Deir Yassin massacre

Deir Yassin massacre
Part of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and Plan Dalet
Jewish paramilitaries in Deir Yassin
LocationDeir Yassin, Mandatory Palestine
DateApril 9, 1948; 76 years ago (1948-04-09)[a]
TargetPalestinian Arab villagers
WeaponsFirearms, grenades, and explosives[1]
Deaths93-140 Palestinian Arab villagers and 5 attackers
Injured12–70 villagers and a dozen Jewish militiamen[fn 1][1]
PerpetratorsZionist militant groups Irgun and Lehi, supported by the Haganah and Palmach[2]
No. of participants
Around 120–130 Jewish militiamen[1]
DefendersVillagers
Part of a series on the
Nakba
Precipitating events
  • Background
1948 expulsion and flight
Discourse
Notable writers
Symbols and memory
Ongoing
Lists

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when Zionist paramilitaries attacked the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, killing at least 107 Palestinian villagers, including women and children.[1] The attack was conducted primarily by the Irgun and Lehi, who were supported by the Haganah and Palmach. The massacre was carried out despite the village having agreed to a non-aggression pact. It occurred during the 1947–1948 civil war and was a central component of the Nakba and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.[3]

On the morning of April 9, Irgun and Lehi forces entered the village from different directions.[4] The Zionist militants massacred Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, using firearms and hand grenades, as they emptied the village of its residents house by house.[5][6] The inexperienced militias encountered resistance from armed villagers and suffered some casualties.[7] The Haganah directly supported the operation, providing ammunition and covering fire, and two Palmach squads entered the village as reinforcement.[8] A number of villagers were taken captive and paraded through West Jerusalem before being executed.[1][9][10] In addition to the killing and widespread looting, there may have been cases of mutilation and rape.[11] For decades it was believed that 254 Palestinian Arabs had been killed, although present scholarship puts the death toll at around 110.[12] By the end of the operation all of the villagers had been expelled[13] and the Haganah took control of the village.[14] In 1949 the village was resettled by Israelis, becoming part of Givat Shaul.

News of the killings was widely publicized, sparking terror among Palestinians across the country, frightening many to flee their homes in anticipation of further violence against civilians by advancing Jewish forces. The massacre greatly accelerated the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight and strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later, beginning the 1948 Arab–Israeli war.[15][16] The Haganah denied its role in the attack and publicly condemned the massacre, blaming it on the Irgun and Lehi, and the Jewish Agency for Palestine (which controlled the Haganah), sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which Abdullah rejected, holding them responsible.[17] Four days after the Deir Yassin massacre, on April 13, a reprisal attack on the Hadassah medical convoy in Jerusalem ended in a massacre killing 78 Jews, most of whom were medical staff.[18][19] Material in Israeli military archives documenting the Deir Yassin massacre remains classified.[20]


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ a b c d e Cite error: The named reference Morris-2005 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Benny Morris, Righteous Victims - "The most important event during Operation Nahshon was probably the conquest by the IZL and LHI, assisted by the Haganah, of the village of Deir Yassin"
  3. ^ Eugene Rogan (2012). The Arabs: A History – Third Edition. Penguin. p. 330. ISBN 9780718196837. Palestinians had already begun fleeing the territory earlier in the spring. Between February and March 1948, some 75,000 Arabs had left their homes in the towns that were the center of fighting, such as Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa, for the relative safety of the West Bank or neighboring Arab states. That April, after Dayr Yasin, the stream of refugees became a flood.
  4. ^ Morris 2005: "The village was attacked just before dawn on 9 April. The dissident forces, mustering 130 troops, arrived from two directions"
  5. ^ Pappe 2006: "As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses with machine-gun fire, killing many of the inhabitants."
  6. ^ Morris 2005: "They then advanced slowly from house to house, clearing each objective with grenades and rifle and submachine gun-fire, and sometimes, explosives. Whole families were killed both inside buildings and in the alleyways outside, as they rushed out to try to escape or surrender."
  7. ^ Morris 2005: The IZL troops, untrained and inexperienced in warfare (apart from terrorism), met stiff resistance and took casualties; their commander, Ben-Zion Cohen, was hit in the leg and evacuated.
  8. ^ Morris 2005: "In the course of the battle, the dissidents ran low on ammunition and asked for and obtained thousands of rounds from the Haganah; Haganah squads also provided covering fire and fired on the refugees fleeing southward, towards “Ein Karim. Two squads of the Palmah (the elite strike force of the Haganah) also arrived on the scene and helped evacuate the wounded and take some of the houses."
  9. ^ Kana'ana and Zeitawi, The Village of Deir Yassin, Destroyed Village Series, Berzeit University Press, 1988.
  10. ^ Yavne to HIS-ID, April 12, 1948, IDFA 5254/49//372 in Morris 2008, p. 127.
  11. ^ Morris 1987, p. 113.
  12. ^ Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine, Fayard Paris 2007 vol.3 p.75
  13. ^ Morris 2005 "The remaining villagers were then expelled."
  14. ^ Hogan 2001 "By Monday, 12 April, the Haganah decided to take full control of Deir Yassin from the Irgun and Lehi."
  15. ^ Morris 2008, pp. 126–128.
  16. ^ Gelber 2006 Archived February 27, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, p. 307.*For "purity of arms", see Walzer, Michael. "War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition", and Nardin, Terry. "The Comparative Ethics of War and Peace", in Nardin, Terry (ed.). The Ethics of War and Peace. Princeton University Press, pp. 107–108, 260.
  17. ^ Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008), "The atrocities were condemned by the Jewish Agency, the Haganah command, and the Yishuv's two chief rabbis, and the agency sent King Abdullah a letter condemning the atrocities and apologizing (which he rebuffed, saying that "the Jewish Agency stands at the head of all Jewish affairs in Palestine")."
  18. ^ Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy (April 7, 2008). "Victims of Hadassah massacre to be memorialized". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on April 7, 2013. Retrieved December 2, 2013.
  19. ^ Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem!, 1972, pp. 284–285, Simon & Schuster, New York; ISBN 0-671-66241-4
  20. ^ Sela, Rona (March 2018). "The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure – Israel's Control over Palestinian Archives". Social Semiotics. 28 (2): 201–229. doi:10.1080/10350330.2017.1291140. ISSN 1035-0330. S2CID 149369385 – via ResearchGate. p.209.


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