Question[condensed]: You said the massacre of Arabs by Jews at Deir Yassin in 1948 “didn’t ...

Question[condensed]: You said the massacre of Arabs by Jews at Deir Yassin in 1948 “didn’t happen.” Jewish historian Benny Morris...says that it was mainly due to atrocities such as Deir Yassin that the Palestinians fled their homeland in 1948 (not because of some Arab radio broadcasts [as you claim] telling all Arabs to get out). I enclose...a brief article from the website of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society [by Roni Kresner]....It must be frustrating...to realize that you are one of the few people...who knows what really did or didn’t happen at Deir Yassin....David Ben Gurion apologized to King Abdullah of Jordan for what happened at Deir Yassin, and the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem excommunicated those who took part....

Answer: I won’t repeat what I have fully docu-mented re Arab leaders themselves telling “Palestinians” to flee. I have not said that no civilians were killed at Deir Yassin. I said there was no “massacre.” Re-examine the facts more thoroughly, and please be reasonable. Jews are human. They have suffered far more through the centuries than any other people, and with a patience that should be admired, not criticized.

There are conflicting reports of what hap-pened. Yes, the Israelis apologized. Tell me for which of the thousands of deliberate and unprovoked murders of Jews the Arabs have apologized! Instead, suicide bombers and others who deliberately kill Jewish civilians are praised! Are you not concerned for that? Four days after Deir Yassin, a Jewish convoy of doctors, nurses and wounded on the way to Hadassah Hospital was ambushed and massacred. Why not mention that as well?

Deir Yassin is repeatedly trotted out as though it represents many other “atrocities.” Where? They aren’t named. As one Jewish author writes, “The error which may have been made at Deir Yassin is constantly being thrown in our faces. Ah, but we have undergone...a thousand Deir Yassins...not only in Russia, Germany or Poland, but also at the hand of Arab people; yet the world has never been upset over that...!”

Deir Yassin overlooked the route into Jerusalem along which the Israelis were attempting to bring water and supplies to besieged Jews. Before attacking this strategic village the Irgun and Lehi warned in Arabic any civilians to leave, and many did. The Jews left an escape route open during the battle, and the Lehi itself evacuated forty of the elderly and children. Does that sound like an intended massacre?

Of course, the Irgun were “aggressive.” This was war. A fierce house-to-house battle caused many Jewish casualties. This, in the “non-belligerent village” Kresner describes? There were combatants in the village from as far away as Iraq! Some feigned surrender, then opened fire. Many disguised them-selves as women. One such, when captured, pulled out a pistol and killed the Jewish commander. “His friends, crazed with anger, shot in all directions and killed the Arabs in the area.”(Uri Milstein, History of Israel’s War of Independence, University Press of America, 1999, p. 276). On BBC, Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948, said “there was no rape.” Hazam Nusseibi who worked for the Palestine Broadcasting Service in 1948 told BBC that the fabrication was a “mistake…[hearing] that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror” (“Israel and the Arabs: The 50 Year Conflict,” BBC).