Chosen for Conquest

“Get over it,” a correspondent wrote me after I’d mentioned Deir Yassin to him. But the Middle East has never gotten over this formative event in the history of the region. It remains the most lastingly successful terrorist operation in the creation of the state of Israel. It played a large part in Plan Dalet, a Zionist campaign to drive Arabs out of Palestine.

“Deir Yassin was a small Arab village just outside Jerusalem,” write George and Douglas Ball in their book The Passionate Attachment. “It had stayed out of the [Jewish-Arab] struggle and, wishing to be neutral, its inhabitants had entered into a mutual nonaggression pact with the neighboring Jews. They had also agreed not to harbor those attacking the Jews.

“Yet the village was almost the first to suffer the horror of Plan Dalet, which went into effect on April 1, 1948. It called for the destruction and evacuation of twenty villages in order to purge the land of Palestinian inhabitants by gaining ‘control of areas given to us by the UN in addition to areas occupied by us which were outside these borders.’”

On April 9 the irregular forces of the Irgun, led by Israel’s future prime minister Menachem Begin, slaughtered nearly all the residents of the nearly defenseless village. Many survivors of the first assault, all civilians, were marched into the village square, lined up against a wall, and shot. A Red Cross representative arrived while the violence was still in progress; he found 254 dead, including 145 women, 35 of whom were pregnant.

A few of the Arabs of Deir Yassin were still alive. The Balls write, “The other surviving women and children were stripped, and with their hands above their heads, paraded in three open trucks up and down King George V Avenue in Jewish Jerusalem, where spectators spat on them and stoned them.”

This had the desired effect. As word of the massacre spread, hundreds of Arabs fled the land. They have never been allowed to return to their homes. Their houses were destroyed and their property distributed to Jews.

Begin was exultant. He sent a message praising his troops:

“Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack. We stand to attention in memory of the slain. We lovingly shake the hands of the wounded. Tell the soldiers: you have made history with your attack and your victory. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou hast chosen us for conquest.”

In his memoirs, Begin made the event sound like a battle, with no mention of the massacre of women and children or of the obscene abuse of the few survivors. But in fact it was a triumph for Plan Dalet — not a heroic defensive feat, but an act of brutal expropriation and a precedent for many others. Even Begin called it a “conquest.”

Nobody was fooled. One of Israel’s founders, David Ben Gurion, had to repudiate Begin and the Irgun, but they were only executing his plan and Ben Gurion himself had never intended to honor the UN boundaries. He accepted them only as a base for future conquest and expansion.

Not only did Begin go on to become Israel’s prime minister; he was vocal in denouncing Arabs for “terrorism,” even as he refused to admit that the Arabs had any rights. Among his servitors was his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, who applied Begin’s methods during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, slaughtering thousands of civilians. (A subsequent inquiry forced Sharon to resign from the cabinet. Not all Israelis are devoid of conscience.)

Such are America’s “reliable allies” in the “war on terrorism.” To most Americans, the events of 1948 and 1982 are ancient history; in fact, to most Americans, history itself (including American history) is ancient history. The very events that shaped today’s world and set the stage for today’s turmoil are deemed too remote to matter. Why won’t those Arabs just shut up?

It’s history, as we say. Get over it.

Joseph Sobran