Chapter Eleven
MASSACRES AND THE CONQUEST OF PALESTINE
The passing of the partition resolution in November 1947 triggered the violence that State
Department and Pentagon analysts had predicted and for which Zionists had been preparing. There
were at least 33 massacres of Palestinian villages, half of them before a single Arab army joined the
conflict.[232] Zionist forces were better equipped and had more men under arms than their
opponents[233] and by the end of Israel’s “War of Independence“ over 750,000 Palestinian men,
women, and children were ruthlessly expelled.[234] Zionists had succeeded in the first half of their
goal: Israel, the self-described Jewish State, had come into existence.[235]
As Israeli historian Tom Segev writes, “Israel was born of terror, war, and revolution, and its
creation required a measure of fanaticism and cruelty.”[236]
The massacres were carried out by Zionist forces, including Zionist militias that had engaged in
terrorist attacks in the area for years preceding the partition resolution.[237]
Descriptions of the massacres, by both Palestinians and Israelis, are nightmarish. An Israeli
eyewitness reported that at the village of al-Dawayima:
“The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without
dead….One soldier boasted that he had raped a woman and then shot her.”[238]
One Palestinian woman testified that a man shot her nine-month-pregnant sister and then cut her
stomach open with a butcher knife.[239]
One of the better-documented massacres occurred in a small, neutral Palestinian village called
Deir Yassin in April 1948 – before any Arab armies had joined the war. A Swiss Red Cross
representative was one of the first to arrive on the scene, where he found 254 dead, including 145
women, 35 of them pregnant. [240]
Witnesses reported that the attackers lined up families – men, women, grandparents and children,
even infants – and shot them. [241]
An eyewitness and future colonel in the Israeli military later wrote of the militia members: “They
didn’t know how to fight, but as murderers they were pretty good.”[242]
The Red Cross representative who found the bodies at Deir Yassin arrived in time to see some of
the killing in action. He wrote in his diary that Zionist militia members were still entering houses with
guns and knives when he arrived. He saw one young Jewish woman carrying a blood-covered dagger
and saw another stab an old couple in their doorway. The representative wrote that the scene
reminded him of S.S. troops he had seen in Athens.[243]
Richard Catling, British assistant inspector general for the criminal investigation division,
reported on “sexual atrocities” committed by Zionist forces. “Many young school girls were raped
and later slaughtered,” he reported. “Old women were also molested.”[244]
The Deir Yassin attack was perpetrated by two Zionist militias and coordinated with the main
Zionist forces, whose elite unit participated in part of the operation.[245] The heads of the two
militias, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, later became Prime Ministers of Israel.
Begin, head of the Irgun militia, sent the following message to his troops about their victory at
Deir Yassin:
“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 in Israel with your attack and your
conquest. Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin , so everywhere, we will attack and smite the
enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.”[246]
Approximately six months later, Begin (who had also publicly taken credit for other terrorist acts,
including blowing up the King David Hotel [247] in Jerusalem, killing 91 people) came on a tour of
America. The tour’s sponsors included famous playwright Ben Hecht, a fervent Zionist who
applauded Irgun violence,[248] and eventually included 11 Senators, 12 governors, 70 Congressmen,
17 Justices, and numerous other public officials.[249]
The State Department, fully aware of his violent activities in Palestine, tried to reject Begin’s visa
but was overruled by Truman.[250]
Begin later proudly admitted his terrorism in an interview for American television. When the
interviewer asked him, “How does it feel, in the light of all that’s going on, to be the father of
terrorism in the Middle East?” Begin proclaimed, “In the Middle East? In all the world!”[251]
Chapter Twelve
U.S. FRONT GROUPS FOR ZIONIST MILITARISM
A number of groups operated in the U.S. to support Zionist paramilitary groups in Palestine. These
often employed clandestine methods and deceptive names. The general American public had little
idea about the true nature of these groups and what they were supporting.
a. Irgun Delegation: Hillel Kook as “Peter Bergson“
A covert Irgun delegation operated in the U.S. from the late 1930s through 1948 under a half dozen
front organizations, including the “Emergency Committee to Save European Jewry“ and “American
Friends of a Jewish Palestine.”[252]
The main leader was Hillel Kook, the senior Irgun officer working outside Palestine. Upon
coming to the U.S. he assumed the alias “Peter Bergson,” and the group is often called the “Bergson
Boys.”
The other leader was Yitzhak Ben-Ami (father of Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of today’s lobbying
organization J-Street). Also closely involved was Eri Jabotinski, son of right-wing Zionist leader
Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky.[253] Also associated with the group was Meir Kahane, who twenty
years later founded the violent Jewish Defense League (JDL).[254]
Though historians have documented that their purpose in coming to the U.S. was to raise money for
Irgun activities in Palestine, this was unknown to the multitude of high-level supporters the group
eventually acquired. These supporters included Eleanor Roosevelt,[255] Harry Truman, Dorothy
Parker, Herbert Hoover, Will Rogers, Jr., Labor leader William Green, U.S. Solicitor General
Fowler Harper, and U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes.[256]
The FBI, however, suspected this illegal fundraising. It investigated the front groups several times,
but largely bungled the investigations and failed to produce evidence. As author Rafael Medoff
divulges: “In fact, according to Bergson lobbyist Baruch Rabinowitz, funds raised by the Bergsonites
in the United States were indeed secretly transferred to the Irgun; the methods of transfer were simply
so well concealed that the FBI could not uncover them.”[257]
Their biographer, Israeli professor Judith Baumel, writes that the Irgun Delegation quickly set
about “integrating themselves into the social and political culture of their temporary home.” They
quickly grasped that “public mood, molded to a large extent by propaganda and public relations
[was] a dominant force in the American system of direct representation” and they soon became
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