The deaths of July 12 are regarded in the Arab world and by several historians as a massacre. Walid Khalidi calls it "an orgy of indiscriminate killing." Morris writes that the "jittery Palmahniks massacr[ed] detainees in a mosque compound." According to Gelber, it was a "bloodier massacre" than at Deir Yassin. Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela write that it was "an intense battle where the demarcation between civilians, irregular combatants and regular army units hardly existed."