وطن نيوز
Continued One of the repeated matters in the documents that can now be published is the directive not to take prisoners. It turned out that the definition of captives was very broad, and sometimes included women and children. This issue was part of the defendant’s line of defense against Lahès, who claimed that transferring the inhabitants of the occupied village to a rear base was “contrary to the order” given to him by his commander, “that we should take no prisoners, and that we should clear the whole area of the enemy.” “I captured Beersheba.” I issued an order to exterminate everyone who appeared in the streets, whether they resisted or not. By destroying everything. After surrender, the killing stopped. Then, women, children and everyone were killed. Then the people were forced to go to Hebron. “Whoever didn’t go was expelled,” said Israel Carmi, a battalion commander in the 7th Brigade. Operations Officer Haim Ben-David of the Carmeli Brigade testified, saying that the order on this matter was given to the fighters verbally, and the message was clear and unambiguous. “It was clear to everyone,” Ben-David said. “They did not ask what it meant to take no prisoners.” According to him, during the war, the young men were not considered “civilians” and could have been killed. Soldier Yitzhak Soroka explained that the order was to kill the men who had not fled the villages. When asked about the ages of the men he had been ordered to kill, he said he had once received “an operational order setting their ages at fifteen.” An intelligence officer named Yacoub D. noted: (His full name was withheld when documents were allowed to be viewed) referred to the killing of Arabs captured in villages, saying: “This is clear and known to me from the course of intelligence officers – when it is announced that no prisoners will be taken, this does not mean expelling them, but killing them.” He added that in cases where fighting forces captured prisoners, they later killed them. According to him, commanders were instructed to kill those in the villages, and this has already been carried out “in several villages.” Witnesses repeatedly addressed the issue of international law. “We knew the international laws, but I also know that we often did not act according to them,” Ben-David said. We used illegal means.” According to his testimony, these things were done with his approval, and even by order of the higher command. Mordechai McClave said the soldiers were not aware of what was in the Geneva Convention, and 7th Brigade Commander Yosef Eitan noted that a pamphlet about the “Hague Laws” may have been sent to units, but “we did not pay special attention to it.” Israel Karmi, a battalion commander in the 7th Brigade, stated that during the period of captivity “we did not act in accordance with the Geneva Convention,” and the brigade commander, Maxim Cohen, said that even during the days of the Haganah, orders were issued “to kill unarmed Arabs.” Karmi added that he sometimes issued an order “not to burden intelligence,” and the intention was to kill the prisoners. For him, any “man with two hands and a head was a danger,” and their fate was decided for a tribe or charitable organization “according to their features.” In cases where he felt that the Arabs in front of him were dangerous, he would kill them on the spot. In addition to the killing of prisoners, documents indicate in several cases the killing of civilians who sought to return to their villages after their fall. For example, materials from a trial held in 1951 indicate the killing of Arab civilians in the town of Al-Majdal, now Ashkelon, in 1949. The focus of the trial was soldiers from a company that was stationed there to prevent Arabs from returning to the town. The court ruled that “the soldiers sometimes lost their minds. Among them were those who believed that they were entitled to treat Arabs, especially infiltrators, as they pleased.” According to some testimonies accepted by the court as reliable, the killing of Arabs was “considered legal” in the eyes of the fighters, and the fighter who killed them was viewed by his comrades as a “comrade.” The trial dealt with a case in which young Arabs sneaked into Majdal to visit the home of their parents residing in the town. The soldiers who arrested them took them outside to execute them, and in a rare case, because the parents remained inside Israeli territory, they testified As they testified at the trial: “My son came from Gaza to my house in Al-Majdal,” the father testified. “I told him: After the curfew ends, I will hand you over to the Jews.” He then described how he found his son’s body: “I saw bullets in my son’s chest, and three or four bullets in his head and back.” I fainted and fell. My son had marks of severe beatings.” The testimonies presented in this investigation are not isolated from their context. Over the past decade and a half, a wave of publications have appeared about the expulsion of the Arabs in 1949, but they have not crystallized into a coherent narrative and have not sparked public debate. Some of them have not even been translated into Hebrew. This material comes from a variety of sources: Israeli studies (Alon Confino, Shai Hazkani), Palestinian studies (Saleh Abdel Jawad, Adel Manna), and Arabic prose texts (Elias Khoury, Salman Natour), investigative reports (Hajar Shezaf in this appendix), non-fiction books (for example, Ari Shavit’s book “My Promised Land,” which describes the expulsion of the Arabs of Lydda), documentaries (“1948 – To Remember and Forget” by Nita Shoshani, “Tantura” by Alon Schwarz, “On the Agenda: Erasure” by Einat Weizman), and the activities of civil society organizations (Zochrot Association, And the Akvot Institute)… Shavit’s book, which was widely heard in the United States but was not distributed to Hebrew readers, details the fall of Lydda based on a long series of conversations with leaders and fighters. Shavit recounts how the city fell quickly, and how thousands of residents gathered in two mosques and a church. The next day, two Jordanian armored vehicles entered the city by mistake, sparking a new wave of violence after the residents mistook them for Arab auxiliary forces and the Israeli army responded with fire in all directions, throwing grenades at homes, and firing a Fiat shell at one of the mosques where the crowd had taken shelter. Shavit, who cites the confession of the fighter who fired the shell, states that 200 civilians were killed within 30 minutes, and adds that after the fire subsided, Ben-Gurion ordered Yigal Allon to expel the residents. He cites a written order from Yitzhak Rabin to the Yiftah Brigade, which was circulated shortly thereafter: “You must expel. Residents of Lod quickly, regardless of their age.” The Fiat shell mentioned in Shavit’s description is also mentioned in the materials of the trial of Hess, which are now being published here. According to the battalion commander, Israel Carmi, “in Lod, hundreds of Arabs were ushered into the mosque and fired Fiat shells inside.” Shoshani’s film also refers to what happened in Lod. The film quotes from joint memoirs written by soldiers in the Yiftah Brigade: “After breakfast, two enemy armored vehicles suddenly appeared and began to approach. Gun butts were scattered from every window. It was a rebellion. We overpowered the enemy, but about 15 other soldiers were wounded and three were killed. The men were angry, ready to kill on the spot. A comprehensive cleansing operation was ordered, and it was carried out. A foul smell spread everywhere. The rest of the day passed in relative silence, except for that joyful incident we witnessed.” In her film, Shoshani gives moving testimony that sheds more light on one of the most difficult events of the war – the Dawayima massacre in Lachish. This testimony, which had previously caught the attention of historians, has also been suppressed. It is a letter written by a responsible man named S. Kaplan to the editor of the newspaper “Al Hamishmar” Eliezer Perry. In the letter, Kaplan cites the testimony of an eyewitness, a soldier named Meir Efron: “The soldier was one of our men, educated, and completely trustworthy. He arrived in the village immediately after the occupation. There was no battle and no resistance. The first occupiers killed between 80 and 100 Arabs, including women and children. A commander ordered a military engineer to bring two elderly Arab women to a certain house and blow them up. Another soldier bragged that he had raped an Arab woman and then shot her. One of the Arab women, carrying a baby in her arms, was working as a cleaner. She worked in the service for a day or two, then they shot her and her child.” Another documentary, “Tantura” by director Alon Schwarz, added important information about the massacre that took place in the village on the coast north of Zikhron Ya’akov. In his film, Schwarz presents some first-hand testimonies. “I didn’t talk to anyone about it,” testified a veteran of the Alexandroni Brigade. “What can I say, I was a murderer?” According to another testimony, “they were taken to the barns.” And they were killed there. They went crazy at Tantura, it was horrific.” “Many were killed,” said a third witness. “I buried them. While a number of Jewish filmmakers were asked to document the Nakba, Arab writers chose to publish survivors’ memoirs in prose. This form, devoid of evidence or references to places, has enabled Israeli historians to disavow harsh testimonies and present them as unreliable. In a book published by Salman Natour a decade ago entitled Memory Spoke to Me and Then It Departed, he describes an execution in an almost It matches the description contained in the documents that form the basis of this investigation. Thus, the book, translated by Yehuda Shenhav-Shahrabani, describes a scene that occurred in a village that IDF soldiers had just entered: “Raise your hands!” They raised their hands. “Kneel down.” They knelt on the ground. “Stand up.” Get up. “Give up your weapons!” They had no weapons. “You, you, you, you.” Come with me.” Four young men, not yet thirty. He ordered a soldier to take them and move away. He moved them fifty meters away. He said: “Raise your hands, and put your backs against the wall.” He stepped back a few meters and pulled the trigger. He heard whispers: “Be quiet, be quiet, you donkeys.” The bodies bumped. They bumped. They bumped. Seconds later, the bodies were lying before our eyes. And here, almost in reverse, is a soldier’s testimony about The Hula Massacre, from the Lahises trial: “Lieutenant Shmuel Lahiss asked me for 15 people from the Arab population. Choose the young men. He told me that I would go with them to a secluded house in the village. The company commander was carrying a weapon, a pistol and a Sten gun. I was carrying a gun. When we got there, the company commander, through me, ordered them to head towards the wall. They headed towards the wall. Then Lieutenant Hess asked me to ask them where the weapons were. They said they had no weapons. After that, Lahis began shooting at them with a Sten machine gun. He shot them in waves, and the Arabs begged and screamed and then fell. Their screams and pleas had no effect on anyone.” When Lahs testified, he said that the battalion commander, Avraham Peled, had decided that the company would “go out and avenge our comrades.” Lahs himself turned to Private Ephraim Huberman and told him: “If you want revenge, there are still Arabs alive, seize the opportunity and take revenge.” Historian Shai Hazkani’s book (“My Dear Homeland – The 1948 War: The Hidden Messages”) contains a private message from a female soldier. She visited Galilee, also highlighting the issue of revenge. The soldier wrote: “The devil has not yet established an occupation like this, the dead are on their knees.” She criticized the soldiers, whom she described as “horrific brutality,” but she understood their motives for what they suffered. “Those who fell in Galilee are also allowed to go out and kill like this simply out of revenge and pleasure.” Hebrew readers interested in the history of the war were introduced to Israeli historians and documentary filmmakers. But what about Palestinian history writers? For many years, Palestinian researchers avoided collecting testimonies and dealing with the horrors of war. There were many reasons for this: the focus on survival in the years following the expulsion, the focus of efforts on the national struggle, the fear that Israel would harass anyone who spoke out, and the sense of shame and dispersal of the Palestinian people throughout the world, from the Middle East to Chile. However, many decades after the Nakba, there were those who collected testimonies from survivors. In 2017, a study by the Palestinian historian residing in Israel, Adel Manna (“The Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee 1948-1956”) was published. Manna stated in his book that “the Operation Hiram massacres were organized by higher authorities, and their aim was to facilitate escape.” Benny Morris criticized the book, claiming that “Manna did not cite any evidence linking the two matters.” Accumulating evidence shows that Manna was right: the Israeli army began massacres and killings to hasten the escape. As Mordecai McClave testified, “There had to be an element of initial terror for them to leave.” But how widespread was this massacre? Morris counted 24 massacres. The writer of these lines mentioned previously in this appendix that the number was in the dozens. Today, even that statement appears to have been cautious and reserved. One of the most prominent studies on the Nakba was conducted by a team of researchers from Birzeit University led by Palestinian historian Saleh Abdel Jawad. Abdel-Gawad’s longitudinal study is based on 300 in-depth interviews with survivors, conducted starting in the late 1990s. The researchers even decided to question witnesses under oath. The certificates were then verified among themselves, as well as with various documents. Initially, Eid al-Jawad reported that more than 70 massacres had occurred. However, in recent years, through additional research based on diverse sources and an additional body of oral testimony, Abdel Jawad has determined that at least 100 massacres have occurred. In other words: In one out of every five villages that fell into the hands of the occupation, civilians were killed. Massacres can be divided into six types: large-scale and general killings (Al-Dawayma); Random killings during the occupation (Beersheba); Intentional killings motivated by revenge for the killing of fighters (Balad al-Sheikh); Selective execution of a group of male civilians in front of walls (Majd al-Krum); Execution of all male prisoners (Hula); Civilians who tried to return to their homes (Al-Majdal) were killed. Current studies allow a large portion of massacres to be identified with high accuracy. The following is a partial list of the most notable incidents: Three of the most severe incidents, each claiming the lives of 100 or more civilians, occurred in Deir Yassin, Al-Duwayma, and Lod. Six massacres resulted in the deaths of between 50 and 100 people, in: Al-Jish at the foot of Mount Meron, Safsaf and Ain Zaytoun in the Safad area, Salha on the Lebanese border, Abu Shusha in the Ramla area, and the village of Brier, north of Gaza. Dozens of civilians were also killed in Tantura, Beersheba, Kafr Anan in the Safad area, Al-Tira in the Haifa area, and Al-Houla on the Lebanese border. About 20 victims were recorded in Eilabun, west of Lake Tiberias, in Nasr al-Din near Tiberias, in the village of Sabarin near Haifa, in the village of al-Bassa north of Akko, and in a Bedouin community south of Akko. Other notable massacres occurred in Majd al-Krum, Kfar Saba, Rehovot (in the village of Zarnoga), south of Nahariya, and near the kibbutzims of Kabari, Negba, and Kfar Menachem. Four years ago, a selection of testimonies collected by the Eid al-Jawad team was published in a book entitled “Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine.” The book is distinguished by its influential style, and is consistent with the testimonies of the Israeli side. Based on these testimonies, Abd al-Jawad identified a recurring pattern of criminal acts during the occupation, which included four phases: besieging villages on three sides with general terror through shooting and bombing; Providing an opportunity to escape to neighboring countries; Residents who did not leave, mostly men and boys aged between 16 and 50, were killed; and intentionally blowing up and setting buildings on fire, often with residents still inside. This is also a legacy of the War of Independence. Adam Raz Haaretz / Supplement 2/3/2026 (2 of 2)
