Interviews: 50th anniversary of Deir Yassin massacre
Palestine, History, 4/10/1998

In retrospect, Palestinians of today admit that one of the most terrible mistakes they made back in 1948 was to over-report the details of the Deir Yassin massacre. "The goal was to mobilize Arab support for the Palestinians who were slaughtered by the Zionists but what really happened was that more and more Palestinians became scared and left their country," said Hazem Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian figure who currently lives in Jordan. In 1948 he was among the key figures of the city of Jerusalem.

On the eve of April 9, armed members of Jewish underground groups attacked the village of Deir Yassin, a strategic site towering over Jerusalem from the west. Deir Yassin became second in importance after Al Qastal fell in the hands of the Israelis. Al Qastal, a village that overshadows the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, obtained a strategic significance and whoever planned for the takeover of Jerusalem had to safeguard his control of the village. It was in the battle over Al Qastal that a leading Palestinian fighter was killed. He was Abdul Qader Husseini, father of PLO Executive Committee member Faisal Husseini, who is also in charge of the Jerusalem file in the Palestinian government.

Abu Tawfiq Yassini lives today in Jericho. He is a bit over 70 years old. He remembers perfectly well what happened the day Deir Yassin fell into Israeli hands. He saw at least one woman being shot dead. He says that an exchange of fire took place, that weapons were stockpiled, somehow, and that Egypt was the source of the weapons. What follows are excerpts of the interview he gave:

"I had an uncle who, along with two more, went to Egypt and brought weapons from there, including two Bren machine-guns and ammunition. My duty was to guard from 1800 until midnight.

"I was the last to get married in that period. We had one or two weddings in the village every week. Mine was the last by then. After I finished my duty at midnight, I headed back to my house. We slept. At around 0400 hours. We heard gunshots outside. They were fired by a Sten machine-gun. We knew the attack had started.

"I heard lots of firing. I left my wife at home and went to my uncle's house where the ammunition he brought from Egypt was hidden. I took the Bren and headed, along with my cousin, to the western edge of the village. My cousin later died in Amman, Jordan."

"Daylight broke out. The Jews came in from the eastern side of the village, where the Zahran family was living. The fighting and the exchange of fire were very heavy. The Jews went into the house of Zahran family and sprayed with bullets all those who were inside."

How did you know they sprayed them all with bullets?

"I was in the western side of the village but we heard the heavy firing from the other edge. There were 36 people who were killed in that neighborhood. There were trenches around the village. We saw the Jews bringing trucks with sand and rocks to fill the trenches and open the way for their vehicles. An armored bus, with guns on both sides, arrived at the spot. It stopped across the street opposite the village school. Next to the school, we had no trenches but we had blocked the street with huge rocks. The vehicles could not get through. The bus was firing and it took fire too. A small tank came to the village and a Jew came out of it. With my own eyes, I saw that Jew approaching the rocks trying to remove them from the road but was shot at and he fell on the ground. His colleagues threw a rope with a hook at one end, hooked his body and pulled it back to the little tank. The tank then retreated backwards.

"Exchange of fire continued until around 12:30 in the afternoon. Our ammunition has finished. We had nothing left to fight with. We pulled out of the village from the western side. On my way out of the village, I did not come across the center of the village and thus could not see any corpses.

"We saw the Jews moving from one street to another. We saw them killing people in the village. With my own eye, I saw a pregnant woman whom they shot in the middle of the street. They shot her before my eyes.

"There were women at the local bakery shop in the village. The wife of my uncle was one of them. She said they were in the bakery shop to bake the bread. She swore to God that the Jews came into the bakery shop, took the baker, a man originally from Hebron, and threw him alive into the oven.

"We fled to Ein Karem [an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem] where we met the Iraqi troops. Women and men who first arrived to Ein Karem from Deir Yassin told the Iraqi troops of what had happened and asked for their help. The Iraqi officer said he had no orders to move to Deir Yassin and instead, he said, they had instructions to go and attend the funeral of Abdul Qader Husseini. From Ein Karem, we went to Malha and to Jerusalem.

"True, there was exchange of fire with the Jews. Prior to the attack, they used to come to the village and distribute leaflets calling for the establishment of friendly and brotherly relations with us offering a formula of 'do not hit us, we won't hit you.' Our youths confronted them and did not listen to them. Our youths used to go out to the eastern side of the village and beat up whatever Jew they saw."

Have you, yourself, seen any of the reported shootings at civilians?

"I saw them shooting people in front of us. They said their commander, the Haganah commander, was shot, and they started spraying people with bullets. They killed the 36 Zahran family members as they sprayed with bullets every person they saw in every house they entered.

"Yet, we were on the western edge of the village. We could not see everything. We were at the house of my uncle. I could see Khumayyes who was shot dead as he was firing from behind a little makeshift trench he prepared. But I did not see Jews walking into houses. As I said, I was away in the western side of the village. The pregnant woman they shot, I saw with my own eyes. She was fired at from a distance."

Do you remember which of the Jewish gangs came into the village? Which one was met with resistance?

"We could not tell who was who. Whoever walked into the village was met with resistance. "

Did the Jews call on the villagers with loudspeakers?

"Yes they did. They said we either leave or they would kill us. They used shock bombs, the explosion of which sounded like a mine blast, or a cannon shell blast. They used regular bombs, but their bombs were not that sophisticated."

The Israelis claimed there were men who were dressed in women's outfits in the village, can you confirm this?

"There was only one man who had stayed behind with his mother. When his mother wanted to leave the village, she put a woman's dress over him before they left the village. But the Jews shot him dead after they identified him. They had taken people out of the village and led them to Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. "

As far as you know, it was only that man who was dressed in a woman's outfit?

"Yes, only him. His name was Abdullah Abdul Majid Sammour. He used to work in Jerusalem electricity and used to go through [Jewish] Givat Shaul settlement every day to and back to the village. He was very familiar to them. That is why they identified him so easily and killed him. His mother tried to dissuade them from killing him. She offered money and gold. Yet, they killed him and took money. They conducted body searches on women looking for money and gold."

Mohammed Asaad Radwan Al Yassini, 70, who currently lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, confirmed that some of the men were dressed in women's outfits. The fact that he gave a different name shows that it was not only one man more. Whether this was a phenomenon of its own is unclear. The question might continue to hover without any specific answer. He also confirmed that trenches were there. He has not seen actual cold-blooded killing. Yet he saw bodies riddled with bullets. Excerpts below:

"I was in the village when the Jews attacked. My colleagues and I were on the western side of the village, opposite Al Qastal. We had our guns on us. All villagers, the youths, were ready for whatever may happen after the Qastal battle was over. By 16:30 on Thursday 8th April 1948, Abdul Qader Husseini was killed in Qastal as we were watching the battle from a distance. After his death, we took precaution measures in case anything would happen. We guarded the village until 02:30 the next morning when the Jews started entering the village with the use of spot and searchlights looking for our fighters. The Jews closed on the village amid exchange of fire with us.

"Once they entered the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached the western edge. The battle was on three fronts, east, south and north. The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks, missiles, and cannons. They used to enter houses and kill women and children indiscriminately. The youths in the village fought bravely against them and the fighting continued until it was around 15:30 afternoon. We had no aid or support from any party. They took about 40 prisoners from the village. But after the battle was over, they took them to the quarry where they shot them dead and threw their bodies in the quarry.

"After the Jews removed their dead and wounded, they took the prisoners and killed them. I had participated in the fighting and was based in the western side. But I did not see Abu Tawfiq, who perhaps was in a different building. I saw youths with their bodies riddled with bullets. I did not see them actually slaughtering women or children in front of me. Neither did they rape any woman. They took the elderly prisoners, women and men and took them out of the village, yet they killed the youths."

Did they use speakers and what did they say?

"They called on us to surrender, to throw our weapons and to save ourselves. But we did not imagine them breaking into the village. We expected the fighting to last for one or two hours, after which time they would retreat. But they continued the fighting. They were some 3,000 soldiers. They were members of Haganah, Etzel, Irgun and Stern. Menachem Begin, the former prime minister, was the butcher of Deir Yassin, and so was Shamir."

Did you have any defenses?

"Our defenses were very simple. What do you expect? Trenches? We had trenches. The Jews filled one of those trenches with sand and rocks in order for their tanks to cross. When we hit the tank, it started firing from its machine-guns at our positions in the western edge of the village."

Were there any men dressed in women's outfits in the village?

I remember, from what my uncle's wife told me, that an uncle of mine, who was a schoolmaster, had killed the commander of the invading gangs on the staircase of one of the houses and later on had disappeared for three days. After three years, they found him with his mother, originally from Latakia in Syria, they saw him with her, and his name was Ribhi Ismail Atiyyeh. She disguised him in women clothes to make sure that she could get him out of the village. They identified that he was a man and not a woman. They opened fire and killed him. That is what I heard from my uncle's wife, but I did not see it happening before my eyes."

Ali Yousef Jaber, Abu Yousef, is also 70 years old. He lives in Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah. Excerpts below:

"I would like to stress on the fact that no rape incidents took place. That was part of a big lie that some of the Arabs and some of our leaders invented but were refuted by our villagers. I was among a group of people who went to Saad Eddin Al Aref to talk to him about this. He told us he wanted to frame them and attribute to them a brutal crime. I said to him: if you want to frame them, do not use Deir Yassin, or our women. Do not attribute to us something that never happened, otherwise this is infamy that our village and its people do not deserve.

"After the battle, the Jews took elderly men and women and youths, including three of my cousins. One was Tawfiq Jaber, the second Jaber Tawfiq and the third Khalil Rashideh. They took them all; one called Jamil Issa, also my cousin, and his nephew. They took them all. Women, who had on them gold and money, were stripped of their gold. After they removed their dead and wounded, they took the men to the quarry and sprayed them all with bullets."

Did anybody see them spraying people with bullets?

"Whoever was busy in a battle could not see. One woman had her son taken some 40 to 60 meters away from where she and the rest of the women stood and shot him dead. Then they brought Jewish kids to throw stones at his body. They, the Jews, later poured kerosene on his body and set it ablaze while the women watched from a distance. We later collected ourselves, checked who was missing. At Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, we were gathered by what was called at the time the Arab Supreme Committee. Each of us was looking for a son, a daughter, a sister or a mother. May you never see such tough minutes. But still we cannot say they amputated women's breasts, slashed their bellies or raped them.

"All men were busy with fighting. Eyewitnesses were only women. Some of those women who saw what happened have passed away. The elderly men were told to remove the dead, both Arabs and Jews. They took the bodies of the Jews and left the Arab bodies, which later were thrown in a well in the village center. "

Abu Mahmoud again: A Jewish eyewitness, Ibrahim Najjar, who lived in Givat Shaul and who took me to the village in 1968, told me there were no Arabs buried in the well. As we arrived in the village, I stood by the well and read some verses from the Koran. He told me not to do that. "There isn't anybody here. Come with me and I will show you were they were all buried." He took me to the quarry where he said: "Here is where you should read the Koran verses. Two Jews held a body of an Arab dead and threw it down in the valley, some 20 meters in depth." That is were they threw bodies of the 14 martyrs who were killed there.

Um Mahmoud, wife of Abu Mahmoud, was 15 years old when the Deir Yassin massacre took place. She seems to be the only real eyewitness. Excerpts from the interview with her:

"We were inside the house. We heard shooting outside. My mother said get up. It looks like the Jews have attacked us. My cousin and his sister came running and said the Jews were already in our garden. In the meantime, fighting became heavier and we heard lots of gunshots outside. The late Khalil Rashideh came to us and asked for a ladder to bring down my uncle, Jaber from the second floor. He said the Jews wanted to throw Jaber on the stairs. My mother told him to take the ladder and get Shaker's children down too. Yasser and me went to fetch the ladder. A bomb was thrown at us and it exploded close to where we were in the yard.

"We took the ladder to the house. He handed me the boy and the girl, but my sister-in-law did not want to leave. She was frightened. The girl was two months old and the boy about three years. I took the two and my mother said we should go to my uncle's house.

I saw how Hilweh Zeidan was killed, along with her husband, her son, her brother and Khumayyes. Hilweh Zeidan went out to collect the body of her husband. They shot her and she fell over his body. Hassan Zeidan was shooting from his position on the stairs as we were staring at him. With my own eyes I saw how he was shot dead. I also saw Hayat Al Bilbeisi, a nurse from Jerusalem serving in the village, as she was shot before the house door of Musa Hassan. The daughter of Abu El Abed was shot dead as she held her niece, a baby. The baby was shot too. "

Does that mean you saw some five people killed in cold blood?

"More than that, perhaps more than ten. Whoever tried to run away was shot dead."

Previous Stories:
  Kufr Qassem 41 years later: survivors recall the cold-blooded massacre   (4/9/1998)
  Deir Yassin commemoration activities   (4/8/1998)
  Deir Yassin massacre 50th Anniversay   (4/8/1998)

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