Kfar Etzion massacre: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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{{Infobox civilian attack

| title = Kfar Etzion massacre

| partof = [[1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine]]

| image = Etzion Tal = Convoy burialPrisoners.jpg

| image_size =
| alt = 240px

[[File:Etzion| Talcaption = Prisoners.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[[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]].▼

| alt =

| map =

| caption = Casualties of the "Convoy of 35" being brought to burial. January 1948

| map map_size =

| map_size map_alt =

| map_alt map_caption =

| location = [[Kfar Etzion]], [[Mandatory Palestine]]▼

| map_caption =

| date = {{start date and age|1948|5|13}}▼

▲| location = [[Kfar Etzion]]

| fatalities = 127 (15 after = 127surrendering)<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/kfar-etzion|title=Before the Kidnappings, There Was the Massacre at Kfar Etzion - Tablet Magazine}}</ref>▼

▲| date = {{start date and age|1948|5|13}}

| perps = Arab [[Irregular military|irregulars]]▼

▲| fatalities = 127<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/kfar-etzion|title=Before the Kidnappings, There Was the Massacre at Kfar Etzion - Tablet Magazine}}</ref>

| dfen = [[Haganah]]▼

▲| perps = Arab [[Irregular military|irregulars]]

▲| dfen = [[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 [[Declaration of Independence (Israel)|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.<ref>[[Martin Gilbert]], ''Jerusalem - Illustrated History Atlas,'', V. Mitchell 1994, page 93.</ref>

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.<ref>[[Henry Laurens (scholar)|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.)</ref> 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.<ref name="Benvenisti"/>

Four prisoners survived the massacre and were transferred to Transjordan.<ref name="Benvenisti">[[Meron Benvenisti]], [https://archive.org/details/sacredlandscapeb00benvrich/page/116 "Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948''], University of California Press, 2000 p.116</ref> Immediately following the surrender on May 13, the kibbutz was looted and razed to the ground.<ref name="Benvenisti"/> The members of the three other kibbutzim of the Gush Etzion surrendered the next day and were taken as [[Prisoner of war|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]].<ref name="Occupied Territories p.20">[[Gershom Gorenberg]], ''Occupied Territories: The Untold Story of Israel's Settlements,''I.B.Tauris, 2007 p. 20.</ref>

==Background==

[[File:Surif 1945.jpg|thumb|Kfar Etzion 1945 1:250,000]]▼

[[Kfar Etzion]] was a [[kibbutz]] founded in 1943, for military and agricultural ends,<ref name="Collins-Lapierre 215-130" >[[Larry Collins (writer)|Larry Collins]], [[Dominique Lapierre]], ''O Jerusalem,''(1972) Granada Books 1982, p. 217</ref> about 2&nbsp;km west of [[Highway 60 (Israel–Palestine)|the road]] between [[Jerusalem]] and [[Hebron]]. By the end of 1947, there were 163 adults and 50 children living there. Much of the town's population was made up of [[Holocaust survivors]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-05-02 |title=Massacre that marred birth of Israel |url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/massacre-marred-birth-israel-independence |access-date=2022-06-13 |website=The Guardian |language=en}}</ref> Together with three nearby kibbutzim established 1945–1947, it formed ''[[Gush Etzion]]'' (''the Etzion Bloc''). According to one member of the settlement, relations were good between settlers and local Arabs, with attendance at each other's weddings, until November 1947.<ref>Margalit Zisman, cited Michael Petrou, ''Is This Your First War?: Travels Through the Post-9/11 Islamic World'', Dundurn, 2012 p. 167</ref>

[[File:AlvaiaConvoy gush ezionburial.jpg|thumb|250px|FuneralCasualties processionof leaving fromthe [[JewishConvoy Agencyof 35]] building,being [[Jerusalem]]brought to burial in January 1948]]

The [[1947 UN Partition Plan|United Nations partition plan for Palestine]] of November 29, 1947, placed the bloc, an enclave in a purely Arab area, inside the boundaries of the intended Arab state,<ref>Avi Shlaim, 'Israel and the Arab Coalition in 1948,' in Albert H. Hourani, Phillip Khoury, Mary Christina Wilson (eds.)''The Modern Middle East,'' I.B.Tauris, 2nd ed. (2005), pp. 535-56.</ref> where, moreover, Jewish settlement was to be forbidden through a transitional period.<ref>Benny Morris, ''The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, ''Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 370.</ref> For Hebronite Arabs, the bloc constituted an 'alien intrusion' on ground that had been wholly Arab for centuries,' though it had been built on land either purchased by Jews (1928) or acquired by them through a complex circumvention of Mandatory law in 1942.<ref>[[Larry Collins (writer)|Larry Collins]], [[Dominique Lapierre]], ''O Jerusalem,''(1972) Granada Books 1982 p.216.'In 1942, by a complex legal manoeuvre, the Fund circumvented the restrictions on Jewish land purchases set out by the British government's 1939 White Paper and acquired the land of a nearby German monastery whose monks had been interned as enemy aliens by the British. On an April night one year later, three women and ten men slipped through the darkness to lay claim to the monastery and officially establish the settlement of Kfar Etzion.'</ref> According to [[Henry Laurens (scholar)|Henry Laurens]], Kfar Etzion had started hostilities in the area in December by destroying a local Arab village.<ref name="Palestine, p.96">[[Henry Laurens (scholar)]], ''La Question de Palestine,'' vol.2, Fayard 2007 p.96.</ref> On 10 December, a convoy from Bethlehem en route to the Gush Etzion bloc was ambushed and 10 of its 26 passengers and escorts were killed.<ref name="Collins-Lapierre 215-130"/><ref>Yoav Gelber,''Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,''Sussex University Press p.26.</ref> Though on January 5, the children and some women had been evacuated with British assistance, and though [[David Shaltiel]] recommended its evacuation,<ref name="Collins-Lapierre 215-130"/> the [[Haganah]], on [[Yigal Yadin]]'s counsel, decided against withdrawing from the settlements for several reasons: they commanded a strategic position on [[Highway 60 (Israel–Palestine)|Jerusalem's southern approach from Hebron]],<ref name="encyc">Mark Daryl Erickson, Joseph E. Goldberg, Stephen H. Gotowicki, Bernard Reich, Sanford R. Silverburg (1996). ''An Historical Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict'', p. 149. Greenwood; {{ISBN|0-313-27374-X}}</ref> and were considered, in the words of [[Abdullah el-Tell|Abdullah Tall]], a 'sharp thorn stuck in the heart of a purely Arab area'. Several relief convoys from the [[Haganah]] in Jerusalem [[Gush Etzion Convoy|had been ambushed]].{{citation needed|date=August 2013}}

In the months prior to May 15, Haganah militiamen in the bloc's kibbutzim repeatedly fired on Arab civilians, and British traffic, including convoys, moving between Jerusalem and Hebron, under instruction to do so in order to draw and drain Arab forces from the fight for Jerusalem.<ref>Henry Laurens, ''La Question de Palestine,'' Fayard 2007, p. 96.</ref><ref name="Benny Morris pp.135-7">Benny Morris, ''The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews,'' I.B.Tauris, 2003, pp. 135-37.</ref> On two occasions, April 12 and May 3, Arab Legion units were ambushed, and several legionnaires killed or wounded<ref name="Benny Morris pp.135-7"/> by the bloc militias, - Kfar Etzion soldiers being directly involved in the incident on April 12<ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/40545147 Chronology, 9 April 1948 - 22 April 1948], ''Chronology of International Events and Documents,'' Volume 4 , issue 8, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948; p.270: '12 April. — Jews in the Kfar Etzion settlement near the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road fired on an Arab convoy and the Arabs fought back.'</ref> - Arab [[Irregular military|irregular forces]] made small-scale attacks against the settlements. An emergency [[Convoy of 35|reinforcement convoy]] attempting to march to Gush Etzion under cover of darkness was discovered and its members killed by Palestinian Arab forces.{{citation needed|date=August 2013}} Despite some emergency flights by an [[Auster Aircraft|Auster]] from Jerusalem<ref name="Collins-Lapierre 215-130"/> and [[Piper J-3|Piper Cubs]] out of [[Tel Aviv]] onto an improvised airfield,<ref name="Occupied Territories p.20"/> adequate supplies were not getting in.

As the end of the [[Mandate for Palestine|British Mandate]] drew closer, the fighting in the region intensified. Although the [[Arab Legion]] was theoretically in Palestine under British command, they began to operate more and more independently. On March 27, land communication with the [[Yishuv|rest of the Yishuv]] was severed completely when the [[Gush Etzion Convoy|Nebi Daniel Convoy]] was ambushed on its return to Jerusalem, and 15 Haganah soldiers died before the remainder were extricated by the British. It was ambushes by the Etzion Bloc militias conducted against Arab Legion units on April 12 and May 4 that, according to a Haganah analysis, tipped the Legion's policy towards the bloc from one of isolating it to destroying it.<ref>Benny Morris,''The Road to Jerusalem,'' p. 137.</ref> On May 4, following the last ambush of a Legion convoy, a joint force of British, Arab Legion and irregular troops launched a major punitive attack on Kfar Etzion. The Haganah abandoned a few outposts but generally resisted, and the attack failed, leaving 12 Haganah soldiers dead, 30 wounded, with a similar number of Arab legionnaires killed, and several dozen wounded. Units from the bloc may have attacked Arab traffic the following day, but the failure of the Legion's assault led Hebronites and Legion units to plan a final attack and destroy the Etzion Bloc militarily.<ref>Benny Morris,''The Road to Jerusalem,'' pp. 137-38.</ref>

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==Massacre==

▲[[File:Surif 1945.jpg|thumb|Kfar Etzion 1945 1:250,000]]

▲[[File:Etzion Tal Prisoners.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[[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]]

In the Israeli mainstream version, when the hopelessness of their position became undeniable on May 13, dozens of defenders, the ''haverim'', of Kfar Etzion laid down their arms and assembled in the courtyard, where they suddenly began to be shot at. Those not slain in the first volleys of fire pushed past the Arabs, and either escaped to hide, or gathered their weapons,<ref>Dov Knohl,''Siege in the Hills:: The Battle of the Etzion Bloc,'' T. Yoseloff, 1958, p. 334.</ref> and were hunted down.<ref>Benny Morris, ''The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews,''pp. 138-39</ref> The number of people killed and the perpetrators, the Arab legion or local village irregulars or both, are in dispute. According to one account, the main group of about 50 defenders were surrounded by a large number of Arab irregulars, who shouted "[[Deir Yassin massacre|Deir Yassin!]]" and ordered the Jews to sit down, stand up, and sit down again, when suddenly someone opened fire on the Jews with a machine gun and others joined in the killing. Those Jews not immediately cut down tried to run away but were pursued. According to Meron Benvenisti, hand grenades were thrown into a cellar, killing a group of 50 who were hiding there. The building was blown up.<ref name="Benvenisti"/>

According to other sources, 20 women hiding in a cellar were killed.<ref>[[Ruth Gruber]] ,''Israel on the seventh day,'' Hill and Wang, 1968 p.30.'Twenty women who had hidden in a cellar were massacred by Arabs with hand grenades.'</ref> David Ohana writes that 127 Israeli fighters were killed on the last day.<ref>David Ohana, ''The Origins of Israeli Mythology: Neither Canaanites Nor Crusaders,'' Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 104.</ref>

Arab losses during the two day battle, according to a Haganah estimate, numbered 69: 42 irregulars, and 27 legionnaires.<ref name="auto">Benny Morris, ibid. p269 n.398.</ref> A number of Israeli histories of the Kfar Etzion massacre (such as Levi, 1986, Isseroff, 2005) state that the defenders had put out the [[white flag]] and lined up to surrender in front of the school building of the German monastery. An Arab version recounts that a white flag was flown, and drew the Arabs into a trap where they were fired on.<ref name="Palestine, p.96"/> Benny Morris cites a Legion officer's statement that the defenders had not formally surrendered, that some resistance continued, with shooting at Arabs, after others had surrendered, that local villagers shot legionnaires trying to defend prisoners, and that legionnaires had to shoot some villagers engaged in the killings.<ref>Benny Morris, ''The Road to Jerusalem: Glubb Pasha, Palestine and the Jews,'' p.139.</ref> The figure of 127 massacredfatalities appears to include both those who surrendered only to be slain, and the defenders who had been killed in battle over 12–13 May.<ref name="auto"/>

In another account, after the 133 defenders had assembled, they were photographed by a man in a [[kaffiyeh]], and then an armored car apparently belonging to the [[Arab Legion]] opened fire with its machine gun, and then Arab irregulars joined in. A group of defenders managed to crawl into the cellar of the monastery, where they defended themselves until a large number of grenades were thrown into the cellar. The building was then blown up and collapsed on them.

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Both Alisa and Nahum said that the Legion soldiers actively participated in the massacre.<ref name="Morris2003p139"/>

[[File:HaBunker IMG 7921.JPG|thumb|right|250px|Names of fallen in Kfar Etzion Memorial]]▼

A total of 157 defenders died in the battle of [[Gush Etzion]] (Levi, 1986), including those killed in the massacre at Kfar Etzion. About 2/3 of them were residents and the remainder were Hagana or Palmach soldiers. Israeli [[historical geographer]] [[Yossi Katz (geographer)|Yossi Katz]] put the death toll at 220. Most of the kibbutz's male residents were killed.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Katz |first=Yossi |last2=Lehr |first2=John C. |date=October 1995 |title=Symbolism and landscape: the Etzion bloc in the Judean mountains |url=http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00263209508701077 |journal=Middle Eastern Studies |language=en |volume=31 |issue=4 |pages=730–743 |doi=10.1080/00263209508701077 |issn=0026-3206}}</ref>

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==Aftermath==

{{more citations needed section|date=May 2018}}

[[File:Alvaia gush ezion.jpg|thumb|250px|Funeral procession leaving from [[Jewish Agency]] building, [[Jerusalem]]]]

▲[[File:HaBunker IMG 7921.JPG|thumb|right|250px|Names of fallen in Kfar Etzion Memorial]]

On October 28, 1948, the Arab village [[al-Dawayima]] was conquered by the IDF 89th Commando Battalion. They then committed the [[Al-Dawayima massacre]], as the villagers were blamed for the Kfar Etzion massacre. Estimates of the number of killed Arab villagers range from 80–100 to 100–200, depending on the source.<ref name = "Morris_2008">[[Benny Morris]] (2008), ''1948: An History the First Arab-Israeli War'', p. 333</ref><ref>[[Saleh Abdel Jawad]] (2007), ''Zionist Massacres: the Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem in the 1948 War'', in E. Benvenisti & al, ''Israel and the Palestinian Refugees'', Berlin, Heidelberg, New-York : Springer, pp. 59-127</ref>

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[[Category:1948 massacres of Jews in Palestine or Israel]]

[[Category:History of Gush Etzion]]

[[Category:Massacres in Mandatory Palestine]]

[[Category:Burials at Mount Herzl]]

[[Category:May 1948 events in Asia]]

[[Category:Massacres in 1948]]

[[Category:1948 murders in Asia]]

[[Category:Massacres20th-century prisoner of Jewswar massacres]]

[[Category:Prisoner of war massacres]]