We give here the report about the destruction of Emmaus, Beit-Nuba and Yalou, written by Amos Kenan, a reservist Israeli soldier who took part in the fighting in this region (This English version is from “Israel, a wasted victory”, Maikam Tel-Aviv Publishers Ltd, Tel-Aviv, 1970, pp. 18-21).
————————-
Amos Kenan
Beit Nuba village near Latroun
The commander of my platoon said that it had been decided to blow up the three villages in the sector – Yalou, Beit Nuba and Emmaus. for reason of strategy, tactics, security. In the first place, to straighten out the Latroun “finger”. Secondly, in order to punish these murders’ dens. And thirdly, to deprive infiltrators of a base in future.
One may argue with this idiotic approach, which advocates collective punishment and is based on the belief that if the infiltrator loses one house, he will not find another from which to wait in ambush. One may argue with the effectiveness of increasing the number of our enemies – but why argue?
We were told it was our job to search the village houses; that if we found any armed men there, they were to be taken prisoner. Any persons should be given time to pack their belongings and then told to get moving – get moving to Beit Sira, a village not far away. We were also told to take positions around the approaches to the villages, in order to prevent those villagers who had heard the Israeli assurances over the radio that they could return to their homes in peace – from returning to their homes. The order was – shoot over their heads and tell them there is no access to the village.
The homes in Beit Nuba are beautiful stone houses, some of them luxurious mansions. Each house stands in an orchard of olives, apricots and grapevines; there are also cypresses and other trees grown for their beauty and the shade they give. Each tree stands in its carefully watered bed. Between the trees, lie neatly hoed and weeded rows of vegetables.
In the houses we found a wounded Egyptian commando officer and some old men and women. At noon the first bulldozer arrived, and ploughed under the house closest to the village edge.
With one sweep of the bulldozer, the cypresses and the olive-trees were uprooted. Ten more minutes pass and the house, with its meagre furnishings, has become a mass of rubble. After three houses had been moved down, the first convoy of refugees arrives, from the direction of Ramallah.
We did not shoot into the air. We did take up positions of coverage, and those of us who spoke Arabic went up to them to give them the orders. There were old men hardly able to walk, old women mumbling to themselves, babies in their mother’s arms, small children, small children weeping, begging for water. The convoy waved white flags.
We told them to move on to Beit Sira. They said that wherever they went, they were driven away, that nowhere were they allowed to stay. They said they had been on the way for four days now – without food or water, some had perished on the way. They asked only to be allowed back into their own villages; and said we would do better to kill them. Some had brought with them a goat, a sheep, a camel or a donkey. A father crunched grains of wheat in his hand to soften them so that his four children might have something to eat. On the horizon, we spotted the next line approaches. One man was carrying a 50-kilogram sack of flour on his back, and that was how he had walked mile after mile. More old men, old women, more babies. They flopped down exhausted at the spot where they were told to sit. Some had brought along a cow or two, or a calf – all their earthy possessions. We did not allow them to go into the village to pick up their belongings, for the order was that they must not be allowed to see their homes being destroyed. The children wept, and some of the soldiers wept too. We went to look for water but found none. We stopped an army vehicle in which sat a Lieutenant-Colonel, to Captains and a woman. We took a jerry-can of water from them and tried to make it go around among the refugees. We handed out sweets and cigarettes. More of our soldiers wept. We asked the officers why the refugees were being sent back and forth and driven away from everywhere they went. The officers said it would do them good to walk and asked “why worry about them, they’re only Arabs”? We were glad to learn that half-an-hour later, they were all arrested by the military police, who found their car stacked with loot.
More and more lines of refugees kept arriving. By this time there have been hundreds of them. They couldn’t understand why they had been told to return, and now were not being allowed to return. One could not remain unmoved by their entreaties. Someone asked what was the point of destroying the houses – why didn’t the Israelis go live in them instead? The platoon commander decide to go to headquarters to find out whether there was any written order as to what should be doe with them, where to send them and to try and arrange transportation for the women and children, and food supplies. He came back and said there was no written order; we were to drive them away.
Like lost sheep they went on wandering along the roads. The exhausted were rescuing. Towards evening we learned that we had been told a falsehood. At Beit Sira too the bulldozers had begun their work of destruction, and the refugees had not been allowed to enter. We also learned that it was not in our sector alone that areas were being “straightened out”; the same was going on all sectors. Our word had not been a word of honour; the policy was a policy without backing.
The soldiers grumbled. The villagers clenched their teeth as they watched the bulldozers mow down trees. At night we stayed on to guard the bulldozers, but the entire battalion were seething with anger; most of them did not want to do the job. In the morning we were transferred to another spot. No one could understand how Jews could do such a thing. Even those who justified the action said that it should have been possible to provide shelter for the population; that a final decision should have been taken as to their fate, as to where they were to go. The refugees should have been taken to their new home, together with their property. On one could understand why fellah should be barred from taking his oil-stove, his blanket and some provisions.
The chicken and the pigeons were buried under the rubble. the fields were turned to desolation before our eyes, and the children who dragged themselves along the road that day, weeping bitterly, will be the fedayeen of 19 years hence.
That is how that day, we lost the victory.
Emmaus before and after the destruction in 1967 … It became Canada Park for picnic funded by Canadian Jews
War crime and crime against humanity
Comments are closed.