Days of Palestine – Ramallah
On this day 73 years ago, Zionist gangs entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in the Jerusalem district, killing between 250 and 360 villagers, mainly women, children, and the elderly.
There were documented cases of rape, mutilation, and humiliation; the victims being mainly Palestinian women.
The massacre occurred in spite of a peace agreement between the villagers and the leaders of neighboring Jewish settlements.
As stated in the subsequent Red Cross report made by ICRC representative Jacques de Reynier, British troops did not intervene to prevent the massacre and Zionist gangs denied access for medical personnel to treat the wounded.
Survivors of the massacres reported on the atrocities done on that day and said armed gangs raided the village of 750 people around 3 in the morning of April 9.
The Zionist gangs opened indiscriminate fire at the civilian population and bombarded the homes with shells causing a large number of civilian casualties and destruction.
After capturing the village a few hours later, the Jewish gangs forced people to stand by the walls and opened fire at them execution-style.
News of the Deir Yassin massacre created a wave of panic, forcing many Palestinians to flee their homes so as to avoid a similar fate.
Menachem Begin, one of Israel's prime ministers who was the leader of the Irgun gang that participated in the attack on Deir Yassin, was quoted admitting, "Without what was done at Deir Yassin there would not have been a state of Israel… The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting 'Deir Yassin.'"
In a book he wrote, Begin bragged about this vicious massacre saying that after killing and displacing hundreds of Palestinians only 165,000 remained of the nearly 800,000 Arabs who lived in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948.
"We created terror among the Arabs", Begin triumphantly boasted after Deir Yassin. "In one blow, we changed the strategic situation."
Deir Yassin was located on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. It has been destroyed since then and currently named Givat Shaoul.
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