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Deir Yassin massacre
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The Deir Yassin massacre refers to the killing of between 107 and 120 Palestinian unarmed civilian villagers, the estimate generally accepted by scholars, during and possibly after the battle at the village of Deir Yassin (also written as Dayr Yasin or Dir Yassin) near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish Zionist guerrilla fighters (Irgun and Lehi) between 9 April and 11 April 1948.
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The Deir Yassin massacre refers to the killing of between 107 and 120 Palestinian unarmed civilian villagers, the estimate generally accepted by scholars, during and possibly after the battle at the village of Deir Yassin (also written as Dayr Yasin or Dir Yassin) near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish Zionist guerrilla fighters (Irgun and Lehi) between 9 April and 11 April 1948. It occurred while Jewish Yishuv forces fought to break the siege of Jerusalem during the period of civil war that preceded the end of the Mandate.
Contemporary reports, originating apparently from a commanding officer in Jerusalem of one of the irregular forces involved (the Irgun), Mordechai Ra'anan, gave an initial estimate of 254 killed. The size of the figure had a considerable impact on the conflict in creating panic and became a major cause of the 1948 Palestinian exodus.
The massacre was universally condemned at the time, including repudiations from the Haganah command and the Jewish Agency.Morris 2001, p.208: "the Jewish Agency and the Haganah leadership immediately condemned the massacre".
Context of the events
The Deir Yassin massacre occurred between the passing of the United Nations UN Resolution 181 on 29 November 1947 and the day the British Mandate ended (14 May 1948), when a new State of Israel was officially declared and the fighting escalated into the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Deir Yassin was within the boundaries of the proposed United Nations-administered Corpus Separatum.
In the months leading up to the end of the Mandate, in a phase of the war known as "The Battle of [the] Roads", the Arab League-sponsored Arab Liberation Army (ALA) (composed of Palestinian and other Middle Eastern Arabs) attacked Jewish communities in Palestine and Jewish traffic on major roads in an effort to isolate Jewish communities from each other. The ALA managed to seize several strategic vantage points along the highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Jerusalem's sole supply route and link to its western side where 16% of all Jews in Palestine lived and began firing on convoys travelling to the city. By March 1948, the road was cut off and Jerusalem was under siege.
In response, the Haganah decided to launch a major counteroffensive, Operation Nachshon, to break the siege. It would become the first large-scale military operation in the ensuing Arab-Israeli conflict. On 6 April, in an effort to secure strategic positions, the Haganah and its strike force, the Palmach, attacked al-Qastal, a village two kilometers north of Deir Yassin overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Days of intense fighting followed as control of the village remained contested and convoys continued to try to reach Jerusalem. On 9 April, on their own initiative, Irgun-Lehi forces attacked the nearby Deir Yassin. The rationale and authority justifying their action remain controversial.
Political and historical background of the attacking forces
The main Jewish forces participating in the Deir Yassin massacre belonged to two underground paramilitary groups, the Irgun (Etzel) (National Military Organization) and the Lehi (Freedom Fighters of Israel).
During the Great Uprising (1936-1939) of the Arabs in Palestine, in which more than 320 Jews were killed in Arab attacks, the Irgun in turn carried out attacks against Arabs, which are believed to have killed at least 250. Irgun's tactics, which included bus and marketplace bombings, were condemned by both the British mandate authorities and the mainstream Jewish leadership, the Jewish Agency.
Lehi, an Irgun splinter group, was formed in 1940 following Irgun's decision to declare a truce with the British during World War Two. Lehi subsequently carried out a series of assassinations designed to force the British out of Palestine. Both Irgun and Lehi were aligned with the right-wing Revisionist movement.
The third group which took part in the attack on Deir Yassin was the Palmach, the armed wing of the mainstream Jewish Haganah (Defense) organization, whose membership eventually formed the nucleus of the Israeli Army, and whose leadership was aligned with the political left (see Mapai). The Palmach's role in the attack appears to have been limited to a brief but decisive intervention in the closing stages of the battle. Unlike the other two organizations, the Palmach has never been accused of taking part in the massacre which is said to have followed the battle.
Because of the political hostility between the Haganah on the one hand and Irgun and Lehi on the other, Deir Yassin became an issue of mutual recrimination between the various Jewish nationalist factions in Palestine and their successor political parties in Israel, one which continues to the present day.
The village and Irgun and Lehi Activity
At this time, no major offensive action had yet been taken by the Irgun and Lehi ground forces. The guerrillas consisted of a mix of hardened veterans and some inexperienced teenagers. The Arab village of Deir Yassin was situated on a hill which overlooked the main highway entering Jerusalem (although a direct line of sight from the village to the highway was blocked by a ridge below). Deir Yassin was also adjacent to a number of Jerusalem's western neighborhoods. The pathway connecting the town to nearby Givat Shaul and the elevation of the hills in the area made control of the town attractive as an airstrip.
Deir Yassin was different from the village of al-Qastal that had recently been attacked by the Haganah, in that it did not participate directly in the conflict. The villagers reportedly wanted to remain neutral in the war and they had repeatedly resisted help and alliances with the Palestinian irregulars. Instead they had made a pact with Haganah to not help the irregulars as long as they were not the target of military operations.
The inhabitants had even remained cooperative while the Haganah took the strategic Sharafa ridge between Deir Yassin and the nearby ALA base Ein Karem. Haganah intelligence confirmed after the village had been captured that it in fact had stayed "faithful allies of the western Jerusalem sector".
Yoma Ben-Sasson, Haganah commander in Givat Shaul, later recalled that "there was not even one incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews".
Battle plans
During the battle for al-Qastal, the Irgun and Lehi took their plan to attack Deir Yassin to Haganah for coordination. Rivalry between them made matters tense. According to Meir Pa'il:
The Zionist irregulars refused to change their minds and complained that the proposed mission would be too hard for them. Shaltiel ultimately yielded and wrote in a letter to the underground commanders that he allows them to attack the village, provided that they could hold it thereafter.
Shaltiel's consent was met with internal resistance. Meir Pa'il objected to violating the agreement with the village but Shaltiel maintained that he had no power to stop the guerillas. Yitzchak Levi proposed that the inhabitants should be notified that the truce was over but Shaltiel refused to endanger the operation by warning them. During some of the preliminary meetings the idea of a massacre was discussed and rejected. A Lehi proposal suggested "liquidating" them "to show what happens when the IZL [Irgun] and the Lehi set out together."
According to most insider accounts, instructions were given to minimize casualties, some guerillas nonetheless anticipated inciting panic throughout Arab Palestine by their actions in Deir Yassin.
The attack
The attack force consisted of about 132 men, 72 from Irgun and 60 from Lehi as well as a few women to serve as support.
From Givat Shaul a Lehi unit approached Deir Yassin, accompanied with Meir Pa'il and a photographer "to watch their military performance".
One Irgun unit moved towards Deir Yassin from the east, while a second approached it from the south. At 4:45 a.m. the fighting started when concealed Irgunists encountered a village guard.
The road south-westward towards Ein Kerem filled with panicked villagers fleeing.
Villager fire inflicted heavy casualties and drove off the Irgun. The Lehi units advance stopped at the town's center where they were only holding the eastern parts. The attackers' fighting capability matched their progress, weapons failed to work, a few tossed hand-grenades without pulling the plug, and a Lehi unit commander, Amos Keynan, was wounded by his own men.
"By noon, they had dispatched 254 people [villagers]; as for their own casualties, what Begin described as 'murderous' fire from the old Mausers and muskets had cost them [the attackers] four dead."
While both Irgun and Lehi commanders had anticipated many residents would flee, and the remaining would surrender after token resistance, both groups of Jewish assaulters, entering the town from different sides, immediately encountered fierce volleys of villagers' rifle fire.
Irgun deputy commander Michael Harif, one of the first to enter Deir Yassin, later recalled how, early in the battle, "I saw a man in khaki run ahead. I thought he was one of us, I ran after him and told him, 'Move ahead to that house!' Suddenly he turned, pointed his weapon at me and fired. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was wounded in the leg". Patchiah Zalivensky of Lehi recalled that among the Arab soldiers killed by his unit was a Yugoslavian Muslim officer.
The villagers sniper fire from higher positions in the west effectively contained the attack, especially from the mukhtar's (= mayor's) house. Some Lehi units went for help from the Haganah's Camp Schneller in Jerusalem.
Intense Arab firepower caused the assaulters' advance into Deir Yassin to be very slow. Reuven Greenberg reported later that "the Arabs fought like lions and excelled at accurate sniping". He added that "[Arab] women ran from the houses under fire, collected the weapons which had fallen from the hands of Arab fighters who had been wounded, and brought them back into the houses". In certain cases, after storming a house, dead Arab women were found with guns in their hands, a sign they had taken part in the battle.
Ezra Yachin recalled, "To take a house, you had either to throw a grenade or shoot your way into it. If you were foolish enough to open doors, you got shot down — sometimes by men dressed up as women, shooting out at you in a second of surprise".
Briefings before the battle had stated that most of the houses in Deir Yassin had wooden doors, so, while trying to storm them, the assaulters were surprised to discover the doors were made of iron, leaving no recourse but to blow them open with powerful explosives, killing and wounding some inhabitants. The Lehi forces slowly advanced house by house.
Meanwhile, the Irgun guerrillas on the other side of the village, were having a very difficult time. By 7:00 a.m., discouraged by the Arab resistance and their own increasing casualties, Irgun commanders relayed a message to the Lehi camp that they were seriously considering retreating from the town. Lehi commanders relayed back that they had already entered the village and expected victory soon.
The large number of wounded was a big problem for the guerillas: they had to be evacuated but if they did they could be fired upon. Meret called the Magen David Adom station for an ambulance that came to the battle area. The attackers took beds out of the houses, laid the wounded on them and ordered the inhabitants of the village, including women and old people, to carry the beds to the ambulance and to screen them. They believed the Arabs would not shoot their own people, which however they did.
The Irgun quickly arranged to receive a supply of explosives from their base in Givat Shaul, and started blasting their way into house after house. In certain instances, the force of the explosions collapsed whole parts of houses, burying Arab soldiers as well as civilians who were still inside.
In numerous instances Arabs emerged from the houses and surrendered; over 100 were taken prisoner by day's end. At least two Haganah members on the scene reported the Lehi repeatedly using a loudspeaker to implore the residents to surrender.
In certain cases Arabs pretending to surrender revealed hidden weapons and shot at their would-be Jewish captors, according to the testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik. Benny Morris, has characterized Gorodenchik's testimony as confused.
At about 10:00 am a sizeable Palmach unit from the Haganah arrived. They brought an armored vehicle and a two-inch mortar. The mortar was fired three times at the mukhtar's house which silenced its snipers. The Palmach unit managed to clear the village of serious resistance and Lehi officer David Gottlieb saw the Palmach accomplish "in one hour what we could not accomplish in several hours."
The loudspeaker truck
Irgun later claimed that it had prepared a truck with a loudspeaker to warn the villagers of the attack. It is unclear whether the Truck reached the battle scene or if indeed it existed at all. The truck left Givat Shaul a few minutes before 5:00 AM as planned, and by then the battle had already started. According to Irgun leader Menachem Begin the truck was driven to the entrance of the area and broadcast a warning to the civilians. Other sources say that the truck never reached the village and still others claim that the truck came within a relatively small distance from the village. Other sources claim that the truck rolled into a ditch caused by Palestinian gunfire before it could broadcast its warning. According to Ezra Yachin, "After we filled in the ditch we continued traveling. We passed two barricades and stopped in front of the third, 30 meters away from the village. One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don't know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect. We alighted from the armored car and joined the attack." Whether or not the truck's message was heard by the villagers is unclear. It is known, however that hundreds of Deir Yassin residents did flee, and those who did were not pursued by the Irgun.
After the battle
The fighting was over at about 11:00 am. The fighters begin to clean up the houses to secure them. Irgun's commander Ben-Zion Cohen noted: "[We] felt a desire for revenge." One villager has stated that the attackers appeared to have been set off by an Irgun commander's death, still others reported that upon discovering an armed man disguised as a woman, one guerrilla began shooting everyone around, followed by his comrades joining in. In the afternoon prisoners were taken on the village trucks to a victory parade in the Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem before they were released in Arab East Jerusalem. Fahimi Zeidan testified that they "put us in trucks and drove us around the Jewish quarters, all while cursing us." Harry Levin, a Haganah broadcaster, reported seeing "three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women, and children, their hand above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with sten-guns and rifles."
The massacre claims
Uri Milstein wrote: "The story of the Deir-Yassin massacre is now part of the heritage of both Arabs and Jews.". Eight years after the event, in 1956, the Arab historian Arif al-'Arif, in his account of the nakba arrived at the estimate, now generally accepted, of 117 victims, 7 in combat, and 110 killed inside their homes
Al-Arif's study was confirmed by Sharif Kananah, of Bir Zeit University, who in a detailed study estimated 110-120 villagers had been killed, an estimate generally accepted by other authors.
Of the many eyewitness accounts, only the core IZL narrative differs from the Arab and the remaining Israeli narratives. Morris attributes this in part to "unstated semantic differences over what constitutes a 'massacre'". He summarizes, drawing on the work of Milstein and Khalidi, but also on the Bir Zeit University study and Israeli documentation, that: 'Combatants and noncombatants were gunned down in the course of the house-to-house fighting, and, subsequently, after the battle, groups of prisoners and noncombatants were killed in separate, sporadic acts of frenzy and revenge in different parts of the village and outside of Deir Yassin. The remaining villagers were then expelled. But this was no Srebrenica.'
Eyewitness accounts
Meir Pa'il's eyewitness account is one of the most detailed single eye witness accounts of the massacre, as he claims to have been at the scene while it happened. Pa'il was a spy for the mainstream Jewish organizations in Palestine monitoring the activities of the right-wing or "dissident" groups. He stated that he:
"... started hearing shooting in the village. The fighting was over, yet there was the sound of firing of all kinds from different houses ... Sporadic firing, not like you would [normally] hear when they clean a house.". He also stated that no commanders directed the actions, just groups of guerillas running about "full of lust for murder".
Historian Uri Milstein says: "On a massacre following the battle there is only the account of Me’ir Pa’il, who claims that he was in the village during and after the battle," and notes that Irgun members denied seeing Pa’il there.
Mordechai Gihon's eyewitness account: Mordechai Gihon was a Haganah intelligence officer in Jerusalem. He was in the village at the afternoon of 9 April. He reported:-
"Before we got to the village we saw people carrying bodies to the quarry east of Deir Yassin. We entered the village around 3:00 in the afternoon . . . In the village there were tens of bodies. The dissidents got them out of the roads. I told them not to throw the bodies into cisterns and caves, because that was the first place that would be checked...""I didn't count the dead. I estimated that there were four pits full of bodies, and in each pit there were 20 bodies, and several tens more in the quarry. I throw out a number, 150."
Eliahu Arbel's eyewitness account: Eliahu Arbel arrived at the scene 10 April. He was an Operations Officer B of the Haganah's Etzioni Brigade. He reported:-
- "I saw the horrors that the fighters had created. I saw bodies of women and children, who were murdered in their houses in cold blood by gunfire, with no signs of battle and not as the result of blowing up the houses. From my experience I know well, that there is no war without killing, and that not only combatants get killed. I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin."
Jacques de Reynier's eyewitness account: Jacques de Reynier was a French-Swiss Representative of the International Red Cross. He came to the village on 11 April. He reported:-
- "... a total of more than 200 dead, men, women, and children. About 150 cadavers have not been preserved inside the village in view of the danger represented by the bodies' decomposition. They have been gathered, transported some distance, and placed in a large trough (I have not been able to establish if this is a pit, a grain silo, or a large natural excavation). ... [One body was] a woman who must have been eight months pregnant, hit in the stomach, with powder burns on her dress indicating she'd been shot point-blank.".
Dr. Alfred Engel's eyewitness account: Alfred Engel went to Deir Yassin with Jacques de Reynier, his conclusion is similar to de Reynier's. He reported:-
- "In the houses there were dead, in all about a hundred men, women and children. It was terrible. I did not see any signs of defilement, mutilation, or rape. ... It was clear that they (the attackers) had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range. I was a doctor in the German army for 5 years, in World War I, but I had not seen such a horrifying spectacle."
Yeshurun Schiff's eyewitness account: Yeshurun Shiff was an adjutant to David Shaltiel. He was in Deir Yassin 9 April and 12 April. He reported:-
- "[The attackers chose] to kill anybody they found alive as though every living thing in the village was the enemy and they could only think 'kill them all.'...It was a lovely spring day, the almond trees were in bloom, the flowers were out and everywhere there was the stench of the dead, the thick smell of blood, and the terrible odor of the corpses burning in the quarry."
Yair Tsaban's eyewitness account: Yair Tsaban was one of several youths in the burial team at Deir Yassin 12 April. He reported:-
- "What we saw were [dead] women, young children, and old men. What shocked us was at least two or three cases of old men dressed in women's clothes. I remember entering the living room of a certain house. In the far corner was a small woman with her back towards the door, sitting dead. When we reached the body we saw an old man with a beard. My conclusion was that what happened in the village so terrorized these old men that they knew being old men would not save them. They hoped that if they were seen as old women that would save them."
In an article dated 2 April 1998, The Jerusalem Post describes a BBC program in which Abu Mahmud resident of Deir Yassin in 1948 stated: "... the villagers protested against the atrocity claims: We said, "There was no rape." [Khalidi] said, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews..."
Khalidi was a prominent Palestinian Arab leader who pushed the editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, Hazem Nusseibeh, to make the most use of alleged atrocities in Deir Yassin.
Mohammed Radwan who fought in the battle:-
- "I know when I speak that God is up there and God knows the truth and God will not forgive the liars," said Radwan, who puts the number of villagers killed at 93, listed in his own handwriting. "There were no rapes. It's all lies. There were no pregnant women who were slit open. It was propaganda that... Arabs put out so Arab armies would invade," he said. "They ended up expelling people from all of Palestine on the rumor of Deir Yassin." This was reported by Paul Holmes, Middle East Times, 20-April-1998
Mohammed Jaber, a village boy, observed the guerillas:-
- "break in, drive everybody outside, put them against the wall and shoot them."
Ayish Zeidan, a teenager, known as Haj Ayish:-
- "We heard shooting. My mother did not want us to look out of the window. I fled with my sister, but my mother and my other sisters could not make it. They hid in the cellar for four days and then ran away". He said he never believed that more than 110 people had died at Deir Yassin and that Arab leaders exaggerated the atrocities. "There had been no rape. The Arab radio at the time talked of women being killed and raped, but this is not true. I believe that most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters."
Zeinab Akkel, a woman, offered money (about $400) to protect her brother. One guerilla took the money and:-
- "then he just knocked my brother over and shot him in the head with five bullets.".
Fahimi Zeidan stated that she and her wounded siblings encountered a captured pair of village males and:-
- "When they reached us, the soldiers [guarding us] shot them. When the mother of one of the killed started hitting the fighters, one of them stabbed her with a knife a few times. When one of his daughters screamed, they shot her too. They then called my brother Mahmoud and shot him in our presence, and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother (she was carrying my little sister Khadra who was still being breast fed) they shot my mother too."
Haleem Eid, a woman, saw:-
- "a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant."
Irgun members Eyewitness accounts
Yehoshua Gorodentchik, an Irgunist fighter, said that they:-
- "found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners."
Ben Zion-Cohen (an Irgun commander) reported to the Jabotinsky archives that at some point in Deir Yassin:-
- "We eliminated every Arab that came our way."
Number of dead, wounded and prisoners
In 1948 participants, observers and journalists wrote that as many as 254 villagers were killed that day. Everyone had an interest in publicizing a high Arab casualty figure: the Haganah, to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; the Arabs and the British to malign the Jews; the Irgun and Lehi to provoke terror and frighten Arabs into fleeing the country.
The first number publicized about the death toll was 254. Irgun commander Raanan told it to reporters and it quickly stuck. Raanan's figure was a deliberate exaggeration, he later explained: "I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic."
The fog of war accounts for some of the discrepancies. In addition, there were severe rivalries between the Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi. The number of 254 killed was readily accepted and disseminated for different reasons of convenience for various parties. This figure has become, until recently, the standard one usually quoted.
In 1987, the Research and Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, a prominent Arab university on the West Bank, published a comprehensive study of the history of Deir Yassin, as part of its Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project. The Center's findings concerning Deir Yassin were published, in Arabic only, as the fourth booklet in its "Destroyed Arab Villages Series.
The Bir Zeit researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitnesses to the attack and personally interviewed each of them. "For the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February–May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative," the Bir Zeit authors explained, listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: "The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250–254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the groups which carried out the massacre exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance." A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded was given.
Additional reports:
Menachem Begin, who did not participate in the battle, wrote that:-
'Apart from the military aspect, there is a moral aspect to the story of Dir Yassin. At that village, whose name was publicized throughout the world, both sides suffered heavy casualties. We had four killed and nearly forty wounded. The number of casualties was nearly forty percent of the total number of the attackers. The Arab troops suffered casualties nearly three times as heavy. The fighting was thus very severe. Yet the hostile propaganda, disseminated throughout the world, deliberately ignored the fact that the civilian population of Dir Yassin was actually given a warning by us before the battle began. One of our tenders carrying a loud speaker was stationed at the entrance to the village and it exhorted in Arabic all women, children and aged to leave their houses and to take shelter on the slopes of the hill. By giving this humane warning our fighters threw away the element of complete surprise, and thus increased their own risk in the ensuing battle. A substantial number of the inhabitants obeyed the warning and they were unhurt. A few did not leave their stone houses — perhaps because of the confusion. The fire of the enemy was murderous - to which the number of our casualties bears eloquent testimony. Our men were compelled to fight for every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades. And the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.
The education which we gave our soldiers throughout the years of revolt was based on the observance of the traditional laws of war. We never broke them unless the enemy first did so and thus forced us, in accordance with the accepted custom of war, to apply reprisals. I am convinced, too, that our officers and men wished to avoid a single unnecessary casualty in the Dir Yassin battle. But those who throw stones of denunciation at the conquerors of Dir Yassin would do well not to don the cloak of hypocrisy.
In connection with the capture of Dir Yassin the Jewish Agency found it necessary to send a letter of apology to Abdullah, whom Mr. Ben Gurion, at a moment of great political emotion, called 'the wise ruler who seeks the good of his people and this country.' The 'wise ruler,' whose mercenary forces demolished Gush Etzion and flung the bodies of its heroic defenders to birds of prey, replied with feudal superciliousness. He rejected the apology and replied that the Jews were all to blame and that he did not believe in the existence of 'dissidents.' Throughout the Arab world and the world at large a wave of lying propaganda was let loose about 'Jewish atrocities.'
The enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name. In the result it helped us. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the main road; and their fall, together with the capture of al-Qastal by the Haganah, made it possible to keep open the road to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. Not what happened at Dir Yassin, but what was invented about Dir Yassin, helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield. The legend of Dir Yassin helped us in particular in the saving of Tiberias and the conquest of Haifa.".
The historian Benny Morris writes:
'Deir Yassin is remembered… for the atrocities committed by the IZL and LHI troops during and immediately after the drawn-out battle: Whole families were riddled with bullets… men, women, and children were mowed down as they emerged from houses; individuals were taken aside and shot." Haganah intelligence reported "there were piles of dead. Some of the prisoners moved to places of incarceration, including women and children, were murdered viciously by their captors… LHI members… relate that the IZL men raped a number of Arab girls and murdered them afterward (we don't know if this is true).' Another intelligence operative (who visited the site hours after the event) reported the 'adult males were taken to town Jerusalem in trucks and paraded in the city streets, then taken back to the site and killed… Before they were put on the trucks, the IZL and LHI men searched the women, men, and children [and] took from them all the jewelry and stole their money.' Finally, the 'Haganah made great efforts to hide its part in the operation.' - Righteous Victims, ibid.p.208
Results
Deir Yassin very quickly became ideological bait in the propaganda war between Israel and the Arab states. Panic flight of Arabs across Palestine intensified. It was also used as a strong argument for the Arab states to intervene against Israel, Arab League chief Azzam Pasha said "The massacre of Deir Yassin was to a great extent the cause of the wrath of the Arab nations and the most important factor for sending [in] the Arab armies".
A member of the Herut party in the Knesset, in a parliamentary debate in August of the following year, claimed that the events at Deir Yassin were central to Israel’s eventual victory in 1948: 'Thanks to Deir Yassin, we won the war.'
After the war Deir Yassin was settled by Israelis and named Givat Schaul Beth, today belonging to the city of Jerusalem (at the top end of Har Nof). The Kfar Shaul mental health center is built on much of the western side of the former village.
Reconsideration of the massacre
Denial by Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1969
In 1969, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published a pamphlet “Background Notes on Current Themes: Deir Yassin” in English denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin, and calling the story "part of a package of fairy tales, for export and home consumption". The pamphlet led to a series of derivative articles giving the same message, especially in America. Menachem Begin's Herut party disseminated a Hebrew translation in Israel, causing a widespread but largely non-public debate within the Israeli establishment. Several former leaders of the Hagannah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy, but the Foreign Ministry explained that "While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our
information, we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare." Yitzhak Levi, the 1948 leader of Hagannah Intelligence, wrote to Begin: "On behalf of the truth and the purity of arms of the Jewish soldier in the War of Independence, I see it as my duty to warn you against continuing to spread this untrue version about what happened in Deir Yassin to the Israeli public. Otherwise there will be no avoiding raising the matter publicly and you will be responsible." Eventually, the Foreign Ministry agreed to stop distributing the pamphlet, but it remains the source of many popular accounts.
Uri Milstein's study
A detailed account of what happened at Deir Yassin was published by Israeli military historian Uri Milstein. Milstein describes examples of atrocities committed by the Irgun and Lehi forces, and agrees that most of the dead at Deir Yassin were “old people, women and children. Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters.” Milstein concluded that most of these events occurred while the fighting was in progress, rather than afterwards.
He doubts that Meir Pa'il was present early enough to see everything he claims to have seen (which Pa'il hotly denies). Finally he is reluctant to call it a "massacre", claiming that such occurrences are typical of war and that the Haganah did similar things on many occasions, even if not on such a scale. In Blood Libel at Deir Yassin, he asserts that the "massacre at Deir Yassin" was a myth created by the Israeli Left in the early settlement to prevent unification of the Haganah and the Irgun, and to prevent the participation of the Irgun's commander Menahem Begin in Israel's first national unity government under David Ben Gurion.
See also
- 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
- Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine War
Footnotes
Major and recurring sources quoted by author and year only. Full citations can be found in the References section.
Further reading
Journals and articles*"There was no Massacre there" by Yerach Tal, in Ha'Aretz, 8 September 1991, page B3.
- "Indeed there was a Massacre there" by Danny Rubinstein, in Ha'Aretz, September 11, 1991.
External links
Arabic News, 4/10/1998. - Jerusalem Post, 7 April 2007. - by Professor Yehuda Lapidot, IZL (Irgun) website by James Zogby, Al-Ahram Weekly by Nur-eldeen Masalha, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948 Autumn, 1988), pp. 121-137 (database access required). - by Mitchell Bard, Jewish Virtual Library - Zionist Organization of America, 9 March 1998 (from Web Archives). - PEACE Middle East Dialog Group. - Palestine Facts website, includes additional links.In 1998 the published an extensive piece entitled "Deir Yassin: History of a Lie" which is reproduced
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