On the eve of the Suez War, Israeli Border Patrol orders a curfew without notifying Arab villagers and then opens fire on all curfew violators.
Kafr Qasim was an Arab village near the Jordanian border. From 1949 until 1966, Arab citizens were regarded by Israel as a hostile population and Arab populations were governed by the Israeli military. The Israeli government believed that Jordan would enter the Suez War on the side of Egypt, and on Octover 29, the first day of the Suez War, the Israeli military declared a curfew from 5pm until 6am, that would go into effect that very same day. Anyone violating the curfew was to be shot on sight.
The orders were alleged to have come from David Ben-Gurion himself.
“I don’t want sentimentality and I don’t want arrests, there will be no arrests,” declared IDF Colonel Yissachar Shadmi. Between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., in nine separate shooting incidents, Israeli troops killed nineteen men, six women, ten teenage boys (age 14–17), six girls (age 12–15), and seven young boys (age 8–13), who did not make it home before curfew. […]