A World - Shaking Birthday on May 14, 1948

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Our holy city of Jerusalem,
maybe on her 1st birthday

"If only the British had treated Arabs and Jews equally, and forced the Arabs to obey the law, the two groups might have learned to live together peacefully.

If only the British had permitted Jews to enter Palestine in reasonable numbers, the English and the Zionists could have joined with the Arabs to build a great land."
                                                             OR
If only the Arabs had decided to talk to UNSCOP, they might have made some telling points.

The refugees from Europe needed homes in Palestine because they weren't allowed into Western countries.  

The United States, though urging immigration into Eretz Yisrael, kept its own doors locked to the refugees.  During the first 8 months of 1946, America admitted only 4,767 refugees----barely the number on the ship, Exodus 1947. 
                                                     

 On that ship, the British sailors boarded and took control.  They wore uniforms and white helmets.  The British troops guarded a group of refugee children in Haifa when they were alongside the Exodus.  The ship's passengers were later sent back to Germany.  When the British seized the Haganah's leaky old ships, they would search for "illegal" refugees and send them back to detention camps in Cyprus.  

After World War II, Jewish survivors of Hitler's program against the Jews had nowhere to go.  There were 300,000 homeless DISPLACED PERSONS.  
                                               

  
The democracies of the West wouldn't accept them. 
 Britain refused to let them into Palestine.  
There was fighting between the Yishuv of Palestine and the British. 
 Irgun, a Jewish group of fighters, used violent tactics including blowing up British headquarters in Jerusalem. 
                                             

Stern Group warned King David Hotel
they would blow it up,
but British didn't listen

 My own 3rd cousin was the chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group-the toughest of them all that the Brits referred to as "The Stern Gang."
The Haganah, a very mild following the law group, confronted the British with boatloads of refugees.  

Britain finally turned the problem of Palestine over to the UN.  The UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), shocked by British cruelty to the refugees on the ship, EXODUS 1947, recommended that Palestine be divided into Arab and Jewish states.  The UN accepted this recommendation on November 29, 1947.

None of these "its" happened.  As a result, battle lines had been drawn.
                                                  

                                                 

September 3, 1947's plan

     THE PARTITION PLAN:  The UNSCOP report recommended that Palestine be divided into 2 states:  one Arab, one Jewish.  This is after the League of Nations and the United Nations had voted that Palestine become a Jewish State and that Britain was given a 30 year mandate to help keep order and to help the Jews to have their Jewish State.  Britain had failed to comply.  

Zionists were disappointed because of the need to control their holy city, Jerusalem.  They felt such a decision was neither fair and indefensible.  However, they went ahead and accepted the UNSCOP recommendation.

The Arabs rejected the report entirely.

It was up to the UNITED NATIONS to decide what to do.  

President Truman pledged American support of the UNSCOP Partition Plan
An Arab victory seemed certain.  
Russia surprised the world by announcing that it, too, would vote in favor of dividing Palestine and creating a Jewish state.  This was a first for Russia and the USA to vote together on any issue.  
                                               

                                                    

The voting began on November 29, 1947. 
Nations cast their vote one by one.
Most European States, many Latin American countries and members of the British Commonwealth joined the USA and Russia in voting.  
All Arab states opposed it.
Great Britain did not vote.
The end result was:  33 for of dividing Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state.  13 against.    10 did not vote.  They had the needed 2/3 majority for approval.  
                                                        The UN had said the Jews could have a state in Palestine.  It was up to the Jewish leaders, the Yishuv, to make that state a reality.  

British soldiers watched Arabs riot toward the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem.  They did nothing to stop the attack.  Some even shot the locks off the doors of Jewish shops to help Arabs loot and destroy.  

In reply to that, the Irgun broke into an Arab movie theater, setting it on fire.  
Their intention was to fight hard for their state and not let the Arabs stop them.
Arab forces attacked from every side, destroying and killing Jews.  No Jew was safe.  Arabs were controlling the roads connecting to towns.  By the end of March 1948, the country was cut apart.  Towns in the Negev couldn't communicate with the rest of the country.  Villages in the north were isolated.  Parts of Jerusalem were cut off from each other. 
                                                    

Chaim Weizmann 1874-1952
Israel's 1st President, had been a chemist.
Without his knowledge of organic chemistry, Britain may have
lost WWI.  

Weizmann and King Feisal, of Iraq in 1921 and king of Syria;  and  oldest son of Hussein, sherif of mecca in 1922 working
together after WWI to get a home for Jews
at League of Nations

Chaim Weizmann, the chosen president for the Jews, was old, sick and half-blind, but he made a long journey from London for an audience with President Truman who wouldn't even talk to the Yishuv.  The White House said there would be no meeting.
                                                         

However, and maybe this was a miracle;  Truman had had a business partner who was Jewish, Eddie Jacobson.  They had remained close friends.  Eddy admired Chaim Weizmann.  Weizmann was secretly admitted to the White House.  

This was not Weizmann's first merry go round.  42 years earlier he had met with Balfour and talked him into a life-long Zionist.  When Weizmann left the president, he had received a solemn promise that the USA would support the idea of a Jewish state.  
                                                     

 Jewish men and women coming to join Haganah

                    

David Ben-Gurion (Gruen) b: 1886- d: 1973

 Ben-Gurion at age 67 and the Haganah thought that a Jewish state might not survive.  General Yigael Yadin of Haganah thought not, too because food and supplies couldn't be driven past Arab positions on the road to Jerusalem.  The Jewish Quarter was about to starve to death.  The British were handing over key locations to the Arabs!    

The Final Vote

On May 12, 1948, two days before the last British soldiers were to leave Palestine, General Yadin met with Ben-Gurion and his team.  Many key positions were now in Jewish control.  Morale was high.  But.....

Armies of 5 Arab states had massed to attack as soon as the English left.  The little Zionist army didn't have enough equipment.  They had bought some weapons in Europe but the British wouldn't allow them into Palestine for the Jews.  Could they even survive until the weapons could make it to them?

Everyone was telling the Jews not to go ahead as the danger was too high.  4 leaders voted for delay.  6 said NOW!  The future was decided by 1 vote.  

On Friday, May 14, 1948, the street outside the Tel Aviv Museum was filled up with a crowd of people.  At 4:00 pm, Ben Gurion read Israel's Proclamation of Independence.  
                                                            

A state was being launched in the land of its birthplace of the Jewish people.  It would guarantee equality to all its citizens, and freedom of religion and culture to all.  
     "We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all."  

That night the Jews of Tel Aviv celebrated both a Shabbat and their independence from Britain and their birth.  No Jew in Jerusalem  had been able to hear the radio broadcast, however.  Arabs had cut off all electricity and were preparing to  attack.   I can imagine at least one or more rabbis wanting to thank those Arabs for helping them to keep Shabbat as the holiday that should take precedence.     

                                                                       

Israel finding herself in her War of Independence
29 November 1947-with Arabs responding with violence to UN resolution on Palestine and lasted until the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949.  

Such was Israel's 1st birthday, and now we celebrate her 72nd.  

Reference:
A young person's History of Israel 2nd edition by David Bamberger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Facts about Israel; Division of Information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem.  

Surrounding Arab States, Not Native Arabs Incensed Over Israel's Creation

Nadene Goldfoot
On the eve of the establishment of Israel, May 14, 1948, a war broke out when the Arab states and the Arab Higher Committee rejected the United Nation's Partition Plan, Resolution 181 ( November 29, 1947) of the General Assembly.  These Arab states threatened to use force to prevent the implementation of the resolution and did.  Israel's War of Independence was the first of many between the State of Israel and her neighboring Arab countries. Israel found themselves up against 5  regular Arab armies;  Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.   On the 13th of May there were still 100,000 British troops stationed in Palestine but their policy was not to intervene except to keep the British forces safe.

 The native Arabs living in Palestine were being manipulated by their brethren just like pawns in a chess game.   This was the first offering by the Jews through the United Nations of two states, Jewish and Muslim and it was refused.  The plan was taking place on land originally decided and stipulated by the League of Nations to be the Jewish National Homeland.  The new offer was a disappointment to the Zionist leaders as well, but they were desperate to have their own state, and something was better than nothing.  This first war lasted until January 5,1949.  It was 7 months of intense fighting with a few  truces, one of which was 28 days from June 10th to July 18th 1948.

By the time it stopped, Israel had 6,373 deaths including about 4,000 soldiers.  That was almost 1% of the total population of 650,000.  (Moses had taken 600,000 Israelites out of Egypt.) The Arabs suffered 2,000 the death of about 2,000 regular invading troops and  and unknown number of irregular Palestinian forces.  They never agreed to a truce and continued harassing against Jewish forces and villages in the north.  It was Egypt who had agreed on January 5, 1949, to negotiate for an armistice which the UN demanded on November 16, 1948.  Jamal Abdel Nasser was in an Egyptian brigade that was cut off in a small pocket around Falouja.

Israel had been able to reopen the road to the south and capture Be'er-Sheva on October 21.  Egyptian forces had been cut off from their bases.  Israel had an army of 100,000 troops, which was awesome considering they had 600,373 people, many of which had just come out of the holocaust.

The Jewish section of my old city of Safed in the Galilee, had been under siege.  Jews had continually lived there as had Jews in Jerusalem.  The Hagana managed to briefly reopen the road to Jerusalem and its Jewish section, captured all of Tiberias below Safed, Haifa and other places.  British intervention,  which wasn't to be allowed by their own rules, prevented the conquest of Jaffa.  The city later surrendered in May.  This is a good example of the fact that Britain was given the mandate "job" of carrying out the wishes of the League of Nations to establish the Jewish National Home and worked against it.

The Syrian army had captured Masada,  originally Herod the Great's Palace and fortress,  the site now used to induct Israel's soldiers into the IDF.  It is on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea.   This was where the last stand took place in 73 CE against the Romans where the Jews, on top of a high mountain had taken refuge.  Instead of allowing the Romans to rush and kill them all unmercifully, they decided on a mass suicide.  When the Romans entered, they found all 960 people were dead.

An interesting aspect of this is that the Druze, a light-skinned people with their own religion, a form is Islam which the Muslims sneer that they are idolaters, had started to fight with the Muslims and then switched and fought with the Israelis.  Today they are still on Israel's side and are some of its greatest champions.  They live in their own towns and marry within themselves and are wonderful Israeli citizens.  They also serve in the IDF while Israel up to now has not asked Israeli Muslims to do, but this is on the table for change to include all Israeli citizens.

Resource:  http://www.knesset.gov.il/holidays/eng/independence_day_war.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masada
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/1948_War.html
Book: Genesis 1948:  The First Arab-Israeli War by Dan Kurzman  1970 2nd edition

Palestinian Perversion of Their History

Nadene Goldfoot

So many lies have been told about the Israel-Palestine situation that the true facts have not even reached the UN.  Many follow the path of  least expended energy to find out what the facts are.  

Jews were deprived of their homeland ever since 70 CE because of the Roman Empire invasion.  They suffered from religious persecution for 2,000 years, leading to pogroms in the 1800's in Russia and with the Dryfus Affair in France of 1894, realized they had to return to their native homeland which was up for grabs, being the Ottoman Empire lost in WWI.  The British, holding the mandate and instructed to carry out the promise of establishing the Jewish National Home, double-dealt with them, because they also  were  guilty of this religious anti-Semitism.  

Palestinian leaders have long desired money and power and care little for their people.  It was they who told their people to leave homes in Israel as they were coming to attack the fledgling country and that they'd get their homes back and more when it was over.  They've created such Arabian Nights fairy tales about their history that even they might have started believing it all.  If you believe the following, then you have been duped along with the average Palestinian.

1.  Palestinians identified with the land for over  thousands of years.  
No:   There were very few Arabs living there that were natives.  Most landowners had sold out and were living in Damascus, Paris, and other nice places.  During 19th and 20th centuries Arabs/Arabic-speakers that were migrants wandered searching for food and jobs all over the Middle East.  Palestine was wasteland and peasants had left.  Nothing was there for them.  But, there were also poor Jews who had remained in Palestine even though many left after 70 CE during the Roman conquest.  Jerusalem was still populated by Jews and remained so.

2. Jews returned after 2,000 years in 1948 to displace Arabs because of their new state of Israel.  
No:  Palestine was the former Empire of Israel,  held by the Ottoman Empire for the past 400 years and included land east and west of the Jordan River.  It originally was to be the new Israel according to the British Mandate but had then been pared down to 20% of the land.  The plan was not to displace the Arabs but to live together in harmony.

3.  But it was Arab land.  Arabs were there first.  
No:  There were few Arabs living in Palestine and they thought of themselves as Ottomans, Turks, southern Syrians, Arab people, but never as "Palestinians."  Effendis and the Mufti tried to create Nationalism in them but it didn't take.  T.E. Lawrence tried it also, and he failed as well.  It was an alien idea.  The only non-Jews that were there first were people that Joshua had conquered when the Israelites entered Canaan in about 1270 BCE, people like the Hittites.  They were all killed, but any survivors were emerged with the Israelite people.

4. Jews stole the Arab lands.
No:   After the Dryfus Affair, Jews formed groups to ask Britain about creating a Jewish National Homeland out of the land held by the Ottoman Empire who lost WWI.  It was decided affirmatively in the League of Nations.  Britain held the mandate and were told  to carry it out.  Arabs living there at the time were included in the plan of being citizens along with the Jews.

5. Jewish terrorists forced the peaceable Arabs to flee from Palestine.
No:  Arabs were fed with religious prejudice, so Muslims of Palestine erupted into anti-Jewish violence many times when Muslim leaders called for it which the British called "Nationalism."

6.  Palestine is Israel, and Israel makes up all of Palestine meaning that in 1948 Palestine became Israel.
No:  The bulk of people living in Palestine that were not Jewish were  from east Palestine, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian and others who were already landless because of feudal type life styles, natural disasters, over-taxation by the Ottomans and loan sharks (people who loan money).  The British gave away state domain lands already designated to be the Jewish National Home to these landless Arabs screaming that they had been displaced by Jews in western Palestine.  Israel got only 20% of land promised to become the Jewish National Home.  That 20% contained mostly all Jews to start with.

7.  Arabs were natives of the land but Jews had to immigrate into Palestine.
No:  Only a few Arabs were natives of the land.  The bulk were poor landless peasants looking for work who came from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon and further.  Jews had always remained in Palestine and their ancestors were  there when Joshua entered Canaan.  Jews had been coming back to the land through the ages, but noticeable groups started in 1880 with the 1st Aliyah from Russia which continued to bring in Jews suffering from religious persecution.  With European immigrants and the end of the Ottoman Empire, there was opportunity in Palestine for jobs, so Arabs came.

8. There are no places for homeless Palestinian refugees to go.
No.  For 64 years, refugees have been living in refugee camps in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria which in fact are the homelands of most of these Arabs.  .  The UN has been feeding them and supporting them, even keeping them in UN refugee jobs which enables them.  They are pawns in the fight against Jews held in this condition by their leaders.  They've been brain-washed to remain in this state.  This means 3 generations have lived this way.   Transjordan had taken land illegally meant for the Jews and it was from there that homeless people wound up in refugee camps as well.  Surrounding Muslim states refused to grant citizenship to these Arabs who had left Israel. Jordan had a war with them and did take in many but not all. King Hussein's son, Abdullah II married one.   Today Obama and Netanyahu are planning to have a summit meeting about Jordan being involved with the West Bank where Fatah's PA rules over Arab communities.

9. Jews were living in equality and tranquility with the Palestinian Arabs before Israel became a state, just like Jews had lived in peace and benevolence throughout the Arab world.
In individual cases, this was true.  My neighbor, Mimi Padrow,  told me about living in Tel Aviv where they had orange groves and that the Palestinian workers got along well with them.  But there were many times, such as from 1919- 1929 that rioting was instigated by leaders  like the Haj Amin el Husseini which led to the slaughter of Jews. From August 23 -29, 1929, there was rioting that killed 133 Jews and injured 339.   In the Arab world, all Jews were called dhimmis, 2nd class citizens and were forced to pay higher taxes, and follow regulations that others did not that were slanderous.  They were looked down on due to their Muslim teachings.    True, it was a better state than Jews living in many places in Europe experienced.

10. Arab Palestinians, like other Arabs, have nothing against Jews, only Zionism.
Hatred started with the Koran.  Mohammed tried to convert Jews but failed, and in many instances he converted by the sword and if that didn't work he killed whole Jewish communities who were living in Medina.  So we started off on the wrong foot.  Treated as dhimmis showed how they felt about Jews.  Britain abetted their anti-Jewish feelings by their unfair treatment of Jews, such as restricting their immigration at a time Hitler was about to kill the 6 million. Those Brits stationed in Palestine are guilty of treating the land to be the Jewish National Home as Arab land.  They didn't stop Arabs from entering.  They counted as refugees the itinerant workers from neighboring countries.  All the Arab leaders had to do was speak those Holy Words and tell lies about Jews and they felt hatred.  They were afraid the Jews would treat them like they had been treated as dhimmis.  Actually, Arabs were not interested in creating their own state, even though offered their own in 1948.  It wasn't until 1967 after the Six Day War that they wanted what they never developed.   Now Abbas wants his state next door to Israel but has no money.  What money they were given by other Arab states has gone into weapons to use against Israel.  He expects Israel to accept them when they do not recognize Israel after these past 64 years.

Resource:From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/riots29.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

Hamas Leader Mahmoud Maabhouh Assassinated

Nadene Goldfoot

A terrorist has been assassinated by someone. Israel's Mossad is being accused. He was assassinated in the first part of February, and it just made the news as a big event yesterday, so it's taken more than two weeks to be talked about. Mahmoud Mabhouh, Hamas leader was in Dubai at the time.

As it turns out, Dubai had terrific security and 11 people are dubbed the killers of which 6 of them were holding Israeli passports that were stolen. Would Mossad frame their own citizens for this deed?

My feeling is that Mossad does a better job than this bungled operation has been handled. They're being framed by British operatives. Every country has their network of spies, some of which are double agents or maybe even triple. Up till now, Mossad has been the most skillful operation. Israel gets blamed for everything, and this may just be another set-up. The difference is that Israel has a darn good reason to feel less regret about this death. We don't rejoice over deaths of anyone, even people that have done us harm. That lesson was learned in the exodus from Egypt.

Israel wasn't the only country who wanted to see this terrorist's demise. He was getting missiles from the Iranians which could have hit Tel Aviv, and there would have been one great war after that would have happened. It's possible that Arab governments don't want to get that involved. Then again, Israel doesn't want missiles to get into Hamas hands in Gaza and destroy it's 6 million citizens. Even a rival Palestinian group could have been the assassinators. Jordan and Egypt have been looking for him for a long time.

Dubai is the center of buying arms. Mabhouh lives in Damascus, Syria. He was on a buying mission. It's bad enough that Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map and just as bad if not worse if Hamas gets some of their deadly weapons. They're a loose cannon and a wildly irresponsible emotional terrorist band.

I didn't think that Israelis were allowed into an Arab country like Dubai. I know we can visit Egypt, but thought that was it. Of course, some of our Israelis are Arabs and they are citizens

Reference: The Israel Project press@theisraelproject.org. by Tom Gross

Israelis Have Paid Dearly For Israel

by Nadene Goldfoot

Back in 1948, Jews in the newly created state of Israel were attacked by the surrounding Arab nations. We lost 7,000 to 10,000 Israelis in that war. That’s more than one out of every hundred Jews who were living there at the time. The Arabs lost even more men.

During the Six Day War Israel lost only 800 out of a population of 2.5 million. Israel had a greatly well-trained army by then.

For starters, people moving back to the area of Palestine bought the land. It’s been in our oral prayers for the past 2,000 years to return to our land of Israel, and we finally organized ourselves and got there after our long absence. Even though we had legitimate claims to the land, being the original dwellers, buying land from present-day owners, getting the official sanctions from the newly formed U.N., and even facing a holocaust that wiped out six million of us, we were attacked for needing to be there. Amazingly, we won and survived.

Back before 1948, we had no army. We actually were fighting from November 1947 to the invasion of Palestine by regular Arab armies in May 1948. We had defenders, though. One group was the Stern Group, with the Chief of Intelligence Stanley Goldfoot. When the attack of 1948 broke out, we had all sorts of problems to contend with. Jordan, also a newly created state, had a British-commanded Arab Legion who came at us with artillery, tanks and planes but did not know how to use them like we later did. We didn’t even receive arms until the middle of the battle and won due to "an unyielding spirit" more than to military equipment or proficiency. We weren’t about to let such a monumental occasion of becoming a state again after 2,000 years go by the wayside.

Teen-aged Jewish girls and Jewish children of age 10 and 11 fought next to our men. Our Jewish communities were attacked by Arab peasants with no military training as well as their present day armies. Luck or, I would like to think Ha-Shem, played a part in our winning the battle.

There was a Molotov cocktail that struck a leading Arab tank. Whoever tossed it from our side wasn’t even a baseball player. We had problems with our fighters being from so many different countries that they didn’t understand each other’s language so had a hard time following directions. It’s just really amazing that we did win.

One story that came out from Safed, my Israeli home-town is related by Dov Silverman. It's another miracle story. When the Arabs left Safed they really expected to return which their leaders told them would happen. Most took the route of the Wadi Amud which passed the water pumping station built by the British. If they had blown it up, it would have been terrible for the Jews there as it was the beginning of summer and everyone would have had to leave because of not having any water. They had left it alone because they expected to be able to return, victorious and take over the city. That water pump is still in use today.

We’ve gone through a lot to get where we are today, and yet we’re still being threatened. We’ve given so much to the world in the field of medicine and other sciences, but are not the favored child of many countries anymore. Now when we defend ourselves from constant attacks, we are condemned for it. Though the world has become unfair and kowtows to the Arab states who hold much of the world’s oil, we cannot give up hope. We’ve just begun to fight.

Resource: Book: Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
Book: Legends of Safed by Dov Silverman

Muslims in London Dealing with Police

Continued report from Tamar Boussi in Jerusalem

"I am also attaching a video from London. It is a shocking scene of a mob of supporters of Islamic terrorism chasing a large group of London police officers down the streets of London for many blocks. Given that Britain is one of the countries that feels it is qualified to tell Israel how to handle the terrorists, this is a question to ponder--How much attention should we give to international opinion and advice?"

Tamar, I would say that the British police in this incident have failed completely. It is scary to think that they cannot protect themselves. Many places in Europe have already had problems with the Muslims who seem to be taking over neighborhoods and have been aggressive towards Jews. I would say that international opinion and advice is to be taken with a grain of salt. We need to use our own intelligence and moral understandings. As we say, the youtube example is a "shunda'.

What rankles me is their yelling: "Free Palestine!" There never has been a country of Palestine, and they have been given all of Gaza and half of the West Bank already. What they want is all of Israel. They are a brain-washed hot-headed group of hatred who have been fed a pack of lies and are so gullible to believe it all. They know the British police are not armed and take joy in threatening them. Now they will be power hungry to do more harm. This irrational behavior is what is scary. You can't deal with it if you are sane. You can't discuss anything with them.

Resource:
Nadene Goldfoot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97hyDRjdXCE

Deir Yassin: What Happened

 

Nadene Goldfoot
Deir Yassin was a village inhabited by Arabs near Jerusalem. Israel was born through the United Nations vote on May 14, 1948, but an Arab blockade of Jerusalem lasted five months and only surrendered on May 29, 1948. The UN had decided that Jerusalem would be an international city. 2,500 Jews were living in the Old City and were starving. Jewish convoys tried to reach them with food as the situation was critical by April. Arabs had been ambushing convoys since December.

The supply route was a highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Arabs tried to cut it off and controlled several important points; the villages of Kastel and Deir Yassin. These villages overlooked the highway and allowed the Arabs to fire on the convoys of food.

The Jewish leaders of Lehi and the Irgun planned on attacking Deir Yassin. Haganah commander David Shaltiel told them that was fine with him as long as they can hold the village. He told them not to blow up the village because then the population would leave and it would be occupied by foreign forces. The Irgun attacked it on April 9 when the Haganah was battling for Kastel, the first major Irgun attack against the Arabs. Before this time, Irgun and Lehi were fighting against the British.

Irgun leader was Menachem Begin, later to become Prime Minister of Israel. The assault was done by 100 members of Irgun, but others recall it amounted to 132 men from both Irgun and the Stern Group. They were told by Mordechai Raanan, Irgun commander, not to loot or kill unarmed civilians. He said, "If a dog bites you, you as a man shouldn’t act like a dog. I would not expect you to bite a dog."

Begin stated that they warned the village with a loudspeaker at the entrance from a small open truck. The civilians were told to evacuate, and many took heed. Many writers of this incident say the warning wasn’t given as the truck rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast. With the Irgun attacking from the east and the south, the Sternists came in from the north. The leaders all thought the village would fall without a shot being fired. This was their first attempt to attack the Arabs.

Residents opened fire on the attackers. The battle was "ferocious" and took several hours. The Irgun lost 4 men and had 41 injured. They then escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The New York Times agreed with Begin’s description. More than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. The report mentioned No massacre.

Dan Kurzman wrote in "Genesis 1948" that the Jewish report was that 250 out of 400 village inhabitants were killed and Arabs say only 110 out of 1,000 were killed. Bir Zeit, a West Bank university, recently did a study based on discussions with each family from the village and came to the conclusion that 107 Arab casualies occurred.
The Jews opened an escape corridor from the village so that more than 200 residents left unharmed. The remaining Arabs pretended to surrender and then fired on the Jewish troops. Some Jews then killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. They found Arab men disguised as women among the bodies.

When the Jewish Agency learned of the attack, they immediately expressed its "horror and disgust." It also sent a letter expressing the Agency’s shock and disapproval to Transjordan’s King Abdullah. However, Deir Yassin has been used by Arabs as a place where Jews massacred them. In fact, the Arab Higher Committee hoped that the exaggerated report about a massacre at Deir Yassin would cause the surrounding Arab countries to put pressure on their governments to intervene in Palestine. Instead, it caused an exodus of Palestinians from the region out of fear.

Four days after the reports, an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital and killed 34 Jews which included doctors, nurses, patients, and the director of the hospital. 23 others were injured. This indeed was a massacre, but attracted little attention and is never mentioned by the Arabs that bring up Deir Yassin.  Just because it has lower number than what happened in Deir Yassin doesn't make it less of a massacre in that the medical personnel were not fighting the Arabs.  They were not attacking them.  They were civilians bringing medical aid.

500 Jews were killed in the first four months following Israel’s declared birth on May 14th, 1948. Jews did not run away from their reborn state.

Arabs knew that Jews were not trying to annihilate them. They were allowed to leave Tiberias, Haifa or any other towns captured by the Jews. They were able to go to nearby Arab states. Jews had no place to run to if they wanted. They stayed and fought to the death. They knew that the Arabs wanted to destroy them all. They knew because Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha made it clear on the eve of the war; "The Arabs intend to conduct a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."

Reference: Myths and Facts: a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, Phd.
Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman