Sa ' sa ' Sa ' sa ' ( ) was a Palestinian village , located 12 kilometres northwest of Safed that was depopulated by Israeli forces during the 1948 Arab - Israeli war . The village suffered two massacres committed by Haganah forces : one in mid - February 1948 and the other at the end of October the same year . History . Sa ' sa ' was built on the site of a Bronze Age ( early second millennium B . C . ) settlement whose remains ( walls , tombs , cisterns , and olive and wine presses ) , have been unearthed . One village house had foundations which has been dated back to fourth century by archaeologists . Another excavated in 2003 yielded ceramics dated to the fourteenth – fifteenth centuries CE . The Arab geographer Abū ' Ubayd ' Abd Allāh al - Bakrī ( d . 1094 ) reported that one passed through Sa ' sa ' when travelling from Dayr al - Qasi to Safad . In 1516 Sa ' sa ' , with the rest of Palestine , came under the control of the Ottoman Empire . Shortly after , Sa ' sa ' was made a checkpoint where a toll was collected on various goods and travellers ; the first records of such taxes are from 1525 / 6 . In 1596 Sa ' sa ' was classified as a village in the " nahiya " ( " subdistrict " ) of Jira , part of " liwa ' " ( " district " ) of Safad , with a population of 457 . It paid taxes on wheat , barley , olive s and fruits , as well as on goats , beehive s , and vineyards . According to this " daftar " , there were no non - Muslim inhabitants in the village . In the eighteenth century Sa ' sa ' in mentioned as one of the fortified villages of Galilee controlled by Zahir al - Umar ' s son , Ali . After the defeat of Zahir al - Umar in 1775 Ali continued to resist the Ottoman authorities and defeated an army sent against him at Sa ' sa ' . In the late nineteenth century , Sa ' sa ' was described as a village with a population of 300 , built on a slight hill that was surrounded by vineyards and olive and fig trees . All the villagers were Muslim . The village had a small market - place in the village center with a few shops , as well as a mosque and two elementary schools , one for girls and one for boys . In 1944 / 45 the village , with a population of 1 , 130 , used 4 , 496 dunum s for cereals ; 1 , 404 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards . 1948 , and after . In February 1948 , Yigal Allon , commander of the Palmach in the north , ordered an attack on Sa ' sa ' . The order was given to Moshe Kelman , the deputy commander of Third Battalion . The order read : " You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible " . According to Pappé , " warriors " in this context meant " villagers " . One history of 1948 asserts that the reason for the attack was to restore Jewish public confidence in their fighting forces following the deaths of all the members of a platoon attempting to take supplies to Kfar Etzion a month previously . On February 15 , 1948 , a Palmach unit entered the village during the night and , without resistance , planted explosives against some of the houses . It was reported at the time that ten or more houses were totally or partially destroyed and 11 villagers were killed ( 5 of them small children ) . According to the official history of the Haganah , the village had been used as a base for Arab fighters . However , press reports at the time belie this , since the Palmach units met " without opposition " in the village . According to Benvenisti ( who gives the date of the attack as 14 February ) , the Palmach units that raided Sa ' sa ' killed 60 people and demolished 16 houses . It was not until October 30 , 1948 , as part of Operation Hiram , that the forces of the Haganah occupied Sa ' sa ' . Those villagers who had not already fled were expelled . There are also allegations of war crimes at this time . Northern Command OC Moshe Carmel later reported that he had seen evidence of killings , and an official investigation by Major Emanuel Yalan suggested that some villagers , including cripples , may have been killed after the village was occupied . However , the relevant files remain closed to historians . Currently , there are few remains of the Palestinian village of Sa ' sa ' , with the exception of the village mosque , which has now been converted into the Kibbutz museum . Excavations in 1972 on the west side of the hill revealed the remains of a large rectangular structure ( 15m x 41 m ) with 2m thick walls made out of rubble stone with ashlar facing . At the south - west corner of the building there was a solid semi - circular tower ( diameter 7m ) . The main part of the structure is a rectangular hall divided into two rows of five bays . There was a central row of four piers and two half - piers which would probably have supported a cross - vaulted roof . In a later phase an outer skin ( 2m wide ) was added , making the wall a total of 4m thick . At the same time the round tower was converted into a square plan . According to the excavators , the place was occupied for a " fairly long " period , and suggest that it was probably part of the fortress built by Ali , ( son of Zahir al - Umar ) in the eighteenth century . The design of the building is quite compatible with other fortresses of the period , like Qalat Jiddin and Dayr Hanna . In 1992 , the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi described the remains of the village : " Some of the old olive trees remain , and a number of walls and houses still stand . Some of the houses are presently used by the kibbutz ; one of them has an arched entrance and arched windows . A large portion of the surrounding land is forested , the rest is cultivated by Israeli farmers . "