IRl 23, June 7, 2010.

URL; http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_war_diryassin.php

This is a very interesting perspective of the Deir Yassin massacre. This article has a definite pro-Jewish slant, which is very evident in the wording.

- "Dir Yassin was certainly not a massacre of a peaceful village, but rather was an Arab-Jewish battle with unfortunate civilian casualties."

The generally accepted viewpoint tends to be that the Jewish were trying to gain as much land as they could by taking over Arab towns, before the UN was to partition Palestine, so that the land held by the Jews would be significantly greater. This article would have one believe that Deir Yassin was attacked due to the actions of the villagers themselves, before the massacre even took place. For instance, this is also stated;

"Dir Yassin was a reasonable military target for Jewish forces, there was warning given before the battle, a fierce battle was fought with casualties on both sides. No massacre, no mutiliations, no atrocities."

This approaches the issue from the viewpoint that there were no atrocities from the Jews, contrary to the common viewpoint that the Jews attacked an innocent village.

Another example of a pro-Israeli slant here is;

"The use of the loudsepaker to warn the civilians to evacuate is a key point, certainly not the action of soldiers planning to murder the population"

The significance of this information to what we are studying in class is that it is a clear and concise example of how the same event can be told from two different perspectives. There is one point of view that the Jews viciously attacked an innocent village, and then there is the point of view expressed here, that the Jews gave advanced warning of what they were going to do and that it wasn't even a massacre, which can be determined from the article in that the word massacre is often put in quotation marks, showing that the writer did not consider it to be a true massacre and is mocking the notion that it was. The main limitation is that this article is definitely slanted toward pro-Jewish viewpoints, and therefore is not an accurate resource in itself for one who wants a balanced view of the Deir Yassin massacre.