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Remembering Deir Yassin |
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By
Stephen Lendman |
| Turning historic Palestine into Israel meant massacring its people,
raping its women, then murdering them, destroying its villages, stealing
its land, expelling its people, wanting the fewest number of Arabs remaining. Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion ordered them eliminated with commands like “(e)very attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion.” He wanted a proud history systematically erased, Jewish development replacing it. April 9 marks the 68th day of the infamous Deir Yassin massacre. Zionist Irgun and Lehi terrorists, led by future prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir respectively, massacred around 120 defenseless Palestinian men, women, children, infants, the elderly and infirm - five weeks before Israel’s establishment. The horror remains a symbol of its barbarity repeated throughout its history, including naked aggression at its discretion. Jewish death squads entered Deir Yassin guns blazing, machine-gunning houses randomly, killing Palestinians indiscriminately. An eyewitness recounted the horror, saying: “I was (there) when the Jews attacked...(They) 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 Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, cannons. They enter(ed) houses and kill(ed) women and children indiscriminately.” “(Village) youths...fought bravely. We had no aid or support...They took about 40 prisoners...After the battle was over, they took them to the quarry where they shot them dead and threw their bodies in the quarry.” “They took (other) prisoners and killed them. They killed the youths.” Other accounts explained shootings, bomb detonations, and a mother killed with her husband, son and brother. A nurse was murdered as well as the daughter of a friend and her baby. “Whoever tried to run away was shot dead.” Cold-blooded murder was systematic. After the battle, “the Jews took elderly men and women and youths, including four of my cousins and a nephew. They took them all.” “Women who had on them gold and money, were stripped of their gold. After the Jews removed their dead and wounded, they took the men to the quarry and sprayed them all with bullets.” A mother watched her son lethally shot. “They poured kerosene on his body and” burned it, she said. Palestinian men were fighting to stay alive and save their families. “Eyewitnesses were solely women. Elderly men were (used) to remove the dead, Arabs and Jews.” Palestinians “were thrown in a well in the village center.” Endless Nakba continues, Palestinians treated horrifically like Jews were in Nazi Germany. They face daily persecution, collective punishment, extrajudicial assassinations, kidnappings and imprisonments, economic strangulation and ethnic cleansing for exclusive Jewish development - children treated as viciously as adults. Palestinians continue suffering horrifically because world leaders able to intervene responsibly to help don’t care - America most of all. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. |
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