A Jewish historian, Adam Raz, has published in Haaretz a major revelation, “Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew: Testimonies continue to pile up, documents are revealed, and gradually a broader picture emerges of the acts of murder committed by Israeli troops during the War of Independence.  Minutes recorded during cabinet meetings in 1948 leave no room for doubt: Israel’s leaders knew in real time about the blood-drenched events that accompanied the conquest of the Arab villages.”  See article by the above author and title in Haaretz, English Edition, December 9, 2021: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-classified-docs-reveal-deir-yassin-massacre-wasn-t-the-only-one-perpetrated-by-isra-1.10453626

The author points out that overall, Israel has sought to conceal-deny the above events which go far beyond the several genocidal massacres that have previously been known, such as in Deir Yassin, Latrun, and in general the knowledge that has emerged that in addition to Arab leaders commanding the residents of Palestinian communities to evacuate and seek safety, Israel carried significant responsibility in bringing about the mass expulsion of Palestinians from many of their communities.

Raz writes, “The heavy hand of military censorship continues to obstruct academic research and investigation.”  The details presented include atrocious cruelty such as shooting a woman with an infant in her arms, raping a young woman and then torturing-killing her, throwing old people, women and children into a well and shooting them all, placing a mass of people in a building and burning it, smashing children’s skulls with sticks.

Many members of the government protested adamantly, but “the ministers grasped very quickly that the Prime Minister [Ben-Gurion] had no interest in a thorough investigation of war crimes.

Raz comments further, “Even those that did not have the benefit of silence and a cover-up and were tried for crimes committed in the war, were finally let off the hook.  In February 1949 a retroactive general pardon was issued for any crimes committed during the war. The public at large appears not to have been disturbed by any of this.

The first Speaker of the Knesset, Joseph Sprinzak, said, “We are far from humanism.  We are like all the nations.”