Israeli Massacre Remembered

It is an opportune time to remember this fact, for just as South Africa remembers its Sharpeville massacre, so too do the Arab peoples remember that on the 9th of April, 1948 the nascent Israeli forces carried out the infamous massacre at Dier Yasin. This article marks the thirtieth anniversary of those who perished.

The background setting of Dier Yasin is the mandate territory of Palestine at the close of the 1939-45 war. Zionist groups were carrying out both illegal immigration to bring more Jews into the area and bombing and assassinations to force the British to relinquish control.

Entrusted with the latter tasks were the Hagana, under the direction of the Jewish Agency, and the Irgun Zvei Leumi and Stern gangs which were identified with the more extreme revisionist Zionist grouping.

In 1943 the Irgun enlisted a new recruit, Menachem Begin, the current Prime Minister of Israel. Begin was soon to rise to the leadership of the Irgun.

These groups, despite their superficial antagonisms were to coordinate in their objectives to spread destruction and terror throughout the entire territory. This even extended to the blowing up of a ship in Haifa harbour in November 1940, with the loss of 252 lives — Jewish lives — in order to blackmail the British authorities and to engender sympathy for the "plight of the Jews struggling to liberate their homeland."²

When the General Assembly moved in late 1947 to recommend the division of Palestine into one state for Jews and one for the Arabs, the Zionist cause was well prepared. Instead of letting a phased handover of power from the British take place, as prescribed by the UN, the Israeli state was declared and the terror gangs went into full operation. Dier Yasin was one result.