Today is the anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre, one of the notorious massacres of the Nakba. Deir Yassin wasn’t just a massacre. It was betrayal that led to a massacre.

A thread about Deir Yassin’s history and the massacre —

Deir Yassin is about 5km west of Jerusalem. By the end of the British Mandate, Deir Yassin was home to roughly 750 people, and was a generally prosperous town due to the local mining industry, which was the primary source of the town’s income.

Deir Yassin is named in historical documents from the alleged time of Christ. “Deir” means “monastery” and was a common inclusion in town names close to Jerusalem.

The closest Jewish town, Givat Sha’ul, was established in 1906, and the two communities had friendly relations.

One of the lesser-known tragedies of the massacre of Deir Yassin has to do with Givat Sha’ul.

On January 20, 1948, town leaders agreed upon a formal mutual non-belligerency pact, which included commitments on the part of both communities to warn the other of potential threats.

The system had to do with hanging specific laundry and setting lanterns in specific windows in coded messages warning of coming violence.

This worked for a few months. But by March 1948, Plan Dalet had been formalized by Israeli leadership.

Plan Dalet was a military strategy to capture and bring under Jewish control areas in the Galillee region and in the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv corridor which had been allocated to the Arab state via partition.

Pro-Israel historian Benny Morris writes of Plan Dalet that it was “not a political blueprint for the expulsion of the Palestinians: it was governed by military and was geared to achieving military ends.”

Please note that language.

At all points, the ”problem” of the existence of Palestinians has been regarded by Israeli military leadership as an incidental that will be dealt with through military means.

The human impact of that has been thoroughly diverted through pro-Israel narratives.

Anyway, back to Plan Dalet and Deir Yassin.

It was betrayal.

On the morning of April 9, 1948, Deir Yassin was attacked by members of Irgun and Lehi, who had staged the attack from Givat Sha’ul. The people of Givat Sha’ul did not warn the people of Deir Yassin.

According to the Hagana, 80 members of Irgun and 40 Lehi, mostly armed with gun artillery, attacked Deir Yassin. They would eventually be joined by the Palmach, the heavy artillery unit. Hagana documents state that they expected the residents of Deir Yassin to flee.

According to Benny Morris, Plan Dalet provided that “in the event of resistance, the armed forces in the village should be destroyed and the inhabitants should be expelled.”

Deir Yassin was considered strategic for defense of Jerusalem and was slated to be cleared.

Once again, notice that the military plan was to clear towns of Arab inhabitants in order to create a “defensive corridor” for Jerusalem.

Pro-Israel proponents have insisted throughout the years that ethnic cleansing was never a goal of the state, but it always was.

Without warning from Givat Sha’ul, the residents of Deir Yassin did not know that they were under planned attack from the military and believed that they were being attacked by a bandit group, so reasonably, some of the men in town with guns fought back.

The response was severe.

When Irgun and Lehi ran low on bullets, Palmach joined the raid, reportedly going from house to house searching for arms and fighters. Palmach using grenades to stifle resistance.

Mordechai Ran’aan, Irgun’s district commander in Jerusalem, claimed 240-250 people had been killed.

Jaques de Reynier, head of International Red Cross, wrote 200 had died, with at least 150 bodies found in a well.

Generally, it’s estimated that about 115 people were killed.

Afterwards, according to Mordechai Gichon, a Hagana operative who participated in the attack, ”the order was: to take prisoner the adult males and to send the women and children to Motzah. In the afternoon, the order was changed and became to kill all the prisoners ...”

“...The adult males were taken to town in trucks and paraded in the city streets, then taken back to the site and killed with rifle and machine-gun fire. Before they were put on the trucks, Irgun and Lehi men ... took from them all the jewelry and stole their money. ...”

”.The behavior toward them was especially barbaric, kicks, shoves with rifle butts, spitting and cursing.”

People from Givat Sha’ul participated in the torture of the survivors.

It was betrayal.