Convoy of 35

The Convoy of 35 (or the Lamed He, which stands for "thirty five" in Hebrew numerals), was a convoy of Haganah fighters sent during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine on a mission to reach by foot and resupply the blockaded kibbutzim of Gush Etzion in January 1948, after earlier motorized convoys had been attacked. They were spotted before they could reach their target and killed in a prolonged battle by Arab irregulars and local villagers.

On 16 January 1948, a convoy of 38 men was sent by the Haganah to deliver supplies to the four blockaded kibbutzim of Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, following an Arab attack on January 14. The unit, named in Hebrew "Machleket HaHar" (lit. Mountain Platoon), set out on foot from Hartuv at 11 p.m. on January 15, commanded by Dani Mass. They took a detour around the Tegart fort-type Palestine Police station, to avoid detection by the British. Three were sent back because one man sprained an ankle, and two accompanied him. The remaining 35 were killed by Arab villagers and militiamen between the villages of Jaba' and Surif.

The fate of the 35 was reconstructed from British and Arab reports. The six hours of night that remained did not suffice for the trip. About an hour before the convoy reached their destination, it became light. Their presence was discovered by two Arab women who encountered two scouts of the group near Surif. (An earlier version, that the soldiers were discovered by an Arab shepherd who they graciously let go, was based on a eulogy written by Ben-Gurion and is apparently apocryphal.) A large number of armed villagers from Surif and other communities gathered to block the way. The battle was fought in two stages, four hours apart, with hundreds of Arabs from a nearby training base taking part. The Haganah force battled until it ran out of ammunition. The last of the 35 was apparently killed at about 4:30 p.m. Among the dead were Tuvia Kushnir, one of the country's most promising botanists, Moshe Perlstein, an American-born World War II veteran who had made aliyah in 1947, and three members of the Hebrew Communist Party.

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