re dir yassin was re no free man propaganda machine freeman with blood greetings from israel in article hm apr yoda cs brown edu hm cs brown edu harry mamaysky writes in article apr thunder mcrcim mcgill edu hasan mcrcim mcgill edu writes check menahem begin dairies published book you ll find accounts of the massacres there including deir yassen though with the numbers of massacred men children and women are greatly minimized there is no known writing directly attributable to menachem begin which admits a massacre at deir yassin thus hasan is wrong as per request of hasan from the revolt by menachem begin dell publishing ny pp apart from the military aspect there is a moral aspect to the story of dir yassin at that village whose name was publicized throughout the world both sides suffered heavy casualties we had four killed and nearly forty wounded the number of casualties was nearly forty percent of the total number of the attackers the arab troops suffered casualties neraly three times as heavy the fighting the word troops is unjustified there has never been any evidence that there were any regular or irregular arab forces in the village apart from the villagers defending themselves according to the haganah observer pa il the irgun lehi forces suffered a lot of casualties because they were incompetent soldiers when they ran into trouble securing the central part of the village a small group of palmach soldiers came and took it without a single casualty begin s failure to even mention the palmach is only one of the major inaccuracies to use a kind word in his account incidentally three times as heavy may be correct as there is serious evidence that the arab loss was closer to lives than to the oft quoted lives however note that begin compares wounded jews to dead arabs he fails to mention the number of wounded arabs guess why was thus very severe yet the hostile propaganda disseminated throughout the world deliberately ignored the fact that the civilian population of dir yassin was actually given a warning by us before the battle began one of our tenders carrying a loud speaker was stationed at the entrance to the village and it exhorted in arabic all women children and aged to leave their houses and to take shelter on the slopes of the hill by giving this humane warning our fighters threw away the element of complete surprise and thus increased their own risk in the ensuing battle as is thoroughly established by many sources the loudspeaker truck got stuck in a ditch too far from the village for it to provide a usueful warning a substantial number of the inhabitants obeyed the warning and they were unhurt a few did not leave their stone houses perhaps because of the confusion the fire of the enemy was murderous to which the number of our casualties bears eloquent testimony our men were compelled to fight for every house to overcome the enemy they used large numbers of hand grenades and the civilians who had disregarded our warnings suffered inevitable casualties the education which we gave our soldiers throughout the years of revolt was based on the observance of the traditional laws of war we never broke them unless the enemy first did so and thus forced us in accordance with the accepted custom of war to apply reprisals i am convinced too that our officers and men wished to avoid a single unnecessary casualty in the dir yassin battle but those who throw stones of denunciation at the conquerors of dir yassin would do well not to don the cloak of hypocrisy in connection with the capture of dir yassin the jewish agency found it necessary to send a letter of apology to abdullah whom mr ben gurion at a moment of great political emotion called the wise ruler who seeks the good of his people and this country the wise ruler whose mercenary forces demolished gush etzion and flung the bodies of its heroic defenders to birds of prey replied with feudal superciliousness he rejected the apology and replied that the jews were all to blame and that he did not believe in the existence of dissidents throughout the arab world and the world at large a wave of lying propaganda was let loose about jewish attrocities the enemy propaganda was designed to besmirch our name in the result it helped us panic overwhelmed the arabs of eretz israel kolonia village which had previously repulsed every attack of the haganah was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting beit iksa was also evacuated these two places overlooked the main road and their fall together with the capture of kastel by the haganah made it possible to keep open the road to jerusalem in the rest of the country too the arabs began to flee in terror even before they clashed with jewish forces not what happened at dir yassin but what was invented about dir yassin helped to carve the way to our decisive victories on the battlefield the legend of dir yassin helped us in particular in the saving of tiberias and the conquest of haifa it is worth noting how begin disputes the standard myth that the palestinian arabs fled as part of a calculated plan a footnote from the revolt pp to counteract the loss of dir yassin a village of strategic importance arab headquarters at ramallah broadcast a crude atrocity story alleging a massacre by irgun troops of women and children in the village certain jewish officials fearing the irgun men as political rivals seized upon this arab gruel propaganda to smear the irgun an eminent rabbi was induced to reprimand the irgun before he had time to sift the truth out of evil however good came this arab propaganda spread a legend of terror amongst arabs and arab troops who were seized with panic at the mention of irgun soldiers the legend was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of israel the dir yassin massacre lie is still propagated by jew haters all over the world apparently of israeli historians are jew haters in reference to denunciation of dir yassin by fellow jews i have previously posted quotations by irgun participants that totally destroys begin s whitewash i have no particular desire to post it yet again brendan normally bdm cs anu edu au
