Incandescent Planet: In Memorium: 63 Years Ago Today, A Village Destroyed, Nation Annihilated

The Islamic soul must be broomed out of [the Land of] Israel."
--Ze've Vladimir Jabotinsky

Jabotinsky

He was one of the more pernicious Zionist figures and, not surprisingly, the first commander of one of the movement's most rabidly terrorist wings, Irgun Z'vai Leumi. But Russian-born Jabotinsky died in 1940, too early to be able to savor the triumphant "brooming" of Palestine in 1948.

Nor would he witness his doctrine's most shocking fallout take place in early April that fateful year, when his Irgunists joined another terrorist group, the Stern Gang, in brutally murdering Palestinian women and children at the village of Deir Yassin.

Thus commenced Zionism's monstrous ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The Deir Yassin Massacre is an unmistakable symbol of Israel being steamrolled into existence over six decades ago. It was by no means the only massacre, as has been revealed in recent years when the Israeli military archives were finally opened up. The disinherited Palestinians, quite naturally, wanted back their homes and villages that the plundering new owners obliterated, like hundreds of Lidices.

1948, year of the Nakba: Palestinians families being ethnically cleansed

Is it really that hard to see why terrorizing and dispossessing the Palestinians would condition them to lash out against their persecutors?

     A vicious cycle of terror-begetting-more-terror has thus continued for over the past half-century between armed Palestinians and heavier armed Israelis. The window dressing U.S. "road map" peace plan that was pitched years ago for this bloodied sliver of land has continued to go nowhere. There's of course no escaping the reality of having to pursue a two-state solution, since Israel is a permanent, long-established fact.

     But also a fact is that the final peace accord must be truly just, not based on the current insidious scheme to relegate the Palestinians to either permanent refugee status or life in a serious of Bantustans. Half-measures that perpetuate continuing injustice against the disenfranchised Palestinians will only sustain the carnage in these killing fields.

     The war criminals running the Israeli regime continue refusing to remove those Israeli colonies ("settlements") from the mutilated 22 percent of what was Palestine (West Bank and Gaza). Moreover, as long as the Israelis continue ignoring the refugee nightmare they created in 1948, this tragedy of millions of displaced Palestinians suffering in camps will continue fanning the terrorist brush fire.

Zionist squatter camps in remaining Palestine

The proverbial insult to all this injury is the spectacle of those insufferable Israeli mouthpieces that promote revisionist drivel on this conflict's origins and subsequent chapters.

     Some commentators, for instance, have given glowingly accounts of then-Israeli Defense Minister Sharon's savage 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Amazing, considering the Orwellian-titled "Peace for Galilee" aggression resulted in an estimated 50,000 dead & wounded Lebanese and Palestinians, culminating in the Sharon-sponsored Sabra and Shatilla massacres. The ulterior motive, an Israeli attempted reordering of Lebanon's political universe, ultimately failed. One would hardly suspect foul play, however, if they believed these twisted yarns about Israel's "ethics" and "purity of arms".

     Some voices come from the Golda "There are no Palestinians" Meir mindset. Incredibly, like the fanatics that deny the Holocaust, they go as far as trying to pretend the Deir Yassin Massacre never happened.

Now that's genuine chutzpah.

Begin

Shamir

In light of the fact that an astounding 95 percent of all the English language books (162 out of 170) classify Deir Yassin as a massacre, it would be no surprise to have the deniers jerry rig their arguments with "authoritative" sources, e.g., the two capos--Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir--that ran the gangs carrying out the slaughter.  Notably, Begin and Shamir later went on to run future Israeli governments, so, no, Ariel Sharon was not the first and only terrorist to be elected prime minister.

      One of the many things that easily exposes these shameless, fraudulent claims about Deir Yassin being a mere "battle" and not a massacre is the fatality count.  There were 107 Palestinian men, women, and children left dead, and 12 more wounded. This killed-to-wounded ratio of nine to one reveals much, because it's an appalling contrast to typical ground combat-incident figures.

     This 90 percent death ratio, characteristic of systematic killing, can be placed almost squarely between two of history's other infamous massacres: just above Wounded Knee (85 percent dead) and just below My Lai (99 percent dead). And a notable third massacre falls into the very same 90 percent death ratio.

    It took place also just outside of Jerusalem, near Mt. Scopus, only four days after Deir Yassin. Arab terrorists, shouting the village's name, slaughtered a convoy of Jewish medical and military personnel, leaving 75 dead, and 6 wounded. The vicious cycle was spinning out of control. But who in their right mind would try to title this the "Battle of Mt. Scopus" and expect to be taken seriously?

The village of Deir Yassin, circa 1930's

The killed-to-wounded ratio is just for starters. Question: Was Deir Yassin a threat to the Zionists in April, 1948? How could it be, since it was faithfully honoring an agreement made with the Haganah (the Jewish community's mainstream armed force, albeit remarkably efficient ethnic cleansers) to avoid any hostilities with nearby Jewish areas, in exchange for being protected from Jewish attack? Moreover, reconnaissance conducted by both the Irgun and Stern Gang confirmed its peaceful status.

     Villagers also provided intelligence to the Haganah and had repeatedly kept Arab soldiers from infiltrating Deir Yassin. A HaganahDeir Yassin's capture that its villagers had remained "faithful allies of the western [Jerusalem] sector". Yona Ben-Sasson, the Haganah commander in Givat Shaul (Jewish Jerusalem's western suburb), later stated "there was not even one [hostile] incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews."

     So much for any of this bunk about the the village being a "threat". Why, then, would the Irgun and Stern Gang not only target Deir Yassin for capture but also carry out a massacre? Because, simply, their criminal nature was no different from any other terrorist groups, past or present--they specialized in murdering civilians, to further a goal. In pre-attack discussions, one Stern Gang proposal recommended "liquidating" the villagers "to show the Arabs what happens when the IZL [Irgun] and the Lehi [Sternists] set out together."

Irgun recruiting poster

At 4:45 a.m. on April 9, the beasts moved in from three different directions and descended upon the men, women, and children of the village.  The approaching blitzkrieg included an armored car with a loudspeaker to announce their arrival but as it turned out, the vehicle crashed into a ditch outside of town and remained stuck there.  How many Palestinians, therefore, were ever warned?

     True, villagers took up arms and returned fire for several hours, but who wouldn't defend their home and family against marauding thugs? As for the women, children, and elderly, they took shelter in their homes, in desperate hopes the Stern and Irgun terrorists would be driven off.

   It was to be a tragically forlorn hope.

     By about 7:00 a.m., the villagers' brave resistance, in combination with the dismal Irgun/Stern combat performance, brought out the full fury of the beast. "We had prisoners," recalled Irgunist Yehoshua Gorodenchik, "and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them. We also liquidated the [Arab] wounded." Ben-Zion Cohen, another Irgun killer, later confessed: "We eliminated every Arab we came across up to that point."

Palestinians of Deir Yassin, murdered by Jewish terrorists

It's more than a stretch to try to rationalize the unfolding SS-style blood bath because some villagers were supposedly faking surrender or some males disguised themselves as women. The terrorists’ goals of "liquidating" the villagers exceeded nearly all expectations.

Sure, not all the villagers were slaughtered; the Irgun/Stern killers forced some village women into being human shields, to transport their wounded. (Which brings up yet another compelling ratio: The average Israeli 1948 combat death ratio was 1 in 6. But, lo and behold, those courageous “Jewish Underground” had a ratio of 1 in 26 at Deir Yassin. Some "battle.”) The Haganah also had plenty blood on its hands, having sent in one of their units at one point to provide tactical support, despite no reports of their soldiers executing villagers – that would take place at other locales.

The testimony of those Palestinians that managed to survive is horrifying. Some villagers were shot down as they tried to escape or help injured neighbors, while others were lined up against walls and mowed down with gun fire. Haleem Eid witnessed "a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh, who was nine months pregnant" and then brutally stab the body. Villagers continued hoping for miracle, taking refuge inside their houses and crowded into corners, only to be gunned down or blown to pieces with hand grenades by the rampaging terrorists.

The fever of the massacre began waning around mid-day. But there were still a few final touches. The Irgun/Stern gunmen decided to load the surviving villagers onto trucks and parade them around Jerusalem's Jewish quarters.

Haganah broadcaster Harry Levin recorded this final degradation, watching "three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women, and children, their hands above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with Sten-guns and rifles" and that one prisoner was "a young boy, a look of anguished horror bitten into his face, his arms frozen upright."

Brings to mind a devastating photo of another young boy taken captive in 1943, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Warsaw Ghetto, 1943

But the macabre Palestinian parade ended when they were dumped somewhere in East Jerusalem to become a part of an ocean of dispossessed victims of a heinous crime. If escaping with only one's life was the sole criteria, they were the lucky ones. An earlier parade of an estimated 25 Palestinian prisoners was returned to Deir Yassin. All of them were then slaughtered by the “freedom fighters” in the town quarry.

The following day, Saturday, April 10, the ravaged village was inspected by Haganah operations officer Eliyahu Arbel, who related: "I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin," littered with "the bodies of women and children, who were murdered in cold blood."

The Haganah's Gadna youth brigade made up the final burial crew, but the carnage was so terrible that younger brigade members were sent away. In several houses, Gadna commander Zvi Ankori discovered sexually mutilated bodies. Another crew member, Shosanna Shatai, found the body of an apparently pregnant woman with a smashed-in abdomen.

International Red Cross representative Jacques de Reynier also inspected the bloodied village. At the very first house he entered, Reynier described what he saw:

"Everything had been ripped apart and torn upside down. There were bodies strewn about. They [Irgun/Stern terrorists] had done their 'cleaning up' with guns and grenades, and finished their work with knives, anyone could see that." He goes on to tell of seeing movement in the shadows, bending down, and discovering the "little foot, still warm" of a ten year-old girl, barely alive.

Palestinian murder victims of the Irgun and Stern Gang

The total number of Palestinians massacred at Deir Yassin was for years an exaggerated figure of 254. But this didn't originate with the Arabs. No, it was made up by Irgun commander Mordechai Raanan in a post-battle press statement, who later explained: "I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic....across the country."

Imagine how much this success story must have inspired Slobodan Milosevic when he launched his own ethnic cleansing campaign in the 1990's Balkins. Things might very well have been different if he just had a lobby colossus like AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) manipulating our U.S. Congress like so many hand puppets.

Perhaps one day Hollywood will give actual equal time to the Palestinian people. After all, reprehensible Israeli propaganda blockbusters like "Cast A Giant Shadow" and "Exodus" only glamorize the same Zionist myths regurgitated by Israel's media minions. But a cautionary note; any challenge to their revisionist snake oil is sure to provoke the warn-out ad hominem attacks smearing critics as “anti-Semites.” At the same time, hope remains whenever some important message flows out, even in the midst of a grotesque film such as the distorted "Exodus".

There's a riveting scene just before a young Holocaust survivor (played by Sal Mineo) is inducted into the Irgun, when he's forced to retell the horrors of his experience in a Nazi death camp. He pleads with the Irgun not to have to relive it, sweating and shaking. After finishing a story that cannot help but wrench the heart, he weeps pitifully. The Irgun chief then administers the gang's seal of approval: an oath, conducted with their two hands sandwiching a gun.

The victims then became ruthless, murderous victimizers. Not convinced? Go and ask practically any of today’s four million Palestinian refugees.