Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!caen!uvaarpa!maxwell!rj3s
From: rj3s@Virginia.EDU ("Get thee to a nunnery.....")
Subject: Re: Deir Yassin
Message-ID: <1993Apr28.020434.14265@Virginia.EDU>
Organization: University of Virginia
References: <HM.93Apr27150023@angell.cs.brown.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1993 02:04:34 GMT
Lines: 55

hm@cs.brown.edu  writes:
> In article <1993Apr26.234331.7303@Virginia.EDU> rj3s@Virginia.EDU ("Get thee to a nunnery.....") writes:
> 
>    This is such Bullshit.  Deir Yassin was an unprovoked attack on
>    the part of the Jews, and a massacre defines it best in my
>    opinion.  The village of Deir Yassin had had a pact with the
>    Jews, a peace pact, but the Irgun purposely broke this
>    agreement in order to scare off the Palestinians.  I might
>    grant that this village housed armed Arabs [I doubt it] but
>    nothing in the archives and available literature indicates that
>    this was a motivating force amongst the Irgun.  The Deir Yassin
>    MASSACRE was part of an over all strategy to intimidate the
>    Palestinians to flee the Jewish Homeland.,...and contrary to
>    your belief, many civilians were killed.  Deir Yassin was later
>    advertized by the very Jews who perpetrated it because it was
>    useful in getting many Palestinians to leave.  The Palestinians
>    were rightfully scared off, because they did not want another
>    Deir Yassin.  
> 	   I'm not necessarily condemning the Israelites here;
>    atrocities were aslo committed on the part of the Arabs.
>    Israelophiles should just be careful in thinking that they are
>    and were the good guys in the middle east.  Both Arab and Jew
>    suck equally.
> 
> rj3s, you say that there is no evidence that what motivated the Irgun
> to attack Dir Yassin was its strategic importance. In fact, Begin,
> who was in charge of the Irgun, wrote that Dir Yassin was attacked for
> its military significance.
> 
> Dir Yassin was merely a battle in the War of Liberation. People died.
> But the thing was never intended to be a masacre. That this hapenned
> is a tragedy of war - not a crime of the Irgun.
> 
> Harry.
> 
> 
I agree with you Harry, however you must also concede then that
Arab terrorism is also a tragedy of war.  remember that the
Palestinians have no other effective target but civilians in
order to further their cause.  If Irgun had to attack civilian
targets to terrorize in order that they might obtain some
objective, I'm sure they would have done so.  I also don't
exclude Irgun's action against British soldiers as terrorism.
The British were showing signs of favoring a compromise with
regards to Palestine, and the Irgun and branch off groups made
a point to kill young British recruits so that mothers and
fathers back in Britain would get angry at Britains continued
presence in Palestine.  Sounds like a form of terrorism to me,
and not much removed from Arab terrorism.  We must not also
forget that Irgun, or Irgun branch off groups [more likely]
killed many jews who were not as hardline zionist as they, or
who cooperated with the British.  
	I'll reiterate again.... both sides are screwy, but
I'll favor the underdog in this case because I do think they
were a bit screwed.
