Deir Yassin:
The first of many massacres

Apr 28, 2008

On April 9, 1948, Irgun, a Zionist terrorist organization, carried out the first in a series of massacres of Palestinians. The heavily armed militia entered the little village of Deir Yassin, ordering everyone to leave within 15 minutes. As soon as they left their homes, virtually the entire village – 254 unarmed men, women and children – was massacred.

According to reports issued by the International Red Cross, which sent a representative to the scene a few days later, the population had been machine gunned down, their homes blown up with hand grenades, and their bodies hacked up with knives. The horror, according to the Red Cross, was beyond description.

Twelve days after Deir Yassin, Zionist forces carried out a deadly attack in Haifa. They rolled barrels filled with gasoline and dynamite down narrow alleys in this heavily populated city. Mortar shells rained down from above. Troops of the Irgun and Haganah, another Zionist terrorist organization, carried loudspeakers that shouted in Arabic, “Flee for your lives. The Jews are using poison gas and nuclear weapons.”

Jewish military commanders recorded afterwards that many Palestinians cried out, “Deir Yassin, Deir Yassin” as they fled.

The Zionist military took up the cry, putting up pictures of the massacre, repeating the warning: “Flee or the fate of Deir Yassin will be yours.”

Deir Yassin came to symbolize what the Zionists were ready to do. The Zionists brandished Deir Yassin as a threat, marching through one Palestinian village after another, driving out the population from the land the Zionists then confiscated and occupied.

It’s no wonder that many Arab people around the world know the anniversary of the founding of the Zionist state of Israel as “Al-Hakba,” the catastrophe.