A Washington Post report: in few words
Kufr Qassem Massacre by by Leslie C. Green
Kufr Qassem 41 years later: survivors recall the cold-blooded massacre, Kufr Qassem - On the Massacre Official Home Page, (in Arabic)
| Kufr Qassem 41 years later: survivors recall the cold-blooded massacre Palestine, History, 4/9/98 It was a 90-minute drive from Jerusalem to the town of Kufr Qassem in the Palestinian triangle inside Israel proper. I had arranged a number of interviews with survivors of a massacre the Israeli army committed a bit over four decades ago. The road leading into the town was full of olive trees on both sides. Only a few people were collecting their olives. The harvest was close to its end. And so were the days forty one years ago. On 29 October 1956, just hours after the tripartite attack of Israel, France and Britain started on Egypt in what was known as the Sinai Campaign, 49 villagers from Kufr Qassem were slaughtered in cold blood as they made their way back from their fields to their homes. In the town centre stood a monument commemorating those who were killed. The list of names carved on the big square stone contained 49 names and one blank space. I later was told it was left for the 50th victim whose name nobody could find out. One of the murdered women was pregnant in her eighth month and the baby died in her womb. No one could ever come up with a suitable name for that unborn victim. I went through the list and matched it with names of people who were slated for interviews later in the day. Many names sounded familiar. Many of them were relatives of those I was going to see. The view of those picking their olives whom I saw on my way into the town crossed my mind to intercut later with images of those who returned to their homes on the day of the massacre. I was moved by the scene and was on the verge of crying. At that moment, light rain drops sporadically fell above our heads. The sky, I wondered, was crying in Kufr Qassem! Israel did not spare any effort to hide the crime and to cover up for those who committed it. The strict censorship it clamped on the story lasted for only a week. On 6 November 1956, one Israeli newspaper reported that a commission of inquiry "was set to investigate the incidents in Kufr Qassem where some civilians were killed and others wounded during a curfew in Kufr Qassem." A month and a half later, details on the massacre started to flow in through the media. A number of left-wing and Arab Knesset members played a leading role and contributed to the exposure. Tewfiq Toubi and Meir Wilner of the Israeli Communist Party sent hundreds of letters about the events on that day to public figures in the country . Latif Dori, an active member of left-wing Zionist Mapam Party infiltrated into the village three days after the massacre and collected first hand testimonies from survivors. Uri Avneri, also a leading leftist who was the first to visit PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Beirut during the Israeli siege of the Lebanese capital in 1982, played an effective role through his weekly magazine, Ha'Olam Hazeh (This World). Yet all that was published in those days could not give an exact account of the motives behind the massacre. The only explanation was given by the villagers themselves who insisted the slaughtering of innocent villagers was meant to force them out of their country into Jordan. Kufr Qassem was no more than six miles away from the 1967 borders between Jordan and Israel. Only in 1991, part of the truth started to come out. Rupik Rozenthal, an Israeli journalist, wrote in "Hadashot" on 25 November saying the massacre was part of an overall plan by the Israeli army to deport as many Palestinians as possible out of the country. Rozenthal was allowed to go through the army archives and read the minutes of the military trial of the 11 soldiers and officers who were involved in the massacre. He found out that the plan was to try and move the Palestinians out of the Arab villages in the Triangle and send them into Jordan should the latter intervene in support of Egypt. Jordan did not enter the 1956 war. The plan was not carried out in full. Only the first phase was done. The dire price was the lives of 49 villagers from Kufr Qassem. When it realized that the crime was too heinous to hide, Israel decided to put those involved on military trial, which according to the villagers was no more than a joke. Colonel Yishishkar Shedmi, who changed the timing for the curfew and reportedly gave his soldiers the green light to go ahead with the massacre, was only found guilty of exceeding his authority when he moved the curfew hour. The court fined him only one piaster. The verdict, at least as far as the villagers were concerned, meant that one piaster was the price Israel was ready to give for the 49 victims. The rest of those on trial were sentenced to between seven and 17 years imprisonment, but all were released before the end of the third year of their penalty. Major Avraham Melinki, who commanded the Border Police force in the village and was the one who gave the orders to shoot, was promoted shortly after his release from prison. Then Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben Gurion placed him in charge of security arrangements in Israel's maximum security nuclear reactor in Dimona. Colonel Shedmi continued his service in the army. In 1967, he was a mechanized brigade commander and in 1973 he served as advisor to the commander of the northern district and was wounded when their helicopter crashed over Mount of Hermon on the Golan Heights. Testimonies of survivors : Jamal Freij was 17 years old the day the massacre took place. He was among a number of villagers working their fields. Among their group, there were some 25 girls and women. "Two kids from the village came to notify us that curfew hour was moved earlier to five in the afternoon. I told the women to head back to their homes. I went, along with a number of men, to a warehouse to change our clothes. On our way back, and at a distance of one mile, we heard heavy shooting coming from the direction of the village. We started to retreat but a lorry driver who came rushing towards the village told us there was no need to run away simply because, he thought and we believed, the shooting was not that serious or indiscriminate. At the entrance to the village, we were stopped by three soldiers. Their officer ordered us to get out of the lorry which drove us to the village. The minute we told him we all were from Kufr Qassem he ordered his soldiers to open fire. They shot at us. Many fell on the ground, dead or wounded. I was among a number of men who ran away but I fell a minute later and hid myself behind the lorry s wheel until the soldiers discovered me late at night and took me back to the village." Talal Issa Shaker was eight years only. Villagers still remember the tragedy that involved his death. He went out to return the flock of sheep from the neighbouring fields. A villager I met confirmed that the soldiers "saw Talal and shot him dead. When his father went out to check what was happening, the soldiers shot and seriously wounded him. The mother later went out and was shot and so was the daughter, Noura." Mustafa Khamis Amer is now 59 years old. He explains how he miraculously escaped death: "The soldiers at the southern entrance to the village stopped us and checked our identity cards. Immediately afterwards, their officer ordered them to shoot. I started to run away and managed to disappear while many others were shot dead or wounded." On that day, Mustafa added, villagers from nearby Jaljoulya were brought in by the army to dig a huge hole, which at the time they didn't know was meant to become a collective grave for the vicitims. All bodies were put in nylon bags and put aside ready for burial, he said. Saleh Khalil Issa was 19 years old. His testimony, given in detail to Latif Dori three days after the massacre, depicted the following account: "We were heading back to the village on our bicycles. We arrived at about ten to five in the afternoon. Three soldiers at the western entrance to the village ordered us to stop. Each of us put his hand in his pocket to pull out his identity card but the officer did not wait. He gave orders to open fire. They shot and immediately killed my cousin Abed Salim Issa and injured his brother As ad and myself. We fell on the ground and then we saw another group of people riding their bicycles approaching. They were a group of eleven people, whose names are known to me. I heard the officer giving orders using the term 'harvest them' and they opened fire. We fell on the ground. I saw a car approaching driven by Ata Yaacob who had some passengers with him. They all were ordered to step out of the car and to stand in a queue. The officer again used the same term and fire was opened at them. The soldiers then pulled all bodies to a nearby field. At a certain moment, we found out the soldiers were looking in the opposite direction and we started to run away. We ran for some 50 meters and guns were shot at us again. I took the ground and stayed there until the next morning. Throughout the night, I heard soldiers giving instructinos to move the bodies. In the morning, the soldiers saw me and took me to the hospital. Abdul Rahim Sarsour was 17 years old on that day. He remembers how he was injured on his way back to the village when soldiers opened fire at him and at the group that returned with him. He pretended he was dead to escape being shot at again by the soldiers. He said he still feels guilty for the death of his brother, whom their mother sent to inform Abdul Rahim and the others that the curfew hour was changed. "Had he stayed home, he would have been alive today," said Abdul Rahim who gave the following account: "We arrived in the village. Soldiers were manning a roadblock on the entrance. They ordered us out of the car. An officer then gave his orders to 'harvest' us and fire was opened indiscriminately in our direction. I fell on the ground and so did many others, some were killed immediately and others wounded. My brother fell next to me. He murmured asking if I was hit. I gave him a blow with my elbow to remain silent but it was too late. A soldier approached and fired four bullets at me, hitting both my right leg and arm. The soldier then pointed his gun to my brother s head and fired several rounds of bullets. The head exploded in pieces while I was watching but did not dare say a single word. I cannot forget that moment at all. I still remember how my brother, frightened by the soldiers, was pressing with his hands on my chest. When the soldier fired at him, I felt the pressure increasing for a second or two until his hands went loose. Jum ah Sarsour, another wounded, lay next to me. He was moaning with pain. I tried to ask him to remain silent but it was too late. One of the soldiers drew close to him and shot him dead. A third main badly wounded was screaming at the soldiers. A soldier approached him and shouted 'why are you shouting, you son-of-a-bitch' and shot him dead. A car approached with a number of women aboard singing. One of the girls saw the bodies and yelled at the rest to stop singing. The driver sped away from the scene but some 150 meters away we heard plenty of shooting." Abdul Rahim said he lost conscience sometime at night and woke up to find a soldier pulling him by the leg. He told the soldier to stop dragging him along with the dead bodies. "The soldier took out his gun and was about to shoot me when an ambulance arrived and its driver asked if the soldiers had any wounded. It was my lucky minute. The driver put me in his ambulance and drove to the hospital." |
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ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, Kufr-Qassem Massacre (http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l/1996.Oct/0048.html) Date: 28 Oct 96 12:25:18 EST From: LEBRECHT HANS <100264.770@compuserve.com> Subject: 40th anniversary Kufr-Qassem massacre
October 29, the Arab population in Israel and democratic Jewish circles commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Kufr-Qassem massacre. On this date in 1956, Israel opened its aggression concocted with the British and French imperialist powers which attempted in vain to regain their rule over the nationalized Egyptian Suez Channel by military means, under the pretext of allegedly driving a "neutral" wedge between the Egyptian and the Israeli armies along the Channel. Well, the Egyptians succeeded to defeat the whole invading British and French troops and Israel had to withdraw a few months later (April/May 1957) from the Sinai peninsula and the Gaza Strip it conquered.
At that time, from 1948 to 1965, all towns, villages and other rural localities in Israel with a population of Arab citizens, foremost in the northern Galilee and the central Triangle districts, were kept under strict military rule. On this particular day of starting the aggressive war, all these areas were put under curfew, although they are quite far away from the attacked Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula. Nowhere, however, outstanding incidents or clashes occurred. The only exception was a horrible blood bath, Israeli "security forces" committed at the entrance of the then still small village of Kufr-Qassem, less than 20 miles east of Tel-Aviv.
When villagers, returning from work in the fields or the near-by Petah-Tiqva industrial area, having been unaware of the curfew, arrived at a road bloc, the Israeli army had set up near the entrance to the village, their vehicles, lorries, cars, or horse-driven wagons, were stopped by an Israeli army unit and forced to descend from the vehicles. All were taken to the roadside and shot without further warning. 49 villagers, among them elderly and young men, boys, women and girls, one of the women in the eighth month of pregnancy, were shot dead, and only a few accidentally survived seriously wounded, some of them buried under the dead bodies of others.
At first, the whole affair was kept strictly concealed from the public eye by the sharp censorship. However, a young Israeli journalist, fluent in the Arabic language, Latif Dori, a correspondent of the organ of the United Workers' Party Mapam, which at the time was a coalition partner in the Labor led Ben-Gurion Government, got wind of the horrible affair. He succeeded to enter Kufr-Qassem illegally in spite of the curfew a few days after the event. At a press conference, held last week in Tel-Aviv by the Arab-Jewish Solidarity Committee with Kufr- Qassem towards the 40th anniversary, Dori stressed that the reports, he at the time heard in the village, made his hair stand on end. He tried to mobilize leading figures from his party, among them cabinet ministers and Knesset members, but these rejected any attempt to break the plot of hushing up the crime. Dori then turned to two communist Knesset members, Tawfiq Toubi and Meir Vilner. Together with Dori they visited the wounded survivors, kept under close police detention in a Jewish hospital near Petah-Tiqva and listened to their eye witness reports. MKs Toubi and Vilner turned to the then PM and Defense Minister Ben- Gurion, as well as to the Knesset Presidium to protest and to raise the matter in the Knesset with the intention to set up a neutral public investigation committee, as well as demanding that the officers, responsible for the massacre be put on on trial.
When Ben-Gurion and the Knesset bodies refused to act, the communist Knesset members published a pamphlet, relating the blood-curling story of the massacre together with all those eye- witness reports, they heard in the Beilinson hospital. The pamphlet was sent to several thousand personalities, politicians, academics, journalists and trade union leaders. Uri Avneri, then the publisher and editor of the weekly magazine "Olam Haze" popular mainly among the younger generation, today the leading figure in the Gush-Shalom peace bloc, broke the censorship and published the whole story. With this, the taboo about the Kufr- Qassem blood bath was lifted. The government was forced by the public uproar about the affair to bring charges before a military court against the army officers and NCOs responsible for the crime.
In the verdict, convicting the perpetrators of the Kufr- Qassem massacre, District Judge Benjamin Halevy, inter alia ruled, that the claim of having acted according to commands given by their superior officers, should not have been executed, but rejected. He pointed to the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, as well as to some of the trials against Nazi S.S. murderers, who tried to excuse their bloody crimes committed against Jews, Gypsies and political opponents of the Nazi regime by "only having executed commands by their superiors". "Such claims for clemency cannot be accepted by any court of justice in the Jewish State of Israel" judge Benjamin Halevy ruled. Officers and men of the army and other security forces have not only the right, but even the duty to refuse executing commands which represent offenses against human rights and the legal code of the state, the judge stated in his verdict. This ruling was adopted by the Supreme Court and is still in force in the Israeli juridical code. (The Yesh-Gvul army reservists who refuse to do reserve duties in the occupied territories, regularly call upon the personnel of the army and police forces stationed in the occupied Palestinian territories, to refuse commands, representing illegal acts according to this ruling).
Eleven of the murderers were sentenced to prison terms of 5 to 17 years. But they never have seen a jail from inside. They did their time in a comfortable hotel in Jerusalem. And then, by way of several mitigations, and at the end of being pardoned by the upper military echelon and the then President of Israel, some of them were released soon after, and not one of them spent more than three years in jail. Moreover, the main culprit, Major Malinki, after his having been pardoned and released from jail, was appointed to be the director general of the Dimona Atom reactor, in which, as known today, Israel produces nuclear war devices. The second next in command of the killing squad, Lieutenant Dahan, was later appointed to be the "civil commander" responsible for the Arab minority population of the town Ramle not far from Kufr-Qassem.
At a press conference, held by the Kufr-Qassem Solidarity Committee towards the 40th anniversary commemoration of the Kufr- Qassem massacre in this, meanwhile large Arab village of about 8,000 inhabitants, the village's Mayor Ibrahim Zarzur, laid out the program of the Day of Commemoration. After a wreath laying ceremony at the place of the blood bath, and another besides the memorial at a village square, a mass demonstration will pass through the village's main streets to the cemetery. There will be held a religious ceremony besides the graves of the 49 victims of the massacre. Later, at a mass rally in the village's center, the mayor of Kufr-Qassem will present the three "Whistle Blowers" of the time, Latif Dori, Tawfiq Toubi and Meir Vilner the honorable freeman title of the village. Zarzur stressed that this was the first time in Israel's history that two Jews, Dori and Vilner, will become freemen of an Arab town or village.
Latif Dori told the story of his revelation of the Kufr- Qassem blood bath, and its aftermath in court, as well of the shameful pardons and honors, the perpetrators of the crime received from the hands of the then ruling Labor establishment. Ali Zarzur, representing the bereaved families, told that he still has nightmares about the evening, when he was a 9-year old boy and his mother, pregnant in her eighth month, was killed by the trigger-happy soldiers.
The chair of the Islamist Party in Israel, Sheik Abdallah Nimr Darwish, raised at the press conference his demand from the present government to hold - after 40 years delay - a "sulha", the traditional (Arab) reconciliation ceremony - not only with the inhabitants of Kufr-Qassem and the families of the victims, but also with the whole of the Palestinian people. Last not least, he said, the criminal massacre in Kufr-Qassem was only one stone in a mosaic of such crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinians. Apparently, the Ben-Gurion administration tried to repeat by it, what the Israeli forces under his command did in 1948, when they committed many such massacres in Dir-Yassin, Kufr Zeitun, and dozens of other Arab localities with the purpose to create a mass panic which, together with outright enforced expulsions, like in Lydda and Ramle (in these two towns alone of 50,000), created the still not solved problem of millions of Palestinian refugees and their offspring. But, in the case of Kufr-Qassem, as with the whole Arab population of Israel at the time, this design of repeating the creation of a panic did not succeed. "The refugees of 1948 and 1967, as all other Palestinians deported by Israel, have the legitimate right to return to their Palestinian homeland, he stressed. Until this right, laid down in international law and the special U.N.O. resolution, will be recognized and honored by Israel, there cannot be achieved any true and just peace here". He added that the Israelis should not fear the return of many of those refugees. When there will be peace between Israel and the future Palestinian state, the return of the Palestinians to their native homeland may become a blessing to all, the Israelis included.
The press conference was chaired by the spokesman of the Committee, Uzi Burstein of the CP Israel. He expressed his hope that the commemoration day in Kufr-Qassem will achieve mass attention of Arab citizen as well as by many Jewish democrats. He announced that some important personalities from the PLO and the Palestinian PNA authority will take part, or at least broadcast in some way their greetings to the memorial ceremonies.
With fraternal greetings,
Hans Lebrecht