ArchivesDeir Yassin massacre
The Deir Yassin massacre (Deir Yassin is also transliterated from Arabic as Dayr Yasin and frequently (mis)transliterated from Hebrew writings as Dir Yassin) refers to the killing of scores of Arab civilians at the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish irregular forces between April 9 and 11, 1948. This occurred during a period of increasing local Arab-Jewish fighting about one month prior to the regional outbreak of the much larger 1948 Middle East war. Reports of the event had considerable contemporary impact on the conflict, and the circumstances, nature, and evaluation of the Deir Yassin incident remain highly controversial decades later. (The modern Israeli suburb of Kefar Shaul is built on the former location of Deir Yassin ).
Why contoversial? Read how Michael K.Smith describes this incident in his book “Portraits of Empire: Unmasking Imperial Illusions from ‘American Century’ to the ‘War on Terror’”
Set on expelling unwanted Arabs from the soon-to-be Jewish state, the terrorist Irgun attacks the Palestinian village on the Muslim sabbath, shattering quiet routine with a nightmare of shouts, explosions, gunpowder, blood and smoke.
The unarmed villagers are ordered into a community square, lined up against the wall, and summarily shot. A nine-months-pregnant woman takes a bullet in the neck and her belly sliced open with a butcher knife. Another woman tries to rescue the baby from dead woman’s womb but is killed on the spot. A sixteen-year-old girl watches horrified as a man with a sword slices her neighbor from head to toe.
The trapped villagers try to flee, but the Irgun commanders track them down, attacking with Sten guns and hand grenades, finishing them off with knives. When the blood curdling screams finally fade away, Deir Yassin is a smoldering ruin, with 254 dead, among them 35 pregnant women. Corpses are thrown down a well.
That is how Michael K.Smith describes it and at the same time many vehemently deny such historical account. For example, some argue that the village of Deir Yassin was a hot spot for Arab insurgents. Official Israeli sources of that time claimed that
Deir Yassin was an integral inseparable episode in the battle for Jerusalem… [Arab forces] were attempting to cut the only highway linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv and the outside world. It had cut the pipeline upon which the defenders depended for water. Palestinian Arab contingents, stiffened by men of the regular Iraqi army, had seized vantage points overlooking the Jerusalem road and from them were firing on trucks that tried to reach the beleaguered city with vital food-stuffs and supplies. Dir Yassin, like the strategic hill and village of Kastel, was one of these vantage points. In fact, the two villages were interconnected militarily, reinforcements passing from Dir Yassin to Kastel during the fierce engagement for [Kastel] hill.
(Information from Abba Eban in “Background Notes on Current Themes” - No.6: Dir Yassin (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Information Division, 16 March 1969).
These words are echoed by Emanuel A.Winston, a middle East Analyst and commentator.
… This Arab village in 1948 sat in a key position high on the hill controlling passage on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. Those villagers were no different than other nearby Arab villagers who were heavily armed, hostile and aggressive. They also hosted a battle group from the Iraqi army. They had incessantly attacked Jewish convoys trying to supply food and medical supplies to Jerusalem which was under siege and cut-off by Arab armies in linkage with those same villagers. They were killing many Jews. Deir Yassin was a staging area for the villagers and regular army from various Arab armies. They were not innocents as proclaimed by the Arab nations or the Jewish Revisionists.
(Information from “Jewish Historical Revisionists”, by Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East Analyst & commentator.)
Who is right in this situation? Where is the truth?
Hard to answer since official Israeli archives are still sealed from the public alongside with photos taken right after the battle of Deir Yassin. Without them it would hard to say for sure what really happened there. Both sides provide witness accounts that condradict each other in one or another way. Some claim that loudspeakers were used to warn civilian population about an incoming attack, other witnesses claim otherwise. An official sources state eye witness accounts:
Meir Pa’il’s eyewitness account is one of the most detailed single eye witness accounts of the massacre, as he was 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:
Meir Pa’il 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”.”.
(Information from Meir Pa’il’s Eyewitness Account, Pa’il and Isseroff)
His more contemporary report and on-scene photographs remain classified.
Here, we might argue that Meir Pa’il’s account was biased and incorrect since he worked for the Israeli side. However, there is no way to prove or disapprove his words since his full report and photos are still classified. Israeli opponents, in their turn, provide completely different account that comes from Israeli officer
Eliahu Arbel arrived at the scene April 10. 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.”
(Information from Yediot Ahronot, 1972-02-05)
The list of so-called eyewitness acounts and facts can go on, yet one fact stays the same, official archives that could shed some light on this event still remain classified. Why? It is open for discussion, so if someone possess any information about it, feel free to share it with us.
As it was expected, the Deir Yassin incident served as ground for retaliation attacks from an Arab side and further ideological fighting from the both, Israeli and Palestininan side.Deir Yassin very quickly became an ideological bait in the propaganda war between Israel and the Arab states. Arab League chief Azzam Pasha said for example: “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**
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). Much of the western side of the village is part of the Kfar Shaul mental health center.
The debate over what happened on that day in Deir Yassin is still open.One detailed account of what happened at Deir Yassin was published by Israeli military historian Uri Milstein. Milstein describes many examples of atrocities committed by the Irgun and Lehi forces, and agrees that most of the dead were “old people, women and children. Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters.” However, 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.Several articles (including one by Sid Zion below) discuss the incident as a pitched battle around which no massacre took place. These reports allege that the battle’s description as a massacre has been exaggerated in media for propagandistic purposes. This reflects the fact that discussion of the events of Deir Yassin has become an information war of its own.
