Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 9. April 24 1978

Eyewitness Account

Eyewitness Account

An eyewitness, Colonel Meir Pa'el, released a report of the massacre six years ago, after he left Israeli Military service:

"The Etzel and Lehi irregulars left the places in which they had been hiding and started carrying out cleaning up operations in the houses. They fired with all the arms they had, and threw the explosives into the houses. They also shot everyone they saw in the houses, including women and children...

"In the meantime some 25 men had been brought out of the houses; they were loaded into a freight truck and led in a "victory" parade (in Jerusalem). At the end of the parade they were taken to a stone quarry between Giv'at Sha'ul and Dier Yasin and shot in cold blood... " The men of Etzel and Lehi started a shameful massacre of the (remaining) in-habitants — men, women, old people, and children, without distinction, standing the inhabitants against the walls and in corners in the houses. There is photographic evidence of this." 6

In such a context it is worthwhile to note the words of Sami Hadawi, a Palestinian scholar and lecturer, who visited New Zealand in 1975: