| I could not get enough information on Qibya to bother to post an alternative view. My point is not, however, that there has never been an atrocity (I accept Deir Yassein as being one, ultimately), but that such atrocities are rarely pre- meditated and are not a result of a general policy of targeting civilians, any more than Lt. Calley's atrocity at Mei Lai. They are the exception. If they were too lenient with the soldiers involved in Kafr Qassem, I am sure that is why: they considered it overzealous and not cold blooded excess. Given the state of the attackers in Deir Yassin, bloody and wound up, I have no idea why the Red Cross representative would have imagined they slaughtered in cold blood, for example. Anyway, all of this was in response to your assertion that the Zionists were no different than the Palestinians. In fact, they are. For example, if there had been a desire to wipe out all of the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, they would not have saved a lot of them, or put themselves in harm's way by going house to house, but would have blown up their houses. Similarly, the incident at Kafr Qassem was horrible, but had they meant to indiscriminately kill Palestinians, they would not have confined themselves to those returning from work. There is not a persistent policy of terror or indiscriminate slaughter, nor is there the fairly monolithic support for such tactics that Palestinian terrorists can count on from the populace. |
