Deir Yassin massacre The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9 , 1948 , when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem , a Palestinian - Arab village of roughly 600 people . The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem by Palestinian forces during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine . Around 107 villagers were killed during and after the battle for the village , including women and children — some were shot , while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes . Several villagers were taken prisoner and may have been killed after being paraded through the streets of West Jerusalem , though accounts vary . Four of the attackers died , with around 35 injured . The killings were condemned by the leadership of the Haganah — the Jewish community ' s main paramilitary force — and by the area ' s two chief rabbis . The Jewish Agency for Israel sent Jordan ' s King Abdullah a letter of apology , which he rebuffed . The deaths became a pivotal event in the Arab - Israeli conflict for their demographic and military consequences . The narrative was embellished and used by various parties to attack each other — by the Palestinians against Israel ; by the Haganah to play down their own role in the affair ; and by the Israeli Left to accuse the Irgun and Lehi of violating the Jewish principle of purity of arms , thus blackening Israel ' s name around the world . News of the killings sparked terror within the Palestinian community , encouraging them to flee from their towns and villages in the face of Jewish troop advances , and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene , which they did five weeks later . Background . Political and military situation . The attack on Deir Yassin took place after the United Nations proposed on November 29 , 1947 ( UN Resolution 181 ) that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish one . Jerusalem was to belong to neither state , but was to be administered separately ; Deir Yassin lay within the boundaries of the proposed plan for Jerusalem . The Arabs rejected the proposal , and civil war broke out . British rule in Palestine ended on May 14 , 1948 ; Israel declared its independence that day , and several Arab armies invaded at midnight on May 15 , triggering the 1948 Arab - Israeli war . In the months leading up to the end of British rule , in a phase of the civil war known as " The Battle of [ the ] Roads , " the Arab League - sponsored Arab Liberation Army ( ALA ) — composed of Palestinians and other Arabs — attacked Jewish traffic on major roads in an effort to isolate the Jewish communities from each other . The ALA managed to seize several strategic vantage points along the highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — Jerusalem ' s sole supply route and link to the western side of the city where 16 percent of all Jews in Palestine lived — and began firing on convoys traveling to the city . By March 1948 , the road was cut off and Jerusalem was under siege . In response , the Haganah launched Operation " Nachshon " to break the siege . On April 6 , in an effort to secure strategic positions , the Haganah and its strike force , the Palmach , attacked al - Qastal , a village two kilometers north of Deir Yassin overlooking the Jerusalem - Tel Aviv highway . On April 9 , Irgun and Lehi forces attacked nearby Deir Yassin . Deir Yassin . Deir Yassin was a Palestinian - Arab village of several hundred residents , all Muslim , living in 144 houses . The International Red Cross reported that there were 400 residents ; Yoav Gelber writes that there were 610 , citing the British mandatory authority figures ; and Menachem Begin ' s biographer , Eric Silver , 800 to 1 , 000 . It was situated on a hill west of Jerusalem , 800 meters above sea level , overlooking the main highway entering Jerusalem . The village was relatively prosperous , thanks to the excavation of limestone from the village quarries , which allowed the residents to make a good living from stone - cutting . By most accounts , they lived in peace with their Jewish neighbors in nearby villages , particularly those in Givat Shaul , an Orthodox community just across the valley , some of whom reportedly tried to help the Deir Yassin villagers during the Irgun - Lehi invasion . On January 20 , 1948 , the villagers met leaders of the Givat Shaul community to form a peace pact . The Deir Yassin villagers agreed to inform Givat Shaul should Palestinian militiamen appear in the village , by hanging out certain types of laundry during the day — two white pieces with a black piece in the middle — and at night signaling three dots with a flashlight and placing three lanterns in a certain place . In return , patrols from Givat Shaul guaranteed safe passage to Deir Yassin residents , in vehicles or on foot , passing through their neighborhood on the way to Jerusalem . Yoma Ben - Sasson , Haganah commander in Givat Shaul , said after the village had been captured that , " there was not even one incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews . " Arab militia . Arab militiamen had tried to set up camp in the village , leading to a firefight that saw one villager killed . Just before January 28 , Abd al Qadir had arrived with 400 men and tried to recruit some villagers , but the elders voiced their opposition and the men moved on . The leader of the village , the mukhtar , was summoned to Jerusalem to explain to the Arab Higher Committee ( AHC ) , the Palestinian - Arab leadership , what the village ' s relationship was with the Jews : he told them the villagers and the Jews lived in peace . No steps were taken against him , and he was not asked to cancel the peace pact . On February 13 , an armed gang of Arabs arrived to attack Givat Shaul , but the Deir Yassin villagers saw them off , the result of which was that the gang killed all the village ' s sheep . On March 16 , the AHC sent a delegation to the village to request that it host a group of Iraqi and Syrian irregulars to guard it . The villagers said no then , and again on April 4 , though Irgun fighters said they did encounter at least two foreign militiamen during the April 9 invasion . The view that the relationship between Deir Yassin and its neighbors was invariably peaceful is disputed by Yehuda Lapidot ( underground name , " Nimrod " ) , the Irgun ' s second - in - command of the operation to take the village . He writes that there had been occasional skirmishes between Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul residents , and that on April 3 , shots had been fired from Deir Yassin toward the Jewish villages of Bet Hakerem and Yefe Nof . He writes that the village was defended by 100 armed men , that ditches had been dug around it , that Iraqi and Palestinian guerrillas were stationed there , and that there was a guard force stationed by the village entrance . Benny Morris writes that it is possible some militiamen were stationed in the village , but the evidence is far from definitive , in his view . In Gelber ' s view , it is unlikely that the peace pact between Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul continued to hold in April , given the intensity of hostilities between the Arab and Jewish communities elsewhere . He writes that shots had been exchanged on April 2 between Deir Yassin and several Jewish communities . Over the next few days , the Jewish community at Motza and Jewish traffic on the road to Tel Aviv came under fire from the village . On April 8 , Deir Yassin youth took part in the defence of the Arab village of al - Qastal , which the Jews had invaded days earlier : the names of several Deir Yassin residents appeared on a list of wounded compiled by the British Palestine police . Irgun and Lehi militia . The Jewish forces that entered Deir Yassin belonged in the main to two extremist , underground , paramilitary groups , the Irgun ( Etzel ) ( National Military Organization ) and the Lehi ( Fighters for the Freedom of Israel ) , also known as the Stern Gang , both aligned with the right - wing revisionist Zionist movement . Formed in 1931 , Irgun was a militant group that broke away from the mainstream Jewish militia , the Haganah . During the 1936 – 1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , in which Palestinian Arabs rose up against the British mandate authorities in protest at mass Jewish immigration into the country , Irgun ' s tactics had included bus and marketplace bombings , condemned by both the British and the Jewish Agency . Lehi , an Irgun splinter group , was formed in 1940 following Irgun ' s decision to declare a truce with the British during World War II . Lehi subsequently carried out a series of assassinations designed to force the British out of Palestine . In April 1948 , it was estimated that the Irgun had 300 fighters in Jerusalem , and Lehi around 100 . The Palmach , the strike force of the Haganah — whose leadership was aligned with the political Left ( see Mapai ) — also took part , though to a lesser extent . Morris writes that two Palmach squads evacuated the wounded , and helped invade and secure some of the villagers ' houses . When the Irgun and Lehi fighters ran low on ammunition , they obtained thousands of rounds from the Haganah . Haganah squads also provided covering fire , and fired on villagers fleeing south towards Ayn Karim . Battle plans . Decision to attack . The attack on the village was important for two reasons , according to Yehuda Lapidot of the Irgun . In the view of Irgun and Lehi , it posed a threat to Jewish neighborhoods and the main road to the coastal plain , and it was the first time Jewish forces had gone on the offensive , as opposed to responding to attacks . An assault on the village would show the Arabs the Jews intended to fight for Jerusalem . Eric Silver writes that Irgun and Lehi commanders approached David Shaltiel , the Haganah commander in Jerusalem , for approval . He was initially reluctant , because the villagers had signed a non - aggression pact , and suggested attacking Ein Karem instead . The Lehi and Irgun commanders complained that this would be too hard for them . Shaltiel ultimately yielded , on condition that the attackers remain in the village rather than leaving it empty , to prevent it becoming an Arab military base . His approval met with resistance . Meir Pa ' il , an intelligence officer with the Palmach , the Haganah ' s strike force , objected to violating the peace pact with the village , but Shaltiel maintained that he had no power to stop them . Pa ' il said in 1998 that Yitzchak Levi , head of Haganah intelligence in Jerusalem , had proposed the inhabitants be notified , but Shaltiel had refused to endanger the operation by warning them . According to Morris , it was agreed during planning meetings that the residents would be expelled . Lehi further proposed that any villagers who failed to flee should be killed to terrify the rest of the country ' s Arabs . Most of the fighters at the meetings , from both the Irgun and Lehi , favored killing the male villagers , but the Irgun command , including Menachem Begin , objected . According to Lapidot , the troops were specifically ordered not to kill women , children , or prisoners . Pre - attack briefing . According to the Haganah , the attack force consisted of about 120 men — 80 from the Irgun and 40 from Lehi . They met for briefings on April 8 , a few hours before the attack began . Lehi met at the Etz Hayim base , and the Irgun at Givat Shaul . Lapidot writes that the mood at the Irgun meeting was festive . It was the first time a large number of underground fighters had met openly , and the collaboration between the groups increased their sense of solidarity . They chose a password to reflect the mood , " " Ahdut Lohemet " " ( " Fighters ' Solidarity " ) . This was the phrase that would signal the start of the attack . According to Lapidot , Mordechai Raanan , the Irgun commander in Jerusalem , stressed that women , children , and the elderly must not be harmed , and that the villagers were to be warned by loudspeaker to give them a chance to escape . The road to Ayn Karim would be left open so they could head there . The attack . Invasion . After the briefing , the fighters were driven to their assigned positions . A Lehi unit approached Deir Yassin from the direction of Givat Shaul , while one Irgun unit moved in from the east , and a second from the south . Despite their confidence , the fighters were by all accounts ill - prepared , untrained , and inexperienced . The loudspeaker that was meant to encourage the villagers to leave wasn ' t working properly , and the truck carrying it got stuck in a ditch outside the village , though Abu Mahmoud , a villager , told the BBC in 1998 that he did hear the warning . At 04 : 45 , a village sentry spotted them moving in , and he called out in Arabic , " Mahmoud . " One of the Irgun fighters thought he had said " Ahdut , " part of the password . He responded with the second half of the password , " lohemet " . According to the Irgun commander the Arabs shouted " Yahud " ( Jews ) and opened fire . Irgun and Lehi commanders had believed the residents would flee , but the fighters encountered resistance . The residents did not realize that the point of the attack was conquest , thinking it just a raid , and failed to run while they had the chance . The villagers ' sniper fire from higher positions in the west , especially from the mukhtar ' s house , effectively contained the attack . Some Lehi units went for help from the Haganah ' s Camp Schneller in Jerusalem . The men had no experience of attacking an Arab village in daylight , and lacked support weapons . They resorted to house - to - house attacks , throwing hand grenades through the doors and windows before entering , a couple of grenades per house , following an order from Ben Zion Cohen , the Irgun ' s commander . Ezra Yachin recalled , " To take a house , you had either to throw a grenade or shoot your way into it . If you were foolish enough to open doors , you got shot down — sometimes by men dressed up as women , shooting out at you in a second of surprise . " The Lehi forces slowly advanced house by house . Weapons failed to work , a few tossed hand grenades without pulling the pin , and a Lehi unit commander , Amos Keynan , was wounded by his own men . Meanwhile , the Irgun guerrillas on the other side of the village were also having a difficult time . By 7 : 00 a . m . , discouraged by the Arab resistance and their own increasing casualties , Irgun commanders relayed a message to the Lehi camp that they were considering retreating . Lehi commanders relayed back that they had already entered the village and expected victory soon . The large number of Jewish wounded was a problem . A Magen David Adom station was called for an ambulance . The fighters took beds out of the houses , and doors off their hinges , laid the wounded on them , and ordered Arab women and old men to carry the injured to the ambulance . According to an Irgun participant , many of the stretcher bearers were hit by Arab fire . The Irgun arranged to receive a supply of explosives from their base in Givat Shaul , and started blasting their way into house after house . In certain instances , the force of the explosions destroyed entire parts of houses , burying Arab fighters and civilians . In the afternoon , a Palmach unit from the Haganah arrived with an two armored vehicles and two two - inch mortars . The mortar was fired three times at the mukhtar ' s house , which stopped the sniper fire . According to one Palmach participant , " six of us went house to house , throwing grenades and bursting in " . Lehi officer David Gottlieb said the Palmach had accomplished " in one hour what we could not accomplish in several hours . " The killing and the aftermath . Numbers killed . The fighting was over by about 11 : 00 am . Jacques de Reynier , head of the International Red Cross delegation in Palestine , visited Deir Yassin on April 11 , 1948 and observed " a total of more than 200 dead , men , women , and children . Sharif Kan ' ana of Bir Zeit University interviewed survivors and published figures in 1988 : 107 villagers had died , 11 of them armed , with 12 wounded . An Irgun fighter testified years later that Irgun and Lehi men had killed 80 prisoners after the fighting was over . Gelber writes that the figure is inflated and has not been corroborated . Kan ' ana writes that 25 villagers were executed and thrown into the quarry after the battle , which Gelber regards as accurate . Meir Pa ' il account . Morris writes that the Irgun and Lehi troops began pillaging the houses and corpses , stealing money and jewelery from the survivors , and burning corpses . Many of the eyewitness accounts come from Haganah officers . Eliahu Arbel , Operations Officer B of the Haganah ' s Etzioni Brigade , arrived at the scene on April 10 . " I have seen a great deal of war , " he said years later , " but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin . " Morris writes that the most detailed report comes from Meir Pa ' il , a Palmach intelligence officer who said he visited the village on April 9 to observe the operation on behalf of the Haganah : Pa ' il writes that the Haredi people of Givat Shaul came to help the villagers at around 2 p . m . , and were able to stop the killing : Israeli military historian Uri Milstein wrote in 1998 that Pa ' il was not in Deir Yassin on April 9 . Milstein argues that there was no organized massacre , though according to Morris he acknowledges that whole families were gunned down during the fighting . Milstein argues that the Haganah intelligence reports were doctored by the authors or their superiors to discredit the Irgun and Lehi because of in - fighting within the Jewish community . Villagers taken to Jerusalem , possibly killed . Morris writes that the Irgun and Lehi troops loaded some survivors , including women and children , onto trucks , and drove them through the streets of West Jerusalem , where they were jeered , spat at , and stoned . Harry Levin , a Haganah broadcaster , reported seeing " three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men , women , and children , their hands above their heads , guarded by Jews armed with sten - guns and rifles . " Contrary to Pa ' il ' s account that people from Givat Shaul had helped the prisoners , Mordechai Gichon of the Haganah wrote on April 10 that they had taken part in what he called the " torture " of the prisoners , referring to their being kicked and shoved with rifle butts . Pi ' al reported to Haganah intelligence on April 10 that he saw five Arab men being paraded through the streets , and later saw their bodies in a quarry near Givat Shaul . Morris writes that this is supported by a report from Dr . Z . Avigdori , the chairman of the Jerusalem branch of the Palestine Physicians Association , and his deputy , Dr . A . Druyan , who were sent by the Jewish Agency to examine the scene on April 12 . They walked from house to house , counting and examining corpses . Their report said they found 46 corpses . The cause of death had been injuries from bullets or bombs , and that , " all the bodies were dressed in their own clothes , limbs were whole and we saw no signs of mutilation . " They also said they found five male bodies in a house by the village quarry . Mordechai Gihon , a Haganah intelligence ( HIS ) officer in Jerusalem , reported on April 10 seeing people carry bodies to the quarry east of Deir Yassin : " We entered the village around 3 : 00 in the afternoon [ of April 9 ] . . . In the village there were tens of bodies . The dissidents got them out of the roads . I told them not to throw the bodies into cisterns and caves , because that was the first place that would be checked . . . " He described beatings , looting , and the stripping of jewelry and money from prisoners . He wrote that the initial orders were to take the men prisoner and send the women and children away , but the order was changed to kill all the prisoners . The mukhtar ' s son was killed in front of his mother and sisters , he said . The head of the HIS in Jerusalem , Yitzhak Levy , wrote in reports dated April 12 and 13 : " The conquest of the village was carried out with great brutality , whole families [ including ] women , old people and children were killed and there are piles and piles of dead . " He wrote that a mother and child who had been moved from Deir Yassin to Sheikh Badr were killed there by Lehi fighters . Seven old men and women , who had been taken to Jerusalem , were taken back to Deir Yassin and killed in the quarry there , he wrote , and an Arab man , believed to be a sniper , was killed and his corpse burned in front of foreign journalists . Fifty - five children from the village whose parents had been killed were taken to the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem ' s Old City , and left there . They were found by a Palestinian woman , Hind Husseini , a member of the prominent Palestinian Husseini family . She at first rented two rooms for them , bringing them food every day , before moving them to the Sahyoun convent . In July , she moved them again , this time to her family home , a large house her grandfather had built in Jerusalem in 1891 . She renamed the house " Dar Al - Tifl Al - Arabi " ( Arab Children ' s House ) , and set up a foundation to finance it . The orphanage continues to this day . Irgun – Lehi press conference . On the evening of April 9 , the fighters invited American journalists to a house in Givat Shaul , where they served tea and cookies while explaining the attacks . A spokesman said he regretted the casualties among the women and children , but they were inevitable because every house had to be reduced by force . Ten houses had been blown up entirely , he said , though Yoav Gelber writes that this is untrue ; he says the Irgun and Lehi forces had not been carrying explosives . Other houses had their doors blown off and hand grenades thrown inside . Morris writes that the killing continued after April 9 . Several residents who had either hidden or pretended to have died were apparently killed by Lehi men on April 10 or 11 . Haganah and Palestine Police Force reports . A number of sources alleged there had been instances of rape . Yitzhak Levy , head of Haganah Intelligence , wrote on April 13 : " LHI [ Lehi ] members tell of the barbaric behavior of the IZL [ Irgun ] toward the prisoners and the dead . They also relate that the IZL men raped a number of Arab girls and murdered them afterward . . . " Levy went on to say that he was not certain the allegations were true . The main source of the rape allegations was Assistant Inspector - General Richard Catling of the British Palestine Police Force . He wrote one or more reports based on interviews he conducted in Silwan with some of the Deir Yassin women : Yoav Gelber writes that Catling was " an old and bitter enemy " of the Irgun and Lehi . The whereabouts of his original report ( s ) are unknown , and writers refer to it only indirectly , citing Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins ' s book " O Jerusalem " ( 1972 ) as their source . Lapierre and Collins write that copies of three of Catling ' s reports were in their possession when they wrote the book . Red Cross visit . Jacques de Reynier , head of the International Red Cross delegation in Palestine , and his assistant Dr . Alfred Engel , visited Deir Yassin on April 11 . In his personal memoirs , published in 1950 , Reynier wrote : " a total of more than 200 dead , men , women , and children . About 150 cadavers have not been preserved inside the village in view of the danger represented by the bodies ' decomposition . They have been gathered , transported some distance , and placed in a large trough ( I have not been able to establish if this is a pit , a grain silo , or a large natural excavation ) . . . . [ One body was ] a woman who must have been eight months pregnant , hit in the stomach , with powder burns on her dress indicating she ' d been shot point - blank . " He wrote that he had encountered a " cleaning - up team " when he arrived the village . After his inspection , the Irgun asked him to sign a document to say he had been received courteously and thanking them for their help . When he refused , they told him he would sign it if he valued his life . " The only course open to me was to convince them that I did not value my life in the least , " he wrote . Reaction . Appeals to the British . The Arab emergency committee in Jerusalem learned of the attack around nine in the morning of April 9 , including reports about the killing of women and children . They requested the help of the British , but did nothing further . In the late afternoon , they started to hear reports of women and children being paraded through the streets of Jerusalem . They sent the prisoners food and again appealed to the British army to intervene , to no avail . Gelber writes that the British were not keen to take on the Irgun and Lehi , who would have fought back if attacked , unlike the Haganah . High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham urged that troops be sent to Deir Yassin , but General Sir Gordon MacMillan , commander of the Palestine Forces , said he would risk British lives only in British interests . The RAF commanding officer offered to fire rockets on the Jewish forces in the village , but the light bombers had been sent to Egypt and the rockets to Iraq . Cunningham later said the RAF had brought a squadron of Tempest aircraft from Iraq to bomb the village , but he cancelled the operation when he learned the Haganah had arrived there and had garrisoned it . Propaganda . The Jordanian newspaper " Al Urdun " published a survivor ' s account in 1955 , which said the Palestinians had deliberately exaggerated stories about atrocities in Deir Yassin to encourage others to fight , stories that had caused them to flee instead . Everyone had reason to spread the atrocity narrative . The Irgun and Lehi wanted to frighten Arabs into fleeing ; the Arabs wanted to provoke an international response ; the Haganah wanted to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi ; and the Arabs and the British wanted to malign the Jews . In addition , Milstein writes , the left - wing Mapai party and David Ben - Gurion , who became Israel ' s first prime minister on May 14 , exploited Deir Yassin to stop a power - sharing agreement with the right - wing Revisionists — who were associated with Irgun and Lehi — a proposal that was being debated at the time in Tel Aviv . Mordechai Ra ' anan , the Irgun commander in Jerusalem , told reporters on April 10 that 254 Arab bodies had been counted , a figure published by " The New York Times " on April 13 . In 1987 , in a study regarded as authoritative , Sharif Kan ' ana of Bir Zeit University concluded by interviewing survivors that 107 had died , with 12 wounded . Hazem Nuseibeh , the news editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service at the time of the attack , gave an interview to the BBC in 1998 . He spoke about a discussion he had with Hussayn Khalidi , the deputy chairman of the Higher Arab Executive in Jerusalem , shortly after the killings : " I asked Dr . Khalidi how we should cover the story . He said , ' We must make the most of this . ' So he wrote a press release , stating that at Deir Yassin , children were murdered , pregnant women were raped , all sorts of atrocities . " Gelber writes that Khalidi told journalists on April 11 that the village ' s dead included 25 pregnant women , 52 mothers of babies , and 60 girls . The stories of rape angered the villagers , who complained to the Arab emergency committee that their wives and daughters were being exploited in the service of propaganda . Abu Mahmud , who lived in Deir Yassin in 1948 , was one of those who complained . He told the BBC : " We said , ' There was no rape . ' He [ Hussayn Khalidi ] said , ' We have to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews ' . " " This was our biggest mistake , " said Nusseibeh . " We did not realize how our people would react . As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin , Palestinians fled in terror . They ran away from all our villages . " He told Larry Collins in 1968 : " We committed a fatal error , and set the stage for the refugee problem . " A villager known as Haj Ayish stated that " there had been no rape " . He questioned the accuracy of the Arab radio broadcasts which " talked of women being killed and raped " , and instead believed that " most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters " . Mohammed Radwan , one of the villagers who fought the attackers , said : " There were no rapes . It ' s all lies . There were no pregnant women who were slit open . It was propaganda that . . . Arabs put out so Arab armies would invade . They ended up expelling people from all of Palestine on the rumor of Deir Yassin . " Radwan added " I know when I speak that God is up there and God knows the truth and God will not forgive the liars . " Historian Abdel Jawad states that women at Deir Yassin spoke to British interrogators about rapes occurring and their opinion that this was the worst thing that happened . He states that it was something that could not be discussed in their society and was never talked of by the men . Citing Hasso ( 2000 : 495 ) Isabelle Humphries and Laleh Khalili note that in Palestine men ' s honour was tied to " the maintenance of kin women ' s virginity ( when unmarried ) or exclusive sexual availability ( when married ) " , and that this culture led to the suppression of the narratives of rape victims . In 1969 , the Israeli Foreign Ministry published an English pamphlet “ Background Notes on Current Themes : Deir Yassin ” denying that there had been a massacre at Deir Yassin , that the village was the home of an Iraqi garrison , and calling the massacre story " part of a package of fairy tales , for export and home consumption " . The pamphlet led to a series of derivative articles giving the same message , mostly outside Israel . Menachem Begin ' s Herut party disseminated a Hebrew translation in Israel , causing a widespread but largely non - public debate within the Israeli establishment . Several former leaders of the Haganah demanded that the pamphlet be withdrawn on account of its inaccuracy , but the Foreign Ministry explained that " While our intention and desire is to maintain accuracy in our information , we sometimes are forced to deviate from this principle when we have no choice or alternative means to rebuff a propaganda assault or Arab psychological warfare . " Yitzhak Levi , the 1948 leader of Hagana Intelligence , wrote to Begin : " On behalf of the truth and the purity of arms of the Jewish soldier in the War of Independence , I see it as my duty to warn you against continuing to spread this untrue version about what happened in Deir Yassin to the Israeli public . Otherwise there will be no avoiding raising the matter publicly and you will be responsible . " Eventually , the Foreign Ministry agreed to stop distributing the pamphlet , but it remains the source of many popular accounts . Exodus and invasion . Mapam ' s leaders later concluded that the fall of Deir Yassin and Haifa were the two pivotal events of the Palestinian exodus . On April 14 , Irgun radio broadcast that villages around Deir Yassin and elsewhere were being evacuated . HIS intelligence reported that the residents of Beit Iksa and Al Maliha had fled . The village of Fureidis appealed for arms . The villages of Fajja and Mansura reached a peace agreement with their Jewish neighbors . Arabs fled from Haifa and Khirbet Azzun . A Haganah attack on Saris encountered no resistance , because of the fear of Deir Yassin , in the view of the British . Menachem Begin , leader of the Irgun at the time of the attack , though not present at the village , wrote in 1977 : The Deir Yassin attack , along with attacks on Tiberias , Haifa , and Jaffa , put pressure on Arab governments to invade Palestine . News of the killings had aroused public anger in the Arab world , which the governments felt unable to ignore . Syria ' s foreign minister remarked that the Arab public ' s desire for war was irresistible . The arrival of tens of thousands of refugees further convinced them to act . A consensus favoring invasion began to emerge the day after Deir Yassin , at a meeting on April 10 in Cairo of the Arab League Political Committee . Golda Meir , disguised in an Arab robe , met King Abdullah in Amman on May 10 – 11 , the second such meeting between them . During their first , Abdullah had agreed to a partition of Palestine to include a Jewish state . Now , he retracted , suggesting instead a Jewish canton within a Hashemite kingdom . Deir Yassin had changed things , he said . Meir reported later that Abdullah was approaching war " as a person who is in a trap and can ' t get out . " The Arab invasion began at midnight on May 14 , when Abdullah fired a symbolic shot in the air , and shouted " Forward ! " Deir Yassin today . In 1949 , despite protests , the Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Shaul Bet was built on what had been Deir Yassin ' s land , now considered part of Har Nof , an Orthodox area . Four Jewish scholars , Martin Buber , Ernst Simon , Werner Senator , and Cecil Roth , wrote to Israel ' s first prime minister , David Ben - Gurion , asking that Deir Yassin be left uninhabited , or that its settlement be postponed . They wrote that it had become " infamous throughout the Jewish world , the Arab world and the whole world . " Settling the land so soon after the killings would amount to an endorsement of them . Ben - Gurion failed to respond , though the correspondents sent him copy after copy . Eventually his secretary replied that he had been too busy to read their letter . In 1951 , construction of the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center began , using some of the village ' s houses , now hidden behind the hospital ' s fence , with entry closely restricted . Har HaMenuchot , a Jewish cemetery , lies to the north . To the south is a valley containing part of the Jerusalem Forest , and on the other side of the valley , a mile and a half away , lie Mount Herzl and the Holocaust memorial museum , Yad Vashem . Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi wrote in 1992 : In 2010 , the High Court of Israel rejected a petition by the newspaper Haaretz for the declassification of documents , reports and photographs concerning the Deir Yassin massacre . The court cited the possible damage to Israel ' s foreign relations and its negotiations with the Palestinians .