Arabs Recover Kastel; Jews Ravage Village

150 Arab Women and Children Among 250 Slain at Deir-Yassin · Jewish Extremists Blamed For Blow · Kastel, Fortress West of Jerusalem, Has Changed Hands Many Times

Carter L. Davidson, Associated Press, Jerusalem

Arabs Recover Kastel; Jews Ravage Village — The Times Leader, 12 April 1948 — The Times Leader · Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania · 12 April 1948

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“Jerusalem, April 11 (AP) — Counterattacking Arabs tonight recaptured Kastel in an assault against the Jewish garrison there, the British Army reported. Fighting still was going on in the hilly terrain where 100 Jews and 300 Arabs already have lost their lives in a series of bitter clashes. Heavy shooting sounded in the area.

The extent of the casualties in tonight’s fighting was not known. Kastel, a key hilltop fortress five miles west of Jerusalem, has changed hands almost daily for the last nine days. Haganah, the Jewish militia, had reentered the town only last night. Kastel and the nearby village of Deir Yassin command a section of the vital Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway.

Ultimately the side which holds the highway likely will determine whether the 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem can remain unconquered. The Jewish extremist groups, Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, took Deir Yassin Friday and still are entrenched there. All Arabs and many Jews now describe the Irgun-Stern attack on the village as a ‘horrible massacre.’

A Red Cross check showed many women and children among the 254 Arab dead there. Haganah announced it had laid waste Kalonia, a village west of Kastel, and blown up most of the houses. It said one British and one Iraqi officer had been killed as well as most of the Arab fighters quartered there. A large quantity of ammunition was captured, Haganah said.

Bloodshed was also reported from scattered other places in Palestine. At Rehovoth, one British soldier was killed and six others wounded in a Jewish arms raid, police said. There was widespread sniping in Jerusalem’s suburbs, and an assistant Lebanese Consul was one of those injured.

The Arab Higher Committee called on Moslems and Christians everywhere to consider the facts of the massacre of innocent people by Jews at Deir Yassin and to decide the world’s reaction to it. The committee’s General Secretary, Dr.

Hussein el Khalidi, handed newsmen this statement: ‘Deir Yassin where this outrage occurred is practically the only (Arab) village in the Jerusalem area which had not yet appealed to any Arab authority as being in danger of Jews. It lives surrounded by Jews and for four months has been living under an agreement of non-molestation.

In the early morning Friday they (the Jews) swooped in and practically exterminated women, children and old men. The only ones who managed to escape were the young men. After that massacre in which some 250 were killed by guns and grenades the remaining 150 women and children were dumped into trucks, paraded through Jewish areas, spat on and stoned.’

A Jewish Agency spokesman said members of Haganah in Jerusalem rescued a number of the Arab women and children who had been paraded by their captors and turned them over to the British. Representatives of the International Red Cross who moved into Deir Yassin said the 254 Arab bodies counted included those of 130 women and children.

One hundred and fifty bodies had been thrown into a cistern, complicating the task of removal. El Khalidi said the Arab higher committee had tried to recover the bodies and give them decent burial but the Jews had refused. He added: ‘We wanted to send a Moslem priest to say a short prayer over that cistern but that too was refused.

Finally we sent word through the Red Cross asking the Jews in the name of common decency to place those bodies still lying about the cistern with their mothers, sisters and children and to seal it up.’”

Context added by this archive

Two days after the first reports, with the Red Cross count and the Arab Higher Committee’s statement printed at length. The paper notes that Deir Yassin had been living under an agreement of non-molestation, and prints both the accusation that survivors were paraded and the Jewish Agency’s account that Haganah rescued some of them.

Three lines, in this order: Arabs recover Kastel, Jews ravage village; 150 Arab women and children among 250 slain at Deir-Yassin; Jewish extremists blamed for blow. The recapture of a hill is the news and the killing is the elaboration.

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"Arabs Recover Kastel; Jews Ravage Village," The Times Leader, 12 April 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-016. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-016