Eilabun massacre

The Eilabun massacre was committed by soldiers of Israel Defense Forces during Operation Hiram on 30 October 1948. A total of 14 men from the Palestinian Christian village of Eilabun (Eilaboun) were killed, 12 of them executed by the Israeli forces after the village had surrendered. The remaining villagers were expelled to Lebanon, living as refugees for some months before being allowed to return.

The massacre at Eliabun is relatively well documented. It was one of the few Arab villages among hundreds depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, to which most of the displaced were eventually able to return. The village elders, the mukhtar and Maronite priests subsequently gave written testimony of the events. The Massacre was documented by the documentary film Sons of Eilaboun by Hisham Zreiq, a film based upon the events as told by the villagers.

Overview

After a battle outside the village in which six Israeli soldiers were injured and four Israeli armoured cars were destroyed, a battle that was part of Operation Hiram, the Golani Brigade's 12th Battalion, entered the village on 30 October 1948 and the population surrendered. Villagers flew white flags^[1] and were escorted by four local priests. Most of the villagers were hiding in two churches. The soldiers were angered by a procession that had taken place in the village a month earlier, in which the heads of two decapitated Israeli soldiers, missing after an attack on a nearby hillside, had been displayed.^[2]

The soldiers ordered the people to gather in the village square. One old man was shot while emerging from a church as the other villagers also emerged from their hiding places. The soldiers' commander ordered that the remaining inhabitants, numbering some 800 people, be led to the neighbouring village of Maghar, 5 km north. The commander and two other soldiers, having selected 17 young men, executed 12 of them. The remaining five were held and used as human shields to protect armoured vehicles and were later sent to a POW camp. Israeli soldiers looted the village.

When the villagers reached Maghar, they were ordered by the soldiers to continue on to Kafr Inan. As they neared this village another old man, Sam'an ash Shoufani, was killed by fire from an armoured car, bringing the death toll to 14. Three women were also injured. The inhabitants of Kafr Inan and Eilabun were expelled to Farradiyya, a nearby village. The Israeli soldiers gathered the people of Eilabun, Kafr Inan and Farradiyya, and robbed the villagers of some 500 pounds. The women were stripped of their jewellery.^[2] After spending the night in Farradiyya, the next morning the Israeli soldiers separated the women, children and elderly from the men. Some 42 youngsters from these three villages were sent to a detention camp. The women, children and the old of the three villages were then marched to Meirun, where they spent three nights without any food or water. At Meirun, the Israeli soldiers put everyone in two cattle trucks, and took them to Rmaich (in Lebanon). Kafr Inan and Farradiyya were later razed to the ground by the Israeli army.

About fifty-two villagers were left in Eliabun, mainly the elderly and children. The village priests complained bitterly about the expulsion of the villagers and demanded their return. Following a United Nations investigation and pressure from the Vatican, the villagers eventually managed to secure their return within six months of the massacre. Most of the population managed to return from Lebanon, and all the men were released from the POW camps.

The massacre was documented in a report by the United Nations observers.^[3] In 1983 the victims were commemorated by a memorial monument adjacent to the Christian cemetery in Eilabun. A second monument commemorating the massacre was built in 1998 but it was soon vandalized and practically effaced.^[4]

See also

• Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine War
• The Sons of Eilaboun
• List of massacres in Israel

References

Bibliography