Deir Yassin massacre
The Deir Yassin massacre refers to the killing of between 107 and 120 villagers[1], an estimate generally accepted by other authors[2][3] consisting of mainly old people, women and children[4] during and after the battle[5][6] at the village of Deir Yassin (also written as Dayr Yasin or Dir Yassin) near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish irregular forces between April 9 and April 11, 1948. It was part of Operation Nachshon, an Israeli military offense intended to fend off the siege of Jerusalem. This occurred during a period of increasing local Arab-Jewish fighting about one month prior to the regional outbreak of the much larger 1948 Middle East war. Reports of the event and the exaggerated number of casualties had considerable contemporary impact on the conflict,[7][8][9] and were a major cause of Arab civilian flight from Palestine. The circumstances, nature, evaluation, and scope of the Deir Yassin massacre remain a source of discussion decades later. Of the many eyewitness accounts, only the core IZL narrative differs from the Arab and the remaining Israeli narratives.[10] Morris attributes this in part to the: unstated semantic differences over what constitutes a "massacre".[10] He summarizes, drawing on work of Milstein and Khalidi, but also on the investigation of the Bir Zeit University and on the Israeli documentation, that: Combatants and noncombatants were gunned down in the course of the house-to-house fighting, and, subsequently, after the battle, groups of prisoners and noncombatants were killed in separate, sporadic acts of frenzy and revenge in different parts of the village and outside of Deir Yassin. The remaining villagers were then expelled. But this was no Srebrenica.[6]
References
- ↑ Kana'ana, Sharif and Zeitawi, Nihad (1987), "The Village of Deir Yassin," Bir Zeit, Bir Zeit University Press
- ↑ Morris, Benny (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81120-1; ISBN 0-521-00967-7 (pbk.). : Chapter 4: The second wave: the mass exodus, April—June 1948, Section: Operation Nahshon, page 238
- ↑ Milstein, Uri [1987] (1998). History of the War of Independence IV: Out of Crisis Came Decision (in Hebrew, English version translated and edited by Alan Sacks). Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc.. ISBN 0-7618-1489-2. : Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 12: The Massacre, page 377
- ↑ Milstein, Uri [1987] (1998). History of the War of Independence IV: Out of Crisis Came Decision (in Hebrew, English version translated and edited by Alan Sacks). Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc.. ISBN 0-7618-1489-2. : Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 12: The Massacre, page 376: Only a modest number were young men classifiable as fighters
- ↑ Milstein, Uri [1987] (1998). History of the War of Independence IV: Out of Crisis Came Decision (in Hebrew, English version translated and edited by Alan Sacks). Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc.. ISBN 0-7618-1489-2. : Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 12: The Massacre, page 376-381
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Morris, Benny (2005). "The Historiography of Deir Yassin". Journal of Israeli History 24 (1): 79-107.
- page 100-101
- ↑ Milstein, Uri [1987] (1998). History of the War of Independence IV: Out of Crisis Came Decision (in Hebrew, English version translated and edited by Alan Sacks). Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc.. ISBN 0-7618-1489-2. : Chapter 16: Deir Yassin, Section 16: Brutality and Hypocrisy, page 388: the leaders of ETZEL, LEHI, Hagana and MAPAM leaders had a vested interest in spreading the highly inflated version of the true facts
- ↑ Milstein, Uri [1987] (1998). History of the War of Independence IV: Out of Crisis Came Decision (in Hebrew, English version translated and edited by Alan Sacks). Lanhan, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc.. ISBN 0-7618-1489-2. : Chapter 17: April 9, Section 1: The Palestinian Refugees: The Beginning, page 397-399
- ↑ Morris, Benny (2003). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81120-1; ISBN 0-521-00967-7 (pbk.). : Chapter 4: The second wave: the mass exodus, Arpil—June 1948, Section: Operation Nahshon, page 239: IZL leaders may have had an interest, then and later, in exaggerating the panic-generating effects of Deir Yassin, but they were certainly not far off the mark. In the Jeruzalem Corridor area, the effect was certainly immediate and profound.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Morris, Benny (2005). "The Historiography of Deir Yassin". Journal of Israeli History 24 (1): 79-107.
- page 98