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From: bdm@cs.rit.edu (Brendan D McKay)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: Deir Yassin
Message-ID: <1993Apr26.223120.28236@cs.rit.edu>
Date: 26 Apr 93 22:31:20 GMT
References: <1r94f9$ge3@morrow.stanford.edu> <martinb.735590895@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA> <HM.93Apr24130607@angell.cs.brown.edu>
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In article <HM.93Apr24130607@angell.cs.brown.edu> hm@cs.brown.edu (Harry Mamaysky) writes:

>Arab civilians did die at Dir yassin. But there was no massacre. First
>of all, the village housed many *armed* troops. 

Nobody ever produced the meagerest evidence for this.  It does not
appear in several long published accounts by Irgun participants.
Even some Irgun propagandists do not make this claim.

>Secondly, the Irgun
>and Stern fighters had absolutely no intentions of killing civilians.

Several members of the Irgun attacking party, including the leader,
deposited personal declarations in the Irgun archives (Jabotinsky
Institute, Tel-Aviv) which state that the Lehi proposed to "liquidate
the village after the conquest".  It seems the Begin overruled
this plan, however the willingness of many of the attackers to
seriously consider this possibility serves as instructive
character evidence.

>The village was attacked only for its military significance. 

The Haganah tried to get the Irgun to attack a village with
real military significance, but it was considered too hard.  
The soft target of Deir Yassin was chosen instead.

>In fact,
>a warning was given to the occupants of the village to leave before
>the attack was to begin.

There was intention (probably originating with Begin) to give such
a warning but the loudspeaker truck got stuck in a ditch before
reaching the village.  Everyone knows that.

>By all rational standards, Dir Yassin was not a massacre. 

By all rational standards, you should be posting from b-cpu.

>The killing
>was unintentional. The village housed Arab snipers and Arab troops.
>Thus it was attacked for its military significance. It was not
>attacked with intentions of killing any civilians.

A lie repeated is still a lie.

>To even compare Dir Yassin, in which some 120 or so Arabs died, to the
>Holocaust is absurd. The Irgun did not want to kill any civilians. The
>village had almost 1000 inhabitants, most of whom survived.
>
>Harry.

Brendan.
