KAFR QASEM MASSACRE
29 October 1956: Israeli frontier guards started at 4 pm what they called a tour of the Triangle Villages. They told the Mukhtars (Aldermen) of those villages that the curfew from that day onwards was to start from 5 pm instead of 6 pm. They reached Kafr Qasem around 4:45 and informed the Mukhtar protested that there are about 400 villagers working outside the village and there is not enough time to inform them of the new times. An officer assured him that they will be taken care of. Then the guards waited at the entrance to the village. 43 Kafr Qasem inhabitants were massacred in cold blood by the army as they returned from work, their crime was violating a curfew they did not know about. On the northern entrance of the village 3 were killed and 2 were killed inside of the village. Amongst the dead were men, women, and children. Lutanat Danhan was touring the area in his jeep reporting the massacre, on his wireless he said "minus 15 Arabs" after a while his message on the radio to his H.Q. was "it is difficult to count".
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Another Account for Kafr Qasassem from:-
War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Command Responsibility
by Leslie C. Green
Kafr Qassem, 1959. In October 1956, during the Suez Crisis, a local commander in the Sinai, which had been seized by the Israel Defence Force, announced a curfew affecting a number of Arab villages. 41 Enforcing that curfew, Israeli border policemen serving in the Israel Defence Force (IDF) Reserves fired upon a group of peaceful Arab villagers who were returning to their village, Kafr Qassem, from their fields, completely unaware of the curfew. Forty-three villagers were killed. Three years later the men involved, members of a squad commanded by a Lieutenant Dahan, were brought to trial. They had been complying with an order specifically to shoot to kill, rather than arrest, any person moving outside the houses of the village after curfew. The order had originally been issued by a Major Melinki, who, when asked at the time if the order to kill included women and children, replied there was to be "no sentimentality. . . . The curfew applies to everyone." Melinki stated at the trial that he was only conveying an order from Brigadier S------ (who was subsequently charged, along with the officers responsible for transmitting the command, with issuing a "manifestly illegal" order, contrary to the Israeli Criminal Code, and was found guilty). The Israeli Military Court of Appeal stated:
D[ahan]'s responsibility for the acts of [these] men derives from his order to fire at the victims which he issued to his unit. . . . This makes D liable for procuring an offence under . . . the Criminal Code. . . . Although D was not present [when the] squad committed the murders . . . he was patrolling in the village, driving his car, and from time to time appeared near the [area from which the firing took place]; he was aware of what was taking place . . . and did not take any measures to stop the killings. Under these circumstances, bearing in mind his authority over [the group], his omission to act to stop the killings is the same as being accessory to the offence. . . . This is a sufficient ground to convict D as an accomplice . . . besides his responsibility for procuring the offence. 42
. . . A decision to kill a certain person . . . includes, of course, also a decision to kill a number of certain persons. . . . There is no need for the victims intended by the murder to be known to him personally. It is sufficient that he defines them as a group according to the signs of recognition he attributes to them, which enable their identification. Thus, it is sufficient for this purpose to have a definition stating "all those returning this evening to these-and-these villages." . . . When he gave his order Melinki knew that the returnees to the villages would be exclusively of the Arab race, and we may assume with certainty that had they not been Arabs the order would not have been issued with such severity. . . .
There is no doubt that the death of all the victims who fell at Kafr Qassem was the probable result of Melinki's order, even though as regards some of them, and perhaps most of them, there was no intention of murder in the sense of [the Israeli Criminal Code]. For these reasons we must uphold the conviction for murder.
. . . A reasonable soldier can distinguish a manifestly illegal order on the face of it, without requiring legal counsel and without perusing the law books. These provisions impose moral and legal responsibility on every soldier, irrespective of rank. . . . [A] commander of any rank must consider the morality of the order he issues and also its legality. . . . The commander who issued the original order and not in obedience to any superior, has no claim of justification. . . .
. . . Commanders . . . [are obligated] to give thought in issuing their orders and the higher the rank the greater the thought required of them. Such thought is required so that the orders will not cause illegal and immoral acts, and so that the soldiers will not be led to undermine army discipline [by disobeying orders]. . . . It is the duty of the commander to obey the law at all times . . . and . . . it is the duty of every soldier to examine, according to the voice of his conscience, the legality of the orders issued to be executed against others. 43 . . . The order to kill men, women and children [was] an order to murder, and no claim of justification will avail anyone who gives or executes such an order. . . .
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