Arab Legion Major Abdullah el Tell (far right) with Captain Hikmat Mihyar (far left) pose with two of the four Jewish survivors of the Fall of Gush Etzion. Around May 13, 1948.
Location
Kfar Etzion
Date
May 13, 1948; 76 years ago (1948-05-13)
Deaths
127 (15 after surrendering)[1]
Perpetrators
Arab irregulars
Defender
Haganah
The Kfar Etzion massacre refers to a massacre of Jews that took place after a two-day battle in which Jewish Kibbutz residents and Haganah militia defended Kfar Etzion from a combined force of the Arab Legion and local Arab men on May 13, 1948, the day before the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Of the 127 Haganah fighters and Jewish kibbutzniks who died during the defence of the settlement, Martin Gilbert states that fifteen were killed on surrendering.[2]
Controversy surrounds the responsibility and role of the Arab Legion in the killing of those who surrendered. The official Israeli version maintains that the kibbutz residents and Haganah soldiers were massacred by local Arabs and the Arab Legion of the Jordanian Army as they were surrendering. The Arab Legion version maintains that the Legion arrived too late to prevent the kibbutz attack by men from nearby Arab villages, which was allegedly motivated by a desire to avenge the massacre of Deir Yassin and the destruction of one of their villages several months earlier.[3] The surrendering Jewish residents and fighters are said to have been assembled in a courtyard, only to be suddenly fired upon; it is said that many died on the spot, while most of those who managed to flee were hunted down and killed.[4]
Four prisoners survived the massacre and were transferred to Transjordan.[4] Immediately following the surrender on May 13, the kibbutz was looted and razed to the ground.[4] The members of the three other kibbutzim of the Gush Etzion surrendered the next day and were taken as POWs to Jordan.
The bodies of the victims were left unburied until, one and a half years later, the Jordanian government allowed Shlomo Goren to collect the remains, which were then interred at Mount Herzl. The survivors of the Etzion Bloc were housed in former Arab houses in Jaffa.[5]
^"Before the Kidnappings, There Was the Massacre at Kfar Etzion - Tablet Magazine".
^Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem - Illustrated History Atlas,, V. Mitchell 1994, page 93.
^Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine, vol.2, Fayard 2007 p.96.:'According to the Arab Legion version, the Jordanian soldiers arrived too late to impede the massacre by villagers who were keen to avenge Deir Yassin and the losses they had sustained since November (it should be kept in mind that it was the colony that opened hostilities in December by destroying a nearby village)'. Selon la version de la Légion, les soldats jordaniens sont arrivés trop tard pour empêcher le massacre de la part des villageois désireux de venger Deir Yassin et leurs pertes depuis le mois de novembre (il faut rappeler que c'est la colonie qui a ouvert les hostilités en décembre en détruisant un village voisin).' Laurens adds:'Le plus probable est que tout se soit passé dans la plus grande confusion' (Most probably, everything took place in a situation of enormous confusion.)
^ abcMeron Benvenisti,"Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, University of California Press, 2000 p.116
^Gershom Gorenberg, Occupied Territories: The Untold Story of Israel's Settlements,I.B.Tauris, 2007 p. 20.
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