Read Palestine

Safsaf

Properties2
tags
aliases

4 min read

Summary

Galilee village taken on 29 October 1948 during Operation Hiram, in Pappe’s account; seventy captured men were blindfolded and summarily shot, a case Israeli archival documents confirm, and the oral testimonies tell of rapes and a pregnant woman bayoneted, after which the rest of the villagers were driven to the Lebanese border.

Details

  • Safsaf in Arabic means ‘weeping willow’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • Heavy bombardment before the attack killed, among others, one of Galilee’s best known singers, Muhammad Mahmnud Nasir Zaghmout, when a shell hit villagers working in the vineyards west of the village (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • The defenders, among them Arab Liberation Army volunteers, expected the attack from the east; it came from the west and the village was quickly overrun by a mixed unit of Jewish and Druze soldiers on 29 October 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • The next morning the people were assembled in the village square and the procedure for identifying ‘suspects’ took place, this time also involving the Druze soldiers; seventy men were taken out, blindfolded, moved to a remote spot and summarily shot, and Israeli archival documents confirm this case (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • The oral testimonies, unlike the Israeli military archives, tell of four women and a girl raped in front of the other villagers and one pregnant woman bayoneted; Pappe writes there is very little reason to doubt these eyewitness accounts (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • The rest of the villagers were ordered to leave, unable to collect even meagre possessions, driven out with troops firing above their heads towards the nearby border with Lebanon; a few people — several elderly men and five boys — were left behind, as in Tantura, to collect and bury the dead (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218).

  • The main witness source is Muhammad Abdullah Edghaim, born 15 years before the Nakba, who was at home when the unit entered; he lives today in the Ayn Hilwah refugee camp (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.218). The text also spells him Mahmoud Abdulah Edghaim on the same page; the conflict is recorded on the source page under Open questions.

  • The fear of undergoing Safsaf’s horrors is why neighbouring Bulayda’s population fled before Israeli soldiers moved in at the end of Operation Hiram (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.219).

  • Jewish settlers colonised Safsaf in the first week of January 1949 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.251).

  • Sitta’s register lists Safsaf at S 495: depopulation date 28-10-48, Exodus Causes M/E, a Massacres M mark, Arab Population 48 of 1,056 on 7,391 dunums, operation hm, defenders ALA (The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, PDF p.18). Pappe dates Safsaf’s capture to 29 October 1948; the register’s date is one day earlier, and both are kept as printed.

  • In Manna’s Chapter 2 in full (part 3), Safsaf was occupied on Saturday 30 October 1948; soldiers gathered those who remained and shot and killed twelve young men, then took dozens of men, some of whom had fought with the ARA, to a well where they executed them; soldiers sent several women to fetch water, followed them, raped them and killed two (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.99).

  • Manna gives the account of ‘Aziza Shrayda, killed with her firstborn son and her husband after refusing rape in front of her family, and explains why such memories were buried for decades: shame at the dishonour, and the remainers’ sense of relative fortune and fear of annoying the “new masters” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.100).

  • An investigation by Haim Laskov extracted officers’ admissions that prisoners were killed and residents severely mistreated after the occupation, yet no soldier was punished (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.100).

Where sources disagree

  • Safsaf’s capture is dated 29 October 1948 by Pappe, its depopulation 28-10-48 by Sitta’s register, and its occupation Saturday 30 October 1948 by Manna. Pappe counts seventy captured men blindfolded and summarily shot; Manna counts twelve young men shot on gathering and dozens of men executed at a well, without a single total. All dates and figures are kept as printed in each source.

The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Operation Hiram, Sa’sa, Tantura

Graph View

Backlinks