In the wake of the recent events in the synagogue at Har Nof, Uri Avnery has written an article. Like all his work, Avnery’s article is informative, original and beautifully written. But it has a glaring omission.
Har Nof from Yad Vashem
Here, Dan McGowan fills him in:
Dear Uri:
I know that you realize that the Har Nof neighborhood in West Jerusalem, where four rabbis and a police officer were recently murdered, is built on the lands of Deir Yassin, the Arab village which no longer exists, that was the site of the 1948 massacre, which according to Menachem Begin, was pivotal to the founding of the Jewish state. This was an early massacre in the Nakba; there were many more to follow, but it struck fear among Palestinians, causing many to flee, also giving the Jews an angle for campaigns of terror, which they visited on other Palestinian villages, basically “Get out or we’ll do to you what we did in Deir Yassin.”
It is interesting to ask why the media, which has been all over this synagogue massacre, mentions nothing about what happened on this site on April 9, 1948?
Why does Wikipedia fail to even cite Deir Yassin in its history of Har Nof?
The attached picture of Har Nof is taken from Yad Vashem, the most prestigous Holocaust memorial. The water tower at the top right is next to the main buildings of Deir Yassin, which today serves as a mental hospital, mostly for those suffering with too much religion, an affliction also known as “The Jerusalem Syndrome.”
At Yad Vashem all visitors, and especially American politicians, are repeatedly told to “Never forget.” At Deir Yassin the message is “Never mind.” There is not even a signpost among the old Arab buildings to indicate that it was once a prosperous Arab village of about 750 people.
In building the Har Nof settlement much of the Deir Yassin cemetery was destroyed. The rest is littered with trash and condoms. Har Nof children have been seen digging up the Arab graves. (Imagine the outcry had they been desecrating Jewish graves.) Apartment buildings of Har Nof are literally built on the old quarry where villagers were executed and their bodies dumped and burned on April 10, 1948.
The ironies are breathtaking. But some of us still remember.