Free The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner

Jewish Agency. Everybody laughing and singing and dancing. Returned home 1:30 and went to bed till 5. After supper went with chevra – the pals – to Café Riva. Many British policemen there. Did not like it. Returned home at 9:30 and went to bed.
    Two days later, on Tuesday, 2 December, at 11:30 in the morning, while in the middle of a Hebrew class, I was handed a telegram. It was from home. Unobtrusively, I opened it. It was a single ribbon of text. It said, “Mammy passed away peacefully in the night.”
    I felt a sudden tightness in my throat and a shortage of breath. Numbly, I walked out and made my way to my room. It was all so unreal, like sleepwalking. I locked the door and sat on the bed, deadened. I tried to cry but couldn’t. I was too shocked and shaken to cry. I don’t suppose there is a right and a wrong way to grieve, but what was infinitely painful was sitting there alone, away from the family, and feeling the guilt of having left my mother hardly three weeks beforehand knowing she was desperately ill, and being absent now from her funeral. So I sat out the long seven days of mourning – the shiva – alone. Fellow students at the Machon assembled each day to form a minyan – the prayer quorum – enabling me to recite Kaddish, but otherwise I sat solitary in my room sharing my feelings with no one, just mourning my mother.
    The sole, admittedly powerful distraction, was the news that Arabs everywhere were up in arms over the UN partition resolution. They were vowing to destroy the Jewish State at birth. Bugles sounded the call to arms. Bit by bit, skirmishes mutated into operations, operations into battles, battles into campaigns, and campaigns into full-scale warfare. By the end of the year, just a couple of months after I’d arrived in Jerusalem, the city was under an intensifying siege.

    From author's diary, describing the festivities following UN partition resolution affirming the establishment of a Jewish State, 30 November 1947

    Celebrations outside the Jewish Agency, Jerusalem, 30 November 1947, following the UN's partition resolution favoring the establishment of a Jewish State
    My own scribbled teenage diary entries of those days mirror the pace of events and my reactions to them:
Sunday December 28: Much gunfire the whole day close at hand. Position more serious. Romema, [general area of today’s Jerusalem Convention Center] populated by Arabs, was attacked by the Irgun. Bit risky getting into town through Romema. Arabs take potshots at the buses. Increasingly, buses under convoy.
Monday December 29: Gunfire so heavy was not allowed to go to shul in town to say Kaddish.
Wednesday December 31: Last day of year presents a picture full of death. Do not feel scared. Only wish I could have some training in order to help put a stop to this tragic killing. Cannot see an end to the troubles, but have faith in God. No post from home. They must be worried about me especially due to recent news of events here in the papers.
One hour later: Reporting for [training] duty January 3. Hurrah!
Thursday January 1: At 4 p.m. Much shooting from direction of Romema. In evening barrage started up from all directions. Shooting from the wadi at back of house. Strong explosions. Flares went up. All traffic into town stopped. Told big attack yet to come when British leave. Must keep faith in my God. Feel more worried that the family is not receiving mail. Trying to keep up with my ideals as a chalutz [pioneer] and will act accordingly. Every day presents a danger to life but yet I fear not, for God is with me. Like David I say “Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me.”
Friday January 2: In evening expected lecture from Golda Meirson [Prime Minister Golda Meir to be]. Did not arrive. Went to bed early.
Monday January 5: Still unable to go to shul. Mobilized for trench digging and other fortifications.
    Tuesday January 6: Went to daven at Zichron Moshe [near city center]. On the way into town while passing through