 On April 9th 1948, the Zionist militia’s known as the Lehi (or the Stern Gang) and the Irgun crept up on the village of Deir Yassin, a town of about 750 Palestinian Arabs 5.5km west of Jerusalem.
It was 4.30 in the morning. By the end of that day, approximately 120 villagers had been killed and the village was all but abandoned.
This was one of the first strikes in a wave of terror known now by the Palestinians only as the Nakba (the Disaster), which drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in a matter of months.
The so-called British Mandate, which saw Britain control Palestine since 1922 with the purpose of eventually establishing a Jewish homeland, was about to come to an end and the brand-new United Nations had just passed, in November 1947, the “Partition plan for Palestine” establishing the Jewish state of Israel.
In the last few weeks of the British Mandate, the Jewish leadership decided it was crucial that they seize control of the land that had been allocated to them. They developed “Plan Dalet”, which called for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from the soon-to-be-founded state of Israel . At the heart of the Zionists scheme lay terror on a monumental scale. They would chase the Palestinians out of their own country by creating such a climate of bloodletting and violence that a fever of fear would sweep the land. The execution of this plan ultimately led to more than 700,000 Palestinians fleeing their homes in a series of events known collectively as the Nakba, or “The Disaster”
Deir Yassin was a strategically insignificant village, which had a non-aggression agreement with neighbouring Jewish villages. It was chosen by two Zionist militias known as ‘Lehi’ and ‘Irgun’ as a soft target. One hundred and twenty men from these gangs assaulted the village in the early hours of the morning. The villagers put a valiant defence but were brought down with assistance from the Palmach - the commando wing of the semi-official Zionist army (the Haganah). In the aftermath of the battle, the militiamen went round houses, lined up families, mostly women and children, inside their houses and simply shot them . Fifteen to 20 of the men were taken to a quarry near the village, put up against the wall and shot. News of the attack quickly spread, sparking a wave of panic amongst the Palestinian population.
 On the eve of the UN Partition Plan Resolution of 29 November 1947, according to a formerly secret Israeli intelligence report, there were 219 Arab villages and four Arab, or partly Arab, towns in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood – with a total Arab population of 342,000. By 1 June, 180 of these villages and towns had been evacuated, with 239,000 Arabs fleeing the areas of the Jewish state. A further 152,000 Arabs, from 70 villages and three towns (Jaffa, Jenin and Acre) had fled their homes in the areas earmarked for Palestinian Arab statehood in the Partition Resolution, and from the Jerusalem area.
Deir Yassin is almost unique in that most of it still stands. It now serves as an Israeli mental health centre, walled off and inaccessible to the public – a sad testament to the devastation which occurred there. Most of the Arab villages in modern Israel were not even that lucky, being wiped from the face of the earth and replaced by Jewish settlements or farmland.
Deir Yassin is notable not as the largest or the worst atrocity in the history of Palestine, but as the start of a much wider campaign that saw literally hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee their homes. This “disaster” ultimately marked the start of the conflict which still rages today, but had roots going back several decades. This is a legacy of racism; of Zionism. It is upon this legacy which the state of Israel was founded, and on which the Zionist policies of its leaders still rest today. Kevin H |
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