Kafr Qasim massacre: Difference between revisions

 

===Timeline===

On October 29, 1956, the Israeli army ordered that all Arab villages near the Jordanian border be placed under a wartime curfew<ref name=":0" /> from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. on the following day.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Hanssen |first1=Jens |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AgRGDwAAQBAJ |title=Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present |last2=Weiss |first2=Max |date=2018-02-15 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-19338-3 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=78}} Any Arab on the streets was to be shot. The order was given to border police units before most of the Arabs from the villages could be notified. Many of them were at work at the time. That morning, Shadmi, who was in charge of the Triangle, received orders to take all precautionary measures to ensure quiet on the Jordanian border. On Shadmi's initiative, the official nightly curfew in the twelve villages under his jurisdiction was changed from the regular hours. Shadmi then gathered all the border patrol battalion commanders under his command, and reportedly ordered them to 'shoot on sight' any villagers violating the curfew. Once the order was given, the commander of one of Shadmi's battalions, Major Shmuel Malinki, who was in charge of the Border Guard unit at the village of Kafr Qasim, asked Shadmi on how to react to those villagers who were unaware of the curfew.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last1=Bergsmo |first1=Morten |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ViC7DwAAQBAJ |title=Philosophical Foundations of International Criminal Law: Correlating Thinkers |last2=Buis |first2=Emiliano J. |date=2018-11-30 |publisher=Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher |isbn=978-82-8348-118-1 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=656}}

 

==Following events==

The military censor imposed a total ban on newspaper reportage on the massacre. Nonetheless, news of the incident leaked out after [[Maki (historical political party)|communist]] [[Knesset]] Members [[Tawfik Toubi]] and [[Meir Vilner]] managed to enter the village two weeks later and investigate the rumours.<ref name="Hitman">Gadi Hitman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=or7VDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 ''Israel and Its Arab Minority, 1948–2008: Dialogue, Protest, Violence,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221030171641/https://books.google.com/books?id=or7VDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 |date=2022-10-30 }} [[Rowman & Littlefield]], 2016 {{isbn|978-1-498-53973-9}} pp. 70–71</ref> However, it took two months of lobbying by them and the press before the government lifted the media blackout imposed by [[David Ben-Gurion]]. The government started an internal inquiry on November 1 involving, among others, the Criminal Investigations Division of the [[Military Police Corps (Israel)|military police]].<ref name="MP book">{{Cite book|author=Asher, Danny|date=April 2008|publisher=[[Israeli Ministry of Defense]]|title=Red and Blue – A Corps's Story 1948–2008|pages=48–49|language=he}}</ref> To limit publicity, a military cordon was maintained around the village for months, preventing journalists from approaching.<ref>Robinson (2003), p. 400</ref> David Ben-Gurion made his first public reference to the incident on November 12.<ref name="Hitman" />

 

Following public protests, eleven Border Police officers and soldiers involved in the massacre were court-martialed for murder. The trial was presided over by Judge [[Benjamin Halevy]]. On October 16, 1958, eight of them were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven to 17 years. Malinki received the longest sentence of 17 years, while Dahan was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. The court placed great emphasis on the fundamental responsibility of Shadmi, though the latter was not a defendant. Shadmi was subsequently charged as well, but his separate court hearing (February 29, 1959) found him innocent of murder and only guilty of extending the curfew without authority. His symbolic punishment, a fine of 10 ''prutot'', i.e. a ''grush'' (one Israeli cent), became a standard metaphor in Israeli polemic debate.<ref>Robinson (2003), p. 411; Bilsky, p. 193.</ref> The fact that other local commanders realised they had to disobey Shadmi's order was cited by the court as one of the reasons for denying Dahan's claim that he had no choice. None of the officers served out the terms of their sentences.<ref name="TOI" />