1948 – Deir Yassin Massacre

Israeli Militias Massacre 190 Palestinians, Including 30 Babies, in a Town that Supported Israel, Kicking Off the Nakba.

On April 9, 1948, just weeks before the creation of the State of Israel, members of the Irgun and Stern Gang Zionist militias, who were widely considered terrorist groups, attacked the village of Deir Yassin, killing at least 107 – 250 Palestinians, including many women and children.

Israeli historian Benny Morris said the militias “ransacked unscrupulously, stole money and jewels from the survivors and burned the bodies. Even dismemberment and rape occurred.”

Like almost all of these atrocities that are officially denied by the State of Israel, they are well documented, often by the British and the United Nations.

A 1948 report by the British delegation to the United Nations says “The deaths of some 250 Arabs, men, women and children, which occurred during this attack, took place in circumstances of great savagery.“

“Woman and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing and survivors have told of even more incredible bestialities. Those who were taken prisoner were treated with degrading brutality.”

The farming village of Deir Yassin was west of Jerusalem. The villagers had signed a non-aggression pact with the Hagana, agreeing to “inform on the movement of strangers in the area” and provide other intelligence to the Jews. In exchange for this, the Zionists agreed that the village would be spared. When Irgun and Stern Gang (Lehi) leaders came up with a plan for attacking and wiping out the village, some Hagana leaders were opposed. However the village was doomed because it was within the areas designated in Plan Dalet to be ethnically cleansed.

Irgun and Stern Gang chose Deir Yassin over other villages suggested by Hagana specifically because the villagers were cooperating with the Zionists, and thus were not expecting to be attacked. They were an easy target for the militias to test their skills at ethnic cleansing and massacre.

“As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses with machine-gun fire, killing many of the inhabitants. The remaining villagers were then gathered in one place and murdered in cold blood, their bodies abused while a number of the women were raped and then killed,” writes dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappé.

Fahim Zaydan was twelve years old during the attack, and recalls seeing his family murdered in front of him.

“They took us out one after the other; shot an old man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then they called my brother Mohammed and shot him in front of us, and when my mother yelled, bending over him – carrying my little sister Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her – they shot her too.”

Fahim was also shot, but survived.

The massacre lasted several days, and ended when Jewish villagers from nearby Givat Shaul arrived and, horrified by what they saw, “began to shout and cry and the massacre was stopped.”

Irgun and Stern Gang took twenty five of the surviving men of Deir Yassin as prisoners. “They were loaded into freight trucks and led in a victory parade like a Roman triumph through the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem.

“Our appearance encouraged people very much and they received us with applause,” recalled Yehuda Marinburg, one of the Jewish militia members. “Later, we executed the prisoners.”

Thousands saw this triumphal display of terrified massacre survivors.

After being paraded through Jerusalem as trophies, the Palestinian prisoners were returned to Deir Yassin, marched into a quarry, and, according to Meir Pa’il, a member of the Hagana who spied on the Irgun and Lehi and was present at Deir Yassin, were executed in cold blood. “They put them up against the wall” and shot them, Pa’il recalls.

Accounts of the Massacre

Piles of smoking bodies. There were 12 bodies, and 6 burnt children.

Histadrut Medical Committee

Piles of smoking bodies. There were 12 bodies, and 6 burnt children.

Histadrut Medical Committee

By the invitation of the Jewish Agency, on April 12, 1948, we visited the village before noon. The village was empty. Looted houses. The commanders of the Haganah showed us bodies in different places. A mother and her children that were killed by gunfire, two bodies of women who were killed by shooting.

In the quarry five bodies [killed] by shooting, and two youths of 13 or 14 [killed] by shooting; in the Wadi 25 bodies, one over the other, uncovered, children and women. . . . We did not check each body, all were dressed. Limbs were whole… They were not buried…

Piles of smoking bodies. There were 12 bodies, and 6 burnt children. We asked for more bodies… There are other bodies in the houses. The Haganah commanders did not inspect the houses.

International Response

The British were still technically in charge of Palestine as the mandate was a month away from ending, and the state of Israel did not yet exist. They could have intervened, but chose not to. They considered airstrikes against the Zionist militias, but “it became known beyond the possibility of doubt that the members of the terrorist groups who originally [attacked] the village had left.”

When questioned by the British Parliament, the British Colonial Secretary announced “It must be realized that with the progressively reduced strength of our armed forces as our withdrawal proceeds, intervention in every instance of violence between Arab and Jew is not possible.”

From the British Report to the United Nations: “A representative of the International Red Cross who visited Deir Yassin on the 11th April is said to have stated that in one cave he saw heaped bodies of some 150 Arab men, women and children, whilst in a stronghold a further 50 bodies were found.”

Four nearby villages were next – Qalunya, Saris, Beit Surik, and Biddu. Taking only an hour or so in each village, the Hagana units blew up the houses and expelled the people. The Hagana leaders claim they had trouble preventing their soldiers from a “frenzy of looting at the end of each occupation.”

“The peasants ran away with nothing while their possessions found their way into the living rooms and farms of both soldiers and officers as wartime mementos,” writes Pappé.

The Aftermath

In the days following the massacre, Haganah Radio broadcast that the Palestinians has massacred themselves and that Haganah had entered the village to save people: “A group of Arab rebels left Deir Yassin today without expressing remorse for the abominable crimes they had committed against their own people.“

The massacre itself is pretty much identical to that which Israel would accuse Hamas of committing some 75 years later, on October 7, 2023, and the Haganah’s response to an atrocity they committed was also the same as the IDF and Israeli government’s response to atrocities like the bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza: claim that Palestinians did it to themselves.

Arab radio stations also broadcast news of Deir Yassin far and wide, hoping that it would strengthen the resolve of the Palestinian Arabs to hold their ground. Instead, it did exactly what the Israelis intended it to do: it sparked terror among Palestinians across the country, frightening them into fleeing their homes in the face of Jewish troop advances, and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later, declaring war against Israel after Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence.

ZOA, the Zionist Organization of America, still insists that the Deir Yassin massacre never happened.