Israeli historiography and collective memory According to Israeli historian
Anita Shapira, there is a gap, at times quite wide, between the 'facts established by historical research' and the image of the battle as retained in
collective memory. This is certainly the case for the battle of Latrun, which has become, in Israel, a
founding myth. Shapira contrasts the early post-war mainstream official narrative that cited the battle as playing a crucial role in tying up Jordanian forces and relieving pressure on Jerusalem. In the 1970s, under new élite, another narrative emerged which indicted the choice to fight at Latrun as an exploitation of immigrant Holocaust survivors dispatched to fight and die in a useless battle as soon as they disembarked in Israel. From 14 June, the press shifted its focus to the 'opening of the Burma route' and, in the context of a conflict between the military's senior command and Ben-Gurion,
Yigael Yadin called the operation a 'great catastrophe' while the latter replied that, in his view, it had been "a great, although costly, victory". Whereas many events in the war were more bloody for the Israelis, like the massacre at
Kfar Etzion with 150 deaths or that of Mount Scopus with 78, the Battle of Latrun is the event of the war to provoke most rumours, narratives and controversies in Israel. The main reason is that Latrun had still been the mainstay for the road to Jerusalem until the
Six-Day War, keeping the Israelis at the margins and having to go round and maintain the town, but struggling to bypass it, which played each day on their minds. According to
Anita Shapira, the primary reason was nothing but people's grievous memories, of David Ben-Gurion and the veterans of the British Armies on one side and former
Palmah and
Haganah soldiers on the other.) On the other side, those supporting Ben-Gurion put everything to advance the case of the "historic sacrifice" by the immigrants, laying the failure to their poor training. it depicts the battle as "The hardest in the history of
Tsahal", and
it puts the responsibility of the defeat on Ben-Gurion, who panicked about Jerusalem, and tactical errors on the brigade commanders and not on the immigrants who received (from his point of view) a sufficient training. Their integration was difficult with
Sabra Israelis, born in the Palestinian Mandate, and taking the essential jobs and around who Israel had built an image of "Sabras, strong and courageous, fearless heroes, disdaining feebleness and trouble". The phenomenon rose up again with the Israeli victory of the
Six-Day War. All the while, these uncertainties and the reparations from the
Yom Kippur War polished the sheen on the
Shoah. The collective memory resurfaced and looked to reconcile its history of difficulties, suffering and sacrifices. A new elite arose from the
Sephardic Jews and the "can-do" of
Menahem Begin. This version was put into several poems by the celebrated provocative poet
Gabi Daniel (pseudonym of Benjamin Harushovsky-Harshav) and entitled "
Peter the Great". Themes in the poem include dehumanisation and how Ben-Gurion got Shoah into his pocket, by the work of the other "innocent young Jews of the Superior Race, who, without name or vision, found themselves the saviours of Israel". Despite this bloodbath, Anita Shapira underlines that this battle didn't remain in the Israeli collective memory. "If success has numerous fathers, [...] defeat remains an orphan. [...] The deaths of Qurikur did not enter into the pantheon of the Israeli
national memory. [...] [While there were numerous polemics about Latrun], that 45 soldiers perished [...] should have begged a question. But they died in a side of the arena that proved to be unimportant, given it was not to decide the outcome of the campaign. In the 1980s, a commemorative site and a museum was built on the old police site. The complex has a wall listing all the names of the fallen soldiers since the
1947–1949 Palestine war, and a monument to the glory of the heroes and another for reverence. The museum has nearly 200 tanks and other armoured vehicles of many kinds.
Jordanian historiography According to Eugène Rogan, the Jordanian history of the war is essentially that of the recollections by Jordanian officers who took part in the fighting, or of nationalist historians. He states that these "non-critical" works are largely loyal to the Jordanian regime and quotes
My memoirs by
Habes al-Majali, commander of the 4th Regiment;
The battles of Bad al-Oued by Mahmoud al-Ghussan, one of the High Command officers;
On the road to Jerusalem by Ma'n Abu Nuwar, an officer of the Arab Legion, Jordanian soldier and
Soldier with the Arabs with
John Bagot Glubb. Jordanian historiography declares Latrun as a great success of the
Arab Legion in the defense of Jerusalem, where a contingent of 1,200 men resisted an assault of 6,500 Israeli soldiers, and claiming Israeli casualties of between 400 Glubb claimed 600 deaths on the first assault and 600 others for the two after.
Habes al-Majali is quoted as the only Arab commander to have defeated the Israelis in 1948 and so he restored a little honour to the Arabs. By his version of events, he would even have caught
Ariel Sharon in the course of the battle and it is Colonel Ashton (his British superior from 3rd Brigade) would have forbidden him to use the artillery against the Burma Road by which he could have prevented its construction. After the war, he was appointed bodyguard of Abdallah and in 1957
Chief-of-Staff of the Jordanian Army. He became Jordanian Minister of Defence in 1967.
Palestinian historiography and collective memory The Palestinian account of the battle is much the same as the Israeli one. It is, after, all, based on the Israeli one but gives no weight or symbolic character to it. In his work "All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948"
Walid Khalidi refers to
Operation Maccabi as the first assault. He reports that the resistance offered by the Arab Legion and the volunteer army were "inspired by
Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni" (who had been killed a month before). Nevertheless, Palestinian historiography and collective memory argue that the
exodus of Palestinian Arabs and
the massacres during the
1948 War could be seen as
ethnic cleansing. In the Latrun zone, this affected about 20 villages and ten thousand Palestinian Arabs. Some inhabitants fled during the fights of April but most fled when the Israelis attacked their village during the following operations. After capturing a village, the Israeli soldiers systematically expelled the non-combatants, intimidating them to leave and demolishing houses. A massacre of between thirty and seventy Arabs took place some days after Abu Shusha was taken. Most villages were levelled, so as not to be used by the Arab volunteers and to prevent the inhabitants returning. In some cases Jewish settlements were established on village land. == References ==