Number of dead, wounded and prisoners
In 1948 participants, observers and journalists wrote that as many as 254 villagers were killed that day. Everyone had an interest in publicizing a high Arab casualty figure: the Haganah, to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; the Arabs and the British to blacken the Jews; the Irgun and Lehi to provoke terror and frighten Arabs into fleeing the country.
Arabs used the incident to unify and invigorate Arab anger against the Jews - resulting in the Hadassah medical convoy massacre, in which 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and patients were killed.
It can now be said with certainty that the death toll did not exceed 120. There were also 12-50 wounded and 50-150 prisoners.
The first number publicized about the death toll was 254. Irgun commander Raanan told it to reporters and it quickly stuck. Raanan's figure was a deliberate exaggeration, he later explained: I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic. (Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p.269, Milstein)
The fog of war accounts for some of the discrepancies. In addition, there were severe rivalries between the Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi. The number of 254 of killed was a complete fiction very convenient to everyone.
In 1987, the Research and Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, a prominent Arab university on the West Bank, published a comprehensive study of the history of Deir Yassin, as part of its Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project. The Center's findings concerning Deir Yassin were published, in Arabic only, as the fourth booklet in its "Destroyed Arab Villages Series." The purpose of the project, according to its directors, is to gather information from persons who lived in these villages and were directly familiar with them, and then to compare these reports and publish them in order to preserve for future generations the special identity and particular characteristics of each village. (Kanani and Zitawi, Deir Yassin (Bir Zeit study), p.5.)
The Bir Zeit study's description of the 1948 battle of Deir Yassin begins with the phraseology typical of many accounts of the event, calling it a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known, (Ibid., p.7.) However, unlike the authors of any other previous study of Deir Yassin, the Bir Zeit researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitness to the attack and personally interviewed each of them. For the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February-May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative, the Bir Zeit authors explained, listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250-254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the groups which carried out the massacre exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance. (Ibid., pp.7-.8.) The authors concluded: Below is a list of the names and ages of those killed at Deir Yassin in the massacre which took place on April 9, 1948, which was compiled by us on the basis of the testimony of Deir Yassin natives. We have invested great effort in checking it and in making certain of each name on it, such that we can say, with no hesitation, that it is the most accurate list of its type until today. A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded followed.(Ibid., p.57.)
Additional reports:
From "The Revolt", by Menachem Begin (who did not participate in the battle), Dell Publishing, NY, 1977, pp. 225-227: Apart from the military aspect, there is a moral aspect to the story of Dir Yassin. At that village, whose name was publicized throughout the world, both sides suffered heavy casualties. We had four killed and nearly forty wounded. The number of casualties was nearly forty percent of the total number of the attackers. The Arab troops suffered casualties neraly three times as heavy. The fighting was thus very severe. Yet the hostile propaganda, disseminated throughout the world, deliberately ignored the fact that the civilian population of Dir Yassin was actually given a warning by us before the battle began. One of our tenders carrying a loud speaker was stationed at the entrance to the village and it exhorted in Arabic all women, children and aged to leave their houses and to take shelter on the slopes of the hill. By giving this humane warning our fighters threw away the element of complete surprise, and thus increased their own risk in the ensuing battle. A substantial number of the inhabitants obeyed the warning and they were unhurt. A few did not leave their stone houses - perhaps because of the confusion. The fire of the enemy was murderous - to which the number of our casualties bears eloquent testimony. Our men were compelled to fight for every house; to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades. And the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties.
The education which we gave our soldiers throughout the years of revolt was based on the observance of the traditional laws of war. We never broke them unless the enemy first did so and thus forced us, in accordance with the accepted custom of war, to apply reprisals. I am convinced, too, that our officers and men wished to avoid a single unnecessary casualty in the Dir Yassin battle. But those who throw stones of denunciation at the conquerors of Dir Yassin would do well not to don the cloak of hypocrisy.
In connection with the capture of Dir Yassin the Jewish Agency found it necessary to send a letter of apology to Abdullah, whom Mr. Ben Gurion, at a moment of great political emotion, called 'the wise ruler who seeks the good of his people and this country.' The 'wise ruler,' whose mercenary forces demolished Gush Etzion and flung the bodies of its heroic defenders to birds of prey, replied with feudal superciliousness. He rejected the apology and replied that the Jews were all to blame and that he did not believe in the existence of
'dissidents.' Throughout the Arab world and the world at large a wave of lying propaganda was let loose about 'Jewish attrocities.'
The enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name. In the result it helped us. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah, was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the main road; and their fall, together with the capture of Kastel by the Haganah, made it possible to keep open the road to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces. Not what happened at Dir Yassin, but what was invented about Dir Yassin, helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield. The legend of Dir Yassin helped us in particular in the saving of Tiberias and the conquest of Haifa.
A footnote from "The Revolt", pp.226-7:
To counteract the loss of Dir Yassin, a village of strategic importance, Arab headquarters at Ramallah broadcast a crude atrocity story, alleging a massacre by Irgun troops of women and children in the village. Certain Jewish officials, fearing the Irgun men as political rivals, seized upon this Arab gruel propaganda to smear the Irgun. An eminent Rabbi was induced to reprimand the Irgun before he had time to sift the truth. Out of evil, however, good came. This Arab propaganda spread a legend of terror amongst Arabs and Arab troops, who were seized with panic at the mention of Irgun soldiers. The legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel. The `Dir Yassin Massacre' lie is still propagated by Jew-haters all over the world
Results
Deir Yassin very quickly became an ideological bait in the propaganda war between Israel and the Arab states. Panic flight of Arabs across Palestine intensified. It was also used as a strong argument for the Arab states to intervene against Israel, Arab League chief Azzam Pasha said The massacre of Deir Yassin was to a great extent the cause of the wrath of the Arab nations and the most important factor for sending [in] the Arab armies. Moreover the Arab retaliatory strike came very quickly. Just four days after the massacre at Deir Yassin had been published, an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital, killing 77 Jews, doctors, nurses and patients (see Hadassah medical convoy massacre).
After the war Deir Yassin was settled by Israelis and named Givat Schaul Beth, today belonging to the district of Jerusalem (at the top end of Har Nof). In 1980 a settlement was built over the remaining ruins and its streets were named after the Irgun-units who participated in the battle.
Modern debate
Several articles (including one by Sid Zion below) discuss the incident as a pitched battle. These reports raise the question of whether the battle's description as a massacre had been exaggerated in media for propagandist purposes. This turns the discussion of the events of Deir Yassin into an information war of its own, as Arabs claim that pro-Israel organizations are trying to tone down the size of the massacre.
See also: List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war
External links
References
- Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi, "Deir Yassin," Monograph No. 4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p. 55.
- "There was no Massacre there" by Yerach Tal, in Ha'Aretz 8.9.91, page B3
- "History of the Independence War Volume 4: From Crisis came Decision" by Uri Milstein.