Celebrating the massacre of the truth

It's been a long week but the Palestine Lobby's Israel Apartheid Week is now officially over and it's time to move on to the commemoration of the so-called Deir Yassin massacre. A large body of mythology has developed over the events that took place at Deir Yassin outside Jerusalem 62 years ago. The PL version is, as usual, skewed away from the factual. Deir Yassin was an Arab village from which their was constant sniping at Jewish travellers and which had been infiltrated by Iraki soldiers by April 1948. According to this article in the Jeruslem Post -

The attack on the Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem (today, the Har Nof neighborhood) was not, as claimed, a "massacre" nor was it a premeditated killing. As we now know from Arab sources and other independent research, (see Bregman, Ahron & El-Tahri, Jihan, "The Fifty Years War, Israel and the Arabs," Penguin Books, BBC Books, London, 1998. pp. 27-34 and Klein, Morton A., “Deir Yassin History of a Lie, ZOA, NY 2005) the number of dead at the village was between 93 and 110, at the most. All of them were killed during the course of the battle, in house-to-house fighting. There were no mutilations or atrocities caused to the corpses as per testimony from the villagers themselves. The attacking combined force of Irgun and Lehi units brought with them a loudspeaker to the village entrance to warn the inhabitants. They also left an escape route open, which led to Ein Karem, so as not to have to harm the inhabitants unnecessarily and hundreds took advantage of this Jewish act of kindness in battle. All these preparations and actions belie any intent of a massacre. ... The fighters were instructed before the attack specifically not to harm unarmed civilians. The survivors were provided transportation to the Old City of Jerusalem and no physical injury was done to them after the surrender. True, the battle itself was not conducted with the utmost professionalism. The underground combatants were not fully trained in urban warfare of this type. The house-to-house character of the fighting, the shooting from within the homes and the lack of knowledge of who was in the houses, all led to the use of dynamite rather indiscriminately causing thus many of the deaths. The portrayal in another recent docudrama, “The Promised Land” shown on Britain's’ Channel Four, is so ludicrous as to be a stain on film professionalism. The battle at the village, part of the “Nahshon” campaign to relieve Jerusalem of the siege the Arabs were applying to the city by blocking the main highway, was approved by the Hagana commander. Deir Yassin provided a base for the Arab attacks on the Castel and the Histadrut Davar newspaper issue of April 4, 1948, contained a report that the previous Friday night, shots from snipers had been fired from Deir Yassin towards Bet Hakerem and Bayit VeGan Jewish neighborhoods (see here). A local Palmach unit provided mortar support fire at one point. Claims of rape, butchering of bodies and other atrocities is simply not true.