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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Remembering the Deir Yassin massacre 75 years on</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Palestine News Network (PNN) - April 9, 2023<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lgb03ddn0" alt="image.png" width="452" height="362"><br><p></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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."</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Deir
Yassin is a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a
historical fact Israel must confront when retelling its national
narrative.</p><p>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.</p>
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