JimQ4Israel

Israel Snapshot

2012-02-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

Just another Arab lie

2012-02-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

Walid Shoebat Foundation Blog » Jihad making lives “Ruff” for Dogs in Europe; PETA Silent

2012-02-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

Walid Shoebat Foundation Blog » Jihad making lives “Ruff” for Dogs in Europe; PETA Silent

israel today | Palestinians praise killer of Jewish family - israel today

2012-01-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

israel today | Palestinians praise killer of Jewish family - israel today

Bozell Statement: Newt Was Found Innocent Nearly 13 Years Ago – Networks Have Yet To Report It | NewsBusters.org

2012-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Bozell Statement: Newt Was Found Innocent Nearly 13 Years Ago – Networks Have Yet To Report It | NewsBusters.org

USA 2012 - 3rd World Muslim Nation?

2012-01-24T06:39:00.000-08:00

2012-01-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

OBAMA - 2012 Campaign Slogan........."Don't Change Your Ayatollah in the Middle of the JIHAD!

A prayer for the State of Israel

2011-12-21T08:32:00.000-08:00

"Saying Merry Christmas is worst then fornication or killing someone" Is...

2011-12-17T07:55:00.000-08:00

Blame Israel!

2011-11-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Yisrael "Guardian of Torah - Light To Rest of the World"

2011-11-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

Israel - Home of Hope Part VI

2011-11-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

The MOST Important Video About Israel You'll Ever See!

2011-10-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

United4Israel.net - Palestinian Sources Staging Footage! Share This! Hit Like If You Oppose Being Lied Too!

2011-09-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

United4Israel.net - Palestinian Sources Staging Footage! Share This! Hit Like If You Oppose Being Lied Too!

Jerusalem, The Holy City of the Jews

2011-08-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Historical Facts:
438 CE There is conclusive historical and archaeological evidence that there has been an unbroken Jewish presence in Jerusalem since 438 CE, 200 years before the Arab conquest in 638 CD. The Jewish claim, therefore, is not based on biblical and historical rights alone. Jews have always been permanent residents of the Old City, and since 1820, the Jews constituted the largest single community there. Despite persecution and oppression, the Jewish presence in Jerusalem was interrupted only twice: under Byzantine rule between 135 and 438 CE, and during the Crusader Kingdom, which lasted from 1099 to 1187 CE.

1889 Thirty thousand out of 40,000 people in Jerusalem are Jews.

1911 Baedeker's guide reports Jerusalem's total population as 70,000, i.e., 45,000 Jews, 15,000 Christians and 10,000 Muslims.

1922 Haj Amin el-Husseini appointed Mufti of Jerusalem and becomes leader of Arab insurgent movement, siding with Hitler during World War II.

1929 Continued harassment of prayers at the Western Wall (such as by removing the cloth screen dividing the male and female enclosures on Yom Kippur) causes indignation among world Jewry. Muslim agitation leads to country-wide riots, culminating in the massacre of the Hebron and Safed Jewish communities.

1936 The establishment of the Arab Higher Committee under the Mufti of Jerusalem led to increased disturbances and a general strike. The investigating Royal Commission headed by Lord Peel recommended the partition of Palestine. The ensuing Arab revolt resulted in a high death toll among Jews, Arab rioters and moderate Arabs killed by Arab extremists.

1939 Hadassah Medical Center opened on Mount Scopus. In the 1948 War of Independence, a convoy on its way to the center was ambushed and its 78 doctors and nurses were murdered. Eventually the center was evacuated.

1948 After the War of Independence, Jerusalem is divided. East Jerusalem and the Old City remain in Jordanian hands, with the Jewish Quarter and its 58 synagogues destroyed and its Jewish population expelled. Israel retains West Jerusalem; passage between the two parts possible only through the Mandelbaum Gate.

Prime Minister Ben Gurion declares State of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital.

1948 - 1967 During the Jordanian occupation, the large Jewish cemetery on the mount of Olives was callously desecrated. Some 38,000 tombstones were ripped out of the ground and used for the building of roads or paving latrines in the camps of the Arab Legion.

Throughout the 19 years of Jordanian occupation Jews were denied access to the Old City altogether. Christians were barred from crossing from Israel into Jordan-held East Jerusalem to visit their Holy Places, except at Christmas and Eastertime.

1967 The Six Day War erupts. King Hussein orders his army to attack West Jerusalem despite Israeli warnings. In the ensuing battle, East Jerusalem falls into Israeli hands and the divided city is reunited.

The Law for the Protection of the Holy Places passed by the Knesset.

The Jerusalem Committee, an international panel of architects, planners and historians for the review of the city's development, established.

Excavations by Amiran and Eitan begin at the Citadel.

1980 Special law enacted by Knesset re-affirming that united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. In the political aftermath, foreign embassies in the city move to Tel Aviv.

Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia declares a Jihad (Holy War) "to protect the Holy City against Zionist aggression."

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem founded.

10 Unknown West Bank Facts

2011-08-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

The Right Place to Stand is to STAND WITH ISRAEL

2011-07-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

San Remo's Mandate Israel's 'Magna Carta'

2011-06-11T07:04:00.000-07:00

Klavan's One-State Solution: Give the Middle East to the Jews

2011-06-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

Oh Israel

2011-06-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Leah's Poem - A Poem to American Jews

2011-05-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Save us from our Leaders, for they are detsroying Us

2011-05-23T05:56:00.000-07:00

Save us from our Leaders, for they are detsroying Us

YouTube - President Obama "Reach Out" To Muslims Speech

2011-05-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

YouTube - President Obama "Reach Out" To Muslims Speech

Obama Endorses "Phased Plan" of Islamic Terrorists

2011-05-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

Obama officially endorsed the phased plan designed by Islamic terrorists for the annihilation of the Jews and elimination of Israel when he called for a return to the 1967 borders. Our first Muslim president has now officially partnered with the pagan gods of those who wish to eliminate the Jews to prove to the world that the G-d of Israel does not exist.

Give Me Osama, I'll Give you the Jews

2011-05-04T13:47:00.000-07:00

The Palestinian Wall of Lies

2011-04-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

The Alternative Speech of the Israeli Prime-Minister. part #1

2011-04-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

Israel "A Bright Light In Middle Eastern Darkness"

2011-04-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

YouTube - What the Palestinians do not want Jews to know

2011-04-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

YouTube - What the Palestinians do not want Jews to know

YouTube - Why Palestinians Want This Video Removed

2011-04-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Why Palestinians Want This Video Removed

Returning to Zion

2011-04-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

No 'Revolution' for Egypt's Christians :: Middle East Forum

2011-03-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

No 'Revolution' for Egypt's Christians :: Middle East Forum

StandWithUs Discusses Israel Apartheid Weeks on TV

2011-03-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

2011-03-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

Osama Bin Laden's 1996 fatwa against America was the first domino in a chain of events that was meant to accomplish three goals.

1) Unify Muslims in a war against Western civilization

2) Topple the governments of the Muslim world, and replace them with fully Islamist regimes.

3) Build a regional and then global Muslim Caliphate

Phase 2 is now well under way. And America and European warplanes are bombing Libya to help clear the way for it. Just as we already did in Yugoslavia and Iraq. It is unknown whether Bin Laden is still alive or not, but his goals are being met. Muslims now see the defeat of Western civilization as an important and an achievable goal. Our democracy and nation building efforts have toppled much of the old order, and those best positioned to benefit from it are the Islamists.

Maan News Agency: Erekat: We will seek UN recognition soon

2011-03-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Maan News Agency: Erekat: We will seek UN recognition soon

Ex-UN envoy: 'US may not veto Palestinian State'

2011-03-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ex-UN envoy: 'US may not veto Palestinian State'

Fernwood Feminists

2011-03-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

Al-Qaradawi Returns to Cairo After 50 Years - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

2011-02-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

The Muslim Brotherhood cleric most known for his hatred of Jews, women and homosexuals returned on Friday to the podium in Cairo after a 50-year hiatus to address a crowd of more than a million worshipers.

Al-Qaradawi Returns to Cairo After 50 Years - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal - CNN.com

2011-02-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

U.S. vetoes resolution!

U.S. vetoes U.N. resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal - CNN.com

In sharp reversal, U.S. agrees to rebuke Israel in Security Council - By Colum Lynch | Turtle Bay

2011-02-17T05:50:00.000-08:00

Our first Muslim president is laying the ground work for the world to march against Israel.

In sharp reversal, U.S. agrees to rebuke Israel in Security Council - By Colum Lynch Turtle Bay

Middle East Baseball

2011-02-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

Middle East Baseball
Jim Qualls ©1998

The players suit for the game.

Spectators from around the world take their seats in the stands. The International Commissioners of Baseball strap on their Blue Helmets and ready themselves to ‘oversee’ the game.

One lone Jew takes his place on the pitcher’s mound.

Five Arab/Muslims take their position as catcher. Additional sets of Five Arab/Muslims each take their places at First Base, Second Base, etc. until all locations are manned and the two teams wait for the ‘play ball’.

A shout is heard from one of the five Arab/Muslim catchers: “We can’t start the game. It’s NOT fair. The Jew has the WHOLE pitcher’s mound. One of the FIVE Arab/Muslim Short Stops takes up the chant; “Its NOT fair, Its NOT fair, The JEW STOLE THE PITCHER’S MOUND and won’t let the Arab/Muslims put any of their players there. The Five Arab/Muslims on Third Base join the protest “Its NOT fair, Its NOT fair, The JEW always tries to cheat the Muslims.” Soon, the entire field of Arab/Muslim players is hollering threatening epithets “The Jew is a Son of a Monkey, The Jew is the Son of a Pig.” “The NAZI JEW is trying to run the whole game and won’t let us have part of the mound.” “If the Jew gets to keep the whole mound for himself he is sure to WIN! Its NOT fair! Its NOT fair!”

Irate Arab/Muslims approach the stands with raised voices and arms “Make the Jew share the mound!! Make the Jew share the Mound!!”

All the spectators petition the International Baseball Commissioners: “Make the Jew share the mound! The little HITLER is trying to ruin the game for everybody! Stop the little NAZI! Why should he have the whole mound? The Arab/Muslims have NOTHING!”

International Baseball Commissioners gather in emergency deliberation and render a “decision” to settle the altercation and start the game. “We can have no peace UNTIL the Jew shares the mound. The Jew MUST share the mound.”

The spectators receive the ruling with enthusiasm and voice their support with “MOUND FOR PEACE! MOUND FOR PEACE!!!”

The Arab/Muslim players follow in unison “MOUND FOR PEACE!!! MOUND FOR PEACE!!!!”

The lone JEW on the pitcher’s mound looks to the sky with a whispered prayer on his lips,
“O God, be not far from me: O my God, make haste for my help.” Ps 71:12

Deir Yassin: History of a Lie

2011-02-14T17:04:00.000-08:00

ZOA Reprot
Deir Yassin: History of a Lie

March 9, 1998

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

For fifty years, critics of Israel have used the battle of Deir Yassin to blacken the image of the Jewish State, alleging that Jewish fighters massacred hundreds of Arab civilians during a battle in that Arab village near Jerusalem in 1948.

This analysis brings to light, for the first time, a number of important documents that have never previously appeared in English, which help clarify what really happened in Deir Yassin on that fateful day.

One is a research study conducted by a team of researchers from Bir Zeit University, an Arab university now situated in Palestinian Authority territory, concerning the history of Deir Yassin and the details of the battle. The researchers interviewed numerous former residents of the town and reached startling conclusions concerning the actual number of people killed in the battle.

The second important work on this subject that has never previously appeared in English, and which was consulted for this study, is a history of the 1948 war by Professor Uri Milstein, one of Israel's most distinguished military historians. His 13-volume study of the 1948 war includes a section on Deir Yassin based on detailed interviews with the participants in the battle and previously-unknown archival documents. Professor Milstein's meticulous research has been praised by academics from across the political spectrum.1

Another document used in this study is the protocols of a 1952 hearing, in which, for the first and only time, Israeli judges heard eyewitness testimony from participants in the events at Deir Yassin and issued a ruling that has important implications for understanding what happened in that battle.

This study is also based upon a unique collection of testimonies concerning the battle of Deir Yassin, by participants and eyewitnesses, which are on file in Israel's Metzudat Ze'ev Archives and have never before appeared in English.

The documents cited in this study were located in Israeli archives by a team of researchers and legal scholars led by Mordechai Haller, with additional research in the United States by Chaviva Rosenbluth.

The Arab village of Deir Yassin was strategically situated on a hill overlooking the main highway entering Jerusalem as well as a number of Jerusalem's western neighborhoods. Estimates of the town's population in 1948 vary. The last official British census, in 1945, counted 610 residents, and Arab sources believe the number had grown to 750 by April 1948.2 The town was also host to several hundred temporary residents who had relocated from other parts of Jerusalem which were close to the battlefields where Arab and Jewish forces were clashing.3 But because of Deir Yassin's strategic location, it was almost inevitable that it, too, would become a battle site.

The British Mandate authorities were scheduled to depart from Palestine on May 15, 1948, and the surrounding Arabs states had vowed to invade, in order to prevent the establishment of a Jewish State. But long before that date, Arab and Jewish armies were already battling. An "Arab Liberation Army," sponsored by the Arab League and manned by volunteers from various Arab countries, attacked Jewish communities in Palestine throughout the winter and spring of 1948. Their attacks on Jewish traffic along major routes succeeded in cutting off western Jerusalem from other areas.

The Jewish fighting forces consisted of three factions. The largest, the Haganah, was affiliated with the Labor Zionists. The second largest, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL), was the underground group led by Menachem Begin that had spearheaded the Jewish revolt against the British during 1944-1947. The smallest was the Lehi (acronym for Fighters for the Freedom of Israel; commonly called the Stern Group), a splinter of the IZL. Relations between the Haganah, on the one hand, and the IZL and Lehi, on the other, were tense at best. Although there had been times when the two sides cooperated in the fight against the British, there were also several periods when the Haganah had collaborated with the British against the IZL and Lehi. The political rivalry between the two camps was passionate and, indeed, the rivalry between their heirs, the Labor and Likud parties, continues to this day.

In recognition of the growing danger from Arab military operations, the two sides began negotiating, in early 1948, to formally merge into a single Zionist army. At the same time, there was increasing cooperation between the two on various levels. Yehoshua Arieli, Jerusalem commander of the Gadna, which was the Haganah's paramilitary youth wing, recalled: "Before Deir Yassin, there was cooperation between the Haganah and the IZL in Jerusalem...The cooperation was not total, there were points of friction, but it held up."4 A draft merger agreement between the Haganah and the IZL was reached in March. The draft agreement, and the ongoing cooperation on the ground between the two camps, ignited a fierce debate on the Zionist left. Mapam, the influential left wing of the Labor Zionist camp, strongly opposed any cooperation with the IZL, with whom they had strong ideological differences. Mapam members and sympathizers within the Haganah lobbied vigorously against the agreement during the weeks prior to, and immediately after, the battle at Deir Yassin.5

At the same time, in early April 1948, the Haganah launched a major military offensive against Arab strongholds in the western Jerusalem area, in order to break the siege of western Jerusalem. IZL and Lehi representatives met with the Haganah's commander for Jerusalem, David Shaltiel, to discuss what action the IZL and Lehi could take to assist the Haganah's offensive. It was in this context that the idea of capturing Deir Yassin first arose. Exactly who first raised the idea of targeting Deir Yassin is unclear. The chief of Lehi intelligence in Jerusalem, Moshe Barzili, later said that Shaltiel was the first to speak of Deir Yassin, in a discussion with Lehi commanders in early April. According to Barzili, Shaltiel said, "If you want to help and to initiate an action, take Deir Yassin." Shaltiel said that the Haganah intended to build an airfield between Deir Yassin and the adjacent Jewish neighborhood of Givat Shaul. Mordechai Ra'anan, the IZL commander for Jerusalem, likewise recalled discussing with Shaltiel the idea of attacking Deir Yassin, with the two of them agreeing on the strategic value of its capture.6 On April 7, Shaltiel sent Ra'anan a note:

I have learned that you intend to act against Deir Yassin. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the capture and holding of Deir Yassin are one stage in our general plan. I have no opposition to you carrying out the action, provided that you have the forces to hold it. If you cannot I would hereby warn you against blowing up the village which will lead to its abandonment by the residents and the seizure of the ruins and the abandoned houses by foreign forces. Such an eventuality will hinder rather than help the general effort, and a reconquest of the place will entail great losses of our men. Another reason I would like to present to you is that if foreign forces are drawn to the place, it will disrupt our plan to construct an airfield."7

When Shimon Monita, a Haganah spy who was infiltrating the Lehi, caught wind of the IZL-Lehi plan to attack Deir Yassin, he rushed to report the news to his contact man in Haganah intelligence, evidently unaware of the high-level coordination between Haganah, IZL and Lehi regarding the planned attack. Monita's contact reassured him, "That's okay."8

On the afternoon of Thursday, April 8, according to Lehi officer Moshe Idelstein, he met at the Allenby cafe in Jerusalem with a representative of the 4th Brigade of the Palmach, the Haganah's mobile strike division. The Palmach man conveyed Shaltiel's request that the attack on Deir Yassin be coordinated with the Haganah's imminent assault on the nearby Arab town of Kastel and a plan to send a convoy along the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road. That night, Idelstein recalled, "I went with one of the Palmach's convoy escorts, Avri Elad, along the convoy parked on the road in Beit Hakerem, and we discussed final coordination."9 Lehi's Patchia Zalivensky and Mordechai Ben-Uziahu later recalled that the group's Jerusalem commander, Yehoshua Zettler, sent them to inform Zalman Meret, chief of the Haganah's Moriah brigade, that Lehi agreed to coordinate the attack on Deir Yassin with the action against Kastel and the convoy. They then discussed battle tactics and communications protocols. They also agreed, at Shaltiel's request, to exchange a quantity of explosives, which Lehi possessed in abundance, for a case of Bren machine-gun bullets. According to Zalivensky, Meret's parting words were: "Do it and succeed."10

Later that evening (April 8), according to Lehi members, Meret met with several Lehi representatives at his home, in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. Lehi's Moshe Barzili, who took part in the meeting, later recalled:

Meret asked, in the name of Shaltiel, that we attack [Deir Yassin] on Friday April 9, at dawn, in order to help the re-conquest of Kastel. We requested from him a vehicle, ammunition and food, and he immediately agreed to our request. We brought the request to attack at dawn to [Lehi Jerusalem commander Yehoshua] Zettler and [IZL Jerusalem commander Mordechai] Ra'anan for their decision."11

Zettler later recalled: "In Lehi, there were many who were strictly Orthodox, and I tried not to have actions on the Sabbath. An attack on Friday morning would be liable to bring us to operational activities on the Sabbath, but after I received Shaltiel's urgent request via Dror [Mordechai Ben-Uziahu] I agreed to attack on Friday at dawn."12

Additional evidence of the coordination between Haganah and the IZL-Lehi forces regarding Deir Yassin is to be found in a report sent by Haganah district intelligence officer Mordechai Gihon to Meret on April 10, the day after the battle: "Assistance to the dissidents by us. The dissidents' liaison officer informed us of H-hour. We gave our positions appropriate instructions regarding assistance during retreat and medical aid."13 Gihon later recalled that his commanders in the Haganah told him there was an agreement between the Haganah and the IZL and Lehi regarding the attack on Deir Yassin, with the Haganah responsible for blocking the way between Deir Yassin and Ein Kerem in case enemy forces sought to reach the town. His commanders instructed Gihon to set up a Spandau machine gun on the nearby Sharafa ridge [which today is known as Mount Herzl] in order to control the pass by gunfire. Gihon and a comrade slept in Givat Shaul on the night of Thursday, April 8, in order to reach their assigned position by dawn on April 9.14 Likewise, a post-battle internal Haganah intelligence report about Deir Yassin stated: "Before the battle, IZL men shared the details of their plan in a meeting with Haganah representatives, including H-hour. At that same meeting, it was decided that if the IZL would be forced to retreat, Haganah forces would cover the retreating force."15

At midnight on Thursday, April 8, an IZL force of 72 men, commanded by Benzion Cohen with deputy commanders Yehuda Lapidot and Michael Sharif, reached Beit Hakerem. An hour later, they set out on foot toward Deir Yassin, where they would rendezvous with a Lehi force of 60 men. On the way, according to Lapidot, they encountered a Haganah patrol. "We told them that we were going to attack Deir Yassin," Lapidot recalled, "and they blessed us 'Good luck, good luck'."16

Deir Yassin's record of anti-Jewish violence

Some historians later expressed surprise at the choice of Deir Yassin as a target, in view of what they regarded as the village's peaceful history. In fact, Deir Yassin served as a center of weapons trafficking during the violent Palestinian Arab outbreaks in 1920; Deir Yassin residents had carried out violent attacks on the Jews of Givat Shaul in October 1928; and during the August 1929 Arab riots throughout Palestine, the villagers of Deir Yassin had again assaulted their Jewish neighbors in Givat Shaul as well as Jews in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood and the Montefiore Quarter.17 A Jewish fighter who was stationed in Givat Shaul to help defend the village against Arab attacks during the violence 1936 later recalled how

we continually faced attempted forays into our homes from Deir Yassin. We dug out our 'illegal' weapons every night and waited, while the Jewish supplementary police [part of the British Mandate police force] repulsed the infiltrators again and again. Months later, we had a defense position in nearby Motza [and the commander] often asked my help to transport men to their night duties in Motza. Driving back and forth to Motza from Jerusalem, I spent many hours lying in roadside ditches after ambushes out of Deir Yassin.18

In late 1947, as Arab-Jewish hostilities intensified, the Deir Yassin village leadership agreed to an informal truce with their Jewish neighbors, with both sides promising to refrain from attacking each other. Some historians have claimed that Deir Yassin's leaders initially rebuffed a proposal to station Syrian or Iraqi units of the Arab Liberation Army in their village. But by March 1948, there were numerous reports of Arab soldiers taking up positions in Deir Yassin. Haganah driver Arnold Shper testified in a 1952 judicial proceeding that during his posting in Givat Shaul in February and March 1948, he spoke with Haganah intelligence agents who mentioned "that foreign Arabs had been detected in Deir Yassin, [including] Iraqis." Jerusalem Haganah intelligence officer Mordechai Gihon led two reconnaissance sorties into Ein Kerem, adjacent to Deir Yassin, and returned with documents revealing regular contacts between Deir Yassin and the bases of Syrian and Iraqi volunteer soldiers in Ein Kerem. On March 30, Gihon reported to his superiors that "150 men, mostly Iraqis, entered Deir Yassin."19 Some of the Haganah's information about developments in Deir Yassin was coming directly from inside the village itself. A Haganah agent code-named "Ovadia," working in the Jerusalem area for the Haganah's Arabic Department, met regularly with Deir Yassin residents as well as their mukhtar, or village chief, who was a paid Haganah informant.20

During the week prior to the IZL-Lehi action against Deir Yassin, there were a spate of shooting attacks from the village aimed at Jewish targets in the area. On Friday night, April 2, gunfire from the Deir Yassin area raked the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods of Beit Hakerem and Bayit Vegan.21 On Sunday, April 4, commander Shaltiel received an urgent message from the intelligence officer of the Haganah's Etzioni division: "There's a gathering in Deir Yassin. Armed men left [from Deir Yassin] in the direction of [the nearby town of] lower Motza, northwest of Givat Shaul. They are shooting at passing cars."22 That same day , the deputy commander of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, Michael Hapt reported to Shaltiel: "A [Jewish] passenger car from Motza was attacked near the flour mill, below Deir Yassin, and is stopped there. There is rifle fire upon it. You too send an armoured vehicle with weapons. There is concern that the road is cut off."23 An armoured vehicle carrying Lehi fighters was also attacked at the same spot that day. A Haganah intelligence officer who described the incident to his superiors reported that according to Lehi officer David Gottlieb, those of his men who disembarked from their vehicle to return fire said that the attackers appeared to be Arab soldiers rather than local villagers.24 A telegram from Michael Hapt, of the Haganah's Beit Horon brigade, to the Haganah command, at 5:00 p.m. that day, urged: "In order to prevent [an attack] on lower Motza, cutting off of road to Jerusalem, and capture of position south of Tzova, Deir Yassin must be captured."25

Shortly before the battle of Deir Yassin, there was additional troubling news: Mordechai Gihon's lookouts reported that numerous armed men were moving between Ein Kerem and Deir Yassin. Some of the soldiers were wearing Iraqi uniforms, and while many of them had entered Deir Yassin, only a few had returned to Ein Kerem.26 And just hours before the IZL-Lehi action against Deir Yassin began, Shaltiel cabled his colleague Shimon Avidan: "The Arabs in Deir Yassin have trained a mortar on the highway in order to shell the convoy [bringing supplies to besieged Jewish portions of Jerusalem]."27

Begin vetoed mistreatment of civilians

Until the spring of 1948, the IZL and Lehi had been underground guerrilla movements engaged in hit-and-run attacks on British targets. Deir Yassin would mark the first time that they would undertake an actual battle with Arab forces. During the pre-battle briefings, the question of dealing with civilians and prisoners was discussed. According to Benzion Cohen and Yehuda Lapidot, the commander and deputy commander of the IZL force that took part in the battle, some of the Lehi representatives favored "killing anyone that opposed us" during the battle, regardless of age or gender. The issue was put before IZL commander-in-chief Menachem Begin, who vetoed any mistreatment of civilians or prisoners, and insisted that the attackers use a loudspeaker to urge Deir Yassin's residents to flee prior to the battle, even though that meant surrendering the advantage of surprise.28 Zettler gave his men explicit orders to avoid harming women and children.29 Even Meir Pa'il, a militant opponent of the IZL and Lehi, later acknowledged: "I learned that during their planning someone tried to suggest a massacre-- 'if we, the IZL and Lehi are finally going to do a joint operation, the Arabs should know it'. There were some hooligans who suggested it. The commanders were opposed. There was an explicit decision against it."30

The attackers did their best to implement Begin's directive. The first of the Jewish fighting units to reach Deir Yassin was led by a truck armed with a loudspeaker. An Iraqi-born Jew, who spoke fluent Arabic, called out to the residents to leave via the western exit from Deir Yassin, which the attackers had left clear for that purpose. Soon after entering the town, however, the truck was hit by Arab gunfire and careened into a ditch. Repeated efforts by Lehi men to extract the truck, while under fire, proved unsuccessful. Whether or not the truck's message was heard by the villagers is unclear. Several hundred Deir Yassin residents did flee, although it is not clear if they were responding to the announcements, the sound of gunfire, or word-of-mouth warnings from fellow-villagers close to the battle sites.

Every house was turned into an armed military post

The IZL and Lehi commanders had expected that large numbers of the residents would flee, and the remaining would surrender, perhaps after token resistance. Instead, both groups of Jewish soldiers, entering the town from different sides, immediately encountered fierce volleys of Arab rifle fire, some of it from the foreign troops who had been reported in the area. IZL deputy commander Michael Harif, who was one of the first to enter Deir Yassin, later recalled how, early in the battle, "I saw a man in khaki run ahead. I thought he was one of us, I ran after him and told him, 'Move ahead to that house!' Suddenly he turned, pointed his weapon at me and fired. He was an Iraqi soldier. I was wounded in the leg."31 Lehi's Patchiah Zalivensky later recalled that among the Arab soldiers killed by his unit was a Yugoslavian Muslim officer, whose identification papers indicated he had been with the all-Muslim units of the Nazi SS that had been organized in Yugoslavia during World War II by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Palestinian Arab leader and Nazi collaborator.32 In an alleyway, Lehi soldier Ezra Yachin came face to face with an Arab armed with a rifle. Instantly he started to release the bolt. The measure of those fearful seconds! Who would shoot first? Who would survive? It was I who pulled the trigger first--but it didn't work. My foe turned to leap over an old wall, and as he did so he shot at me. I felt a pain in my right thigh...Dror [Mordechai Ben-Uziahu] had clambered up onto a rooftop from where he was able to spot my assailant who was dressed in the uniform of an Iraqi officer, and shot him.33

The substantial quantities of weapons and ammunition that the IZL and Lehi men found in Deir Yassin provided additional confirmation of earlier suspicions that the village had been turning into a heavily-armed Arab military post. Yehuda Lapidot, deputy commander of the IZL force in Deir Yassin, later recalled: "A cache of ammunition for English rifles which we found in the village saved the day. We filled the clips for the Bren [machine-gun], distributed weapons to the boys and fought on." In another house, IZL fighter Yehoshua Gorodenchik discovered an additional 20 clips of ammunition for the Bren gun.34 Lehi soldiers David Gottlieb, Moshe Barzili, and Moshe Idelstein found a huge quantity of Czech rifle bullets which did not fit their rifles; they offered to trade 6,000 of them to the Haganah for 3,000 British bullets.35

The Jewish fighters' advance into Deir Yassin was painstakingly slow because of the intense Arab firepower. The IZL's Reuven Greenberg reported later that "the Arabs fought like lions and excelled at accurate sniping." He also noted that "[Arab] women ran from the houses under fire, collected the weapons which had fallen from the hands of Arab fighters who had been wounded, and brought them back into the houses."36 There were also instances in which, after storming a house, dead Arab women were found with guns in their hands, indicating that they had taken part in the battle.37 "To take a house," Ezra Yachin recalled, "you had either to throw a grenade or shoot your way into it. If you were foolish enough to open doors, you got shot down--sometimes by men dressed up as women, shooting out at you in a second of surprise."38

When they tried to storm some of the individual stone houses, the Lehi fighters were surprised to discover that most of the homes had doors made of iron, not wood as their pre-battle briefings had led them to believe. The attackers had no choice but to attach powerful explosives to the doors to blow them open, and a number of the inhabitants were inadvertently killed or wounded in the explosions.39 Slowly, house by house, the Lehi forces advanced.

On the other side of the village, meanwhile, the IZL soldiers were having less success. By 7:00 a.m., the IZL commanders, stymied by the Arab resistance and their own mounting casualties, sent a messenger to the Lehi camp that they were seriously considering retreating from the town altogether. The Lehi commanders told the messenger to inform the IZL that Lehi had already penetrated the village and expected victory soon. The IZL quickly arranged to receive a supply of explosives from their base in Givat Shaul, and proceeded to blast their way into house after house. In some cases, entire sections of the houses collapsed from the force of the explosion, burying the Arab soldiers as well as civilians who were still inside. It is unclear if the civilians had chosen to stay of their own free, or were held hostage by Arab soldiers who thought that their presence would deter the Jewish forces--a tactic frequently employed by Arab terrorists in southern Lebanon in our own era.40 At the same time, there were numerous instances of Arabs emerging from the houses and surrendering; more than 100 were taken prison by the end of the day. At least two Haganah members who were on the scene later recalled hearing the Lehi repeatedly using a loudspeaker to implore the residents to surrender.41 There were also instances in which Arabs feigned surrender, then produced hidden weapons and shot at their would-be Jewish captors.42

The Haganah played a crucial role in the battle

Meanwhile, on the nearby Sharafa ridge, the Haganah's Mordechai Gihon watched as a stream of Arab fighters and civilians fled from Deir Yassin, and as Arab reinforcements from Ein Kerem and Malcha began advancing toward the town from the south. "We fired bursts from the Spandau machine-gun onto the road," Gihon reported to his superiors. "We hit Arabs fleeing from Deir Yassin and we blocked their way. We prevented the advance of the reinforcements, and we also might have hit some IZL men who entered our line of fire. At about 8:30 a.m. we returned to Givat Shaul." Haganah men in adjoining areas also sprayed gunfire in the same direction, to prevent the reinforcements from advancing.43

The Haganah also played a crucial role in the battle itself. After conquering most of the village, the IZL and Lehi forces were stalled at the house of the mukhtar, or village leader, which was situated on a hill from which incessant rifle fire was directed at the Jewish forces. In response to the attackers' appeal, a Haganah unit arrived with two-inch mortars and proceeded to pummel the mukhtar's stronghold, which soon fell.44 While the mortar unit was at work, IZL Jerusalem commander Mordechai Ra'anan was meeting with David Shaltiel in nearby Givat Shaul, at Shaltiel's request, according to testimony Ra'anan gave in a 1952 legal case:

This was in the midst of the operation, at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon.

To the best of my recollection, it was on a street in Givat Shaul. In his opinion, we had taken on a job far beyond our capabilities, and he spoke with a certain ridicule, but in earnest. I asked him if that [ridicule] was the only reason he had called me to meet with him, and he asked me if we needed any help, and I replied that we required no further assistance. Because at that time, a unit of Haganah men which had returned from the battles of Motza had offered --or the commander of that unit had offered-- assistance, and the operation itself was at the mopping-up stage.45

The Haganah unit returning from Motza was sent into Deir Yassin to aid the dozens of wounded IZL and Lehi fighters. "In order to extricate the wounded, we had to eliminate the sources of gunfire," recalled Haganah unit leader Moshe Eren. Kalman Rosenblatt, a member of one of the two Haganah units that entered the village to assist the wounded, said: "We threw hand grenades into the houses before we entered them." The Haganah soldiers were more effective than the IZL and Lehi forces, Lehi's David Gottlieb recalled. "They achieved in one hour what we could not accomplish in several hours. They had good weapons, and they had battle experience."46

No evidence that Arab prisoners were mistreated

When the battle ended, in the late morning, the IZL and Lehi found themselves with about 40 Arab prisoners, mostly women and children, as well as some elderly people. They were loaded on two trucks and driven to a Lehi camp in Jerusalem's Sheikh Bader neighborhood. According to the camp guards, the Arabs were given food and water, held there until the late afternoon, and then transported to a nearby Arab section of the city and released. Meanwhile, during the course of the afternoon, a small number of additional Arab survivors of the battle were found in some of the houses in Deir Yassin. They were put on a truck and driven towards Jerusalem's Arab sector, passing through downtown Jerusalem and the Orthodox neighborhood of Meah Shearim on the way. According to Lehi's Moshe Barzili, the purpose of the prisoner transport was "strictly humanitarian," to bring the survivors to an Arab area. Shimon Monita, the Haganah spy in Lehi, contended that the IZL and Lehi commanders deliberately chose a travel route that would take the truck through central Jerusalem, hoping that the sight of enemy prisoners "would lift the morale of the Jewish public," which had been depressed by the grueling Arab siege that had cut them off from much of the rest of the country. Some later accounts claimed that Jewish passersby in the streets cursed or even spat at the Arab prisoners. But according to Natan Yellin-Mor, one of Lehi's three commanders-in-chief, the hostile reception was from Orthodox Jews who were angry at the driver, not the prisoners, for bringing the vehicle in to their neighborhood after the onset of the Sabbath.47

A young Haganah officer named Meir Pa'il later gave a very different account of what happened to the prisoners, as well as what happened in Deir Yassin in general. Pa'il played an active role in the Haganah's operations against the IZL and Lehi during the 1940s, earning a promotion, in late 1947, to the post of commander of a Haganah Intelligence Service unit devoted to combating the "dissidents" in the Jerusalem region. There were ten men under Pa'il's command, including intelligence officers, infantry men, and members of the Palmach, the Haganah's mobile strike force. On March 18, 1948, much to Pa'il's dismay, Haganah official Yisrael Galili ordered that the unit be disbanded and its members reassigned to the military police. Pa'il appealed to David Cohen, overall coordinator of actions against the IZL and Lehi, for a budget "in order to continue the unit." His request was denied, and the unit disbanded. At the time of the battle of Deir Yassin, on April 9, Pa'il was out of work--and possibly looking for ways to convince his superiors that the behavior of the IZL and Lehi still merited a special squad under his command.48 Pa'il would later become active on the fringe-left of Israeli politics, serving as a Member of Knesset for the Moked Party, a faction of Israel's Communist Party.

According to Pa'il, "a day or two before the Deir Yassin episode, I met a friend, a Lehi man, Moshe Idelstein, who was once in the Palmach--though I do not think that he knew what my assignment was in Jerusalem--and he told me that the IZL and Lehi were going out to attack Deir Yassin and that I ought to come and see them in action." Idelstein, by contrast, told historian Uri Milstein: "I knew exactly what Pa'il's assignment had been; I never told him about our plans to attack Deir Yassin or anywhere else, and therefore I never invited him to come along."49

There are other statements in the accounts that Pa'il has given over the years which raise questions about his credibility as a witness concerning Deir Yassin. For example, in a 1981 interview, Pa'il said of Deir Yassin: "It was not situated on any important route. Its strategic value was zero."50 Pa'il said he went to Deir Yassin on the morning of the battle, accompanied by a young photographer. "I suddenly started to hear shots from all over the village. I ran with [the photographer], and I saw group of IZL and Lehi men running from house to house, entering, and with gunfire slaughtering the people sleeping there, spontaneously [i.e. not on orders from above]." Needless to say, the notion that the Arab residents would have been sleeping in the midst of a huge battle hardly seems plausible. It is also difficult to understand how Pa'il could have seen the "slaughtering" without actually being present inside the houses. According to Pa'il, "I ran after them and started to shout, 'What are you doing?' They looked at me like I was crazy, and the photographer took pictures."51

In contrast to Pa'il's claim of a dramatic confrontation between himself the IZL and Lehi men, the veterans of the battle interviewed by Milstein, including Yehoshua Zettler, Mordechai Ra'anan, Moshe Barzili, Yehuda Lapidot, Patchia Zalvensky, and Moshe Idelstein, all said that Pa'il was not at Deir Yassin and that it was inconceivable he could have been there without their knowledge. Nor is there any evidence from Haganah sources indicating that Pa'il was present; the statements given by David Shaltiel, Zalman Meret, Zion Eldad, and Yeshurun Schiff do not mention Pa'il by name or by either of his code names, "Avraham" and "Ram." The Haganah's Moshe Eren and Mordechai Gihon, who were at Deir Yassin and who knew Pa'il personally at the time, said they did not see him there. Yehoshua Arieli, who supervised the burials, stated that he did not see Pa'il there. Shlomo Havilov, the Haganah's commander for western Jerusalem, who spent the night of April 9 in Givat Shaul, stated: "I did not see Meir Pa'il there. I knew him well. If he had been there I would remember him."52

As for the identity of the photographer, Pa'il has consistently refused to name him, saying he "is fearful."53 Pa'il claimed that the photographer took "36 pictures, some during the battle, some after."54 According to Pa'il, he submitted the photos, together with a report he compiled about the event, to his Haganah superior, Yisrael Galili, and they are presently stored as classified material in the Israel Defense Forces Archives. Galili later confirmed that he received a report and photographs from Pa'il, but could not recall precisely what was in the report or what the photos showed.55 Pa'il's claim that some of the photos revealed an actual massacre in progress has been disputed by the IDF Archives, which, while not releasing the report or the photographs, has said that the photographs show dead bodies, without any way of knowing how or when they were killed.56

Regarding the prisoners, Pa'il is the source of the only claim that the Jewish fighters massacred a number of Arab prisoners after the battle. He alleged that a group of about 20 prisoners were "paraded" through Jerusalem, then brought back to a quarry near Deir Yassin and massacred.57 Pa'il's allegation has been denied by the the Haganah commander in Givat Shaul, Yona Ben-Sasson, who testified that several hotheads considered the idea of taking prisoners to the quarry and killing them, but that he personally talked them out of it.58

Exaggerations by the Red Cross

On April 10, the day after the battle, Jacques de Reynier, the chief Red Cross representative in Jerusalem, "received a call from the Arabs asking me to go immediately to the village of Deir Yassin, where the civilian population of the whole village had just been massacred." De Reynier's memoirs give no indication that he harbored any doubts as to the veracity of the allegation. When he set out for Deir Yassin on April 11, he already seems to have been expecting to encounter the aftermath of a massacre.59

De Reynier's account brimmed with hostility towards the Jewish side. As he told it, it was a dramatic tale of a brave humanitarian who again and again narrowly --and miraculously-- escaped from life-threatening situations to bring the world the truth about the Jewish mass-murderers. The first IZL commander he met on the scene supposedly "had a peculiar glitter in his eyes, cold and cruel." A female Jewish fighter he encountered was "a beautiful young girl with criminal eyes." The IZL-Lehi fighters were "these criminals."60

De Reynier's recollections were colorful, but often strained the bounds of believability. Reaching the outskirts of Deir Yassin, his car was stopped by "two soldier-like individuals, whose look were far from reassuring, with machine-guns in their hands, and large cutlasses in their belts." It seemed that "everything was lost," de Reynier recalled-- "when, suddenly, a huge fellow, at least two meters tall and as large as a cupboard, appeared, pushed his comrades aside, and seized my hand and squeezed it in his enormous paws, shouting incomprehensibly." According to de Reynier, his anonymous rescuer was a Jew who had been aided by the Red Cross when he was a prisoner of the Nazis, so now he would help de Reynier. "With such a bodyguard I felt I could go to the end of the world," de Reynier wrote.61 Elsewhere in his account, de Reynier affectionately referred to the man as "my 'wardrobe'" and "my good friend the glass cupboard."62

In fact, the man to whom de Reynier referred was not, as Reynier suggested, a secret savior whose gratitude to the Red Cross had moved him to switch sides and help de Reynier reveal the truth about Jewish savagery.

He was Lehi intelligence officer Moshe Barzili, chosen by his superiors to escort de Reynier because he and the Red Cross official both spoke German. He was not sneaking de Reynier into Deir Yassin; he was sent by Lehi to give Reynier a detailed tour of the battle site.63 The Jewish fighters gave de Reynier permission to enter because they had committed no atrocities and had nothing to hide. The significance of this point was apparently lost on de Reynier, however. His account makes it seems as if he somehow managed to enter the village against the Jewish fighters' will--a feat that hardly seems possible. At another point in his memoir of the visit, de Reynier claims that when he wanted to enter one of the Arab houses, "a dozen soldiers surrounded me, their machine-guns aimed at my body," yet he "pushed them aside and went in to the house." When he tried to carry a wounded Arab from the house, "the officer tried to stop me" but "I pushed him aside." Is it plausible that an unarmed Red Cross representative repeatedly "pushed aside" machine-gun toting Jewish soldiers? Barzili later recalled that the Lehi leadership agreed to permit de Reynier to visit precisely because of the rumors of a massacre. A Jewish policeman in the British Mandatory government with whom Lehi had contact, Shlomo Sofer, informed them that "there were rumors a massacre had taken place in the village, and that a Red Cross representative wanted to visit it. We hoped that with de Reynier's help, the rumors would be dispelled."64

As he inspected the village, de Reynier recalled, he was accompanied by "a Jewish doctor" who had been summoned by the Red Cross office. The doctor "followed me courageously" from house to house. That was Dr. Alfred Engel of Magen David Adom, Palestine Jewry's equivalent of a Red Cross. Engel's later descriptions of what he saw, however, differed from de Reynier's in significant respects.

According to de Reynier, the Arab residents of Deir Yassin numbered "approximately 400, never armed." He did not explain the discrepancy between his claim that they were "never armed" and the fact that they shot to death 4 of the Jewish fighters and wounded several dozen more. In the houses he examined, de Reynier saw a number of bodies of Arabs whom, he claimed, had been killed by "machine-guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished off with knives, anyone could see that." He found three survivors, a child and two elderly women. "There had been 400 people in this village," de Reynier's account continued. "About 50 of them had escaped, and were still alive. All the rest had been deliberately massacred in cold blood..." According to de Reynier, he then visited local Arab leaders to ask what should be done with the corpses and, upon their request, he returned to Deir Yassin to ask that they be buried on the site.65

The "Jewish doctor" was Dr. Alfred Engel of Magen David Adom, Palestine Jewry's equivalent of a Red Cross. In contrast to de Reynier's hair-raising tales about trying to get into Deir Yassin, Engel recalled that "We entered the village easily. The only ones there were the dissidents [IZL and Lehi]," and they were busy "loading bodies onto trucks." Engel accompanied de Reynier into the houses. "In the houses there were casualties, a total of about 100 men, women, and children," he recalled. "It was terrible. I did not see any signs of defilement, mutilation, or rape." It is noteworthy that in contrast to de Reynier, who claimed that many of the dead Arabs had been "finished off with knives, anyone could see that," Dr. Engel, who saw the corpses along with de Reynier, made no reference to seeing anyone who had been "finished off with knives." Engel's estimate of 100 dead also contrasted sharply with de Reynier's of 350.66

The Haganah's accusation

The reason so many corpses were still visible when de Reynier arrived was that David Shaltiel was locked in a fierce dispute with the IZL and Lehi over how to dispose of the bodies. The IZL and Lehi units, exhausted from the battle and nursing dozens of their wounded, were not up to the task of burying the unexpectedly large number of dead bodies. Nor did they intend to do garrison duty. Their commanders informed Shaltiel that they were anxious to return to their bases, and requested that he provided soldiers to occupy the village. Shaltiel was furious; he neither wanted to divert soldier from other areas to take over Deir Yassin, nor had he expected to be saddled with the burden of dealing with burial problems. After heated arguments with the IZL and Lehi leaders, Shaltiel finally sent a small Haganah force to the village, followed by a group of members of Gadna, the Haganah's paramilitary youth group, to handle the burials.67

Among the young buriers was Yair Tsaban, later a Knesset Member and longtime leader of the leftwing Mapam Party. Tsaban, arriving after the battle was over, and could not have witnessed how the Arabs were killed. In an interview with author Eric Silver, Tsaban gave no indication that he had any idea whether the deceased had been massacred, or killed inadvertently amidst the firefights and explosions. All he could do was speculate: since he came across "two or three cases of old men dressed in women's clothes" among the deceased, "My conclusion was that what happened in the village so terrorized these old men that they knew being old men would not save them. They hoped that if they were seen as old women that would save them."68 Tsaban's retrospective assumption may be interesting, but there is no evidence to support it. An equally plausible theory is that while the old men feared the Jews might massacre the men --just as the Arabs often massacred their Jewish prisoners-- and therefore dressed as women, in fact had they been captured alive, they would have been spared. Instead, they lost their lives because they were caught in the crossfire or in the dynamited houses, not because of any massacre. In contrast to de Reynier's claims, Tsaban told author Eric Silver that he --who reached Deir Yassin two days before de Reynier-- saw no blood on the clothing of the Jewish fighters and "I saw no evidence of killing by knives."69

Another leftwing activist, Uri Avnery, claimed to have elicited semi-confessions from some of the participants after the battle. Avnery's objectivity must be carefully weighed, in view of his long record of extremist political activity, including serving as editor of the extreme-left magazine Haolam Hazeh from 1950 to 1990, and serving as a Knesset Member for two far-left parties, Haolam Hazeh and Sheli, from 1965-1981. Concerning Deir Yassin, Avnery wrote in his 1968 book Israel Without Zionists that "all the inhabitants of the village who had not fled were massacred"--going considerably further than even many of the others who have charged there was a massacre. 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." Avnery provided no dates for the alleged "interrogations"; none of the names of the individuals whom he supposedly interrogated; and no actual quotations from them, whether confessional or otherwise.70

Shaltiel's disputes with the IZL and Lehi over who would occupy the town after the battle, and over the burial problem, appear to have kindled his wrath. There was no love lost between Shaltiel and the "dissidents"; indeed, in 1946-1947, as head of Haganah intelligence, he had played an active role in the Haganah's operations against the IZL and Lehi.71 Now he would take one last shot at his old enemies. Shaltiel, in consultation with his superiors in the Jewish Agency, and perhaps motivated by a desire to undermine the pending IZL-Haganah merger agreement, Shaltiel decided to go on the offensive. He told reporters 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 its "horror and disgust" at the "barbaric" behavior 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.72 Surprised by Shaltiel's turnaround, the IZL promptly released the text of his April 7 note approving the attack. Years later, the Israeli Defense Ministry published a history of the 1948 war in which Shaltiel was quoted as admitting that he knew in advance of the Deir Yassin attack. Although he did not concede the full extent of his cooperation in the planning of the attack, Shaltiel said: "I cannot claim that I did not know about the action. A day before the action [Thursday, April 8], Yeshurun Schiff informed me of it"--completely contradicting his claim, immediately after the battle, that he had no advance knowledge of it.73

After the 1948 war, four wounded Deir Yassin veterans applied to the Israeli Defense Ministry for the standard benefits provided to injured Israeli soldiers by Israel's Disabled Persons Act (Benefits and Rehabilitation) of 1949. The Ministry rejected the request on the grounds that the battle at Deir Yassin did not qualify as "military service," since the government defined "military service" as "organized activity against the Arab gangs and the invading armies." The veterans sued, hoping that the principles of judicial fairness would overcome political partisanship, especially once the passions of the war had subsided. They took their case to the Defense Ministry's Board of Appeals, a judicial body panel consisting of three judges. The Board, after hearing testimony from participants in the battle, ruled that it did indeed fit the Ministry's definition of "military service."74

The British "coaxed" the witnesses

Arab propagandists routinely claim that the Jewish fighters raped Arab women during the Deir Yassin battle, but evidence to support the allegation is lacking. To begin with, the charge of sexual assault is completely at variance with the behavior of Jewish soldiers throughout both the 1948 war and subsequent Arab-Israeli wars. (By contrast, Arabs frequently raped Jewish women during Arab attacks on Jewish communities, such as the 1929 riots in Hebron.)

As noted earlier, Dr. Engel, who accompanied Jacques de Reynier of the Red Cross, reported that he "did not see any signs of defilement, mutilation, or rape."75 Daniel Spicehandler, a member of a Haganah unit sent to assist the IZL, said later: "So far as I saw, there was no rape or looting."76 An Arab survivor of the Deir Yassin battle, Muhammad Arif Sammour, told author Eric Silver emphatically that there were no sexual attacks. Silver wrote: "Sammour, who has no reason to minimize the atrocities, is convinced that there were no sexual assault: 'I didn't hear or see anything of rape or attacks on pregnant women. None of the other survivors ever talked to me about that kind of thing. If anybody told you that, I don't believe it.'"77 Sammour's statement is corroborated by the testimony of two Jewish doctors physicians, Drs. Z. Avigdori and A. Droyan. At the request of the Jewish Agency, Avigdori and Droyan were sent by the Histadrut Medical Committee [the Labor Zionist-affiliated trade union], in Jerusalem, to Deir Yassin on Monday, April 12. They examined the bodies and reported that "all the bodies were clothed, the limbs were intact, and no sign of mutilation was visible on them."78

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 Investigation Division and a specialist in Jewish matters.

Catling was not, however, the most objective person to be investigating whether or not the IZL and Lehi had carried out atrocities against Arab civilians.

For much of the previous decade, Catling had played a prominent role in the Mandate regime's violent struggles with the Jewish fighting forces and with the IZL and Lehi in particular, who had assassinated numerous leading British police officers and military officials, and had publicly humiliated the English forces with retaliatory hangings, public whippings, assaults on supposedly-invulnerable police stations and army bases, and spectacular prison breaks. Catling himself narrowly escaped death at the IZL's hands on more than one occasion. He was at British police headquarters in Jerusalem during an IZL raid in 1944, in which a colleague of his was killed, and one of the suspects captured. While Catling was brutally beating the suspect, an IZL bomb shook the station. "John Scott was a good friend of mine," Catling later recalled. "We had this unfortunate suspect in [Inspector-General Arthur] Giles's office and I was knocking him about like hell. I freely admit it. Then the bomb went off. We were thrown across the room, and covered in plaster." Two years later, Catling happened to be standing near the reception desk in the main lobby of the King David Hotel --military headquarters of the British Mandate regime--when the IZL bombed it in 1946. At the sound of the massive explosion, Catling dove under the reception desk and was saved.79

Catling visited the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan five days after the battle of Deir Yassin, and interviewed a number of Arab women who said they had been at Deir Yassin the previous week. "The majority of those women are very shy and reluctant to relate their experiences especially in matters concerning sexual assault and they need great coaxing before they will divulge any information," Catling wrote. When he was finished "coaxing" them, Catling was able to conclude that "many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews." According to Catling, "many young school girls were raped and later slaughtered," "old women were also molested," "many infants were also butchered," and "one story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two."80 Catling may have been understandably eager to believe any allegation made against the hated IZL and Lehi, but the lack of corroboration from other sources, combined with Catling's likely bias and his own admission that he engaged in "great coaxing" of the Arab women he interviewed, raises serious doubts as to the veracity of their allegations.

How many Arabs died at Deir Yassin?

Estimates of the number of Arabs who died at Deir Yassin varied wildly. Haganah soldier Daniel Spicehandler said he saw "maybe some fifty dead."81 Shimon Monita, the Haganah spy in Lehi, estimated 60 Arabs dead; the Lehi's Moshe Idelstein recalled the number 61 being used at the time. Haganah intelligence officer Yona Feitelson, who arrived in Deir Yassin the morning after the battle, estimated 80 dead. The Haganah's Mordechai Gihon, who was there on the afternoon of the battle itself, thought the number was in the vicinity of 150.82 IZL commander Menachem Begin, who was briefed on the battle by his officers, wrote that the number was approximately 130.83

It was Mordechai Ra'anan, the IZL commander in Deir Yassin, who first used the figure 254. In an interview years later, Ra'anan was asked how he arrived at that number, which he gave to the media a few hours after the battle. He replied:

On that day I did not know, could not have known, how many Arabs had been killed. No one counted the bodies. People estimated that 100 or 150 people were killed. I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that the Arabs would panic not only in Jerusalem but across the country, and this goal was accomplished. Reporters, journalists, researchers and historians treat it as if it were an established fact requiring no investigation, and nobody bothered to check what the true figure was.84

Meir Pa'il appears to have been one of the first to be fooled by Ra'anan's figure. In one of his accounts of the battle, Pa'il said that his report to Galili described "the massacre of 250 people."85 David Cohen, Pa'il's commander in Haganah intelligence, later recalled that Pa'il had used the number 254 in his report on the battle. "This number seemed to us exaggerated, and we asked him how he arrived at it," Cohen said. "Pa'il replied, 'I didn't count them all, but there is a report straight from the horse's mouth'," referring to Ra'anan. Writing in Yediot Ahronot in 1972, Pa'il repeated the claim that 254 were killed.86 The fact that Pa'il used the false Ra'anan figure, and that he apparently admitted to Cohen that he himself did not count the bodies, raises further questions as to how close Pa'il was to the scene, and the reliability of his claims about what occurred.

According to Eric Silver, "They buried so quickly that no one stopped to count the corpses." Silver quoted Muhammad Arif Sammour as saying that three days after the battle, "representatives of each of the five clans in Deir Yassin met in Jerusalem in the Moslem offices near the Al Aqsa mosque and made a list of the people who had not been found. We went through the names. It came to 116. Nothing has happened since 1948 to make me think this figure was wrong." Silver added: "Again, Sammour has every reason for exaggerating rather than playing down the casualties. His case is reinforced by Yehoshua Arieli [commander of the Haganah group that buried the bodies], now a professor of history and Israeli peace campaigner. 'The 116 figure', he says, 'makes sense. I don't think we could have buried more than 120-40.'"87

Arab researchers' surprising discovery

In 1987, the Research and Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, a prominent Arab university in the territory now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, published a comprehensive study of the history of Deir Yassin, as part of its "Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project." The Center's findings concerning Deir Yassin were published, in Arabic only, as the fourth booklet in its "Destroyed Arab Villages Series."

The purpose of the project, according to its directors, is "to gather information from persons who lived in these villages and were directly familiar with them, and then to compare these reports and publish them in order to preserve for future generations the special identity and particular characteristics of each village."88

The Bir Zeit study's description of the 1948 battle of Deir Yassin began with the hyperbole typical of many accounts of the event, calling it "a massacre the likes of which history has rarely known."89 But unlike the authors of any other previous study of Deir Yassin, the Bir Zeit researchers tracked down the surviving Arab eyewitness to the attack and personally interviewed each of them. "For the most part, we have gathered the information in this monograph during the months of February-May 1985 from Deir Yassin natives living in the Ramallah region, who were extremely cooperative," the Bir Zeit authors explained, listing by name twelve former Deir Yassin residents whom they had interviewed concerning the battle. The study continued: "The [historical] sources which discuss the Deir Yassin massacre unanimously agree that number of victims ranges between 250-254; however, when we examined the names which appear in the various sources, we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120, and that the groups which carried out the massacre exaggerated the numbers in order to frighten Palestinian residents into leaving their villages and cities without resistance."90 The authors concluded: "Below is a list of the names and ages of those killed at Deir Yassin in the massacre which took place on April 9, 1948, which was compiled by us on the basis of the testimony of Deir Yassin natives. We have invested great effort in checking it and in making certain of each name on it, such that we can say, with no hesitation, that it is the most accurate list of its type until today." A list of 107 people killed and twelve wounded followed.91

How the "massacre" lie grew

When IZL commander Mordechai Ra'anan deliberately exaggerated the Deir Yassin death toll for propaganda purposes, he inadvertently provided fodder to anti-Israel propagandists for decades to follow.

Ra'anan's figure of 254 was broadcast in a BBC Radio report the evening after the battle.92 Two days later, Dr. Hussein Khalidi, spokesman for the Arab Higher Committee --the principal Palestinian Arab agency-- adopted the number 254 as his own, and repeated it to journalists, claiming that his information was based on a visit to the village by Red Cross representative Jacques De Reynier of the Red Cross.93 Khalidi tried to use the role of the Red Cross to give the massacre claim credibility, by attributing it to a humanitarian agency that presumably did not take sides in the Arab-Jewish conflict. In fact, however, Khalidi's information could not have come from Jacques de Reynier. Khalidi told reporters that de Reynier had "seen 40 or 50 bodies," and had been "told that another 50 were scattered elsewhere and 150 thrown in to a cistern"--that is, a total of between 240 and 250. But de Reynier's report of his visit to Deir Yassin claimed a death toll of 350.94 Only Ra'anan had used the number 254, which Khalidi was now using.

On the evening after the battle, the Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times, Dana Adams Schmidt, together with a group of other journalists, was given a briefing on the battle by an IZL spokesman in a house in Givat Shaul, adjacent to Deir Yassin.95 Schmidt's report in the Times, based on that briefing, stated that "more than 200 Arabs" were killed in the battle, and made no reference to the notion that there had been a massacre.96 "Not until the next morning," Schmidt later recalled in his memoirs, "when I went to the Arab side to see Dr. Khalid [sic], the spokesman of the Arab Higher Committee, did I discover the horror of Deir Yassin."97 Schmidt did not explain, either in his news reports at the time or in his memoirs, why he chose to believe Khalidi's version rather than that of the IZL spokesmen. Nor did his reports cite any independent evidence that a massacre had taken place. In his report on the front page of the next day's New York Times (April 12), Schmidt treated Khalidi's accusations as valid and quoted them at length--five full paragraphs. The April 12 dispatch by Schmidt concerning Deir Yassin used the casualty figure of 250.98 By the next day, the Times' figure had grown again, this time to the number used by Ra'anan and Khalidi: 254.99

The appearance of the massacre allegation in the New York Times gave the atrocity claim a significant veneer of credibility. Without the imprimatur of the Times, the claim of massacre would have been little more than the latest in a long series of disputes between the Jews and the Arabs. It is true that the Arab version had the endorsement of a Red Cross official and the Labor Zionist leadership, but both endorsements were tainted: de Reynier had not personally witnessed the events, and the Jewish Agency-Haganah statements were made by a party with a strong political interest in discrediting the IZL and Lehi. Once it appeared in the Times the "newspaper of the record," it took on the appearance of fact, not allegation. Now future historians and journalists could refer to the Times as their source, as if the Times had investigated and confirmed the massacre allegation, when it had not. Indeed, some historians --for example, Ben Halpern, in his The Idea of the Jewish State, which is mandatory reading in many college courses about the Middle East-- use the Times' 1948 coverage as their only source for the massacre claim.100

The earliest reports of the battle by foreign correspondents also embellished the massacre story with additional undocumented accusations. The New York Times , for example, in its April 13 report quoted a Haganah statement claiming that the attackers engaged in "looting." It did not publish any response from the accused.101 Time magazine reported that the IZL and Lehi "swept into the village of Deir Yassin and blew up its huts with demolition charges." Readers were left with a false image of Deir Yassin as a collection of defenseless thatched huts, rather than the reality of heavy stone houses, some with iron doors, filled with heavily-armed Arab fighters.102 Richard Graves, the senior British Mandatory official for Jerusalem, added an anti-Jewish stereotype: his memoirs of the period, published in 1949, declared that "women [in Deir Yassin] were stripped naked and searched for money" by the Jews. As for actual evidence of a massacre, Graves wrote that "it certainly was a massacre, as the killing was not provoked by any resistance" --an extraordinary claim, in view of the Arab fighters' massive, and nearly overwhelming, firepower.103

Despite the fact that Graves presented no original evidence, his book has been cited in a number of history texts as the source of the information that Arabs were massacred at Deir Yassin. Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine, by William Polk, David Stamler, and Edmund Asfour (1957) cited Graves, as did Christopher Sykes in his Crossroads to Israel (1965).104 The Polk-Stamler-Asfour book has since been cited as a massacre "source" by the anti-Zionist polemicist Alfred Lilienthal, while Sykes' book has been cited as the source for the "massacre" by other historians, including David McDowall (Palestine and Israel) and Desmond Stewart (The Middle East), as well as the Marxist anti-Zionist author, Nathan Weinstock (Zionism: False Messiah).105 Hence the remarkable and disturbing phenomenon of historians irresponsibly relying on secondary sources, which in some cases are actually third-hand sources, since they themselves rely on other secondary sources.

Another of the earliest published accounts of Deir Yassin that became a source for many subsequent historians was Promise and Fulfilment, by the journalist Arthur Koestler (1949). Citing no sources except the original Jewish Agency denunciation, Koestler called the Jewish fighters' action a "blood-bath" and an "atrocity." Interestingly, Koestler also implied that some Arab descriptions of the event were exaggerated, remarking that Arab accounts at the time were "adorned with the lurid detail of oriental imagination."106 A number of subsequent history texts (as well as anti-Zionist polemicists such as Lilienthal and Weinstock) cited Koestler as their source for the massacre claim, although they did not include Koestler's statement about the Arabs "imagining" some of the allegations, including Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1992) and Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle (1979).107 Bethell, in turn, was cited as one of the "massacre" sources by David McDowall (Palestine and Israel), who also cited as a source an 1986 article by David Gilmour in Middle East International .108 A determined reader who chases down the Gilmour article will find that one of Gilmour's chief sources for the "massacre" claim is--Arthur Koestler. Thus the chain of irresponsibility comes full circle, beginning with Koestler's undocumented allegation; Koestler's account propped up Bethell's; Bethell's propped up McDowall's; McDowall's was also propped up by Gilmour's; and Gilmour's was propped up by Koestler.

Many other books that refer to Deir Yassin likewise cite as their source other books which cite no sources for the massacre claim. Jon Kimche's Seven Fallen Pillars cited no sources for its massacre charge, yet is cited in many other history books as the source for the charge.109

A total of 170 English-language history books which refer to the battle of Deir Yassin were analyzed for this study. Only 8 of the 170 raised serious doubts as to whether or not there had been a massacre. Of the 162 books which stated definitively that a massacre had occurred, 94 of them --58%-- gave no source whatsoever for their accusation, and an additional 38 -- 23.4%-- cited only secondary sources for the massacre claim. In other words, a total of 81.4% of the authors claiming a massacre did so without undertaking any original research to substantiate their claim.

In the heat of the battle and its immediate aftermath, the Labor Zionist-controlled Jewish Agency and Haganah had taken advantage of a difficult situation to score some political points. But years passed, tempers cooled, and by 1960 a new Labor-led Israeli government was beginning to reexamine what had happened at Deir Yassin. That year, the Israel Office of Information --a division of the Foreign Ministry, then under a Labor government with Golda Meir as Foreign Minister-- issued a pamphlet about the Arab-Israeli conflict which included a description of the Deir Yassin action far different from the version circulated by Labor Zionist spokesmen in 1948:

Jewish dissident groups, led by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, undertook operations against the village of Dir Yassin, without the cooperation or consent of the main body of the Jewish population organized in Haganah. This village had been for long a nest of Arab snipers and armed bands. The action took place before the establishment of the State of Israel and before effective control by its Government of all armed forces previously engaged in resisting Arab attacks. The incident was unreservedly condemned by all responsible Jewish elements.

Menachem Beigin, Irgun leader, subsequently stated that Haganah had expressly warned the Irgun command against the attack. He points out, however, that repeated loud-speaker warnings in Arabic advised non-combatants who were killed in the fighting to evacuate the village from which a murderous fire was being directed against the Irgun irregulars.

The pamphlet then quoted a Deir Yassin survivor, Yunes Ahmed Assad, as having told the Jordanian newspaper Al Urdun on April 9, 1953: "The Jews never intended to harm the population of the village, but were forced to do so after they encountered fire from the population, which killed the Irgun commander."

While the pamphlet's version mistakenly claimed that the Haganah opposed the attack, and incorrectly stated that Begin himself had said so (Begin, in fact, said exactly the opposite), it also directly challenged and undermined several of the long-standing claims that the Labor Zionists had themselves initially helped propagate: that Deir Yassin was not a legitimate target, since it had been peaceful; that the villagers were unarmed and defenseless; and that the residents had not been given any prior warning of the attack. Furthermore, the pamphlet, while noting the condemnations of the "operation," made no reference to any massacre having been committed.110 Nevertheless, these startling reversals of long-held positions were almost universally ignored by subsequent histories of the battle.

In 1969, Israel's Labor government issued an even more extensive rebuttal of the 1948 accusations. The Information Division of the Foreign Ministry --at that time under Foreign Minister Abba Eban-- issued a new 9-page pamphlet on the battle of Deir Yassin. The pamphlet began by denouncing the massacre accusation as a "fairy-tale" and as "the 'big lie' of Deir Yassin."111 The battle for Deir Yassin, the pamphlet continued, was an integral, inseparable episode in the battle for Jerusalem... [Arab forces] were attempting to cut the only highway linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv and the outside world. It had cut the pipeline upon which the defenders depended for water. Palestinian Arab contingents, stiffened by men of the regular Iraqi army, had seized vantage points overlooking the Jerusalem road and from them were firing on trucks that tried to reach the beleaguered city with vital food-stuffs and supplies. Dir Yassin, like the strategic hill and village of Kastel, was one of these vantage points. In fact, the two villages were interconnected militarily, reinforcements passing from Dir Yassin to Kastel during the fierce engagement for that hill.112

The pamphlet did not comment on the question of the Haganah's advance knowledge. It described how the IZL fighters (for some reason the pamphlet did not mention the Lehi contingents) issued Arabic-language announcements, prior to the attack, urging the residents to flee. "Some two hundred villagers did come out and took shelter on the lower slopes of the hill on which Dir Yassin was perched," the pamphlet reported. "None of them, during or after the fighting, was hurt or molested in the slightest, and all were afterwards transported to the fringe of the Arab-held fifth of East Jerusalem and there released."113

The battle was dominated by "fierce house-to-house fighting," the pamphlet noted. "Most of the stone buildings were defended hotly and were captured only after grenades were lobbed through their windows." Some Arabs "attempted to escape in women's dress. When approached, they opened fire. They were discovered to be wearing Iraqi military uniforms under the disguise." Inside the house, the Jewish fighters were horror-stricken to find that, side byside with those of combatant Palestinians and Iraqis, were the bodies of women and children. Either these luckless villagers had trusted in the Arab soldiers to beat off the attack or had been prevented from leaving the village with the others when the opportunity was given before the fighting began or perhaps had been afraid to go. Whatever the reason, they were the innocent victims of a cruel war and the responsibility for their deaths rests squarely upon the Arab soldiers whose duty it was--under any rule of wara--to evacuate them the moment that they turned Dir Yassin into a fortress...This was no massacre of an unarmed, peaceful village population by a military unit as Arab propaganda pretends; the Irgun fought and won a battle, there was no aftermath of outrage or brutal excess.114

In a direct rebuke to what Labor Zionist leaders had claimed 21 years earlier, the 1969 Foreign Ministry pamphlet emphasized that while Arab propagandists had made much use of the statements issued by the Jewish Agency and the Haganah in 1948, in fact "the Agency and the Haganah were in no position to 'admit' or 'contradict' anything [concerning the massacre allegation], as their defence units did not take part in the battle nor could they have known at first-hand of the circumstances in which civilian casualties had been caused."115 Yet this extraordinary pamphlet, with its complete reversal of earlier Labor Zionist charges of a massacre, was almost universally ignored by historians.

Additional baseless allegations

One of the most troubling aspects of how historians have handled the Deir Yassin episode has been the tendency of many of them to embellish the standard massacre allegation with lurid details that have no reliable evidence to support them. That Arab sources have engaged in such exaggerations is perhaps not entirely surprising, in view of the intensity of emotion surrounding the controversy. One of the leaflets of the Palestinian Arab intifada, for example, claimed that at Deir Yassin, the Jews "ripped open the bellies of pregnant women in order to destroy the seed of our people."116 Arab writers have also claimed that, among other things, some of the Deir Yassin victims were "buried alive;"117 that all of the 250 "massacre" victims were "women and children;"118 that the female Arab survivors were paraded through Jerusalem while "stripped naked;"119 and that Jerusalem residents unleashed "a hail of stones" upon the hapless prisoners and the trucks drove by.120

What is surprising, however, is the frequency with which these and similar "details" have appeared in what are considered mainstream history texts. Almost none of these accusations are accompanied by sources, and the rare cases in which sources are given invariably turn out to offer no evidence in support of the charges made.

One text claimed that the massacre in Deir Yassin took place "while its inhabitants slept."121 Many books asserted that the Jews killed the "entire population" of the village, which would mean anywhere from 400 to 1,000 victims.122 Others have alleged --without any sources-- that the victims were "stripped and robbed"123 and "raped and disemboweled,"124 with the survivors paraded "naked in trucks" through Jerusalem.125 Even as widely regarded a historian as Howard Sachar has made the charge --without any documentation -- that the bodies of the "more than 200" victims were all "mutilated."126

One text that claimed the Jews "looted and raped," Dilip Hiro's Inside the Middle East 127 did have a footnote: Noah Lucas's The Modern History of Israel.128 Yet the Lucas book made no such charge. Another accusation bearing a worthless footnote was the unique claim by Terence Prittie that the villagers raised white flags of surrender, which the Irgun ignored. "Irgun apologists claimed afterwards that although the villagers had put out white flags, they [the Arabs] defended every house," Prittie asserted.129 His footnote for the claim was page 215 of Days of Fire, by Irgun alumnus Shmuel Katz. The average reader would no doubt assume that Katz acknowledged the waving of white flags. In fact, Katz did not even mention white flags; he stated only that "Almost every house in the village was defended."130

The "Begin confession" that never was

Several historians have gone so far as to use a fabricated "confessional" statement attributed to IZL leader Menachem Begin. In his autobiography, The Revolt, which was first published in Hebrew in 1950 and in English in 1951, Begin strongly denied the massacre allegation. Basing himself on reports from the IZL officers who took part in the battle (Begin himself was not on the scene), Begin argued that the Arab civilians were killed inadvertently during the house to house fighting. He also noted that the panic which the Deir Yassin massacre story ignited around the country unintentionally benefited the Jewish forces, because it led to voluntary Arab emigration from strategically important areas.

The most creative fraudulent paraphrasing of Begin's memoir appeared in Edward Said's The Question of Palestine (1979). Without using any actual quotation marks, Said reported: "In this book, Begin describes his terrorism--including the wholesale massacre of innocent women and children--in righteous (and chilling) profusion. He admits to being responsible for the April 1948 massacre of 250 women and children in the Arab village of Deir Yassin." Of course, Begin "admits" no such thing, but since Said had no footnote, readers could not check the veracity of his sources.131 Gerald Kaufman (To Build the Promised Land) makes a similar claim of a Begin "confession," writing that the Irgun committed "an unspeakable massacre" which is "still justified by Begin more than 23 years later." Kaufman's implication is that Begin acknowledges and justifies a massacre; in fact, Begin denies the massacre and justifies merely the idea of targeting Deir Yassin for capture.132 A variation on this theme is the claim--for example, by Lois Aroian and Richard Mitchell--that in his book, "Begin justified the massacre on military grounds and claimed that without it, the Jewish state would have been still-born." Needless to say, they did not quote Begin's actual words, which would have contradicted their misleading paraphrase.133 Another text even had Ben-Gurion, rather than Begin, supposedly declaring --without a source note, of course-- "Without Deir Yassin, there would have been no Israel."134

An alleged Begin quotation was offered by Lawrence Joffe, who, in his contribution to the 1989 volume Israel and the Palestinians , asserted that "Menachem Begin is on record as saying: 'The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory of Deir Yassin." Like Said, Joffe provided no source for the claim.135 Jamal Nassar's 1991 study of the Palestine Liberation Organization utilized the same Begin quote, claiming it can be found on page 164 of the 1951 edition of The Revolt. In fact, there is no such statement on that or any other page.136 Punyapriya Dasgupta's 1988 study of the Palestinian Arabs came a step closer to resolving the mystery, by providing a footnote which read: "This sentence existed in the Hebrew original published in Israel but was omitted in the English edition." But instead of citing the alleged Hebrew-language original, Dasgupta continues: "See Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest."137 A footnote in Hadawi's book attributed the alleged Begin statement to an obscure (now defunct) anti-Israel publication called the Jewish Newsletter, which claimed the statement appeared in The Revolt. Hadawi contacted the publication's editor, "who stated that he had taken it from a Hebrew version of The Revolt published in Israel for 'home consumption.'"138 In fact, the Deir Yassin section in the Hebrew edition of The Revolt is identical to the English editions; there is no quote by Begin admitting or praising any massacre.139

Portraying the Jews as Nazis

For some historians, the Deir Yassin story is an irresistible opportunity to invert history, by portraying the Jews as the equivalent of Nazis and the Arabs as the equivalent of the Nazis' Jewish victims. Maxime Rodinson and Erskine Childers called it "the Israeli Oradour" (referring to the site of a Nazi massacre of Frenchmen), while Stewart Perowne compared Palestinian Arabs emigrating after Deir Yassin to "Frenchmen in their thousands [who] fled before the advancing Nazis."140 Desmond Stewart compared Deir Yassin to Auschwitz in one of his books, and to "Lidice or Hiroshima in little" in another.141 Kenneth Cragg dubbed it "the Arab Lidice."142 An editorial in the U.S. weekly Christian Century declared Deir Yassin "a horror worse than Lidice, for in Lidice only the men and boys were slaughtered."143 The most preposterous example in this vein was that of Andrew Sinclair, in Jerusalem: The Endless Crusade (1995), who characterized Deir Yassin as "a ghastly re-enaction of what the Nazis had done to the Jews at Lidice." Evidently Sinclair was unaware that Czechs, not Jews, were the victims of the Nazi atrocity at Lidice, which was undertaken as a reprisal for the assassination of Nazi official Heinrich Heydrich by Czech partisans. So anxious was Sinclair to portray the Jews as modern-day Nazis that he literally falsified history, injecting the Jews into an historical episode to which they had no connection, so that in the minds of readers, the Zionists' behavior would seem to resemble that of a well-known Nazi atrocity.144

Blurring fact and fiction

The two most detailed accounts of the battle of Deir Yassin are so detailed primarily because the authors have creatively "reconstructed" the event based on an amalgam of interviews, news reports, and imagination.

Dan Kurzman, in Genesis 1948, turned the battle into an entertaining 11-page drama. Although Kurzman presents his account as if it were indisputable historical fact, not fiction, he supplies detailed dialogue among the combatants and even claims to have known what individuals were thinking at particular moments. In his preface, he describes style as "using the techniques of the novelist and biographer to bring history alive." Instead of specific footnotes, Kurzman states merely that he "reconstructed" the story of Deir Yassin "mainly from interviews with Arab survivors" --whom he does not name-- and ten Israelis, some of whom were not even at Deir Yassin. His most controversial claim is that "some of [the attackers] admit that," in the heat of the battle, they "lost all restraint and cold-bloodedly shot every Arab they found--man, woman, or child." Significantly, however, Kurzman does not say which of the attackers "admitted" to him that they carried out atrocities. Nor was there any evidence of any other claim, prior to the publication of his book in 1970, that any attackers had "admitted" massacring Arabs at Deir Yassin.

In short, there is no way of knowing whether Kurzman's claim is authentic or a creative combination of speculation and assumption.145 Despite the ambiguity surrounding the source of Kurzman's claim, it was subsequently repeated as fact in other history books. For example, J. Bowyer Bell, in his Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929-1949 --still the only comprehensive English-language history of the Jewish revolt against the British-- stated: "Some [of the attackers in Deir Yassin] privately admitted that men, women, and children had been shot on sight." Bell offered no footnote nor any other clue as to who exactly had made this private "admission," but Bell's other footnotes for indicated that he relied heavily on Kurzman and on O Jerusalem, by best-selling journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, which appeared in 1972.146 Bell's account, in turn, became the "massacre" source for a number of other books, including Melvin Urofsky's 1978 study of relations between Israel and American Jewry. Indeed, Urofsky embellished the accusations, stating that "stories of other atrocities, some confirmed and some not, of rapes and mutilations and butcherings, have circulated to this day"--even though the only source Urofsky cited, Bell, did not confirm any rapes, mutilations, or butcherings.147

Like Kurzman, Collins and Lapierre authored a fast-paced, entertaining saga which emphasized readability over historical accuracy, putting into the combatant's mouths (and minds) the words that the authors imagine were spoken, whether or not they were actually spoken. Unlike Kurzman, Collins and Lapierre did specify their sources for their allegations--Arabs who claimed to have witnessed atrocities, and the British police official Richard Catling. Apparently accepting the veracity of Arab allegations without questioning, Collins and Lapierre repeated a claim by a 12 year-old Arab boy that Jewish fighters lined up a large group of adults and children against a wall and shot them down, "but most of us children were saved because we hid behind parents." Collins and Lapierre did not seem to have wondered why, if the Jews were intent on massacring them, would they have refrained from shooting the children who supposedly survived the first volley of bullets? Collins and Lapierre also recited wild allegations by Arabs of Jewish fighters raping Arab women, cutting open the stomach of a woman who was nine months pregnant, and slashing Arabs "from head to toe" with a sword. The Jews "killed, they looted, and finally they raped," Collins and Lapierre concluded definitively.148 (David Hirst, author of a 1977 study of the Arab-Israeli conflict, was so fond of that phrase that he plagiarized it, writing "The attackers killed, looted, and finally they raped," without attributing it to Collins and Lapierre. To make matters worse, numerous subsequent books which have claimed a massacre took place have listed Hirst's book as their source.149)

The rape allegations were based exclusively on the report of British investigator Richard Catling. Collins and Lapierre reported that although they "interviewed, with some difficulty, a number of survivors of the massacre in 1969," they used quotations from only one of them, "because of the fear that perhaps over the years the survivors' accounts of what happened might have been altered to conform with some of the propaganda excesses associated with it." In other words, even Collins and Lapierre found the survivors' accounts to be less than reliable. In their notes at the back of the book --but, strangely, not in the text itself-- Collins and Lapierre acknowledged that Haganah men Yeshurun Schiff and Yehoshua Arieli, who were part of the unit sent to help bury bodies, "saw no evidence of rape."150

The latest and the worst

Two of the most significant recent studies of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs feature most of the errors of their predecessors concerning Deir Yassin. Instead of utilizing recent research to rectify past mistakes, as serious scholars would be expected to do, they have compounded and multiplied past errors. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal authored Palestinians: The Making of a People, nearly 400 pages long, was published by the prestigious Free Press in 1993. Mark Tessler's A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, over 900 pages in length, was published by the Indiana University Press in 1994. Both books have become required reading in numerous college courses dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Kimmerling and Migdal began their description of Deir Yassin with the remarkable comment: "The sequence of events in Dayr Yasin is now scarcely disputed," and proceed with the standard allegations of a massacre. Presumably the intention of the remark was to suggest that since virtually no historians dispute the massacre claim, therefore it must be true. That itself is irresponsible, since the historian's obligation is to independently investigate the events about which he is writing, not merely to count the number of historians on each side of a dispute, and then conclude that the side with the larger number must be telling the truth. What makes the Kimmerling-Migdal account even more preposterous, however, is the fact that they did not even mention that the IZL and Lehi denied there was a massacre. Instead, they state definitively --but without citing any sources-- that after the battle, "the Jewish fighters killed many of the remaining men, women and children and" --again, without sources-- "raped and mutilated others."151

To their credit, Kimmerling and Migdal acknowledge the Bir Zeit study, although they misrepresent its conclusion, when they write: "A recent study by a team of researchers at Bir Zeit University found that the figure probably did not exceed at 120." In fact, as noted earlier, the Bir Zeit researchers concluded: "we became absolutely convinced that the number of those killed does not exceed 120."152 "Absolutely convinced" --not "probably." Kimmerling and Migdal then add: "But that does not diminish the depth of the atrocity or its short- and long-run effects." Certainly a massacre of 120 people is no less horrifying than a massacre of 254 people. But Kimmerling and Migdal have missed the most significant point about the Bir Zeit study. If those who claimed there was a massacre --Arab spokesmen, Labor Zionist officials, the Red Cross representative-- have been proven to be so completely unreliable concerning the crucial question of the casualty total, what does that say about the reliability of their other claims? If the accusers were willing to knowingly assert that the number of victims was nearly 150% larger than it really was, how can we trust their other claims--of rape, mutilation, and of the massacre itself? Some of those who used death toll figures ranging from 254 to 350 knew that the number was a vast exaggeration; others among the accusers were no doubt simply carelessly parroting as fact figures that they had no way of confirming. Whether through mendacity or carelessness, they mangled the truth, and such behavior would have discredited all of their testimony in a court of law.

Tessler, like Kimmerling and Migdal, nowhere acknowledged that the alleged perpetrators of the massacre deny there was a massacre. Tessler's version of the IZL's position was a variation on the "Begin confessed" theme: "Menachem Begin subsequently boasted about the contribution of the massacre to other military operations," according to Tessler. Begin did not, of course, boast about a "massacre" making such a contribution, but rather about how the false claims of a massacre had the unexpected effect of scaring Arabs to leave some areas that would otherwise have been the sites of difficult battles. Furthermore, Tessler also included some of the usual falsehoods, such as characterizing the village residents as "defenseless" and asserting that the IZL and Lehi "mutilated many of the bodies" --without citing any evidence.153

"The major significance of Deir Yassin," according to Tessler, "lies not in a dispute about what really happened or about whether there could be any justification for the massacre, it lies in bitter disagreement about whether or not there was a systematic and calculated Zionist campaign of terror designed to drive Palestinians from the area that became the State of Israel." One side of the debate, according to Tessler, consists of "opponents of Israel as well as some Israeli scholars and pro-Zionist authors," who say Deir Yassin was part of a broader Zionist plot. The other side consists of those who say there may have been some justification for targeting Deir Yassin, but who "deplore the fact that unarmed Arab civilians were murdered" and "agree with critics who insist that it makes no difference whether or not a legitimate military operation preceded the massacre." From Tessler's skewed perspective, there is no room for even considering the possibility that there was no massacre.154

Tessler is one of a large number of historians whose books were published after the Bir Zeit study was revealed in Ha'aretz in 1991, yet who continued to claim that over 200 Arabs were killed and made no reference to what the Bir Zeit researchers discovered. Of the 29 texts published after 1991 that were reviewed for this study, only one --Kimmerling and Migdal, as noted earlier-- mentioned the Bir Zeit findings.

A number of encyclopedias dealing with Middle East topics likewise parrot the 254 figure. For example, the Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century, Congressional Quarterly's The Middle East, the Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, the Timetables of Jewish History and the Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict all claim there was a massacre of 250-254, or "hundreds" of, Deir Yassin civilians. The Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict , which had a particularly lengthy entry on Deir Yassin, managed to repeat almost every major error made by its predecessors. Although published in 1996, it ignored the Bir Zeit study and claimed 254 civilians were "slaughtered." (Curiously, another entry in the same encyclopedia, which mentioned Deir Yassin in passing, stated that 240 were killed.) The entry made it appear as if David [it erroneously called him "Daniel"] Shaltiel did not favor the attack, ignoring Shaltiel's pre-battle letter to the IZL, as well as his admissions in 1960 and subsequent revelations by Milstein and others about the Haganah's cooperation in the attack. The encyclopedia entry questioned whether there were really Iraqi or other Arab soldiers in the village, and quoted Meir Pa'il and Jacques de Reynier as sources, without reference to the contradictions in their allegations.155 Don Peretz, who is both a professor and an extreme-leftwing political activist, is the author of at least two major encyclopedia entries on Deir Yassin, the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and the "Arab-Israel Dispute" installment in the Library in a Book series published by Facts on File. Both entries, although published five years after the Bir Zeit study was revealed in Ha'aretz, accused the IZL and Lehi of the mass murder of "200 to 250" civilians. One of the entries claimed "There was little armed resistance to the attack"; the other did not acknowledge any resistance whatsoever. One mentioned the attackers' statement that Arab soldiers were based in the village, but hastened to add --incorrectly-- that their claim was "not substantiated by the Haganah;" Peretz's other entry made no reference to the Arab soldiers. Neither of the entries mentioned the house-to-house fighting.156

Conclusion

It has been said that a lie can travel halfway across the world before the truth can catch up with it. The lie that Jewish fighters massacred Arab civilians in Deir Yassin has gone halfway across the world and further over the past fifty years. The original "massacre lie" has been embellished upon with additional false accusations, and then recirculated by an array of harsh critics of Israel and careless historians, the Deir Yassin lie has taken on a life of its own, making its way into authoritative texts such as encyclopedias, where it is being passed on to the next generation as established fact. The truth has struggled to catch up, but, step by step, it has gained ground. First there was the Israeli judicial ruling in 1952, an official recognition, by the very parties that had charged massacre, that the battle was, in fact, a legitimate military operation against enemy armed forces. Then came the Israeli Labor government's 1960 pamphlet describing Deir Yassin without any reference to the supposed massacre. Next, the Labor government's 1969 reversal, acknowledging the errors that Labor officials had made in 1948 and officially clearing the Jewish fighters of the charge that they committed atrocities. Finally, in 1987, the Bir Zeit University study--Arab researchers confirming that one of the central claims of the accusers, the death toll of 254, was a wild and reckless exaggeration. Taken together, these developments and revelations have exposed, once and for all, the lie of the Deir Yassin "massacre." It has taken fifty years, but the truth has finally caught up.

Footnotes

1 For example, Benny Morris, dean of Israel's leftwing "new historians," has written that Milstein's study "will most likely turn out to be the definitive military history of the 1948 war...No one is likely to surpass the sheer breadth, depth, and scope of this work...Israeli military history has now been pulled up to a new, higher and refreshing plane." (Morris, "'Pre-History' vs. 'History', Jerusalem Post, 9 May 1989, p.40).
2 Sharif Kanani and Nihad Zitawi, Deir Yassin, Monograph No.4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p.6.
3 Uri Milstein, The War of Independence: Out of Crisis Came Decision - Volume IV [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Zmora-Bitan Publishers, 1991), p. 256.
4 Milstein, p.253 (interview with Yehoshua Arieli, 11 December 1987).
5 Milstein, pp.277-278.
6 Milstein, p.255 (interview with Moshe Barzili, 9 May 1982).
7 Israel Ministry of Defense, David Shaltiel: Jerusalem 1948 (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1981), p. 139.
8 Milstein, p.260 (interview with Shimon Monita).
9 Milstein, p.260 (interview with Moshe Idelstein).
10 Testimony of Patchiah Zalivensky, Metzudat Ze'ev [Jabotinsky Archives, Tel Aviv] (hereafter cited as MZ); Milstein, p.260 (interview with Yehoshua Zettler).
11 Milstein, p.260 (interview with Moshe Barzili).
12 Milstein, p.260 (interview with Yehoshua Zettler).
13 Milstein, p.260, quoting "Report by 'Elazar' [Gihon's Haganah code name]," 10 April 1948.
14 Milstein, p.260 (interview with Mordechai Gihon).
15 Milstein, p.260, quoting "Report of the Haganah's [Anti-Dissident] Unit on the Deir Yassin Action."
16 Testimony of Mordechai Ra'anan, MZ; Testimony of Yehuda Lapidot, MZ; Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ; Milstein, p.262 (interviews with Mordechai Ra'anan and Yehuda Lapidot).
17 Milstein, pp.255-256; Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917-1929 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), p.69.
18 Yitshaq Ben-Ami, Years of Wrath, Days of Glory (New York: Shengold, 1983), p.439.
19 Milstein, p.257 (interview with Mordechai Gihon). Milstein found the report in the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 83/17, Reports of "Teneh," 9 April 1948.
20 Milstein interview with Haganah agent Yona Ben-Sasson, 12 November 1980; also, Milstein, citing the Ben-Nur Report in the David Shaltiel Archives.
21 "Shots in Jerusalem,"Davar, 4 April 1948, p.2.
22 Milstein, p. 257, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 88/17, "From Hashmonai," 4 April 1948, 10:00 A.M.
23 Milstein, p. 257, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 88/17, "From Sa'ar," 4 April 1948, 10:00 A.M.
24 Testimony of David Gottlieb, MZ; Milstein, pp.257-258, citing the Israel Defense Forces Archives, War of Independence Collection 21/17, "From Hashmonai," 4 April 1948.
25 Milstein, p. 258, citing "Operations Log - Arza," 4 April 1948, 17:00 hours, Broadcast #562, Israel Defense Forces Archive, War of Independence Collection, 88/17.
26 Milstein, p.258 (interview with Mordechai Gihon).
27 Milstein, p.258, citing Israel Defense Forces Archive, War of Independence Collection, 228/3, Operation Log, 9 April 1948, 2:40 a.m.
28 Testimony of Benzion Cohen, MZ; Testimony of Yehuda Lapidot, MZ.
29 Ilan Kafir, "Three Accounts of Deir Yassin" (Hebrew), Yediot Ahronot, 4 April 1972, p.3.
30 Ron Miberg, "They Showed Us the Photographs!" (Hebrew), Monitin, April 1981, p.37.
31 Milstein interview with Harif, p.262.
32 Milstein, p.263 (interview with Zalivensky).
33 Yachin's testimony is quoted at length in Lynne Reid Banks, A Torn Country: An Oral History of the Israeli War of Independence (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), pp. 58-65.
34 Milstein, p.265 (interviews with Yehuda Lapidot and Yehoshua Gorodenchik).
35 Milstein, p.265, citing Israel Defense Forces Archive, Yitzhak Levy collection, "Report of Yaakov Weg."
36 Testimony of Reuven Greenberg.
37 Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ.
38 Banks, op.cit., p.62.
39 Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ.
40 Milstein, pp.264-265, interviews with Ezra Yachin, Mordechai Ra'anan, Benzion Cohen and Yehuda Lapidot; Testimonies of Mordechai Ra'anan, Benzion Cohen, and Yehuda Lapidot.
41 Milstein, p.263, interview with Uri Brenner; Daniel Spicehandler's testimony, quoted in Ralph G. Martin, Golda: Golda Meir - The Romantic Years (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988), p.329.
42 Testimony of Yehoshua Gorodenchik, MZ. Benny Morris, a harsh critic of the IZL and Lehi, has characterized Gorodenchik's testimony as "confused." (Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p.323, n.175.
43 Milstein, p.264, (interview with Mordechai Gihon and "Report of Etzioni intelligence officer").
44 Milstein, p.266.
45 Testimony of Mordechai (Kaufman) Ra'anan, 30 June 1952, Procotol of the Board
of Appeals in Appeal 89-90-92-96/51, p.7, File kaf-10/9, MZ. 46 Milstein, p. 266 (interviews with Moshe Eren, Kalman Rosenblatt, and David Gottlieb).
47 Natan Yellin-Mor, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Shikmona Publishers, 1974), p.472; Milstein, p.267 (interviews with Moshe Barzili and Shimon Monita, and Testimony of Yaffa Bedian).
48 Milstein, p.255 (interviews with Meir Pa'il; interviews with Yitzhak Levy; interview with David Cohen, 18 July 1987; interview with David Shaltiel; interview with Yehoshua Arieli; Testimony of Meir Pa'il, 10 May 1971).
49 Milstein, p.259 (Testimony of Meir Pa'il; interviews with Moshe Idelstein).
50 Miberg, op.cit., p.36.
51 Pa'il quoted in Yerach Tal, "There Was No Massacre There" [Hebrew], Ha'aretz, 8 September 1991, pp.2-3.
52 Milstein, p.274 (interviews with Yehoshua Zettler, Mordechai Ra'anan, Moshe Barzili, Yehuda Lapidot, Patchia Zalivensky, Moshe Idelstein, Moshe Eren, Shlomo Havilov, Yehoshua Arieli); Testimonies of David Shaltiel, Zalman Meret, Zion Eldad, and Yeshurun Schiff, MZ.
53 Tal, op.cit.
54 Miberg, p.39.
55 Ha'aretz, 8 September 1991; Miberg, op.cit.
56 Milstein, p.275.
57 Pa'il, quoted in Kafir, op.cit.
58 Milstein, p.275 (interview with Yona Ben-Sasson).
59 The relevant sections of Reynier's report are translated in Walid
Khalidi, ed. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987), pp.761-766.
60 Reynier, 762, 763.
61 Ibid., p.762.
62 Ibid., pp.763, 764.
63 Milstein, p.269.
64 Milstein,p.269 (interview with Moshe Barzili).
65 Ibid., 764-765.
66 Milstein, pp.269-270 (interview with Alfred Engel, 7 December 1987).
67 Milstein, p.260.
68 Eric Silver, Begin: The Haunted Prophet (New York: Random House, 1984), p.93.
69 Ibid., p.95.
70 Uri Avnery, Israel Without Zionists: A Plea for Peace in the Middle East (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), p.196. Avnery also got the date of the battle wrong, as well as the time of day it took place. He stated that the IZL and Lehi captured Deir Yassin in a "night battle"; the battle actually began at dawn and continued until mid-day. He asserted that the "massacre" took place on April 10, when in fact the Arabs who died were killed --however they were killed-- on April 9.
71 Yellin-Mor, op.cit.
72 "Agency Berates Massacre," Palestine Post, 12 April 1948, p.1.
73 Israel Ministry of Defense, David Shaltiel, Jerusalem 1948 (Tel Aviv: Israel Ministry of Defense, 1981), p.139. In what may be another instance of post-battle recriminations, but this time coming from the IZL-Lehi side, Lehi member Reuven Greenberg later claimed that after the battle, a Palmach member killed an Arab civilian with a small explosive charge. (Testimony of Reuven Greenberg, MZ.) Lehi veteran Baruch Nadel described a similar incident in Kati Marton's A Death in Jerusalem (New York: Pantheon, 1994, p.29), although Marton translated Nadel's reference to the perpetrator as "an Israeli" (rather than "a Palmach member") which seems inaccurate, since the State of Israel did not yet exist at the time of the incident. Yisrael Segal, correspondent for the leftwing Israeli magazine Koteret Raishit, examined Greenberg's testimony and concluded that it "is almost certainly drawn mainly from the imagination." Segal notes that Greenberg's account of the killing of the Arab "has no corroboration from other testimonies." Questioning Greenberg's credibility as a witness, Segal characterizes him as "a man with a checkered past who was involved in many political and criminal capers in the first years of the state...Greenberg knew how to tell tales." (Segal, "The Deir Yassin File" [Hebrew], Koteret Raishit, 19 January 1983, p.8.)
74 Decision of the Board of Appeals in Appeal 89/51 (Aryeh Halperin v. Benefits Officer), File: kaf 4-10/2, MZ.
75 Milstein, pp.269-270 (interview with Alfred Engel, 7 December 1987).
76 Spicehandler testimony in Martin, op.cit.
77 Silver, p.95
78 David Shaltiel, Jerusalem 1948, p.140; Aryeh Yitzhaki, "Deir Yassin--Not Through a Warped Mirror," Yediot Ahronot, 14 April 1972, p.17.
79 Thurston Clarke, By Blood and Fire: July 22, 1946 - The Attack on Jerusalem's King David Hotel (New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1981), p.224; Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle for the Holy Land, 1935-48 (New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1979) p.156.
80 A long excerpt from Catling's report may be found in Collins and Lapierre, p.276.
81 Spicehandler testimony in Martin, op.cit.
82 Milstein, p.274 (interviews with Shimon Monita, Moshe Idelstein, Yona Feitelson, and Mordechai Gihon).
83 Menachem Begin, The Revolt (Los Angeles: Nash, 1972), p.163.
84 Milstein, pp.268-269 (interview with Mordechai Ra'anan).
85 Milstein, p.269 (Testimony of Meir Pa'il).
86 Milstein, p.273 (interview with David Cohen, 18 July 1987). Pa'il used the figure in Yediot Ahronot, 20 April 1972. But in 1989, he wrote that in his report to Galili, "the number of those murdered was not mentioned at all, since we did not then know the number." (Uri Milstein, "The Speech Which Was Not Given" [Hebrew], Ha'aretz, 10 March 1989, p. 15.)
87 Silver, op.cit., pp.95-96.
88 Kanani and Zitawi, Deir Yassin (Bir Zeit study), p.5.
89 Ibid., p.7.
90 Ibid., pp.7-.8.
91 Ibid., p.57.
92 Milstein, p.273 (interview with Mordechai Ra'anan).
93 "Arabs Charge Cruelty," Palestine Post, 12 April 1948, p.1; Schmidt, "Arabs Say Kastel...," op.cit.
94 The relevant sections of Reynier's report are translated in Walid Khalidi, ed. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1987), pp.761-766.
95 Dana Adams Schmidt, Armageddon in the Middle East (New York: The John Day Company, 1974), pp.4-5.
96 Dana Adams Schmidt, "200 Arabs Killed, Stronghold Taken," New York Times, 10 April 1948, p.6.
97 Schmidt, Armageddon, p.5.
98 Dana Adams Schmidt, "Arabs Say Kastel Has Been Retaken; Jews Deny Claim," New York Times, 12 April 1948, p.1.
99 "A Haganah Plane Downed by British," New York Times, 13 April 1948, p.7.
100 Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), p.480, n.60.
101 "A Haganah Plane...," op.cit.
102 "Palestine: War for the Jerusalem Road," Time, 19 April 1948, pp.34-35.
103 R.M. Graves, Experiment in Anarchy (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1949), p.179.
104 William Polk, David Stamler, and Edmund Asfour Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine (Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1957), p.290; Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1965), p.351.
105 Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection: What Price Peace? (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1978), p.795, n.23; David McDowall, Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p.298, n.44; Desmond Stewart, The Middle East: Temple of Janus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), p.314; Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: False Messiah (London: Ink Links Ltd, 1979), p.303, n.45.
106 Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfilment: Palestine 1917-1949 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1949), p.160.
107 Weinstock, op.cit., p.305, n.23; Lilienthal, op.cit., p.795, n.40; Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), p.150, n.64; Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle: The Struggle for the Holy Land, 1935-48 (New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1979), pp.354-355.
108 McDowall, op.cit., p.299, n.44; David Gilmour, "The 1948 Arab Exodus: 2. What Really Happened," Middle East International No.288 (21 November 1985), pp.15-17.
109 Jon Kimche, Seven Fallen Pillars: The Middle East, 1915-1950 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1950) is cited by, among other books, Sydney D. Bailey, Four Arab-Israeli Wars and the Peace Process (London: Macmillan, 1990); Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: South End Press, 1983); and David Gilmour, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, 1917-1980 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1980).
110 Israel's Struggle for Peace (New York: Israel Office of Information, 1960), pp.41-42.
111 Background Notes on Current Themes - No.6: Dir Yassin (Jerusalem: Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Information Division, 16 March 1969), pp. 1-2.
112 Ibid., pp.2-3.
113 Ibid., p.4
114 Ibid., p.5-6.
115 Ibid., p.6.
116 Quoted in Shaul Mishal and Reuben Aharoni, Speaking Stones: Communiques from the Intifada Underground (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), p.223.
117 Abu Iyad with Eric Rouleau, My Home, My Land (New York: Times Books, 1981), p.4.
118 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Times Books, 1979), p.44.
119 Issa Nakhleh, on p.570 of John Norton Moore, ed., The Arab Israeli Conflict - Volume I: Readings (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974).
120 Sami Hadawi and Robert John, Palestine Diary - Volume Two: 1945-1948 (New York: New World Press, 1972), p.328.
121 Eugene M. Fisher and M. Cherif Bassiouni, Storm Over the Arab World: A People in Revolution (Chicago: Follett, 1972), p.44.
122 This allegation appears in, for example, William R. Polk, The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century (New York: St.Martin's Press, 1979), p.144: John Marlowe, The Seat of Pilate: An Account of the Palestine Mandate (London: The Cresset Press, 1959), p.245; and George Lenczowksi, The Middle East in World Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), p.400.
123 William Polk, David Stamler, and Edmund Asfour Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine (Boston: Beacon Hill Press, 1957), p.291. 124 Cheryl A. Rubenberg, in Roselle Tekiner, Samir Abed-Rabbo, and Norton Mezvinsky, eds. Anti-Zionism: Analytical Reflections (Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1989), p.189.
125 Geoffrey Furlonge, Palestine is My Country: The Story of Musa Alami (John Murray, London 1969), p.155
126 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p.333.
127 New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982, p.62.
128 New York: Praeger, 1975.
129 Eshkol: The Man and the Nation (New York: Pitman, 1969), p.130.
130 Samuel Katz, Days of Fire (Jerusalem: Steimatzky's, 1968), p.215.
131 Said, op.cit., p.44.
132 Gerald Kaufman, To Build the Promised Land (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), p.139.
133 Lois A. Aroian and Richard P. Mitchell, The Modern Middle East and North Africa (New York and London: Macmillan and Collier Macmillan, 1984), p.245.
134 Christina Jones, The Untempered Wind: Forty Years in Palestine (London: Longman, 1975), p.90.
135 Martin Wright, ed. Israel and the Palestinians (London: Longman, 1989), p.24).
136 Jamal R. Nassar, The Palestine Liberation Organization: From Armed Struggle to the Declaration of Independence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1991), p.24, n.57.
137 Punyapriya Dasgupta, Cheated by the World: The Palestinian Experience (London: Sangam Books, 1988), p.82, n.39.
138 Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest: Palestine Between 1914-1979 (Delmar, NY: The Caravan Books, 1979), pp.80-81.
139 Menachem Begin, The Revolt: The Memoirs of the Commander of the Irgun Zvai Leumi in Eretz Yisrael [Hebrew](Tel Aviv: Achiasaf Publishers, 1950).
140 Maxime Rodinson, Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? (New York: Monad Press, 1973), p.114, n.109; Erskine Childers, "The Other Exodus," The Spectator, 12 May 1961; Stewart Perowne, "Levant Dusk: The Refugee Situation," in Walter Z. Laqueur, ed., The Middle East in Transition (New York: Praeger, 1958), p.222.
141 Desmond Stewart, The Middle East: Temple of Janus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), p.314; Desmond Stewart, The Palestinians: Victims of Expediency (London: Quartet Books, 1982), p.62.
142 Kenneth Cragg, This Year in Jerusalem: Israel in Experience (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982), p.56.
143 "Israel and Judaism," Christian Century, 16 March 1949, p.328.
144 Andrew Sinclair, Jerusalem: The Endless Crusade (New York: Crown, 1995), p.232.
145 Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New York: World Publishing, 1970), pp. xi, 138-149.
146 J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929-1949 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979), p.296.
147 Melvin I. Urofsky, We Are One! American Jewry and Israel (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1978), p.485. Bell is also the only source cited for the Deir Yassin massacre charge in Stephen Green's Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984), p.260, n.15.
148 Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), pp.274-276.
149 David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1977). Collins and Lapierre wrote, "Its [Deir Yassin's] assailants killed, they looted, and finally they raped." (p.275) Hirst wrote, "The attackers killed, looted, and finally they raped." (p.125) Books listing Hirst as a source include: Yemima Rosenthal, ed. Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel: Volume 3 - Armistice Negotiations with the Arab States December 1948-July 1949 (Jerusalem: Government Printer, 1981; Dilip Hiro, Inside the Middle East (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982); John W. Amos II, Palestinian Resistance: Organization of a Nationalist Movement ((New York: Pergamon Press, 1980); and David Gilmour, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians 1917-1980 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1980).
150 Collins and Lapierre, op.cit., p.584.
151 Kimmerling and Migdal, op.cit., p.151.
152 Kanani and Zitawi, Deir Yassin (Bir Zeit study), p.7.
153 Tessler, op.cit., p.291.
154 Ibid., pp.292-293.
155 Yaacov Shimoni and Evyatar Levine, eds.Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20th Century (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Books, 1974, p.36; Congressional Quarterly, The Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1991), p.13; Eli Barnavi, ed.Historical Atlas of the Jewish People (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), pp.244, 276; Judah Gribetz, ed. Timetables of Jewish History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p.495; Bernard Reich, ed.Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), pp.128-129, 247.
156 Peretz has served as an official of a number of extreme-left organizations, including the Jewish Committee on the Middle East (as a member of its Advisory Committee), which calls for halting all U.S. aid to Israel; the Jewish Peace Lobby (as a member of its Policy Council), which lobbies in Washington for PLO statehood; Breira (as a member of its board of directors), the first American Jewish group to call for an Israeli retreat to the pre-1967 borders; and the Committee for New Alternatives in the Middle East (as a member of its Steering Committee), which lobbied against U.S. arms shipments to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Peretz's two Deir Yassin entries appeared in Reeva S. Simon, Philip Mattar, and Richard W. Bulliet, eds. Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster - Macmillan, 1996), pp.546-547, and Don Peretz, Library in a Book: The Arab-Israel Dispute (New York: Facts on File, 1996), pp.39, 121.

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Islamists Massacre Two Coptic Families in Egypt - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

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Islamists Massacre Two Coptic Families in Egypt - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

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Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader > Citizens 4 Freedom

2011-02-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader > Citizens 4 Freedom

The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jiha.

The Avalon Project : Hamas Covenant 1988

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The Avalon Project : Hamas Covenant 1988

Hamas Covenant 1988
The Covenant
of the
Islamic Resistance Movement
18 August 1988
In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

"Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed." (Al-Imran - verses 109-111).

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

"The Islamic world is on fire. Each of us should pour some water, no matter how little, to extinguish whatever one can without waiting for the others." (Sheikh Amjad al-Zahawi, of blessed memory).

In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

Introduction
Praise be unto Allah, to whom we resort for help, and whose forgiveness, guidance and support we seek; Allah bless the Prophet and grant him salvation, his companions and supporters, and to those who carried out his message and adopted his laws - everlasting prayers and salvation as long as the earth and heaven will last. Hereafter:

O People:
Out of the midst of troubles and the sea of suffering, out of the palpitations of faithful hearts and cleansed arms; out of the sense of duty, and in response to Allah's command, the call has gone out rallying people together and making them follow the ways of Allah, leading them to have determined will in order to fulfill their role in life, to overcome all obstacles, and surmount the difficulties on the way. Constant preparation has continued and so has the readiness to sacrifice life and all that is precious for the sake of Allah.

Thus it was that the nucleus (of the movement) was formed and started to pave its way through the tempestuous sea of hopes and expectations, of wishes and yearnings, of troubles and obstacles, of pain and challenges, both inside and outside.

When the idea was ripe, the seed grew and the plant struck root in the soil of reality, away from passing emotions, and hateful haste. The Islamic Resistance Movement emerged to carry out its role through striving for the sake of its Creator, its arms intertwined with those of all the fighters for the liberation of Palestine. The spirits of its fighters meet with the spirits of all the fighters who have sacrificed their lives on the soil of Palestine, ever since it was conquered by the companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, and until this day.

This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.

Thus we see them coming on the horizon "and you shall learn about it hereafter" "Allah hath written, Verily I will prevail, and my apostles: for Allah is strong and mighty." (The Dispute - verse 21).

"Say to them, This is my way: I invite you to Allah, by an evident demonstration; both I and he who followeth me; and, praise be unto Allah! I am not an idolator." (Joseph - verse 107).

Hamas (means) strength and bravery -(according to) Al-Mua'jam al-Wasit: c1.
Definition of the Movement

Ideological Starting-Points

Article One:
The Islamic Resistance Movement: The Movement's programme is Islam. From it, it draws its ideas, ways of thinking and understanding of the universe, life and man. It resorts to it for judgement in all its conduct, and it is inspired by it for guidance of its steps.

The Islamic Resistance Movement's Relation With the Moslem Brotherhood Group:

Article Two:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine. Moslem Brotherhood Movement is a universal organization which constitutes the largest Islamic movement in modern times. It is characterised by its deep understanding, accurate comprehension and its complete embrace of all Islamic concepts of all aspects of life, culture, creed, politics, economics, education, society, justice and judgement, the spreading of Islam, education, art, information, science of the occult and conversion to Islam.

Structure and Formation

Article Three:
The basic structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement consists of Moslems who have given their allegiance to Allah whom they truly worship, - "I have created the jinn and humans only for the purpose of worshipping" - who know their duty towards themselves, their families and country. In all that, they fear Allah and raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.

"But we will oppose truth to vanity, and it shall confound the same; and behold, it shall vanish away." (Prophets - verse 18).
Article Four:
The Islamic Resistance Movement welcomes every Moslem who embraces its faith, ideology, follows its programme, keeps its secrets, and wants to belong to its ranks and carry out the duty. Allah will certainly reward such one.

Time and Place Extent of the Islamic Resistance Movement:

Article Five:
Time extent of the Islamic Resistance Movement: By adopting Islam as its way of life, the Movement goes back to the time of the birth of the Islamic message, of the righteous ancestor, for Allah is its target, the Prophet is its example and the Koran is its constitution. Its extent in place is anywhere that there are Moslems who embrace Islam as their way of life everywhere in the globe. This being so, it extends to the depth of the earth and reaches out to the heaven.

"Dost thou not see how Allah putteth forth a parable; representing a good word, as a good tree, whose root is firmly fixed in the earth, and whose branches reach unto heaven; which bringeth forth its fruit in all seasons, by the will of its Lord? Allah propoundeth parables unto men, that they may be instructed." (Abraham - verses 24-25).
Characteristics and Independence:

Article Six:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.

How excellent was the Moslem poet, Mohamed Ikbal, when he wrote:

"If faith is lost, there is no security and there is no life for him who does not adhere to religion. He who accepts life without religion, has taken annihilation as his companion for life."
The Universality of the Islamic Resistance Movement:

Article Seven:
As a result of the fact that those Moslems who adhere to the ways of the Islamic Resistance Movement spread all over the world, rally support for it and its stands, strive towards enhancing its struggle, the Movement is a universal one. It is well-equipped for that because of the clarity of its ideology, the nobility of its aim and the loftiness of its objectives.

On this basis, the Movement should be viewed and evaluated, and its role be recognised. He who denies its right, evades supporting it and turns a blind eye to facts, whether intentionally or unintentionally, would awaken to see that events have overtaken him and with no logic to justify his attitude. One should certainly learn from past examples.

The injustice of next-of-kin is harder to bear than the smite of the Indian sword.

"We have also sent down unto thee the book of the Koran with truth, confirming that scripture which was revealed before it; and preserving the same safe from corruption. Judge therefore between them according to that which Allah hath revealed; and follow not their desires, by swerving from the truth which hath come unto thee. Unto every of you have we given a law, and an open path; and if Allah had pleased, he had surely made you one people; but he hath thought it fit to give you different laws, that he might try you in that which he hath given you respectively. Therefore strive to excel each other in good works; unto Allah shall ye all return, and then will he declare unto you that concerning which ye have disagreed." (The Table, verse 48).
The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the links in the chain of the struggle against the Zionist invaders. It goes back to 1939, to the emergence of the martyr Izz al-Din al Kissam and his brethren the fighters, members of Moslem Brotherhood. It goes on to reach out and become one with another chain that includes the struggle of the Palestinians and Moslem Brotherhood in the 1948 war and the Jihad operations of the Moslem Brotherhood in 1968 and after.

Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
The Slogan of the Islamic Resistance Movement:

Article Eight:
Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.

Objectives

Incentives and Objectives:

Article Nine:
The Islamic Resistance Movement found itself at a time when Islam has disappeared from life. Thus rules shook, concepts were upset, values changed and evil people took control, oppression and darkness prevailed, cowards became like tigers: homelands were usurped, people were scattered and were caused to wander all over the world, the state of justice disappeared and the state of falsehood replaced it. Nothing remained in its right place. Thus, when Islam is absent from the arena, everything changes. From this state of affairs the incentives are drawn.

As for the objectives: They are the fighting against the false, defeating it and vanquishing it so that justice could prevail, homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the mu'azen emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places and Allah is our helper.

"...and if Allah had not prevented men, the one by the other, verily the earth had been corrupted: but Allah is beneficient towards his creatures." (The Cow - verse 251).
Article Ten:
As the Islamic Resistance Movement paves its way, it will back the oppressed and support the wronged with all its might. It will spare no effort to bring about justice and defeat injustice, in word and deed, in this place and everywhere it can reach and have influence therein.

Strategies and Methods

Strategies of the Islamic Resistance Movement: Palestine Is Islamic aqf:

Article Eleven:
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land - whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions between the Caliph of the Moslems, Omar bin-el-Khatab and companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, it was decided that the land should be left with its owners who could benefit by its fruit. As for the real ownership of the land and the land itself, it should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day. Those who are on the land, are there only to benefit from its fruit. This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.

"Verily, this is a certain truth. Wherefore praise the name of thy Lord, the great Allah." (The Inevitable - verse 95).
Homeland and Nationalism from the Point of View of the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine:

Article Twelve:
Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission.

Nothing of the sort is to be found in any other regime. This is an undisputed fact. If other nationalist movements are connected with materialistic, human or regional causes, nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement has all these elements as well as the more important elements that give it soul and life. It is connected to the source of spirit and the granter of life, hoisting in the sky of the homeland the heavenly banner that joins earth and heaven with a strong bond.

If Moses comes and throws his staff, both witch and magic are annulled.

"Now is the right direction manifestly distinguished from deceit: whoever therefore shall deny Tagut, and believe in Allah, he shall surely take hold with a strong handle, which shall not be broken; Allah is he who heareth and seeth." (The Cow - Verse 256).
Peaceful Solutions, Initiatives and International Conferences:

Article Thirteen:
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."

Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?

"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith:

"The people of Syria are Allah's lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation."
The Three Circles:

Article Fourteen:
The question of the liberation of Palestine is bound to three circles: the Palestinian circle, the Arab circle and the Islamic circle. Each of these circles has its role in the struggle against Zionism. Each has its duties, and it is a horrible mistake and a sign of deep ignorance to overlook any of these circles. Palestine is an Islamic land which has the first of the two kiblahs (direction to which Moslems turn in praying), the third of the holy (Islamic) sanctuaries, and the point of departure for Mohamed's midnight journey to the seven heavens (i.e. Jerusalem).

"Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs; for Allah is he who heareth, and seeth." (The Night-Journey - verse 1).
Since this is the case, liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem.

The day the problem is dealt with on this basis, when the three circles mobilize their capabilities, the present state of affairs will change and the day of liberation will come nearer.

"Verily ye are stronger than they, by reason of the terror cast into their breasts from Allah. This, because they are not people of prudence." (The Emigration - verse 13).
The Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is an Individual Duty:

Article Fifteen:
The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.

It is necessary that scientists, educators and teachers, information and media people, as well as the educated masses, especially the youth and sheikhs of the Islamic movements, should take part in the operation of awakening (the masses). It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah el-Din (Saladin). The Crusaders realised that it was impossible to defeat the Moslems without first having ideological invasion pave the way by upsetting their thoughts, disfiguring their heritage and violating their ideals. Only then could they invade with soldiers. This, in its turn, paved the way for the imperialistic invasion that made Allenby declare on entering Jerusalem: "Only now have the Crusades ended." General Guru stood at Salah el-Din's grave and said: "We have returned, O Salah el-Din." Imperialism has helped towards the strengthening of ideological invasion, deepening, and still does, its roots. All this has paved the way towards the loss of Palestine.

It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis. Palestine contains Islamic holy sites. In it there is al- Aqsa Mosque which is bound to the great Mosque in Mecca in an inseparable bond as long as heaven and earth speak of Isra` (Mohammed's midnight journey to the seven heavens) and Mi'raj (Mohammed's ascension to the seven heavens from Jerusalem).

"The bond of one day for the sake of Allah is better than the world and whatever there is on it. The place of one's whip in Paradise is far better than the world and whatever there is on it. A worshipper's going and coming in the service of Allah is better than the world and whatever there is on it." (As related by al-Bukhari, Moslem, al-Tarmdhi and Ibn Maja).
"I swear by the holder of Mohammed's soul that I would like to invade and be killed for the sake of Allah, then invade and be killed, and then invade again and be killed." (As related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
The Education of the Generations:

Article Sixteen:
It is necessary to follow Islamic orientation in educating the Islamic generations in our region by teaching the religious duties, comprehensive study of the Koran, the study of the Prophet's Sunna (his sayings and doings), and learning about Islamic history and heritage from their authentic sources. This should be done by specialised and learned people, using a curriculum that would healthily form the thoughts and faith of the Moslem student. Side by side with this, a comprehensive study of the enemy, his human and financial capabilities, learning about his points of weakness and strength, and getting to know the forces supporting and helping him, should also be included. Also, it is important to be acquainted with the current events, to follow what is new and to study the analysis and commentaries made of these events. Planning for the present and future, studying every trend appearing, is a must so that the fighting Moslem would live knowing his aim, objective and his way in the midst of what is going on around him.

"O my son, verily every matter, whether good or bad, though it be the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, and be hidden in a rock, or in the heavens, or in the earth, Allah will bring the same to light; for Allah is clear-sighted and knowing. O my son, be constant at prayer, and command that which is just, and forbid that which is evil: and be patient under the afflictions which shall befall thee; for this is a duty absolutely incumbent on all men. Distort not thy face out of contempt to men, neither walk in the earth with insolence; for Allah loveth no arrogant, vain-glorious person." (Lokman - verses 16-18).
The Role of the Moslem Woman:

Article Seventeen:
The Moslem woman has a role no less important than that of the moslem man in the battle of liberation. She is the maker of men. Her role in guiding and educating the new generations is great. The enemies have realised the importance of her role. They consider that if they are able to direct and bring her up they way they wish, far from Islam, they would have won the battle. That is why you find them giving these attempts constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.

Article Eighteen:
Woman in the home of the fighting family, whether she is a mother or a sister, plays the most important role in looking after the family, rearing the children and embuing them with moral values and thoughts derived from Islam. She has to teach them to perform the religious duties in preparation for the role of fighting awaiting them. That is why it is necessary to pay great attention to schools and the curriculum followed in educating Moslem girls, so that they would grow up to be good mothers, aware of their role in the battle of liberation.

She has to be of sufficient knowledge and understanding where the performance of housekeeping matters are concerned, because economy and avoidance of waste of the family budget, is one of the requirements for the ability to continue moving forward in the difficult conditions surrounding us. She should put before her eyes the fact that the money available to her is just like blood which should never flow except through the veins so that both children and grown-ups could continue to live.

"Verily, the Moslems of either sex, and the true believers of either sex, and the devout men, and the devout women, and the men of veracity, and the women of veracity, and the patient men, and the patient women, and the humble men, and the humble women, and the alms-givers of either sex who remember Allah frequently; for them hath Allah prepared forgiveness and a great reward." (The Confederates - verse 25).
The Role of Islamic Art in the Battle of Liberation:

Article Nineteen:
Art has regulations and measures by which it can be determined whether it is Islamic or pre-Islamic (Jahili) art. The issues of Islamic liberation are in need of Islamic art that would take the spirit high, without raising one side of human nature above the other, but rather raise all of them harmoniously an in equilibrium.

Man is a unique and wonderful creature, made out of a handful of clay and a breath from Allah. Islamic art addresses man on this basis, while pre-Islamic art addresses the body giving preference to the clay component in it.

The book, the article, the bulletin, the sermon, the thesis, the popular poem, the poetic ode, the song, the play and others, contain the characteristics of Islamic art, then these are among the requirements of ideological mobilization, renewed food for the journey and recreation for the soul. The road is long and suffering is plenty. The soul will be bored, but Islamic art renews the energies, resurrects the movement, arousing in them lofty meanings and proper conduct. "Nothing can improve the self if it is in retreat except shifting from one mood to another."

All this is utterly serious and no jest, for those who are fighters do not jest.

Social Mutual Responsibility:

Article Twenty:
Moslem society is a mutually responsible society. The Prophet, prayers and greetings be unto him, said: "Blessed are the generous, whether they were in town or on a journey, who have collected all that they had and shared it equally among themselves."

The Islamic spirit is what should prevail in every Moslem society. The society that confronts a vicious enemy which acts in a way similar to Nazism, making no differentiation between man and woman, between children and old people - such a society is entitled to this Islamic spirit. Our enemy relies on the methods of collective punishment. He has deprived people of their homeland and properties, pursued them in their places of exile and gathering, breaking bones, shooting at women, children and old people, with or without a reason. The enemy has opened detention camps where thousands and thousands of people are thrown and kept under sub-human conditions. Added to this, are the demolition of houses, rendering children orphans, meting cruel sentences against thousands of young people, and causing them to spend the best years of their lives in the dungeons of prisons.

In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children. Their policy of striking fear in the heart is meant for all. They attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money and threatening their honour. They deal with people as if they were the worst war criminals. Deportation from the homeland is a kind of murder.

To counter these deeds, it is necessary that social mutual responsibility should prevail among the people. The enemy should be faced by the people as a single body which if one member of it should complain, the rest of the body would respond by feeling the same pains.

Article Twenty-One:
Mutual social responsibility means extending assistance, financial or moral, to all those who are in need and joining in the execution of some of the work. Members of the Islamic Resistance Movement should consider the interests of the masses as their own personal interests. They must spare no effort in achieving and preserving them. They must prevent any foul play with the future of the upcoming generations and anything that could cause loss to society. The masses are part of them and they are part of the masses. Their strength is theirs, and their future is theirs. Members of the Islamic Resistance Movement should share the people's joy and grief, adopt the demands of the public and whatever means by which they could be realised. The day that such a spirit prevails, brotherliness would deepen, cooperation, sympathy and unity will be enhanced and the ranks will be solidified to confront the enemies.

Supportive Forces Behind the Enemy:

Article Twenty-Two:
For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

"So often as they shall kindle a fire for war, Allah shall extinguish it; and they shall set their minds to act corruptly in the earth, but Allah loveth not the corrupt doers." (The Table - verse 64).
The imperialistic forces in the Capitalist West and Communist East, support the enemy with all their might, in money and in men. These forces take turns in doing that. The day Islam appears, the forces of infidelity would unite to challenge it, for the infidels are of one nation.

"O true believers, contract not an intimate friendship with any besides yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate. We have already shown you signs of their ill will towards you, if ye understand." (The Family of Imran - verse 118).
It is not in vain that the verse is ended with Allah's words "if ye understand."

Our Attitudes Towards:

A. Islamic Movements:

Article Twenty-Three:
The Islamic Resistance Movement views other Islamic movements with respect and appreciation. If it were at variance with them on one point or opinion, it is in agreement with them on other points and understandings. It considers these movements, if they reveal good intentions and dedication to Allah, that they fall into the category of those who are trying hard since they act within the Islamic circle. Each active person has his share.

The Islamic Resistance Movement considers all these movements as a fund for itself. It prays to Allah for guidance and directions for all and it spares no effort to keep the banner of unity raised, ever striving for its realisation in accordance with the Koran and the Prophet's directives.

"And cleave all of you unto the covenant of Allah, and depart not from it, and remember the favour of Allah towards you: since ye were enemies, and he reconciled your hearts, and ye became companions and brethren by his favour: and ye were on the brink of a pit of fire, and he delivered you thence. Allah declareth unto you his signs, that ye may be directed." (The Family of Imran - Verse 102).
Article Twenty-Four:
The Islamic Resistance Movement does not allow slandering or speaking ill of individuals or groups, for the believer does not indulge in such malpractices. It is necessary to differentiate between this behaviour and the stands taken by certain individuals and groups. Whenever those stands are erroneous, the Islamic Resistance Movement preserves the right to expound the error and to warn against it. It will strive to show the right path and to judge the case in question with objectivity. Wise conduct is indeed the target of the believer who follows it wherever he discerns it.

"Allah loveth not the speaking ill of anyone in public, unless he who is injured call for assistance; and Allah heareth and knoweth: whether ye publish a good action, or conceal it, or forgive evil, verily Allah is gracious and powerful." (Women - verses 147-148).
B. Nationalist Movements in the Palestinian Arena:

Article Twenty-Five:
The Islamic Resistance Movement respects these movements and appreciates their circumstances and the conditions surrounding and affecting them. It encourages them as long as they do not give their allegiance to the Communist East or the Crusading West. It confirms to all those who are integrated in it, or sympathetic towards it, that the Islamic Resistance Movement is a fighting movement that has a moral and enlightened look of life and the way it should cooperate with the other (movements). It detests opportunism and desires only the good of people, individuals and groups alike. It does not seek material gains, personal fame, nor does it look for a reward from others. It works with its own resources and whatever is at its disposal "and prepare for them whatever force you can", for the fulfilment of the duty, and the earning of Allah's favour. It has no other desire than that.

The Movement assures all the nationalist trends operating in the Palestinian arena for the liberation of Palestine, that it is there for their support and assistance. It will never be more than that, both in words and deeds, now and in the future. It is there to bring together and not to divide, to preserve and not to squander, to unify and not to throw asunder. It evaluates every good word, sincere effort and good offices. It closes the door in the face of side disagreements and does not lend an ear to rumours and slanders, while at the same time fully realising the right for self-defence.

Anything contrary or contradictory to these trends, is a lie disseminated by enemies or their lackeys for the purpose of sowing confusion, disrupting the ranks and occupy them with side issues.

"O true believers, if a wicked man come unto you with a tale, inquire strictly into the truth thereof; lest ye hurt people through ignorance, and afterwards repent of what ye have done." (The Inner Apartments - verse 6).
Article Twenty-Six:
In viewing the Palestinian nationalist movements that give allegiance neither to the East nor the West, in this positive way, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not refrain from discussing new situations on the regional or international levels where the Palestinian question is concerned. It does that in such an objective manner revealing the extent of how much it is in harmony or contradiction with the national interests in the light of the Islamic point of view.

C. The Palestinian Liberation Organization:

Article Twenty-Seven:
The Palestinian Liberation Organization is the closest to the heart of the Islamic Resistance Movement. It contains the father and the brother, the next of kin and the friend. The Moslem does not estrange himself from his father, brother, next of kin or friend. Our homeland is one, our situation is one, our fate is one and the enemy is a joint enemy to all of us.

Because of the situations surrounding the formation of the Organization, of the ideological confusion prevailing in the Arab world as a result of the ideological invasion under whose influence the Arab world has fallen since the defeat of the Crusaders and which was, and still is, intensified through orientalists, missionaries and imperialists, the Organization adopted the idea of the secular state. And that it how we view it.

Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies.

That is why, with all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation Organization - and what it can develop into - and without belittling its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser.

"Who will be adverse to the religion of Abraham, but he whose mind is infatuated? (The Cow - verse 130).
The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers, and fuel for its fire that will burn the enemies.

Until such a day, and we pray to Allah that it will be soon, the Islamic Resistance Movement's stand towards the PLO is that of the son towards his father, the brother towards his brother, and the relative to relative, suffers his pain and supports him in confronting the enemies, wishing him to be wise and well-guided.

"Stand by your brother, for he who is brotherless is like the fighter who goes to battle without arms. One's cousin is the wing one flies with - could the bird fly without wings?"
D. Arab and Islamic Countries:

Article Twenty-Eight:
The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

Arab countries surrounding Israel are asked to open their borders before the fighters from among the Arab and Islamic nations so that they could consolidate their efforts with those of their Moslem brethren in Palestine.

As for the other Arab and Islamic countries, they are asked to facilitate the movement of the fighters from and to it, and this is the least thing they could do.

We should not forget to remind every Moslem that when the Jews conquered the Holy City in 1967, they stood on the threshold of the Aqsa Mosque and proclaimed that "Mohammed is dead, and his descendants are all women."

Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."

E. Nationalist and Religious Groupings, Institutions, Intellectuals, The Arab and Islamic World:

The Islamic Resistance Movement hopes that all these groupings will side with it in all spheres, would support it, adopt its stand and solidify its activities and moves, work towards rallying support for it so that the Islamic people will be a base and a stay for it, supplying it with strategic depth an all human material and informative spheres, in time and in place. This should be done through the convening of solidarity conferences, the issuing of explanatory bulletins, favourable articles and booklets, enlightening the masses regarding the Palestinian issue, clarifying what confronts it and the conspiracies woven around it. They should mobilize the Islamic nations, ideologically, educationally and culturally, so that these peoples would be equipped to perform their role in the decisive battle of liberation, just as they did when they vanquished the Crusaders and the Tatars and saved human civilization. Indeed, that is not difficult for Allah.

"Allah hath written, Verily I will prevail, and my apostles: for Allah is strong and mighty." (The Dispute - verse 21).
Article Thirty:
Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters and teachers, and all the various sectors in the Arab and Islamic world - all of them are called upon to perform their role, and to fulfill their duty, because of the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control, as well as the consequences that all this lead to in the greater part of the world.

Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity - together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah's banner higher and higher - all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah's sake.

"Whosoever mobilises a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a fighter. Whosoever supports the relatives of a fighter, he himself is a fighter." (related by al-Bukhari, Moslem, Abu-Dawood and al-Tarmadhi).
F. Followers of Other Religions: The Islamic Resistance Movement Is A Humanistic Movement:

Article Thirty-One:
The Islamic Resistance Movement is a humanistic movement. It takes care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions. It does not antagonize anyone of them except if it is antagonized by it or stands in its way to hamper its moves and waste its efforts.

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.

It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror. Everyone of them is at variance with his fellow-religionists, not to speak about followers of other religionists. Past and present history are full of examples to prove this fact.

"They will not fight against you in a body, except in fenced towns, or from behind walls. Their strength in war among themselves is great: thou thinkest them to be united; but their hearts are divided. This, because they are people who do not understand." (The Emigration - verse 14).
Islam confers upon everyone his legitimate rights. Islam prevents the incursion on other people's rights. The Zionist Nazi activities against our people will not last for long. "For the state of injustice lasts but one day, while the state of justice lasts till Doomsday."

"As to those who have not borne arms against you on account of religion, nor turned you out of your dwellings, Allah forbiddeth you not to deal kindly with them, and to behave justly towards them; for Allah loveth those who act justly." (The Tried - verse 8).
The Attempt to Isolate the Palestinian People:

Article Thirty-Two:
World Zionism, together with imperialistic powers, try through a studied plan and an intelligent strategy to remove one Arab state after another from the circle of struggle against Zionism, in order to have it finally face the Palestinian people only. Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of the struggle, through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. They are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements and to bring them outside the circle of struggle.

The Islamic Resistance Movement calls on Arab and Islamic nations to take up the line of serious and persevering action to prevent the success of this horrendous plan, to warn the people of the danger eminating from leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism. Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that. "for whoso shall turn his back unto them on that day, unless he turneth aside to fight, or retreateth to another party of the faithful, shall draw on himself the indignation of Allah, and his abode shall be hell; an ill journey shall it be thither." (The Spoils - verse 16). There is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one's country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values. Let every person know that he is responsible before Allah, for "the doer of the slightest good deed is rewarded in like, and the does of the slightest evil deed is also rewarded in like."

The Islamic Resistance Movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road. The Movement adds its efforts to the efforts of all those who are active in the Palestinian arena. Arab and Islamic Peoples should augment by further steps on their part; Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews.

"..and we have put enmity and hatred between them, until the day of resurrection. So often as they shall kindle a fire of war, Allah shall extinguish it; and they shall set their minds to act corruptly in the earth, but Allah loveth not the corrupt doers." (The Table - verse 64).
Article Thirty-Three:
The Islamic Resistance Movement, being based on the common coordinated and interdependent conceptions of the laws of the universe, and flowing in the stream of destiny in confronting and fighting the enemies in defence of the Moslems and Islamic civilization and sacred sites, the first among which is the Aqsa Mosque, urges the Arab and Islamic peoples, their governments, popular and official groupings, to fear Allah where their view of the Islamic Resistance Movement and their dealings with it are concerned. They should back and support it, as Allah wants them to, extending to it more and more funds till Allah's purpose is achieved when ranks will close up, fighters join other fighters and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty while loudly proclaiming: Hail to Jihad. Their cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah's victory comes about.

"And Allah will certainly assist him who shall be on his side: for Allah is strong and mighty." (The Pilgrimage - verse 40).
The Testimony of History

Across History in Confronting the Invaders:

Article Thirty-Four:
Palestine is the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, had himself pointed to this fact in the noble Hadith in which he called on his honourable companion, Ma'adh ben-Jabal, saying: O Ma'ath, Allah throw open before you, when I am gone, Syria, from Al-Arish to the Euphrates. Its men, women and slaves will stay firmly there till the Day of Judgement. Whoever of you should choose one of the Syrian shores, or the Holy Land, he will be in constant struggle till the Day of Judgement."

Expansionists have more than once put their eye on Palestine which they attacked with their armies to fulfill their designs on it. Thus it was that the Crusaders came with their armies, bringing with them their creed and carrying their Cross. They were able to defeat the Moslems for a while, but the Moslems were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner, united their word, hallowed the name of Allah and surged out fighting under the leadership of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi. They fought for almost twenty years and at the end the Crusaders were defeated and Palestine was liberated.

"Say unto those who believe not, Ye shall be overcome, and thrown together into hell; an unhappy couch it shall be." (The Family of Imran - verse 12).
This is the only way to liberate Palestine. There is no doubt about the testimony of history. It is one of the laws of the universe and one of the rules of existence. Nothing can overcome iron except iron. Their false futile creed can only be defeated by the righteous Islamic creed. A creed could not be fought except by a creed, and in the last analysis, victory is for the just, for justice is certainly victorious.

"Our word hath formerly been given unto our servants the apostles; that they should certainly be assisted against the infidels, and that our armies should surely be the conquerors." (Those Who Rank Themselves - verses 171-172).
Article Thirty-Five:
The Islamic Resistance Movement views seriously the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi and the rescuing of Palestine from their hands, as well as the defeat of the Tatars at Ein Galot, breaking their power at the hands of Qataz and Al-Dhaher Bivers and saving the Arab world from the Tatar onslaught which aimed at the destruction of every meaning of human civilization. The Movement draws lessons and examples from all this. The present Zionist onslaught has also been preceded by Crusading raids from the West and other Tatar raids from the East. Just as the Moslems faced those raids and planned fighting and defeating them, they should be able to confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it. This is indeed no problem for the Almighty Allah, provided that the intentions are pure, the determination is true and that Moslems have benefited from past experiences, rid themselves of the effects of ideological invasion and followed the customs of their ancestors.

The Islamic Resistance Movement is Composed of Soldiers:

Article Thirty-Six:
While paving its way, the Islamic Resistance Movement, emphasizes time and again to all the sons of our people, to the Arab and Islamic nations, that it does not seek personal fame, material gain, or social prominence. It does not aim to compete against any one from among our people, or take his place. Nothing of the sort at all. It will not act against any of the sons of Moslems or those who are peaceful towards it from among non-Moslems, be they here or anywhere else. It will only serve as a support for all groupings and organizations operating against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.

The Islamic Resistance Movement adopts Islam as its way of life. Islam is its creed and religion. Whoever takes Islam as his way of life, be it an organization, a grouping, a country or any other body, the Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself as their soldiers and nothing more.

We ask Allah to show us the right course, to make us an example to others and to judge between us and our people with truth. "O Lord, do thou judge between us and our nation with truth; for thou art the best judge." (Al Araf - Verse 89).

The last of our prayers will be praise to Allah, the Master of the Universe.

WHO LOST EGYPT? at DickMorris.com

2011-01-29T15:09:00.000-08:00

WHO LOST EGYPT? at DickMorris.com

The Iranian government is waiting for Egypt to fall into its lap. The Muslim Brotherhood, dominated by Iranian Islamic fundamentalism, will doubtless emerge as the winner should the government of Egypt fall. The Obama Administration, in failing to throw its weight against an Islamic takeover, is guilty of the same mistake that led President Carter to fail to support the Shah, opening the door for the Ayatollah Khomeini to take over Iran.

israel today | Arab princess comes to Israel dying, walks away smiling

2011-01-11T05:47:00.000-08:00

israel today Arab princess comes to Israel dying, walks away smiling

Tower of Babel’s Ruins Waiting for Archaeologists - A7 Exclusive Features - Israel News - Israel National News

2011-01-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

Tower of Babel’s Ruins Waiting for Archaeologists - A7 Exclusive Features - Israel News - Israel National News

Former Gitmo detainees returning to jihad in ever-increasing numbers - Jihad Watch

2010-12-09T05:46:00.000-08:00

150 former Guantanamo detainees are either "confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities," according to a new intelligence assessment released by the Director of National Intelligence's office on Tuesday. In total, 598 detainees have been transferred out of U.S. custody at Guantanamo. 1 out of every 4, or 25 percent, of these former detainees is now considered a confirmed or suspected recidivist by the U.S. government.

Former Gitmo detainees returning to jihad in ever-increasing numbers - Jihad Watch

Geert Wilders in Tel Aviv: "Israel is an immense source of inspiration for me" - Jihad Watch

2010-12-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Here is the text of the speech Geert Wilders gave in Tel Aviv today:

Shalom chaveriem,
Let me start by saying that it is with great sadness that I share your grief over the deaths of more than 40 brave Israelis who lost their lives - many while trying to save others in the great fire near Haifa. My country, the Netherlands, is amongst other countries helping to put down this fire, which is threatening the lives and property of thousands of your compatriots. I offer my heartfelt condolences to the families of those who perished. My thoughts are with them.

Geert Wilders in Tel Aviv: "Israel is an immense source of inspiration for me" - Jihad Watch

Doing the math in a 'two state solution' by Jonathan Rosenblum

2010-12-06T05:42:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's June 14, 2009 foreign policy address at Bar Ilan University made headlines around the world for his acceptance of a Palestinian state. Less noticed by the foreign press was the second part of Netanyahu's speech: His demand for reciprocity from the Palestinians. That Palestinian state, he said, would have to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it would have to be demilitarized, and Israel's critical security needs would have to be honored.

Doing the math in a 'two state solution' by Jonathan Rosenblum

PMW Bulletins

2010-11-30T10:24:00.000-08:00

Following are the lyrics of the song:

"My brother! The oppressors [Israelis] have gone too far.
Therefore Jihad is a right, and self-sacrifice is a right.
Shall we let them steal the Arab nature -
the patriarchal glory and rule?
And only through the sound of the sword
They respond, with voice or echo.
Draw from the sheath your sword;
And let it not return.
My brother, my brother, Oh proud Arab
Today is our moment, not tomorrow.
My brother, the time of our nation's sunrise has arrived,
[the time] for you to repel those who are misled
And bring renaissance to Islam."

PMW Bulletins

Mona Charen

2010-11-30T09:34:00.000-08:00

"If a Christian or a Jew suddenly becomes more devout, there is very little chance that he or she will become violent. Quite the contrary. By contrast, religious zeal among Muslims is often expressed with bombs and the blood of innocents. Thousands of imams worldwide preach violent jihad, Islamic schools instill contempt for other faiths, and terrorists actively recruit killers willing to commit massacres for Allah."

Mona Charen

Iran used ambulances to deliver arms to Hizballah - Jihad Watch

2010-11-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

Iran used ambulances to deliver arms to Hizballah - Jihad Watch

Global Warming Scam Exposed

2010-11-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

Global warming scam exposed by the Highest Authority on ALL matters of the environment.

Gen 8:22
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
KJV

YouTube - Soldier Boy by Toots Sweet

2010-11-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

A military tribute to all who served and are serving this great country. You are America's Most Dedicated and without.the sacrifice and perseverance of Americas Most Dedicated there would be no America. Thank you for all you do.

YouTube - Soldier Boy by Toots Sweet

PM on WikiLeaks: ‘Now World Knows what Arabs Say About Iran’ - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

2010-11-29T06:58:00.000-08:00

"It can eliminate the theory that Israel is the obstacle to peace and show that we have mutual interests," Netanyahu said. "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of 60 years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history there is agreement that Iran is the threat."

PM on WikiLeaks: ‘Now World Knows what Arabs Say About Iran’ - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

US Colleges Teach Anti-Israel, Pro-Iran Courses Thanks to Alavi - Politics & Gov't - Israel News - Israel National News

2010-11-29T05:36:00.000-08:00

The courses are taught by professors who openly slur Israel and express sympathy for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime, as well as terrorist groups Hizbullah and Hamas.

US Colleges Teach Anti-Israel, Pro-Iran Courses Thanks to Alavi - Politics & Gov't - Israel News - Israel National News

WikiLeaks: Good for Israel - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

2010-11-29T05:30:00.000-08:00

“There was no contradiction between what Israel has said in public and in private. Several events happened as Israel said they would,” such as Syria’s building a nuclear site.

WikiLeaks: Good for Israel - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Urgent Advice For Israel

2010-11-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

G-d of Israel Writes a "Neat Ending"

2010-11-17T16:34:00.000-08:00

A Neat Ending

2010-11-16T07:35:00.000-08:00

A NEAT ENDING

When Hitler and the Islamic mufti tried to exterminate the Jews in the 40s, the answer they received from the G-d of Israel was, "I will raise these bones from your ovens" and "I will CALL MY PEOPLE to ISRAEL."

When the Arab/Muslims came in 1948 to exterminate the Jews, the G-d of Israel humiliated the Muslims and their Arabian Allah. The tiny band of Jews defeated the Arab/Muslim hordes and the ancient nation of Israel was reconstituted in the eyes of an unbelieving world.

In 1967 the Arab/Muslims came in the name of the Allah of Islam to ANNIHILATE the Jews and the G-d of Israel said, "these people just won't learn, I am going to RETURN JERUSALEM to My people." The Jews thanked the G-d of Israel for returning Jerusalem to the Jews by allowing the enemies of the G-d of the Jews to continue to worship the Arabian Allah of Islam in a mosque on the Temple Mount.

Now in 2010, the Arab Muslims have convinced nearly the entire world that the Jews are unfair and the Jews should leave Jerusalem. The United States has its first Muslim president; a president whose utmost priority is the “final solution” to the “Jewish problem” in the Middle East. The G-d of Israel says to Israel, "I knew this would happen, that is why I didn't make you destroy the high places to the foreign Allah of Islam in 1967. At that time you might have thought you were the victory, but now the whole world is coming against you and you will have to depend on Me."

The G-d of Israel watches as the whole world prepares to make the Jews leave Jerusalem exactly like He wrote through Zechariah twenty-five hundred years ago. The G-d of Israel says "I will do EXACTLY what I said I would do. More than Sixty years ago Hitler and the Islamic/Fascists decreed to KILL every Jew. I said NO. Today they come to take Jerusalem and kill every Jew. I repeat NO."

The armies of those who hate the Jews will come. A world full of Jew haters will come to kill the Jews and take Jerusalem for the Allah who opposes the G-d of the Jews. The Jew haters will die and the G-d of Israel will say, “I told you so, more than twenty-five hundred years ago. You chose not to listen"....... AND the earth will be filled with the Glory of the G-d of Israel.

Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. Ps 121:4
JimQ

Israel - The Battle for Zion - Muslim Occupation of the Jewish Identity

2010-11-16T06:22:00.000-08:00

Spot Report: Salute to Steven Harper » the Jerusalem Connection Blog -

2010-11-16T06:16:00.000-08:00

Spot Report: Salute to Steven Harper » the Jerusalem Connection Blog -

By the rivers of babylon...

2010-11-16T06:11:00.000-08:00

Andrew Klavan: Fun With Anti-Semitism

2010-11-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

Rivers Of Babylon.

2010-11-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

Israel, Just Say NO!

2010-11-14T13:55:00.000-08:00

It is our earnest prayer that Israel will not be deceived by Hussein Obama treacherous plans contrived to deliver Israel into the hand of Obama's Muslim cohorts seeking the "final solution" to the "Jewish"problem in the Middle East.