Summary
Deputy commander of the Palmach’s third battalion in the north, who led the Sa’sa attack of 14–15 February 1948 and whose battalion had committed the Khisas atrocities, in Pappe’s account.
Details
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Kalman was deputy commander of the third battalion that had committed the atrocities in Khisas; Yigal Allon entrusted him with the attack on Sa’sa, ordering him to blow up twenty houses and kill as many villagers as possible (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.105-106).
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Kalman recalled that all the villages attacked under the Lamed-Heh order were assaulted around midnight, and of Sa’sa: ‘We left behind 35 demolished houses and 60–80 dead bodies’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.106).
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The Safad commander in Pappe’s Chapter 1 list of regional commanders is Moshe Kalman (Safad) (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.28).
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In Pappe’s Chapter Five, Kalman was also entrusted with the cleansing of Ayn al-Zaytun on 2 May 1948 under Operation ‘Broom’, to settle ‘old accounts’ as well as to implement Plan Dalet; his troops herded the surrendered villagers into the centre, where the intelligence officers’ list was used to select men to be shot (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.141-142).
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Sa’sa, Khisas, Yigal Allon