Posted on 12/10/2002 4:01:00 PM PST by SJackson
The IDF has decided that former Lechi fighter Ezra Yachin will no longer be allowed to lecture to soldiers as part of the army's educational seminars. Meretz MK Naomi Chazan complained that Yachin tells his audiences that Lechi soldiers did not carry out a massacre in Dir Yassin in 1948. Yachin himself, who took part in the Dir Yassin battle, says that the decision to keep him away from soldiers "astonishes" him. He says that just as there was no massacre in Jenin, there was none in Dir Yassin.
A work by ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, entitled, Dir Yassin: History of a Lie, brings to light important documents disproving the claim that 250-300 Arab civilians were massacred by Jewish fighters in the Jerusalem-area village. The study finds that Dir Yassin was actually a legitimate military target overlooking the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, from where Jewish traffic was regularly attacked.
Arutz-7's Nissan Ratzlav-Katz reports that Hazen Nusseibeh, an editor for the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, once told BBC the true origins of the "Dir Yassin massacre." Nusseibeh said that in consultation with Hussein Khalidi, then-Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, "we wrote a press release stating that at Dir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities." When residents of the village protested this portrayal of events, Nusseibeh said, they were told that the lies were necessary to incite Arab armies to help fight the Jews, and that Khalidi said outright, "We have to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews."
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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, with additional research in the United States by Chaviva Rosenbluth.
...VERY BIG SNIP--CLICK THE LINK FOR ARTICLE-LONG....
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.
After a very ugly battle for the town, which concluded with the Israelis taking the Arab captives through Jerusalem in trucks, the Arabs started the story about a massacre. At the time the Israelis were too preoccupied with the war to do much investigation, so they prompted conceded to the widespread propaganda and started apologizing profusely.
Only very recently has anyone bothered to do a serious investigation that shows that the "massacre" was much exaggerated.
It took 47 years, but Rabin finally paid for his actions.
That's about how the linked article describes the battle.
This insanity is akin to Historian Steven Ambrose having been forbidden to speak to American troops about the Battle of Midway because Maxine Waters said that it was a racist massacre of peaceful Japanese civilians who were using carriers and destroyers to go fishing.
This is not PC. This is evil. Pure and simple. This Meretz MK should be verbally assaulted and pelted with tomatoes everywhere she speaks or appears until she resigns. She is a traitor to Israel and a dangerous Arab agent in their midst.
I cannot understand how Sharon can possibly allow this to go forward. The Defense Minster (who was formerly IDF Chief of Staff) must reverse this obviously ignorant low-level decision.
That's a rather pompous assertion. But to do the subject-matter credit, Hogan's collaborative refutation of the ZOA article can be found here:Anatomy of a Whitewash: A Critical Examination and Refutation of the Historical Revisionist "Deir Yassin: History of A Lie," Issued By the Zionist Organization of America (Mar. 8, 1998)
It can also be found in several other Arab Islamic sites which like to whitewash their own involvement in precipitating the hell of war.
Couple of points about the alleged refutation of the ZOA article.
Hogan and McGowan do not refute the figure of dead arrived at by the ZOA article nor, it appears the original source for the false and bloated figures (an Arab). Secondly, while they complain about the source material (the very reputable Uri Milstein largely), and assert the lack of other sources, in point of fact Milstein bases his work on numerous interviews and other primary source information. It turns out their criticism is vacuous. As the ZOA article quotes from Benny Morris (by the way a New Historian and anti-Zionist),"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). "
By the way, you will note that in the Hogan article you gave the link source to, Hogan himself relies on Milstein numerous times. Arguably a case of picking and choosing the material which lends itself to Hogan's thesis and rejecting the contrary material.
Finally, the "demanding truth" assertion is only accomplished by having MORE than ONE position advanced. That is exactly the point of the criticism in this article and the above postings. To that end your criticism is itself self-contradictory.
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