Kfar Kassem Massacre

“In this way were the 49 inhabitants of Kafr Kassem slaughtered”

The following is a detailed account of the horrible massacre of Kfar Kassem as told by eyewitnesses. The Israeli daily, Kol Haam published on Wednesday, December 19, 1956 on its front page the following detailed story of the Kfar Kassem massacre, which was committed by the Israeli army on October 29, 1956, against the Arabs in occupied Palestine. Forty-nine men, women and children were slaughtered in cold blood. Kol Haam published the story of the massacre under the title, “In This Way Were the 49 Inhabitants of Kfar Kassem Slaughtered.” The following is a literal translation:

Here are the details of the massacre in which 49 of the peaceful inhabitants of Kfar Kassem-- all Arabs living in Israel-- were slaughtered in cold blood. Another thirteen of these inhabitants also sustained serious injuries in this horrible massacre committed by the troops of the Israeli frontier guards.

On October 29, 1956, the day on which Israel launched its assault on Egypt, units of the Israeli frontier guards started at 4 p.m. what they called a tour of the Triangle Villages. They informed the Mukhtars (heads of the villages) and the rural councils that the curfew in those villages was from that day onwards to be observed from 5 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. as was the case before, and that the inhabitants were, therefore, requested to stay home as from that very instant.

One of the villages the frontier guards passed through was Kfar Kassem. This is a small Arab village situated near the Israeli settlement of Betah Tefka. The villagers there received the alert at 4:45 p.m., only 15 minutes before the new curfew time. The “Mukhtar” of Kfar Kassem promptly informed the unit officer that a large number of the villagers, whose work took them outside the village, knew nothing of this curfew. The officer in charge replied that his soldiers would take care of these. The villagers who were home complied with the newly-imposed curfew and remained indoors. Meanwhile, the armed frontier guards posted themselves at the village gates. Before long, the first batch of villagers came into sight. The first to arrive was a group of four laborers, home-bound, on bicycles. Here is what one of these laborers, Abdullah Samir Bedir by name, said about this incident:

“We reached the village entrance at about 4:55 p.m. We were suddenly confronted by a frontier unit consisting of 12 men and an officer, all occupying an army truck. We greeted the officer in Hebrew saying ‘Shalom Katsin’ which means ‘Peace be unto you officer,’ to which he gave no reply. He then asked us in Arabic: ‘Are you happy?’ and we said, ‘Yes.’ The soldiers then started stepping down from the truck and the officer ordered us to line up. Then he shouted to his soldiers this order: ‘Laktasour Otem,’ which means ‘Reap them!’ The soldiers opened fire, but by then I had flung myself on the ground, and started rolling, yelling as I rolled over. Then I feigned death. Meanwhile, the soldiers had so riddled the bodies of my three friends with bullets that the officer in charge ordered them to cease firing, adding that the bullets were merely being wasted. As he put it, we had more than the necessary dose of those deadly bullets.

“All this occurred while I lay very still, feigning death. Then I saw three laborers approaching on a small horse cart. The soldiers stopped the cart and killed all three of them. Soon after, the soldiers moved a few yards down the road, apparantly to take up positions that would enable them to stop a new truckload of home-bound villager, as well as a bunch of workers returning home on their bicycles. I seized this opportunity and moved as quickly as I could to the nearest house. The soldiers saw me and opened fire, but I was already in safety.

“One of the trucks used for transporting farm produce was again stopped while carrying thirteen olive pickers, all women and girls, and two male laborers and the driver. They were attacked by the same group of frontier guards, who pitilessly butchered all but one of them.”

This is what 16-year-old Hanna Soliman Amer, the only survivor, said about this incident:

“The soldiers brought our car to a halt at the entrance of the village and ordered the two workers and the driver to step down. Then they told them they were going to be killed. On hearing that the women started crying and screaming, begging the soldiers to spare those poor workers’ lives. But the soldiers shouted at the women, saying that their turn was coming and that they, too, were going to be killed.

“The soldiers stared at the women for a few moments, as if waiting for their officer to give the order. Then I heard the officer talk over the wireless set, apparantly asking the headquarters for instructions about the women. The minute the wireless conversation was over, the soldiers took aim at the women and girls, who were 13 in number, and who included pregnant ones (Fatma Dawoud Sarsour was in her eighth month pregnancy) as well as an old woman of sixty and two thirteen-year-old girls (Latifa Eissa and Rashika Bedair).”

The number of cars stopped by the Israeli soldiers of the frontier guards was three; the people in all three cars were ordered to descend and were shot by machine-gun fire, killing them instantly.

A fourth car, which was a little late in coming, met with better luck, for the driver, seeing the bodies scattered around, didn’t heed the order to stop. He pressed the accelerator and thus managed to escape with his car. The soldiers, however, succeeded in shooting one of the passengers as the care sped by.

With the massacre practically over, the soldiers moved around finishing off whoever still had a pulse beating in him. Later on, the examination of these bodies showed that the soldiers mutilated them, smashing the heads and cutting open the abdomens of some of the wounded women to finish them off. The only survivors were those who for some time lay buried under the corpses of their comrades and thus had their bodies covered with the blood of these victims, giving the impression that they, too, were dead. Those were the only ones who lived to speak of the horrors of the massacre of Kfar Kassem.

The massacre lasted for an hour and a half and the soldiers looted whatever they could find, apparently while going round the bodies doing their finishing-off job. However, thirteen of those wretched people only fainted when they were shot at. These were taken to Bilinson as well as to other hospitals.

One of those wounded was Osman Selim, who was travelling on one of the trucks. He witnessed the massacre, and escaped by pretending to be dead among the pile of corpses. Assad Selim, a cyclist, was seriously injured. So was Abdel Rahman Yacoub Sarsoura, a youth aged 16, who is deaf and dumb. The only one who managed to escape death and reach Kroum El-Zeitoum is Ismail Akab Badeera, aged 18, who nursed his wounds until he got there, then climbing up an olive tree despite his suffering. He remained there for two whole days until a passing shepherd came along and carried him to a hospital where one of his legs had to be amputated for gangrene.

The blood bath was not restricted to the entrance or outskirts, but was carried right into the village itself. Talal Shaker Eissa, aged 8, left his home to bring in a flock of goats. He had hardly stepped out of his home when he was murdered by a shot fired by one of the soldiers. When his father ran out to investigate, he was killed by another shot. The mother, dragging in his body, was then shot. Noura, the remaining child, followed the cries of agony coming from her parents, and was killed on the spot by a hail of bullets. The only survivor of the family, a frail and aged grandfather, hearing the horror and the sounds of death, succumbed to a heart attack and died.

The next day, 31 October, 1956, a curfew was imposed on the village of Kfar Kassem, and during that time, the Israeli police brought over some of the villagers form (neighboring) Galgoulia and ordered them to bury the corpses, which included fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. Among these were Safa Abdalla Sarour, a woman aged 45, who was killed with her two sons, Jihad, 16, and Abdalla, 14. Osman Abdalla Eissa was killed with his son Fathi aged 12; and Zeinab Abdel Rahman Taha and her daughter Bikria, aged 17.