"Prisoner of War"

Dov Bela Gruner's lawyer last week told him that his -L-120 bonus check for five and a half years' service with the British Army had arrived. Gruner sent for paper, made a will leaving his bonus to the Irgun Z-vai Leumi, the Jewish terrorist organization that considers itself at war with Britain. Then Gruner, in the blood-red uniform of a prisoner condemned to death, sat in his Jerusalem cell and waited for the British to make up their minds whether to hang him.

If they did, Gruner's "martyrdom" would undoubtedly increase world pressure on Britain. If they did not, law enforcement in Palestine would be at the mercy of pressure groups using terrorism. This week a military court sentenced three Jews to death for complicity in the flogging of a British major.

The propaganda battle over Gruner's sentence mounted last week to a pitch of frenzy, with ads in U.S. newspapers (paid for by the League for a Free Palestine) asserting that Gruner was still alive only because the pressure of U.S. opinion restrained the British from a "pogrom which will write finis to the Hebrews in Palestine." Amid this hysteria the actual crime in which Gruner had been involved was almost lost from sight. It contained in miniature the chief elements of the Palestine crisis.

Gruner, a 33-year-old Hungarian refugee, was found wounded in front of the police station at Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel-Aviv, after an Irgun raid last April. The British said that he and his pals had held up and disarmed the police, were about to seize the arms in the station when other cops on the roof opened fire, forcing the raiders to withdraw. An Arab constable was killed in the Skirmish. Gruner made no defense, refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the Palestine Government, insisted that he be treated as "a prisoner of war."

In preparation for the storm, of civil strife gathering around the Gruaer case, the British last week strung barbed wire through Jerusalem, ordered the evacuation of Rehavia, the city's best residential district. The shock of the evacuation notices spread consternation through the Jewish community. When she got her notice, Mrs. Rifka Benjamin, a 65-year-old Hungarian widow, fell dead.

In spite of the impending strife, Jews from Europe were still trying to find homes in Palestine. Last week 650 refugees, packed on a schooner off Haifa, hurled bottles and belaying pins at 100 British soldiers who boarded the ship to prevent illegal immigration.

Invitation to Struggle. Was a solution possible? The only proposal under official consideration was a British plan for tentative partition of Palestine for five years, pending a final settlement. The five-year clause would be an invitation to both Jews and Arabs to continue the struggle for advantage during the interim period. The fact that the proposed partition had no definite boundaries would almost certainly be a further incentive to strife. This week in London both Jews and Arabs turned down the British plan.

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