Fateful Triangle

Israel and Palestine: Historical Backgrounds298Egyptian charges against the captured terrorists, denouncing the “showtrial…against a group of Jews...victims of false accusations.” Thejournal of the governing Labor Party accused the Egyptian government of“a Nazi-inspired policy,” though the government was well aware of thefacts. 211 There are numerous other examples.Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of the ability to effaceatrocity concerns Deir Yassin, where 250 people were murdered byBegin’s Irgun and LEHI in April 1948 (see section 2 above). A yearlater, Ha’aretz reported the “settlement festival” for religious settlerswho were founding Givat Shaul Beth (now part of Jerusalem) in “theformer village of Deir Yassin.” Ha’aretz reports further: “President ChainWeizmann sent his greetings in writing...the chief Rabbis and MinisterMoshe Shapira took part in the ceremony…the orchestra of a school forthe blind played…” 212 In 1980, the remaining ruins were bulldozed toprepare the ground for a settlement for Orthodox Jews. Streets werenamed after units of the Irgun which perpetrated the massacre, and ofPalmach, the kibbutz-based strike force of Haganah, which took part inthe operation but not the massacre. These units were to be“immortalized on the site,” in the words of the Israeli press. 213 Morerecently, most of the Deir Yassin cemetery was bulldozed to prepare theground for a highway to a new Jewish settlement. 214Nahum Barnea writes that “at first Deir Yassin was forgotten. Now itis celebrated.” He describes a (to him, horrifying) tour to Deir Yassinorganized by the Society for the Protection of Nature, perhaps, he suggestsbitterly, because “nature was the only thing not destroyed there onApril 9, 1948.” The tour (an annual event) was led by a former Irgunist,who whitewashed the operation before a largely passive audience. Theactual site of the village is now a mental hospital, as is the Acre prison,site of another Irgun operation. 215None of this is particularly surprising, or unique to the Jewish nationalClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky