Al-Kabri massacre

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On May 20, 1948, the Israeli Carmeli Brigade captured al-Kabri (Arabic: الكابري)), an Arab village in the north-west corner of the region of Palestine which became the State of Israel. The operational orders given that day were to "attack with the aim of conquest, the killing of adult males, [and] the destruction and torching of the villages of Kabri, Umm al Faraj and al Nahar." (Morris, p347) The orders were carried out to the letter. (Benvenisti, p139).


Al-Kabri was captured without any resistance and almost all inhabitants fled immediately. Two groups of villagers were killed on two occasions.[citation needed]

[edit] Eyewitness accounts

Dov Yirmiya, who was company commander in the 21st battalion, reported:

Kabri was conquered without a fight. Almost all inhabitants fled. One of the soldiers, Yehuda Reshef, who was together with his brother among the few rescapees from the Yehi'am convoy, got hold of a few youngsters who did not escape, probably seven, ordered them to fill up some ditches dug as an obstacle and then lined them up and fired at them with a machine gun. A few died but some of the wounded succeeded to escape. The battalion commander did not react. Receive was a brave fighter and as a rescapee from the Yehi'am convoy, enjoyed special status in the battalion. He advanced later to the grade of Brigadier General. He justified his action as an act of revenge.
When the action ended, we left, namely the battalion commander Dov Tschitchiss, Education Officer Tzadok Eshel, the driver and myself. We drove over fields to Nahariya. While driving we saw refugees escaping to the North. The battalion commander ordered the driver to stop and went with the driver and the Education Officer to chase an Arab who was escaping with a girl eight or nine years old. I heard shots and had scarcely the time to understand what happened. When they returned, the battalion commander declared: We killed them. I asked: The girl too? And he answered to me: No, no, we did not kill the girl. (Guy Erlich, Not Only Deir Yassin, Ha'ir (Israeli newspaper) May 6, 1992)

Aminah Muhammad Musa, a villager woman, reported:

My husband and I left Kabri the day before it fell... At dawn [the next day], while my husband was preparing for his morning prayer, our friend Raja passed us and urged us to proceed, saying that we should run... It was not too long before we were met by the Jews... They took us and a few other villagers... in an armoured car back to the village. There a Jewish officer interrogated us and, putting a gun to my husband's neck, he said "You are from Kabri?"... The Jews took away my husband, Ibrahim Dabajah, Hussain Hassan al-Khubaizah, Khalil al-Tamlawi, Uthman Iban As'ad Mahmud, and Raja. They left the rest of us... An officer came to me and asked me not to cry. We slept in the village orchards that night. The next morning, Umm Hussain and I went to the village... I saw Umm Taha on the way to the village courtyard. She cried and said "You had better go see your dead husband." I found him. He was shot in the back of the head. (Nazzal, Palestinian Exodus p. 61-61, interviewed at Burj al-Barajnih Camp, Beirut, Lebanon, February 24, 1973)

[edit] External links and references