The birth of a Palestinian nation : the myth of the Deir Yassin massacre / Uri Milstein ; translated from the Hebrew by Yonatan Silverman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Milstein, Uri, 1940-

Contributor:

Silverman, Yonatan.

Standardized Title:

ʻAlilat dam be-Dir-Yasin. English

Language:

English

Hebrew

Subjects (All):

Israel-Arab War, 1948-1949--Israel--Dayr Yāsīn (Palestine).

Israel-Arab War, 1948-1949.

Massacres--Israel--Dayr Yāsīn (Palestine).

Massacres.

Palestinian Arabs--History--20th century.

Palestinian Arabs.

History.

Dayr Yāsīn (Palestine)--History.

Dayr Yāsīn (Palestine).

Israel--Politics and government--20th century.

Israel.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

xiv, 264 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Springfield, NJ : Gefen, [2012]

Summary:

In the pre-dawn hours of April 9, 1948, five weeks before the establishment of the State of Israel, men of the right-wing underground freedom fighter organizations Etzel and Lehi converged on the Arab village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. By the end of the day's battle, the myth of a massacre had become the seed of a previously unknown Palestinian national consciousness. The Arabs of Palestine had always considered themselves part of the Arab nation. Senior Israeli military historian Dr. Uri Milstein identifies Deir Yassin as the turning point when Palestinian Arabs began to aspire to national identity in order to defend themselves from the danger that this false myth aroused in their minds. The Deir Yassin affair is also a founding myth of the new Israeli left, as David Ben-Gurion's left-wing Jewish leadership used public accusations of a massacre in internal power struggles with the right-wing leaders Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Using archival sources and abundant eyewitness interviews, Dr. Milstein here describes what really happened in the infamous Deir Yassin battle, as well as two actual massacres of the period: the massacre of Jewish doctors and nurses by an Arab force in Jerusalem, and the massacre of Arabs in the village of Ein Zaytun in the Upper Galilee by the very same Jewish left-wingers who had disseminated the lie about Deir Yassin. He sheds clarity on the massacre that never was, analyzing who stood to gain from the blood libel and how it developed into the founding myth of the Palestinian nation. Book jacket.

Contents:

Epic propaganda

Background: the stage is set

The operation

First eyewitness reports

An assessment: what really happened?

Military outcomes

The massacre of the Hadassah convoy

Massacre of captives at Ein Zaytun

Shaping history to suit the elites

Yitzhak Rabin: an Israeli legend

Echoes of history in the IDF.

ISBN:

9652295825

9789652295828

OCLC:

775415678

Publisher Number:

99951603976