CPTnet
April 15, 2002
JERUSALEM: Massacre in Jenin, Deir Yassin relived

By Mark Frey

[Note: Mark Frey led a CPT delegation attending a conference last week
organized by Sabeel--an ecumenical liberation theology center in Jerusalem.]

The brutality of the IDF's take-over of Palestinian
towns and villages has been downplayed by US and
Israeli governments and within the Western media,
particularly in the US. Even so, Israeli Prime
Minister Peres has been privately referring to the
IDF's attacks in the Jenin refugee camp as a
"massacre." Sketchy reports speak of hundreds of
bodies lying in the rubble of homes knocked down by
military bulldozers clearing the way at the front of
the advancing IDF. Israeli officials are concerned
about world reaction when the full extent of death
comes to light. Facts are not known because Israel is
not allowing press or humanitarian workers into the
area. The dead and wounded are left in the streets as
Israeli snipers shoot at anyone who moves.

Unlike today's Jenin, however, the 1948 April 9
massacre of over 120 people from the Jerusalem-area
Arab village of Deir Yassin by Jewish troops is
well-known. As word of that attack's brutality
spread, eventually hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled
their homes. Today Deir Yassin has acquired a potent
symbolism, representing the destruction -- the Nakhba,
or catastrophe -- experienced by Palestinians during
Israel's war of creation, during which over 400 Arab
villages were razed to the ground and effectively
erased. Today, apart from a few original Deir Yassin
buildings now used as a mental hospital, the Jerusalem
neighborhood of Givat Shaul covers the now-erased
village.

Every April 9 is the day of "Deir Yassin Remembered."
Coincidentally, this April 9, 2002, as happens very 19
years, was also Holocaust memorial day. At 10am sirens
blared throughout Israel and all movement came to a
halt while people stood still, remembering.

The CPT delegation, attending the Sabeel Ecumenical
Liberation Theology Center's week-long solidarity
visits, visited the remnants of Deir Yassin, standing
at 10am with the rest of Israel, remembering both
Holocaust and massacre.

  Following the solemn commemoration, the group listened to 74-year-old Imm
Saleh describe the Jewish attack on her village, how
her family was slaughtered -- one member shot five times
in the head, another member's throat slit. Through
tears she explained that after she was captured, the
soldiers gave her a choice of death: to be strung up,
to be shot, or to remain in the house while it was
destroyed. She chose the last, she said, because
she would not leave her land. Her testimony evoked
images of bodies lying in rubble, like those in Jenin
camp who refused to leave their land and were
consequently, reportedly, buried in their homes. Imm
Saleh was lucky; she was not killed and instead
soldiers transported her and other witnesses to
different villages so they could spread the
eye-witness stories of terror.

Deir Yassin is not over. Palestinians continue to
trace the symbolic massacre through other brutalities
like the massacre in Lebanon's camps of Sabra and
Shatila. Deir Yassin is being relived right now, in
the mind of Imm Saleh and other survivors like her,
and on the destroyed streets of Jenin. Imm Saleh
said, "What is happening today is worse than what
happened to us." And, like Sabra and Shatila,
then-General and now-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon is the architect. And the world, in large
part, is doing very little.