"Begin stated that a small open truck fitted with a loudspeaker was driven to the entrance of the village before the attack and broadcast a warning to civilians to evacuate the area, which many did.
40Most writers say the warning was never issued because the truck with the loudspeaker rolled into a ditch before it could broadcast the warning.
41 One of the fighters said, the ditch was filled in and the truck continued on to the village. “One of us called out on the loudspeaker in Arabic, telling the inhabitants to put down their weapons and flee. I don’t know if they heard, and I know these appeals had no effect.”
42"
40Menachem Begin,
The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), pp. xx-xxi, 162-163.
41See, for example, Amos Perlmutter,
The Life and Times of Menachem Begin, (NY: Doubleday, 1987), p. 214; J. Bowyer Bell,
Terror Out Of Zion, (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 292-96; Kurzman, p. 142.
42Uri Milstein,
History of Israel’s War of Independence. Vol. IV, (Lanham: University Press of America. 1999), p. 262.
"Surprisingly, after the “massacre,” the Irgun escorted a representative of the Red Cross through the town and held a press conference. The
New York Times’ subsequent description of the battle was essentially the same as Begin’s. The
Times said more than 200 Arabs were killed, 40 captured and 70 women and children were released. No hint of a massacre appeared in the report."
Dana Adams Schmidt, “200 Arabs Killed, Stronghold Taken,”
New York Times, (April 10, 1948).
“Paradoxically, the Jews say about 250 out of 400 village inhabitants [were killed], while Arab survivors say only 110 of 1,000.”
45 A study by Bir Zeit University, based on discussions with each family from the village, arrived at a figure of 107 Arab civilians dead and 12 wounded, in addition to 13 “fighters,” evidence that the number of dead was smaller than claimed and that the village did have troops based there.
46 Other Arab sources have subsequently suggested the number may have been even lower.
47
In fact, the attackers left open an escape corridor from the village and more than 200 residents left unharmed. For example, at 9:30 A.M., about five hours after the fighting started, the Lehi evacuated 40 old men, women and children on trucks and took them to a base in Sheikh Bader. Later, the Arabs were taken to East Jerusalem. Seeing the Arabs in the hands of Jews also helped raise the morale of the people of
Jerusalem who were despondent from the setbacks in the fighting to that point.
48 Another source says 70 women and children were taken away and turned over to the British.
49 If the intent was to massacre the inhabitants, no one would have been evacuated.
45Kurzman, p. 148.
46Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi, “Deir Yassin,” Monograph No. 4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project, (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987), p. 55.
47Sharif Kanaana, “Reinterpreting Deir Yassin,”
Bir Zeit University, (April 1998).
48Milstein, p. 267
49Rami Nashashibi, “Dayr Yasin,”
Bir Zeit University, (June 1996).