Zionist Massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, Prelude to the Nakba

76th Anniversary of Deir Yassin Massacre, April 9, 1948

Deir Yassin lies in ruins after the massacre carried out by Zionist terrorists.

Deir Yassin (also known as Deir Yasin or Dayr Yassin) was an Arab village on the outskirts of west Jerusalem not very far from the highway which connects Jerusalem with the Mediterranean Sea coast of Palestine. It was one of the first of hundreds of Palestinian localities which were systematically ethnically cleansed by the Zionists in 1948 to establish the State of Israel. This ethnic cleansing was known as the Nakba (Catastrophe).

Posted below is an excerpt from the article “Deir Yasin Massacre, 09.04.1948,” published on April 10, 2010 by Reham Alhelsi on her blog “A Voice from Paletine.” It has been slightly edited for style. Alhelsi is a regional planner who worked as a programs director for the Palestinian Working Women Society for Development at that time.

The events at Deir Yassin and all the crimes of the Zionists ever since make clear that the current brutality and genocide in Gaza in 2024 is not an aberration but the ongoing basis on which Israel was founded and continues to exist, with the complicity of the big powers, a state of affairs that must be ended once and for all.

Since the arrival of the first Zionist to Palestine, hundreds of massacres have been committed against unarmed Palestinian civilians in the name of “Israel,” making this entity synonym to death and destruction. One of the worst Zionist massacres committed against Palestinians is the Deir Yassin massacre. Defenceless Palestinian civilians were tortured before being massacred and their bodies mutilated. Women and children were raped, babies were butchered and pregnant women were bayoneted.

Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village located at the outskirts of Jerusalem, had a population of around 750 on the eve of April 9, 1948. The village was surrounded by six Zionist colonies, the closest being Giv’at Sha’ul, and the Zionist colonists had blocked the main access road connecting Deir Yassin with Jerusalem, placing Deir Yassin under an almost total blockade. To protect the village from the attacks of the Zionists, the villagers of Deir Yassin formed a local guard whose weaponry consisted only of a few old rifles and very little ammunition. Because the village was surrounded by several Zionists colonists, was besieged and continuously threatened by them and because the villagers had little means to protect themselves, Deir Yassin agreed to a non-aggression pact with the Zionist colonists just one month before the massacre.

Nevertheless, on April 9, 1948, and in a joint operation codenamed “Operation Unity” the three terrorist gangs Irgun, Lehi (Stern) and Haganah (later Zionist terrorist army) attacked the peaceful village with the aim of killing as many Palestinians as possible and to force the rest out of their homes and lands. At 4:30 on Friday morning, 09.04.1948, and while the villagers slept, the Zionist terror gangs surrounded Deir Yassin. Palestinians woke up to the sound of loud speakers ordering them to leave the village, and the unsuspecting residents went out of their homes to investigate the situation, and it was then that the massacre began.

The Irgun attacked the village from the south east, Stern attacked it from the east while the Haganah bombarded the village with mortars. The Palestinian village guard tried to protect the residents and to stop the Zionist gangs, they fought heroically but with their meagre weaponry had little chance against three fully armed terror gangs. The Zionists opened fire at whoever tried escaping the village, and then moved into the village and started their “clean up”: they moved from one house to the other raping women, slaughtering children and killing whoever was inside with machine guns and knives. Whole families were lined up against the wall and executed. Pregnant women were bayoneted and the bodies of children were mutilated. Money and jewelry were snatched from the bodies of victims and other personal belongings were stolen before houses were burnt. Of the 144 houses of Deir Yassin, at least 15 were blown up over the heads of their inhabitants by the Zionist terror gangs. British interrogating officer, Deputy Inspector General Richard Catling, confirmed that:

“The recording of statements is hampered also by the hysterical state of the women who often break down many times whilst the statement is being recorded. There is, however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two. Many infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old woman … who had been severely beaten about the head with rifle butts. Women had bracelets torn from their arms and rings from their fingers and parts of some of the women’s ears were severed in order to remove earrings.”[1]

Bodies of some of the hundreds killed by the Zionists in Deir Yassin.

During the massacre; men, women, children and elderly were killed in cold blood and in a gruesome way and hundreds were wounded. The number of victims is disputed. Most sources put the number of martyrs at 254, including 25 pregnant women who were bayoneted and 52 children who were maimed in front of their mothers before being beheaded and the mothers slain.

“A chilling account of the massacre is given by a Red Cross doctor who arrived at the village on the second day and saw himself – the mopping up – as one of the terrorists put it to him. He says that the “mopping up” had been done with machine guns, then grenades and finished off with knives. Women’s bellies were cut open and babies were butchered in the hands of their helpless mothers. Around 250 people were murdered in cold blood.[2] Of those 250 people, 25 pregnant women were bayoneted in their abdomens while still alive. 52 children were maimed under the eyes of their own mothers, and they were slain and their heads cut off. Their mothers were in turn massacred and their bodies mutilated. About 60 other women and girls were also killed and their bodies mutilated.[3]

The UN and the Red Cross, whose representatives were among the first to enter the village after the massacre, confirm that the number of the victims is in fact close to the 250 estimate. Other more recent sources name around 120 martyrs […], adding that the number of victims was exaggerated by the Zionist terrorists to spread fear amongst Palestinians everywhere. Ethnic cleansing was one of the declared aims of the massacre, and the atrocities committed at Deir Yassin were used to force residents of other Palestinian villages to flee for their lives out of fear of a similar destiny. After the massacre, Zionist terrorist gangs went from one Palestinian village to another, ordering Palestinians to leave “or meet the fate of Deir Yassin.”[4] They would warn the residents in loud speakers: “The Jericho road is still open, fly from Jerusalem before you are killed, like those in Deir Yassin.”[5] During the expulsion of the inhabitants of Ramleh and Lydd in July 1948, Sari Nair from Ramleh recalled how they were kicked out of their home by a Zionist soldier who told them to leave “Otherwise you know what will happen. What happen at Deir Yassin will happen to you.”[6]

In addition to those butchered in their homes, 25 Palestinian men were rounded up by the Zionist terrorists, loaded onto a truck and paraded through Jerusalem in a sort of “victory tour” before being executed at a nearby quarry and buried in a mass grave. Also, eye witnesses reported that around 150 women and children were paraded naked through the Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem. “The marauders gathered the women and girls who were still alive, and after removing all their clothes, put them in open cars, driving them naked through the streets of the Jewish section of Jerusalem, where they were subjected to the mockery and insult of the onlookers. Many took photographs of those women.”[7] Fifty-five children who survived the massacre were left at the Mendelbaum gate. Six of these orphans went knocking on the door of Palestinian Jerusalemite Hind Al-Husseini seeking shelter. After hearing about the massacre, Al-Husseini went searching for the other children and after finding them decided to take care of them all. Her family gave her the mansion of her grandfather Dar Al-Husseini (the Husseini house) where she was born and which she renamed into Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Home of the Arab Child). Hind Al-Husseini dedicated her whole life to the orphans of Deir Yassin and other Palestinian children.

When the news of the massacre spread, the International Red Cross Society requested permission for its representative Jacques de Reynier to enter the village and investigate the matter. The Jewish Agency – which claimed it had nothing to do with the massacre and publicly “condemned” it – tried its best to prevent an investigation of the massacre and delayed granting the permission 24 hours to give the Zionist terrorists enough time to erase all traces of the massacred (something the Zionist government and its IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] have been doing since then after every massacre: public condemnation followed by a self-investigation that clears them of the massacre while preventing an independent investigation). But the evidence of the massacre was visible everywhere; it was so horrific that all efforts to erase it failed. The Zionists even tried to change the landmarks of the village so the Red Cross representative would not find the village’s cistern which they locked up. But de Reynier found it and testified to finding the maimed bodies and parts of bodies of 150 women, children and elderly. Other bodies were found under the rubble of the destroyed homes, and many were scattered along the streets of the village. Scores of bodies were also found in the mass grave at the quarry.

As the massacre was taking place, both the British commander of the Mandate ground troops and the Jewish Agency knew about it but did nothing to stop it. But after the news of the massacre spread and the horrific details of what had happened were made public, both “denounced” the massacre and denied any previous knowledge. Also the Haganah, the armed forces of the Jewish Agency, “condemned” the massacre and denied any connection or knowledge of it. The leaders of the Haganah tried to hide their role in the massacre and claimed they only entered Deir Yassin after the massacre was over and denied the claims of Irgun and Lehi that they were part of the attack. These [other groups] were enraged by the claims and published a letter proving that the Haganah commander was fully aware of the plan to attack Deir Yassin and even approved it. The leader of Irgun, Menachim Begin, “admitted on December 28, 1950, in a press interview in New York, that the Deir Yassin incident had been carried out in accordance with an agreement between the Irgun and the Jewish Agency and the Haganah.”[8] In fact, the attack on Deir Yassin was codenamed “Operation Unity” “to demonstrate the unity between the official Zionist leadership on the one hand and the two terrorist groups on the other.”[9]

According to “Plan Dalet,” Deir Yassin was to be occupied together with other Palestinian villages. “Plan Dalet” was the master military plan of the Zionists and contained many sub-operations for the systematic expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible and grabbing as much Palestinian land as possible before the British Mandate was over. It gave Zionist military commanders and Zionist gangs a green light to massacre and to expel Palestinians and destroy their villages and towns. This Plan and its operations caused the ethnic cleansing of 213 Palestinian localities (40 per cent of all Palestinian localities) and caused 413,794 Palestinians [to become] refugees (54 per cent of the Nakba refugees) making it the main plan behind the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It started on April 1, 1948 and ended on May 15, 1948 and consisted of eight major military operations against Palestinian communities, the first being “Operation Nachshon.” This operation “was launched to carve out and hold a corridor from Tel Aviv on the coast to Jerusalem in the interior. This involved the occupation and destruction of Arab villages in this corridor. The massacre of Deir Yassin on April 10 was part of this operation. By April 12, the Zionists had expelled about 15,000 Arab villagers from this corridor.”[10]

The Deir Yassin massacre was the first of at least another 17 massacres committed within the framework of “Plan Dalet.” Only two days after Deir Yassin, on April 12, 1948, Zionist terror units killed 12 residents of Khirbet Nasir Al-Din (Tiberias area). The next day, Irgun and Lehi Zionist terror gangs entered the village and killed 50 of its 90 residents, the remaining 40 managed to escape before the whole village was destroyed. “Plan Dalet” was carried out by the Zionist terrorists while Palestine was still under British Mandate, meaning under British protection, but the British army and government did nothing to stop the Zionist terror attacks and massacres against the Palestinians. Instead they supported the Zionist terrorists by providing them with weapons and military training. At the same time, they denied Palestinians the possession of weapons leaving most Palestinians Defenceless.

During the massacre, Deir Yassin was ethnically cleansed, wiped off the Zionist map and later re-populated with Zionist colonists. While its indigenous population were made refugees who are till today scattered all over the world, Zionist colonists from Poland, Romania and Slovakia were settled in the homes of the Palestinians. The irony is that some of the old houses of Deir Yassin became part of a Zionist mental hospital and these homes which are the site of the slaughter of their inhabitants later housed a number of Holocaust survivors suffering from mental trauma.

The Zionist terror militias that committed the massacre were the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi. These terrorist gangs got most of their financing from the U.S., just like today, and in one case, the Lehi (Stern) terror gang contacted Albert Einstein and asked his help in raising money in the US. Einstein’s reply came one day after the massacre of Deir Yassin: he refused to help “calling the Stern Gang terrorists and misled criminals.”[11]

The Haganah, as the armed unit of the Jewish Agency, was headed by the political leader of the Jewish Agency David Ben-Gurion who became the first prime minister of the Zionist entity. Irgun was headed by Menachim Begin who became the sixth prime minister of the Zionist entity. Lehi was headed by Yitzah Shamir who became the seventh prime minister of the Zionist entity. According to Menachim Begin: “The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin.”[12] And after the massacre, he sent [a message to] the attackers of Deir Yassin: “Accept congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Tell the soldiers you have made history in Israel.”

No one was ever punished for this and other massacres. This entity that had been headed by one war criminal after the other since its creation, and is still headed by war criminals, blatantly keeps claiming it seeks peace and is “only defending itself” when it kills unarmed civilians whether in Palestine, Lebanon or elsewhere. Deir Yassin was not an isolated incident. Hundreds of massacres followed and the Jenin massacre [April 2002] and the recent Gaza Genocide [December 2008] are only two examples of the blood-thirsty Zionist nature.

Choosing Deir Yassin as a target for this horrific massacre only shows the nature of the Zionist entity: Deir Yassin was known as a peaceful village and had prevented Palestinian fighters from using its land to fight the Zionist terrorists, in addition to the fact that it had signed a non-aggression treaty with the Zionists. One day before the massacre, the Palestinian leader Abdel-Qader Al-Husseini had been killed while resisting the Zionists in near-by Al-Qastal. He had waited in vain for support from Arab armies who had betrayed him and betrayed Palestine as they still do. Deir Yassin had refused to assist Al-Husseini and the Palestinian fighters. The village, surrounded by several Zionists colonies maybe saw in signing the non-aggression pact the only way to protect its inhabitants from the Zionist terror. Nevertheless, the Zionists chose Deir Yassin as the site for the massacre which was to be used as example for all other Palestinian villages and towns. The Zionists chose the people who signed a “non-aggression” treaty and as a “thank you” massacred them, raped their mothers and wives, paraded their children naked before executing them.

Memorials to Deir Yassin. Left and centre: memorial with a bronze sculpture of an uprooted olive tree, on the shore of Lake Seneca, New York. Right: Memorial in Glasgow, Scotland.

This should always be a reminder and a warning for every Palestinian about the nature of Zionists, and a warning to all those who want to negotiate with Zionists or sign agreements with them claiming the “Zionists want peace.” There is no peace with this entity and there will never be peace as long as there is Zionism. There can be no peace with an entity that has ethnic cleansing as its official policy. “Yosef Weitz, the Jewish administrator responsible for Jewish colonization and member of the Jewish Agency’s first Transfer Committee declared as early as 1940 that: “Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country. We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent people with the Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a Palestine, at least Western Palestine (west of the Jordan river) without Arabs And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left. Only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb the millions of our own brethren. There is no other way out.”[13] There can never be peace with an entity that thrives on continuous aggression, oppression, numerous massacres, the theft of Palestinian and the Judaization of Palestine.

Deir Yassin massacre is one of the most barbaric and horrific massacres committed by the ZioNazis and remains one of the many witnesses of Zionist barbarism and ZioNazi behaviour. But most importantly; Deir Yassin must always remain a warning and a reminder to every Palestinian, to every Arab as the village that signed a “peace agreement” with the Zionists and ended up being ethnically cleansed, wiped off the map and its residents either savagely massacred or made refugees.

To view the complete article, including testimonies from: survivors of the Deir Yassin massacre; Jacques de Reynier, Chief representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross; and the Zionist attackers of Deir Yassin, click here.

Notes

1. http://www.deiryassin.org/survivors.html

2. http://www.allaboutpalestine.com/massacre.html

3. http://www.jerusalemites.org/crimes/massacres/5.htm

4. http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Right-Of-Return/Story433.html

5. http://www.palestinehistory.com/issues/massacre/mass01.htm

6. http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/Chapter09_1of2.htm

7. http://www.jerusalemites.org/crimes/massacres/5.htm

8. http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/Chapter10_1of3.htm

9. http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Right-Of-Return/Story433.html

10. http://www.palestine-encyclopedia.com/EPP/Chapter09_2of2.htm

11. http://www.deiryassin.org/einstein.html