Day 7 of 599 of מלחמת העצמאות MILḤEMET HAʾAẒMAʾUT (War of Independence)

Yaakov (Kobi) Schiff was nineteen when he was killed near location://HaTikva and the approaches to Salameh on 23 Kislev 5708. His official memorial says his ההגנה HAʾHAGANA group encountered an English Empire police patrol, which opened fire; a police sergeant's bullet struck Schiff.¹

דוד בן-גוריון DAVID BEN-GURION's diary preserves a witness account attributed to Yaakov Neuderfer. The testimony says Schiff had his hands raised when a sergeant shot him in the back. This is a contemporaneous report of witness testimony, not Ben-Gurion's eyewitness account; the sergeant is not named in the records inspected.²

A fuller source study of this episode is available at event://5708־09־23־יעקב־Schiff־killed YAʾAKOV.

Dvora Yaari Wald died on 23 Kislev 5708 from wounds suffered in the attack on the buses carrying יהודים YEHUDIM near Fajja six days earlier. Her memorial says her husband Shalom was shot while helping her and later died; their son Haim had died the year before. It records that Dvora was buried beside them.³

This is a later death from wounds, not another person killed at the scene on 17 Kislev. The family record does not establish that Dvora was a Holocaust survivor or that her immediate losses exhausted all surviving relatives. No such claim is made here.

In the first week after partition, הארגון HAʾIRGUN fighters entered Abu Kabir, a mostly Arab neighborhood adjoining southern תל אביב TEL AVIV, and set buildings on fire. The act belonged to the widening armed conflict around יפו YAFO, but it was an attack by הארגון HAʾIRGUN on an Arab residential area, not simply defense of homes of יהודים YEHUDIM. Contemporary reporting and later reconstructions agree that an הארגון HAʾIRGUN raid occurred; they disagree about the exact day and some of its consequences.⁴

The focused source discussion is retained in event://5708־09־Dd־Abu־kabir־ארגון־raid IRGUN. Its event date and this daily article’s civil-day route are not automatically the same.

This is Day 7 of the 599-day civil-date series: 1947-12-06. Its OTD route, 5708-09-23, is the daytime fixed-Hebrew conversion of that civil date, not a claim that every action mentioned here occurred before sunset.⁵ The adjacent Hebrew date after local sunset is 24 Kislev 5708 (5708-09-24). Individual memorials assign Schiff's and Dvora's deaths to 23 Kislev. Later accounts disagree between civil 6 and 7 December for the Abu Kabir raid, and no checked operational hour settles its Hebrew date; its discussion here does not resolve that dispute. Newspaper issue dates, dispatch dates and later testimony are kept distinct from occurrence dates.

• Which event or report fixes the date of this day’s main account?
• What record would resolve the most important remaining timing or casualty question?