As shocking as it is, there is nothing new in the despicable comment by Dr. Mordechai Kedar quoted in the following article. As a means of instilling fear, panic and intimidation, rape was a tactic used by Zionists in Palestine to dispossess and drive out the native Arab population during the 1947-48 conflict.
To wit:
The Deir Yassin massacre, Friday, April 9/48. The interrogating British officer, Assistant Inspector General Richard Catling : "There is no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young girls were raped and later slaughtered. Older women were also molested." ((Quoted by historian Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe, p. 54. Also see David Hirst's "The Gun and the Olive Branch," p. 250.)
"In Safsaf, [October, 1948] after...the inhabitants had raised a white flag, the [soldiers] collected and separated the men and women, tied the hands of fifty-sixty fellahin [farmers] and shot and killed them and buried them in a pit. Also, they raped several women...." (Benny Morris, "Falsifying the Record," Journal of Palsestine Studies, Vol. XXIV, Number 3, Spring 1995, p.55)
Notes taken by Aharon Cohen during a November 11, 1948 meeting of the Political Committee of Mapam (United Workers Party) provide further proof of the atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in Safsaf: "...52 [Arab] men [were] tied together with a rope, pushed down a well and shot. 10 killed. Women pleaded for mercy. 3 cases of rape.... A girl of 14 raped. Another four killed. Rings [cut off?] with knives." (Benny Morris, "Falsifying the Record," p. 60)
In 2004, when asked by Ha'aretz journalist Ari Shavit what new information his just completed revised version of The Birth of the Palestinian Problem would provide, historian Benny Morris, an ardent Zionist, replied: "It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves." (Ha'aretz, January 9, 2004)
Gary
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