Claim

What do Israelis think of the Deir Yassin massacre?

Fact

What Palestinians think of the Battle of Deir Yassin may be more important.

Here’s an article, with links, that I wrote several years ago for a local paper:

Deir Yassin – The Lie that Won’t Die

Deir Yassin is a prime example of the “murderous nature of Zionism”, at least in the Arab/Palestinian narrative. However, narratives aren’t fact, but opinions, or, as Ilan Pappe describes himself, “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers” (Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999). He is not the only historical fiction writer around trying to pawn himself off as a legitimate historian.

In 1988 Bir Zeit University published a monograph, the result of several years of investigating the Deir Yassin Incident and interviewing every Arab survivor of the battle. They concluded that the number of people – fighters AND civilians – who died in Deir Yassin could not have been more than 120 (and was most likely 112) – raising serious doubts as to the credibility of those who have accused the Jews of a massacre. If those claiming a massacre were so far off the actual number killed (giving a number more than double the real figure), what does that say about the reliability of their other claims – of rape, mutilation, and intentional massacre of civilians?

PBS, in a 1998 documentary series called “50 Years of War” came to the following conclusion: “Deir Yassin was a legitimate military target. Deir Yassin was strategically located, overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Arab military forces located in Deir Yassin and adjacent villages regularly attacked Jewish traffic on that highway, effectively cutting off western Jerusalem from much of the rest of the country. The Jewish fighters who sought to conquer Deir Yassin in April 1948 encountered hours of heavy gunfire from the well-armed villagers and Arab soldiers based there. Large amounts of weapons and ammunition were found in the village by the Jewish forces.”

In addition, the April 2, 1998 issue of the Jerusalem Report revealed that Hazem Nusseibeh, the editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, admitted that he was instructed by Palestinian leader Hussein Khalidi to falsify the claims of atrocities at Deir Yassin with the intent to encourage Arab regimes to attack Israel.

Nusseibeh said he met with survivors of Deir Yassin and with Hussein Khalidi and in collusion with them created the story. He said he recalled that Khalidi said to him: “We must make the most of this.”

Nusseibeh wrote the press release which stated that the children of Deir Yassin were murdered and pregnant women were raped. It never happened. Nussbieh also claimed that their attempt at goading the Arab countries to “defend” the Arabs of Palestine backfired on them, causing a massive exodus of Arabs from Palestine, fearing that the same thing they thought had happened at Deir Yassin would happen to them.

Haganah members trying to discredit the Irgun and Lehi added to the confusion by accepting the Arab claims and even adding gory details that later proved untrue (during a Knesset investigation in the 1960s).

It would be fair to say that the story of the Deir Yassin Massacre is another example of “a lie that won’t die”.

Source