The Jewish Story: Pre-Independence 1948 - The Battle for the Roads and the Birth of Narrative War

memory says william faulkner believes before knowing remembers believes longer than recollects longer than knowing even wonders and sometimes I wonder what I even know and how I came to know it cuz I'm not Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 39 heat independence 48 the battle to the roads and the birth of the narrative war so I want agrees that the 29th of November 1947 is a date that's going down in history why that so depends on who you ask and that's gonna be our task for today we've got to try and understand the import of some of the events leading up to the Israeli independence and to consider the impact of how their stories told on the world as a whole so November 29th 1947 was the day that the UN General Assembly voted on the recommendations of unscoped that UN special commission on Palestine and I hope you remember that the majority of the Commission had recommended partition as the solution of the chaos in the Palestine mandate and it was gonna be an independent Jewish state an Arab state and if you look at the maps he puts the gerrymandering of congressional districts of our day to shame but in the eyes of Jewish history at least how its told today that makes November 29th the official day of judgment by the nations of the world on whether the Jewish people had a legal right to once again be a people in their land and it wasn't just a judgment by the nations because we spoke last episode about the three oaths that the Comerica Duchenne says define Israel in exile they were warned not to go up get Houma on mass in battle number two that the nations would not oppress Israel too much and number three that Israel never avail against the nation's and from that perspective November 29th is really the end of the binding nature of exile because for better or worse the underground armies have already come up like a wall through armed revolt and we've been following that story for a while and al-shibh is as we said a couple weeks ago surely broke the nation's pledge not to oppress Israel too much and now here on November 29th the world is going to vote yay or nay on the legality of national return means it won't be a rebellion so the unscoped recommendations were compiled into UN resolution 181 the so called partition plan and the details of plan were greeted with at best mixed feelings by the Zionists the mainstream leadership was willing to accept it that says nothing of veer guna lefty who immediately expressed their absolute opposition to dividing the homeland but truth is all but the most pragmatic of Zionists had somewhere in their heart the longing for a return to the glory of old a homeland stretching from the river the sea if not the biblical borders from the mouth of Euphrates but true to the pattern that we've seen this is the beginning of a twentieth century the Jewish Agency in the World Zionist Organization endorsed resolution 101 despite their misgivings for some it was like I said simple pragmatism after all - Fausta Maru bellowed the FASTA if he grabbed too much he end up holding nothing and any comparisons that people might like to make to the wisdom of Solomon if you don't know the story at 1 Kings chapter 3 and how the real mother doesn't settle for half the child may make for good rhetoric but after 2,000 years of wandering some of a homeland he's definitely better than none and unlike the baby in the story of the land doesn't die when it's divided for others it wasn't just pragmatism endorsing the partition plan was smart tactics Yasser Arafat was not the one to first imagine a phase strategy for the conquest of the Land of Israel I mean ben-gurion wrote to his son ammos back in 1937 when the peel Commission first proposed the idea of partition as a solution to the chaos in the mandate he said this a Jewish state in part of Palestine is not an end but a beginning our possession is important not only for itself through this we increased our power and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety establishing a small state will serve as a very important lever in our historical efforts to redeem the whole country so in general that's how the Zionists saw this vote the unlocking of the gates of exile for the few religious minds in the room the pragmatism of taking a bit when you can't have it all and the first step on the way to conquests now the Arab leadership was actually United in the rejection of everything a resolution 181 in fact they warned loudly that its acceptance was going to lead to war and at this point this is no idle threat anymore already back in June of 1946 the Arab League had secretly pledged funds arms and men to the Palestinian cause and only a couple of months ago in September they formed the arab liberation army from mix of Palestinians and volunteers from the Arab states and it was waiting just north of the Syrian border to enter but the hope that war actually offered more than partition would was not the only source of air about positioned at 181 because we have to understand that many in the Arab world looked on the whole UN mechanism from the beginning to end as nothing more than an extension of pre-war colonialism dressed up in a new legal garb and therefore that resolution 181 was a perfect example of how the old game of power could be played with new means it was just the European powers using the tool of international law instead of war to expiate their guilt over the suffering of the Jews at the expense of their formal colonial subjects by coincidence as one Palestinian historian what later write the Arabs quote failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust they failed to see why it was not fair for Jews to be a minority in a unitary Palestinian state while it was fair for almost half of the Palestinian population the indigenous majority of its own ancestral oil to be converted overnight into a minority under alien rule now I could deconstruct a lot of things in that statement not the least of which this indigenous people and ancestral soil but it's not my point right now if even a small group of the Arabs living in and around the Land of Israel saw the story that way that we can say for sure that the elements of today's narrative conflict that you're reading about in the newspaper between Arab and Jew were all but locked in on November 29th 1947 so the voting was broadcast live on radio around the world and until the last minute it was a cliffhanger no one knew for sure exactly how it would come out all the testimonies before Commission or the begging all the pleading all the strong-armed politics of the last few years were now being put to the test and you could picture it hearts of rose and fell as these country announced its vote yeah a sense of victory or defeat that it was causing it to do so with depend of course on which outcome the listener desired but in the end the two-thirds majority required to pass the resolution was carried 33 in favor 13 against 10 abstentions even the Zionist leadership itself was stunned at victory by the grace of God through the power of guilt over the Holocaust and a sense of historic justice amongst the nations not to mention a unique moment of Soviet American agreement in the UN over the Middle East had given an international warrant for the Jews to reclaim a small piece of their homeland ben-gurion called it the greatest achievement in the history of the Jewish people and I'm not gonna start arguing with him right now and when Golda Meir addressed the cheering crowd that gathered outside her office in Jerusalem she declared for 2,000 years we have waited for our deliverance now that it's here it is so great and wonderful that it surpasses human words Mazel Tov Mazel Tov Jews Mazel Tov the Arabs on the other hand saw no cause for celebration in their eyes this was a moment of historic injustice UN had followed on the heels of the Balfour Declaration by taking a piece of land that wasn't theirs and giving it to someone who didn't own it as His Royal Highness Emir Faisal also that's the king of Saudi Arabia said we came to the General Assembly filled with hope that both the large and small nations would direct their efforts toward the elevation of moral standards we came here filled with hope that all nations would unanimously respect and uphold human rights and justice and that this organization would be an instrument for establishing international and security but alas today's resolution has dissipated our hopes we have pledged ourselves before God and history to fulfill the Charter in good faith thereby respecting human rights and repelling aggression however today's resolution has destroyed the Charter in all the covenants preceding it now I may take talk of respecting human rights a bit hard to swallow from the early days on a passive market which only recently gave women the right to drive but we have to remember that not so long ago before this speech all the middle east were subjects of foreign empires and in fact much of it still is those very empires which now surprise surprise control the UN so the Arabs declared resolution 181 entirely invalid along with the UN as a whole by proxy and storm from a halt warning of bloodshed to come one event two stories and in truth if you've been listening you know that this isn't the point of divergence for the Zionists and Arab narratives around the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel we've been watching that for some time after all are the Jews returning home or are we colonial invaders are the Palestinians a separate nation or an extension of the Arab people spread throughout the Middle East and now is the birth of a Jewish state in law the correction of a historic injustice or is it itself a new historic injustice encoded in law where the Jews jumping out of the burning building of Europe landing on the back of the Arabs of Palestine or were they actually coming home and by the by if they jumped out and land on the banks did they start to beat them while the world looked on in approval so the narrative conflict isn't new what our chapters going to add is how stories can gain a life of their own more powerful even than the events themselves later in his life well after the establishment of the state ben-gurion wrote about the celebrations on that night of November 29th I could not dance I could not sing that night I looked at them so happy dancing and I could think only that they were all going to war he knew that the celebrating Zionists were dancing on a powder keg and that their victory in the UN had lit the match in their hand and he wasn't surprised when on November 30th the very next day an eight-man gang out of Jaffa ambushed a Jewish bross driving on the coastal plain near Farah Sirkin five passengers were killed several more wounded half an hour later they struck again a second bus killing two more and the day after that the Arab Higher Committee declared a three-day general strike and had it out that a large mob burst out of Jerusalem's Old City gates and ransacked the Jewish commercial quarter in the new city lots of injuries buildings torch but at first the Zionist leadership hoped that this was just another round of disturbances should sound familiar kind of like the cycle riots that had rocked these shoes in the 20s which were scary but went nowhere and there were certainly little thought that this might be the opening of a war well since the British had crushed the Arab revolt from 36 to 39 the Arabs of Palestine lacked the will or even the capacity for organized struggle and as we know for the last few years in the 40s the violence was between the British and the Jews but it quickly became clear that we were entering into the final phase of the struggle for control the Land of Israel and the culmination of that awful love triangle hatred and violence that we've been witnessing between Arab British in Jew and it was clear to ben-gurion that night and every moment forward as well as the military man around him that the real threat looming over the issue was actually from the surrounding Arab states if and when they chose to go to war they had threatened to do so on the floor of the General Assembly but everyone knew that there would be no quick invasion so long as the British were still officially in charge and no one in the Arab world wanted to pick a fight with the Empire and when the British announced that they were pulling up their pull out date from the August first mandated by UN to May 15th the clock began to tick but so far nominally they're still in charge and so the first stage of the struggle between Arab and Jew was a civil war between the populations of the mandate each one attempting to take control of what the UN had divided between them regardless of by the way of what the map said in as 1948 unfolds the violence between the two groups is going to escalate into the phase of Israeli military history known as the Battle of the roads the Arab forces were basically local militias and irregular spaced in the villages as well as the Arab Liberation Army that I mentioned which was organized up in Syria and already infiltrated the country before May 15 on the Jewish side we had the Hagana which ben-gurion was rapidly shaping into the skeleton of a regular professional army Universal conscription is only months away and there were the guerillas in Paris of the air goon and Lackey whose reprisals were still ongoing both toward British and Arab and continued to strike fear into the heart of the Arabs and had fueled the fire of everybody's hatred this phase known as the Battle of the Rhodes though because by and large the Jews were able to defend their settlements and generally maintain the upper hand in the urban areas except where they were totally boxed out in terms of population but the vast majority of the mandates of Rhodes ran through areas heavily populated by the Arabs and so by March the air forces held almost every major Road in the country the route to Jerusalem was blocked many of the settlements in the Judean Hills and the Galilee and the Negev were cut off and resupply convoys with a constant target of attacks and this is fighting of a particularly vicious type sniping on the roads roadblock ambushes bombs in public spaces murder and mayhem it's the brutality of two people bent on possessing the same land and it's gonna give rise to some of the strongest narrative elements of our current conflict as well as many of its deepest scars not to mention a lot of the well I'm gonna call them successful but a lot of the tactics and perhaps the best-known incident of the battle for the Rhodes was a failed attempt to break the siege of Gush Etzion the etzion block south of Jerusalem it's known as the walk of the 35 dalamud hey on this the 26th day of spot 5704 in the fifth year of the Second World War at the close of the first year of our occupation of this site we cellars of Abraham of Hapoel hamazaki are planting fruit and forest trees in Clare etzion observing the injunction of the Torah when you come to the land you shall plant because he did not create it for Cass he created it for habitation the trees were planting today are a symbol a symbol of the path that we tread as pioneers of our people a symbol of our covenant with the soil of our homeland for man is like under the tree of the field the roots these trees will strike deep into the soil will always remind us to engage in the practical work of construction the lofty treetops will inspire us with high thoughts to know our Creator 2,000 years ago these slopes reverberate it with the sounds of a multitude of trees in life that teamed all about today they stand bleak and desolate we have taken this oath upon settling in Fayette see own we shall not rest nor know peace until we cast off the shame of barrenness from these islands until we shall cover them with fruit and forest trees which together shall give forth a song of rebirth which the prophet Ezekiel foresaw but ye o mountains of Israel you shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people of Israel for they are at hand to come for behold I am for you and I will turn unto you and ye shall be tilled and sown and I will multiply men upon you all the house of Israel even all of it in the cities shall be inhabited and the wastes shall be builded blessed be he who has kept us alive sustained us and enable us to see this time kabuto Etzion is the original settlement of gush etzion the Etzion block a group of kibbutz seem collective agricultural communities that was built along the bethlehem hedron road which ran south from jerusalem on the rich and strategic hills of you doc and reading of the plantation scroll that I just read part of marked a momentous day not just because the 1943 establishment of a new Jewish community in the Land of Israel was a powerful expression of light in the face of a Nazi darkness but also because the kibbutz had seen two previous attempts to strike crude in 1927 in 1935 and they've been thwarted by air violence but this time they stuck and they knew they had and over the next four years they were joined by more kyboot seam masseur theouttalk river dean into him until the population of the Etzel block was some 470 at the time of the 1947 partition vote a vote which by the way placed them outside the proposed borders of the new Jewish state but what I just read you is more than a speech dedicating a new settlement no matter how hard fought process you heard the tone it's the echoes of a relationship between amuse rail and God through sacred texts that we haven't heard basically since herby Akiva backed the failed revolt of our culpa back in the second century to the author of the plantation school and those listening to its declaration this wasn't just an act of settlement on the land it's the fulfillment of prophecy and what you hear when you hear that scroll is inspired exit Jesus the author of the plantation scroll didn't claim to be a prophet we did assert that the founding of fire Etzion was the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy that's about as inspired an interpretation of word you're going to get and this type of a historical interpretation remains fairly rare at this stage of our story since Rabi Akiva despite the downright biblical proportions of the events that have been happening around us so just keep in mind this powered of inspired exegesis the pastor documents if you're interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls because in 1967 when religious Zionism finally breaks out of the conventional box that it had been it had squeezed itself into we're gonna see its power in full and of course the return to the settlements of the excellent block will be central to that awakening of the so called settlement movement well that's a story that lies much further ahead from now the sea to the Etzion block was one of the opening moves of the Battle of the roads in the days after the UN vote the arrows immediately began to cut the communities off as December progressed the Etzion block became completely isolated it was surrounded by hostile air villages and there was no easy route of retreat everyone there knew that defeat in the coming battle wouldn't just cost them their homes it would likely cost them their lives but retreat was not an option as 1948 dawn the haagen-dazs motto became no Jewish outpost must be abandoned every settlement was seen as critical and the position of VC booth seemed on the southern flank of Jerusalem made them even more important they were essential to the haagen-dazs plans for defending the city in the war that they knew was soon to come so on January 5th the mothers and children were evacuated from the bloc and the remaining residents reinforced by Hagana units that snuck in dug in for the fight to come 400 men and 100 women awaiting the coming assault less than two weeks later Arab forces led by Josh algid a muqaddas the army of the holy war it's a proxy army of our old friend Haj Amin al-husseini former mufti of Jerusalem Nazi collaborator and now fugitive from British justice his army closed in on the gush and it became nearly a thousand men mustered for a simultaneous assault on piety on the suity o'clock and in serene it would actually be the largest Arab attack on any Jewish settlement to date on the night of January 14th the surrounding hillsides erupted in smoke and flame as the opening volley began and the fighting raged through the night but despite the fearsome odds when the smoke cleared the defenders had carried the day but they've exhausted their supplies and ammunition nevertheless their houses still stood and so victory was theirs everyone in the Etzion bloc knew that another wave of attackers was just a matter of time and they knew that without immediate resupplies there was no way they'd hold out but every paved road between Jerusalem and gooch St was in the hands of the besieging Arab forces so therefore when they sent their message out a desperate plea for resupply and support the response was a foot convoy On January 16th 1948 a group of 38 men from mahogany's muhahahaha that's the mountain Platoon set on foot to deliver supplies to the besieged kibbutz seam of the gush carrying massive packs and taking a winding route in order to avoid detection there was a British police for it they actually dominated the hills immediately above their outset point the unit set out in the dark of night from the settlement of her tooth and in the darkness one man soon sprained his ankle he was sent back with to his companions by commander Danny Haas and now they were 35 what happened next has been reconstructed from British and Arab reports and has become the stuff of legends and I mean that I've sent my oldest daughter off to join with tens of thousands of other teenagers from bnei akiva her youth movement to hike the path of alam inhe the 35 in the dark to follow the trail of these 35 heroes and of course to be taught their message about life and death so delayed by injury the light of dawn actually caught the unit somewhere between the villages of Java and serif' and they were quickly discovered by two Arab women out gathering wood in the pre-dawn light they fled before the forward Scouts could grab them and they sounded the alarm as they ran the rest as they say is history masses of armed villagers reinforced by hundreds of Arabs from a nearby training base gathered around the hill on which the 35 took their stand known today as a battle hill the man in the mountain platoon battled the attackers into the afternoon until they ran out of ammunition some died they say with rocks in their hands and the first rumors of the fate of the 35 that reached the ears of the Jews was actually a phone conversation intercepted by the year goon it spoke of fighting in which many were killed and some wounded but well into the next day no one was really sure what had happened to the 35 when wounded Arabs began arriving in have roan and the word major battles spread the British remembered that they were actually in charge of law and order in this region and dispatched a platoon or the Royal Sussex regiment to investigate what exactly was going on the regimen after threatening the village moved ours into cooperation was led to battle Hill and there they found the bodies of the 35 mutilated beyond recognition you know describing what they saw the February 2nd issue of Time magazine read the picture was reminiscent of the terrible black and white mass of photographs that had Illustrated the war and the war crimes trials it also recalled the fierce word pictures of how Old Testament warriors dealt with their enemies it showed the mutilated bodies of 35 young Hagana fighters who had been ambushed by Arabs at fight scene in the lonely Hills of her own now it took all the political and military force the British were willing to muster but on Monday January 19th 1948 mass grave was dug in the cemetery of Kivar etzion in the 35 were laid to rest of Rea Levine led the service now there's of course more to the story but there are two post grips I actually want to tack on to the event each of which in its own way contributes to making the story of the lawmen hey even more powerful than the events of their lives the first one occurred on February 18th when palma commander its asada published an article in the newspaper al-hawa glorifying the squad of 35 so they wrote Arabs tell with awesome admiration about the supreme heroism of those who fell in battle they also tell why the evil befell the fighters an old Arab man who met them on the way and to whom they did no harm sounded the alarm in his village and the surrounding villages there is no doubt that armed Arabs would not pave thus if they met a Jew on the road our fighters are not only brave souls they are also dear Souls they are very humane it's a story that originated with David ben-gurion who had told it first when eulogizing the lawmen hey in an address to his political party the map I a few days after their murder then Graham himself claimed that its source was the testimony of an Arab who was interrogated shortly after the battle and so two stories of the death of the 35 began to circulate widely in the Shu and they're still being told today the first was the mutilation of their bodies hearing it anyone who was of a certain age could not fail to recall the horror of the Heffron massacre almost twenty years before when former neighbors had gouged out the eyes and driven nails through the skulls of Jews and Quran and the message was clear the enemy is a barbarian and there's no hope for mercy what we face is victory or a fate worse than death the second story of the lamonta that became part of the lore of Israel was the fatal nobility of releasing a captured old Arab man and thereby risking their lives rather than harming an innocent and here the message is clear as well our soldiers are fearless powerful and above all pure and the discourse around purity of arms is something we've encountered before go back to episode 33 where we discussed the evolution of the term in the context of the debate between the Jewish underground militias and how to respond to the rising violence of the Arab revolt in the 30s but for now just recall that the term toha Hanushek purity of arms was coined by the labor zionist to draw a clear distinction between the types of military action used by the Hagana their military harm and those used by the air gun and the laughy meaning that everyone but us the Hagana are immoral stop at nothing Paris while we are soldiers whose arms are pure and as we move deeper into an even more serious round of war toha Neshek the purity of arms is going to become the central moral organizing principle of the Israeli army in the making as the independence war breaks out and is meant to distinguish them from both the Arabs and so-called ideological deviance of the right and the knowable death of the 35 something that shook the entire issue of to its core is going to add a powerful emotional driver the acceptance of this principle as supreme and by the way of those a supreme who adhere to this principle and that's true to this very day I mean just have to read the news to see how important it is the Israel that we have the most moral army in the world and you have to picture the tens of thousands of teenagers in my daughter's youth group sitting in the dark on battle Hill hearing about the nobility of their morals and the horror of their death 80% of those kids will be in the Army within three or four years and so it's clear that the story has far more impact and perhaps what amounts to a failed attempt to break the siege of the etzion block and there's one more wrinkle according to many contemporary historians the old Arab man never existed no one's exactly sure where ben-gurion got the story from but it seems as I told you that the 35 were discovered by two women out collecting wood but it doesn't matter because it was the story that you told welded to the heroic death of the 35 and of course the horrid end that place purity of arms at the center stage of the IDF's moral doctrine and therefore a large part of Israeli society to this very day so the other postscript the story is of course the end of the siege Gush Etzion held out for four more months as the Battle of the roads raged throughout the Land of Israel until finally hopelessly surrounded and starved arms and supplies it fell to an all-out assault by Jordans Arab Legion on May 14th 1948 the day that the state was declared now Legionnaires were an army not a local militia and they were British trained nonetheless even the conflicting reports of what happened at the end of the siege agree that among the hundred twenty-seven dead of the defenders were many prisoners who had surrendered before they were shot the Legionaries routed and raised all the houses and buildings over the entire etzion block and the order was clear leave not one stone upon another to prevent the Jews from ever returning and indeed the hills of Utah remained free of Jews for almost 20 years during those years if you know the story the few survivors and their children of the etzion block took the gathering on the Israeli side of the border to gaze and longing at that land where they had sought to cast off the shame of barrenness and that longing for the land that they had tried to cover with fruit and forest trees which they believed was even now giving forth a song of rebirth is going to help shape the story of the soon-to-be born state just as much as the martyrdom and memory of the holy 35 I just want to end this section with the final stanza of the poem behold our bodies written by the most respected Israeli poet of the generation of 48 hi I'm Corey a man who did more to put the institution of martyrdom at the center of Israeli culture perhaps than any other artists behold our bodies are laid in a long long line we do not breathe but the wind is now in the hills the wind breathes morning breaks and The Shining du sings we shall return again we shall meet we shall return as scarlet flowers you will notice it once our silent Mountain platoon then we shall blossom when the last shot has been silenced in the hills so when I was growing up I received a good Zionist education I don't mean the cheap propaganda and sloganeering that passes for public relations today I'm talking about a real in-depth look at the history of the last 150 years and the great merit of walking the length and breadth of the land while learning it so the question of what effective Zionist education looks like today is a complicated one by the by it's one I'm quite committed to you can shoot me an email if you want to think it through or if you're actually serious about it you can book a consulting session then we can do some real work together but for now as part of that education I was taught that the origin of the Palestinian refugees was the order which they received from their very own leadership and that of the armies invading to get out of the way so he can push the Jews into the sea and as I got older encountered some of the competing narratives design ISM I discovered that there are many people lo and behold who say such a thing never happened but rather that the origin of these refugees was the ethnic cleansing by the Zionist army and as I've gotten older still I learned that the truth as always lies somewhere in the middle it was during the war of the roads that the first wave of Arabs fled the Land of Israel the early victories in the battle for the roads may have boosted the morale among Arik combatants but it appears that the mood in the months following UN resolution 181 wasn't shared by their politicians or civilian population as the fighting intensified as the winter deepen the UN palestine commission set up to implement 181 reported quote panic continues to increase throughout the arab middle classes and there's a steady exodus of those who can afford to leave the country this was the first wave it was the middle and upper classes who had the resources to relocate that were the first to flee among them by the way the families of local governors and most of the members of the Arab Higher Committee it was a pattern that had been established already in the Arab revolt of 36 39 and they had every reason to believe that now as then they'd be able to return when the situation calmed down after all they could afford it the estimates are that between December 1947 in January 1948 perhaps as many 75,000 fled and that by the end of March the number had grown toward a hundred thousand now the mass flight of the economic and political elite was a huge blow to the fabric of Arab society in the Land of Israel schools businesses hospitals all shut down the resulting social disruption along with the example set by the leadership is what sets the stage for a second much larger wave that will occur with the engage of the Arab armies in the outbreak of formal war now we're gonna discuss that full picture in a coming episode but for now my focus is on the relationship between event and stories and how with the events of biblical proportion as we call them the power of story so often proves much greater than the power the events themselves and if we want to understand how that principle applies to the emergence of the refugee issue in the midst of this first civil war phase of the struggle for independence and we couldn't choose a better story than that of dear yes see the brutality of the battle for the roads only increase as the winter of 1948 moved toward spring and the siege of Jerusalem was growing desperate the Hagana commanders actually feared food riots if it wasn't broken soon and so on April 5th 1948 operation knock shown was launched its immediate aim was to break the siege by opening the Tel Aviv Jerusalem Road and that meant conquering the Arab villages mostly to the south but really on both sides of that road but the operation didn't exist in a vacuum it was also part of a larger shift in approach on behalf of the Jewish armed forces who are now completely organized into the Hagana which became the sava hagen alia sir al v Israel Defense Forces this was the opening of the first phase of the haagen-dazs plan dalit let's plan D the plan was formulated by the political and military leadership of the Hagana under the guidance of ben-gurion and likely general agalya Dean and its objective was quite simple quote to gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders it also aimed to gain control the heirs of Jewish Salman concentration that are outside the borders that have been aside by 181 and the goal was to defend against what was called regular semi-regular and small forces operating from bases outside or inside the state in other words what we have here is a document that represents the haagen-dazs shift into a true military posture as they prepare to move from civil war to international war an operation not shown was the first step so when about seventy year goon fighters assembled at the eight-time base at the entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday April 8th the excitement was high it was the first time that so large a number of the underground fighters had gathered openly without fear of British policemen or soldiers which was a major change unto itself right and the atmosphere was optimistic because after four month of a defensive posture the moment for retaliation was finally in sight they were joined by dozens of laughy fighters and furthermore they were there at the behest of the Hagana which had given them a specific assignment in operation not shown the fact that two underground movements were acting together in coordination with the Hagana command enhanced the sense that a fundamental change had come about and in fact the password chosen for the day reflects it it was no Hemet fighting solidarity mortify rot none commander of your gun in Jerusalem opened the meeting of his men by explaining that their target was the village of dier Yassin and that their objectives in taking it were twofold the first was military furiously occupied an important strategic position that dominated the western half of Jerusalem and they were meant to liberate that part of Jerusalem from the military threat emanating for what was now a fortified village the second objective was political this was no simple retaliation operation like the Iroquois and had known before it was an act of conquest with the aim of holding on to territory the entire world in ronon's eyes must know that the Jews were not going to give up Jerusalem despite UN resolution 181 that had placed the city under international rule now according to your good accounts are not also added that the operation was an act of conquest a military operation and not a reprisal and therefore unlike previous doctrine the fighters were to avoid inflicting needless injury in particularly he cautioned against harming old people women and children now at 2:00 a.m. the ear goon fighters under the command of Ben Tzion Cohen also known as Jorah moved into the wadi riverbed below diría seen the squads began to climb slowly up the terraced slope above them at the same time the Leckie unit had assembled a give actual and proceeded from there down the main road toward the target their force was advancing behind an armored car that preceded them along the road into the center of the village now in an unusual twist to a military operation the armored car was actually equipped with a loudspeaker meant to inform the inhabitants of diría scene that the village was all but surrounded that only around toward an calm was left open and their choice was clear flee surrender or fight close to 4:45 the village guard spot as suspicious movement on the road one of them called out in Arabic Mahmoud but an ear goon fighter thought that someone had shouted out the password alpha Newt and responded with the second half the password in Hebrew Clement the guards opened fire and the battle began as your gunmen were trying to climb the wadi side the armored car was stopped by a trench 30 meters from the entrance to the village and it seems that it's ultimatum was left unheard by any of inhabitants and the situation deteriorated from here not only didn't the villagers flee every house became an armed fortress and fierce house-to-house fighting began many of the attackers from the lefty were injured in the first onslaught including a number of their commanders that had been advancing at the head of the men near groom forest that had tried to enter deer scene from the riverbed below was pinned down at the edge of the village under heavy fire after two hours of fierce hand-to-hand combat they hadn't even reached the center of the village and the Leki was plowing their way through the main road in desperation the air gun fighters sent a courier back to base calling for evacuation of the wounded for explosive reinforcements perhaps even for a retreat but once the explosives TNT arrived the began to dynamite the houses at the edge of the village to allow their advance toward the centre throwing grenades into many others but still the wounded piled up and the message from the left he was that the center held finally a mugging dahveed ambulance arrived to begin decorating the Jewish wounded and after it came upon a horse two armored cars with 2-inch mortars and large submachine guns and as the fighter said later in the last six minutes of the battle they did more than we could in the last six hours their assault on the MOOC Dara's house with the mortars ended the battle in moments but the real story of Deir Yassin begins after the fight because dear you seen is remembered not as a key battle in the effort by the Jewish armies to gain control over critical strategic ground but as a cruel massacre perpetrated by bloodthirsty rightists the Jerusalem commander of shai the haagen-dazs intelligence unit reported after seeing the site the conquest of the village was carried out with great cruelty whole families women old people children were killed and there were piles of dead he even reported rumors of rape by the ear gun soldiers and the reports change from day to day the number of dead the tales of cruel and unusual behavior even in the documentary trail grow with each telling and it's noteworthy by the by that this was the commander of the Hagana Intelligence Unit shy which only a few years ago had imprisoned beaten and turned over the men to their goon to the British the Hagana leadership immediately condemned what happened at Deir Yassin as a massacre while moving swiftly to hide the role that the Palmach played in deciding the battle the jewish agency actually sent a formal letter of apology and explanation to king hussein of Transjordan as their representative of the palestinian arab overnight in the midst of a conflict marked by extraordinary cruelty among jews dear Eocene became the one atrocity about which it was permissible to write and speak and when you look at the early reports the frame is always the same it was the ear goon the man of Menachem Begin who in their bloodthirsty fierceness perpetrated this crime in fact the name of dear Eocene became instrumental in keeping beggin his and his party out of the political mainstream in the years of had in a way in which the Lehi mostly did not suffer but the question is did it happen was there a massacre at deer scene you know if you have been following the more recent decade of the arab-israeli like you might remember the massacre of Jenin our so called back in this 2002-2003 in operation defensive shield i had a good friend who was there who told me what it was like to dynamite their way from house to house to avoid the hamas booby traps and he told me with absolute certainty if there was no massacre but the whole world thought it was true so here that was a few years ago what about 1948 by the time the war of independence erupts in May participants journalists observers Adira scene were all claiming that as many as two hundred and fifty four villagers with killed on that day now you should know recent research by both Arabs and Jews suggests that the number was actually more like 100 110 the majority of whom were killed in house-to-house fighting so how does that number more than double closer to be attacking well everyone had an incentive to inflate the figures the Hagana wanted to inflate the figures in order to blacken the name of the organ and alecky for the reasons that we've already mentioned and we know from many episodes back the Ergun Maliki wanted to inflate the numbers in order to strike fear in the hearts of the Arabs so that they would either break or flee and the Palestinian Arabs hadn't intended to inflate the numbers in order the black in the names of the Jews and muster the support of the surrounding Arab states who were right now wavering over whether to intervene Hussein Khalid II was a senior air of authority in 1948 in Jerusalem and at the time he said we must make the most of this in a 1998 interview his assistant has a new cybo reported that khalili said we should give this the utmost propaganda possible because the Arab countries apparently are not interested in assisting us and we are facing a catastrophe so we are forced to give a picture not what is actually happening but we had to exaggerate and in fact on that level he succeeded dear seeing did indeed become a rallying cry for the arab invaders and when the Etzion bloc finally fell and many of its defenders were murdered with their hands up the villagers who shot them down were said to be crying dear Eocene dear seen but Khalid ease distortion of the facts not only failed to prevent the catastrophe he feared it helped to fuel it because ultimately the story of the Battle of diría scene was summed up in the following way by the history of the War of Independence as a document prepared by the history division of the IDs General Staff quote the dear Eocene affair was publicized throughout the world as the dear Eocene massacre causing great harm the reputation of the issue all the Arab propaganda channels disseminated the story at the time and continued to do so to the present day but the battle in doodlee served to expedite the collapse of the arab hinterland in the period which followed more than the deed itself this was achieved by the publicity received from Arab spokesmen they wanted to demonstrate to their people the savagery of the Jews and to instill in them a spirit of religious fervor in fact however they intimidated and alarmed them they themselves now admit their mistake in other words we can debate how many people died at the scene and what exactly happened on the battlefield and off we could talk about morality in war and the different political systems and visions that go into shaping it but everyone agrees on the results of the battle how can I wanted to besmirch their political opponents they are goon and Allah he wanted to terrorize their enemies in the Arabs aim to evoke empathy for their cause and because of this the story of dear Eocene was told repeated exaggerated in the Jewish Arab and world media for weeks more so than any other story of the spring of 1948 and in truth by the way the battle over the story of deer scene is still being told exaggerated and debated da go check it out on Wikipedia but in real time the result of the inflation of the story was a deep demoralization of the Palestinian Arabs and it became a major factor that drove the massive flight out of the country in the weeks and months ahead so much so that the IDS Intelligence Service later concluded that the story of deer Eocene was quote a decisive seller rating factor in the arab exodus from the land of israel there are so many more stories that I could tell but I have to stop I'm actually curious how the few that I've shared here have land with you send me your reactions on Facebook at the Jewish story podcast or to my email Rob Mike of the Jews story CEO or Rob Mike foyer at gmail we'll talk but for now I just want to reiterate what I see to be the major lesson here 1948 was a year of biblical proportions the war the rise of a Jewish state the birth of the Palestinian refugee issue these are world shaping events but the difference between biblical events and world shaping events is in the power of how the story is told I have this discussion with my students all the time no matter what your theology about the authorship of the Bible and its historicity we can all agree that what you're looking at there is how the story got told and thus how it impacts the world I want to leave you with this thought when we're approaching events such as those in 1948 I believe our responsibility is not just an honest look at what really happened but also an honest approach to how the story shapes our world basically in my eyes we can choose between being prophets historians or sages now prophets aim to speak divine reality and though in our generation we're no longer privy to such a deep exposure of God's plan there is always what we heard in the plantation scroll inspired exegesis there's always that opportunity to see the words of the prophets being fulfilled in our days and it's a powerful and important and intoxicating approach to the world and frankly can be somewhat dangerous I sometimes go up to the benjamine Visitor Center at the heart of southern Chum Rowan the West Bank the occupied territories not interested in what you call I just want to know where it is and I often think of this idea the the visitors that are there is the home of the physical winery which is a truly beautiful place and I highly recommend the wines but on the wall next to the entrance is a plank with the last two lines of the book Obama says I will restore my people Israel they shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine they shall till gardens and eat their fruits beautiful words and true all you have to do is look out the huge plate glass windows and see the words of the prophets coming to fruition before your very eyes but if you want to understand the power and problematics of the current political complexity of the State of Israel you have to read the next line and I will plant them upon their soil never more to be uprooted from the soil I have given them said the Lord your God so I guess I know which party God will be voting for in the coming election so we could choose to be prophets or we could choose to be historians and take the critical deconstructionist approach to our national stories I see the intellectual and emotional satisfaction that progressive academics take in bursting the bubble of national mythology kind of like a thrill of debunking the tooth fairy on a far greater scale but whatever pleasure you may get out of such a deconstruction be careful you don't do more damage than you can handle and never forget the warning from ernest renan that great 19th century giant of thought in history and nationalism and so many other things he says forgetting I would even say historical error is an essential factor in the creation of a nation and it is for this reason that the progress of historical studies often poses a threat to nationality historical inquiry and in effect throws light on the violent acts that have taken place at the origin of every political formation even those that have been the most benevolent in their consequences unity is always brutally established so in a world which is still far from kind and gentle the power and protection we receive from our myths and what rallies around them should not be thrown away lightly sacrificed on the altar of historical objectivity so we could be prophets we could be historians or we could choose to be sages in our relationship the events of 1948 to the wise the facts always matter because without them you have no real story but where the story is headed is what helps you put those smashes together in something which is coherent so we can choose to tell a story of the facts today that will put us in any number of places one of them is in write relation to the past and this is of course as you know what will get us to the future but profit is story in our sage there's a critical ingredient in how we relate to the events of 48 least in my eyes we have to have a healthy dose of humility how could we not when we're experiencing not just the events but the documentation of events whose consequences may not be known for centuries to come and I just want to say with a Thousand apologies for the delay that this episode of the Jewish story is dedicated in loving memory a friend holy teacher ha Robins fee been high in Kalman maze neshama merit to rest in the highest places and may the light reaches students wherever they are and if you want a sponsor an episode of the Jewish store you can be in touch with me on Rob Mike Feuer at gmail and I'll give you the details I wanna thank a few folks and before I do it actually I want to do a redirect go check out all the new great digital platforms that the launch of the Jewish story brand has brought into the world that's WWWE story that co-co-co or Jewish story podcast on Facebook and find the Jewish story on iTunes if you even find it on Twitter I'm wavering there if you want me there tweet away I'd also like to really thank people who give their hard-earned money to help make the show happen to get free and widely available I want to encourage you to join them go to Jewish story that seal in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron even click on through for some perv podcast support I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network that took the land of israel calm repeating the platform allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank from Huggies Institute VAR d es hora de el for building an educational institution allows me to teach so many wonderful Jews and I want to thank you for listening