Who gave such orders? Leaders such as Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared: “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”
34
The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book,
The Arabs: “This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country.”
35
“The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two,” Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). “Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ’Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.”
“The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies,” according to the Jordanian newspaperFilastin, (February 19, 1949).
One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: “The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
“The Secretary-General of the
Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade,” said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper,
Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). “He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”
The Arabs’ fear was exacerbated by stories of Jewish atrocities following the attack on
Deir Yassin. The native population lacked leaders who could calm them; their spokesmen were operating from the safety of neighboring states and did more to arouse their fears than to pacify them. Local military leaders were of little or no comfort. In one instance the commander of Arab troops in
Safed went to Damascus. The following day, his troops withdrew from the town. When the residents realized they were defenseless, they fled in panic.
“As Palestinian military power was swiftly and dramatically crushed, and the
Haganah demonstrated almost unchallenged superiority in successive battles,” Benny Morris noted, “Arab morale cracked, giving way to general, blind, panic, or a ‘psychosis of flight,’ as one IDF intelligence report put it.”
36
Dr. Walid al-Qamhawi, a former member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, agreed “it was collective fear, moral disintegration and chaos in every field that exiled the Arabs of Tiberias, Haifa and dozens of towns and villages.”
37
As panic spread throughout Palestine, the early trickle of refugees became a flood, numbering more than 200,000 by the time the provisional government declared the independence of the State of Israel.
Even Jordan’s King Abdullah, writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:
The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue.
38
These accounts have been bolstered by more recent statements by Palestinians who have become fed up with the phony narrative concocted by some Palestinian and Israeli academics. Asmaa Jabir Balasimah, for example, recalled her flight from Israel in 1948:
We heard sounds of explosions and of gunfire at the beginning of the summer in the year of the “Catastrophe” [1948]. They told us: The Jews attacked our region and it is better to evacuate the village and return, after the battle is over. And indeed there were among us [who fled Israel] those who left a fire burning under the pot, those who left their flock [of sheep] and those who left their money and gold behind, based on the assumption that we would return after a few hours.
39
An Arab resident of a Palestinian refugee camp explained why his family left Israel in 1948:
The radio stations of the Arab regimes kept repeating to us: ‘Get away from the battle lines. It’s a matter of ten days or two weeks at the most, and we’ll bring you back to Ein-Kerem [near Jerusalem].’ And we said to ourselves, ‘That’s a very long time. What is this? Two weeks? That’s a lot!’ That’s what we thought [then]. And now 50 years have gone by.
40
Mahmoud Al-Habbash, a Palestinian journalist wrote in the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper:
. . . The leaders and the elites promised us at the beginning of the “Catastrophe” in 1948, that the duration of the exile will not be long, and that it will not last more than a few days or months, and afterwards the refugees will return to their homes, which most of them did not leave only until they put their trust in those “Arkuvian” promises made by the leaders and the political elites. Afterwards, days passed, months, years and decades, and the promises were lost with the strain of the succession of events . . . [“Arkuvian” is a reference to Arkuv, a figure from Arab tradition known for breaking promises and lying.]
41
Another Palestinian journalist, Jawad Al Bashiti, explained the cause of the “Catastrophe”:
The following happened: the first war between Arabs and Israel had started and the “Arab Salvation Army” came and told the Palestinians: ‘We have come to you in order to liquidate the Zionists and their state. Leave your houses and villages, you will return to them in a few days safely. Leave them so we can fulfill our mission (destroy Israel) in the best way and so you won’t be hurt.’ It became clear already then, when it was too late, that the support of the Arab states (against Israel) was a big illusion. Arabs fought as if intending to cause the “Palestinian Catastrophe.”
42
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”
— Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas 43
|
FACT
The
United Nations resolved that
Jerusalem would be an international city apart from the Arab and Jewish states demarcated in the
partition resolution. The 150,000 Jewish inhabitants were under constant military pressure; the 2,500 Jews living in the
Old City were victims of an Arab blockade that lasted five months before they were forced to surrender on May 29, 1948. Prior to the surrender, and throughout the siege on Jerusalem, Jewish convoys tried to reach the city to alleviate the food shortage, which, by April, had become critical.
Deir Yassin after the attack
|
Meanwhile, the Arab forces, which had engaged in sporadic and unorganized ambushes since December 1947, began to make an organized attempt to cut off the highway linking Tel Aviv with —the city’s only supply route. The Arabs controlled several strategic vantage points, which overlooked the highway and enabled them to fire on the convoys trying to reach the beleaguered city with supplies. Deir Yassin was situated on a hill, about 2,600 feet high, which commanded a wide view of the vicinity and was located less than a mile from the suburbs of
Jerusalem.
44
On April 6,
Operation Nachshon was launched to open the road to
Jerusalem. The village of Deir Yassin was included on the list of Arab villages to be occupied as part of the operation. The following day
Haganah commander David Shaltiel wrote to the leaders of the
Lehi and
Irgun:
I learn that you plan an attack on Deir Yassin. I wish to point out that the capture of Deir Yassin and its holding are one stage in our general plan. I have no objection to your carrying out the operation provided you are able to hold the village. If you are unable to do so I warn you against blowing up the village which will result in its inhabitants abandoning it and its ruins and deserted houses being occupied by foreign forces. . . . Furthermore, if foreign forces took over, this would upset our general plan for establishing an airfield.
45
The
Irgun decided to attack Deir Yassin on April 9, while the
Haganah was still engaged in the battle for Kastel. This was the first major Irgun attack against the Arabs. Previously, the Irgun and
Lehi had concentrated their attacks against the British.
According to
Irgun leader
Menachem Begin, the assault was carried out by 100 members of that organization; other authors say it was as many as 132 men from both groups. Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning for civilians to evacuate the area, which many did.
46Most writers say the warning was never issued because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast the warning.
47 One of the fighters said, the ditch was filled in and the truck continued on to the village. “One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don’t know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect.”
48
Contrary to revisionist histories that say the town was filled with peaceful innocents, evidence shows that both residents and foreign troops opened fire on the attackers. One Irgun fighter described his experience:
My unit stormed and passed the first row of houses. I was among the first to enter the village. There were a few other guys with me, each encouraging the other to advance. At the top of the street I saw a man in khaki clothing running ahead. I thought he was one of ours. I ran after him and told him, “advance to that house.” Suddenly he turned around, aimed his rifle and shot. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was hit in the foot.
49
The battle was ferocious and took several hours. The Irgun suffered 41 casualties, including four dead.
Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The
New York Times’ subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin’s. The
Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report.
50
“Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.”
51 A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 “fighters,” evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there.
52 Other Arab sources have subsequently suggested the number may have been even lower.
53
In fact, the attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. For example, at 9:30 A.M., about five hours after the fighting started, the Lehi evacuated 40 old men, women and children on trucks and took them to a base in Sheik Bader. Later, the Arabs were taken to East Jerusalem. Seeing the Arabs in the hands of Jews also helped raise the morale of the people of
Jerusalem who were despondent from the setbacks in the fighting to that point.
54 Another source says 70 women and children were taken away and turned over to the British.
55 If the intent was to massacre the inhabitants, no one would have been evacuated.
After the remaining Arabs feigned surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops, some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. None of the sources specify how many women and children were killed (the Times report said it was about half the victims; their original casualty figure came from the Irgun source), but there were some among the casualties.
At least some of the women who were killed became targets because of men who tried to disguise themselves as women. The Irgun commander reported, for example, that the attackers “found men dressed as women and therefore they began to shoot at women who did not hasten to go down to the place designated for gathering the prisoners.”
56 Another story was told by a member of the Haganah who overheard a group of Arabs from Deir Yassin who said “the Jews found out that Arab warriors had disguised themselves as women. The Jews searched the women too. One of the people being checked realized he had been caught, took out a pistol and shot the Jewish commander. His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area.”
57
Contrary to claims from Arab propagandists at the time, and some since, no evidence has ever been produced that any women were raped. On the contrary, every villager ever interviewed has denied these allegations. Like many of the claims, this was a deliberate propaganda ploy, but one that backfired. Hazam Nusseibi, who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948, admitted being told by Hussein Khalidi, a Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate the atrocity claims. Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948 told Khalidi “there was no rape,” but Khalidi replied, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Nusseibeh told the BBC 50 years later, “This was our biggest mistake. 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.”
58
The Jewish Agency, upon learning of the attack, immediately expressed its “horror and disgust.” It also sent a letter expressing the Agency’s shock and disapproval to Transjordan’s King Abdullah.
Arab radio stations broadcast accounts of what happened over the days and weeks that followed and the Arab Higher Committee hoped exaggerated reports about a “massacre” at Deir Yassin would shock the population of the Arab countries into bringing pressure on their governments to intervene in Palestine. Instead, the immediate impact was to stimulate a new Palestinian exodus.
Just four days after the reports from Deir Yassin were published, an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital, killing 77 Jews, including doctors, nurses, patients, and the director of the hospital. Another 23 people were injured. This premeditated massacre attracted little attention and is never mentioned by those who are quick to bring up Deir Yassin. Moreover, despite attacks such as this against the Jewish community in Palestine, in which more than 500 Jews were killed in the first four months after the partition decision alone, Jews did not flee.
The Palestinians knew, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the Jews were not trying to annihilate them; otherwise, they would not have been allowed to evacuate
Tiberias,
Haifa or any of the other towns captured by the Jews. Moreover, the Palestinians could find sanctuary in nearby states. The Jews, however, had no place to run had they wanted to. They were willing to fight to the death for their country. It came to that for many, because the Arabs
were interested in annihilating the Jews, as Secretary-General of the Arab League Abd Al-Rahman Azzam Pasha made clear in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper (October 11, 1947): “Personally, I hope that the Jews will not force this war upon us, because it will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the
Crusades.”
59
References to Deir Yassin have remained a staple of anti-Israel propaganda for decades because the incident was unique.
1 Arieh Avneri,
The Claim of Dispossesion, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), p. 272; Benjamin Kedar,
The Changing Land Between the Jordan and the Sea, (Israel: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1999), p. 206; Paul Johnson,
A History of the Jews, (NY: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 529. Efraim Karsh analyzed rural and urban population statistics and concluded the total number of refugees was 583,000–609,000. Karsh, “How Many Palestinian Refugees Were There?”
Israel Affairs, (April 2011).
2 Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine, Submitted to the Secretary-General for Transmission to the Members of the United Nations, General Assembly Official Records: Third Session, Supplement No. 11 (A/648), Paris, 1948, p. 47 and Supplement No. 11A (A/689 and A/689/Add.1, p. 5; and “Conclusions from Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine,” (September 16, 1948), U.N. doc. A/648 (part 1, p. 29; part 2, p. 23; part 3, p. 11), (September 18, 1948).
3 “Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine – 30th Meeting,” United Nations Press Release GA/PAL/84, (November 24, 1947).
4 Avneri, p. 276.
5 Jerusalem Post, (December 4, 2003).
6 David Ben-Gurion,
Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, (NY: Philosophical Library, 1954), p. 220.
7 Atalia Ben Meir, “The Palestinian Refugee Issue and the Demographic Aspect,”
Israel and A Palestinian State: Zero Sum Game?, (ACPR Publishers: 2001), p. 215.
8 Joseph Schechtman,
The Refugee in the World, (NY: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1963), p. 184.
9 I.F. Stone,
This is Israel, (NY: Boni and Gaer, 1948), p. 27.
10 Shmuel Katz,
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (Taylor Publications Ltd: 2002), p. 10.
11 Ibid.
12 Avneri, p. 270
13 London Daily Mail, (August 12, 1948) cited in Shmuel Katz,
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (Taylor Publications Ltd: 2002), p. 13.
14 New York Times, (April 23, 1948).
15 Howard Sachar,
A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 332; Avneri, p. 270.
16 Secret memo dated April 26, 1948, from the Superintendent of Police, regarding the general situation in Haifa, cited in Shmuel Katz,
Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (Taylor Publications Ltd: 2002), p. 13.
17 Golda Meir,
My Life, (NY: Dell, 1975), pp. 267–8.
18 New York Times, (April 23, 1948).
19 London Times, (April 24, 1948).
20 Schechtman, p. 190.
21 Foreign Relations of the U.S. 1948, Vol. V, (DC: GPO, 1976), p. 838.
22 Tom Segev,
1949: The First Israelis, (NY: The Free Press, 1986), pp. 27–8.
23 Yigal Allon in
Sefer ha-Palmach, quoted in Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre,
O Jerusalem!, (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 337; Yigal Allon,
My Fathers House, (NY: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc, 1976), p. 192.
24 Benny Morris,
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, (MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 423–5.
25 Morris, p. 592.
26 Middle East Journal, (October 1949).
27 Terence Prittie, “Middle East Refugees,” cited in Michael Curtis, et al,
The Palestinians, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 52.
28 New York Times, (March 4, 1949).
29 The Guardian, (February 21, 2002).
30 “International: On the Eve?,”
Time Magazine, (May 3, 1948).
31 Morris, p. 590.
32 Middle East Studies, (January 1986); See also, Morris, pp. 263, 590–2.
33 The Memoirs of Haled al Azm, (Beirut, 1973), Part 1, pp. 386–7.
34 Myron Kaufman,
The Coming Destruction of Israel, (NY: The American Library Inc., 1970), pp. 26–7.
35 Edward Atiyah,
The Arabs, (London: Penguin Books, 1955), p. 183.
36 Morris, p. 591.
37 Yehoshofat Harkabi,
Arab Attitudes to Israel, (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), p. 364.
38 King Abdallah,
My Memoirs Completed, (London: Longman Group, Ltd., 1978), p. xvi
39 Al-Ayyam, (May 16, 2006), quoted in Itamar Marcus and Barbara Cook, “The Evolving Palestinian Narrative: Arabs Caused the Refugee Problem,”
Palestinian Media Watch, (May 20, 2008).
40 Palestinian Authority TV, (July 7, 2009), quoted in
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, (July 23, 2009).
41 Al-Hayat al-Jadida, (December 13, 2006), quoted in Itamar Marcus and Barbara Cook, “The Evolving Palestinian Narrative: Arabs Caused the Refugee Problem,”
Palestinian Media Watch, (May 20, 2008).
42 Al-Ayyam, (May 13, 2008), quoted in Itamar Marcus and Barbara Cook, “The Evolving Palestinian Narrative: Arabs Caused the Refugee Problem,”
Palestinian Media Watch, (May 20, 2008).
43 Falastin a-Thaura, (March 1976).
44 Walid Khalidi,
Palestine Reborn, (I.B. Tauris: 1992), p. 289.
45 Dan Kurzman,
Genesis 1948, (OH: New American Library Inc., 1970), p. 141.
46 Menachem Begin,
The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), pp. xx–xxi, 162–3.
47 See, for example, Amos Perlmutter,
The Life and Times of Menachem Begin, (NY: Doubleday, 1987), p. 214; J. Bowyer Bell,
Terror Out of Zion, (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), pp. 292–6; Kurzman, p. 142.
48 Uri Milstein,
History of Israel’s War of Independence, Vol IV, (Lanham: University Press of America, 1999), p. 262.
49 Milstein, p. 262.
50 Dana Adams Schmidt, “200 Arabs Killed, Stronghold Taken,”
New York Times, (April 10, 1948).
51 Kurzman, p. 148.
52 Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi, “Deir Yassin,” Monograph No. 4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project, (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p. 55
53 Sharif Kanaana, “Reinterpreting Deir Yassin,”
Bir Zeir University, (April 1998).
54 Milstein, p. 267.
55 Rami Nashashibi, “Dayr Yasin,”
Bir Zeit University, (June 1996).
56 Yehoshua Gorodenchik testimony at Jabotinsky Archives.
57 Milstein, p. 276.
58 “Israel and the Arabs: The 50 Year Conflict,” BBC Television Series, (1998).
59 “Interview with Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha,”
Akhbar al-Yom (Egypt), (October 11, 1947); translated by R. Green.
60 Sachar, p. 335.
61 Schechtman, p. 268.
62 Prittie in Curtis, pp. 66–7.
63 New York Times, (July 17, 1949).
64 Jerusalem Post, (January 26, 1989).
65 Telegraph (Beirut), (August 6, 1948), quoted in Schechtman, pp. 210–11.
66 Moshe Sharett,
”Israels Position and Problems,”
Middle Eastern Affairs, (May 1952), p. 136.
67 Al Said (Lebanon), (April 6, 1950), cited in Prittie in Curtis, p. 69.
68 Al-Misri, (October 11, 1949), cited in Nathan Feinberg,
The Arab-Israeli Conflict in International Law, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1970), p. 109.
69 Beirut al Massa, (July 15, 1957), cited in Katz, p. 21.
70 Benjamin Franklin,
Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin, Vol 1, (M’Carty & Davis: 1834), p. 463.
71 Melissa Radler, “UN Marks Partition Plan Anniversary with anti-Israel Fest,”
Jerusalem Post, (December 4, 2003).
72 UNRWA, (as of December 30, 2010).
73 UNRWA; “Biennial Programme Budget 2010-2011 of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,”
UN General Assembly, (September 17, 2009).
74 Schechtman, p. 220.
75 “Speech to Parliament – April 24, 1950,” Abdallah, pp. 16–7; Aaron Miller,
The Arab States and the Palestine Question, (DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1986), p. 29.
76 Khaled Abu Toamed, “Amman Revoking Palestinians Citizenship,”
Jerusalem Post, (July 20, 2009).
77 Leibler, p. 48.
78 Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky, “A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography,”
Middle Eastern Studies, (September 2010).
79 Jerusalem Report, (June 27, 1991).
80 UNRWA81 Musa Alami, “The Lesson of Palestine,”
Middle East Journal, (October 1949), p. 386.
82 Sol Stern, “Mr. Abbas, Tear Down This Wall!”
Jewish Ideas Daily, (September 28, 2010).
83 UNRWA84 Arlene Kushner, “the UN’s Palestinian Refugee Problem,”
Azure, (Autumn 2005).
85 Jerusalem Report, (July 6, 1998).
86 Katz, p. 21.
87 Editorial,
Des Moines Register, (January 16, 1952).
88 Jerusalem Report, (March 26, 2001).
89 UNRWA Annual Reports, (July 1, 1966–June 30, 1967), pp. 11–19; (July 1, 1967–June 30, 1968), pp. 4–10; (July 1, 1968–June 30, 1969), p. 6; (July 1, 1971–June 30, 1972), p. 3.
90 Maurice Roumani,
The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, 1977), p. 34.
91 Associated Press, (October 23, 2001).
92 “Meeting Minutes: President Abbas Meeting with the Negotiations Support Unit,” (March 24, 2009).
93 Amos Oz, “Israel Partly at Fault,” Ynetnews,(March 29, 2007).