Thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service.

In this program Lucy Williamson takes us back to the birth of modern Israel, where a Jewish

newspaper in Jerusalem is under attack.

It's February the 1st, 1948, a Sunday, and just before 11pm in the newspaper offices

of the Palestine Post, foreign editor Mordekai Chertoff is putting the paper to bed.

We were ready to go to press, which meant that normally I would be downstairs writing headlines.

But because it was a Sunday night, I was upstairs at my desk reading Moby Dick for the fourth

or fifth time.

I had a thing for it in those days, I don't know why.

When the explosion came, I was leaning back like this, reading, and a fragment hit the book.

So I got saved.

It was a bomb, a direct hit on the building in Hassel Elstreet where the post was housed.

What was your first thought when the bomb hit?

What did you think was going on?

Did you know immediately?

No question.

It was very obvious.

The target was your office?

The target was the editorial office of the post.

A few minutes after the blast, flames crept along the floors and walls, and soon there were

flames on both sides of the street.

Tenants began to evacuate their houses.

...