Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
12 July
RABIN'S LONG CRIMINAL HISTORY
On this day in 1948, Lt. Colonel Yitzhak Rabin, issued the following order to Yiftah Brigade headquarters:
"1. The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly without attention to age. They should be directed towards Beit Nabala. Yiftah must determine the method and inform [Operation] Dani HQ and 8th Brigade HQ.
2. Implement immediately."
The order was signed "Yitzhak R." Hundreds of Palestinians were killed to drive the very young and very old to begin what became known as the Lydda Death March.
التاريخ الإجرامي الطويل لإسحق رابين
12 يوليو
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1948 ، أصدر المقدم إسحق رابين ، الأمر التالي إلى مقر كتيبة يفتاح:"1. يجب طرد سكان اللد بسرعة دون اعتبار للعمر. يجب أن يوجهوا نحو بيت نبالا. على قيادة يفتاح أن تحدد الطريقة وإبلاغها الى كل من [مركز عمليات] داني و[مركز عمليات] اللواء الثامن. 2. تنفيذ الأمر على الفور." تم توقيع الأمر "يتسحاق ر." قُتل المئات من الفلسطينيين الشباب وكبار السن نتيجة ما أصبح يعرف باسم مسيرة الموت باتجاه اللد.
In his memoirs Rabin recalled a conversation he had with David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, regarding the fate of the Palestinians of Lydd and Ramla:
"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. [Commander Yigal] Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!’... I agreed that it was essential to drive the inhabitants out."
Liberal Zionist author Ari Shavit's bestselling 2013 book, My Promised Land, was embraced by a pantheon of liberal Jewish-American pundits, Shavit documented with fairly remarkable honesty the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian city of Lydda by the Israeli military in 1948.
He detailed the horrors of the so-called Lydda Death March, when forces led by Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Allon drove tens of thousands of Palestinians from the city and towards Ramallah, where they would become refugees and never return. And he recounted the hideous massacres that occurred in the process, calculated acts of slaughter that have never been officially acknowledged by the state of Israel.
“Zionism obliterates the city of Lydda. Lydda is our black box. In it lies the dark secret of Zionism. If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be...If need be, I’ll stand by the damned. If it wasn’t for them, the State of Israel would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to be alive.”
Not only did Shavit declare that the Jewish state could not have come into being without ethnic cleansing committed on a mass scale, he insisted that such crimes were necessary to preserve his own existence and that of his entire family in Israel.
The military commander, General Yigal Allon, asked Ben-Gurion what to do with the Arabs. Ben-Gurion waved his hand: Deport them. Hours later, Yitzhak Rabin, the operations officer, issued a written order to the Yiftach Brigade: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.”
The next day, negotiations were held in the rectory of St. George’s Church between Shmarya Gutman, the newly appointed military governor of Lydda, and the Arab dignitaries of the occupied city. When negotiations ended, in the late morning of July 13, 1948, it was agreed that the Arabs in Lydda and the refugees residing there would be expelled from the city immediately. By evening, approximately thirty-five thousand Palestinian Arabs had left Lydda in a long column, marching past the Ben Shemen youth village and disappearing into the east. Zionism had obliterated the city of Lydda.
When terror didn’t do the trick, Palestinians were forced out by Jewish militias. Early April saw the launch of the “Plan Dalet” military campaign, which