Deir Yassin massacre

Political and military situation The attack on Deir Yassin took place a few months after the beginning of the 1947-1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, which broke out after the announcement of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which sought to divide Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. Operation Nachshon was a Haganah operation to open the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem road, which had been blockaded by Palestinian Arabs as part of the Battle for Jerusalem, leaving the 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem with limited food, fuel or munitions. Historian Benny Morris writes that "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" and that the Palmach also assisted. Ilan Pappé writes that the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah "were united into one military army during the days of the Nakba (although [...] they did not always act in unison and coordination)", and that Operation Nachshon was "the first operation in which all the various Jewish military organisations endeavoured to act together as a single army – providing the basis for the future Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)." Plan Dalet and the role of the Haganah Historians Ilan Pappé and Walid Khalidi consider the attack to have been a part of Plan Dalet, which Pappé calls "a blueprint for ethnic cleansing". In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Pappé writes that "The systematic nature of Plan Dalet is manifested in Deir Yassin, a pastoral and cordial village that had reached a non-aggression pact with the Hagana in Jerusalem, but was doomed to be wiped out because it was within the areas designated in Plan Dalet to be cleansed." Walid Khalidi also emphasized "the connection between the Haganah’s “Plan Dalet” [...] and what happened in Deir Yassin, explicitly linking the expulsion of the inhabitants to the Haganah’s overall planning." Khalidi states that the Haganah was involved in the attack on Deir Yassin through all stages, coordinating with and sending in the Irgun and Lehi forces, as well as participating in the fighting directly. Prior to the attack on Deir Yassin the Haganah had conducted a number of wartime massacres such as the Al-Khisas raid on Dec 18 1947, the Balad Al-Shayk massacre on Dec 31 1947, and the Sa'sa' massacre on Feb 14 1948. Pappé considers that the Haganah sent in the Irgun and Lehi "to absolve themselves from any official accountability." Irgun and Lehi militias (left) inspecting members of the Irgun in Jerusalem, August 1948. Most of the Jewish forces that attacked Deir Yassin belonged to two extremist, underground, militias, the Irgun (Etzel, abbreviated IZL) (National Military Organization), led by Menachem Begin, and the Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, abbreviated LHI), also known as the Stern Gang, both aligned with the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement. Formed in 1931, Irgun was a militant group that broke away from the mainstream Jewish militia, the Haganah. During the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, in which Palestinian Arabs rose up against the British mandate authorities in protest at Jewish mass immigration into the country, Irgun's tactics had included bus and marketplace bombings, condemned by both the British and the Jewish Agency. Lehi, an Irgun splinter group, was formed in 1940 following Irgun's decision to declare a truce with the British during World War II. Lehi subsequently carried out a series of assassinations designed to force the British out of Palestine. In April 1948, it was estimated that the Irgun had 300 fighters in Jerusalem, and Lehi around 100. Both groups had committed numerous terror attacks against the British and the Arabs and historian Matthew Hogan writes that: Another organizational ethos, deliberate terror, undoubtedly constituted a principal factor in the massacre. The Irgun's self-admitted operational tactics were "terror, bombs, [and] assassination." Deir Yassin would be their first proper military operation and the groups were keen to show their rival, the Haganah, their combat prowess. The attack was the first joint operation between the groups since Lehi split from the Irgun in 1940. Deir Yassin Deir Yassin was a Palestinian Arab village of several hundred residents, all Muslim, living in 144 houses. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that there were 400 residents; Yoav Gelber writes that there were 610, citing the British mandatory authority figures; and Begin's biographer, Eric Silver, 800 to 1,000. Walid Khalidi writes that the population was approximately 750. The village was situated on a hill 800 meters above sea level and two kilometers south of the Tel Aviv highway. Yoma Ben-Sasson, Haganah commander in Givat Shaul, said after the village had been captured that, "there was not even one incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews." The view was echoed in a secret Haganah report which stated that the village had stayed "faithful allies of the western [Jerusalem] sector." Gelber viewed it is unlikely that the peace pact between Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul continued to hold in April, given the intensity of hostilities between the Arab and Jewish communities elsewhere. On April 4, the Haganah affiliated daily Davar reported that "[t]he western neighborhoods of Jerusalem, Beit Hakerem and Bayit Vagan, was attacked on Sabbath night (April 2) by fire from the direction of Deir Yassin, Ein Kerem and Colonia." Relationship with Arab militia fighters Arab militiamen had tried to set up camp in the village, leading to a firefight that saw one villager killed. Just before January 28, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni had arrived with 400 men and tried to recruit some villagers, but the elders voiced their opposition and the men moved on. The leader of the village, the mukhtar, was summoned to Jerusalem to explain to the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the Palestinian Arab leadership, what the village's relationship was with the Jews: he told them the villagers and the Jews lived in peace. No steps were taken against him, and he was not asked to cancel the peace pact. In February, Arab irregular fighters killed the sheep in Deir Yassin as a retaliation for the village not allowing their forces to use Deir Yassin as base from which to attack Givat Shaul. On March 16, the AHC sent a delegation to the village to request that it host a group of Iraqi and Syrian irregulars to guard it. The villagers said no then, and again on April 4. Benny Morris notes that Menachem Begin at the time didn't mention attacks from the village or a presence of foreign militiamen as he would do years later. It remains unclear the exact extent the Haganah coordinated with the Irgun and Lehi in their attack on Deir Yassin, although at the very least Haganah commander David Shaltiel preapproved of the attack (with some sources describing this approval as having been given "reluctantly"). Shaltiel suggested attacking Ein Karem instead, but the Lehi and Irgun commanders complained that this would be too hard for them. Shaltiel ultimately yielded, on condition that the attackers would continue to occupy the village rather than destroying it, lest its ruins be used by Arab militias which would force the Jews to reconquer it. == Massacre ==

Day of the attack Pre-attack briefing About 130 fighters participated in the attack of which 70 came from Irgun, according to Morris. When the Lehi force, which was late, finally arrived at the other end of the village to begin the attack, the fighting was already underway. The Lehi force was spearheaded by an armored vehicle with a loudspeaker. The plan was to drive the vehicle into the center of the village and blare a warning in Arabic, urging the residents to run towards Ein Karim. Instead, the vehicle halted or overturned at a ditch directly in front of the village, and as it struggled to get out, the Arabs opened fire on it. Whether a warning was read out on the loudspeaker is unknown. Yachin stated that it was: Abu Mahmoud, a survivor, told the BBC in 1998 that he did hear the warning. Aref Samir stated that he didn't hear the warning: If a warning was read out it was obscured due to the sounds of heavy gunfire and few, if any, villagers heard it. The Lehi forces slowly advanced, engaging in house-to-house fighting. In addition to Arab resistance, they also faced other problems; weapons failed to work, a few tossed hand grenades without pulling the pin, and a Lehi unit commander, Amos Kenan, was wounded by his own men. In an interview decades later, Yachin claimed "To take a house, you had either to throw a grenade or shoot your way into it. If you were foolish enough to open doors, you got shot down—sometimes by men dressed up as women, shooting out at you in a second of surprise." Meanwhile, the Irgun force on the other side of the village was also having a difficult time. It took about two hours of house-to-house fighting to reach the center of the village. Irgun officer Yehoshua Gorodenchik claimed that 80 prisoners were killed: Aref Samir in 1981 stated: Gelber writes that Gorodenchik's figure was inflated and has not been corroborated. Kan'ana write that 25 villagers were executed and thrown into the quarry after the battle, which Gelber regards as accurate. According to survivor testimony, as many as 33 civilians were executed in the morning. Zeidan recalled hiding with her family and another when the door was blasted open. The attackers took them outside where they executed an already wounded man and one of his daughters. Two of her own family members were then killed: "Then they called my brother Mahmoud and shot him in our presence, and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother (she was carrying my little sister Khadra who was still being breastfed) they shot my mother too." Instead, Hogan claims that the explosives story were used by the perpetrators to explain the high number of deaths as the result of combat rather than as a deliberate massacre. The mortar was fired three times at the mukhtar's house, which stopped the sniper fire. Reviewing the situation, Weg concluded that the wounded could not be evacuated before suppressing all hostile fire. Thus, his mission expanded to capturing the village. Zeidan, who was taken prisoner, recalled meeting another group of captives: "We walked with some other women from the village, then came across a young man and an older man, with their hands up in the air, under guard." "When they reached us, the soldiers shot them." The young man's mother was in Zeidan's group and she started hitting the fighters that killed her son, so "one of them stabbed her with a knife a few times." The most detailed report comes from Pa'il who spied on the revisionists on behalf of the Haganah: Pa'il writes that the Haredi people of Givat Shaul came to help the villagers at around 2 p.m., and were able to stop the killing: Pa'il reported that he saw five Arab men being paraded through the streets, and later saw their bodies in a quarry near Givat Shaul. Morris writes that this is supported by two Jewish doctors who visited Deir Yassin on April 12 and reported that they found five male bodies in a house by the village quarry. to fend for themselves. Fifty-five children from the village whose parents had been killed were taken to the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, and left there. They were found by a Palestinian woman, Hind Husseini, a member of the prominent Palestinian Husseini family. She at first rented two rooms for them, bringing them food every day, before moving them to the Sahyoun convent. In July, she moved them again, this time to her family home, a large house her grandfather had built in Jerusalem in 1891. She renamed the house Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Arab Children's House), and set up a foundation to finance it. The orphanage continues to this day. A Shai report from April 12 to Shaltiel read: "Some of the women and children were taken prisoner by the Lehi and transferred to Sheik Bader [Lehi's headquarter in Jerusalem]. Among the prisoners were a young woman and a baby. The camp guards killed the baby before the mother's eyes. After she fainted they killed her too." Arab requests for British intervention The Arab emergency committee in Jerusalem learned of the attack around nine in the morning of April 9, including reports about the killing of women and children. They requested the help of the British, but did nothing further. In the late afternoon, they started to hear reports of women and children being paraded through the streets of Jerusalem. They sent the prisoners food and again appealed to the British army to intervene.However, Lieutenant General Sir Gordon MacMillan, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the British Forces in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, said he would risk British lives only for British interests. Gelber writes that the British were not keen to take on the Irgun and Lehi, who would have fought back if attacked, unlike the Haganah. At this, Cunningham turned to his RAF commanding officer, who offered to bomb the perpetrators in the village. The Mandate's Security Committee greenlighted high intensity punitive airstrikes on those responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre. However, the bombings were delayed since the light bombers had been sent to Egypt and the rockets to Iraq. Cunningham later said the RAF had brought a squadron of Tempest aircraft from Iraq to bomb the village, but he cancelled the operation when he learned the Haganah had arrived there and had garrisoned it. Nevertheless, he continued to express anger against the Zionist movement, particularly the Irgun and Lehi."The world must be told about these people, the Irgun and the Stern Gang – the absolute dregs of degradation." Ten houses had been blown up entirely, he said, though historians doubt if that was true. Other houses had their doors blown off and hand grenades thrown inside. Eliahu Arbel, Operations Officer B of the Haganah's Etzioni Brigade, visited Deir Yassin on April 10. "I have seen a great deal of war," he said years later, "but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin." The Arab side told de Reynier about the massacre in Deir Yassin and asked him to investigate. He was discouraged from visiting the village by Haganah and the Jewish Agency but insisted on going: "They advised me not to interfere, because if I were to go there, my mission might be ended. They washed their hands in advance of anything that might happen to me if I insisted. I answered that I would fulfill my duty and that I saw the Jewish Agency as directly responsible for my safety and freedom of action, because it is responsible for all territories under Jewish control." April 11 Morning April 11 de Reynier visited Deir Yassin. He reported that he had encountered a "cleaning-up team" when he arrived the village: In his memoirs, published in 1950, de Reynier wrote: After his inspection, the Irgun asked him to sign a document to say he had been received courteously and thanking them for their help. When he refused, they told him he would sign it if he valued his life. "The only course open to me was to convince them that I did not value my life in the least," he wrote. His assistant, Dr. Alfred Engel, wrote: April 12 By April 12 the Haganah had taken control of the village from the Irgun and Lehi. On April 12 before noon, two Jewish doctors, Tzvi Avigdori, the chairman of the Jerusalem branch of the Palestine Physicians Association, and his deputy, A. Druyan, visited Deir Yassin and reported: Later the same day, troops from Haganah's youth organization Gadna were ordered to the village. They were to relieve the revisionists but not before they had disposed of the bodies, something they had refused to do. The dispute almost lead to violence. Yeshurun Schiff who had accompanied the Gadna troops recalled: "I told the commander [of Etzel or Lehi], 'you are swine.' My people surrounded them. I spoke to Shaltiel by wireless. Shaltiel said, 'Take their weapons, and if they do not surrender their weapons, open fire.' I said, 'I cannot do that to Jews.' Shaltiel said 'That's an order!' but then he changed his mind." Eventually the revisionists left and the Gadna troops buried the bodies. Gadna counsellor Hillel Polity related: "The stench was awful. They brought us gloves from the city, windbreakers and kerchiefs to cover our faces. We transported the bodies, two at a time, by hand, to the quarry. A bulldozer was brought from the city and used to cover the bodies with earth." Gadna commander Shoshana Shatai claimed she saw a woman with a great smashed belly: "I was in shock. On the following day I told the investigator what I had seen." By the end of the operation all of the villagers had been expelled. == Casualties and allegations of sexual violence ==

The exact number of victims killed is not known, although estimates range from 93 to 140. Historian Matthew Hogan estimates between 110 and 140 were killed, with 50 to 70 wounded. Benny Morris wrote that "altogether about 100–110 villagers died". Ilan Pappé estimated that 93 villagers were massacred and dozens of others were killed in the fighting. Sharif Kan'ana of Bir Zeit University interviewed survivors and published figures in 1988 concluding that 107 villagers had died, 11 of them armed, with 12 wounded. Palestinian historian Aref al-Aref estimated in 1956 that 117 had been killed — 7 in battle and 110 in their homes. Eliezer Tauber concluded that 101 villagers died. According to Tauber, of the dead 61 were killed in battle, of whom 24 were armed fighters and the rest were family members who were killed alongside them, 17 were killed in unknown circumstances, 12 were killed in circumstances that he considers to be in a "grey zone" in which the characterization of their deaths can be debated, and 11 were from a single family killed by an Irgun fighter. Matthew Hogan writes that approximately two-thirds of the victims were women, children and elderly men. Hogan also stated that "The low number of Deir Yassin villager wounded (50-70) compared to the number killed (110-140), the reverse of ground combat's normal ratios, is also a noted trait of systematic killing." For many decades the number of victims was believed to be around 250. Historian Ilan Pappé in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) writes that: "Contemporary accounts put the number of victims of the Deir Yassin massacre at 254, a figure endorsed at the time by the Jewish Agency, a Red Cross official, The New York Times, and Dr Hussein al-Khalidi, spokesperson for the Jerusalem-based Arab Higher Committee. It is likely this figure was deliberately inflated in order to sow fear among the Palestinians and thereby panic them into a mass exodus." Allegations of sexual violence A number of sources alleged there had been instances of rape. Levi wrote on April 13: "LHI members tell of the barbaric behavior of the IZL toward the prisoners and the dead. They also relate that the IZL men raped a number of Arab girls and murdered them afterward (we don't know if this is true)" Another source of rape allegations was Assistant Inspector-General Richard Catling of the British Palestine Police Force. He led a British police team that conducted interviews with survivors in Silwan on April 13, 15 and 16: Citing Hasso (2000:495) Isabelle Humphries and Laleh Khalili note that in Palestine men's honour was tied to "the maintenance of kin women's virginity (when unmarried) or exclusive sexual availability (when married)", and that this culture led to the suppression of the narratives of rape victims. Hogan cites one documentary in which one female survivor nods affirmatively when asked about "molestation." Gelber writes that the stories of rape angered the villagers, who complained to the Arab emergency committee that it was "sacrificing their honour and good name for propaganda purposes." Abu Mahmud, who lived in Deir Yassin in 1948, was one of those who complained. He told the BBC: "We said, 'There was no rape.' He [Hussayn Khalidi] said, 'We have to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews. "This was our biggest mistake," said Nusseibeh. "We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror. They ran away from all our villages." A villager known as Haj Ayish claimed that "there had been no rape." He questioned the accuracy of the Arab radio broadcasts that "talked of women being killed and raped", and instead believed that "most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters." Mohammed Radwan, one of the villagers who fought the attackers, said: "There were no rapes. It's all lies. There were no pregnant women who were slit open. It was propaganda that ... Arabs put out so Arab armies would invade. They ended up expelling people from all of Palestine on the rumor of Deir Yassin." Radwan added "I know when I speak that God is up there and God knows the truth and God will not forgive the liars." Number of attackers killed and injured Yehuda Slutzky, a former Haganah officer, wrote in 1972 that four attackers were killed and 32 wounded, four of them seriously. Hogan in 2001 based on an Irgun communique from 11 April, put the death toll at five, four of whom were killed during the battle and one who later died of wounds sustained there. In addition, he wrote that four attackers were seriously wounded and 28 were "lightly wounded." Gelber in 2006 put the casualty toll of the attackers at five killed and 35 wounded. Morris, also in 2006, put the number of casualties at four killed and a dozen seriously wounded, adding that the figures of 30 to 40 wounded given by the attackers were likely exaggerated. == Aftermath ==

Role in the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight The attack on Deir Yassin spread great fear throughout the Palestinian Arab population, causing thousands more to flee from other locations, greatly accelerating the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. Historian Benny Morris wrote in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988) that Deir Yassin "probably had the most lasting effect of any single event of the war in precipitating the flight of Arab villagers from Palestine." On April 14, Irgun radio broadcast that villages around Deir Yassin and elsewhere were being evacuated. HIS intelligence reported that the residents of Beit Iksa and Al Maliha had fled. The village of Fureidis appealed for arms. The villages of Fajja and Mansura reached a peace agreement with their Jewish neighbors. A Haganah attack on the Arab village of Nasir al-Din near Tiberias on April 12, only a few days after the Deir Yassin massacre, again saw villagers killed and expelled, leading some Palestinians to describe the attack as "a second Deir Yassin". Arabs fled from Haifa and Khirbet Azzun. A Haganah attack on Saris encountered no resistance, because of the fear of Deir Yassin, in the view of the British. Irgun commander Ben-Zion Cohen, who participated in the attack, later stated that: "If there were another three or four more Deir Yassins in the Land of Israel at the time, not a single Arab would have remained in Israel". Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun at the time of the attack, denied that a massacre occurred and blamed "enemy propaganda" for causing the Palestinians' fears and flight, stating in 1977 that "Not what happened at Dir Yassin, but what was invented about Dir Yassin, helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield", and that "the legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel." Begin described the effects of the Deir Yassin massacre as follows: Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. [...] In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. [...] The legend of Dir Yassin helped us in particular in the saving of Tiberias and the conquest of Haifa. Other anti-Arab massacres and ethnic cleansing operations followed Deir Yassin, including the Dawayima massacre, Lydda massacre, Safsaf massacre, fall of Haifa, and the Sasa massacre, among others, with Mapam's leaders later concluding that the attacks on Deir Yassin and Haifa were the two pivotal events of the Palestinian exodus. 1948 Arab–Israeli war said Deir Yassin had changed things, and that invasion was now unavoidable. The Deir Yassin attack, along with attacks on Tiberias, Haifa, and Jaffa aroused public anger in the Arab world, which put pressure on Arab governments to invade Palestine. According to historian Benny Morris, "Deir Yassin alienated peace-prone Arab leaders, such as King Abdullah of Jordan, making it difficult for them to continue their dialogue with the Yishuv." Hadassah medical convoy massacre On April 13, five days after Deir Yassin, Arab forces carried out the Hadassah medical convoy massacre as a form of retaliation. Reactions The Haganah denied its role in the attack and publicly condemned the massacre, blaming it on the Irgun and Lehi. The Jewish Agency for Palestine (which controlled the Haganah), sent Jordan's King Abdullah a letter of apology, which Abdullah rejected, stating "the Jewish Agency stands at the head of all Jewish affairs in Palestine." Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, who would go on to become Prime Minister of Israel in 1977, hailed the taking of Deir Yassin as a "splendid act of conquest" that would serve as a model for the future. In a note to his commanders he wrote: "Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest." Morris writes that "During the following decades, Menachem Begin’s Herut Party and its successor, the Likud, were continually berated for Deir Yassin in internal Israeli political squabbling." The Jordanian newspaper Al Urdun published a survivor's account in 1955, which said the Palestinians had deliberately exaggerated stories about atrocities in Deir Yassin to encourage others to fight, stories that had caused them to flee instead. Every group in Palestine had cause for spreading the atrocity narrative. The Irgun and Lehi wished to frighten the Arabs into leaving Palestine; the Arabs wished to provoke an international response; the Haganah wished to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; and the Arabs wished to malign both the Jews and their cause. Gelber writes that Husayin al-Khalidi, the deputy chairman of the Higher Arab Executive in Jerusalem told journalists on April 12 that the village's dead included 25 pregnant women, 52 mothers of babies, and 60 girls. Historian Uri Milstein writes that the left-wing Mapai party and David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel's first prime minister on May 14, exploited Deir Yassin to stop a power-sharing agreement with the right-wing Revisionists—who were associated with Irgun and Lehi—a proposal that was being debated at the time in Tel Aviv. Resettlement as Givat Shaul Bet . In 1949, despite protests, the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Shaul Bet was built on what had been Deir Yassin's land, now considered part of Har Nof, an Orthodox area. Historian Tom Segev writes that "Several hundred guests came to the opening ceremony, including the Ministers Kaplan and Shapira, as well as the Chief Rabbis and the Mayor of Jerusalem. President Haim Weizmann sent written congratulations." Four Jewish scholars, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, Werner Senator, and Cecil Roth, wrote a letter to Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, asking that Deir Yassin be left uninhabited, or that its settlement be postponed. Writing that "The Deir Yassin affair is a black stain on the honor of the Jewish nation", and that it had become "infamous throughout the Jewish world, the Arab world and the whole world", they argued that "resettling Deir Yassin within a year of the crime, and within the framework of ordinary settlement, would amount to an endorsement of, or at least an acquiescence with, the massacre." Ben-Gurion failed to respond, though the correspondents sent him copy after copy. Eventually, his secretary replied that he had been too busy to read their letter. In 1951, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center was built on the village itself, using some of the village's abandoned buildings. Currently, many of the remaining buildings, located within the hospital, are hidden behind the hospital's fence, with entry closely restricted. In the 1980s, most of the remaining abandoned parts of the village were bulldozed to make way for new neighborhoods, and most of the Deir Yassin cemetery was bulldozed to make way for a highway. Har HaMenuchot, a Jewish cemetery, lies to the north. To the south is a valley containing part of the Jerusalem Forest, and on the other side of the valley, a mile and a half away, lie Mount Herzl and the Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem. There are no memorials or indicators of the Deir Yassin massacre at the site today. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi wrote in 1992: Veterans benefits suit In 1952 a group of four wounded Irgun and Lehi fighters applied to the Israeli Defense Ministry for veterans' benefits. The Ministry rejected their application stating that the Deir Yassin massacre wasn't "military service". But the decision was reversed after the group appealed. == Historiography ==

According to New Historian Benny Morris, "Arab chroniclers and historians by and large related, and continue to relate, to Deir Yassin as representative of Yishuv/Israeli military behavior in 1948, not as an exception; Deir Yassin, for them, is the paradigm for the Nakba as a whole. The implication is that massacres accompanied or followed the conquest of all or most Arab sites. This is the thrust of [Walid] Khalidi’s (and, incidentally, Milstein's) assertion that Deir Yassin was far from unique and merely conformed to the pattern of Haganah conquests during the war." Eliezer Tauber of Bar Ilan University published a book in 2021 titled The Massacre That Never Was, arguing that what occurred at Deir Yassin was a battle and not a massacre. First hand accounts Due to the lack of technical evidence, historians' narratives of the Deir Yassin massacre are largely based on witness accounts, either in the form of reports produced before or shortly after the attack, or in interviews conducted many years later. • Non-participants: • Jacques de Reynier, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Palestine who had been staying in the country since early April. He visited Deir Yassin on April 11 and reported what he saw on April 13. • Survivors: • Fahimi Zeidan, a 12-year-old girl, testified in 1987. • Yair Tsaban, member of the Gadna (Youth Brigades) who participated in burying bodies. • Lehi fighters: • Yehoshua Zettler. Archival records Material in Israeli military archives documenting the Deir Yassin massacre remains classified. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a petition by the newspaper Haaretz for the declassification of documents, reports and photographs concerning the Deir Yassin massacre. The court cited the possible damage to Israel's foreign relations and its negotiations with the Palestinians. This view was reaffirmed when Israeli researcher Rona Sela attempted to examine the material in the mid-2010s. The Israeli state archivist replied that: 'A special committee (headed by the Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked) to deal with permission to view classified archival material met on 11 September 2016, to discuss among others, your request. The committee asked for clarifications from additional sources and concluded that until they receive these answers and have further discussions on the subject, the material will remain classified.' Morris challenges Milstein's version that Pa'il was not at Deir Yassin that day with his observation that part of Pa'il's report, that he saw the bodies of five Arabs in a quarry, "is apparently reinforced by a report by two Jewish doctors, who also report having found five male bodies in a house by the village quarry". including much of his information about Pa'il and also about the incompleteness of his sources – "Both Milstein and Yitzhak Levi leave out key testimony by Yehoshua Gorodenchik, from the Jabotinsky archives, in which he admits that Irgun troops murdered about 80 prisoners – mostly men – corresponding to accounts of refugees." Pa'il, who died in 2015, defended himself in an interview in 2007: "What the Lehi and Etzel [Irgun] people did in Deir Yassin in April 1948 was a despicable act. It cannot be called by any other name." He maintained that he was sent to Deir Yassin to gauge Lehi and Irgun's fighting capabilities which he found to be lacking: "they didn't know a thing about field war. Worse, I saw that they knew how to massacre and kill... They are angry with me that I said these things. Let them first be angry at themselves." He also attacked Milstein for being "a cheap propagandist for the right-wing considerations of the Zionist enterprise," adding angrily: "I was there, I saw the massacre with my own eyes. Why didn't he ever question me about the things I experienced there?" ==See also==