Yossef Vashitz was a senior advisor of Arab affairs to Mapam, whose major military force, the Palmach, were the commando units of the Zionist military effort in 1948. His private collection include this half page – undated - translated here, which just give a short list of atrocities committed in 1948 (mostly in October to November that year during operation Hiram) in the upper Galilee.
Here it is:
Safsaf –caught 52 men, tied them one to the other, dug a hole and shot them. While they were sill alive, women came and pleaded for their lives. Found 6 bodies of old men, all and all 61 bodies. Three rape cases. One by a Mizrachi Jew from Jaffa of a 14 years old girl. 4 men shot and killed. From The one they cut by knife his fingers to take his ring.
Jish – 400 inhabitants. A women embracing a child - both dead. 4 women and 11 soldiers dead.
The Logistic Unit.
They wipe everything. The Kibbutzim rob everything. Kefar Giladi [robbed] five flower lorries.
Ein Zitun, the logistic went wild…tore women earlobes to take the ear rings. In Birim – the same sight and one dead man for no reason.
Sasa. Murders; especially of old men.
Ilabun – 1000 people, the army received surrender, slaughtered [animals], food, and then the expulsion from the village began by shooting. Thirty people died. The order was to expel the villages. Rumours of it across the border.
Saliha – ninety two, men, old men women and children [died] when a house was blown on them.
Mashhat – the village wanted to surrender already in the days of Qawqji, he revenged, now we.
(Ilan Pappe translation)
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