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Between 107 and 120 Palestinian civilians were killed (many sources originally reported many more deaths for various reasons, but these numbers have been disproved - see below ).
The Jewish forces participating in the battle belonged to two Jewish paramilitary groups, generally acknowledged as terrorist, the Irgun (Etzel) and the Lehi (the Stern gang). Both groups were known for their direct, aggressive tactics that included attacks on civilians.
The incident had a large impact on the outcome of the war, It greatly stimulated Palestinian Arab refugee flight (see Palestinian Exodus) and appear to have been critical in the final decision of the Arab states to intervene directly in Palestine in 1948 to thwart the creation of the state of Israel. It also inflamed hatred among Jews and Arabs and took the atrocities both sides committed during the conflict to a higher level.
In the years leading up to 1948 the tension between Jews and Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine had worsened significantly. The United Kingdom's decision to withdraw from the territory had made its future uncertain. Violence between Jews and Arabs broke out and by the spring of 1948 Palestine was in a state of civil war.
During the winter and spring of 1948, the Arab Liberation Army, composed of Palestinians and volunteers from various Arab countries and sponsored by the Arab League, attacked Jewish communities in Palestine, and Jewish traffic on major roads. This phase of the war became known as "the battle of roads" because the Arab forces mainly concentrated on major roadways in an attempt to cut off Jewish settlements from each other. Initially, they were successful and in March 1948 they had the vital road that connected Tel Aviv to western Jerusalem, where about 16% of all Jews in Palestine lived, under siege.
The Haganah decided to launch a counter offensive - Operation NachshonThe objective of Operation Nachshon (or Nahshon , an Israeli military operation in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, was to open up the Jerusalem road that had been besieged by the Arabs. It was named after the Biblical figure Nachshon Ben Aminadav who was the f to break the siege of Jerusalem. On April 6th they had taken al-Qastalal-Qastal was a Palestinian village that was captured by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. al-Qastal Location8 km west of Jerusalem Israeli occupation dateApril 8-9, 1948 Israeli military operation Operation Nachshon Israeli attacking brigadeThe Pa, an important roadside town 2 kilometers west of Deir Yassin, but intensive fighting would last for days more.
At this time the Irgun and LehiLehi refers to: Lehi, a prophet in the Book of Mormon Lehi, a city in Utah Lehi, a Zionist paramilitary group in Palestine/Israel Lehi, a location in southwest Palestine/Israel Lehi, a traditionally Mormon agricultural neighborhood in northern Mesa, Arizo had not made any major offensive action yet. The guerillas consisted mostly of ill-equipped teens lacking battle experience. Their goals were to improve Jewish morale and gather supplies. They moved on Deir Yassin, which they expected to be an easy target.
Deir Yassin was an Arab village west of Jerusalem, about a mile south of the road to Tel-Aviv. On a modern map, the former location of Deir Yassin is now called Kfar Shaul, on the western edge of Har Nof, well inside metropolitan Jerusalem (see ).
In World War 1 as British forces advanced through PalestineFor varying definitions, see definitions of Palestine. Palestine ( Latin: Syria Palaestina Hebrew: Palestina Eretz Yisrael Arabic: Filasin , is a region in the Middle East extending inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Its political sta, the TurkishTurkey (officially the Republic of Turkey Turkish Turkiye is a country located in Southwest Asia with a small part in southeastern Europe. Until 1922 the country was the center of the Ottoman Empire. The Anatolian peninsula, between the Black Sea and the army fortified the hilltop of Deir Yassin as part of a ring of defences around Jerusalem. But on 8 December 1917 after a little British shelling the Turks fled, and General Allenby entered Jerusalem the next day.
The 1945 British census counted 610 residents; according to Arab sources the number had grown to 750 by April 1948 (Sharif Kanani and Nihad Zitawi, Deir Yassin, Monograph No.4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p.6.) The village was located 3 kilometers from Kastel and 1 kilometer from Jerusalem's western suburb, Givat Shaul . Irgun operations chief Yehoshua Goldsmidt was raised in that suburb and had been sworn by his father to avenge the attacks emanating from Deir Yassin against Givat Shaul during the earlier conflicts in the 1930s.
Deir Yassin was different from al-Qastel that had recently been attacked by the Haganah, in that it did not participate in the conflict. The villagers reportedly wanted to remain neutral in the war and they had repeatedly resisted help and alliances with the Palestinian irregulars. Instead they had made a pact with Haganah to not help the irregulars as long as they were not the target of military operations. (Levi, Yitzhak, op. cit. pp 340-341) They had even remained cooperative while the Haganah took the stategic Sharafa ridge between Deir Yassin and the nearby ALA base Ein Kareem . Haganah intelligence confirmed after the village had been captured that it in fact had stayed faithful allies of the western [Jerusalem] sector. (Kanani and Zitawi, "Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4," 50; Collins and Lapierre, "Deir Yassin"; Milstein, Out of Crisis Comes Decision, 257; "Conquest of Deir Yassin," Yitzhak Levi (1948 Jerusalem Haganah intelligence chief) file, quoted in Levi, Nine Measures, 343.) Yoma Ben-Sasson, Haganah commander in Givat Shaul, later recalled that there was not even one incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews (Milstein, out of Crisis Comes Decision, 257)
Earlier that year the ALA had repeatedly urged the villagers to let soldiers enter the village but they were denied every time.
It is highly unlikely that there were more than at most half a dozen foreign fighters in Deir Yassin at the time of the attack.
A theory that has been put forward is that Arab troops passed through Deir Yassin and that it therefore was an important military target. Abba Eban claimed that "In fact, the two villages were interconnected militarily, reinforcements passing from Dir Yassin to Kastel during the fierce engagement for that hill." (Eban, Background Notes on Current Themes - No.6: Dir Yassin[sic])
As the battle for Kastel raged the Irgun and Lehi took their plan to attack Deir Yassin to Haganah for coordination. Rivalry between them made matters tense. The guerillas contacted David Shaltiel, the Haganah district commander, and asked for his approval. Shaltiel was surprised by their choice and asked:
The guerillas refused to change their minds and complained that the proposed mission would be too hard for them. Shaltiel ultimately surrendered and wrote in a letter to the underground commanders that he allows them to attack the village, provided that they could hold it thereafter. (Shaltiel, David, Jerusalem 1948, Israel Ministry of Defense, Tel Aviv 1981, p. 139)
Shaltiel's consent was met with internal resistance. Meir Pa'il objected to violating the agreement with the village but Shaltiel maintained that he had no power to stop the guerillas. Yitzchak Levi proposed that the inhabitants should be notified that the truce was over but Shaltiel refused to endanger the operation by warning them. (Pa'il and Isseroff, "Meir Pa'il's Eyewitness Account"; Levi, Nine Measures, p. 341)
During some of the preliminary meetings the idea of a massacre was discussed and rejected. (Milstein, op. cit. p. 258.) A Lehi proposal suggested liquidating them to show what happens when the IZL [Irgun] and the Lehi set out together. (Statement of Yehuda Lapidot [Irgun], file 1/10 4-K, Jabotinsky Archives, Tel Aviv, quoted in Silver, Begin: The Haunted Prophet, 90) According to most insider accounts, instructions were given to minimize casualties, some guerillas nonetheless anticipated inciting panic throughout Arab Palestine by their actions in Deir Yassin. (Dan Kurzman, Geneis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War 1970, p.139)
The attack force consisted of about 132 men, 72 from Irgun and 60 from Lehi as well as a few women to serve as support. Most were teens lacking military training or experience.
From Givat Shaul a Lehi unit approached Deir Yassin, accompanied with Meir Pa'il and a photographer to watch their military performance. (Uri Milstein, Deir Yassin) One Irgun unit moved towards Deir Yassin from the east, while a second approached it from the south. At 4:45 a.m. the fighting started when concealed Irgunists encountered a village guard. (Uri Milstein, Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.262) The road south-westward towards Ein Kerem filled with panicked villagers fleeing.
From the Sharafa ridge, villagers fire inflicted heavy casualties and drove off the Irgun. The Lehi units advance stopped at the town's center where they were only holding the eastern parts. The attacker's fighting capability matched their progress, weapons failed to work, a few tossed hand-grenades without pulling the plug and a Lehi unit commander, Amos Keynan, was wounded by his own men. (Deir Yassin, Milstein; A Jewish Eyewitness: An Interview with Meir Pa'il, McGowan)
While both Irgun and Lehi commanders had anticipated many residents would flee, and the remaining would surrender after token resistance, both groups of soldiers, entering the town from different sides, immediately encountered fierce volleys of Arab rifle fire.
Irgun deputy commander Michael Harif, one of the first to enter Deir Yassin, later recalled how, early in the battle, I saw a man in khaki run ahead. I thought he was one of us, I ran after him and told him, 'Move ahead to that house!' Suddenly he turned, pointed his weapon at me and fired. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was wounded in the leg. (Milstein interview with Harif, p. 262)
Patchiah Zalivensky of Lehi recalled that among the Arab soldiers killed by his unit was a Yugoslavian Muslim officer. (Uri Milstein, Out of Crisis Came Decision p.263)
The villagers sniper fire from higher positions in the west contained effectively the attack, especially from the mukhtar's (the mayor's) house. Some Lehi units went for help from the Haganah's Camp Schneller in Jerusalem. (Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.262-265, Milstein)
Intense Arab firepower caused the fighters' advance into Deir Yassin to be very slow. Reuven Greenberg reported later that the Arabs fought like lions and excelled at accurate sniping. He added that [Arab] women ran from the houses under fire, collected the weapons which had fallen from the hands of Arab fighters who had been wounded, and brought them back into the houses. (Testimony of Reuven Greenberg.)
In certain cases, after storming a house, dead Arab women were found with guns in their hands, a sign they had taken part in the battle. (Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ.) Ezra Yachin recalled, 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. (Lynne Reid Banks, A Torn Country: An Oral History of the Israeli War of Independence (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), p. 62.)
Pre-battle briefings had stated that most of the Deir Yassin houses had wooden doors, so while trying to storm them, the fighters were surprised to discover the doors were made of iron, leaving no recourse but to blow them open with powerful explosives, in the process inadvertently killing or wounding some inhabitants (Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ). The Lehi forces slowly advanced house by house.
Meanwhile, the Irgun soldiers on the other side of the village, were having a very difficult time. By 7:00 a.m., discouraged by the Arab resistance and their own increasing casualties, Irgun commanders relayed a message to the Lehi camp that they were seriously considering retreating from the town.
Lehi commanders relayed back that they had already entered the village and expected victory soon.
The large number of wounded was a big problem for the guerillas, they had to be evacuated but if they did they could be fired upon. Meret called the Magen David Adom station for an ambulance that came to the battle area. The attackers took beds out of the houses, laid the wounded on them and ordered the inhabitants of the village, including women and old people, to carry the beds to the ambulance and to screen them. They believed the Arabs would not shoot their own people which however they did. (Uri Milstein, Out of Crisis Came Decision, p. 265)
The Irgun quickly arranged to receive a supply of explosives from their base in Givat Shaul, and started blasting their way into house after house. In certain instances, the force of the explosions collapsed whole parts of houses, burying Arab soldiers as well as civilians who were still inside.
In numerous instances Arabs emerged from the houses and surrendered; over 100 were taken prisoner by day's end. At least two Haganah members on the scene reported the Lehi repeatedly using a loudspeaker to implore the residents to surrender. (Milstein, p.263, interview with Uri Brenner; Daniel Spicehandler's testimony, quoted in Ralph G. Martin, Golda: Golda Meir - The Romantic Years (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), p. 329). In certain cases Arabs pretending to surrender revealed hidden weapons and shot at their would-be Jewish captors. (Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ). Benny Morris, a harsh critic of the Irgun and Lehi, has characterized Gorodenchik's testimony as confused. (Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 323, n. 175.)
At about 10:00 am a sizeable Palmach unit from the Haganah arrived, they brought an armored vehicle and a two-inch mortar. (Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.265-266, Milstein) The mortar shot tree shoots at the mukhtar's house which silenced its snipers. The Palmach unit managed to clear the village of serious resistance and Lehi officer David Gottlieb saw the Palmach accomplish in one hour what we could not accomplish in several hours. (Edge of the Sword, p.450, Lorch)
Before the battle the Irgun had prepared a truck armored with a loudspeaker to warn the villagers of the attack and attempt to force them from their homes. However, there is near total agreement that the truck never even entered the settlement.
According to Uri Milstein: The armored car with the loudspeaker left Givat Shaul a few minutes before 5:00 AM as planned, and by then the battle had already started.
According to Irgun leader Menachem Begin the truck was driven to the entrance of the area and broadcasted a warning to the civilians (The Revolt 1977, Begin).
Other sources claim that the truck never reached the village (Levi, Yitzhak, op. cit. p 342), although some state that it came to a relatively small distance from it. Other sources claim that the truck rolled into a ditch caused by Palestinian gunfire before it could broadcast its warning (Terror out of Zion 1977, Bowyer Bell). Ezra Yachin related,
Whether or not the truck's message was heard by the villagers is unclear. While hundreds of Deir Yassin residents did flee, it is unclear if it was because of the announcements, the sound of gunfire, or warnings from fellow-villagers who were near the battle sites.
The fighting was over at about 11:00 am. The fighters begin to clean up the houses to secure them. Irgun's commander Ben-Zion Cohen noted: [We] felt a desire for revenge. (Statement of Ben-Zion Cohen, file 1/10 4-K, Jabotinsky Archives) One villager has stated that the attackers appeared to have been set off by an Irgun commander's death, still others reported that upon discovering an armed man disguised as a woman, one guerrilla began shooting everyone around, followed by his comrades joining in. (Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.276, Milstein)
In the afternoon prisoners were taken on the village trucks to a victory parade in the Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem before they were released in Arab East Jerusalem. Fahimi Zeidan testified that they put us in trucks and drove us around the Jewish quarters, all while cursing us. (Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4, p.56, Kanani and Zitawi) Harry Levin, a Haganah broadcaster, reported seeing three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women, and children, their hand above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with sten-guns and rifles. (Jerusalem Embattled, p.57, Levin)
Meir Pa'il who was at the scene while the massacre happened brought with him a photographer that took photos of the dead bodies. Those photos have never been published and are to this date still kept secret in the IDF archives, not even academic researchers have been able to gain access to them.
Meir Pa'il's eyewitness account is one of the most detailed single eye witness account of the massacre, as he was at the scene while it happened. Pa'il was a spy for the mainstream Jewish organizations in Palestine monitoring the activities of the right-wing or "dissident" groups:
Meir Pa'il stated that he:
He also stated that no commanders directed the actions, just groups of guerillas running about full of lust for murder. (Meir Pa'il's Eyewitness Account, Pa'il and Isseroff)
His more contemporary report and on-scene photographs remain classified.
Mordechai Gihon was a Haganah intelligence officer in Jerusalem. He was in the village at the afternoon of April 9.
Eliahu Arbel arrived at the scene April 10. He was an Operations Officer B of the Haganah's Etzioni Brigade.
Jacques de Reynier was a French-Swiss Representative of the International Red Cross. He came to the village on April 11.
Alfred Engel went to Deir Yassin with Jacques de Reynier, his conclusion is similar to de Reynier's.
Yeshurun Shiff was an adjutant to David Shaltiel. He was in Deir Yassin April 9 and April 12.
Mohammed Jaber, a village boy, observed the guerillas break in, drive everybody outside, put them against the wall and shoot them. (Statement of Mohammed Jaber, dossier 179/110/17 GS, "Secret," Police Investigator Team reports dated 13, 15, and 16 April 1948)
Zeinab Akkel, a woman, offered money (about $400) to protect her brother. One guerilla took the money and then he just knocked my brother over and shot him in the head with five bullets. (Meir Pa'il's Eyewitness Account, Pa'il and Isseroff)
Fahimi Zeidan stated that she and her wounded siblings encounted a captured pair of village males and When they reached us, the soldiers [guarding us] shot them. When the mother of one of the killed started hitting the fighters, one of them stabbed her with a knife a few times. (Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4, p.56, Kanani and Zitawi)
Haleem Eid, a woman, saw a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant (Kanani and Zitawi, "Deir Yassin, Monograph No. 4," 55.)
Irgunist Yehoshua Gorodentchik said that Male Arabs dressed as Arab women were found, and so they started shooting the [surrendering] women also. (Statement of Yehoshua Gorodentchik, file 1/10 4-K, Jabotinsky Archives)
Irgun commander Mordechai Raanan recalled.
Ben Zion-Cohen an Irgun commaner reported to the Jabotinsky archives that at some point in Deir Yassin We eliminated every Arab that came our way (Amos Perlmutter, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin, p. 216)
The Jewish Agency and the Haganah leadership immediately condemned the massacre.
In 1948 participants, observers and journalists wrote that as many as 254 villagers were killed that day. Everyone had an interest in publicizing a high Arab casualty figure: the Haganah, to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; the Arabs and the British to blacken the Jews; the Irgun and Lehi to provoke terror and frighten Arabs into fleeing the country.
Arabs used the incident to unify and invigorate Arab anger against the Jews - resulting in the Hadassah medical convoy massacre, in which 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and patients were killed.
It can now be said with certainty that the death toll did not exceed 120. There were also 12-50 wounded and 50-150 prisoners.
The first number publicized about the death toll was 254. Irgun commander Raanan told it to reporters and it quickly stuck. Raanan's figure was a deliberate exaggeration, he later explained: I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic. (Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.269, Milstein)
The fog of war accounts for some of the discrepancies. In addition, there were severe rivalries between the Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi. The number of 254 of killed was a complete fiction very convenient to everyone.
In 1987, the Research and Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, a prominent Arab university on the West Bank, published a comprehensive study of the history of Deir Yassin, as part of its Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project . The Center's findings concerning Deir Yassin were published, in Arabic only, as the fourth booklet in its "Destroyed Arab Villages Series." The purpose of the project, according to its directors, is to gather information from persons who lived in these villages and were directly familiar with them, and then to compare these reports and publish them in order to preserve for future generations the special identity and particular characteristics of each village. (Kanani and Zitawi, Deir Yassin (Bir Zeit study), p.5.)
The Bir Zeit study's description of the 1948 battle of Deir Yassin begins with the phraseology typical of many accounts of the event, calling it a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known, (Ibid., p.7.) However, unlike the authors of any other previous study of Deir Yassin, the Bir Zeit researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitness to the attack and personally interviewed each of them. For the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February-May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative, the Bir Zeit authors explained, listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250-254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the groups which carried out the massacre exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance. (Ibid., pp.7-.8.) The authors concluded: Below is a list of the names and ages of those killed at Deir Yassin in the massacre which took place on April 9, 1948, which was compiled by us on the basis of the testimony of Deir Yassin natives. We have invested great effort in checking it and in making certain of each name on it, such that we can say, with no hesitation, that it is the most accurate list of its type until today. A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded followed.(Ibid., p.57.)
Additional reports:
From "The Revolt", by Menachem Begin (who did not participate in the battle), Dell Publishing, NY, 1977, pp. 225-227:
A footnote from "The Revolt", pp.226-7:
Deir Yassin very quickly became an ideological bait in the propaganda war between Israel and the Arab states. Panic flight of Arabs across Palestine intensified. It was also used as a strong argument for the Arab states to intervene against Israel, Arab League chief Azzam Pasha said The massacre of Deir Yassin was to a great extent the cause of the wrath of the Arab nations and the most important factor for sending [in] the Arab armies. Moreover the Arab retaliatory strike came very quickly. Just four days after the massacre at Deir Yassin had been published, an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital, killing 77 Jews, doctors, nurses and patients (see Hadassah medical convoy massacre).
After the war Deir Yassin was settled by Israelis and named Givat Schaul Beth, today belonging to the district of Jerusalem (at the top end of Har Nof). In 1980 a settlement was built over the remaining ruins and its streets were named after the Irgun-units who participated in the battle.
Several articles (including one by Sid Zion below) discuss the incident as a pitched battle. These reports raise the question of whether the battle's description as a massacre had been exaggerated in media for propagandist purposes. This turns the discussion of the events of Deir Yassin into an information war of its own, as Arabs claim that pro-Israel organizations are trying to tone down the size of the massacre.
See also: List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
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