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The Gazette and the 1952 revolution (292) The revolution and Israel Intimidating Arabs (10) Other 1948 Massacres in Palestine (VI) Naser Al-Din Massacre
On April 13-14, 1948, a contingent of Lehi and Irgon entered a village (near Tiberias) on the night of April 13 dressed as Arab fighters. Upon their entrance to the village the people went out to greet them, the terrorists met them with fire, killing every single one of them. Only 40 people survived. All the houses of the village were raised to the ground. The Tantura Massacre On May 15, 1948, at least 200 people from the village of Tantura, near Haifa, in northern Palestine, were killed by Israeli troops. Tantura had 1,500 residents at the time and was later demolished to make way for a parking lot for a nearby beach and the Nahsholim kibbutz, or co-operative farm. Fawzi Tanji, now 73 and a refugee at a camp in the West Bank, is from Tantura. He said: “I was 21 years old then. They took a group of 10 men, lined them up against the cemetery wall and killed them. Then they brought another group, killed them, threw away the bodies and so on." I was waiting for my turn to die in cold blood as I saw the men drop in front of me. Other Palestinians were killed inside their homes and in other parts of the village. At one point the soldiers shot at anything that moved, Tanji added. Beit Daras Massacre On May 21, 1948, after a number of failed attempts to occupy this village, the Zionists mobilised a large contingent and surrounded the village. The people of Beit Daras decided that women and children should leave. As women and children left the village they were met by the Zionist army who massacred them despite the fact that they could see they were women and children fleeing the fighting. The Dahmash Mosque Massacre On July 11, 1948, after the Israeli 89th Commando Battalion led by Moshe Dayan occupied Lydda, the Israelis told Arabs through loudspeakers that if they went into a certain mosque they would be safe. In retaliation for a hand grenade attack after the surrender that killed several Israeli soldiers, 80-100 Palestinians were massacred in the mosque, their bodies lay decomposing for 10 days in the mid-summer heat. This massacre spread fear and panic among the Arab population of Lydda and Ramle, who were then ordered to march out of these towns after they were stripped of all personal belongings by Israeli soldiers. Yetzak Rabin, Brigade Commander (later Prime Minister of Israel) then says: “There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the legion". Most of the 60,000 inhabitants of Lyda and Ramble came to refugee camps near Ramallah, around 350 lost their lives on the way through dehydration and son stroke. Many survived by drinking their own urine. The conditions in the refugee camps were to claim more lives. The Dawayma Massacre On October 29, 1948, the Israeli army brutally massacred about 100 women and children, precipitating a massive flight of people from that village on the western side of the Hebron mountains. Mr. Walid Khalidi, author of All That Remains, says that the Palestinian inhabitants at Dawayma faced one of the larger Israel massacres, though today it is among the least well-known. The following are excerpts of a description of the massacre published in the Israeli daily Al ha Mishmar, quoted in All That Remains: The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house. Without dead...one commander ordered a sapper to put two old women in a certain house...and to blow up the house with them. The sapper refused...the commander then ordered his men to put in the old women and the evil deed was done. One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her... A former mukhtar (head of a village) of Dawayma interviewed in 1984 by the Israeli daily Hadashot, also quoted by Mr. Khalidi, offered another description: The people fled, and everyone they saw in the houses, they shot and killed. They also killed people in the streets. They came and blew up my house, in the presence of eye-witnesses...the moment that the tanks came and opened fire, I left the village immediately. At about half past ten, two tanks passed the Darawish Mosque. About 75 old people were there, who had come early for Friday prayers. They gathered in the mosque to pray. They were all killed. About 35 families had been hiding in caves outside Dawayma, according to the mukhtar, and when the Israeli forces discovered them they were told to come out, line up, and begin walking. “And as they started to walk, they were shot by machineguns from two sides...we sent people there that night, who collected the bodies, put them into a cistern, and buried them," the mukhtar told the Israeli daily. [email protected]
