There was no massacre. There was a battle, and you must realize there are two sides to every story. This took place in the time of the partition plan and during the war. To call it a massacre is unfair. Would you call any battle during wartime a massacre?
I urge you to read the other side of the story. This article is chock-full of references. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/deir_yassin.html
First of all, the towns people were forewarned to leave. This article states that the truck with the loud speaker warning the people may or may not have gone into a ditch, but those were the intentions, whether or not it actually happened. Regardless, the Arabs there were fighting back. There was a battle which lasted for hours.
Several women and children were evacuated. As the article states, if the intention was to kill everyone, why would there be any sort of evacuation?
Accounts of the dead varied, but after an investigation, these are the numbers: 107 Arab civilians dead, 12 wounded in addition to 13 fighters, proving that there were Arab troops there. Why were any civilians killed? There was a great deal of confusion first of all; men dressing as women for one; and then they pretended to surrender before opening fire. After this, "some Jews killed Arab soldiers and civilians indiscriminately." This would be understandable under such circumstances. I'm not making excuses for it, but in the middle of a battle, you can see how something like that would happen, right or wrong.
Four days after reports of the incident were published, "an Arab force ambushed a Jewish convoy on the way to Hadassah Hospital, killing 77 Jews, including doctors, nurses, patients, and the director of the hospital. Another 23 people were injured. This massacre attracted little attention and is never mentioned by those who are quick to bring up Deir Yassin."
Here is the most important quote from the article:
"The Palestinians knew, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, the Jews were not trying to annihilate them; otherwise, they would not have been allowed to evacuate Tiberias, Haifa or any of the other towns captured by the Jews. Moreover, the Palestinians could find sanctuary in nearby states. The Jews, however, had no place to run had they wanted to. They were willing to fight to the death for their country. It came to that for many, because the Arabs were interested in annihilating the Jews, as Secretary-General of the Arab League Azzam Pasha made clear in an interview with the Egyptian paper Akhbar al-Yom before the war (October 11, 1947): 'It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.'"
So you see, there are two sides to every story.
@M: Neither one of us are saying that it didn't happen. What we're saying is that you are accepting the Arab version of events, when the facts are quite different. Why do you so readily accept ONLY the Arab side of the story and disregard the other well-documented side? According to that article, even Arabs at the time were saying that the numbers were lower. The figure of 1000 is deceitful propaganda.
@Til I Die: Very funny. My article may have come from the Jewish Virtual Library, but as I said, it has plenty of references. If you would take the time to click on the link, you would see that.
@M: Oh brother. The only reason I mentioned the number 1000 is because there were some propagandists who used that inflated number. Even the 254 number is inflated. The number is closer to 100. And I found another source, for your information.
http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/deir_yassin.html
Tell me please, where are you getting your information about 25 men being shot against a brick wall? That did not happen. I would like to know why Arabs are not ashamed of killing 77 doctors, nurses and patients on the way to the hospital. Is that part of normal warfare? Israeli doctors help wounded Arab terrorists, rather than let them die. Unfortunately, we cannot expect the same kindness from the Palestinians. Why is that?
And as for the Gaza War, as usual yes, Arab propaganda distorts everything. You do realize they were firing back, don't you? This was a battle which took place. Gassing civilians? Please! There were air strikes with specific targets which were hit (those specific targets were not civilians btw.) And after an investigation, it was found that the IDF is not guilty of war crimes. The ICC prosecutor decided against this war crime idea as well.