Category: Chapter1

Eilot

Ilut Massacre July 10^th through the 28^th, 1948:

 

Not only one massacre, but several were carried out against the people of the sad village of Ilut.

According to Ahmad AlBash of the Palestinian Monthly Magazine – Issue 11 – the first year – August 2008 – Rajab 1429, Damascus, (Note: reset margin)

Ilut village is located within five kilometers of the northwest of Nazareth, and has an altitude of 300 meters. The village is located in between the villages of Saffuriyya and Ma’lul, Nazareth.

Land area of 13,390 Dunums, of which 30 Dunums constitute the area of the village, the population in 1945 reached about 1310 inhabitants, living in 165 homes, this village fell in the hands of Zionist gangs on the 16^th of July 1948.

In early August 1948, one of the shepherds of the village was taking his sheep to the wilderness of the village between Saffuriyya and Ilut, he was surprised to see thirteen dead bodies in front of him that were eaten by beasts and birds of prey. This shepherd took the people of his village to this location and they identified the bodies from their clothes; they were those of their children who were abducted by Zionist gangs days before”.

• On the 10^th of July 1948 Zionist gangs entered the village and kidnapped thirteen men from the village, no one was able to find out what happened to them.
• During the occupation of Nazareth, the Zionist gangs entered the village of Ilut for the second time and the residents were ordered to leave.
• In the morning of the 21^st of July the army entered once again and asked the residents to gather in the square of the village at the threshing floor and when two young men –Saleh Said Abou Ras and Taha Abou Ayyash” tried to bring water for the elderly to drink, they were shot.

In this regard witnesses say

that members of the Zionist gangs took the clothes of the martyrs off then took them to the square of the village. The officer of the Zionist unit in charge of occupying the village, took a list of names and read it out loud in front of the residents, they took the mentioned people in a car and the ones that were absent were replaced by other residents from the village.

The Zionist gangs released the rest of the villagers and ordered them to leave the village; they blew up three houses which belonged to the Mukhtar Hassan Mohamad Abou Ras, Sari Khalil Abou Ayash and the family of Abou el Abed Abou Ayash. Afterwards,when the car carrying the prisoners came to be 500 meters away from the square of the village mosque, the Zionists killed all of them with machine guns.

On the 28^th of July 1948, the army entered the village once again and captured around 20 men and after investigating them and torturing them they were released, except for: Awad Ali Abou Ras, Salim Mohamad Abou Ras and Ali Awdeh Aboud who were executed. Sheikh Barkini held their funeral in the neighboring village of Safouriya, their bodies were recognized by their clothes by the women of the village and the Sheikh kept their clothes.

2-14-1- Testimonies from inside the massacre:

Abu Abed Abu Ayyash – Mohammed Ibrahim Abu Ras – Mohammed Hassan Abu Ras – Ali Sabri Abu Ras – Ahmed Abdel-Halim Abu Ayyash – Khaled Saleh Abu al-Walid were all witnesses to these massacres.

Abu Abed Abu Ayyash mentioned that he was 20 years old back then and before the army entered the village they sent a police officer to the Jewish region who called Al Shwayli and Hassan Mohamad Suleimani from “Mentashi zebda” to meet with the Mukhtar Hassan Mohamad Abou Ras, the Sheihk of the village,Taha Al Khatib, Al Abed Abou Ayash and other people from the village.

The messenger came back to the village warning that the army will surround the village and capture some men and he encouraged them to either hide or run away, and I hid behind the jars in our house.  The Zionist gangs came indeed in their tanks from the west side and surrounded the village; twenty four men were captured among them Hassan Mohamad Suleimani. And, despite the fact that I thought no one saw me hiding, my sisterinlaw Amina Al Waked and Fatima Eid had seen me.

While I was hiding, one of the Zionist gangs entered our house but did not see me and he prepared his riffle to shoot everything that was moving.. When I heard the first house blow up, I stood tall and wouldn’t go out until they blew up the house. My sister-in-law Amina came running screaming with other women and men from the village thinking I was dead and with their help I was able to get out from under the destroyed house. Meanwhile, we were hearing heavy shooting and the late Salim Mohamad Abou Ras appeared to tell us: “they shot the families and killed them all”. After the army left, we went to see the bodies. Hassan Abou Ras shouted, Khodr and Ali Abu Ras heard him and were reassured that the army had withdrawn. The stood up from among the martyrs as they had faked their death during the shooting but were injured. They said that after the car holding the prisoners had moved half a kilometer away from the square of the mosque, the army ordered the prisoners to get out of the car, sit on the ground and the officer gave the order to kill them with machine guns. They all died including the messenger who was sent to the village.

As remembered by Mohamad Ibrahim Abu Ras, the martyrs were eleven, found in the forest a few days after their kidnapping by a shepherd who smelled their corpses. In the North and in the threshing ground, several people from the village were killed during an atrocious massacre. In Nazareth, Ali Aboud from Ilut was killed as well as Mufleh Awdat Allah in Sarafand.

Of the martyrs who were killed in these massacres, as stated by the son of the Mukhtar Mohamad Hassan Abou Ras, two young men from the village had their bodies mutilated with axes, their hands and legs were broken before they were killed. This is the Nakba of the village of Ilut and the massacres against defenseless people, where 48 martyrs died in less than two months and lost with them most of the village’ lands.

2-14-2- We will neither forget nor forgive…. we will neither pardon nor permit

Despite all that they suffered from injustice, oppression, murder and persecution, the residents remained close to their village, which enabled half of them to return to their village a year after the Nakba. As they were determined to return the rest of the villagers returned to their village three years later, to build it again and became attached to it more than ever.

At the beginning of the battle, very few of the villagers immigrated in the to Lebanon and Jordan. They are now waiting to return and get back together with their families and relatives and the people of their village. They also wish for all the sons of Palestinian villages and cities to be reunited and for Palestine to be free from the Zionist invaders.

Hundreds of villagers from Ilut participated in the evening held for the 60^th commemoration of the horrible massacre of the Zionist gangs which resulted in the death of 40 martyrs.

The evening was held under the slogan “We will neither forget nor forgive…. we will neither pardon nor permit” and started with a minute of silence in tribute to the memory of the martyrs of the Palestinian people. Sheikh Hilmi Hamad read verses from the Koran and Mr. Khalid Abu Ras, stressed the need to preserve the memory, and raise the level of national awareness among the younger generation and the cultural level of the village to reach a self understanding of national and collective identity.

Hajj Khaled saleh Taha, Abou Al Walid, who lived through the massacre gave a word during which he narrated the events of the massacre which followed the displacement of Safuriyya in the middle of July 1948 due to the Golani Unit of the Israeli army.

Abou Al Walid mentioned that the massacre happened in two rounds, the first one was when 13 men from the village were taken to the neighboring vineyards in the region of Jabal Al Ayn and were shot them by the army, as well as stopping and shooting a woman from the village who was riding her horse going to Nazareth.

After a few days the residents of the village were gathered for the Zeytoun big massacre as 26 young men were taken to the vineyards and were shot dead by the soldiers. Abou Al Walid concluded praising the survival of Ilut after the tragic loss.

The speech given by the deputy Mohammed Barakeh, head of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality mentioned that the massacre in the village of Ilut did not occur by accident. It was planned, as part of the general plan, which included all parts of Palestine, in order to expel the Palestinian people from their homeland; as the Zionist strategy is to try to get as much as possible of the land and the least possible of the people (Palestinians).

Barakeh continued saying that the massacre of Ilut happened a few days after uprooting the neighboring village of Saffuriyya. He emphasized that the objective was to evacuate the entire area of its people, but if they succeeded in uprooting Saffuriyya, they failed to uproot Ilut, and this is what happened in many of our villages and towns and Commemoration Day is an important element in the preservation of history and its transfer to future generations.

Barakeh mentioned that the uprooting policy hasn’t stopped for a moment in the last 60 years. After 1948, the authorities were worried about the survival of 150 thousand Palestinians in their homeland, and everything was done in order to resume expulsions and deportations, and the massacre of Kafr Kassem which took place in conjunction with the tripartite aggression on Egypt, was intended to intimidate the residents of the village and the entire region, and push people to flee to the West Bank. However, the scheme failed, despite the fact that the massacre took the lives of 49 martyrs.

The historian Dr. Mustafa Kabha, a history and media lecturer at the Open University gave a lecture about the meaning of the Palestinian Nakba in terms of the destruction of 450 villages and 6 towns, the halt of urbanization, as well as the commission of massacres and displacement. He placed emphasis on the massacre of Ilut and highlighted the importance of keeping the memory, and documenting local history through the conservation of the testimonies of the living, and to have these recorded across all possible means and venues: publishing books, holding seminars and the establishment of institutions that are interested in these areas.

Abu Shousha Massacre

Abu Shousha Massacre:

Palestinian researchers working at Beir Zeit University have managed to uncover for the first time a massacre that took place in the village of Abu Shousha, near Ramleh, at the hands of Zionist forces. This massacre led to the killing of some 60 Palestinians and ended with the expulsion of all its inhabitants and its subsequent destruction.

The 290 page study on the massacre points out that it took place one day after the British mandate over Palestine was terminated.

One of the co-researchers stated that there was a kind of an unwritten truce between the village residents and the “Jezer” Kibbutz which was founded in March 13th, 1945. The name “Jezer” is a Canaanite word meaning “high”, in reference to the height of the land on which the Kibbutz was founded. The Kibbutz overlooked Abu Shousha which in 1948 had a total area of 9,425 Dunums and a population of 950.[i]

The study noted the existence of economic and social relationship between the Kibbutz residents and the villagers, but that such relationship

“deteriorated after the partition resolution and worsened dramatically following the killing of the Kibbutz guard on March 21st, 1948 to avenge the killing of villager Noah Mohammad Al-Haj”.

2-10-1- The Details …

According to the study, on the dawn of May 14th, 1948, Jewish soldiers from the Jefa’ati Brigade laid a tight siege to the village, and proceeded with a heavy bombardment of the strategic northern side of the village, which was guarded by 10s of defenders possessing some 70 rifles.

Jewish forces succeeded in entering the village and the Arab defenders had to withdraw. Meanwhile, women took refuge in three caves where they stayed in hiding for a whole week; Men, on the other hand, were expelled.

The women’s hideaway was discovered when one woman ventured out to cook some food for her kids. She was confronted by an Israeli patrol, which after interrogating her, were led to the caves. All the women and children were ordered out and were subsequently returned to their homes. The Women formed a 5-member “burial committee” entrusted with burying the corpses. In all 60 were buried; their names were recorded in the said study. Trenches, ditches and caves were used a mass graves.[ii]

2-10-2- Expulsion and killing

The Study accuses the Israeli Military of the responsibility for the expulsion of women pursuant to a military order it issued on May 20th, 1948. Women were ordered to come out of their homes. Soldiers were lined in two symmetrical rows, some 3 meters apart. Women were ordered to parade between those two rows facing east, where the village of Al-Qabab lies. When women pleaded with the soldiers to be permitted to go back and fetch some of their belongings, bullets were fired in the air and towards the women’s feet. The firing continued until the women were out of the soldiers’ sight. They left their village, never to come back.[iii]

• A telegraph sent to King Abdullah might provide some indication as to the magnitude of death and destruction that befell Abu Shousha and its residents. The telegraph asserted that “Jews are killing the villagers and we request the intervention of the air force”.
• Another telegraph sent from Ramleh Police Station to The Red Cross Commission states: “Jews are conducting barbaric acts and we demand the presence of a Red Cross delegation to provide the necessary assistance”.
• According to the Hagana, 5 rifles and 500 bullets were confiscated; 30 villagers were killed and 11 were detained in Rahobot, while other villagers were instructed to vacate the village.

2-10-3- The Destruction of the Village

Following its occupation, the village was razed to the ground. By 1974 it was nothing more than heaps of stones, and in 1978 it was forested, now trees stand where it once stood.

The two researchers, who were presented with the study, Fahom Shalabi and Nasr Yacoub, have traced the names of those killed, their ages, the location of their murder and sometimes their burial site. They have also met with their relatives. In all 60 were killed in a massacre the history books never mentioned a word about.[iv]

Dr. Saleh Abduljawad, the Head of Beir Zeit Research Institute, and one of the supervisors of the Study which unearthed the Abu Shousha massacre, had stated that “the importance of the massacre lies also in its timing; the day the State of Israel was born, and also in the fact that it was not recorded in history books”.

Abduljawad added: “The importance of the discovery is made ever more important today since there is much talk of a historical settlement; it is not so much to poke into past wounds or say that there could be no peace between the two sides, but to make the Israeli side feel guilty and to torpedo the fiction that there was no mass expulsion of Palestinians and that they had left on their own accord, or in response to calls from Arab States to do so; Palestinians had to flee because they were subjected to a well thought-out and systematic Israeli policy. This made them refugees, and this is the essence of the Palestinian problem”.

Abduljawad continued: “The Study is a stab in the heart of the Israeli propaganda which denies that mass expulsion campaigns ever took place. Shimon Peres, Israel’s Foreign Minister, tried in his book, “A New Middle East”, to deny that expulsion ever took place, but this study came to show that this was a naked lie”.[v]

[i]. Al-Quds Newspaper, 21/3/1995.

[ii]. Ibid.

[iii]. Ibid.

[iv]. Al-Quds Newspaper, 22/3/1995.

[v]. Al-Dustoor Newspaper, 29/10/1999.

 

Tantora

Tantoura Massacre – A Mass Grave:

If one considers the details of this massacre committed by the Zionist forces against the inhabitants of the village of Tantoura, the ugliness of the atrocities overshadows those of Deir Yassin.

The importance of this massacre lies in that it was uncovered by an Israeli researcher named Teddy Kats, a lecturer at Haifa University. Since, he was subjected to harassment and had received numerous death threats in addition to being forced to appear before Israeli courts.

We hereby present the details of this massacre committed in May 1948 relying mainly on the study prepared by Dr. Katz who uncovered it 52 years after its commission. It was indeed published in full by the Israeli paper, Ma’ariv:[i]

“These scenes shall never be forgotten by Fawzi Mahmoud Ahmad Tanji (Abu Khaled). Fifty-two years after the ordeal, he goes numb whenever he recalls how his entire family and friends have been massacred before his own eyes. “They took us to the village’s cemetery where we were made to stand in line; the Jewish commander ordered his soldiers to ‘take 10’. They selected 10 from amongst us and took them close to some cactus trees and shot them dead. They returned and took another 10 and the massacre continued”.

Abu Khaled adds:

“These soldiers, whom I will never forget their features as long as I live, appeared to me like angels of death; as I stood there, I was certain that I was living the last seconds of my life and that they will soon pick me .. Jews are duty-bound to take example of what the Nazis did to them; I don’t know why they did to us what the Nazis did to them?!”.

The 74-year-old Abu Khaled suddenly bursts in tears: “It would have been far better for me to have died rather than carry this terrible ordeal with me all these long years”.

Those implicated in the Tantoura massacre, and ironically even its Arab victims, or the survivors among them, have opted to suppress these terrible events deep down in their inner self; that is, until an Israeli researcher uncovered it.

Rizq Ashmawi (Abu Saed), who today resides in the village of Al-Faridis, was only 13 at the time of the massacre. He recalls:

“Not far away from the village mosque there was a small yard. The Israelis gathered around 25 young men, lined them up, and opposite them they stationed between 10 to 12 soldiers who simply opened fire, killing all 25 of them”.

Ashmawi further recalls how he had gone with a Jewish soldier to get some bread, saying:

“As we returned using the sea shore path, we found around 40 to 50 corpses. Women were desperately trying to cover their children least they be killed. My own mother was almost killed that day. When we were about to leave towards the cemetery, my mother suffered a seizure and couldn’t walk. We begged the soldiers to take us by car but they responded: ‘there is no need, we will kill her and relieve you of her’. A heated exchange ensued between us and the soldiers and we were subsequently spared”.

Ashmawi believes that the massacre resulted in over 90 killed. Men were buried in two pits while women were buried in a third smaller one.

2-9-1- A Bloody Pursuit in Search of Young Men

Teddy Kats, 56, a Meguil Kibbutzim and a Meretz member, has devoted 2 years trying to establish contact with anyone who was present in Tantoura on the eve of May 22/23, 1948.

He spoke to scores of people who were displaced; some currently reside in the village of Al-Faridis, while others were expelled outside the country (some live in Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, Syria). Katz also spoke to soldiers from the Alexandaroni Brigade, Unit 33, aka “The Saturday Brigade”, since this very Unit had a new mission assigned to it every weekend. The researcher also spoke to residents of “Zakhron Yacoub”, a neighboring village to Tantoura.

In compiling his report, Katz also consulted and inspected the Israeli Army’s Archives and has unequivocally concluded that

“what happened in Tantoura on that May 1948 evening was a massacre at a mass scale”.

Katz writes: “On the evening of May 22/23, 1948, Unit 33 of the Alexandaroni Brigade assaulted the village of Tantoura; within hours of heavy fighting, the entire village fell in the hands of the Israeli Army”.

According to over 20 testimonies and to others from members of the Brigade, for hours soldiers have chased the village men intending to kill them. At the beginning, soldiers fired at men wherever they found them, at homes, yards, even in the streets … then they started chasing men in the village’s cemetery.

In occupying Tantoura, 14 Alexandaroni Brigade soldiers were killed. The village’s cemetery was later converted into a car park for “Dor Beach” resort on the Mediterranean south of Haifa. A number of displaced Palestinians painfully told the researcher: “We have even been denied and deprived from visiting the graves of our loved ones”. Abu Khaled comes every now and then to visit the ruins of his village; he straddles the ground and bursts into painful tears.

2-9-2- They Shot Them and They Fell into Their Graves

• Abu Khaled says: “They gathered us near the sea shore, men on one side and women on the other. Children 12 and above were ordered to join the men while those under 12 joined the women; and then the selection began. Seven to ten men were picked up and taken to the village mosque where they were executed. The killers returned and took another batch, and the massacre continued. In all, around 90 were thus executed. Then they took all who had remained to the cemetery. As they were about to commence the killing, around 50 to 60 people from “Zakhron Yacoub” Kibbutz arrived at the scene. The second they comprehended what had happened, a number of their senior officials intervened and averted the massacre”.
• A similar testimony was conveyed to the Israeli researcher from Abdul Razzaq Al-Yahya (Abu Anas), a top Palestinian security official, who in turn had heard from a family member who was in Tantoura on that eve. Abu Anas told Dr. Katz: “They gathered all the men at the cemetery and divided them into batches of 6 or 7. Every batch was ordered to dig a pit in the sand. As soon as they finished they were lined up at the edge of the pit and shot dead; automatically they would fall in their own dug graves”.
• Abu Anas continues: “At one point, two of my brothers who were in two different batches hugged each other before their turns were due. At that very moment, a Jewish man riding a motorbike arrived at the scene. He was carrying an order from his Command to stop the massacre”.

Apparently, Abu Anas contends that “the Jewish Command feared the possibility that similar measures might be taken against Jewish prisoners in the custody of Jordanian troops”. Abu Anas believes the death toll to hover around 78.

• Another testimony of what Israeli soldiers have perpetrated was provided by Abdul Rahman Dansh, age 75. While digging what later would be his grave, he saw soldiers laughing and exchanging jokes among themselves.

Dansh adds: “After every spree of shootings and executions, the soldiers would exchange remarks and crack jokes. I couldn’t understand what they were saying since I didn’t speak Hebrew. However, a friend of mine who speaks it told me that they were saying “look at these fools who are digging their own graves”.

Dansh further states that he and his friend decided to slow down the digging. A short while later, he saw a Jewish man known to him. He pleaded with him to intervene to save his life, which he did. Both Dansh and his friend were set free.

2-9-3- Mass Killing

Shlomo Amber, who at the time was 25, worked as a Commanding Officer at Unit 33. In his testimony before the researcher, he stated: “My mission was to detonate a bridge connecting two sandy banks of a valley. However, I spent the entire day at Tantoura and witnessed events I’d rather not speak of”.

“After a long pause”, Katz writes in his report, “the officer spoke”. Amber said: “I joined the British Army out of conviction that it was the duty of every Jew to fight the Germans … but we ended up fighting in Tantoura. It is my duty to state that even the Germans didn’t kill unarmed prisoners, who were all later repatriated safe and sound; however, here in Tantoura, we killed our Arab prisoners”.

He adds: “It was not possible to portray what had happened as aiming towards regaining national respect; moreover, I do not think that the number of victims who fell at Tantoura was large enough to push people to a wave of outrage and resentment. We simply set to occupy a distant village that does not fall on any major transportation network or at any major crossroads; this was an anomalous phenomenon with a distinctive import.

We did have a face to face confrontation; however, the images indelibly printed in my mind are of the cemetery where I saw a large number of corpses. It was then that I decided to leave the place when I saw the soldiers killing, killing and killing. Hence, I don’t know how many killers were there”.

Last week however, Amber, who worked as the Head of Civil Defence and resigned from military service after reaching the rank of Major-General, retracted from his statements arguing that what Katz had written was not accurate:

“I haven’t mentioned anything about Nazi soldiers nor did I talk about killing prisoners. I find it unwise to say so. I feel angry when I read what neo-historians (revisionists) are writing on the killing of prisoners. May be they mixed things up”.

Amber adds to Ma’ariv: “I am not willing to corroborate inaccurate stories. True, people were killed at Tantoura; but mass killings? What is mass? People died during battles and may be after, but I do not wish to comment on that. Today, after I’ve reached this age I do not wish to comment on what I have done when I was 25”.

There is no doubt that the research entitled “The exodus of Arabs from the villages of Southern Carmel in 1948” represents an explosive material. Katz himself admitted that he had second thoughts before embarking on his research. He thought that certain issues were better left unturned. He wrote in his research,

“There are considerations which are tantamount to unleashing bears in a jungle. Examining sensitive issues might place so many soldiers of all ranks who took part in the 1948, as well as the civilian leadership, in an ethical dilemma. Fifty years after the events, at a time when conditions were radically different; a different interpretation now would cast a bad image on an entire generation of the Israeli military”.

At one of the walls in “Zara’s” family home hangs the image of a hundred civilian women and children surrounded by Israeli military police, a few meters away from the glass factory awaiting their expulsion from their village. Underneath the photo, the owner of the house wrote the inscription (caption) “Tantoura Catastrophe, August 22, 1948 – Memory and History”.

Ahmad Saleh Zara (Abu Suhail), who died 8 months before the publication of Kats’ report, and his wife, Muyassar, had so many beautiful memories before the village’s occupation. Katz has met Abu Suhail months before his death where he told him: “Our village was much more beautiful than Haifa in many respects. Now there exists ‘Haponeim Settlement’ and ‘Mayan Tseifi and Majan Mikhail Kibbutz’”.

Abu Suhail adds: “Until the war, we had lived with Jews and cooperated with them in many spheres. However, when the war erupted, residents of ‘Zakhron Yacoub’ kibbutz tried to convince Tantoura villagers to surrender and hand in their weapons. It was obvious that the village could not withstand the ferocity of the attack; however, the village’s brave defenders refused to even consider the idea of surrender”.

“When the battle started at around midnight”, Abu Suhail continues,

“Soldiers started shooting sporadically at anyone they laid their eyes on; it was something akin to Hitler’s wars. Heaps of corpses in the streets; it was a horrific scene. When we were ordered to move from one place to another, we had to tread on corpses. When the battle was over, they gathered all the remaining villagers and started transferring them to the village cemetery for their execution”.

2-9-4- Mass Grave

Katz has also met Raslan Hassan Ayoub Omar, (Abu Hassan) two years ago in a refugee camp in Tulkarm where he currently resides. Abu Hassan stated: “A State that is founded on the basis of crime is undoubtedly doomed; a State that is founded on the basis of justice is a perpetual one”. This was uttered by Abu Hassan, the 75 year old elderly, after all his attempts at avoiding meeting Katz had failed.

• After calming down, Abu Hassan continued: “After they had occupied the village, they gathered us near the seashore; they picked 7 of us and I was one of the 7 and asked us to collect the corpses. While doing so, I noticed two corpses in the middle of a cactus bush, so I was reluctant to go there and fetch them as they were full of thorns. At this stage, a soldier pointed his gun at me and ordered me to grab the bodies. Naturally, I had no option but to do so”.

“In all”, Abu Hassan continues,

“We collected some 60 to 70 bodies, and may be more, I cannot recall exactly. At that stage, a wounded soldier came forward and told the guards that he wanted to execute two of us in revenge for his wound. He pointed his finger towards me and another standing next to me. The guy standing next to me was totally oblivious to what was happening since a while ago he had carried the corpses of his two brothers. He stepped forward about a 100 meters and was shot dead by the soldier. As for me, I failed to move forward and got away (luckily), in that they didn’t shoot me”.

“Women and old people were transferred to Al-Faridis village after being stripped of their valuables and jewelry”, Abu Hassan said. “Any one between 10 and 100 years of age was taken to prison; first they were taken to Zakhron Yacoub then to “Umm Khaled”; others were taken to faraway places, as for me I languished in jail for 11 months”, Abu Hassan concluded.

• Mohsen Murie is a domicile of Al-Faridis and was 17 years at the time of the massacre. He was amongst those who were given the task of burying the dead. He states:

“We arrived two days after the massacre to bury the dead. I had laid between 40 to 45 bodies in one grave and another 42 bodies in another mass grave; in a third grave, I laid another 9; there was another grave where 3 women were buried”.

2-9-5- The Clique are Professional Killers

On May 27th, 1948, a few days after the battle of Tantoura, Neftali (Tolek) Makobski, a member of Unit 33 which carried out the attack noted the following in his diary:

“What I have learnt here is that soldiers are professional killers. Some Jews were killed at the hands of Arabs; these killings were personally avenged by the soldiers. I felt that they were retaliating against what has been accumulating in their inner self for long. They felt much better after doing what they had done”.

According to Katz, Makobski, who recorded the above in his diary, was killed in the battle of “Sheikh Mo’nes” on June 1st, 1948.

Something Abnormal at Midnight

Another witness, Mustapha Al-Masri (Abu Jamil), 65, I have met in Al-Faridis while on his way to prayer like many others. He was not so keen to talk to me but at the end he stated: “At midnight I heard something strange, I was 13 at the time. I went straight to my parents and inquired but was told that probably it was a row between our neighbors”.

According to Abu Jamil, his father was not quite content with the explanation he has just given, so he asked his family members to stay and went out to see for himself what was taking place. He soon realized that the whole village has been overrun by the Israelis. He asked his friends who were staying over at his home to stay with him. He had many Jewish friends and was hoping that some would come to rescue him and his family. A Jewish soldier who knew the family well did indeed come. Abu Jamil’s father told him “You know us for over 20 years”; however, the soldier replied “Don’t you dare say something like this; I don’t know any of you”. Abu Jamil’s father responded painfully, “If this is what you say, then I don’t want anything from you”.

Soon after, the soldier left and assigned the house to another. The new soldier asked Mustapha and another sick guy to leave the house. Seconds after they did and around 15 meters away from the door steps of the house, a huge explosion took place. The entire family of 12 has been killed.

Abu Jamil also spoke of another Jewish killer who was roaming the streets shooting sporadically at pedestrians, hours after the battle had ended. David Shelli pleaded with him to stop shooting unarmed civilians like birds; after a long heated argument, he did.

2-9-6- They Were Slaughtered Inside Their Homes

A third location where people from Tantoura were slaughtered, in addition to the cemetery and the streets, was inside their homes while soldiers were searching for weapons. Eyewitnesses testified that every youth arrested was subjected to interrogation regarding weapons found in his possession. However, after the interrogation was over, only soldiers came out of the houses; the occupants didn’t; they were all slaughtered.

The massacre continued for hours on end. The couple Zara told Katz:

“The residents of Zakhron Yacoub came to rescue us in the last minute. A heated discussion ensued between them and the soldiers. They stood as a barrier between the soldiers and Tantoura’s inhabitants insisting that no soldier could lay a finger on us. Had they been 15 minutes late, it would have been over.”

Muyassar added: “When they asked us to leave the house, we passed by a large number of corpses; women were overcome with emotions and started weeping uncontrollably. The soldiers forced men to line up like a herd waiting to be slaughtered. Then they collected the corpses in a few meters’ heap, and then shoveled them into a mass grave using a crane. I am certain their intention was to annihilate the entire village; but such was prevented by the inhabitants of Zakhron Yacoub”.

2-9-7- I Am Not a Killer and I Have Nothing to Hide

One of the Jewish leaders interviewed by Katz in the course of his research is called Murdachi Sockolor, an 80 year old resident of Zakhron Yacoub. He led Alexandaroni Brigade’s raid at Tantoura in 1948. He stated: “We advanced towards the village and suddenly we heard bullets being fired, so we started shooting in all directions since we could not establish the source”.

The following day, Sockolor states that he saw tens of corpses in different locations in the village, and adds:

“We dug a huge pit across the railroad and placed the corpses there as we found them, fully clothed, with the help of some seven of the residents of Al-Faridis. The faces of the dead Arabs were all covered with Kufiyyas (the Palestinian headdress). There was no official record of the number but I recall around 230”.

Kats observes that this testimony does not conform with that of another witnesses’, namely, Abu Fahmi’s, who testified that he recorded the names of the death in two note books, and his total was much less than Sockolor’s. However, such discrepancy could be explained in that Abu Fahmi’s numbers covered only those who fell at the day of the raid, while other numbers included those who fell in the few days that followed the initial raid.

Sockolor recalls the formation of a huge “Mountain of Death” a couple of days after the burial due to the corpses’ inflation in the mass grave. The “Mountain” only subsided two weeks later.

Sockolor’s conscience is at peace regarding what took place in Tantoura. “I am a fighter”, Sockolor states 52 years later,

“And what happened took place in the course of battle. We were fired at and we responded by firing in all directions since we didn’t know where the source was. I am not a killer and I have nothing to hide”.

He further adds that no massacre took place inside the houses and at the cemetery as the refugees maintain”.

However, Katz wrote in his report that Sockolor, just like many other witnesses before him, was not present in the location where killing was taking place in the other side of the village.

2-9-8- In Search for Potential Justifications

Katz attempted in his research to look for and comprehend the motive which led members of Alexandaroni Brigade to behave the way they did. One likely justification claims that the brigade’s members were in a state of shock prior to their raid at Tantoura, since a week before two of their comrades were killed in a car…

In his attempt to look for other justifications, Katz approached Al-Hanan Anani, who was 20 at the time and had joined the Brigade. Anani had migrated from Germany 15 years before escaping from the Nazis, along with his family.

Unlike other soldiers of the Brigade who made no mention of mass killings, Anani told Katz:

“Believe me, this issue of what took place at Tantoura has been causing me much anxiety. It is possible that what happened was linked to the fact that a week before the operation we had lost a large number of our most distinguished colleagues in the battle of Kafar Saba. This might have caused soldiers to enter the Tantoura battle with vengeance”.

Anani added that in a number of Units, including his, soldiers were thirsty for blood and hence it was hard to control them. “In addition, there were no clear policy guidelines pertinent to shooting people after their surrender”.

• Reserve Liwaaaa, Bents Freidan, another commander of the Tantoura operation, and later a Commander of the Alexandaroni Brigade, asserted that a large number of Arabs have been killed at Tantoura.

“This is war, and in war, especially if the theater is a residential area, people die. When you confront your enemy, with no badge on him stating that he does not intend to kill you, you kill him. Based on this, we roamed the village from one street to another, and so many people were killed”.

Freidan strongly rejects testimonies that a massacre took place in the cemetery or inside the homes.

• Abraham Amber, who was a member of the Brigade and is 73 today, was somewhat reserved. “Every now and then there is talk of how Jews killed Arabs; why don’t they investigate all the killing that Arabs committed against Jews”.

2-9-9- Other Testimonies

In the course of the trial of Israeli researcher, Teddy Katz, before the Tel Aviv Central Court, a number of Palestinian eyewitnesses (from Tantoura) appeared to testify in support of Katz’ assertion that a massacre did indeed take place. One such witness was Fawzi Tanji, 73, from Tulkarm refugee camp, who gave evidence before the court, stating:

“They gathered us at the beach and separated men from women; then they divided us into batches of between 7 and 10 and shot them. They killed 90 of us”.[ii]

• Meanwhile, Alexandaroni Brigade Commander stated before the court, that nothing of the sort took place.
• Other members of the Brigade had sued Katz accusing him of slander, defamation and forging their testimonies and claimed compensation in the amount of 101 Million Shekels.
• A number of Palestinian institutions operating in the 1948 territories (Israel proper) and among them the Refugees Committee, have all expressed their support for Katz, while other liberal Israeli institutions have expressed their belief that putting Katz on trial is tantamount to a gag.

Katz was defended by renowned attorney, Afigdor Feldmann, who stated that there are other testimonies, not included in the report, that support the assumption that a massacre did indeed take place. It’s worthwhile noting that Katz had conducted his research as part of an academic requirement at Haifa University.

2-9-10- The Elderly Buried Their Sons in a Mass Grave

• Seventy-year old refugee, Kassem Mohammad Ahmad Obeid, from Jenin refugee camp, still carries the scar of a gunshot he received in 1948, and specifically during the battle of Tantoura.

In the course of a seminar organized by the Palestinian Cultural Directorate to commemorate the 53^rd anniversary of the massacre, Obeid spoke of his now destroyed home village, Kafer Lam, near Haifa, which was destroyed by Zionist gangs after killing the majority of its inhabitants and expelling the rest.

Obeid, who currently lives in the Jenin camp with his children and grandchildren, started by pointing to his village, which lies some 21 km south of Haifa. At the eve of the (nakba), Kafer Lam’s population numbered around 400 belonging to 10 families. They relied for their livelihood on agriculture as they used to supply Haifa, Jaffa and Acre with cucumber, for which their village was renowned due to the abundance of water.

Education started early on at the mosque before a school opened which covered 1st to 4th grade. After that students would have to transfer to Tantoura School.

In so far as transportation was concerned, Obeid said:

“It was easy to go to Haifa using public transportation. Buses used to depart from Tantoura to our village via Ain Ghazal and then on to Haifa. This was convenient for those who sought medical treatment at Rambam Hospital in Haifa”.

Obeid then moved to narrate the nationalist role assumed by his village, stating:

“Kafer Lam has been subjected to a number of strict military sieges during the British mandate period (the 1936 Revolution) and to intolerable harassment and collective punishment. However, this did not stop its inhabitants from supporting the revolutionaries”.

As for the villagers’ relationship with the Jews, Obeid noted that it was normal until the end of 1947, when Jewish gangs started exerting pressure on the inhabitants with the aim of expelling them from their village. When Jewish gangs finally attacked the village, unarmed inhabitants were forced to flee to Ain Ghazal, Ajzam and Al-Faridis. These three villages later became hotbeds for confrontations with armed Jewish gangs backed by British troops, who didn’t hesitate from using their air force to strike them, killing in the process; many homes were destroyed.

When he started talking about the Tantoura massacre, Obeid lifted his right arm to show a gunshot wound that he sustained during the battle in the defence of Tantoura. “Jewish gangs”, Obeid continued,

“laid a siege on Tantoura from the north and started bombarding the village from land and sea before invading it and desecrating its mosque. Then they called upon its inhabitants, using loud speakers, to vacate their homes and march towards the sea. It was there that Zionist gangs executed the massacre”.[iii]

Obeid adds:

“Zionists were selecting individual Palestinians, grouping them in batches of 10s, then forcing them to go away from the congregation’s sight, force them to raise their arms and face the wall before executing them. They would then force the elderly to carry their bodies and lay them in a mass grave dug by bulldozers. This scene continued more than ten times”.

Obeid was among one of the last batches to be executed. He, along with others, was saved by the intervention of the mayor of “Zamarin” Settlement who had maintained good relationship with the villagers. The survivors were transferred to a detention camp in the City of Umm Khaled, currently, Netanya. After a year in jail, Obeid managed to escape towards Qalqiliya, then to Nablus and on to Jenin.

What rejuvenated Obeid’s rich memory, was that he was testifying along with his peer, Yousef Al-Haj Daoud who stated:

“When we ran out of ammunition and specifically on July 25th, 1948, the journey of dispossession and dispersion has begun. We moved towards Jenin and, using Iraqi vehicles, we went to Baghdad, where we were housed in Qarrara Schools District for two months”.

Daoud continues: “We stayed for one whole year in the Barracks of the British Army in Basra. Then we petitioned the Iraqi officer in charge of refugees to allow us to return to Palestine. Our petition was approved and we (around 170 refugees) were transported to the Jordanian border and on to the West Bank, minus some 30 refugees who went to Syria”.

2-9-11- Beni Morris Testifies

Israeli Army Spokesman, commenting on the massacre as presented by Dr. Katz stated:

“In the light of the information in the possession of the Israeli Army, there is nothing to indicate that a massacre was committed against the inhabitants of Tantoura at the time of its occupation in May 1948”.[iv]

Palestinian historian, Walid Al-Khalidi, states:

“The village of Tantoura was one of the last villages in a streak of coastal villages, extending from Zakhron Yacoub, south of Haifa, to Tel Aviv, that was not occupied by the Israelis.

In May, a meeting took place between local intelligence officers of the Hagana Gang and Israeli experts in Arab affairs to decide Tantoura’s fate and other nearby villages. The decision was made, according to Israeli historian Beni Morris, to ‘either expel the inhabitants or subdue them’”.

In the book entitled “The History of the War of Independence”, it was stated that

“The decision was executed in Tantoura two weeks later on the eve of May 22 / 23.

Unit 33 of the Hagana and Unit 3 of Alexandaroni Brigade started the raid and “the village fell after a short battle”.

Maurice writes:

“It was clear that the commanders of the Alexandaroni Brigade wanted the village vacated from its inhabitants, and that some of those inhabitants were expelled”. In an Israeli military communiqué issued on May 23rd, 1948, and quoted in the New York Times, it was stated that “100s of Arabs were rounded up and a huge amount of bounty were confiscated”.

The newspaper’s correspondent also made mention of Hagana’s somewhat dubious claim, namely, that the village was a conduit for Egyptian volunteers, coming from the sea. However, Tantoura villagers’ ordeal didn’t end with their expulsion; some went to the Triangle while some 1,200 others were transferred to the nearby village of Al-Faridis, which had previously fallen.

Towards the end of May 1948, the Israeli Minister of State, Beikhor Shatrit, asked the Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion: “Should the residents of Tantoura be also expelled from Al-Faridis?”. Morris points out that “most of the residents were indeed expelled in the summer from areas under Israeli control, and that some 200 people stayed in Al-Faridis, mainly women and children”.

[i]. Teddy Katz, Maariv Newspaper, 19/1/2000.

[ii]. Al-Quds Newspaper, 26/12/2000.

[iii]. Al-Ayyam Newspaper, 24/6/2001.

[iv]. Al-Dustoor Newspaper, Jordan, 20/1/2000.

 

Dier yassin

The Dier Yassin Massacre:

The researcher “Shoshani” revealed “that the Supreme Court of Israel refused the solicitation whose purpose was to reopen the archives of the Israeli army that was related to the massacre of Deir Yassin; the sixty third commemoration of which was on Friday”.

Shoshani also demanded to “compel the Israeli army to open its archives to see the pictures of this massacre which were taken by the photographer Haganah”. She also said that “the three judges of the Supreme Court examined the appeal and decided to refuse it under the pretext that “the wounds have not healed yet/ Al Jazeera – 08/04/2011”. She clarified that “The solicitation was discussed without her participation or one of her assigned lawyer on that matter. Whereas, delegates from the government and security services were present, and presented before the judges atrocious pictures from the massacre which costed the lives of hundreds of Arabs”.

Collective Palestinian memory indicates that the mass massacre committed by the Zionist forces against the inhabitants of Dier Yassin was by far the most dangerous and its effects most felt since it was ingeniously employed by Zionist leaders to instill fear and horror in the Palestinians.

The village of Deir Yassin lies to the West of Jerusalem and is 770 meters above sea level. It is rich in antiquity, its houses are built from quarry, and its alleys are narrow and crooked. It has a total area of 12 Dunums with another 2,857 Dunums constituting its overall area. Its total population as of 1945 was around 800 people. Today, on its ruins, lies a Jewish settlement, “Jefat Shaoul”, and forms part of the Jerusalem Municipality.

2-8-1- Details of the Massacre as Documented in a Number of Sources

Before the crack of dawn on Friday, April 9, 1948, and under the cover of darkness, over 100 members of the Israeli Irgun and Hagana gangs, armed with guns, hand grenades and automatic rifles, and commanded by Menachem Begin, headed towards the village of Dier Yassin.

The element of surprise was indeed deliberately sacrificed when an armed armored vehicle led the way announcing through a loud speaker mounted atop, that the village should be vacated. The villagers responded by reigning in on the vehicle with a heavy barrage of gunfire forcing it to swerve uncontrollably and fall into a ditch at the entrance of the village; this signaled the outbreak of the battle.

The fierce resistance by the Palestinian defenders, according to an account published in the Jerusalem Post, exceeded all expectations. As dawn cracked, Zionist forces escalated the barbarity of their assault in an attempt to minimize their losses by resorting to detonating the houses’ entrances then storming in and slaughtering their occupants. These forces were later joined by members of the Palmach who concentrated their assault, using mortar fire, on the main road leading to the village to prevent any rescue attempt from the nearby village of Ein Karem.

The “battle” came to a close in the afternoon when the village was overwhelmed by the ferocity of the attackers. Palestinian survivors were crammed in military vehicles, which later paraded them in the street of East Jerusalem, where they were dispensed with later. The losses on the Israeli side were 5 killed and more than 30 injured.[i]

There exists some discrepancy between various accounts relating to the details of the massacre.

While some accounts talk of the stationing of Arab soldiers, mainly Iraqis, at different locations around Dier Yassin since March 1948, other accounts deny that and stress that the Irgun and Lehy gangs were expecting the villagers to vacate as soon as they were ordered to do so; that these gangs were taken by surprise by the fierce resistance which prolonged the battle from around 5:00 am to 2:00 pm. Other accounts, mainly Jewish, speak of the brutality and barbarity of the gangs’ members.[ii] Meir Ba’el, an intelligence officer at the Irgun said: “The Palestinians’ resistance was at a minimal and the Jewish fighters fought stupidly”. Tesban Ya’er, the then Minister of Immigration and a Knesset member, who took part in digging the mass grave where Palestinian victims were burred, stated: “I haven’t found many empty shells which refutes the suggestion that there was a fierce resistance on the part of the Palestinians”.

News spread that “the atrocities committed during this massacre were indescribable and unspeakable. Bodies were mutilated and civilians were slaughtered using knives and machetes. There were confirmed reports that incidents of executions were taking place long after the battle has ended.

Ba’el sent a report to his superiors at the Hagana which included excerpts from a Jewish poem written in the aftermath of the massacre of Jews in Russia in 1903, entitled “City of Death”: “Get up and head towards the City of Death; witness the splashed blood, the scrambled brains, the limbs on the walls, on the ground, on the fence, everywhere”.

Ba’el adds: “After parading some 23 Arab prisoners at Mehnet Yehuda street before a huge crowd of spectators, the Irgun members took them to a nearby quarry at Jefat Shaoul and executed them all”.[iii]

Jack de Rene, the Red Cross Representative in Jerusalem visited the village of Dier Yassin on April 11, 1948, where he stated:

“The Jewish officer’s eyes at the scene were glassy, cold and repulsive at the same time. The killing was so brutal; they used automatic weapons and hand grenades, and later used machetes. This is clear to anyone who visits the scene”.[iv]

He further added:

“A Jewish female soldier brandished a knife she was carrying while still dripping in the blood of its victims; she displayed it as one would display a medal of courage”.

In referring to the Jews who took part in this massacre, Mr. Rene used the term “those beasts ….”.

He concluded that the number of those killed exceeds 350 which is much larger than Arab sources’ statistics.

The British officer assigned the task of investigating the massacre stated:

“There is much compelling evidence of incidents of rape at the hands of the Jewish attackers; likewise, a number of school children were subjected to horrific sexual assaults before being slaughtered. Elderly women were also sexually assaulted”.

Survivors’ Accounts of the Massacre

According to Menachem Begin,

“The assault started while children were sleeping in their parents’ laps. Arabs fought fiercely in defence of their homes, wives and children”.

Survivors gave their account of the massacre before the British investigative commission stating:

• “Entire families were asked to line up against a wall only to be executed wholesome; young girls were raped; a pregnant woman was slaughtered first, then her tummy was gaped open using a butcher’s knife. When a young girl attempted to rescue the embryo from the dead mother’s womb, she was shot dead. Women’s hands and ears were cult off in order to get their golden bracelets, rings, and earrings.[v]
• The bride and her groom were the first victims. They were handcuffed, along with 33 of their relatives and neighbors and lined up against the wall and executed”, according to an account given by the only survivor, a twelve year old called Fahmi Zeidan. He added: “Jews ordered my entire family to line up facing the wall. Then they opened fire; I was hit in my thigh, but we children managed to escape death as we hid behind our parents. My 4-year old sister’s head was blown to fragments. All my family members were killed: My Dad, my Mom, my grandfather, my grandmother, my uncles, my aunts, and a number of my cousins”.[vi]
• Halima Eid, a 30-year-old survivor states:

“I saw a man who had just fired a bullet that hit my sister-in-law in the neck. She was expecting to deliver at any moment. The soldier then proceeded with a knife to cause a gaping incision in her tummy. When one of the women, Aisha Radwan, tried to get the baby out of her gut she was killed. In another house, Hanna Khalil, a 16 year old girl, saw a man brandishing a big knife skinning her neighbors’ corpse, Jamila Habash, from head to foot”.

Detailed evidence derived from the survivors’ point to the fact that these brutal systematic attacks continued from house to house.

“Girls and women accompanying the terrorist gang were no less brutal than their male counterparts. The sound of explosives and bullets, coupled with the smell of blood and open corpses, mixed with burnt flesh and death… all this weight was prostrated on Dier Yassin, while the butchers were going on their way robbing, destroying, killing and raping”.[vii]

• Safiyya, a 40-year-old woman, described how one man had unzipped his pants and assaulted her:

“I started screaming helplessly … surrounded by all the women who were in turn screaming horrifically at my fate, then they stripped us of all our clothing and groped out breasts and other sensitive parts; some even snatched earrings from the women’s ears causing the ears to tear off”.[viii]

Although the massacre didn’t last more than 13 hours, the Zionists managed to kill no less than 25 pregnant women and more than 52 children under the age of ten, who were all dismembered. In addition, the village’s school was destroyed completely and the head teacher was also killed. In all, over 250 were killed. Women survivors were crammed in military vehicle, naked, along with their surviving children, and transferred to Mendelbaum Gate, where they were paraded in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.[ix]

The head of the burial unit, Sheif, described what he saw in the following words:

“It was a beautiful spring day with the smell of almond flowers engulfing the area, yet this refreshing smell was mingled with the odor of death and destruction coming from all corners of the village”.[x]

Reserve Colonel, Meir Ba’el, an Irgun officer, described what he saw to the Israeli paper, Yedeot Aheranot:

“After the ceasefire around midday, soldiers started ‘cleansing’ the homes. They got out around 25 men, put them in a truck and took them in a ‘victory parade’ to Mehane Yehuda. Then they were dropped at a quarry located between Gafaat and Deir Yassin where they were all shot in cold blood. The attackers also herded women and children into a truck and transferred them to Mendelbaum Gate; the leaders of the gangs who perpetrated this massacre refused to take part in the burial of the 254 Arab victims whose corpses were scattered all over the village”.[xi]

Arieh Yetshafi, an Israeli historian, who works as a researcher in the Israeli Army, stated:

“If one is to sum up what happened at Deir Yassin, one could state that it was, to a large extent, a customary way of occupying an Arab village, where most of the houses are demolished, coupled with the killing of many women, children and elderly”.[xii]

Meir Ba’el adds to Yedeot Aheranot:

“Etsel men started a shameful indiscriminate massacre of men, women, children and elderly. They were lined up against a wall. In total, 245 people were massacred. There are some photographic evidence which proves this”.[xiii]

He adds:

“In Deir Yassin there was a massacre; they were moving from house to house killing and slaughtering”. He also stated that he has pictures, but it is worthwhile noting that such pictures were not uncovered by the Government’s archive even after his death in 1986.[xiv]

Jack de Rene, the Red Cross Representative in Palestine in 1948 described the perpetrators as “men and women armed to their teeth with rifles, pistols and hand grenades”.

He further adds:

“I entered a house which was full of destroyed furniture and all kinds of shrapnel. I also saw some cold corpses, where I soon realized that I am at the theatre of a massacre where knives and grenades had been used!! When I was about to leave, I trampled over a small warm foot. It was of a 10 year old girl who was still gasping for her life. As I attempted to lift her, I was stopped by an Israeli soldier. I pushed him aside and carried her. She was, along with two other elderly women, the only survivors. The village was the home of some 400 Palestinians; fourty managed to escape and the rest were all massacred in cold blood”.[xv]

So, according to the Red Cross Representative, the number of those massacred at Deir Yassin exceeded 360 men, women and children.

Menachem Begin – Israel’s ex-Prime Minister – boasted about this massacre in his book “The Revolution” when stating:

“The repercussions and ramifications of this operation exceeded all expectations; Arabs were so horrified by the news of what happened at Deir Yassin that they started leaving. From an original total of 800,000 Arabs who were residing in the Land of Israel, only 165,000 remained”.[xvi]

So here Begin believes that the massacre had served the Zionist Movement’s strategy and accordingly, he reprimands those who distanced themselves from it accusing them of duplicity. Some even went as far as saying that “without Deir Yassin, Israel stood no chance of coming into being”. While Etsel stuck to its original position vis-à-vis the massacre, Lehy continued to defend what happened at Deir Yassin, regarding it as “a humanitarian duty”.[xvii]

[i]. Najib Al-Ahmad, Palestine: History and Struggle, p. 429; and Velitcia Langer, Fury and Hope, Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut, 1993, p. 72.

[ii]. Ibid.

[iii]. Ibid.

[iv]. Jonathan Damely, The Palestinians, 1979, p. 79.

[v]. Op. cit, Damely, p. 79.

[vi]. Rojeh Delom, I Accuse, 1983, p. 52.

[vii]. Ibid.

[viii]. Dominique La Pierre & Larry Collins, O Jerusalem, 1972, p. 275.

[ix]. Dr. Hamdan Bader, The Role of the Haghana in the Creation of Israel, 1985, p. 179.

[x]. La Pierre & Collins, op. cit.

[xi]. Yadeot Aharenot, 4/4/1972.

[xii]. Bader, op. cit.

[xiii]. Ibid.

[xiv]. Erik Silver, 28/11/1991.

[xv]. Palestinian Encyclopedia, Vol. 22, 1984, pp. 434-453.

[xvi]. Menachem Begin, op. cit., p. 165.

[xvii]. Abdelhafiz Muhareb, Relations Between Armed Zionist Groups (1937-1948), 1981, p. 351.

 

Al-Dawaimeh Massacre

Al-Dawaimeh Massacre:

Children’s Skulls Crushed / Smashed

The conspiracy hatched against the Palestinian people prior to the creation of the Jewish State, aimed at vacating Palestine of its native inhabitants by forced expulsion, aided by Western Powers’ collusion, coupled with Arab Regimes’ oblivion, all these factors combined paved the way for the Zionists to pursue their goals unhindered by any ethical or moral considerations.

This is indeed attested to by the fact that Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Itshak Shamir and Menachem Begin have all masterminded and conducted systematic crimes in 1948 which led to the total destruction of more than 500 villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants; in addition to committing the most hideous massacres in around 35 of these villages.

One of those villages was Al-Dawaimeh, near Hebron which was raided by Commando Brigade 89, an auxiliary of the 8th Battalion under the command of Moshe Dayan. Members of this brigade were selected from among ex-members of the Stern and Irgun gangs. The Israeli State tried to conceal this massacre since orders were issued to bury the dead in mass graves and a total news blackout was imposed.

–          The Location :

Al-Dawaimeh lies on a hill 24 km west of Hebron. Its location is regarded as strategic as it lies astride the urban and bedouin areas and between the sea and the mountain region. Its population on the eve of its occupation was 8,000 people with a total area of 60,585 Dunums.

–          The Name :

There is more than one story circulating among the village’s inhabitants on why the village was named so. The majority, however, agree that Al-Dawaimeh was a name given to the village by a pious Sheikh after his father, Abduldaiem, who was unjustly executed by the Ottomans in Jerusalem. Indeed, a shrine for his father still exists to this day in the Hebron Gate area in Jerusalem, frequented by many of the village residents.

2-11-1- The 1936 Revolution

The Mandatory Power, Britain, has facilitated the acquisition of land by the Zionist Movement, which led to the deterioration of the economic conditions and the surge in Jewish immigration. This sparked the flames of the 1936 Revolution.

The village did play its part in this revolution through strict observance of the national strike called for by the revolution’s leaders and other manifestations of resistance, i.e. armed struggle. Examples follow:

1. The kidnapping of a Mr. Lobby, a British official, a banker.
2. The Kasla battle, where Rashid Abu Haniya was killed.
3. Gorat Bohlus battle.
4. Beit Ummar battle of 1943, where Ibrahim Al-Awameh was killed.

–          Courage :

One of the villagers narrated how the Viceroy had once called for a meeting of the village elderly and notables at his residence. When the invitees arrived, the Viceroy noticed that one of their lot, Musa Abu Hadeeb, was late. Upon arriving, Musa proceeded to occupy the seat of the Viceroy himself. When the astonished Viceroy inquired about why the villager did so, Musa responded: “You couldn’t tolerate me occupying your seat for a minute, and yet you want us to accept Israel occupying our homes?”.

2-11-2- The Occupation of the Village

As was customary, the villagers had performed their Friday prayers at the village mosque on October 29th, 1948. As the sermon was coming to a close, they heard the sound of bullets being fired from three directions, the north, the south and west. The east was apparently kept quiet to enable the villagers to escape.

One of the villagers described how he saw Israeli tanks approaching from the west heading north and east towards Al-Qabiba village. Right before noon, the tanks started moving eastward towards Al-Dawaimeh village, unconcerned by the sporadic resistance from the village residents.[i]

2-11-3- The Massacre

Al-Dawaimeh massacre was not far detached in that it didn’t take place in isolation from the series of killings and expulsions perpetrated against the Palestinians. The aim being to kill as many as possible and to instill fear in those who survive to compel them to flee in order to vacate the village.

What took place at Al-Dawaimeh contradicts all known human norms, laws, conventions and morals. What crime have the children of Al-Dawaimeh committed to deserve their skulls being smashed with clubs and sticks? Where is the humanity of the military commander who had ordered the destruction of homes over the heads of their elderly inhabitants after denying them food and water?

2-11-4- Three Stages

The Hebrew newspaper, Hadshout, published an extensive report on the massacre, indicating that its execution could be divided into three phases, as follows:

–         Stage I: Around 80 to 100 people (including women and children) were killed in the initial raid on the village; the majority killed in their houses or on the streets.

–         Stage II: Generally speaking, places of worship enjoy a special sanctity, which should not be violated at all times. However, what happened in Al-Dawaimeh was worse than storming and desecrating a mosque. Atrocities and massacres were committed against those people who had sought refuge and safety in their mosque. Soldiers had even killed elderly pious Sheikhs reciting their holy book.

Villagers narrated the following regarding the mosque’s massacre. At around 10:30 two armoured vehicles passed by Al-Zawiya Mosque where there were between 100 to 150 worshippers, the majority of whom were elderly, who had gone there early to perform the Friday prayers. As they were about to start their worship, heavy gunfire was heard which prompted some to rush outside while others favoured staying inside thinking that it would be safer. However, Zionist troops stormed their way inside the mosque shooting sporadically in all directions.[ii]

Yeola Harshafi, an Israeli journalist, noted in an article published in the Hadshout Newspaper, that “the death toll reached 332”; however, historian Benny Morris noted that the number of victims who fell in Al-Dawaimeh massacre ran into tens and probably hundreds. He further stated that according to the Israeli Defence Force sources, the UN and Arab sources, the death toll was somewhere between 70 to 100.

It is however certain that the number of victims had surpassed any other massacre committed by the Israelis during the 1948 war. Hence, it is not an overstatement to conclude that Al-Dawaimeh massacre was by far more hideous and horrific than either Deir Yassin or Abu Shosheh massacres, not so much for the number of its victims but in that it was executed in cold blood.

• Stage III : Tor Al-Zagha massacre started when Zionists discovered a cave where 35 horrified families have taken refuge.

A woman survivor narrated the following: “As we heard the sound of gunfire getting closer and closer to us, we huddled the walls of the cave for fear of being discovered. An eerie silence engulfed the place as women rushed silently to their kids comforting them and hugging them”.[iii]

She added that as the soldiers arrived, they pointed their guns at the crowd and ordered them to walk out of the cave. The children burst in tears and clung to their mothers’ dresses. An old man took off his white headdress (kufiyyeh) and waived it in a gesture of surrender, and asked all those in side to leave. One of the men who had just exited attempted to run but was shot instantly by the soldiers; he managed to escape. This incident was probably responsible for the frenzy that followed. Soldiers ordered the crowd to line up in two rows, one for men and another for women. Two or three soldiers picked up three young girls from the women’s row which prompted their mothers to plead with the soldiers to leave their daughters alone and not to harm them. Soldiers responded by shooting the mothers and dragged away the screaming girls. Within moments, a soldier screamed at the top of his voice, “harvest them”, and the massacre started. Bullets reigned in like heavy rain. Many people were killed in a pool of blood and the woman fell to the ground pretending to be dead.

During all that, she could hear mumblings followed by shootings. She attempted to raise her head but was fired at by the soldiers. The bullet missed her and hit a dead man lying next to her and then penetrated her toddler girl’s head, killing her instantly. By then she was certain that the soldiers were shooting at anything that moved. The soldiers jumped into their vehicles and departed the scene towards the village.

Surrounded by dead bodies, the woman attempted to stand up in vain. She looked for her brother and managed to locate him. He had seven bullet wounds and was unconscious. He survived.

Historian Benny Morris had included in a research he had conducted on Israeli massacres committed against Palestinians in the 1948 War, the contents of a personal letter sent by a “Mapam” Party member to the editor of Al-Hamishmar, Kiflan Aliazer Fray.

The soldier mentioned in the letter was an eyewitness to the massacre committed at Al-Dawaimeh. He requested avoiding the use of what he called “armed diplomacy” based on “blood and murder” and called for the intervention of the press and the Party to uncover the massacre. The said letter was never published before by Israeli newspapers. It is hereby presented in an abridged version:

“Aliazer Fray,

Greetings,

I have just read today’s Al-Hamishmar’s op-ed handling the conduct of our troops, which is occupying everything but have difficulty controlling their emotions. I’m presenting you with an eyewitness testimony of a soldier who took part in Al-Dawaimeh massacre. The soldier is one of us; an educated human being and he is honest one hundred percent. He had allowed me to gain access to his inner feelings, as he is in dire need to share the psychological horror caused by the crime which points to the barbarity that our educated men could reach. He has done so since people who are willing to listen are rare”.[iv]

He adds: “He arrived at Al-Dawaimeh upon its occupation by Brigade 89. there were no Egyptian troops in the village, but rather a force called “irregular” or maybe “paramilitary” comprised mainly of old men and women. What is important is that no battle took place and there was no resistance. The occupiers initially killed 80 to 100 Arab women and children; children were killed by smashing their skulls; there is hardly a house that doesn’t have a dead one”.

2-11-5- Demolishing Homes

The second raid was conducted by the battalion to whom the eyewitness belonged. Arab men and women were locked inside their homes and denied food and water. Then explosives experts were called to detonate the houses. A commander instructed an explosives expert to force two elderly ladies to enter a house about to be detonated. The expert refused stating that he could take orders only from his commander. The battalion commander instructed other soldiers to execute the order; which they did and the women were killed.

Another soldier boasted how he had raped an Arab woman before killing her. While another spoke of how he had forced an Arab woman who had just given birth to sweep the yard where soldiers have just finished eating. When she was done, she was shot dead along with her newborn.[v]

2-11-6- Expulsion and Annihilation

The soldier states:

“Decent and civilized commanders, regarded as the best that our society has produced, were transformed into murderers and thugs. This didn’t happen as a result of a stormy emotional episode which was hard to inhibit, but as a result of a systematic policy of expulsion and annihilation. This is fast becoming the political incentive which is hardly met by any criticism by the State. I personally have spent two weeks there and have heard stories from soldiers and commanders boasting how much of good “hunters” of Arabs they are. This is the one sphere where soldiers compete against each other”.

According to testimonies this massacre might be the worst in the history of atrocities committed during the Nakba by battalion 89 that’s affiliated to the eighth Israeli Brigade. The Documentation Commission on Palestine, affiliated to the United Nations and which replaced Count Bernadotte in mediation efforts, organized a special session to investigate what happened on October 28, 1948, in this village located less than three miles away from the city of Hebron and which originally had a population of 2,000, but 4,000 refugees came to it and tripled its population.

The United Nations report, dated June 14, 1949 stated the following: “The reason for how little we know about this massacre, which outweighs – in many ways – in its brutality the Deir Yassin massacre, is that the Arab Legion (the army, which controlled that area) feared that if the news and details about the massacre would spread, it would have the same impact of the Deir Yassin massacre on the morale of peasants and that it would cause another wave of asylum seekers”(75).

The report of the conciliation commission is mainly based on the statements of the Mukhtar^[vi], Hassan Mahmoud Hdaib, and the reports saved in the archives of the Israeli military confirm several of his statements. The well-known Israeli writer, Amos Kinan, who participated in the massacre, confirmed the reality of the massacre in an interview conducted with him in the late nineties by the Palestinian actor and director Mohammed Bakri, for his documentary, on 1948. The Mukhtar mentioned as well that “half an hour after the Friday prayers on October 28, twenty armored vehicles entered the village from Alqabaybeh side, while being attacked simultaneously by soldiers from the opposite side, and the fear instantly paralyzed the twenty people who were guarding the village. The soldiers opened fire from their automatic weapons from the armored vehicles and mortars, while they were making their way inside the village in nearly circular movements and as usual, they surround the village from three sides, leaving the eastern side open in order to expel its population of 6,000 people within one hour. When that did not happen, the soldiers jumped out of their vehicles and started shooting people indiscriminately, among which, many fled to the mosque for protection and to a near sacred cave called Iraq Alzagh. When the Mukhtar dared to return to the village, he saw piles of dead bodies in the mosque and scattered on the streets, among them men, women and children including his own father. When he reached the cave it was blocked by dozens of bodies. According to his census 455 people were missing, among them 170 children and women.

Jewish soldiers who participated in the massacre provided a description of the hair-raising scenes mentioning that “skulls of babies were smashed; women were raped or burned alive inside their homes and men were stabbed to death”.

2-11-7- International and Israeli testimonies about the massacre

–    After several days of the massacre, a team of United Nations observers headed by the Belgian first officer, Van Vossen Hovey, arrived in the village, accompanied by a group of Israeli military. When one of the observers requested access to the closed mosque, he was denied entry on the grounds that entry to the mosque is not allowed for non-Muslims. However, the observer saw smoke rising from the mosque, he approached the window and smelled the burning bodies, when he asked the Jewish officer about the smoke and smell he was forbidden to continue his investigation. He asked as well about a house that they were preparing to blow up, and was told that “The home is infected by toxic insects and this is why we will blow it up” (79).

–    The international observers sent a confidential report to their superiors stating the following: “We have no doubt that there was a massacre and that the odor emanating from the mosque was the smell of human bodies “(80)

–    Whereas Zionist statements regarding the massacre are mentioned by the Israeli historian “Benny Morris” in his book “Correcting a Mistake: Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956”, which was published in several columns in the Jordanian newspaper “Al Dostor” starting 15 March 2001, states that “the massacre was done upon the orders of the Israeli government and that few paragraphs about the atrocities committed in the village of “Dawayima”, were deleted from the minutes of meeting of the “Mapam party” Committee and that the soldiers had massacred hundreds of villagers to force the rest of them to leave “.

–    In his testimony about the massacre, “Israel Galilee”, the commander of the Operations Branch in the Israeli army in the War of 1948 and one of the leaders of the Israeli “Mapam party” said that he saw “horrific scenes of the killing of prisoners and rape of women and other indecent acts”.

–    Regarding Zionist crimes in Palestine in general we quote the testimonies of some historians, rabbis, including that of “Aaron Cohen”, one of the historians of the new stream in Israel, said: “Entire populations of villages were slaughtered and the ears and fingers of women were cut off to remove their golden jewelry.”

–    The Zionist Rabbi “Yael Bin Nun” says in this regard that “The historical injustice we inflicted on Palestinians was more than the one the world had inflicted on us”.

2-11-8- Victims of the Massacre of “Dawayima”: General estimations

The number of martyrs from the Dawayima massacre varies according to Arab estimates, the “United Nations” and the Israeli occupation army itself, ranging between 700 to 1,000 Arab citizens, apart from those who were trying to infiltrate the village to take their belongings and their food, days following the massacre. In any case the final outcome estimation could be clarified as follows:

• In the first two days of the massacre on the 29^th and the 30^th of October 1948, there were 580 martyrs of whom 75 were elderly and located in the mosque around the corner.

On the 29^th of October 1948, 110 villagers became martyrs as they were trying to infiltrate the village to take their belongings and food.

• The number of wounded individuals was 8; it was a small number as Jewish soldiers tried not to keep them alive.
• Nine prisoners were killed, among them , 3 who were in Israeli jails.

[i]. Ibid.

[ii]. Hadeshot Hebrew Newspaper, 24/8/1984.

[iii]. Ibid.

[iv]. Al-Hamishmar, Haaretz, Maariv, Yedeot Aheranot, 23/11/2001.

[v]. Ibid.

^[vi]. Mukhtar (also spelled Muktar, meaning “chosen” in Arabic:المختار‎, refers to the head of a village or neighborhood in many Arab countries The name refers to the fact that Mukhtars are usually selected by some consensual or participatory method, often involving an election.