It was 9 April 1948 .Only weeks before the British Mandatory Authority ended in Palestine which was later turned into Israel. Jewish terror gangs Irgun, Hagana and Stern went on killing spree to drive out Palestinians and grab their lands.
Located
in the outskirts of Jerusalem, Deir Yassin was a peaceful Palestinian
village where Irgun, led by Menachem Begin who later became Prime
Minister of Israel, massacred the entire population of 254 men, women,
children and the aged between 9 and 11 April 1948.
Palestinians
and peace loving people worldwide observed 70 years of Deir Yassin
Massacre this month described as one of the most barbarous crimes ever
committed against humanity and could be coupled with the “My Lai
massacre in Vietnam”.
By noon
9 April 1948 over 100 people, half of them women and children, were
murdered. Twenty-five male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded
through the Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, and then taken to a
stone quarry along the road between Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot
to death. The remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem.
The mutilated bodies of the victims were thrown into a well in the
village.
Of
the victims were 22 pregnant mothers, a woman teacher by the name of
Hayat Balabse who wore a Red Cross badge and was tending the wounded
when she was butchered, a blind man, Mohammed Khalil Mustafa, and his
wife, Latifa Mustafa, who was trying to lead him to safety when the
attackers slaughtered both. The women, girls and the children who
survived the holocaust were rounded up at dawn and loaded into Lorries
to Jerusalem where they were paraded through the Jewish streets, jeered
and spat upon.
That
evening Menachem Begin called a press conference to announce the
massacre as a “victory” in the war of conquests of Palestine and
Trans-Jordan. The irony is that Begin, not even a Palestinian, fled
his native Poland to the Soviet Union where he was sentenced in 1940 to a
Siberian labour camp for his Zionist activities.
Overwhelmed
with panic the Palestinian who began to flee in terror. Haganah carried
out attacks on other fronts. All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance
through Haifa like a hot knife through butter. The Arabs, unarmed and
unorganised, began to flee in panic shouting “Deir Yassin”.
This horrific act served the future State of Israel well. According to Begin:”Arabs,
induced to believe wild tales of "Irgun butchery," were seized with
limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight
soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political
and economic significance of this development can hardly be
overestimated”.
Of
about 144 houses, 10 were dynamited. The cemetery was bulldozed and
Deir Yassin was wiped off the map. By September, Orthodox Jewish
immigrants from Poland, Rumania, and Slovakia were settled there over
the objections of Martin Buber, Cecil Roth and other Jewish leaders, who
believed that the site of the massacre should be left uninhabited. The
center of the village was renamed Givat Shaul Bet. As Jerusalem
expanded, the land of Deir Yassin became part of the city and is now
known simply as the area between Givat Shaul and the settlement of Har
Nof on the western slopes of the mountain.
The
massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin remains crucial turning point
in 20th-century Palestinian and Israeli history. Not because of its size
or its brutality, but because it stands as the starkest early warning
of a calculated depopulation of over 400 Arab villages and cities and
the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian inhabitants to make room for
Jews from the rest of the world.
Commenting
on this massacre, renowned historian Arnold Toynbee had this to say in
his book “A Study of History”: “The evil deeds committed by the Zionist
Jews against the Palestinian Arabs that were comparable to crimes
committed against the Jews by the Nazis, were the massacre of men, women
and children at Deir Yassin which precipitated a flight of the Arab
population in large numbers from districts within range of the Jewish
armed forces, and the subsequent expulsion of the Arab population from
districts conquered by the
Jewish
forces between 15 May 1948 and end of the year...The blood at Deir
Yassin was on the head of the Irgun; the expulsion of Palestinians after
15 May 1948 were on the head of all Israelis.”
This
was not the end of the story. In the same cold blooded vein Irgun,
Stern and Haganah gangs massacred people in a number of other villages.
This included Nassiruddin, on April 14 1948, where all except forty,
who managed to escape, were butchered. On May 5 1948, Haganah committed
massacre in Mazraat El Khoury, overlooking Tiberias. The bodies of many
slain women and children were mutilated and a number of old people were
beheaded and their limbs cut off. Young people were roasted alive when
the Haganah locked them inside a house and set it on fire before the few
surviving old people were finally set free and sarcastically asked the
Arab states to come to their rescue.
A
mosque was blown up on 6 May 1948, over the heads of villagers who were
locked in at Al Zeitoon, Safad. The entire population of Beit Drass
in Gaza was wiped out on 13 May 1948 similar to Deir Yassin massacre.
There pregnant women were bayoneted in the womb, bodies of others
atrociously mutilated and all the houses in the villages were finally
dynamited.
The
Zionist Jews also asked Palestinians, through loudspeakers installed
in armoured cars, to leave, saying the road to Amman was opened. Another
method used was the mass destruction of their homes and villages.
Since
then the Palestinians, driven out of their homes and lands, are still
suffering in the refugee camps. Tired mothers and hungry and sick
children still hope in vain the United Nations would settle their
problems, and let them return to their homes again. They still have the
keys to their houses and the deeds to their lands now occupied by
migrant Jews. About a quarter million Palestinian Arabs took refuge in
neighbouring countries.
This
is how Israel was established in Palestinian lands with the complete
backing of United States, Britain, France and Soviet Union. Western
media never speaks about these war crimes.
The
world, especially the Middle East, ruled by scoundrels, remains
indifferent to Palestinian sufferings which continue unabated while US
and remain all out to defend and protect Israel while Arab dictators
have abandoned Palestinians to serve their Western and Zionist masters
for their own political survival. Ends.
by Latheef Farook
by Latheef Farook
