- 07 Feb 2008 00:33
#1445943
Watch the video
Hazem Nusseibah (7:30 min. into the video) of the Palestine Broadcasting Service testifies : "We transmitted Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi's statement mentioning rape and this and that. It had a devasting impact on everyone in Palestine, and the exodus began….It was the biggest blunder that could have happened."
The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs
PBS with the joint BBC-WGBH production traced the turbulent events of the last half century since the founding of the modern nation of Israel.
It offers a more historically nuanced portrayal of the battle of Deir Yassin than is usually provided in media accounts about this oft-cited episode. Following in the footsteps of Palestinian historians such as Walid Khalidi of Harvard University and Shairf Kana'ana of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, West Bank, they show that the massacre of Deir Yasin in 1948 was exaggerated by the Arab side. Rather than encourage resistance, this precipitated the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into neighbouring Arab countries.
As a result of this propaganda, Arab civilians panicked and fled by the tens of thousands. This was confirmed in the PBS documentary called The Fifty Years of War in which Deir Yassin survivors were interviewed. They testified that they had begged Dr. Hussein Khalidi, director of Voice of Palestine (the Palestinian radio station in East Jerusalem) to edit out the lies and fabrications of atrocities that never happened. He cynically exaggerated the casualties of the Deir Yassin battle, making up stories of gang rape, brutalizing of pregnant women, killing unborn children cut from their mothers’ wombs by blood-thirsty Jews, and massive murders with bodies thrown into a nearby quarry.
The Arab village strategically located on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road was overrun by Jewish forces in 1948 and more than a hundred Arab villagers were killed. While Palestinian Arabs have termed the event a massacre and have focused on it as emblematic of alleged Jewish policy, the PBS account includes interviews with Jews and Arabs present at the village who tell a more complex story. That deaths occurred is undisputed, but the calculated attempt by Palestinian Arab leadership at the time to magnify and distort the occurrences in an attempt to draw in neighboring Arab armies is also described. As Arab interviewees recount, instead of attracting those armies, lurid and false claims of Jewish atrocities frightened Palestinian Arab villagers throughout the area, who fled by the thousands.
In the PBS special, "The Fifty Years' War," and in the accompanying book by the same name, written by Jihan El-Tawri and Aaron Bregman, the lie for the greater good—"Al-Taqiya"—reappears, as an Arab eye-witness recalls:
The following morning the surviving villagers [after the battle] went to a meeting with the National Committee, the local Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem. It was up to the committee to decide how they should handle what had happened.
Abu Mahmoud, villager testifies
Mahmoud [Mahmoud Assad Yassini] remembers that the survivors were asked to exaggerate some aspects of the terrible events: "When we arrived in Jerusalem, we were taken to a hotel near the Damascus gate. We started asking each other who had been killed, who was alive. Then the leaders of the National Committee arrived, including Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi [head of the National Committee in Jerusalem]. He invited some of us to his headquarters. He said: ' We want you to say that the Jews slaughtered people, committed atrocities, raped, and stole gold.' He said you have to say this so that the Arab [not Palestinian] armies will finally make a move and come to liberate Palestine from the Jews."
Hazem Nusseibah, a senior program assistant for the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, was also contacted by the National Committee. "Dr. Hussein Khalidi phoned me," he remembers, "and said we must alert the Arab countries to what is happening. I was sure there were no rapes, but we were shaken by the events." Ironically, it was Nusseibah's broadcast exaggerating the atrocities that triggered the mass exodus of Palestinians [Arabs] from their homes. He recalls: "We transmitted Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi's statement mentioning rape and this and that. It had a devasting impact on everyone in Palestine, and the exodus began….It was the biggest blunder that could have happened."
Abu Tawkif and Abu Mahmoud resent the way these distortions of the truth led to Arabs fleeing their homes. Mahmoud observes, "Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi was the one who caused the catastrophe. Instead of working in our favor, the propaganda worked in favor of the Jews. Whole villages and towns fled because of what they heard had happened in Deir Yassin."
Yassir Arafat himself (his authorized biography, by Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker) that the Deir Yassin lies were spread "like a red flag in front of a bull" by the Egyptians. Then, having terrorized them with these stories, the Egyptians proceeded to disarm the Arabs of the area and herd them in Gaza's refugee camps.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/deir-yassin.htm
Author - Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri
ISBN - 0 14 0268 278
Publisher - Penguin and BBC Books
Price - £7.99
Pages - 301
THE FIFTY YEARS WAR: ISRAEL AND ARABS
Norma Percy, UK, 2001
Norma Percy's acclaimed series tells the inside story of the conflict in the Middle East and the efforts to bring peace to the region.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentar ... _war.shtml
Hazem Nusseibah (7:30 min. into the video) of the Palestine Broadcasting Service testifies : "We transmitted Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi's statement mentioning rape and this and that. It had a devasting impact on everyone in Palestine, and the exodus began….It was the biggest blunder that could have happened."
The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs
PBS with the joint BBC-WGBH production traced the turbulent events of the last half century since the founding of the modern nation of Israel.
It offers a more historically nuanced portrayal of the battle of Deir Yassin than is usually provided in media accounts about this oft-cited episode. Following in the footsteps of Palestinian historians such as Walid Khalidi of Harvard University and Shairf Kana'ana of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, West Bank, they show that the massacre of Deir Yasin in 1948 was exaggerated by the Arab side. Rather than encourage resistance, this precipitated the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into neighbouring Arab countries.
As a result of this propaganda, Arab civilians panicked and fled by the tens of thousands. This was confirmed in the PBS documentary called The Fifty Years of War in which Deir Yassin survivors were interviewed. They testified that they had begged Dr. Hussein Khalidi, director of Voice of Palestine (the Palestinian radio station in East Jerusalem) to edit out the lies and fabrications of atrocities that never happened. He cynically exaggerated the casualties of the Deir Yassin battle, making up stories of gang rape, brutalizing of pregnant women, killing unborn children cut from their mothers’ wombs by blood-thirsty Jews, and massive murders with bodies thrown into a nearby quarry.
The Arab village strategically located on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road was overrun by Jewish forces in 1948 and more than a hundred Arab villagers were killed. While Palestinian Arabs have termed the event a massacre and have focused on it as emblematic of alleged Jewish policy, the PBS account includes interviews with Jews and Arabs present at the village who tell a more complex story. That deaths occurred is undisputed, but the calculated attempt by Palestinian Arab leadership at the time to magnify and distort the occurrences in an attempt to draw in neighboring Arab armies is also described. As Arab interviewees recount, instead of attracting those armies, lurid and false claims of Jewish atrocities frightened Palestinian Arab villagers throughout the area, who fled by the thousands.
In the PBS special, "The Fifty Years' War," and in the accompanying book by the same name, written by Jihan El-Tawri and Aaron Bregman, the lie for the greater good—"Al-Taqiya"—reappears, as an Arab eye-witness recalls:
The following morning the surviving villagers [after the battle] went to a meeting with the National Committee, the local Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem. It was up to the committee to decide how they should handle what had happened.
Abu Mahmoud, villager testifies
Mahmoud [Mahmoud Assad Yassini] remembers that the survivors were asked to exaggerate some aspects of the terrible events: "When we arrived in Jerusalem, we were taken to a hotel near the Damascus gate. We started asking each other who had been killed, who was alive. Then the leaders of the National Committee arrived, including Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi [head of the National Committee in Jerusalem]. He invited some of us to his headquarters. He said: ' We want you to say that the Jews slaughtered people, committed atrocities, raped, and stole gold.' He said you have to say this so that the Arab [not Palestinian] armies will finally make a move and come to liberate Palestine from the Jews."
Hazem Nusseibah, a senior program assistant for the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, was also contacted by the National Committee. "Dr. Hussein Khalidi phoned me," he remembers, "and said we must alert the Arab countries to what is happening. I was sure there were no rapes, but we were shaken by the events." Ironically, it was Nusseibah's broadcast exaggerating the atrocities that triggered the mass exodus of Palestinians [Arabs] from their homes. He recalls: "We transmitted Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi's statement mentioning rape and this and that. It had a devasting impact on everyone in Palestine, and the exodus began….It was the biggest blunder that could have happened."
Abu Tawkif and Abu Mahmoud resent the way these distortions of the truth led to Arabs fleeing their homes. Mahmoud observes, "Dr. Hussein Fakhri Al-Khalidi was the one who caused the catastrophe. Instead of working in our favor, the propaganda worked in favor of the Jews. Whole villages and towns fled because of what they heard had happened in Deir Yassin."
Yassir Arafat himself (his authorized biography, by Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker) that the Deir Yassin lies were spread "like a red flag in front of a bull" by the Egyptians. Then, having terrorized them with these stories, the Egyptians proceeded to disarm the Arabs of the area and herd them in Gaza's refugee camps.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/deir-yassin.htm
Author - Ahron Bregman and Jihan El-Tahri
ISBN - 0 14 0268 278
Publisher - Penguin and BBC Books
Price - £7.99
Pages - 301
THE FIFTY YEARS WAR: ISRAEL AND ARABS
Norma Percy, UK, 2001
Norma Percy's acclaimed series tells the inside story of the conflict in the Middle East and the efforts to bring peace to the region.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentar ... _war.shtml
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- By Tainari88