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.