We transported the bodies, two at a time, by hand, to the quarry. The attack on Deir Yassin took place a few months after the United Nations had proposed on that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish one. Givat Shaul stands 820 meters above sea level. Fifteen wounded and 15 bodies were transferred to Jerusalem by the Red Cross. The Jewish village of Givat Shaul stood between Deir Yassin and the main road to Jerusalem. 90–91. Most of the fighters at the meetings, from both the Irgun and Lehi was for "liquidation of all the men in the village and any other force that opposed us, whether it be old people, women, or children. Angel's Bakery moved to its present location here in 1958. Givat Shaul Beth and Har Nof neighborhoods of Jerusalem Deir Yassin ( Arabic : دير ياسين ‎‎, Dayr Yāsīn ) was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 inhabitants about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Jerusalem . Mordechai Weg, known as Yaki or Yaacov, commander of Palmach's Harel 4th brigade. [15] These include two large book publishing houses, Keter Publishing House (established in 1958)[16] and Feldheim Publishers, which established its Israel branch in the 1960s. The next day he submitted his report. Every group in Palestine had cause for spreading the atrocity narrative. We did not check each body, all were dressed. Maxime Rodinson argued that the massacre at Deir Yassin, and the fear of further terrorism that it inspired in the Palestinian population, was a major cause of the subsequent Palestinian flight. [2] Zeinab Akkel claimed she offered her life savings to an attacker in exchange for sparing her younger brothers life: "my husband had given me $400. W 1951 r. W 1951 r. W samej wiosce zbudowano Centrum Zdrowia Psychicznego Kfar Shaul , wykorzystując same opuszczone wiejskie budynki. There were no pregnant women who were slit open. It was also their first joint operation since the split in 1940. 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. Forwarded to the Chief Secretary of the Palestine government, Sir Henry Gurney, by Richard C. Catling, Assistant Inspector General of the Criminal Investigation Division, on April 13, 14 and 16, 1948, dossier no. 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. [75], Yehuda Slutzky, a former Haganah officer, wrote in 1972 that four attackers were killed and 32 wounded, four of them seriously. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest. In one of the conquered village houses a Bren machine gun was set up, which shot everyone who got in its line of fire. [34], A gunbattle then broke out. Several major synagogues are located here, including the Pressburg Yeshiva and neighborhood synagogue, and the Zupnik - Ner Yisroel synagogue, and the ivy Yeshiva, Ner Moshe, headed by Rabbi Avraham Gurewitz and Rabbi Shalom Shechter. [39] Morris, also in 2006, put the number of killed to four and a dozen seriously wounded, adding that the number 30 to 40 wounded given by the attackers were likely exaggerated. "There was a natural wall there, formed by diggingy. I agreed, and the people of my platoon waited outside the village. "[88] Mohammed Radwan, one of the villagers who fought the attackers, said: "There were no rapes. [11], After 1948, the Givat Shaul industrial zone expanded with factories and warehouses. Settling the land so soon after the killings would amount to an endorsement of them. The residents did not realize that the point of the attack was conquest, thinking it was just a raid, and failed to run while they had the chance. [2] Yisrael Natach was a member of the Shai and were on the day stationed in Ein Karem. 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. American historian Matthew Hogan claims that they weren't. [40] The men had no experience of attacking an Arab village in daylight, and lacked support weapons. The invention, initially opposed by the Jerusalem municipality for being above-ground, won the Kaplan Prize for distinction in productivity and efficiency. [103] Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi wrote in 1992: Many of the village houses on the hill are still standing and have been incorporated into an Israeli hospital for the mentally ill that was established on the site. There were 12 bodies, and 6 burnt children. A total of 15 houses were blown up. There is, however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. [68] His assistant, Dr. Alfred Engel, wrote:[70]. In addition, Haganah members who were in the area (including the deputy commander of the Palmach force that took part in the attack), some of whom personally knew Pa'il and were specifically mentioned in his account, denied having seen him there. Lehi, an Irgun splinter group, was formed in 1940 following Irgun's decision to declare a truce with the British during World War II. Milstein said there were contradictions in Pa'il's claims and an absence of any mention of Pa'il in other Haganah accounts of the incident. Topics Israel The following witnesses are main sources for historians: Irgun and Lehi commanders approached David Shaltiel, the Haganah commander in Jerusalem, for approval. The Deir Yassin villagers agreed to inform Givat Shaul should Palestinian militiamen appear in the village, by hanging out certain types of laundry during the day—two white pieces with a black piece in the middle—and at night signaling three dots with a flashlight and placing three lanterns in a certain place. "[2], In 1969, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published an English pamphlet "Background Notes on Current Themes: Deir Yassin" denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin, that the village was the home of an Iraqi garrison, and calling the massacre story "part of a package of fairy tales, for export and home consumption". In response, the Haganah launched Operation Nachshon to break the siege. The dissidents did not fight. Modern scholarship puts the number at about half that. [citation needed], 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. Some villagers escaped and Jewish wounded were treated. [4] He held them responsible for the massacre,[9] and warned about "terrible consequences" if similar incidents occurred elsewhere. "[2], 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. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. [23] The Gutnick Halls,[22] funded by Australian philanthropist Joseph Gutnick and managed by Chabad, provide subsidized weddings for 440 needy couples annually through the Colel Chabad charity fund. She renamed the house Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Arab Children's House), and set up a foundation to finance it. "[99], 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. Massacre at Deir Yassin x. The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 130[1] fighters from the Far-right wing Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi killed at least 107 Palestinian Arabs, including women and children, in Deir Yassin, a village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem. We went into houses. It cannot be called by any other name." [1] Hogan estimates that there were 132 men; 72 from Irgun, 60 from Lehi, and some women serving in supporting roles. [1], The massacre was condemned by the leadership of the Haganah—the Jewish community's main paramilitary force— by the Em contrapartida, as patrulhas de Givat Shaul garantiram passagem para os moradores de Deir Yassin, em veículos ou a pé, no caminho de Jerusalém, [12] Yoma Ben-Sasson, comandante da Haganah em Givat Shaul, afirmaria tempos depois que "não houve sequer um incidente entre Deir Yassin e … After she fainted they killed her too. I did not know their commanders, and I didn’t want to expose myself, because people were going around there, as I wrote in my report, with their eyes rolled about in their sockets. In April 1948, it was estimated that the Irgun had 300 fighters in Jerusalem, and Lehi around 100. [76] 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. Later the same day, troops from Haganah's youth organization Gadna were ordered to the village. It was propaganda that ... Arabs put out so Arab armies would invade. 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. I looked everywhere, turned over all the bodies, and eventually found a little foot, still warm. In the corners we saw dead bodies. ‘Givat Shaul Beit’ of Israel, once ‘Deir Yassin’ of Palestine… Arriving there he faltered. After I joined him, he told me that he had been sent with some people from Camp Schneller to deploy his men on the main ridge, where the cemetery is today, commanding the main road to Jerusalem, because there was supposed to be a convoy that day. Shaltiel said, 'Take their weapons, and if they do not surrender their weapons, open fire.' 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. im palästinensischen Dialekt Dēr Yāsīn) war ein palästinensisches Dorf, heute Teil der im Nordwesten Jerusalems gelegenen orthodoxen Siedlung Giv'at Scha'ul.Das Dorf mit etwa 600 Einwohnern wurde am 9. The fighting was over, yet there was the sound of firing of all kinds from different houses. [12] The bakery's landmark factory store opened in 1984. In the southern part of Givat Shaul, the population predominantly consists of Modern Orthodox Jews, affiliating with Religious Zionism. In recent years, low-cost wedding halls servicing the religious population of Jerusalem have opened in several office and industrial buildings on Beit Hadfus Street. [27], The scant arsenal was divided as follows. The findings were published in Arabic as the fourth booklet in the university's "Destroyed Arab Villages" series, part of its Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project. It was Friday afternoon. They washed their hands in advance of anything that might happen to me if I insisted. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. [2] In 1927, the Diskin Orphanage moved to Givat Shaul from the Old City. Located in a strategic corridor west of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Shaul, Deir Yassin has become synonymous with … Gelber writes that Gorodenchik's figure was inflated and has not been corroborated. One of the Irgun fighters thought he had said "Ahdut", part of the password. 225–227; footnote to pp. Soon after that I saw Yaki Weg, a young Palmach company commander, driving up the steep northern slope to the western village with about 15–17 guys. During the Battle for Jerusalem in 1948, the Haganah flew in supplies, armaments, food, and troops on this runway. He [Hussayn Khalidi] said, 'We have to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews. Gadna commander Shoshana Shatai claimed she saw a woman with a great smashed belly: "I was in shock. [2] According to Gorodenchik, the Arab stretcher bearers were nevertheless hit by fire. [16] 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. All of them were young, some even adolescents, men and women, armed to the teeth: revolvers, machine-guns, hand grenades, and also cutlasses in their hands, most of them still blood-stained. Deir Yassin at the beginning of April 1948, was an Arab village on a hilltop opposite the neighbouring Orthodox Jewish settlement of Givat Shaul. "[89] Radwan added "I know when I speak that God is up there and God knows the truth and God will not forgive the liars. The village fell after house-to-house fighting. Lehi further proposed that any villagers who failed to flee should be killed to terrify the rest of the country's Arabs. 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. Givat Shaul Givat Shaul is a neighborhood in West Jerusalem.The neighborhood is located at the western entrance to the city, east of the neighborhood of Har Nof and north of Kiryat Moshe.Givat Shaul stands 820 meters above sea level. Of all the canards associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict, one stands out: the events that took place on April 9, 1948, in the village of Deir Yassin. He wanted to observe the revisionists fighting capabilities. They had no communication equipment. Today I would write that their eyes were glazed over, full of lust for murder. "[51] Lehi officer David Gottlieb said the Palmach had accomplished "in one hour what we could not accomplish in several hours". On April 14, Irgun radio broadcast that villages around Deir Yassin and elsewhere were being evacuated. It must have been about 4:00–5:00 P.M because the religious people had begun leaving to prepare for the Sabbath. (eds.) The dissidents were going about the village robbing and stealing everything: Chickens, radio sets, sugar, money, gold and more ... Each dissident walked about the village dirty with blood and proud of the number of persons he had killed. A consensus favoring invasion began to emerge the day after Deir Yassin, at a meeting on April 10 in Cairo of the Arab League Political Committee. On April 6, in an effort to secure strategic positions, the Haganah and its strike force, the Palmach, attacked al-Qastal, a village two kilometers north of Deir Yassin overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Finally they put the prisoners from the schoolhouse on four trucks and drove them to the Arab quarter of Jerusalem near the Damascus gate. "[89], Historian Abdel Jawad states that women at Deir Yassin spoke to British interrogators about rapes occurring and their opinion that this was the worst thing that happened. Tal, Yerech. The figure was repeated by the BBC and the Hebrew news services by The New York Times on April 13. In 1999, the organization Deir Yassin Remembered asked Prime Minister Ehud Barak to release the records. The whereabouts of Catling's original reports are unknown, according to Gelber. Lehi would stage its attack from Givat Shaul, and the Irgun from Beit HaKerem. I spoke to Shaltiel by wireless. Sources diverge on whether the armored vehicle was a "truck" or a "car". [1][2], The doors of the houses in Deir Yassin were made of iron and not wood, as the attackers had thought, and they had difficulty breaking into the houses. My cousin went out to see what happened to his uncle, who was shot a few minutes before, and he was killed too. Givat Shaul is named after the Rishon Lezion, Rabbi Yaakov Shaul Elyashar, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel,[1] and not, as commonly believed, for the biblical King Saul, whose capital was probably located on the hill Gibeah of Saul near Pisgat Ze'ev, on the way to Ramallah. Don't get mixed up with the Irgun and Stern Gang [Lehi]. There was a great deal of yelling. The Jews searched the women too. The neighborhood is located at the western entrance to the city, east of the neighborhood of Har Nof and north of Kiryat Moshe. Gichon told them "not to throw the bodies into cisterns and caves, because that was the first place that would be checked." In the months leading up to the end of British rule, in a phase of the civil war known as "The Battle of [the] Roads", the Arab League-sponsored Arab Liberation Army (ALA)—composed of Palestinians and other Arabs—attacked Jewish traffic on major roads in an effort to isolate the Jewish communities from each other. [96] Syria's foreign minister remarked that the Arab public's desire for war was irresistible. We met the Lehi and Etzel [Irgun] people in the middle of the village. The adult males were taken to town in trucks and paraded in the city streets, then taken back to the site and killed with rifle and machine-gun fire. Here the "cleaning up" had been done with machine-guns, then hand grenades. When Weg returned he gave them 3,000 bullets. The fear of Jewish terrorism also played a major part, even though the terror was sporadic and restricted. The mortar was fired three times at the mukhtar's house, which stopped the sniper fire. "[2] He further argues that if explosives were used, the number of wounded and dismembered bodies would have been much higher. Deir Yassin (Arabic: دير ياسين ‎, Dayr Yāsīn) was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 inhabitants about 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) west of Jerusalem.Deir Yassin declared its neutrality during the 1948 Palestine war between Arabs and Jews. The mukhtar's son was killed in front of his mother and sisters, he said. 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. Arabs fled from Haifa and Khirbet Azzun. I didn’t know what to do. [2], Thanks to the rapid work of Palmach the fighting was over by about 11:00 am. The villages of Fajja and Mansura reached a peace agreement with their Jewish neighbors. Remembered by all Palestinians over the world as a day of infamy in the worst chapter of Palestinian history, what is known as an-Nabka or catastrophe.. Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village of around 600 inhabitants in 1948, West of Jerusalem. [90] 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. The commanders of the Haganah showed us bodies in different places. [39] 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. Massacre of the Haddassa Hospital Convoy xi. Lapierre and Collins 2000, footnote, p. 276. Several wells are located at the southwestern edge of the site. After the truck drove into a ditch, the attack went on anyway. 226–227. The orphanage continues to this day. [82], A number of sources alleged there had been instances of rape. Today this pipeline brings 120 tons of flour to the bakery daily. [3] These families, mainly Yemenite Jews, were joined by others from Meah Shearim and the Old City. Fortunately, help arrived shortly thereafter in the form of ultra-Orthodox Jews from Givat Shaul, who rushed to Deir Yassin in time to shame the attackers into sparing the prisoners. Now, he retracted, suggesting instead a Jewish canton within a Hashemite kingdom. '[78], 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. [1] Several former leaders of the Haganah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy, but the Foreign Ministry explained that "While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our information, we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare. The stretcher bearers only got clubs. From the eastern edge of the village nobody came out unhurt. [1] Hogan in 2001 based on an Irgun communique from 11 April, wrote that four killed in the battle and one of the wounded later died, four seriously wounded and 28 "lightly wounded. It seemed to be going on everywhere. We checked, and found out it was not true. We visited many houses in this village in which approximately some two to three hundred people from Deir Yassin village are housed. Fighting began at 04:45 when a village sentry spotted the Irgunists moving in, and called out in Arabic, "Mahmoud". Enligt Pail kom vid 14-tiden en grupp ortodoxa judar från byn Givat Shaul, den by som Deir Yassin hade slutit fredsöverenskommelse med, och fick slut på dödandet. A short while later, he saw a group of around 25 prisoners being led to a quarry between Deir Yassin and neighbouring Givat Shaul. [74] Israeli researcher Eliezer Tauber writes that a total of 101 people were killed, 61 definitely in combat circumstances (including 24 armed fighters, with the remained being their family members who were with them); 18 for whom the cause of death could not be determined; about 10 whose deaths are in a "grey zone" whose charactization can be debated; and a further 11 being members of a single family who were gunned down by a single Irgun member. They wrote that it had become "infamous throughout the Jewish world, the Arab world and the whole world". They were debating what to do with them. [8] The number of wounded is estimated to between 12 and 50. [60], During the day, prisoners were loaded into trucks that came to and departed from Deir Yassin. Arabs who dressed up as Arab women were also found, and so they started to shoot the women also who did not hurry to the area where the prisoners were concentrated. They were found by a Palestinian woman, Hind Husseini, a member of the prominent Palestinian Husseini family. The camp guards killed the baby before the mother’s eyes. 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. Hasso, Frances S. (2000). Abu Mahmoud, a survivor, told the BBC in 1998 that he did hear the warning. He described beatings, looting, and the stripping of jewelry and money from prisoners. [1], 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. "[3], Houses and corpses were pillaged and money and jewelry were stolen from prisoners. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. 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. [citation needed], Formed in 1931, Irgun was a militant group that broke away from the mainstream Jewish militia, the Haganah. [2], The large number of Jewish wounded was a problem. It had been finished off with knives, anyone could see that ... as I was about to leave, I heard something like a sigh. He wrote that the initial orders were to take the men prisoner and send the women and children away, but the order was changed to kill all the prisoners. [5][6], In January 1948, the leaders of Givat Shaul met with the mukhtar of Deir Yassin to work out a non-aggression pact: if armed militia entered Deir Yassin, the villagers would hang out laundry in a certain sequence or place lanterns in a particular location. ... [One body was] a woman who must have been eight months pregnant, hit in the stomach, with powder burns on her dress indicating she'd been shot point-blank. It was clear that they had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range. In the result it helped us. The Angel brothers and co-CEOs Avraham, Ovadia, and Danny, commissioned a Texas company to construct a 750-foot pipeline to convey flour directly from the mill to the silo to the bakery. Sharif Kan'ana of Bir Zeit University interviewed survivors and published figures in 1988; 107 villagers had died, 11 of them armed, with 12 wounded. [27], Lapidot in his 1992 memoirs described occasional skirmishes between Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul residents, that on April 3, shots had been fired from Deir Yassin toward the Jewish villages of Bet Hakerem and Yefe Nof. Pa'il went home and wrote a report about what he had seen while his photographer developed the negatives. Reviewing the situation, Weg concluded that the wounded could not be evacuated before suppressing all hostile fire. These colonies formed a formidable barrier between Deir Yasin and Jerusalem. I tried to go into a house. [58] In a presentation to the PEACE Middle East Dialog Group, Ami Isseroff, translator of Milstein's book into English, provided side-notes critical of many aspects of Milstein's work,[93] 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. [28] He also notes that Begin at the time didn't mention attacks from the village or the presence of foreign militiamen as he would do years later. Eventually it turned out that in the Lehi sector there were more murders, but I didn’t know that then.