Operation ‘Ben-Ami’
Commentary and Translation by Prof. Ilan Pappé
Document One
These two documents tell the story of the ‘Ben-Ami’ operation: the total destruction and massacre of Palestinian village in the Western Galilee, which was part of the state granted to the Arabs in the UN partition resolution and was planned before the Arab governments had sent contingents to Palestine
Another document from this batch, probably from few days before, tells you how many hours the army thought it would take to destroy five villages, with thousands of people in them. here are two pages, I pencilled the part i translated:
The first marked part says: Attack the villages of Kabri, Nahr, Basa, A-Zib, destroy the gangs, the men, sabotage the properties and pillage (literally, take the loot)
Second page is the most telling one: 4 hours after hour zero [pappe: the beginning of operations]: complete the mission in villages, Kabri, Nahr, Ghabisyyeh by inflicting maximum destruction [on them]; the Kabri platoon moves to Um al-Faraj and destroys the village; the Nahr platoon destroys [the village] al-Tel.
The document is date April 1948 without a specific day. It claims that each village was defended by volunteers from the Arab world, but that they had no heavy guns or armored vehicles. Although in the first document I published, it turned out that most of these villages did not have that kind of protection as predicted here, and indeed it took less than four hours to complete the ethnic cleansing of that part of Palestine, as the villagers were defenceless.
Document Two
The second one, on the eve of the occupation on May 19,1948,
“In the villages lying between Nahraiya and Tarshiha there are no foreign troops for the time being. The villages are armed and ready for action [pappe: villagers had no proper arms of course, only for hunting purposes and people who served in the police; without Arab troops that were absent they stood no chance].
Your orders are to occupy, kill the men [Pappe: in April 1948, the Intelligence of the Hagana defined men as any one above the age of 10], destroy and burn down the villages of Kabri, Umm al-Faraj and al-Nahr.” Hagana archives, 100\35 [the original reference appears on the photo]