[News] Remembering the Deir Yassin massacre 75 years on

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.pnn.ps <https://english.pnn.ps/news/46001>
Remembering the Deir Yassin massacre 75 years on
Palestine News Network (PNN) - April 9, 2023
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On this day in 1948, a couple of hundred armed Zionist militias from the
pre-1948 Irgun and Stern gangs stormed the village of Deir Yassin, a few
kilometers to the west of Jerusalem, and committed one of the earliest
massacres that became standard practice for the newly-founded state of
Israel.

On April 9, 1948, Zionist gangs raided the village of Deir Yassin, killing
at leasr 254 Palestinian civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly.
There were documented cases of rape, mutilation and humiliation.

The Deir Yassin massacre was led by Menachem Begin in his capacity as head
of the Irgun terrorist militia, which were also responsible for several
acts of terror, including the blowing up of the King David Hotel in
Jerusalem. Supporting the Irgun was the Haganah, a group that went on to
form the basis for the Israeli army, and the Lehi, led by Yitzhak Shamir.

As news of the atrocities in the village spread, thousands of Palestinians
fled their villages in fear. Eventually, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or
be were forcibly displaced at the outset of Israel’s creation, making the
massacre a decisive moment in Palestinian history.

Deir Yassin was a peaceful village whose less than 1,000 residents lived
quite a relaxed life, with a degree of economic prosperity. The village was
famous for its limestone cutting business. But all that peaceful life
turned upside down after the massacre, in which 250 and 350 local
Palestinian residents were massacred. The majority of the victims of the
massacre were women, children and the elderly.

After being taken prisoner, many villagers were paraded through Jerusalem’s
Old City by the militias in order to widely publicize their “victory” in
Deir Yassin. In several other Palestinian villages, Nakba survivors
reportedly fled after hearing about the massacre in Deir Yassin, fearing
similar violence.

Others who survived, fearful and terrified, left their homes and properties
to seek shelter elsewhere. They became just another number in the still
ongoing uprooting of Palestinians from their homes. No one has ever been
held accountable for the Deir Yassin massacre.

Zionist propaganda even tried to dispute the fact that the massacre of Deir
Yassin ever took place. However, that painful and shameful fact is now
beyond any historical doubt, just like other infamous world massacres, such
as the My Lai massacre committed by the US military in South Vietnam in
1968.

Daniel A. McGowan, a Jewish journalist in Jerusalem, who witnessed the
massacre unfolding, has written that all reports about the massacre were
"direct, fresh and convincing". However, many extremist Zionists "still
refuse to believe it."

Nathan Friedman-Yellin, a criminal himself, found the Deir Yassin massacre
to be "inhumane." He was a joint commander of the Jewish Stern Gang in
1948, yet he could not swallow his colleagues' actions.

A member of the UK delegation to the United Nations (UN), in a letter dated
20 April, 1948, confirmed the attack on Deir Yassin in which "250 Arab men,
women and children" were killed in "circumstances of great savagery".
Palestine, at the time, was a UK Mandate territory pending final status
determination by the UN.

Of nearly 70 massacres during the 1948 Nakba, Deir Yassin would become one
of those atrocities where almost all the acts of war criminality were
unleashed: killing, destruction, pillaging, rape, and displacement.

Deir Yassin is a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a
historical fact Israel must confront when retelling its national narrative.

Israeli historians and Israeli society have been able to admit to the
massacre in Deir Yassin by attributing it to the right-wing group Irgun,
but have covered up or denied other massacres – notably the one in Tantura
in 1948 – carried out by the Haganah, the main Jewish militia from which
the current-day Israeli military has evolved.
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