Jerusalem. The Biography

League generals. ‘Kastel has fallen,’ said the Iraqi commander-in-chief. ‘It’s your job to get it back, Abd al-Kadir.’
    ‘Give us the weapons I requested and we will recover it,’ answered Husseini furiously.
    ‘What’s this, Abd al-Kadir? No cannon?’ said the general, who offered nothing.
    Husseini stormed out: ‘You traitors! History will record that you lost Palestine. I’ll take Kastel or die fighting with my
mujahidin
!’ That night he wrote a poem for his seven-year-old son Faisal who, decades later, would become Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian ‘minister’ for Jerusalem:
     
This land of the brave is the land of our forefathers
    The Jews have no right to this land.
    How can I sleep while the enemy rules it?
    Something burns in my heart. My homeland beckons.
     
    The commander reached Jerusalem next morning and mustered his fighters.
    GUN SALUTES ON THE HARAM: ABD AL-KADIR HUSSEINI
     
    On 7 April, Abd al-Kadir led 300 fighters and three British deserters up to Kastel. At 11 o’clock that night, they attacked the village but were repelled. At dawn the next day, Husseini moved forward to replace a wounded officer, but as he approached in the fog, unsure who held the actual village, a Haganah sentry, thinking the new arrivals were Jewishreinforcements, called in Arabic slang: ‘Up here, boys!’
    ‘Hello, boys,’ retorted Husseini in English. The Jews often used Arabic – but never English. The Haganah sentry sensed danger and let slip a volley that hit Husseini. His comrades fled, leaving him on the ground, moaning, ‘Water, water.’ Despite attention from a Jewish medic, he died. The gold watch and the ivory-handled pistol revealed that he was a leader, but who was he?
    On the radio, the exhausted Haganah defenders eavesdropped on the anxious Arabic talk of regaining the body of the lost commander. His brother Khaled assumed the command. As word spread, Arab militiamen streamed into the area on buses, donkeys and trucks and retook the village, the Palmach troops dying in position. The Arabs killed their fifty Jewish prisoners and mutilated the bodies. The Arabs had retaken the key to Jerusalem – with Husseini’s body.
    ‘What a sad day! His martyrdom depressed everyone,’ recorded Wasif Jawhariyyeh. ‘A warrior of patriotism and Arab nobility!’ On Friday 9 April, ‘no one stayed in their house. Everyone walked in the procession. I was at the funeral,’ Wasif noted. Thirty thousand mourners – Arab fighters waving their rifles, Arab Legionaries from Jordan, peasants, the Families – attended as the fallen Husseini was buried on the Temple Mount next to his father and near King Hussein in Jerusalem’s Arab pantheon. There was an eleven-cannon salute; gunmen fired into the air and a witness claimed that more mourners were killed than had died in the storming of Kastel. ‘It sounded as if a major battle was in progress. Church bells rang, voices cried for revenge; everyone feared a Zionist attack,’ remembered Anwar Nusseibeh, who was ‘despondent’. But the Arab fighters were so keen to attend Husseini’s burial that they left no garrison in Kastel. The Palmach destroyed the stronghold.
    As Husseini was being buried, 120 fighters of the Irgun and Lehi jointly attacked an Arab village just west of Jerusalem named Deir Yassin, where they committed the most shameful Jewish atrocity of the war. They were under specific orders not to harm women, children or prisoners. As they entered the village, they came under fire. Four Jewish fighters were killed and several dozen wounded. Once they were in Deir Yassin, the Jewish fighters tossed grenades into houses and slaughtered men, women and children. The number of victims is still debated, but between 100 and 254, including entire families, were murdered. The survivors were then paraded in trucks through Jerusalem until the Haganah released them. The Irgun and Lehi were undoubtedly aware that a spectacular massacre would terrify many Arab civilians and encourage flight. The Irgun commander, Begin, contrived to deny that the atrocityhad taken place while boasting of its utility: ‘The legend [of Deir Yassin] was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs.’ But Ben-Gurion apologized to King Abdullah, who rejected the apology.
    Arab vengeance was swift. On 14 April, a convoy of ambulances and food trucks set off for the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. Bertha Spafford watched as ‘a