Day 37 of 599 of מלחמת העצמאות MILḤEMET HAʾAẒMAʾUT (War of Independence)

An Associated Press account printed on 5 January says the hotel had been destroyed early that morning. It initially reported at least twenty dead with more feared buried. Later histories commonly give roughly twenty-four to twenty-six. Those figures cannot replace a victim register, but they establish that the attack killed many people, including civilians. The full study is at ההגנה HAʾHAGANA bombed the Semiramis Hotel in ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM..^{1 2}

The ההגנה HAʾHAGANA said the hotel served as an armed Arab meeting place and weapons center. British authorities publicly rejected that explanation. Their disagreement concerns a real targeting claim, but neither public statement is a complete independent investigation. Ben-Gurion's later diary records conflicting accounts of authorization within ההגנה HAʾHAGANA leadership.^{3 4 5}

Marina Parisinou's later family research identifies Lutfi and Eleanora Aboussouan as killed while their three sons survived. It also names members of the related Lorenzo family among the dead. That evidence challenges a repeatedly published claim that seven Aboussouan family members died. The original family papers have not been independently checked here.⁶

This is Day 37 of the 599-day civil-date series: 1948-01-05. Its public Ivrit route is 5708-10-23; after local sunset the adjacent Hebrew route is 5708-10-24.

The public daily route is daytime 23 Tevet 5708 for 5 January. A same-day AP report says the hotel was destroyed early on 5 January, and the 6 January Ben-Gurion diary describes a Sunday 4 January evening consultation followed by an attack around midnight. Benny Morris instead dates the operation to the night of 5–6 January. The contemporaneous sequence favors early 5 January, but the original operation and police logs are still needed. An attack after midnight on 5 January remains on 23 Tevet; an attack on the following night would have a different civil and Hebrew date.^{7 8}

• What evidence would establish what the attackers knew about the hotel's use before the explosion?
• How do the family records change a casualty story repeated in later books?