Published: 5 November 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
CARMELA SANSUR FREIJ, Hind Sarsur, 72, and Fithia Sarsur, 61, stand solemnly near the grave of Freij's mother, as they do every year on October 29.
Together with hundreds of other residents of Kafar Qasem, a town in central Israel with a population of some 21,000, they have marched the short distance from the town square to the cemetery to commemorate the 64th anniversary of Kafar Qasem massacre. On that day, in 1956, Israeli troops murdered 49 villagers, including nine women and 15 children; hundreds were wounded.
Freij's mother, then in her eighth month of pregnancy, was one of the victims.
At the entrance to the cemetery, men and women are directed to different entrances, but once inside, they mingle together. Most of the people are dressed in black. Some carry black flags, a few carry Palestinian flags and the many children carry black balloons.
The black and white, faded-looking pictures of the dead are displayed on hundreds of posters. The sun is unseasonably strong and the humidity is oppressive. Freij thankfully takes a sip of water offered to her by a young child.
"It was olive-picking season," Freij recalls as she wipes her face. "And when my mother came back from the orchards, she was shot in the head, for no reason."
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="39319"]
Naimeh Badir, 53, stands at the entrance to the cemetery with her two youngest children, Bilasan, 9, and Hatem, 7. Like Badir, even most of the now-adults were not yet born in 1956. "We remember and honour our relatives, even if we never had the privilege of knowing them. Our parents told us, and we bring the children here so that they, too, will know what happened to us."
The events of that day are well-known. Following the War of Independence in 1948, Israel granted citizenship to most of the Arabs living within its sovereign territory but imposed a military regime on their villages. Military rule, which stayed in effect until 1966, included severe limitations on movement from village to village and a nightly curfew from 9pm until first light the next morning.
The military authorities moved the curfew up to 5pm and ordered that anyone violating it should be shot on sight. But that decision was taken early in the afternoon, when many of the villagers were out working. They rarely returned before 5pm and had no way to know about the change.
On October 29, 1956, the military authorities in the district moved the curfew up to 5pm and ordered that anyone violating the curfew should be shot on sight. But that decision was taken early in the afternoon, when many of the villagers were working in fields or factories outside the village. They rarely returned before 5pm and had no way to know about the change in the curfew.
Some officers stationed in the region questioned those orders, realising that the returning villagers would all be unwittingly violating the curfew. What should be done to them? The local commander, Issachar Shadmi, infamously replied, "Allah Yerhamhu" (May God have mercy on them") – a well-known expression in Arabic, recited after a person has died; it was interpreted as an instruction to shoot the villagers.
There were three units in the district, covering eight villages. Two of the three units ignored the order, but the third, stationed in Kafar Qasem, carried it out precisely. Witness testimonies tell of cruel executions at close range of people who were not aware they were breaking any rule.
The events took place only a day before the breakout of the Sinai Campaign, the armed confrontation with Egypt launched by Israel, in coordination with France and Britain, over the Suez Canal. According to reports from the time, Israeli officials apparently feared that Jordan, just a few metres across the eastern border, would join the conflict.
Kafar Qasem, which in 1956 was a poor, uneducated, agricultural village of less than 5,000 residents, is located in the part of the country known as the "Triangle," a region of Arab villages home to a large population who had not fled or expelled during the 1948 war.
According to Professor Gadi Elgazi, professor of history at Tel Aviv University, speaking in a recent zoom conference about the massacre, "the State of Israel had not yet decided what to do with these Arabs. And there was concern that, should Jordan join the conflict, they would be a dangerous element."
Elgazi, who has studied the events leading up and subsequent to the massacre, says that a top-secret plan, codenamed "Mivtza Hafarperet," ("Operation Mole"), had been drafted a short while earlier. While full details of the plan are still not available, Elgazi says that from what is known, the plan called for removing some of the villagers in the area into "enclosures" in central Israel, while others were to be expelled to Jordan.
[gallery columns="1" size="large" ids="39318"]
"The Israelis wanted us out," says Nazi Taha, 50, standing by the grave of his uncle. “They thought they would chase us out, like they did in 1948.
"But we, the simple people of Kafar Qasem, didn't run away," Taha continues.
Indeed, addressing the gathering, Sayyed Abdelwahid Issa, who is head of Kafar Qasem’s Popular Committee and lost a grandfather on that day, tells the crowd that October 29 is a day of life. "The descendants of those who were murdered now number 4,964. And I am one of them," he declares as his voice cracks.
The fact that the residents of Kafar Qasam did not flee, says Elgazi, "is one of the most important aspects of the massacre. It forced the Israeli authorities to realise that they would never be able to expel the Arabs. The residents of Kafar Qasem were victims, but they were also courageous and determined."
Although the Israeli authorities attempted to keep the events from becoming publicly known, the news leaked out, and a public outcry ensured. The troops involved were put on military trial for murder. The proceedings lasted for nearly nine months, and in September 1957, the defendants were convicted of murder. Some were sentenced to terms as long as 17 years, and all were demoted to the rank of private.
In writing his decision to convict the accused, the head of the panel of justices, Judge Benjamin Halevy (who was later a judge at the trial of Adolf Eichmann), established the legal construct of "manifestly illegal orders." According to this construct, and in contrast to the assumption that soldiers are not expected to verify the legality of orders before carrying them out, if an order is "manifestly illegal," soldiers must disobey it or be liable for punishment along with the commander who issued that order.
In recent years, Israeli ministers and presidents have attended the annual ceremonies and have often expressed sadness and shame. But the Knesset has consistently rejected bills under which Israel would officially acknowledge its responsibility for the murders.
A "manifestly illegal command" is one that any reasonable soldier would recognize as such. Such an unlawful command, Halevy determined, should be viewed as if a black flag (a reference to ocean safety) were flying above it.
This, says linguist Ruvik Rosenthal, has since served as a norm of Israeli military behaviour. The ruling is taught in officers' training in the Israel Defence Forces and, while not part of the compulsory curriculum, is also studied in some high schools.
The term, "black flag," is a well-known reference in Israeli society. It is seen, and was seen at the time, which was only 11 years after the end of the Holocaust, as the moral distinction between the morality of the Israeli army and that of the Nazis and others, who infamously claimed that they were "only following orders."
Yet, despite this foundational ruling, the convicted soldiers' sentences were soon commuted by the Chief of Staff. They were pardoned by the president and quickly released from jail. Shadmi, who gave the order and was the most senior officer directly involved, was sentenced to a symbolic fine of an Israeli lira (then roughly the equivalent of an American penny) for exceeding authority.
"The only black flag still flying," says Shadi Taha, 41, who joins his cousin, Nazi, near their grandfather's grave, "is the one of hatred. Even after all these years, the State of Israel still sees us as enemies. We are discriminated against. We do not have equal rights or equal benefits. That is the black flag that is still waving over Israel's head," he says.
In previous years the commemorations have been attended by tens of thousands from throughout the country and have included workshops, history lessons, and other events, but this year, due to the restrictions caused by Covid, the ceremony was smaller and shorter.
Yet these ceremonies only began nearly 40 years after the events. Following the trial, the government imposed a sulha, a traditional reconciliation ceremony, on the village and forbade the villagers to commemorate the events. During the time of the military rule, the military governor would issue pre-emptive arrest warrants for activists in order to prevent them from marching to commemorate the massacre. Even after the military rule was lifted, authorities continued to confiscate black flags and megaphones.
But in the past two decades, authorities have not intervened. In recent years, Israeli ministers and presidents have attended the annual ceremonies and have often expressed sadness and shame. But the Knesset has consistently rejected bills under which Israel would officially acknowledge its responsibility for the murders.
Indeed, on the evening before this year's ceremony, the Knesset debated, and rejected, a bill proposed by Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman that would have conferred "full state recognition" of the event and added mandatory instruction about the massacre into school curricula.
Touma-Sliman concluded: "recognising the harm caused is a necessary stage in the repair of that harm. The State of Israel has not done this."
READ MORE
Israel carries out largest West Bank demolition operation in a decade (972)
Israel demolished over 70 structures in the Humsa al-Fuqa community in the occupied West Bank, displacing 11 Palestinian families
Photo: From left, Camela Sansur Freij, 74; Hind Sarsur, 72; Fithia Sarsur, 61; all photos by Eetta Prince-Gibson
