From Ian:
Deir Yassin: There was no massacre
David Collier: We must not accept the normalisation of extremism
Deir Yassin: There was no massacre
Deir Yassin is one of the founding myths of the Palestinian narrative, according to which Israelis murdered 254 people, committed rapes, and other gender-oriented atrocities in a peaceful 1948 Palestinian village. For the past five years, I have carried out an in-depth research into the affair, learned to know the village, who lived there and where, their names, and above all, the exact circumstances of death of each of the people killed there. The results were astounding, but clear. There was no massacre in Deir Yassin. No rapes. Lots of unfounded Palestinian propaganda.Seth Frantzman: Colonizing Gaza’s dead for Kaddish theater
On 9 April 1948, combined forces of the Jewish Etzel and Lehi underground organizations attacked Deir Yassin, an Arab village west of Jerusalem. It was four months after the eruption of hostilities between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and about a month before the termination of the British mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel. The nature of this attack became one of the most controversial issues in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, serving the Palestinians as a proof for Israeli inhumanity. For almost seven decades, an anti-Israeli biased literature described it as an intentional and deliberate massacre of defenseless Arab villagers, accompanied by rapes and other atrocities.
What really happened in Deir Yassin? Contrary to what one could expect, I found that the testimonies of the Jewish attackers on the one hand, and the Arab survivors on the other hand, were surprisingly similar, at times almost identical. My methodology, therefore, was to integrate the testimonies of both parties involved, Jews and Arabs, into one story. I relied on a vast number of testimonies and records from 21 archives (including Israeli, Palestinian, British, American, UN and Red Cross), many of them yet unreleased to the public, and hundreds of other sources. My findings were basically two: no massacre took place in Deir Yassin, but on the other hand, the false rumors spread by the Palestinian leadership about a massacre, rapes and other atrocities, drove the Palestinian population to leave their homes and run away, becoming a major incentive for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
No Massacre
Deir Yassin was not the peaceful village many later claimed it to be, but a fortified village with scores of armed combatants. Its relations with the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods were troubled for decades and the Jews believed it to endanger the only road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, thus constituting part of the Arab siege of Jewish Jerusalem. Therefore, although later denying it for political reasons, the Jewish main militia in 1948, the Haganah, sanctioned the attack and later took part in it by means of its striking force, the Palmach.
On May 14 more than 60 people in Gaza were killed during protests that were the culmination of the “Great Return March” organized by Hamas. Two days later a group of 50 Jewish activists, some affiliated with well known groups, attended a Jewish prayer event at Parliament Square in London to, in the words of one attendee “express grief and anger in the most Jewish way possible.”
Have 50 Jews from different groups in the UK, or anywhere else, ever held a mass Kaddish for other groups? Have they ever held a Kaddish for the dead in the Rwandan genocide? Or Rohingya refugees? Or thousands of Yazidis machine-gunned to death by Islamic State? Or for hundreds of Israelis killed during the Second Intifada? Or for Jewish victims of antisemitism, whether in the AMIA Jewish Community Center bombing in 1994 or the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006?
It doesn’t seem so. Only one group has received such a Kaddish, and only once, in a public place for all to see.
Palestinians didn’t ask for Kaddish to be said for them. They didn’t ask to become part of a Jewish mourning ritual. They had their own mourning tents in Gaza, their own prayers. But no one who said Kaddish for them in Parliament Square seemed particularly interested in Islamic mourning, or in live-streaming a mourning tent from Gaza. They wanted to say Kaddish – they wanted to colonize the dead in Gaza for a kind of theater in London.
I read two accounts of the Kaddish prayer in London, by two participants. One uses the word “Jew” or “Jewish” 10 times, the other five times. One uses the term “Gazans” once and the other uses the term “Palestinian” once. This incredible imbalance between self-references and references to the other – the group supposedly being prayed for – illustrates that the event wasn’t about Palestinians, it was about Jews.
David Collier: We must not accept the normalisation of extremism
Giving the extremists airtime
As the news became public, social media comments were filled with the anger of many in the Jewish community. Some of these comments were indeed outrageous. Why people make comments such as ‘I hope you commit suicide‘ is totally beyond me. But as awful as this may be, this isn’t news that is specific to this event. We know social media comments are full of hate. I personally receive ‘hate mail’ almost daily. Focusing on this element, rather than the fact that Jewish groups are creating extremists, was a matter of choice. It became a successful exercise in deflection.
Jewish News published a blog written by someone who had said Kaddish for terrorists.
Jewish News extremists blog
It wasn’t the blogger who chose to use the word ‘murder’ in the headline, it was the Jewish News editorial team (the Jewish News later changed the disgraceful headline). The blogger merely whines her way to the conclusion that Israel ‘does not value human life’. In any event, a party of forty-five extremists had been given a voice in the Jewish News.
How about giving Kahanist views airtime? Or does the paper’s pandering to more extreme views only reach out in one direction?
Forty-five people and one blog. Enough, right? Wrong. One hour later there was another one.
The second blog ran with an identical tune. Like the first it misled readers by suggesting the Kaddish group came from a ‘diverse’ range of opinions. Like the first it suggests the author is the one with a superior moral code that the rest of us need to aspire to. Just like the first it whines its way to the conclusion that outside of this band of extremists, Jewish people do not respect Jewish life.
Two is enough right? Wrong. The Rabbi who led the Kaddish also wrote a blog. That too was published. Forty five people – three blogs. But we are not finished.












