Leftwing activist, Uri Avnery, claimed to have elicited semi-confessions from some of the participants after the battle. He wrote in his 1968 book Israel Without Zionists that “all the inhabitants of the village who had not fled were massacred." Avnery added: “Later, I tried to interrogate the soldiers who took part in the action. They maintained that the massacre was not premeditated, that their local commander lost his head after some of his men were killed by Arab snipers." Shaltiel, head of Jerusalem's Haganah Intelligence division, said that he had no advance knowledge of the plan to attack Deir Yassin, and that the Haganah had taken no part in the battle. Simultaneously, the Jewish Agency issued a statement expressing “horror and disgust" at the “barbaric" behaviour of the IZL and Lehi in Deir Yassin, and sent a cable to Transjordanian ruler King Abdullah, expressing regrets and condolences for what had happened. The original source of the Deir Yassin rape accusation was a senior British police official. Since the British Mandatory authorities were still in power at the time of the Deir Yassin battle – they were not due to leave Palestine until May 15, more than a month later – the British police carried out their own investigation of the events, led by Richard C. Catling, Assistant Inspector General of the Mandatory regime's Criminal Investiga-tion Division and a specialist in Jewish matters. According to Catling, “many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered," while “old women were also molested, and many infants were also butchered," and “one story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn into two." [email protected]
