The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later

Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias swept through Palestinian villages, massacring the villagers and driving out those who were alive, paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel.

An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 fled their homes to live as refugees in other parts of Palestine or neighboring countries, an event known to Palestinians as the Nakba – “the catastrophe”.

This year, the United Nations is hosting its first-ever high-level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948.

But Palestinians have never stopped commemorating the loss of every village that was once part of their homeland.

Among them was Deir Yassin, a hilltop village west of Jerusalem that has come to symbolize the suffering the Jewish nation-state has inflicted on Palestinians.

What is the Deir Yassin massacre?

On April 9, 1948, just weeks before the establishment of the State of Israel, members of the Irgun and Stern Gang Zionist militias attacked the village of Deir Yassin, killing at least 107 Palestinians.

Many of the people slaughtered—from those tied to trees and burned to death to those standing against a wall and shot by submachine guns—were women, children, and the elderly.

As word of the atrocities spread, thousands fled their villages in fear. Ultimately, some 700,000 Palestinians would flee or be forcibly displaced at the beginning of Israel’s creation, making the massacre a defining moment in Palestinian history.

What happened in Deir Yassin?

It was a Friday afternoon when the militia attacked Deir Yassin, where about 700 Palestinians lived. Most were stonemasons and stonemasons.

According to the Israeli narrative, Operation Nachshon aimed to break through the blocked road to Jerusalem and the fighters encountered fierce resistance from the villagers who forced them to move slowly from house to house.

But Palestinians and some Israeli historians say the villagers signed a non-aggression pact with the Haganah, the pre-Israeli Zionist state army. Yet they were murdered in cold blood and buried in mass graves.

According to a Report from 1948 submitted by the British delegation to the United Nations, the murder of “some 250 Arabs, men, women and children, took place in conditions of great brutality”.

“Women and children were stripped naked, lined up, photographed and then butchered by automatic firing and survivors have told of more incredible bestialities,” the report said. “Those captured were treated with humiliating cruelty.”

Israeli historian Benny Morris said the militias “looted unscrupulously, stole money and jewelry from the survivors and burned the bodies. Even mutilation and rape occurred.”

The number of dead is disputed, but ranges from 100 to 250. A Red Cross representative who entered Deir Yassin on April 11 reported that he had heaped the bodies of some 150 people haphazardly in a cave, while about 50 were found on gathered at another location.

Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the time that such events were “notorious”.

“Hundreds of innocent men, women and children were slaughtered in Deir Yassin,” he said. “Let the village remain uninhabited for the time being, and let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of war, and a warning to our people that no practical military need will ever justify such killings.”

Why does it matter to this day?

Morris noted that “Deir Yassin had a profound demographic and political effect: it was followed by a mass flight of Arabs from their lands.”

News of the massacre caused panic among Palestinians, causing hundreds of thousands to flee.

Four nearby villages were the following: Qalunya, Saris, Beit Surik and Biddu.

According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, Deir Yassin was not mistaken.

“The depopulation of Palestine was not a consistent war event, but a carefully planned strategy, known as Plan Dalet, authorized by [Israeli leader David] Ben-Gurion in March 1948,” Pappé wrote. “Operation Nachshon was actually the first step in the plan.”

The massacre unleashed a cycle of violence and counter-violence that has been the pattern ever since. Jewish forces have viewed every Palestinian village as an enemy military base, which the historian says paved the way for the vague distinction between massacring civilians and killing combatants.

What does it say about Israel’s vision today?

Deir Yassin has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a historical fact that Israel must confront as it retells its national story.

According to Pappé, given that “terrorism” is a mode of behavior that Israelis attribute exclusively to the Palestinian resistance movement, “it could not be part of an analysis or description of chapters in Israel’s past.”

“One way out of this conundrum has been to recognize a particular political group, preferably an extremist group, with the same attributes as the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior,” he wrote.

Israeli historians and Israeli society have been able to admit the massacre at Deir Yassin by attributing it to the right-wing group Irgun, but have glossed over or denied other massacres – most notably the Tantura massacre in 1948 – committed by the Haganah. the main Jewish militia from which today’s Israeli army emerged.

Despite this blame shift, leading human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have called Israel itself an apartheid state.

“We came to this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the predominance of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians,” HRW said in 2021.

“As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, if you don’t recognize that reality exists, you have to bury your head deeper and deeper in the sand,” it added. “Today apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario.”

Explore a database of destroyed Palestinian villages PalestineRemix.com