On April 9 Palestinians will celebrate Deir Yassin Day to commemorate the fifty-seventh anniversary of the massacre of 254 innocent Palestinian residents of the Deir Yassin village, which is now left in ruins outside Jerusalem.

In 1948 the Irgun and Stern Gang, two armed Jewish guerilla groups, attacked the peaceful village of Deir Yassin, which lay outside the area recommended by the United Nations to be included in a future Jewish State. By noon 100 residents, including women and children, had been systematically murdered in line with a plan to evacuate and destroy the village in order to build a small airfield for the Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

The Jewish commanders then took 25 male villagers, paraded them through the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem and shot them to death in a stone quarry along a road in Deir Yassin, or what the Israelis call Givat Shaul. The remaining survivors of Deir Yassin were dumped outside the walls of the Old City in Arab east Jerusalem. By the end of the war, Deir Yassin was completely wiped off the map. It is now only a memory or, rather, a reminder of the brutal way in which the modern state of Israel was established by means of the suffering of an innocent population.

Although leaders of the Haganah, the Zionist military organization, condemned the massacre, they also admitted that this horrific event helped Israelis defeat the Palestinians – who fled in panic and fear of suffering the same fate as Deir Yassin – and succeed in establishing a Jewish state. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun Gang, and later prime minister of Israel, once said that “Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery,’ were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives; this mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic significance of this development can hardly be overestimated.”

Today, Palestinians do not only struggle for freedom and self-determination, but also for the recognition of their suffering at the hands of Zionism. Deir Yassin Day is an occasion for the international community to come together in solidarity and not only remember the victims, but also to work to put an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinians.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, is a non-governmental, non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society through promoting public accountability, transparency, the free flow of information and ideas and the challenging of stereotyping at home and abroad.