Deir Yassin Massacre 1948: Killings in a Village near Jerusalem

The Deir Yassin massacre took place on 9 April 1948, when fighters of the Jewish underground organisations Irgun and Lehi attacked the Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin on the western edge of Jerusalem. More than 100 villagers, many of them women, children and old people, were killed. News of the killings spread fear across Arab Palestine and became one of the defining events of the 1948 war.

Background

After the United Nations voted on 29 November 1947 to partition Palestine, fighting broke out between Jewish and Arab forces while Britain prepared to end its mandate (see UN Partition Plan for Palestine). By early 1948 Arab irregulars had cut the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, leaving the city’s Jewish population short of food and supplies.

In early April the Haganah, the main Jewish militia, launched Operation Nachshon to reopen the road. Deir Yassin, a stone-quarrying village of roughly 600 to 750 people, lay on a hill near the road’s approach to Jerusalem. Its leaders had reached a non-aggression understanding with the neighbouring Jewish district of Givat Shaul, and the village had largely stayed out of the fighting.

The Irgun and Lehi were smaller, more radical groups outside the Haganah’s command. They proposed an attack on Deir Yassin, and the Haganah’s Jerusalem commander, David Shaltiel, agreed on condition that the village be held afterwards rather than destroyed.

What happened

Before dawn on 9 April 1948 about 120 to 130 Irgun and Lehi fighters advanced on the village from two directions. A loudspeaker truck meant to warn residents to leave reportedly got stuck in a ditch, and it is disputed whether its message was heard. Villagers resisted with rifles, and the attackers, who were poorly trained for street fighting, took casualties and moved slowly from house to house.

The attackers used grenades and explosives against houses, killing families inside. Later in the day a Palmach unit helped with mortar fire, and the village was taken. Eyewitness accounts, including those of survivors, Haganah observers and a Red Cross delegate, Jacques de Reynier, describe the killing of unarmed people, including some who were shot after capture. Some prisoners were driven through parts of Jerusalem in trucks before being released.

Four or five of the attackers were killed and several dozen wounded. The Irgun and Lehi then handed the village over to the Haganah.

The death toll

The Irgun and Lehi commanders announced that 254 Arabs had been killed, a figure repeated by Arab leaders and international newspapers. The number was later shown to be exaggerated. A 1987 study by Birzeit University, based on interviews with survivors, listed 107 named dead, and most historians now give a toll of roughly 100 to 120 villagers.

Historians such as Benny Morris have described the events as a massacre, while some Israeli accounts have argued that most deaths occurred in house-to-house combat. The consensus is that a large share of the victims were non-combatants and that killings continued after resistance had ended.

Reactions and consequences

The Jewish Agency and the Haganah leadership condemned the killings, and David Ben-Gurion sent a message of regret to King Abdullah of Transjordan. The Irgun leader Menachem Begin defended the operation as a legitimate military action.

Arab radio broadcasts spread detailed accounts of the atrocities, in part to rouse resistance. Historians generally agree that this coverage also intensified panic and contributed to the flight of Palestinian civilians from many other villages in the following weeks. On 13 April 1948 Arab fighters ambushed a Jewish medical convoy to the Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus, killing about 78 people, an attack widely seen as revenge for Deir Yassin.

Arab governments cited Deir Yassin among their reasons for intervening when the Arab–Israeli War of 1948 widened in May.

Key people

• Menachem Begin commanded the Irgun and later became Prime Minister of Israel (1977–1983).
• David Shaltiel, Haganah commander in Jerusalem, approved the operation with conditions.
• Jacques de Reynier, the International Committee of the Red Cross delegate, visited the village shortly after the fighting and recorded what he saw.
• Hind al-Husseini, a Jerusalem educator, took in about 55 orphaned children from the village and founded the Dar al-Tifl al-Arabi orphanage to care for them.

Timeline

• 1947, 29 November: The UN General Assembly votes for partition; civil war begins in Palestine.
• 1948, early April: The Haganah launches Operation Nachshon to open the road to Jerusalem.
• 1948, 9 April: Irgun and Lehi fighters attack and capture Deir Yassin; more than 100 villagers are killed.
• 1948, 13 April: The Hadassah medical convoy is ambushed, killing about 78 people.
• 1948, 14 May: Israel declares independence; neighbouring Arab states intervene the next day.
• 1987: A Birzeit University study lists 107 villagers killed.

Why it matters

Deir Yassin became a symbol of the Palestinian Nakba, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, and of the human cost of the war that created the State of Israel. It also exposed early divisions within the Jewish leadership over the conduct of war. How the event is remembered remains a sensitive question in both Israeli and Palestinian memory.