Listen to an Introduction from Citizen Paul

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Now – Turn the clock back to 1948 when the U.N. voted to partition Palestine into two states –– PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

NAKBA
“The Catastrophe”

Members of Haganah expel Palestinians from Haifa in 1948

Violence escalated immediately between Arabs and Jews. Menachem Begin and his Irgun, the Stern Gang, and the Haganah (Zionist terror gangs) began to slaughter Palestinians and to destroy Palestinian towns. Zionists “depopulated” over 200 Palestinian towns and villages (out of 475) before May 1948.

The Palestinians were easily outmatched by the well-armed Zionist terror gangs who ruthlessly took on the Palestinian
villages one by one. On April 9, 1948, the Irgun and the Stern Gang massacred 245 people in the village of Deir Yassin. Attacks such as the one on Deir Yassin terrified the Palestinians who began to flee for their lives.

Commander Menachem Begin addresses his Irgun troops

Israelis refer to the war in 1948 as the War of Independence or Liberation. Palestinians call it al Nakba – the Catastrophe. Al Nakba produced 700,000 Palestinian refugees. Those that did not flee were forcefully evacuated by the Zionist forces.

The Irgun and the Stern Gang were banned by the Israeli government in September 1948 after Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator for the Israeli-Arab war, was assassinated by the Stern Gang. His murder was directed by Yitzhak Shamir – head of the militant LEHI faction. The Haganah later became the core of the Israel Defense Force.

Deir Yassin

Deir Yassin was a small Palestinian village close to Jerusalem. Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked the village with about 750 Palestinian residents.

Soldiers walk by 13-year-old Palestinian boy killed in Haifa

The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover. (Led by Menachem Begin!)

These are the stories of some of the survivors:
Mr. Abu Mahmud, 70: “The Jews closed on the village amid exchanges of fire with us. Once they entered the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached the western edge. The battle was on three fronts, east, south, and north. The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, cannons. They used to enter houses and kill women and children indiscriminately. The youths in the village fought bravely against them and the fighting continued until it was around 15:30 in the afternoon. We had no aid or support from any party.”

Mr. Fahimi Zeidan, 12: “The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the wall and they started shooting us. I was hit in the side, but most of us children were saved because we hid behind our parents. The bullets hit my sister Kadri [four] in the head, my sister Sameh [eight] in the cheek, my brother Mohammed [seven] in the chest. But all the others with us against the wall were killed: my father, my mother, my grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and aunts and some of their children.”

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu (3rd L) joins Palestinians in memorial march in 2005 at the original site of Deir Yassin

Ms. Haleem Eid, 30: “A man [shot] a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher’s knife.”

Ms. Naaneh Khalil, 16, saw a man: “take a kind of sword and slash my neighbor Jamil Hish from head to toe then do the same thing on the steps to my house to my cousin Fathi.”

Ms. Safiyeh Attiyah, 41: “I screamed but around me other women were being raped too. Some of the men were so anxious to get our earrings they ripped our ears to pull them off faster.”

Mr. Mohamed Jaber, student: “The Jews [broke] in, [drove] everybody outside, put them against the wall and shot them. One of the women was carrying a three-month-old baby.”