DEIR YASSIN THE PALESTINIANS WOUNDED KNEE : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

Deir Yassin: The Palestinians’ Wounded Knee
Written by Haitham on 09. April 2008,

A recent poll found that 76 percent of Jewish Israelis support “transferring” the Palestinian citizens of Israel - more than 1.4 million people - out of the country. Today, April 9, marks the 60th anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre - the most traumatic incident in the campaign to expel Palestinians from their homeland.

Deir Yassin Remembered (previously published a year ago)

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

This is another example of Israel’s brutality and history of barbarism:

FAQ on Deir Yassin (via: IMEU)

The massacre at Deir Yassin is one of some two dozen documented massacres of Palestinian civilians by Zionist forces seeking to transform Palestine into a Jewish state. If the import of catastrophes were gauged only in numbers of people slaughtered, Deir Yassin may not have taken on its central role in the Palestinian national consciousness. However, the terror at Deir Yassin triggered a mass flight of Palestinians who feared for their own lives. When Israel was established sixty years ago this May, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. This tragic event and its consequences lie at the core of the Palestinian/Israeli problem.

1. What happened in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and why does it matter today?

In the early morning of April 9, 1948, three Zionist militias - the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang — attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, located west of Jerusalem. More than 100 men, women and children were massacred. Some were mutilated and raped before being murdered. Twenty-five men from the village were paraded through Jerusalem and then executed in a nearby quarry. Those able to escape fled to East Jerusalem.

Word of the terror attacks spread rapidly, causing many Palestinians to flee, fearing for their lives. Within a year of the massacre, Deir Yassin, which had been emptied of Palestinians, was re-populated with Jewish immigrants and its name was removed from the map.

For Palestinians, Deir Yassin became the symbol of the sudden loss of their homes and homeland and the near destruction of their society, a situation which endures until today. When Israel was established sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians were exiled and 78 percent of the land of historic Palestine was lost.

Today, Palestinian refugees number nearly four million, out of a total population of approximately ten million. They are still deprived of their internationally-recognized right to return to their homeland. In the West Bank, Israel continues to seize land for Israeli-only settlements and Israeli-only roads.

2. Who carried out the massacre?

The Haganah, which became the Israeli army, fired mortars at the village while the Irgun and Stern Gang attacked from close range. At the time of the massacre, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s 1st prime minister, directed Haganah policy; Menachem Begin, Israel’s 6th prime minister, led the Irgun; and Yitzhak Shamir, Israel’s 7th prime minister, was a leader of the Stern Gang.

3. What resulted from the Deir Yassin massacre?

As news of the massacre spread, the ensuing terror triggered the mass flight of Palestinians. A few days after the attacks, in fact, the Irgun asserted that the incident advanced “terror and dread among the Arabs in all the villages around, in Al Maliha, Qaluniya and Beit Iksa a panic flight began …” The flight of Palestinian refugees fit into the plans of Zionist military and political leaders at the time. During the first week of April, a concerted campaign - known as Plan Dalet - to systematically expel Palestinians from areas sought for the soon-to-be-founded state of Israel went into effect. Zionist forces conducted eight major military operations against Palestinian cities and villages between April 1st and May 15th when Israel declared independence and Arab states intervened in response to the growing refugee crisis. Some 250,000 Palestinians had been expelled by then.

4. Was Deir Yassin an isolated incident?

No. While Deir Yassin may be the most infamous, Israeli historian Benny Morris documents 24 massacres of Palestinians conducted by Zionist, and then Israeli, forces in 1948. According to Morris, “In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved. The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70)… The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres.”

The Irgun and Stern Gang also attacked British and United Nations institutions and officers who they believed stood in the way of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. The Irgun was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel, which was used as British military headquarters, in Jerusalem in 1946. Ninety-one people were killed. The Stern Gang assassinated Lord Moyne, the British minister of state for the Middle East, in 1944, attempted to assassinate Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner of Palestine, in 1944 and assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations representative in the Middle East, in 1948.

5. What was the total destruction and how it is still relevant today?

In total, at least 450 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated due to Zionist military attacks or fear of such attacks. Most of these were demolished. By the end of 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians - two-thirds of the Palestinian population - were exiled and their society was destroyed. Even today, a Jew from anywhere in the world is welcome to settle in Israel, while Palestinians with the keys and deeds to their seized homes do not enjoy the right to return.

But you must know the deal by deal- when the Arabs lose a battle, its a massacre.
What really happened at Deir Yassin, btw:

Deir Yassin
By Mitchell Bard

The United Nations resolved that Jerusalem would be an international city apart from the Arab and Jewish states demarcated in the partition resolution. The 150,000 Jewish inhabitants were under constant military pressure; the 2,500 Jews living in the Old City were victims of an Arab blockade that lasted five months before they were forced to surrender on May 29, 1948. Prior to the surrender, and throughout the siege on Jerusalem, Jewish convoys tried to reach the city to alleviate the food shortage, which, by April, had become critical.

Meanwhile, the Arab forces, which had engaged in sporadic and unorganized ambushes since December 1947, began to make an organized attempt to cut off the highway linking Tel Aviv with Jerusalem - the city's only supply route. The Arabs controlled several strategic vantage points, which overlooked the highway and enabled them to fire on the convoys trying to reach the beleaguered city with supplies. Deir Yassin was situated on a hill, about 2600 feet high, which commanded a wide view of the vicinity and was located less than a mile from the suburbs of Jerusalem. The population was 750.

On April 6, Operation Nachshon was launched to open the road to Jerusalem. The village of Deir Yassin was included on the list of Arab villages to be occupied as part of the operation. The following day Haganah commander David Shaltiel wrote to the leaders of the Lehi and Irgun:

I learn that you plan an attack on Deir Yassin. I wish to point out that the capture of Deir Yassin and its holding are one stage in our general plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation provided you are able to hold the village. If you are unable to do so I warn you against blowing up the village which will result in its inhabitants abandoning it and its ruins and deserted houses being occupied by foreign forces....Furthermore, if foreign forces took over, this would upset our general plan for establishing an airfield.

The Irgun decided to attack Deir Yassin on April 9, while the Haganah was still engaged in the battle for Kastel. This was the first major Irgun attack against the Arabs. Previously, the Irgun and Lehi had concentrated their attacks against the British.

According to Irgun leader Menachem Begin, the assault was carried out by 100 members of that organization; other authors say it was as many as 132 men from both groups. Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning to civilians to evacuate the area, which many did.3 Most writers say the warning was never issued because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast the warning.4 One of the fighters said, the ditch was filled in and the truck continued on to the village. "One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don't know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect."

Contrary to revisionist histories that the town was filled with peaceful innocents, residents and foreign troops opened fire on the attackers. One fighter described his experience:

My unit stormed and passed the first row of houses. I was among the first to enter the village. There were a few other guys with me, each encouraging the other to advance. At the top of the street I saw a man in khaki clothing running ahead. I thought he was one of ours. I ran after him and told him, "advance to that house." Suddenly he turned around, aimed his rifle and shot. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was hit in the foot.

The battle was ferocious and took several hours. The Irgun suffered 41 casualties, including four dead.

Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The New York Times' subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin's. The Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report. “Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.” A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 "fighters," evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there. Other Arab sources have subsequently suggested the number may have been even lower

In fact, the attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. For example, at 9:30 A.M., about five hours after the fighting started, the Lehi evacuated 40 old men, women and children on trucks and took them to a base in Sheikh Bader. Later, the Arabs were taken to East Jerusalem. Starting at 2:00 P.M., residents were taken out of the village. The trucks passed through the Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim after the Sabbath had begun, so the neighborhood people cursed and spit at them, not because they were Arabs, but because the vehicles were desecrating the Sabbath. Seeing the Arabs in the hands of Jews also helped raise the morale of the people of Jerusalem who were despondent from the setbacks in the fighting to that point.10 Another source says 70 women and children were taken away and turned over to the British. If the intent was to massacre the inhabitants, no one would have been evacuated.

After the remaining Arabs feigned surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops, some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. None of the sources specify how many women and children were killed (the Times report said it was about half the victims; their original casualty figure came from the Irgun source), but there were some among the casualties. Any intentional murder of children or women is completely unjustified. At least some of the women who were killed, however, became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. The Irgun commander reported, for example, that the attackers "found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners." Another story was told by a member of the Haganah who overheard a group of Arabs from Deir Yassin who said "the Jews found out that Arab warriors had disguised themselves as women. The Jews searched the women too. One of the people being checked realized he had been caught, took out a pistol and shot the Jewish commander. His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area."

Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi "there was no rape," but Khalidi replied, "We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews." Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, "This was our biggest mistake. We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html

So was the Warsaw Ghetto.

In the course of this battle, the Nazi forces sent in to suppress armed resistance in the Ghetto, wantonly slaughtered thousands of non combatants.

Were they just "collateral damage"?

Unless your intent is to mislead the naive, there is no reasonable comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and Deir Yassin

Well, its a stretch
by but there is still Jewish resistence Saturday, Apr. 12, 2008 at 11:22 PM

Well, there are some parallels- the heavily armed Iraqi soldiers vs the rag tag Jewish resisters...but its still a stretch

In both cases, a racist military operation was carried out against innocent civilians. In both cases, the goal was ethnin cleansing. In both cases, resistance was insufficient, so the racists won.

For more details, see:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/160324_comment.php#163011

(snip)

. . . Deir Yassin, Palestine’s very own Lidice . . .

(snip)

in both cases, a rag tag, poorly trained, poorly equiped group of Jewish resistence fighters took on a much stronger better trained force.
In Deir Yassin, the Jewish resistence fighers won.

Cleveland Indy Media Center