Deir Yassin, an Arab village cleared out in 1948 by Jewish
forces brutally weeks before Israel was formed,
Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, is petitioning Israel's High
Court of Justice to release written and photographic evidence in
military archives. Survivors of Deir Yassin, a village of 400,
claim the Jews committed a massacre.
In 2006, Israeli arts student, Neta Shoshani, applied for access
to the Deir Yassin archives as a 50-year embargo on the secret
documents had expired. She was granted limited access to the
material, but there was an extended ban on more sensitive
documents.
Among the documents is a damning report written by Meir Pa'il, a
Jewish officer who condemned his compatriots for bloodthirsty
conduct on that day. Equally incriminating are the many photographs
that survive.
"The photos clearly show a massacre," says Daniel
McGowan, a US professor who works with Deir Yassin Remembered.
"Those photos show villagers lined up against a wall and shot."
Abdul-Kader Zidain was 22 years old then and joined a band of 30
fighters from the village to fend off the surprise Jewish
offensive, even though they were clearly outnumbered.
"They went into the houses and they shot the people
inside. They killed everybody they saw, women and children," said
Mr Zidain, who lost four of his family, his father and brothers, in
the attack.
Survivor testimonies are supported by Mr Pa'il (Israeli
officer), whose detailed eyewitness account was published in 1998.
Awaiting reassignment, he observed the attack and described how he
heard sporadic firing from the houses, and went to investigate.
There he saw soldiers had stood the villagers in their homes and
shot them. He saw around 25 prisoners led to a quarry between Deir
Yassin and Givat Shaul. He and a companion saw everything and took
photographs. "They stood the prisoners against a wall and shot all
of them," he said.
By UN estimates, 750,000 Palestinians had fled their homes by
the end of the 1948 War of Independence, roughly 60 per cent of
Palestine's pre-war Arab population.
