Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in '48 - and What Israeli Leaders Knew

Testimonies continue to pile up, documents are revealed, and gradually a broader picture emerges of the acts of murder committed by Israeli troops during the War of Independence. Minutes recorded during cabinet meetings in 1948 leave no room for doubt: Israel's leaders knew in real time about the blood-drenched events that accompanied the conquest of the Arab villages

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-classified-docs-reveal-deir-yassin-massacre-wasn-t-the-only-one-perpetrated-by-isra-1.10453626

https://archive.fo/pMtFA#selection-299.0-299.87



The discussions were fraught with emotion. Cabinet minister Haim-Moshe Shapira said that all of Israel’s moral foundations had been undermined. Minister David Remez remarked that the deeds that had been done remove us from the category of Jews and from the category of human beings altogether. Other ministers were also appalled: Mordechai Bentov wondered what kind of Jews would be left in the country after the war; Aharon Zisling related that he had had a sleepless night – the criminals, he said, were striking at the soul of the whole government. Some ministers demanded that the testimonies be investigated and that those responsible be held to account. David Ben-Gurion was evasive. In the end, the ministers decided on an investigation. The result was the establishment of the “committee to examine cases of murder in [by] the army.”

It was November 1948. Testimonies of massacres perpetrated by Israel Defense Forces soldiers against Arabs – targeting unarmed men as well as elderly folk and women and children – were piling up on the cabinet table. For years these discussions were concealed from the public by the military censors. Now, an investigative report by Haaretz and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research for the first time makes public the sharp exchanges between the ministers on this subject and reveals testimonies about three previously unknown massacres, as well as new details about the killing in Hula, Lebanon, one of the most flagrant crimes of the war.

In October 1948, the IDF launched two large-scale operations: In the south, Operation Yoav, which opened a road to the Negev; and in the north, Operation Hiram. In the latter, within 30 hours, dozens of Arab villages in the north were overrun and tens of thousands of residents fled or were expelled from their homes. Within less than three days, the IDF had conquered the Galilee and also extended its reach into villages in southern Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of them took no part in the fighting. Most of the exchanges of fire were between the IDF and the Arab Salvation Army, consisting of volunteers from Arab countries. At the time of Israel’s campaign to conquer the Galilee, 120,000 Arabs remained in the area, half the number who had resided there on the eve of the United Nations’ adoption of the partition plan, in November 1947.

The IDF’s rapid advance toward the northern border brought the soldiers into contact with the population that remained in the villages, among whom were elderly folk and women and children. The Palestinians’ fate was now in the hands of the Israeli forces. That was the background to the massacres that were perpetrated against civilians and against Arab soldiers who were taken captive. At the war’s end, some 30,000 Arabs remained in the north. The atrocities of the 1948 war are known from diverse historical documentation: soldiers’ letters, unpublished memoirs written in real time, minutes of meetings held by political parties, and from other sources. Reports about military and governmental investigations are for the most part classified, and the heavy hand of military censorship continues to obstruct academic research and investigative reporting. Still, the open sources provide a picture that is slowly becoming clearer. For example, testimonies about previously unknown massacres that took place in Reineh, at Meron and in Al-Burj, which are discussed below.

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