Deir Yassin: Remembrance and Forgiveness
by: Daniel McGowan
April - May
1997
The Link - Volume 30, Issue 2
On April 9, 1948, two Zionist groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang, massacred 254 men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin. Some villagers were driven in a truck through the streets of Jerusalem in a “victory parade” before being taken back to the village and shot against a wall. On April 9, 1998, a 50th anniversary conference will be held in Palestine to commemorate the massacre. As Professor Daniel McGowan notes, his September-October, 1996 issue of The Link has played a role in remembering Deir Yassin.
The Link was the first publication to report in depth on the work and objectives of Deir Yassin Remembered. It described DYR's quest to create a memorial to the Palestinians of Deir Yassin murdered by Jewish terrorists and to build it at the site of the massacre. Deir Yassin, located in an orthodox Jewish neighborhood in West Jerusalem, is in the shadow of the famous Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem.
The article sparked letters of encouragement from all over the world. The late Colin Edwards, a broadcast journalist and Middle East correspondent for 40 years, had made a taped documentary of the Deir Yassin story. His wife, Mary, resurrected the tape and gave it to DYR, which makes it available to interested parties.
Descendants of the Swedish Colony in Jerusalem sent a generous contribution and related the colony’s experiences in Jerusalem at the time of the massacre. Sizable checks came from Saudi Arabians, Germans, and Arab-Americans, including radio celebrity Casey Kassem. Other support has come from whom I refer to as "righteous Jews," meaning those who recognize the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians through the creation and expansion of the State of Israel.
Roni Ben-Efrat, the Israeli editor of Challenge Magazine, wrote to express her admiration for DYR’s aims. In December she accompanied me to Deir Yassin, walking through the site for the first time and viewing it from Yad Vashem. Through her I met an American author and tour guide who emigrated to Israel; he promised to include Deir Yassin on his tours of Jerusalem.
Birzeit University has linked the Birzeit website to ours (www.deiryassin.org) and distributed copies of The Link and our brochure to students. We are jointly planning the April 9, 1997, conference to commemorate the anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre. The conference coordinators are Sahar Ghosheh, wife of Samir Ghosheh, Minister of Labor in the Palestine National Authority, and Khairieh Abu Shusheh, a primary school teacher in the Old City. Speakers will include Marc Ellis, a Jewish theologian; Saleh Abdel Jawad of the Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society; Mahara Dajani, director of Dar El Tifl El Arabi, founded by the late Ms. Hind Husseini as an orphanage for surviving children of Deir Yassin; Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s "national poet;" and a representative of the Survivors of Deir Yassin.
Meir Pa'il, an Israeli Jew who witnessed the Deir Yassin massacre, also read The Link. A former military historian, he is now retired and living in Tel Aviv. Two members of DYR visited him there and, with his permission, recorded his account of the events on those fateful days in 1948. That tape and its transcript also are available to members of DYR.
DYR has agreed to underwrite the first book to be published on the Deir Yassin massacre. It is being written by Sherry Al Mufti and will be published in time for the 50th anniversary remembrance ceremonies in 1998.
In its December mission to Israel, representatives of DYR met with Knesset members Talab Elsana, Hashem Mahameed, Nawaf Masalha, and Tamar Gozansky. They promised to put Deir Yassin on the Knesset calendar for discussion on April 9, the day of our conference at Birzeit University. We have met with several members of the Palestinian Authority and President Arafat has endorsed our project in writing.
DYR also met with Michel Sabbah, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem. While giving our project his full endorsement, he counseled us not to create a Holocaust-style memorial, but rather one which demonstrates Christian forgiveness, even to the murderers who committed the massacre. His point was well received and will be incorporated into the specifications for the memorial design competition.
Much has been accomplished by DYR in the past two years. However, the critical phases are before us. We have artists and sculptors eager to compete to design the memorial; we have people ready and willing to petition the Israeli government for a suitable site at Deir Yassin. But we have yet to raise the initial $100,000 necessary to launch the project.
Daniel McGowan is a professor of economics. He can be contacted at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY, 14456; telephone, 315/781-3418; e-mail, McGowan@hws.edu.