Birthday in Zion

While a jubilant world Jewry acclaimed the victory of partition (see FOREIGN NEWS), a quieter celebration went on last week in a modest office off Zion Square in Jerusalem. Editor Gershon Agronsky, 54, just home from covering the fateful U.N. debates at Lake Success, gathered his Palestine Post staffers around him. While they sang Happy Birthday, he gravely cut a cake and the staff sipped wine. Thus the doughty little (circ. 23,000) daily that is the London Times of the Middle East--and the authoritative voice of the Zionist moderates--passed its 15th birthday.

In a decade and a half of dangerous living, the Post's reporters have grown used to dodging bullets in covering the news; their boss has kept up a running battle with the British and their galling censorship. The Post is read eagerly by Jews, covertly by Arabs, and somewhat grudgingly by 4,000 British troops who otherwise would miss such features (bought from Lord Beaverbrook) as the Low cartoons, the whimsies of Nat Gubbins.

In a land cursed by violence, the Post has raised its voice firmly, if not always effectively, for moderation. Last spring, when Playwright Ben Hecht was egging on the homeland's terrorists, Agronsky sternly wrote: "You are making yourself responsible for a criminal insanity that is killing Jews as well as Britons."

Russian-born Editor Agronsky came to the U.S. with his family at 13. He intended to become a rabbi, but gave this up to report for Philadelphia's Jewish World. He got to Palestine by joining the Jewish Legion in World War I, stayed as correspondent for U.S. and British papers. He founded the Post (with later help from the Jewish Agency) as a pro-mandate organ, broke with the British in 1939.

Into four pages a day (eight on Fridays), Agronsky crams dispatches from eight news services and his own correspondents in London and the U.S., regional news for Arabs as well as for Jews. At times the Post has managed to make some money.

With partition, Gershon Agronsky could look forward to liberation from censorship. "You're not required by law to submit everything," he says, "but God help you if you don't." He knows that the Post will face a heavier responsibility as the British pull out. The best tribute the Post has had came from the British High Commissioner on its tenth birthday. Sir Harold MacMichael congratulated the paper for "stating facts fairly, respecting confidences and avoiding equally sensationalism, snobbery and cheap insinuation."

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