What Happened?

18 December 1947: The Yiftach Brigade of the Israeli Haganah raided the village of al-Khisas in the Safad Subdistrict in Mandatory Palestine. The attack happened at night, involving machine guns and grenades thrown into Palestinian homes.

Twelve civilians were killed, including 7 men, 1 woman and 5 children; 5 people were injured, and two homes were destroyed, one of which was the Palace of Emir Mahmud al-Faour (of the Syrian Parliament). The civilians were sleeping when grenades were lobbed into their homes.

The raid was a retaliation for the death of a Zionist settler who was stabbed and ultimately died after 73 members of his kibbutz, Maayan Baruch, attacked 5 Palestinian Arabs.

References

Benvenisti, Meron. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948. University of California Press, 2000.

Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Pictorial and Evidence

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