The Hadassah convoy massacre took place on April 13, 1948, when a convoy, escorted by Haganah militia, bringing medical and military supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, was ambushed by Arab forces. which the Arabs had seeded with mines that could be detonated by electrical triggering at a distance. The area covered by the Hadassah hospital had great strategic importance, since it allowed one to take the Arab lines from their rear.
At a press conference on March 17, the leader of the Arab forces in Jerusalem, Abdul Kader Husseini, threatened that Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University would be captured or destroyed. He went on record as declaring, "Since Jews have been attacking us and blowing up houses containing women and children from bases in Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University, I have given orders to occupy or even demolish them." Husseini was subsequently killed on April 8 while reconnoitering the Kastel to block relief convoys to Jerusalem. This factor, according to Marlin Levin, also influenced the decision to attack the convoy. inspired two of Husseini's lieutenants, Mohammed Abdel Najar and Adil Abd Latif, to undertake the assault.
Arab sniper fire on vehicles moving along the access route had become a regular occurrence, and road mines had been laid. The British Colonial Secretary and the High Commissioner had given assurances that the relief convoys would be given British protection. The British commander of Jerusalem assured the Jews that the road was safe. For the preceding month, a tacit truce had been in place and the passage of convoys had taken place without serious incident.
thumb|An ambulance preparing to join the convoy to Mount Scopus. April 13, 1948
Attack
On April 13, the convoy, comprising ten vehicles (two ambulances, three buses of medical staff, and three logistical trucks, escorted by two Haganah armoured cars), set off for the hospital at 9.30 am. They carried 105 passengers. The Jewish liaison officer with the British army asked for permission to send in a Haganah relief force, which was denied on the grounds it might interfere with a cease-fire negotiation. The Army unit tried to arrange a cease-fire between "11 and noon". Shortly after 1 pm, two British armoured cars, one occupied by the commander of British forces in Palestine, General Gordon MacMillan, approached the area from the Nablus road, observed the firefight, but refrained from risking British lives by intervening, preferring to let the Jews and Arabs fight it out themselves. Following the massacre, Churchill oversaw the evacuation of 700 patients and staff from the hospital.
Casualties
thumb|250px|Hadassah convoy memorial at Hadassah University Hospital, Mount Scopus
thumb|250px|Hadassah convoy story at Hadassah University Hospital, Mount Scopus
thumb|250px|Ha Ayin-Het Street, named for the slain 78 of the convoy to Har HaTzofim
In the attack, 79 Jews and one British soldier were killed by gunfire or were burnt when their vehicles were set on fire. Twenty-three were women. Among the dead were Dr. Chaim Yassky, director of the hospital, and Dr. Moshe Ben-David, slated to head the new medical school (which was eventually established by the Hebrew University in the 1950s).
Most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. The 31 victims that could be identified were buried individually. The remaining 47 Jews were purportedly buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery. However, in the mid-1970s, Yehoshua Levanon, the son of one of the victims, discovered that a commission of inquiry convened at the time of the attack reported that only 25 were buried in the mass grave and 22 victims were missing. Going in search of the missing bodies, in 1993 he met an Arab who had participated in the ambush, who claimed that the attackers had buried stray body parts in a mass grave near the Lions' Gate. In 1996 Levinson petitioned the Israeli High Court to force the Defense Ministry to set up a genetic database to identify the 25 bodies buried in the Sanhedria cemetery. The mass grave was never opened. One British soldier also died in the attack, making the total of fatalities 79.
Aftermath
The day after the attack, several thousand Orthodox Jews demonstrated in the Jewish Quarter, demanding a "cease fire". In a statement they claimed that the demonstration was broken up by the Haganah.
British soldier Jack Churchill coordinated the evacuation of 700 Jewish doctors, students and patients from the Hadassah hospital on the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.
Inquiry
On that same day, April 12, the Jewish Agency requested that the Red Cross intervene over what they called a grave Arab violation of the conventions. An inquiry conducted among the Arabs, Jews and the British suggested the circumstances were more complex. The firefight had lasted several hours, indicating that the convoy was armed. The Arabs claimed that they had attacked the military formation by blowing up the armoured cars. They were unable to make a distinction between military and civilians because, they maintained, all the Jews, including the medical personnel, had taken part in the battle. In July, a deal was worked out where Mount Scopus became a United Nations area, with 84 Jewish policemen assigned to guard the now-shuttered hospital.
thumb|right|200px|Haim Yassky Street, named for doctor killed in the convoy to Har HaTzofim
In the armistice agreement with Jordan, signed on April 3, 1949, the hospital became a demilitarized Israeli enclave, with a small adjacent no-man's-land (containing a World War I Allied military cemetery under British supervision) and the rest of Mount Scopus and East Jerusalem becoming Jordanian. The Israeli government and Hadassah donors then re-founded the hospital in Israeli West Jerusalem, with the original hospital staff (Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital).
The Mount Scopus hospital resumed medical services only after the Six-Day War.
On the 60th anniversary of the massacre, the city of Jerusalem named a street in honor of Dr. Yassky.