What Is Truth?

In Jerusalem, where Pontius Pilate once posed the question, newsmen again asked: "What is truth?" Last week TIME Correspondent Eric Gibbs found, amid the confused and bitter fighting, that it was almost impossible for newsmen to answer.

This place is a swirl of rumors, propaganda and outright lies from which it is most difficult to extract the grain of truth. All except eyewitness reports by competent and independent correspondents should be treated with the greatest reserve. Any objective account from any side seems out of the question. There are three main sources of information:

1) The British Public Information Office, short on manpower, tries to give reasonably accurate handouts. But its sources often turn out to be the uncorroborated word of an Arab (or Jewish) constable of the Palestine Police.

2) The Arabs have no conception of news in our terms, no hard facts. Their press conferences are soap-box diatribes against the Jews.

3) The Jews have a large publicity mill, with little real grist. Haganah, hard-pressed by the Arabs and taunted by the Irgun and Stern groups, is terrified of news which might affect "security" or show Haganah in anything but glorious victory.

All Is Confusion. So most correspondents 1) hang around the British P.I.O. for handouts, and pick the brains of Arab and Jewish newsmen in the bar; 2) attend the daily Jewish Agency press conference in Ben Yehuda Street; 3) pump their Jewish and Arab stringers and contacts. The only way of getting any accurate picture is to go out yourself, and this is getting harder.

"This," said one disgusted A.P. photographer, "is the damnedest war I ever saw. It's all front--with no back and no sides to it." Sometimes a road may be quite peaceful; the next moment it may be swept with gunfire. Even with Arab, Jewish and British press cards, it is a problem to get people on the spot to accept you. In the Arab quarter of the old city, for example, unless you have an armed escort from the Arabs' national headquarters, you might be fired on, attacked by a crowd as a Jewish spy, or arrested. It is difficult to switch from one side to another (after May 15 it may be impossible) and there is always the risk of being shot as a spy.

"Y" Marks the Spot. A number of correspondents are. living at the Y.M.C.A. The "Y" secretary has been trying to get the place declared a neutral international zone--sort of hallowed ground like the Holy Sepulchre. The trouble is that it stands on a hill which dominates the old city and the road to Hebron. And it has a tower 176 ft. high--ideal for snipers. Both Arab and Jewish authorities have listened politely to a committee of worried pressmen. But the answer has amounted to this: O.K. in principle, but we're afraid we can't guarantee that some of our people won't attack the place on their own. So there is every prospect of having a battle right on the premises.

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