A Survivor Remembers

Some of the original buildings in Deir Yassin are now part of a Jerusalem mental hospital (AFP Photo/Daoud Mizrahi).

IT WAS FOUR o’clock in the morning of April 9, 1948 when my 96-year-old grandmother, Hajjah Amenah, came to my bed and said: “My son, wake up, the whole village is burning and guns are firing in every direction.” I was then 17 years of age, and sound asleep. But as the firing intensified and got closer and closer, my grandmother finally yanked me out of bed, and I got up.

Looking out my bedroom window toward the west side of the village, I saw the village ablaze and heard the sound of heavy cannons and grenades bursting from all directions, in house after house.

On orders from future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, 80 Irgun terrorists had attacked my village that morning—despite the fact that, a month earlier, Deir Yassin had signed a non-aggression pact with the nearby Jewish settlement of Giv’at Sha’ul. Nevertheless, it was from Giv’at Sha’ul that the Irgun attackers emerged, along with many armed terrorists from the Stern Gang, one of whose top three leaders was Yitzhak Shamir, another future prime minister of Israel. They threw hand grenades into village homes and shot residents in cold blood.

My grandmother and 2-year-old brother, Omar, who had been sitting on her shoulders, were shot dead, and 27 of my relatives, uncles and aunts were killed. All in all, 103 people from the village were dead, two-thirds of them old men, women and children. My 6-year-old sister, Nazeeha, hid between the bodies of my grandmother and brother when they fell to the ground. She was taken captive, and my mother, who had spent the night of attack at the home of one of her relatives, later was taken captive as well.

I escaped by a MIRACLE. Luckily, my father and the rest of his seven sons were in Majdal, a town near Gaza, completing work on a construction contract for the British, who were preparing to end their Mandate in Palestine.

When the massacre was over, the terrorists placed surviving villagers in trucks and paraded them through the streets of Jerusalem in a victory parade.

Following the Deir Yassin massacre, approximately 750,000 Palestinians left their villages or towns and became refugees. Most of them were either expelled by force or fled in fear from their homes and villages.

Today my family’s home in Deir Yassin is occupied by a Russian Jew and used as a carpentry shop. I cannot go there.

While I might forgive what happened in my village for the sake of peace and to save other human lives—Palestinian and Israeli—I will never forget. All criminals must pay for their crimes. We know that justice will always prevail over injustice and that Palestine will once again be free and that Jerusalem will be our future and eternal capital.

By Dawud Assad, Edison, NJ.