Al-Khisas raid | |
---|---|
Part of the 1947–1949 Palestine war | |
Location | Al-Khisas, Mandatory Palestine |
Coordinates | 33°13′31″N35°37′10″E / 33.22528°N 35.61944°E |
Date | 18 December 1947 |
Target | Palestinian Arabs |
Attack type | Arson, Massacre |
Deaths | 12 Arabs (5 children) |
Perpetrators | Haganah |
The al-Khisas massacre took place in al-Khisas in Mandatory Palestine on December 18, 1947, near the Syrian border and was carried out by Haganah militiamen, possibly from Palmach. Twelve Arab residents of Al-Khisas were killed, four of them children. [1]
The raid was performed in reprisal to a shooting in which a passenger on a horse-cart from a nearby kibbutz was shot and killed earlier that day, in an unrelated personal vendetta. [1] Local Palmach commanders mistakenly assumed the shooting was political, [2] and mistakenly judged that it had emanated from al-Khisas. [1]
The rationale at that time for the raid was that "if there was no reaction to the murder, the Arabs would interpret this as a sign of weakness and an invitation to further attacks". [1] The Hagana High Command approved the action on condition that the attack be directed against "men only and they should burn [only] a few houses". [1]
The massacre was carried out by the Palmach's Yiftach Brigade 3rd Battalion.
According to Haim Levenberg:
One unit attacked with hand-grenades a four-roomed house killing two men and five children, and wounding five other men. At the same time, another unit attacked a house in the village owned by Amir Al-Fa’ur of Syria, in which one Syrian and two Lebanese peasants were killed and another Lebanese and two local men were wounded. According to HQ British Troops in Palestine, the villagers did not use any firearms to defend themselves. [3]
Twelve Arab residents of Al-Khisas were killed, four of them children. [1]
The Jewish leadership at the time sharply criticized the attack. [1] Three weeks later, Arab forces crossed the Syrian border and carried out a reprisal attack on the kibbutz Kfar Szold, but suffered heavy losses and were repulsed. [1]
The events led to an escalation in violence that rapidly spread through the Upper Galilee region; [1] the region had generally been quiet before the massacre, which was blamed for unnecessarily widening the hostilities. [4]
During the operation a female member of the battalion had refused to throw a grenade into a room in which she could hear a child crying; following the event the battalion's commander Moshe Kelman argued that women should not be used on front line duties but should be used as "cooks and service people." [5]
Moshe Dayan was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) during the 1956 Sinai War, and especially as Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became a worldwide fighting symbol of the new state of Israel.
Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and unarmed soldiers.
The 1st "Golani" Brigade is an Israeli military infantry brigade. It is subordinated to the 36th Division and traditionally associated with the Northern Command. It is one of the five infantry brigades of the regular Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the others being the Paratroopers Brigade, the Nahal Brigade, the Givati Brigade and the Kfir Brigade. Its symbol is a green olive tree against a yellow background, with its soldiers wearing a brown beret. It is one of the most highly decorated infantry units in the IDF. The brigade consists of five battalions, including two which it kept from its inception, one transferred from the Givati Brigade (51st).
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.
Al-Khisas, also known as Khisas or Khissas, was a Palestinian Arab village in the Safad Subdistrict in Mandatory Palestine. It was located 31 kilometers (19 mi) northeast of Safed on a natural terrace about 100 meters (330 ft) wide that formed when Lake al-Hula receded. To the west of the village was a valley known as Wadi al-Hasibani through which ran the Hasbani River.
The Palmach was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach was established in May 1941. By the outbreak of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, it consisted of over 2,000 men and women in three fighting brigades and auxiliary aerial, naval and intelligence units. With the creation of Israel's army, the three Palmach Brigades were disbanded. This and political reasons compelled many of the senior Palmach officers to resign in 1950.
The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine. After six Arabs were killed by grenades thrown by the Irgun militia, 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.
The Balad al-Shaykh massacre was the killing of a large number of Palestinians by the Haganah in the village of Balad al-Shaykh during the early stages of the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine. It was one of the largest, and earliest, massacres during the 1948 Palestine war.
The Coastal Road massacre occurred on 11 March 1978, when Palestinian militants hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway of Israel and murdered its occupants; 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were killed as a result of the attack while 76 more were wounded. The attack was planned by the influential Palestinian militant leader Khalil al-Wazir and carried out by Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist party co-founded by al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat in 1959. The initial plan of the militants was to seize a luxury hotel in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.
Kfar Szold is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the Hula Valley in the Galilee Panhandle, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 731.
The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
In February 1948, Yigal Allon, commander of the Palmach in the north, ordered an attack on Sa'sa'. The order was given to Moshe Kelman, the deputy commander of Third Battalion. The order read: "You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible". According to Ilan Pappé, "warriors" should be read as "villagers" to properly understand the order. Khalidi, referencing "The History of the Haganah" by Ben-Zion Dinur, say they referred to the massacre as "one of the most daring raids into enemy territory."
Misgav Am is a kibbutz in the Upper Galilee in northern Israel. Located close to the border with Lebanon, facing the Lebanese town of Odaisseh, and near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, it falls under the jurisdiction of Upper Galilee Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 360.
A successful paramilitary campaign, sometimes referred to as the Palestine Emergency, was carried out by Zionist underground groups against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between the Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939. The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat.
The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when Zionist paramilitaries attacked the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine, killing at least 107 Palestinian villagers, including women and children. The attack was conducted primarily by the Irgun and Lehi, who were supported by the Haganah and Palmach. The massacre was carried out despite the village having agreed to a non-aggression pact. It occurred during the 1947-1948 civil war and was a central component of the Nakba and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight.
Operation Yiftach was a Palmach offensive carried out between 28 April and 23 May 1948. The objectives were to capture Safed and to secure the eastern Galilee before the British Mandate ended on 14 May 1948. It was carried out by two Palmach battalions commanded by Yigal Allon.
Moshe Kelman was an Israeli military officer. According to the testimony of numerous fellow soldiers, Kelman was responsible for ordering the Ein al-Zeitun massacre. He was also a key participant in the Lydda massacre.
This is a timeline of intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine.
The Arab Liberation Army, also translated as Arab Salvation Army or Arab Rescue Army (ARA), was an army of volunteers from Arab countries led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji. It fought on the Arab side in the 1948 Palestine war also known as the Israeli War of Independence and the Nakba. It was set up by the Arab League as a counter to the Arab High Committee's Holy War Army, but in fact, the League and Arab governments prevented thousands from joining either force.