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A British Deserter Who Joined the Jews in the 1948 War

(Ha'aretz) Dalia Karpel - On April 13, 1948, British Army Sgt. John Patrick Cooper sensed that an attack by the Arabs in Jerusalem was imminent. He saw the Jewish convoy ascend the road toward Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus and noticed that, in contrast to past occurrences, there were no British armored vehicles escorting the convoy. When Cooper asked what was going on, his superior officer threatened to court-martial him. The convoy was attacked as it made its way through Sheikh Jarrah. 78 men and women, most of them from the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from Hadassah Hospital, were killed. As historian Benny Morris wrote in his book 1948, the English "were there, didn't lift a finger and prevented others from helping." That evening, Cooper deserted his unit in order to fight "on the side of the Jews." "I cannot serve in an army that allows atrocities like that," he told Yohanan Piltz, the IDF officer who received Cooper into his unit.
2010-12-24 08:26:20
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