An Air Strike Arranged Against the Dissidents at Deir Yassin

For the Record 

PALESTINE (OUTRAGES)

HC Deb 19 April 1948 vol 449 cc117-8W117W

Mr. Sorensen asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any further statement to make about the capture of the Arab village of Deir Yassin in Palestine by Jews on 9th April.

Mr. McNeil I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend has now received additional information from the High Commissioner. The figure of Arab casualties given to the House on 12th April has been confirmed by a visit to the village by a representative of the International Red Cross, who has stated that in one cave he saw the heaped bodies of some 150 Arabs, men, women and children, whilst in a well a further 50 bodies were found. The approaches to the village are strongly held by Hagana and the Palestine Police could not enter to conduct investigations without a considerable show of force. The terrorist groups claim that Hagana facilitated the mounting of their attack on Deir Yassin, although the Jewish Agency issued a statement on 12th April expressing118W horror and disgust at the barbarity of the manner in which this action had been carried out by the terrorists. The Zionist General Council, however, meeting in Tel Aviv on the same day, ratified an agreement for co-operation between the Hagana and the Irgun Zvai Leumi. Units of the Hagana have now taken over occupation of Deir Yassin from the members of the terrorist groups who originally attacked the village.

Invitations to the Press conference given by a Jewish spokesman for the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group, which took place in the heavily guarded Jewish settlement of Givat Shaul, near Deir Yassin, were issued by telephone to selected American and Jewish correspondents. The fact that this conference had taken place was not known to the authorities until the following day. No correspondents of British newspapers were invited.

In view of the difficulties of military operations against the village, which would probably be very costly in British lives, the High Commissioner, in consultation with the Air Officer commanding arranged for an air strike against the terrorists, with the object of turning them out of the village. Before the attack could take place it became known, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the members of the terrorists' groups who had originally occupied the village had left. In these circumstances it was decided not to proceed with the air operations.

It must be realised that with the progressively reduced strength of our Armed Forces as our withdrawal proceeds, intervention in every instance of violence between Arab and Jew is not practicable. Within the limited resources available, however, every possible action will be taken to prevent the spread of civil conflict and to punish those responsible for such barbarous acts.

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Eliezer Tauber's Treatment of Deir Yassin

My own post on Eliezer Tauber's book on Deir Yassin is here.

I quote from Yoav Gelber's review

"...Tauber deserves every kudo for his meticulous work, which is exemplary for this genre of historiography. He left no stone unturned and used all the available sources, written and oral, Arab, Jewish (Haganah, IZl, LHI, and political), British, and Red Cross. This resolution of microhistoriographic analysis requires a massive use of oral testimonies, extracting the valuable material from the rubbish and a careful scrutiny of the findings. His expertise in Arabic and on Palestinian society equipped him with vital tools for conducting such a study.

In examining the oral testimonies about the battle in Deir Yassin, Tauber has shown how the stories of witnesses on both sides, Arab villagers and IZL and LHI combatants, are close to each other. Of course, each witness speaks from his individual and national perspectives, but it is clear that they all speak of the same battle and that their stories are supplemental rather than contradictory. At the same time, the narratives that were circulated by both sides’ higher echelons immediately after the fighting was over are propagandist and conflicting.

...At that stage of the war, occupying an Arab village was something new, still without precedent. Under the circumstances of the inter-communal civil war overshadowed by waning British sovereignty, it was also impossible to hold people in captivity and POWs should have been either released or killed. This axiomatic assumption forecasted the flight of the non-combatant population at the beginning of the raid. In the case of Deir Yassin, the axiom proved mistaken for various reasons analyzed by Tauber.

Seven IZL and LHI fighters were killed in Deir Yassin. There are various figures of wounded, fluctuating between 10 and 40. Tauber tends to establish the number as a little above 30. There are several estimates and nominal lists of Arab fatal casualties. Arab informers for the SHAI (Jewish intelligence) reported from the beginning on 100 to 110 killed. The conquerors boasted that they killed 240 Arabs and the foreign press as well as the Haganah adopted this figure for polemical or political reasons of their own. This figure was generally accepted, though Arab propagandists inflated the number up to 400. In the 1990s, the anthropologist Sharif Kan’ane published the findings of his research that put the number back at 107, based mainly on Arab lists and survivors’ testimonies. After reviewing all the existing lists and comparing them, Tauber compiled his own list that includes 101 names and is probably the closest to the real number.

Although the onslaught on Deir Yassin was not a glorious operation by any standard, a wide gap separates what happened in the village and the rumors that spread at the time and have persisted to the present. It was a bloody battle fought in the midst of the civilian population, but in 1948 there were bloodier encounters such as the fall of the Etzion Block and the conquest of Lydda. In Deir Yassin there was no pre-planned, deliberate massacre as the prevalent Arab narrative, backed by Israeli radicals, naïve or ignorant, has claimed ever since. Tauber skillfully disproves the massacre myth and refutes the allegations of atrocities such as rapes or executions.

The myth was created during the war of propaganda that followed the occupation of the village. The IZL and LHI inflated and glorified their accomplishment. The Haganah preferred the version of the SHAI’s Dissidents Section over the far more accurate version of its Arab Section, and the Jewish Agency panicked because of the possible diplomatic consequences and hurried to condemn the perpetrators and apologize to King Abdullah of Transjordan and to the world in general. The British were apologetic and apparently had some compunctions about their indifference, but they stuck to the plan of evacuation and refused to get involved in combat.

Hitherto, the bulk of the Arab population had looked on the fighting from the sidelines. The local Arab leadership in Jerusalem strove to excite the Palestinians, and bolster up their motivation to fight. This was the main purpose of the propaganda campaign that Hussein Khalidi, the only member of the Higher Arab Executive present in the country, and his associates launched in the following days. They achieved the opposite outcome: instead of inspiring the Arabs’ stamina and will to fight, the inflated numbers of casualties and faked atrocity rumors shocked and intimidated the non-combatant population and considerably encouraged the mass flight.

Nonetheless, I think that Tauber overstates the part of Deir Yassin in causing the Arab mass flight. Before Deir Yassin, about 100,000 Arabs left their homes, huts, or tents and wandered to the neighboring countries or to purely Arab regions in the depth of the country. The Palestinians have tried to minimize the scope of this early wave of refugees and claim that only members of the elites fled, but the flight was more varied and its scope was bigger. The early refugees did not consist exclusively of the elites and included additional categories, such as residents of frontier or mixed neighborhoods in the cities, Bedouins who camped in Jewish areas, or first generation immigrants from the countryside who lost their jobs in the towns and returned to their villages. Deir Yassin and the following propaganda campaign did not cause the mass flight and at most stimulated an already existing process. Indeed, they strongly affected the villages around Jerusalem and the Arab quarters outside the city’s walls, but their impact diminished in more distant villages and was marginal in the Arab and mixed towns from where the majority of the refugees fled.

Tauber is wrong in connecting the Arab armies’ invasion to Deir Yassin. Truly, the news shocked the Arab masses abroad but hardly affected the debates of the Arab League’s Council that convened in Cairo two days later. Hitherto they objected to invasion and relied on the Arab League (or Liberation) Army to defeat the Jews after the end of the mandate. The collapse of the ALA in Mishmar HaEmek and the defeat of the Palestinian militias and ALA detachments in the towns left them no alternative but invasion. The purpose was to save what was left of Arab Palestine rather than “throwing the Jews into the Mediterranean,” but Deir Yassin had little, if any, part in the decision.

One of the explanations of Deir Yassin survivors for the onslaught on their village was the participation of several villagers in the Arab attack on the nearby village of Qastel the day before. This is a lame excuse and probably no one on the Jewish side knew about their participation...

____________

UPDATE

Tauber gave a presentation at the ASMEA conference in November 2021. Recording is here:

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Countering An Arab Propaganda Claim

It is difficult at times to counter Arab falsification of history.  Other times, a bit of research will solve the difficulty.

For example, here, where it is claimed:

The Deir Yassin massacre followed in 1948. A join contingent, containing the Tsel, Irgun, and Haganah, assaulted the 600-person village near Jerusalem. A cistern alone was found to contain 150 mutilating bodies and the full death toll remains unknown. Irgun leader Menachem Begin falsified the Red Cross’s reports, ironically labelling it the fabrication by anti-Semites. [3]

We'll ignore the misspelling of Etzel. Or whether actually 150 bodies, mutilated (all?), were found (Bir Zeit University claims maybe 110 were killed*). Well, I went to the source quoted.

There, on page 297, I found this:

How could he falsify the reports of the Red Cross? Did the writer mean he misrepresented them? Or that he quoted from them what they did not contain?

So I went to Begin's memoir as Commander of the Irgun, The Revolt, and on page 164 I found this footnote:

and as I presumed, Begin insisted not that the battle did not took place but that there was no "massacre". The charge of a "massacre" is a lie. That claim is correct as Eliezer Tauber's new Hebrew-language book details (see here). He also used "Jew-haters", not "anti-Semites" if we are to be exact in quoting someone.

And he certainly did not "falsify" the Red Cross reports. In fact, "Red Cross reports" are not mentioned at all by Begin.

Were those reports false? That is another issue.

They claimed that there was "great savagery"; that "Woman and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing"; that "survivors have told of even more incredible bestialities"; and that those "who were taken prisoner were treated with degrading brutality".

Those claims are false.

______________

*
Here:

In 1987, the Research and Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, a prominent Arab university in the territory now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, published a comprehensive study of the history of Deir Yassin, as part of its "Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project." The Center's findings concerning Deir Yassin were published, in Arabic only, as the fourth booklet in its "Destroyed Arab Villages Series." The purpose of the project, according to its directors, is "to gather information from persons who lived in these villages and were directly familiar with them, and then to compare these reports and publish them in order to preserve for future generations the special identity and particular characteristics of each village."88 The Bir Zeit study's description of the 1948 battle of Deir Yassin began with the hyperbole typical of many accounts of the event, calling it "a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known."89 But unlike the authors of any other previous study of Deir Yassin, the Bir Zeit researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitness to the attack and personally interviewed each of them. "For the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February-May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative," the Bir Zeit authors explained, listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: "The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250-254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the groups which carried out the massacre exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance."90 The authors concluded: "Below is a list of the names and ages of those killed at Deir Yassin in the massacre which took place on April 9, 1948, which was compiled by us on the basis of the testimony of Deir Yassin natives. We have invested great effort in checking it and in making certain of each name on it, such that we can say, with no hesitation, that it is the most accurate list of its type until today." A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded followed.91 

^

You Know April 9 Is "Deir Yassin Day"?

I have blogged previously and profusely on Deir Yassin, the Arab village near Givat Shaul, in today's Har Nof neighborhood and specifically, the grounds of the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center.

Here. And here.

It was overrun by Irgun and Lechi forces, assisted by a Palmach unit who provided mortar fire and the Hagana command who supplied ammunition and medical services during the fighting, on Friday, April 9, 1948. This year it falls on a Monday.  There's now a film.  There's a commemorance site. Even a Facebook page.

And now, Shmuel Rosner has reviewed the new book that has appeared in Hebrew in his The Truth of Deir Yassin.

The author is Eliezer Tauber, an Israeli academic who specializes in the modern history of the Middle East. 

The book's cover:

I have met him.

As Rosner notes, Tauber has published

a book arguing that there was no massacre in Deir Yassin. A detailed account of a fateful day, minute by minute, hour by hour. A convincing account. 

What really happened in Deir Yassin? Tauber is not the first scholar to argue that the large-scale massacre story is a myth. Professor Yoav Gelber, in “Palestine 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” makes a similar claim. Still, Tauber was more thorough than all of his predecessors in looking into this specific day of carnage. The result is a gripping narrative. 

...He counts one clear case of unjustified shooting. An Arab family evacuated a house in surrender. An Irgun fighter opened fire while his commander was shouting at him, “What are you doing? Stop it!” This incident, Tauber believes, gave credence to later overblown stories of larger-scale massacre, rape, mutilation and barbarity.

And to the crux. As I have noted, the Arabs themselves created the myth.

...the myth was perpetrated not because of confusion. It was a deliberate attempt by the Palestinian leadership to force the Arab militaries of surrounding countries to intervene in the battle over Palestine. The leaders of the Palestinians sowed a wind and reaped a whirlwind. 

Rosner, though, makes this important point:

Professor Tauber believed that his story would be of great interest to American publishers. He contacted university presses in the United States, and their response left him stunned. A representative of an elite university wrote back: “While everyone agreed on the book’s many strengths, in the end the consensus was that the book would only inflame a debate where positions have hardened.” Another one wrote: “We could sell well to the right-wing community here but we would end up with a terrible reputation.” Apparently, a book questioning the Palestinian narrative is not a book that American universities feel comfortable publishing.

Amazingly, though, he has made it into the Wikipedia entry

Israeli researcher Eliezer Tauber writes that a total of 101 people were killed, 61 definitely in combat circumstances (including 24 armed fighters, with the remained being their family members who were with them); 18 for whom the cause of death could not be determined; about 10 whose deaths are in a "grey zone" whose charactization can be debated; and a further 11 being members of a single family who were gunned down by a single Irgun member.

More references:

Avi Woolf

Dr. Arnon Groiss

Shimon Cohen


__________________________

UPDATE

On the refusal of publishers at Legal Insurrection.

^

Did He Flee or Remove Himself?

"The best known milestone in the removal of the Arab population was the Deir Yassin massacre of April 9, 1948, conducted by Irgun and Lehi forces, designed to scare Palestinians and cause them to flee their homes, towns and villages."

That excerpt is from an op-ed published in Haaretz by the son of famous Betar, Brit HaBiryonim, Irgun and Lechi veterans Moshe and Tova Svorai.

Yair (what else?) Svorai describes himself as "a former Israeli, has lived in the United States for 45 years."  

His misguided and misrepresented and baseless attack is launched on what he perceives as a campaign of renewed "settlement expansion and the process of people replacement".

However, Svorai's claim that Deir Yassin (and there was no massacre) was meant as a "removal of the Arab population...designed to...cause them to flee their homes, towns and villages" is in error.

If there had not been attacks on Jewish neighborhoods the weeks before the attack, if the Arabs of Deir Yassin had not tried in 1914 to kill the Jews of Givat Shaul, and then again in 1920 and again in 1929 and again during 1936-39 - all instances documented - they probably would not have been attacked, unlike Abu Ghosh which was left alone.  

Shame, really.

He could have been in Israel these past 45 years instead of removing himself - or did he flee? - to the Diaspora.  Although he seems to have done well as a a real estate professional.



^

Deir Yassin, June 12, 1939

The Palestine Post, June 13, 1939.

^

Deir Yassin and David Shaltiel

A comment was just left at a six-year old post of mine here relating to Deir Yassin and it noted that the Hagana City Commander gave his approval to the Deir Yassin conquest as the road leading to the village, today's Kanfei Nesharim Street, for an alternative runway to alieve the blockade by Arabs of the Jerusalem Highway (see p. 86 and as noted:

Eric Silver writes that Irgun and Lehi commanders approached David Shaltiel, the Haganah commander in Jerusalem, for approval. He was initially reluctant, because the villagers had signed a non-aggression pact, and suggested attacking Ein Karem instead. The Lehi and Irgun commanders complained that this would be too hard for them. Shaltiel ultimately yielded, on condition that the attackers remain in the village rather than leaving it empty, to prevent it becoming an Arab military base. His approval met with resistance. Meir Pa'il, an intelligence officer with the Palmach, the Haganah's strike force, objected to violating the peace pact with the village, but Shaltiel maintained that he had no power to stop them. Pa'il said in 1998 that Yitzchak Levi, head of Haganah intelligence in Jerusalem, had proposed the inhabitants be notified, but Shaltiel had refused to endanger the operation by warning them.

So, here is the Lechi announcement right after the operation:

which contained the text of Shaltiel's letter:

And in English:

To: Raanan
From: Shaltiel
I have learned that you intend to carry out an operation against Deir Yassin. I would like to call your attention to the fact that the occupation and holding of Deir Yassin are one of the stages in our overall plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation on condition that you are capable of holding on to it. If you are incapable of doing so, I caution you against blowing up the village, since this will lead to the flight of the inhabitants and subsequent occupation of the ruins and the abandoned homes by enemy forces. This will make things difficult rather than contributing to the general campaign and   the occupation of the site will entail heavy casualties for our men. An additional argument I would like to cite is that if enemy forces are drawn to the place, this will disrupt the plan to establish an aerodrome there.

Oh, and by the way, there's this in connection to Shaltiel:

...On Sunday, April 4, commander Shaltiel received an urgent message from the intelligence officer of the Haganah's Etzioni division: "There's a gathering in Deir Yassin. Armed men left [from Deir Yassin] in the direction of [the nearby town of] lower Motza, northwest of Givat Shaul. They are shooting at passing cars."22 That same day , the deputy commander of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, Michael Hapt reported to Shaltiel: "A [Jewish] passenger car from Motza was attacked near the flour mill, below Deir Yassin, and is stopped there. There is rifle fire upon it. You too send an armoured vehicle with weapons. There is concern that the road is cut off."23 An armoured vehicle carrying Lehi fighters was also attacked at the same spot that day. A Haganah intelligence officer who described the incident to his superiors reported that according to Lehi officer David Gottlieb, those of his men who disembarked from their vehicle to return fire said that the attackers appeared to be Arab soldiers rather than local villagers.24 A telegram from Michael Hapt, of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, to the Haganah command, at 5:00 p.m. that day, urged: "In order to prevent [an attack] on lower Motza, cutting off of road to Jerusalem, and capture of position south of Tzova, Deir Yassin must be captured."25

Shortly before the battle of Deir Yassin, there was additional troubling news: Mordechai Gihon's lookouts reported that numerous armed men were moving between Ein Kerem and Deir Yassin. Some of the soldiers were wearing Iraqi uniforms, and while many of them had entered Deir Yassin, only a few had returned to Ein Kerem.26 And just hours before the IZL-Lehi action against Deir Yassin began, Shaltiel cabled his colleague Shimon Avidan: "The Arabs in Deir Yassin have trained a mortar on the highway in order to shell the convoy [bringing supplies to besieged Jewish portions of Jerusalem]."27
22 Milstein, p. 257, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 88/17, "From Hashmonai," 4 April 1948, 10:00 A.M.23 Milstein, p. 257, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 88/17, "From Sa'ar," 4 April 1948, 10:00 A.M.24 Testimony of David Gottlieb, MZ; Milstein, pp.257-258, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 21/17, "From Hashmonai," 4 April 1948.25 Milstein, p. 258, citing "Operations Log - Arza," 4 April 1948, 17:00 hours, Broadcast #562, Israel Defense Forces Archive, War of Independence Collection, 88/17.26 Milstein, p.258 (interview with Mordechai Gihon).27 Milstein, p.258, citing Israel Defense Forces Archive, War of Independence Collection, 228/3, Operation Log, 9 April 1948, 2:40 a.m.

Zionist history can be surprising.

^ 

Marking Deir Yassin Day

Next week, “Deir Yassin Day” will be marked.

As with many of the Arab claims, this incident, too, has been returned to its historical truth and correct proportions.  Unlike the wild propaganda over the years, the so-called “massacre” on Friday, April 9, 1948 did not occur nor was as related by Arabs and their supporters and the context of the events is much different than suggested.

I have dealt with many of the issues over the years.  I have noted the newspaper reports of initiated sniping from the village at the beginning of April which put the lie to the “quiet, tranquil village” portrayal.  That an escape route to Ein Karem was left open for the Arabs, who were expected to flee.   And that the history of the village was one of murderous Arab hostility to Jews.  Following Bernard Wasserstein, that was traced back to 1920.

One point always bothered me, or, rather, was unclear.  The sources all point to Yehoshua Goldschmidt (Gal) as the local Irgun commander who pushed for Deir Yassin to be attacked rather than other targets, and there were several.  As Yehuda Lapidot writes

In mid-March, Gal (Yehoshua Goldschmidt) returned to Jerusalem and was appointed Operations Officer of the Irgun. Gal had served as Commanding Officer of the Fighting Force in Jerusalem till 1946 when, on the wanted list of the British, he was forced to leave for Tel Aviv. He was a daring fighter and had taken part in numerous actions against the British. With his arrival, Irgun activity in Jerusalem took on a new direction.
At that time, negotiations had begun between and Raanan (Mordechai Raanan-Kaufman), Irgun Commander in the city, and Lehi Commander in Jerusalem, Meir (Yehoshua Zetler), leading to close co-operation between the Irgun and Lehi. This was no mean achievement in light of the resentments and rivalry, which had developed between the two organizations since the 1940 split.  It was decided to occupy the village of Deir Yassin with a joint force of the Irgun and Lehi.

Several sources mention that Gal had a score to settle with Deir Yassin.  For example, as Jerusalem Irgun’s 1948 campaign first historian, Yehoshua Ophir, wrote in his Hebrew  “Al Hachomot” (On the Walls) in 1951, at page 49 and. btw, he is the father of arch-anti-Zionist Adi Ophir who holds outlandish views):-

“Gal’s father, Reb Joseph Tzvi Goldshmidt, a Jewish ritual slaughterer (shochet) in Givat Shaul, was famous in his youth as a brave warrior against the Arab rioters from adjacent Deir Yassin…Goldshmidt learned from his father to be a soldier and also got his inspiration to fight the Arab village from him. This village had frequently endangered the lives of the inhabitants of the neighborhood in which he grew up. When he returned to Jerusalem in 1948, the old shochet reminded his son to ‘remember what Deir Yassin did to us.”

I always assumed it related to the attack by the villagers on his home neighborhood, Givat Shaul, which bordered the Arab village in 1929, or other attacks including during 1936-39.

I was wrong.

The great-grandson of Tzvi Yosef Goldschmidt, Avraham Binyamin, grand-nephew of Gal, grandson of Shmuel David, has now published (in Olam Katan, Number 422, Tazria 5774-March 27, 2014) the story that occurred 100 years ago, on the night of the 19^th of Adar 5674 – 16/17(?) of March 1914.  Due to a poor winter with little rain, the Arabs of Deir Yassin, as well as other neighboring villages, supplemented their meager income by stealing, from the Jews.  But that evening, almost the entire village fell upon Givat Shaul with more than theft and brigandage.  They came to kill.

His great-grandfather’s memoirs record that the Arabs came armed with pistols and swords and knives, screaming ‘itbah al-Yehud (slaughter the Jews).  In other words, if there was a massacre at Deir Yassin, this was the intended butchering of civilians and the Jews were to be the victim. The Arabs proceeded from house to house, injuring Jews they encountered that hadn’t fled and stealing.  When they came to the Goldschmidt home, they tried breaking down the door while stealing all the chickens from the pen in the yard.  Goldschmidt prevented them from breaking in even thought they shot through the door.  Nevertheless, his strength held and the Arabs left for other prey.  Yosef Tzvi  gathered up his wife and four young children and escaped to the Old People’s Home (then near the entrance of the city and now under the new Central Bus Station).  He then continued to the Turkish Army/Police station just south of Machaneh Yehuda (the ‘Lions’), 83 Jaffa Road.  A patrol was sent out and they all returned to Givat Shaul.  Firing off shots in the air, the Arabs of Deir Yassin fled but one was caught in a quarry and identified by Yosef Tzvi as one of his attackers.

This Arab, Abdul Azziz, had even worked in the Goldschmidt house.  The police commandant ascertained that indeed Azziz had recently fired a gun and found in his clothes a note from his brother-in-law, Akab Abed, who ordered him to organize the pogrom.  A few slaps elicited the fact that Akab was still hiding near the village.  A further search did not produce the wanted man but did uncover weapons including funs and much stolen goods.  All the males were then rounded up, brought to the station and “persuaded” to reveal his whereabouts under the threat that the village would be destroyed.  Akab was turned in.

The trial sentenced Akab to death and other to five years imprisonment.  It was held in front of the Damascus gate and a German officer served as judge.  Jamal Pasha the ‘Small’ (not to be confused with Jamal Pasha the ‘Great’), the Turkish Governor of Jerusalem decided to execute Akab right outside the Goldschmidt family home (located at the end of Kanfei Nehsarim Street on the left, just before the corner of Roberto Bacchi).

Goldschmidt managed to persuade him not to as that would surely lead to acts of reprisal and revenge.  The governor then tied a long rope to the door of the house and tied Akab to the other end and led him across a large field where he was shot by a squad of Turkish soldiers.

During the First World War, the family separated and the mother, Frieda, died in Tiberias of cholera during forced expulsions ordered by the Turks.  Another five children were born to Yosef Tzvi with his second wife, Esther, also a war widow.  Two of these children were Yehoshua-Gal and Sarah (Yael) who was, at age 18, also in the Irgun and was one of the two girls who made the phone calls during the King David Hotel operation when the offices of the Mandate Secretariat and the British Army HQ, located in the building’s southern wing, were demolished. The kidnapped Major Collins, taken from Mamilla Street to prevent the hanging of Dov Gruner, was held in an empty cistern near the house.

Yehoshua was killed at the Police School by Jordanian fire in mid-May 1948.  Yosef-Tzvi died in 1959.

-_______________

To grasp the immorality and historical perversion of this act, first review my Deir Yassin posts:

Visuals.

2008.

2010.

2011.

2012.

2013.

Read this article.

Read this book by Uri Milstein. 

P.S.   A newspaper report now re-discovered from Herut on April 15, 1957:

^

More on the "Tranquil Village of Deir Yassin"

From the HaTzofeh daily, Sunday, April 4, 1948, reporting on an incident the occurred on the previous Friday evening:

 

Translation:

Bet HaKerem and Bayit Vegan Attacked

For the first time, the western neighborhoods of Bet HaKerem and Bayit Vegan were attacked.  The attack came from the direction of Deir Yassin and Ein Karem, as well as Kolonia.  The defenders responded with gunfire.  The shooting continued throughout the night.

^

Zochrot and Deir Yassin Day

The Zochrot group is at it, again:

Commemorating 65 years since the Dayr Yassin massacre

We will carry signs bearing the names of the victims of the massacre.

09/04/2013

16:00-18:00

Tzachi Ostrovsky

On Tuesday, April 9, we will commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Dayr Yassin massacre.  We will walk along the main street of the village (now Kanfey Nesharim Street), learn about the village and its Nakba, and pass some of the Palestinian buildings that are still standing along the road - people were massacred in some of them - as well as the Kfar Shaul mental hospital, whose buildings were once the core of the village.  We'll stop at the remains of the Palestinian cemetery and end the tour in the grove behind the hospital.

We will carry signs bearing the names of the victims of the massacre.

The tour will begin at Kanfey Nesharim 24 (near Mercantile bank), Jerusalem, at 16:00, and will end at 18:00.

For information:

Umar, 052/874-3099, umar@zochrot.org
http://www.facebook.com/events/284525845012847

To grasp the immorality and historical perversion of this act, first review my Deir Yassin posts:

Visuals.

2008.

2010.

2011.

2012.

Read this article.

Read this book by Uri Milstein.  And if not, here's a summary:

"Dir Yassin Massacre was a hoax" argued Israel's most distinguished military historian, Dr. Uri Milstein. He has argued the same in his many books and lectures. Each year when Israel celebrates its 'Independence Day', this issue repeats itself, a myth, an anti-Israeli myth. For 50 years the Arab propaganda has managed to 'sell' this massacre arguing that, in 1948, the Jews behaved like monsters, or like war criminals. Of course, the Arabs have declined to discuss their behavior in 1948 or 1947. According to history books or articles, the fighters of Lehi (Stern Group) and the Irgun (Begin) attacked a peaceful village, Dir Yassin, near Jerusalem and murdered 245 civilians (women & children).

Dr. Milstein researched this affair for many years and came to these illuminating conclusions:

• It was not a massacre! Civilians died because, like in many wars, civilians became victims of the battles or air bombardments. That's the nature of modern warfare. (In the Middle Ages it was different!) But is was not a planned massacre! The massacre is only a myth, an anti-Israeli myth. Today, the post-Zionist historians love to reinforce this pro-Arab, pro-Palestinian myth
• Only around 140 people were killed in the battle of Dir Yassin
• The battle took place on April 9, 1948 before the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948. The 'Palmach' (the pro-left army) also was part of this battle together with the 'Irgun' and Lehi
• What is the origin of this myth? Milstein believed that the Israeli left in 1948 or Mapai, the party of Ben-Gurion in order to smear its 'right' camp, or the 'Irgun' and its commander Menachem Begin, used Dir Yassin, the battle. The party inflated the story and distorted the truth to build a weapon against the Right opposition to Mapai, the ruling Labor party. The person who invented the massacre is Israel's famous military historian, Col. (Ret.) Meir Pail, today, a defender of Mapai's history or military history. Also, a guardian angel of the Palmach's legacy, Dr. Pail, a military scholar has always argued that the Irgun's leaders and fighters should express regrets for this massacre and ask Israel for forgiveness. Dr. Pail developed the myth since 1948. Dr. Milstein argued that the Palmach also was not always clean.

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UPDATE

 

http://documents.guidestar.org.il/PDF/newfiles/fin/2010/117-99-2011-0223284.pdf

Page 15

Based on Zochrot 2010 Financial Report 

• Mennonite Central Committee - Gave Zochrot NIS107,130. MCC is a relief, service, and peace agency representing 15 Mennonite, Brethren in Christ and Amish bodies in North America. The U.S. headquarters are in Akron, Pennsylvania, the Canadian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• Broederlijk Delen & Belgian Government  Gave Zochrot NIS189,199. Supports groups of people in the South to realise their own plans in their struggle against poverty and injustice. It's the people in the South who find the solutions themselves. Only this guarantees that the solutions are adapted to their specific context. This way of working of Broederlijk Delen guarantees sustainable results!
• CCFD - Gave Zochrot NIS145,006. The top French development NGO, is an association comprising 28 movements and services of the Catholic Church. It has a permanent staff of 170 based in Paris and in various regions of France who work to fulfill CCFD objectives. Two modes of intervention: The Conference of Catholic bishops of France has confided CCFD with the mission of mobilising Christian solidarity, particularly during the Lenten period, in order to promote solidarity between peoples by acting for development. In order to accomplish this mission CCFD focuses its efforts in two fields: Support for development initiatives; Raising public awareness on international solidarity issues. 
• Oxfam - Gave Zochrot NIS83,604+10,550. Oxfam is an international confederation of 17 organizations working in approximately 90 countries worldwide to find solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives. Oxfam works directly with communities and seeks to influence the powerful, to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them. Each organization (Affiliate) works together internationally to achieve a greater impact through collective efforts. Oxfam was originally founded in Oxford, UK, in 1942.
• Trócaire - Gave Zochrot NIS150,092. Head Office, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland: We're working in 28 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Overseas we deliver our support through local partner organisations, helping communities and families to free themselves from the oppression of poverty. In Ireland we raise awareness about the causes of global poverty and encourage people to campaign for global change as a matter of justice. We envisage a just and peaceful world where people's dignity is ensured and rights are respected; where basic needs are met and resources are shared equitably; where people have control over their own lives and those in power act for the common good. 
• MISEREOR - Gave Zochrot NIS137,078. Misereor is the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation for Development Cooperation. For over 50 years MISEREOR has been committed to fighting poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. MISEREOR’s support is available to any human being in need – regardless of their religion, ethnicity or gender.
• Bischoefliches Hilfswerk Misereor Inc. - Gave Zochrot NIS175,176.
• HEKS-EPER - Gave Zochrot NIS139,880. Stands for the Hilfswerk der Evangelischen Kirchen Schweiz (the aid organisation of the Protestant Churches of Switzerland), is based in Zurich and has an office for French-speaking Switzerland in Lausanne. The French abbreviation is EPER (Entraide Protestante Suisse). HEKS was set up in 1946 by the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches (FSPC) and has been organised as a trust since 2004. HEKS gives humanitarian and emergency aid and fights the causes of hunger, injustice and social deprivation. All people should be able to live a life of dignity and of safety in social, economic and political terms. The aid organisation has five regional offices in Switzerland and is engaged in about 200 projects worldwide. HEKS has its own coordination offices in 21 key countries. 
• ICCO (Kerk in Actie) - Gave Zochrot NIS480,981. ICCO is a Dutch cooperative with an international organizational structure. It is the interchurch organization for development cooperation. We work in 44 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

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UPDATE

From Mahmoud Illean's picture:

 

It's A 'Deir Yassin' in Syria

Assad is really in trouble now:

At least 10 Palestinian refugees were killed Wednesday in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, activists posting to a Facebook account for the camp reported.

According to media from the camp, 15-year-old Jalal Yousif Salih was shot dead by a Syrian government sniper near the Palestine Hospital in the camp. Photos of the victim were published before he was identified.  Another victim identified as 10-year-old Fadi Alaa al-Masri was shot dead in the al-Zein neighborhood.  Earlier, a body was found in the Black Stone neighborhood. The victim was later identified as Muhammad Shaaban.

An elderly man was also shot dead in the Deir Yasin neighborhood, according to activists. They identified him as 70-year-old Ahmad Abbas.

From Facebook:

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Deir Yassin That Quiet, Peaceful Village

April 1946:-

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If April 9, 1948 Is 'Deir Yassin Day', What'll Be April 9, 2012?

April 9, 2012 on the border between Syria and Turkey:

...shots from the Syrian side into Turkey injured three people, angering Ankara a day before a visit by international envoy Kofi Annan.  Two Syrians and a Turkish translator were wounded near a refugee camp in southeastern province of Kilis along the Syrian border, diplomatic sources said. The incident marked the first time Syrian fire from across the border hurt people on Turkish soil...

Actually, worse:

...Syrian forces fired across the border into a refugee camp near the town of Kilis in south-western Gaziantep province.  It was the first such incident since Turkey began sheltering thousands of fleeing Syrians last summer and the latest to fuel international alarm about the escalating crisis.  Mohammad Abdelqader, a refugee in the camp, told Reuters he had witnessed the shootings on Monday and that two Syrians had been killed and two more had been injured. Turkey is understood to have immediately protested...

And from Turkey, we go to Lebanon:-

The bloody conflict in Syria spilled across two tense borders Monday when gunfire from government forces killed a cameraman in Lebanon and wounded at least six people in a refugee camp in Turkey, authorities said.

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Deir Yassin Day

My previous posts relevant to the charge of a "massacre" at an Arab village, Deir Yassin, on Friday, April, 9, 1948, on Jerusalem's outskirts that was engaged in anti-Jewish violence since 1920 and from where sniping began in March 1948, in violation of a truce pact arranged, which caused the Hagana to authorize a suggested joint Irgun-Lechi attack on the village:

Here.

And here.

And here, too.

And this.

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Cross-Dressing at Deir Yassin

This cross-dressing happened at Deir Yassin as well:

The lengths the Taliban are prepared to go to in order to gain access to coalition forces was illustrated yesterday when local police arrested seven men dressed in women's clothing in Mehterlam, Laghman province, east of Kabul.

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Even A Senator Can Err

Well, a former Senator.

James Abourezk, former U.S. Senator from South Dakota and author of a memoir, Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate, has writtne of meeting Menachem Begin and in touching on Deir Yassin, writes

...In April of 1948, Mr. Begin and his terrorist thugs joined with another vicious terrorist group called the Stern Gang, massacring some 107 villagers in Deir Yasin...Several of the villagers were taken prisoner and were most likely killed, but only after they were paraded through the streets of Jerusalem in an action designed to create enough fear among the Palestinians to cause them to leave Palestine.

Two quick comments:

a) notice how the number, 107, is much different from what Arab propagandists used to push and some still do. But at least the figure is dropping.

b) there was no real "parade" and most certainly those driven in open lorries, all the Irgun possessed at the time, were not returned to the village and killed. In fact, there is a film about one of them who was in a group of children driven to the Damascus Gate and there left.

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On Deir Yassin by a Hagana Veteran Who Was There

At the Hagana Archives in Tel Aviv, I met Shraga Peled and in talking, he mentioned to me that he was a bit of an outsider in that in his memoirs, he expressed sympathy for the Irgun's Deir Yassin operation.

I asked him about it and he showed me the book, "Stories from the Archives", published in 2006 by a company called Kavim.

Here's the frontispiece:

The two pages dealing with Deir Yassin follow below:

For those who cannot read Hebrew, I will summarize:

He notes that both Irgun and Hagana sources mention that a unit of the Palmach participated in the battle, each one telling his own version and here is his. He served in the Shai,, or Intelligence Unit and was a photographer with two cameras, a Leica and a Minoc, a spy's camera. I went out to Deir Yassin when the bodies were still warm. I snapped a few pictures of some not-very-nice scenes. Also one at the stonequarry where bodies lay. Since he wasn't in the village at the time of the action, he can't relate exactly what happened but he doesn't think any persons were concentrated there to be shot after the battle. The quarrey was a bit outside the village and people fled to it. There was a tree at the entrance and it was buring and an Arab was tied to it and he was told it was the work of the Irgun. The pictures, he was told, are some place in a restricted file.

At the end of the battle, the Irgun arranged a victory procession through town with old people up on trucks driving down Ben-Yehuda Street. He didn't feel comfortable with that but in war, as it war and he forgives the Irgun all.

The Irgun history asserts that at the end of the fighting was over, in addition to hundreds of villagers who had retreated to Ein Karem via the path left purposefully open, downes had surrendered and they were taken prisoner. The prisoners, mostly women and children, were loaded onto trucks and taken to East Jerusalem, where they were handed over to their Arab brethren at the Damascus Gate area.

Morover,

...there was bitter fighting at Deir Yassin. More than 100 Arab fighters were well equipped and had large amounts of ammunition. The Arabs occupied fortified positions in stone buildings, while the attackers were exposed to enemy fire. The fierce gunfire directed from the houses forced the attackers to charge, throw grenades and, in several cases, to blow up houses. As a consequence, women and children were among the dead.

According to all the documents and testimonies, it is clear today that fewer than one hundred Arabs were killed at Deir Yassin, and not the 240 as published. Moreover, this was the first instance in the War of Independence where battle had taken place in a built-up area, and such fighting typically claims numerous victims. For the same reason, the number of Irgun and Lehi members injured by Arab fire was 35% of the force (5 dead and 35 wounded).

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On Deir Yassin Day

My new Jerusalem Post blog post.

At Green-Lined.

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Deir Yassin Visuals

To understand the issue of Deir Yassin, you should view these:

a)  Davar newspaper, the Histadruth organ (that is, the socialist Left), Sunday, April 4, 1948

b) and its report on the sniping directed from Deir Yassin to the Jewish neighborhoods of Bet Hakerem and Bayit V'Gan:

c)  a map from the 1940s

e)  deir Yassin today in the neighborhood of Har Nof, marked in black:

f) a map purported to be from Irgun archives (unconfirmed)-

Read here.

Watch this clip.

More resource:  here; here; here; the ZOA tract.
^