Jerusalem. This factor, according to Marlin Levin, also influenced the decision to attack the convoy. Revenge for this and retaliation for the Deir Yassin Massacre five days earlier on April 9, in which Zionist militant groups of Irgun and Lehi massacred at least 107 Arab Palestinian villages, including women and children,Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948,University of California Press, 2002 p.116. inspired two of Husseini's lieutenants, Mohammed Abdel Najar and Adil Abd Latif, to undertake the assault.Dan Kurzman, Genesis: The 1948 First Arab-Israeli War,New American Library, 1970 pp. 188ff.
Arab sniper fire on vehicles moving along the access route had become a regular occurrence, and road mines had been laid. The British Colonial Secretary and the High Commissioner had given assurances that the relief convoys would be given British protection. The Red Cross had offered to put Mount Scopus under its flag on condition that the area be demilitarized, but the Hadassah leaders declined the proposal, though a plan was prepared for an eventual evacuation if the authorities could not ensure the daily passage of three convoys. Unless this could be done, the only alternative was to accept the Red Cross offer. Jerusalem's 100,000 Jews depended on its services, wherever it was located. Dr Yassky had found suitable quarters for the hospital in Jerusalem and was preparing to make arrangements for the transfer of the hospital there.
When food and supplies at the hospital begun to dwindle, a large convoy carrying doctors and supplies set out for the besieged hospital, marked by a "red shield", which should have guaranteed its neutrality.Jacques de Reynier, "À Jérusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu", La Baconnière, Neuchâtel 1950 p. 79:'Ce convoi était muni d'emblèmes du Bouclier Rouge et devait donc être considéré comme neutre.' The British commander of Jerusalem assured the Jews that the road was safe. For the preceding month, a tacit truce had been in place and the passage of convoys had taken place without serious incident. On April 11, the regional British commander gave assurances the road was safe, but noted that, after the Deir Yassin massacre, tensions were high. According to Henry Laurens, an Australian officer tipped off the combatants of the Arab quarter through which the convoy had to pass, that the men of the Haganah had a mission to use the enclave to attack the Arab quarters and cut the route to Ramallah, and that, acting on this information, the Arabs then set up an ambush.Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine: L'accomplissement des prophéties, 1947–1967, t. 3, Fayard, 2007 p. 76.
Attack On April 13, the convoy, comprising ten vehiclesThe Palestine Post, April 14, 1948 (two ambulances, three buses of medical staff, and three logistical trucks, escorted by two Haganah armoured cars), set off for the hospital at 9.30 am.Dov Joseph, The Faithful City – The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948, Simon and Schuster, New York. 1960 p.74. They carried 105 passengers. It was commanded by the Jerusalem Haganah Lieutenant Asher Rahav, who escorted convoys in an armoured Ford truck. The line was ordered so that Rahav's vehicle headed the column, followed by the two ambulances, then the buses and the three supply trucks, with another escort car taking up the rear. The Sheikh Jarrah Quarter provided an ideal position for an ambush in a small stretch of the road between Nashashibi Bend and the Shepherd Hotel, where a small unit of twelve men from the British Highland Light Infantry armed with a heavy machine gun and bazookas were stationed. It stood some from the eventual site of the ambush. The local British inspector, Robert J. Webb, head of the Mea Shearim police station, usually travelled the road beforehand to ascertain if the route was safe. On this particular day, he said over the phone that the route was secure, but did not make his customary excursion to the Nashashibi bend where he could confirm this.
Rahav noticed several odd circumstances along the road: little traffic, closed shops, and Arabs in Iraqi uniform with bandoliers. At approximately 9:45 am, a mine was electrically detonated five feet in front of Rahav's Ford, which contained a contingent of ten soldiers and two hitchhiking Haganah members. The truck tilted into a ditch. At the same time, the convoy came under raking fire from Arab forces. Five vehicles managed to back out and return to base, while the rear Haganah escort car inexplicably wheeled about and returned to Jerusalem. Abdel Najar's ambush unit numbered around forty, and were later joined by men commanded by Mohammed Gharbieh, and many other fighters alerted to the battle.
British and Palmach forces were slow to come to the convoy's assistance.Hadassah marches on The Jewish liaison officer with the British army asked for permission to send in a Haganah relief force, which was denied on the grounds it might interfere with a cease-fire negotiation. British forces in the area did not intervene initially, the reason, according to Meron Benvenisti, being to "let the Arabs take revenge for Deir Yassin, so as to calm somewhat the rage of the Arab world." Marlin Levin suggests that the Arabs had an understanding whereby their operation would not be blocked if they refrained from firing on British units. One of the first men on the scene was Major Jack Churchill, who arrived on the scene at 11:15 am and banged on a bus, offering to evacuate members of the convoy in an APC. His offer was refused in the belief that the Haganah would come to their aid in an organized rescue. When no relief arrived, Churchill and his twelve men provided what cover fire they could against hundreds of Arabs.Fighting Jack Churchill survived a wartime odyssey beyond compare , Robert Barr Smith, WWII History Magazine, July 2005.Bertha Spafford Vester (and Evelyn Wells), 'Our Jerusalem'. Lebanon, 1950. p.353: "about one hundred and fifty insurgents, armed with weapons varying from blunder-busses and old flintlocks to modern Sten and Bren guns, took cover behind a cactus patch in the grounds of the American Colony ... I went out and faced them"p.376: "About 250 rifle-men were on the edge of our property shooting at the convoy.... I begged them to desist from using the grounds of the American Colony for such a dastardly purpose." The Army unit tried to arrange a cease-fire between "11 and noon". Shortly after 1 pm, two British armoured cars, one occupied by the commander of British forces in Palestine, General Gordon MacMillan, approached the area from the Nablus road, observed the firefight, but refrained from risking British lives by intervening, preferring to let the Jews and Arabs fight it out themselves. As they passed Nashashibi bend, according to one testimony, they blocked the retreat, and Rahav ordered his men to fire at them in order to have them get out of the way. They left the scene at 2 pm, returning at 3 pm with heavier weapons. Negotiations were conducted between one of the leaders of the Arab ambush, Adil Latif, two Haganah men and a British officer, the Arabs proposing that all Jewish arms be surrendered, and all Jewish men capable of combat taken prisoner. The talks were suddenly interrupted when Latif was shot down.