Friday, February 1, 2013

The Deir Yassin Tragedy

Nadene Goldfoot
I hate to say it, but the Arabs keep lying about facts  concerning them and the Israelis.  An example of this is what happened at Deir Yassin in 1948.  Below is a video interview of the people who were there and how they were told to lie by their leadership about the events.

All the Jews knew about what happened to them in 1929.  Arabs had come out from Deir Yassin and massacred every Jew they could find.  Recently, their information was that the villagers had regularly sniped at Givat Shaul.  Massacres had been going on in Hebron and other places in that period.

Supposedly there were one or two times when Jews copied the antics of the Arabs and committed terrorism, said to have happened at Deir Yassin after the Israel War of Independence had begun in November 1947 and the Arab world had declared a "war of extermination" against the Jews.  At that time the UN resolution favored the Jewish state.  Reports came over broadcasts in exaggerated accounts that helped to create the feeling that Arabs must flee.  Something fierce had scared them off.  It was the account of rapes they lied about having taken place.  They knew this wasn't true.

Deir Yassin was a group of flat-topped, sun-baked stone huts mounted in tiers to the crest of a hill  and was vulnerable.  The men of the village got along with the Jews.  Recently, 4 Arab strangers fired at Jews from the village causing its mukhtar to apologize.  Two weeks before, 40 Arab fighters had asked the village for protection and a 96 year old grandfather leader invited them for lunch but refused their request.  These villagers had met with nearby Jews and promised to keep the peace even if fighting broke out.  These citizens were all armed and had quantities of ammunition stored away, just like many  Texans today.  The next thing that happened was that shots were fired, and screams heard.  They thought the Jews were attacking!

An Irgun commander in Jerusalem, Mordechai Raanan,  had decided to capture this Arab village and hold it.  His men were warned against looting and killing unarmed civilians.  Asked about what Arabs would do in a reversal role, he said, "If a dog bites you, you as a man shouldn't act like a dog.  I would not expect you to bite a dog.."   At about the same time, the Stern Group's leader in Jerusalem, Yehoshua Zetler, was also preparing his men who were to join them  in the attack on Deir Yassin and he also warned against killing unnecessarily.  They planned to attack Deir Yassin from 3 sides;  Irgun from the south and east; Sternists from the north.  They had a loud speaker mounted on an armored car stolen from the British they would use to tell all the people to go to the west.  They both figured the village would fall without a shot fired.  Both men were not connected to the Haganah's authority, but were lone fighters, sort of like Rambos with a platoon.  .

They were afraid Deir Yasssin could serve as an Arab base for an attack on Jerusalem and thought that Arab fighters were using the village from the Jerusalem area to Ein Karim and Kastel.  The men found it difficult to communicate with their superiors in Tel Aviv or with Shaltiel of the Haganah.   Arab villagers responded to the firing with fire and our Jewish fighters shot back with Sten fire and destroyed their pillbox.  Surpised Jewish intruders were attacked and killed Arabs.  They couldn't understand the Arab resistance they had met up with.  They were expecting empty houses and were met with each home turned out to be a fort.  This was the first village anyone had tried to take.  The armored car with the speaker had an accident getting there and smashed into the center of the village and couldn't be pulled out of a deep tank trap.  One could hear the message belatedly, maybe by only the Sternists.  It turned into an OK Corral shootout.  The Jewish attackers were trapped and finally suffered  40% casualties.   They reported that there were 250 out of the 400 village inhabitants that died, while the Arab survivors say there were 110 out of 1,000 inhabitants.  It was the returning Schiff with a party of schoolboys who dug the graves and buried the Arab bodies.  It is said they cried and vomited as they did this.   Survivors say that Jewish fighters told them at the height of the battle that their leaders had ordered an end to the killing.  Everyone had a different version of what had happened.  Ben Gurion was shocked by what had happened.  The Arabs shouted the loudest of all and exaggerated the atrocities.  This action intensified Arab fears.  It became a rallying cry for Arab vengeance which helped to propel the historic flight of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Palestine.  Many had already started to leave before this happened.

Our Jewish men were reacting against Arab terror and brutality of British indifference to the Holocaust.  Jews had been going through hundreds of Deir Yassins or more at the hands of the Arab people, but nobody ever got upset by that.  Again, a massacre took place in Qiryat Shemona where Jews were gunned down  in their beds and children thrown out of the window who were all North African refugees!  Arab Jews!  Albert Memmi, a Tunisian-born writer, angry with this unjust propaganda against Jews wrote that his own grandfather and father lived in terror from blows on their heads which any Arab passerby could give them at anytime.

The West has often taken the theme of Arab propaganda citing "Deir Yassin" as they reason which the world equates Arab terrorism with "Jewish terrorism."  They throw out that Jews were terrorists, too, making it okay.  Too bad there weren't TV cameras there in that village that day to record what really took place.

This tells me that in the heat of a battle with raw recruits, things can get out of hand.  The men had panicked and fought for their lives.  They weren't prepared or trained for they were trying to do.  They learned the hard way and wouldn't repeat this again.

Like Golda Meier said, "“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.”  These men did not intend to kill even one person.  In such a situation, they found out they were overwhelmed.

Resource:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Ata-hY9WQ&playnext=1&list=PL1ACAB4A4FBF4CF71&feature=results_main
From Time Immemorial, origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine by Joan Peters, p. 354-355.
Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman p. 138-149.  The Fruit of Deir Yassin
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/MeironPeace.html

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