An anti-Israel billboard has gone up in Detroit, Michigan a half mile from the busy Southfield Expressway which reads: “NOT ISRAEL” in huge letters, and in smaller letters, above the main message it reads: “America First.”
In much smaller letters beneath the message we learn who funded this billboard. It is from “Deir Yassin Remembered.”
Deir Yassin was an Arab village high on a ridge just west of Jerusalem in which a fierce battle took place during the Arab war against the recently declared new Jewish State, in 1948.
The legend of Deir Yassin has grown to mythic proportions. Claims are made that Jewish fighters mercilessly slaughtered several hundred innocent Arab men, women and children, and anti-Israel propagandists love to tell the tale about this so-called massacre to prove that Israeli fighters are bloodthirsty. Never mind that the battle took place during an onslaught against the tiny new nation, what actually happened at Deir Yassin is quite different from the myth.
WHAT HAPPENED AT DEIR YASSIN
As still remains the protocol today in their respective combat locations, Israeli fighters gave residents of Deir Yassin warning of the impending assault. They were given the opportunity to flee. By doing so, the Israelis lost the vital military element of surprise. According to Yehuda Avner’s account based on an interview with the commander of the attack and published in his book The Prime Ministers (Toby Press 2010), “there was no massacre.”
Yehuda Lapidot said the Israeli fighters were “being repeatedly hit and the casualties were heavy.” When Lapidot took over for the original commander who was killed early in the fighting, he said, “our men were told to avoid bloodshed as much as possible. We had a loudspeaker mounted on an armored truck which was to drive ahead to warn the villagers, to give them a chance either to flee or surrender.” The plan was for the truck to drive straight into the middle of the village, with the bullhorn blaring its warning. But the truck overturned in a newly created ditch. Though the truck crashed and was stuck, the loudspeaker still blared: ‘You are being attacked by superior forces. The exit of Deir Yassin leading to Ein Karem is open Run immediately! Don’t hesitate! Run to Ein Kerem! Run!”
Instead of retreating to safety, however, the Arab villagers “opened up with everything they had.” There was a great deal of confusion and miscommunications, but, according to Avner’s account from Lapidot, the Arabs were better armed than were the Israelis. There were heavy casualties on both sides.
“So I say to you again, no, ABSOLUTELY NO: there was no deliberate massacre at Deir Yassin,” swore Yehuda Lapidot. “The dazed and shaken Arabs you saw being driven through Jerusalem on trucks that Friday afternoon were not being driven away to be shot,” – as many accounts claimed – “They were taken to the Arab side of town and released,” Lapidot exclaimed to Avner.
As Avner noted, and as anyone who has immersed him or herself in the many fables surrounding the Arab war against Israel’s independence, the myth of a massacre at Deir Yassin lives on.
STRATEGY BEHIND THE BILLBOARD
And so some group calling itself “Deir Yassin Remembered,” as lionized by bloggers at a site named for Deir Yassin, readily use the myth of Israeli brutality to justify their hatred.
The Deir Yassin massacre idolizers report that the message is intended to remind motorists passing by the billboard that their legislators must “put American interests ahead of the Jewish Lobby in determining U.S. foreign policy.”
They explain that the strategy behind this billboard “is to drive a wedge between those who feel American interests are not served by fighting wars for Israel, and the Israel-firsters in this country who manipulate our leaders into the false premise that Israel is the ally of the United States.”