Massacres
April 5, 1956: On Thursday evening, Zionist occupation forces fired 20-mm mortar artillery on the city of Gaza. The shelling was concentrated against the city center, which was teaming with civilians going about their day-to-day affairs. Most of the shelling was directed against Mukhtar Street, Palestine Square and nearby streets, as well as the Shuja’iyya district. As a result of this terrorist massacre carried out by gangs belonging to the Zionist Army against the Palestinian people, 56 people were killed and 103 were injured, the victims including men, women and children. Some of the wounded died subsequently, bringing the death...
November 3, 1956: the Israelis occupy the town of Khan Yunis and the adjacent refugee camp claiming that there was resistance, but the refugees state that all resistance had ceased when the Israelis arrived and that all of the victims were unarmed civilians. Many homes in Khan Yunis were raided at random. Corpses lie everywhere and because of the curfew no one could go out to bury them. (An UNRWA investigation later found that the Israelis at Khan Yunis and the refugee camp had murdered 275 civilians that day ). After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza under American pressure, a...
October 29, 1956: the day on which Israel launched its assault on Egypt, units of Israeli Frontier guards started at 4:00 pm what they called a tour of the Triangle Villages. They told the Mukhtars (Aldermen) of those villages that the curfew from that day onwards was to start from 5:00 pm instead of the usual 6:00 pm, and that the inhabitants are ordered to stay home. The Mukhtars (Aldermen) protested that there were about 400 villagers working outside the village and there was not enough time to inform them of the new times. An officer assured him that they...
(Justin, this is the massacre with the picture of the old lady I was speaking of) October 14-15, 1953: This village was the object of a brutal Israeli attack which was carried out by units from the regular Israeli Army as part of a pre-meditated plan and in which a variety of weapon types were used. On the evening of October 14, an Israeli military force estimated at about 600 soldiers moved toward the village. Upon arrival, it surrounded and isolated it from the neighboring villages. The attack began with concentrated, indiscriminate artillery fire on the homes. This continued until...
October 26, 1948: Houla is located in southern Lebanon, only a few kilometers from the Israeli border. When Arab volunteers gathered to liberate Palestine from the Israeli occupation, they established their headquarters in Houla, on hills overlooking Palestine. The force was successful in fending off major attacks on Lebanese villages, but the fighters suddenly withdrew on October 26, 1948. Jewish militants attacked the town to avenge the residents’ support of Arab resistance forces. On October 31, Jewish militants dressed in traditional Arab attire entered the border village. Residents gathered to cheer the men, thinking Arab volunteer fighters had returned. They...
October 29, 1948: the Israeli army brutally massacred about 100 women and children, precipitating a massive flight of people from that village on the western side of the Hebron mountains. Mr. Walid Khalidi, author of All That Remains, says that the Palestinian inhabitants at Dawayma faced one of the larger Israel massacres, though today it is among the least well-known. The following are excerpts of a description of the massacre published in the Israeli daily ‘Al ha Mishmar, quoted in All That Remains: “The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead…one...
July 11, 1948: after the Israeli 89th Commando Battalion lead by Moshe Dayan occupied Lydda, the Israelis told Arabs through loudspeakers that if they went into a certain mosque they would be safe. In retaliation for a hand grenade attack after the surrender that killed several Israeli soldiers, 80-100 Palestinians were massacred in the mosque, their bodies lay decomposing for 10 days in the mid-summer heat. The mosque still stands abandoned today. This massacre spread fear and panic among the Arab population of Lydda and Ramle, who were then ordered to march out of these towns after they were stripped...