Hula Massacre - Eye Witness Account

Eye Witness Account

At the time of Lahis' nomination to head the Jewish Agency, Lahis's immediate superior in the Carmeli Brigade, Dov Yirmiya, wrote to Jewish Agency Chairman Arie Dulzin about Lahis' role in the 1948 massacre. After Lahis' appointment in the role, the controversy was reported in the Israeli media and caused debate in the Knesset. Yirmiya's letter was later published in the newspaper Al Hamishmar.

"I received a report that there had been no resistance in the village, that there was no enemy activity in the area, and that about a hundred people were left in the village. They had surrendered and requested to stay. The men among them were kept in one house under guard. I was brought there and saw about 35 men. in the age range 15-60, including one Lebanese soldier in uniform .... When I returned to the village the following morning with an order to send the villagers away, I found out that, while I was away, two of the troops' officers had killed all of the captives who were in the house with a sub-machine gun, and had then blown up the house on top of them to be their grave. The women and children were sent west."

"When I asked him why he had done this, the officer answered that this was 'his revenge for the murder of his best friends in the Haifa Oil Refinery massacre.'" (Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. VII, no. 4 (summer 1978), no. 28, pp. 143-145)

Dulzin's response to Yirmiya's letter said that Lahis' past had been known to the Jewish Agency since 1961. It also revealed that when Lahis had applied to be registered as a lawyer in 1955 the matter had been examined by the Israeli Legal Council. It was decided that the act which was the reason for Lahis' trial at the military courts was "not an act that carries with it a stigma" (quoted by Dulzin, as translated by JPS).