The 1953 Attack on the West Bank Village of Qibya

INTRODUCTION
This history of the Massacre at Qibya is from the last section of Part Three A of “Wired for Terror,” but I thought I would post it now, as it is done, and it is a compelling historical event which stands as a story unto itself, and is one that never seems to make the History Channel lineup. Here is one of the end sections of “Part Three A” for you to read while work on other sections is being completed. Sometimes you shoot the end sections of the movie first.

This is an event which, interestingly, occurs just nine months before Israel’s first international false flag terror operation against the U.S. – the infamous July 1954 “Operation Susannah” – a series of bomb and phosphorous attacks launched against British and American interests in Egypt, including the U.S. Embassy, in order to get the U.S. or Britain to attack Egypt, then under Gamal ‘Abd el-Nasser. After a terror cell of 13 Israeli saboteurs were caught red-handed by Egyptian security, planting explosives, “Operation Susannah” led to what became known as “the Lavon Affair” in which Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon was forced to resign his post. “Operation Susannah” is, of course, the beginning of Part Three B of “Wired for Terror” which deals with the history of Israeli false flag terror attacks.

BACKGROUND: THE GENERAL ARMISTICE AGREEMENTS OF 1949 AND ETHNIC CLEANSING VIOLATIONS
With regards to the General Armistice Agreements of 1949—which the UN Security Council had the Israelis and Arabs agree to and sign off on in order to end the violence in Palestine and its neighboring regions—historical events on the ground, as well as UN documentation show that nearly every element agreed to was repeatedly violated by Israel, yet honoured by the Arab Muslims and Christians (1). The eighty year history of Zionist and Israeli signatures on any given agreement, however, has usually been one of signing with simultaneously held ‘covert intent’ to violate every agreement that they were ever “forced to sign under duress,” as David Ben-Gurion put it when Israeli signatories put their pens upon the paper to sign the UN-brokered Lausanne Protocol on May 12, 1949, essentially lying their way into UN member state status. In this short blip of historical time, it is often seen that Zionist propagandists, like Ben-Gurion, every time they need to deflect attention from some political scam or crime they are trying to hide or run down on someone, are quite fond of pulling out that old “victim card” smoke screen, with its guaranteed, emotional guilt effect. It is almost like some kind of “comfort blanket,” Pavlovian, defense-mechanism operating system. “Forced to sign under duress,” give me a break.

Within an eighteen-year period, between the dates of Israel’s signing the UN General Armistice Agreements of 1949 and April 7, 1967, United Nations records, such as the Reports of the Israeli-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission and the UN Security Council, show that the Israeli armed forces launched over 40 major military operations, and between April 5, 1951 and April 7, 1967, attacked and razed (including schools, clinics, and mosques) roughly 45 different Arab villages and towns in sovereign, designated Arab territory (UN Document S/7843 of April 7, 1967). One of these Arab villages was the West Bank village of Qibya. Unfortunately, for the historians of the modern state of Israel, an American Roman Catholic priest named Father Ralph Gorman, who for many years had been living in Jerusalem, began to investigate the attacks by finding and interviewing eyewitnesses, and verifying eyewitness accounts just after the Qibya massacre had occurred, and what he found profoundly shocked his conscience.

OCTOBER 14, 1953
In a December 1953 editorial published in Sign magazine (2), Father Ralph Gorman described the Israeli attack on Qibya as follows:

“The evening of October 14 was like any other for the 1,500 inhabitants of the peaceful village until 9:30 all hell let loose. Mortar shells began exploding from artillery that had been carefully aimed from Israel before dark. After the town had been partly demolished and many of its inhabitants buried in the rubble of falling homes or blown to bits by exploding shells, half a battalion of the regular Israeli army moved in and surrounded the village to cut off escape [same move used by Ariel Sharon in the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon]. Then followed an orgy of murder that would be incredible if it had not been verified by reliable neutral testimony. Women and children as well as men were murdered deliberately, systematically and in cold-blood [seventy-five in all, including two nearby villages].

“The official report of the Palestine Truce Supervision removed any possible doubt that the Israelis, themselves in large part refugees from Hitler’s terror, were perpetrators of this horrible slaughter of innocent men, women and children. It also reveals that it was an official act of state, carried out by an official organ, the army.

“The only response the Israelis have made to outraged protests of the civilized world has been one of defiance and self-justification. The Prime Minister excused the murderers. Israeli newspapers openly gloated over the deed and even American Zionists showed little concern other than a fear that American dollars might not continue to flow as freely as before into the coffers of the new state.

“Terror was a political weapon of the Nazis and is still used by the communists. But neither Nazis nor communists ever used terror in a more cold-blooded and wanton manner than the Israelis in the massacre of Qibya.”

(1) Confirmed by the testimony of the Chief of Staff, General Bennike before the UN Security Council on November 9, 1953. It is a matter of United Nations record that all attacks in violation of the General Armistice Agreements of 1949 were led by the Israel regular armed forces. No Arab state was ever brought before either the Israeli-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission or the UN Security Council accused of an attack by its regular armed forces on Israeli-held territory during the armistice period (UN Document S/PV.635, pp. 41-42).

(2) From an Editorial by Father Ralph Gorman in Sign magazine, December 1953. Quoted in Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press. 1991, p. 119.