Dayr Yasin: don't forgive, don't forget

"Deir Yassin was a quiet village, that had a pact with us that had been approved by Yitzhak Navon, then Head of the Arab section of the Haganah Jerusalem Intelligence Service and later President of Israel. The people of Deir Yassin had kept to the pact. The Mukhtar’s son had even been killed fighting off an attempt to bring in foreign Arab troops. The Haganah had planned, when the British left, to take over Deir Yassin peacefully as we did in Abu Ghosh, and to build an airstrip between Deir Yassin and Givat Shaul. The place was of no strategic value. There was one field track that led into it from Givat Shaul and that was a dead end. I never heard about any shooting at our side coming from Deir Yassin or from foreign Arab soldiers in Deir Yassin in 1948, and there was none that I know of on the night before the attack. I know that Raanan, commander of the Irgun, later said it had strategic value and controlled roads and logistic axes and so on, but that is all nonsense. Deir Yassin did not maintain any observation or fire control over the main road to Jerusalem, or any other route to Motza or Qastel. They didn’t shoot at anything, certainly not at the road, because it was impossible to shoot at the road from Deir Yassin. Deir Yassin is high above sea level, but it, and Givat Shaul, are separated from the main road to Jerusalem by a big ridge where the Givat Shaul cemetery is located now, and you cannot see anything of strategic value from Deir Yassin. Everyone knows where the cemetery is, so it is ridiculous to claim they could fire on the road from Deir Yassin." (thanks Laleh)