Photographs of the victims are displayed at the Kafr Qassem Massacre Museum. Dylan Collins. All rights reserved.If your Palestinian neighbors and
friends seem slightly on edge, please excuse them. The 29th of October brings
back horrific memories to Palestinians everywhere, young and old.
It was 60
years ago that a scene of cold-blooded murder fell upon the hill-top
Palestinian village of Kafr Qassem (also written Kfar Kassim), located in
Israel about 20 km east of Tel Aviv, near the Green Line (1949 Armistice
Agreement’s demarcation line) separating Israel and the West Bank.
In 1956 the Israeli military literally mowed down
48 innocent civilians in cold blood, one was a pregnant woman whose fetus is
counted as the 49th victim. It was said that all of this was done in the
service of the almighty Israeli “military order,” which no one dared to
challenge.
Sixty years is a long time to mourn
a death, even a cold-blooded murder. It is even longer when you must live among those who murdered your loved ones, and under their system. Had this
been merely an isolated incident of the Israeli military machine killing
Palestinians, one may have already relegated it to the history books. But it
was not.
There were other massacres prior to
Kafr Qasssem, such as Deir Yassin in 1948. and since then there have been numerous other incidents, too many to list.
One incident comes to mind when the 13-year old Iman al-Homs was walking
home from school in Gaza in October 2004 and an Israeli soldier emptied his magazine into
her. As she lay wounded on
the ground, the soldier was caught saying he was
“confirming the kill” on his radio.
A more recent example is the Israeli soldier caught on
camera in Hebron last March executing a wounded and immobilized Palestinian man lying on the ground. He fires a bullet into his head as his fellow soldiers casually watched.
Unlike today, decades ago Israel did
undertake more serious investigations of its military actions. This is not
to say that justice was ever served—it rarely is. One landmark investigation
was the Israeli Kahan Commission, established by the Israeli government on
the 28th of September 1982, to investigate the Sabra and Shatila massacre (September
16 -18, 1982) where 1,000 – 3,000 (exact numbers are disputed) Palestinians were
slaughtered over three days.
The Kahan Commission was chaired by the Israeli President of the Supreme Court,
Yitzhak Kahan. Its other two members were Israeli Supreme Court Judge Aharon
Barak and Major General (res.) Yona Efrat. The Israeli Defense Minister Ariel
Sharon was found to bear personal responsibility. Sharon's negligence in
protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli
control, resulted in a recommendation that Sharon be dismissed as Defense
Minister. Although Sharon grudgingly resigned as Defense Minister, he remained
in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio. Years later, Sharon would be
elected Israel's Prime Minister.
Back to Kafr Qassem.
On the 28th of October, the Israeli newspaper,
Haaretz, reported in a story by correspondent Ofer Aderet titled 60 years after massacre, Kafr Qasem doesn’t want
an apology from the Israeli government, that, “In the 60 years since the [Kafr Qasem] carnage
Israel’s attitude has been complicated. Those involved in it were court
martialed, convicted and some sentenced at first to long prison terms [these
“long terms” were less than what the law stipulated for premeditated murder].
[Israeli] Judge Benjamin Halevy coined the phrase “a blatantly illegal order”
in his verdict. The instruction to Israel Defense Forces soldiers that they are
obliged to refuse an order “that has a black flag flying over it” has become
part of the Kafr Qasem legacy.”
The Haaretz story goes on: “But the
convicted parties’ sentence was soon commuted by the chief of staff, they were
pardoned by the president and released from jail. The most senior defendant,
Col. Issachar Shadmi, commander of the brigade in charge of the area, was
sentenced to a symbolic fine of ten pennies for exceeding authority. Major
Shmuel Malinki, commander of the Border Patrol battalion, testified at the
trial that Shadmi had ordered him to enforce the curfew with gunshots. Asked
what would happen to those who return to the village after the curfew, Kedmi
said Shadmi had said “may God have mercy on their soul.””
Perhaps the most shocking part coming from an Israeli newspaper is that, “the comparison between the Kafr
Qasem massacre and the Holocaust was first made at the trial, when the
[Israeli] judge asked one of the defendants if he would have justified a Nazi
soldier who was obeying orders.”
The Haaretz correspondent continues, “In 1986,
30 years after the massacre, Shalom Ofer, one of the convicted soldiers, said
in an interview to Ha’ir: “We were like the Germans. They stopped trucks, took
the Jews off and shot them. What we did is the same. We were obeying orders
like a German soldier during the war, when he was ordered to slaughter Jews.””
Many, especially those in the Jewish
community in Israel and abroad, will rightfully find the above hard to
swallow. I don’t blame them. This horrendous act was revolting and when
undertaken in “your” name it makes one sick to their stomach.
Aderet's article offers but a glimpse into the legal proceedings surrounding
Kafr Qassem.
One of the first people to document those proceedings was attorney Sabri Jiryis
in his landmark book, The Arabs in Israel, published in Haifa in Hebrew
in 1966. A fuller account of the testimonies
recorded by the Israeli commanders and soldiers who took part in this killing
spree can be found printed here [with
the author’s permission] in English. Warning: it’s a disturbing read.
And this, my friends, is the buried
past and not so buried present, of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), “the most
moral army in the world.” It is imperative that we all redouble our efforts to
not make it its future as well, military order or not.