Deir Yassin: Obfuscating History
By Michael Galvin
14 July, 2009
Countercurrents.org
Five kilometers to the west of Jerusalem's Old City lies the ruins of Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village that was wiped off the map during the Nakba in 1948. Passing through the modern housing complexes, expansive boulevards, and office towers of West Jerusalem to reach the site is a striking contrast to the pot-hole ridden roads and worn steps of the Arab eastern side of the city. Before the Israeli invasion and the construction of neighborhoods for Jewish immigrants these hills were covered with terraced fig, almond, and olive orchards. Now they are home to a modern Western metropolis and the only signs to the contrary are carefully hidden away.
Located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Deir Yassin was a Palestinian village slated for occupation under the 1948 Plan D (or Plan Dalet) whose intention was to conquer as much of Palestine and expel as many Palestinians as possible. During this operation the Jewish Defense Force, Haganah, authorized the terrorist groups of Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover in certain zones.
In February 1948, Deir Yassin organized a self-defense committee to prepare against the Jewish threat. On April 4th, Haganah attacked all towns on the Jaffa-Jerusalem road. Early in the morning on April 9, 1948, Stern Gang and Irgun commandos, led by future Prime Minister Menachem Begin, attacked Deir Yassin, a village of only 750 Palestinians, and was held back by the resistance in the town. Haganah arrived with heavy artillery and a massacre ensued in which 120 men, women and children were killed, the survivors loaded onto trucks and paraded through the streets of Jerusalem. Of roughly 144 houses, 10 were dynamited. The cemetery was later destroyed and Deir Yassin was wiped off the map. In September of the same year, Orthodox Jews from Poland, Romania, and Slovakia were settled there over the objections of certain Jewish leaders who wanted the site of the massacre to remain as a memorial. The center of the settlement was named Givat Shaul Bet and as Jerusalem expanded, Deir Yassin quickly became just another section of the city's ever-expanding suburbs.
In 1951, the construction of the Kfar Shaul Mental Hospital began using the remains of village houses themselves. When we arrived at the gate of the heavily guarded hospital, the security asked us several times who we were visiting. Mumbling something about someone's mother somehow got them to stop asking, though they insisted on confiscating any cameras. After passing through the metal detector we were free to roam around the delicately preserved old Palestinian village on the hilltop. Nothing like the surrounding Orthodox neighborhood constructed in standard settlement style with skyscrapers just beyond on all sides, the hospital was home to old limestone archways, the remains of several wells, and almond and olive trees that constituted the orchards of the village. One tall cypress tree stands in the middle of what was clearly once the cemetery. Additionally, a few of the houses outside the village appeared to be used for residential and commercial purposes, and one was a warehouse.
While the history of this place weighs heavily on the politics of Israel-Palestine, Deir Yassin is, of course, selectively forgotten. The massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin is nonetheless considered to be one of the most significant events in Palestinian and Israeli history, as it is generally agreed that the massacre had a large effect in causing around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs to flee their towns and villages during the 1948 war, thereby creating the current Palestinian refugee problem. Hearing the news of the killings terrorized Arab communities, who from then on frequently fled in the face of Irgun, Stern Gang, and Haganah advances. Thus, the massacre is not necessarily significant because of its size or brutality, but rather because it stands as the starkest early warning sign of a calculated expulsion of 450 Arab communities to make room for Jews from the rest of the world.
While visitors to the "Holy Land" seem to be enamored with the ancient history just waiting to be discovered around every corner, another more recent history is carefully and systematically obfuscated. As masses of tourists crowd the entrance to the Bible Lands Museum just down the hill, the only visitors to Deir Yassin will remain Israeli mental patients.
Originally from St. Louis, MO, Michael Galvin attended a liberal arts college in Minnesota from 2004-2008 where he worked with groups mobilizing against the Iraq War. He is currently in the West Bank working with organizations against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He hid his camera at the entrance to the hospital and pictures of Deir Yassin and the ruins of another Palestinian village just outside Jerusalem can be seen at mdgalvin.wordpress.com. For more information contact [email protected].
