However, there is another sense in which Deir Yassin is symbolic of the conflict. The whole conflict can be viewed as a long series of "Deir Yassin massacres," perpetrated without cause, in the minds of the protagonists, by either side, on blameless victims of the other. In each case, the facts are totally denied or ignored by partisans of one side, and exaggerated to monstrous proportions by the other side. When two peoples are condemned to continually relive the same plot with different characters and places, history and historical truths cease to be solely academic subjects. The history of the Deir Yassin massacre and the perception of that history and the psychology of that perception, can therefore give us insight into the processes that sustain the conflict.

The facts of the attack as known are presented at a Web site I created at http://www.ariga.com/peacewatch/dy. Briefly, on April 9, 1948, the dissident Jewish Irgun and Lehi underground groups attacked the village of Deir Yassin, at the entrance to Jerusalem, though the village had had a defense pact with the Jewish agency. In the attack, four of the attackers and over a hundred villagers were killed, many of them women and children. According to an affidavit provided by an Irgun commander, about 80 prisoners were shot. A number of witnesses, Jewish and Arab, reported independently that a group of about 15 persons were taken to a quarry and shot. Me'ir Pail, a Palmach (Zionist underground) officer who spied on the attack, and two or three additional witnesses, reported women children and old men shot at close range. The Zionist executive apologized for this attack, which was done by forces not under its control. The Palestinians subsequently exacted revenge by killing about 80 Jews in a convoy to Hadassah hospital, and another 50 who had surrendered at Gush Etzion..

I was surprised and dismayed at the reactions elicited by my Web site and by any discussion of Deir Yassin. On the one hand, most pro-Israel visitors insist that the massacre never took place at all, even though the Israel government decided some time ago to teach about the massacre as part of the school history curriculum. For insisting on telling the same truth that is taught in Israeli schools, I have been called "traitor," "obstacle to peace" and "self-hating Jew."

On the other hand, pro-Palestinians are insistent that this massacre, perpetrated by an inexperienced and undisciplined group of dissident soldiers, typifies all of the accomplishments of Zionism in Palestine from its inception, and was part of a Zionist plot to expel the Arabs of Palestine. Each year Palestinians and their partisans, including so-called "peace" groups, commemorate the Deir Yassin massacre and insist on turning it into a hate Israel platform. Would-be "historians" have tried to link Deir Yassin with Plan Daleth (Plan D) of the Haganah. However, Plan D did not envisage massacring anyone, nor did it call for massive permanent expulsions, and the attack on Deir Yassin, while tolerated by the Jerusalem Haganah commander, Shaltiel, was not part of the Haganah plan.

It seems that no amount of proof would convince either side, and that the opinions are not susceptible to empirical evidence at all. Every irrelevant or impossible argument has been used to refute the evidence of the massacre by one side, and every possible device has been used by the other side to try to turn this one incident, an unplanned massacre perpetrated by a renegade group, into a symbol of Zionist policy.

According to Palestinian partisans, massacres like Deir Yassin, and only such massacres, were the sole cause of the flight of the Palestinian refugees in 1948, perpetrated as part of a premeditated "ethnic cleansing" plot by the evil Zionists to expel the blameless Arabs of Palestine. It does not matter to them that the Palestinians attacked the Jews originally and blockaded the roads to Jerusalem. It is useless to show that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had already fled before the events of Deir Yassin. It is no use pointing out that the Irgun/Lehi action was not sanctioned by the Zionist leadership, that Jewish evictions of Arabs followed Arab evictions of Jews, or that over 420 Jewish civilians were killed by enemy action and many more died due to starvation and illness during the Arab blockade of Jerusalem. About 30,000 Jews fled the city during or after the blockade, including several thousand who were forcibly evicted from the Jewish quarter in the old city. None of the above makes any impression. Each side claims about the suffering of the other, "it is not equivalent" "it is not the same thing," it was "justifiable revenge" or simply, "it didn't happen."

What happened in 1948 was known by both sides, but it was actively "forgotten," just as what is happening today, all around us, is known to both sides, but it is actively "forgotten." The facts are made to fit what we need to believe, for by other names and at other times, the tragedy of, Deir Yassin is revisited and replayed perpetually by Palestinians, and the equivalent tragedies are revisited by Israelis. For Deir Yassin, Jews may substitute the Hebron Massacre of 1929, or the expulsion from the Old City of Jerusalem, or the Hadassah convoy massacre or the Gush Etzion massacre or another incident in their version of the history, and the Palestinians may substitute the Jenin "massacre" any other incident in their version of history.

The story of Deir Yassin is typical of almost every other incident in the history of Palestinian-Israeli relations. There is an act of senseless brutality, that is performed in the context of revenge for other acts of senseless brutality and competition with other political groups. The deed becomes the justification for other outrages, which in turn create the need for vengeance and more such deeds. Each side remembers only one part of the story, and actively dismisses the rest, which is a threat to their own self image, as a group, and as individuals. Two peoples are living a lie. Thus, Deir Yassin is the child of many Deir Yassins, and parent to many more. Partisans claim that the brutal act, whether it is the massacre at Deir Yassin, or the massacre of Jews in Hebron, or suicide bombings, or brutality at checkpoints, is characteristic of their opponents, and proves that they are thoroughly evil and inhuman.

Critics complain that Zionists have created a "Holocaust industry" to capitalize on the suffering of the Jews in Europe. However, the same critics are among those who have created a Deir Yassin industry, to trade on the suffering of the Palestinians and to inflate an incident into a cause, and an excuse to denying legitimacy to an entire people. The "Deir Yassin Industry," like the museum of the Hebron settlers that is dedicated to the massacre in Hebron, is not intended to humanize victims or make the other side feel their pain. There is no chance that such propaganda can bring about rapprochement or peace or justice, because the other side is never going to accept a false version of history in which they are entirely wrong and delegitimized, or accept that the "punishment" for their "misdeeds" is that they have to forfeit all their rights entirely. Reconciliation cannot be built on hate-mongering.

The history of Deir Yassin, and of every other event, clear enough in itself, becomes lost or repressed in a fog of deliberate obfuscation by one side, and in a torrent of exaggeration by the other. In this way, each group has developed their own historical fictional mythology. The myths are supported by a set of obstinate defense mechanisms, that are impervious to any facts except those that support the myths. The myths provide a rationale for sustaining the conflict, which generates more Deir Yassins to create more myths. The psychological mechanisms are devastatingly effective. The events of recent years have proven that in a hundred or more years of conflict over Palestine, both sides have forgotten nothing of the myths they created, and learned nothing of the truths they have repressed. Until we are willing to learn the truths and to dispel the myths, we will all be condemned to relive the tragedy of Deir Yassin.

Ami Isseroff