by
Shevat 20, 5768, 1/27/2008
A few days ago it was the 60th anniversary of the massacre of the "Lamed Heh" or the 35 Jewish fighters attempting to relieve the besieged Gush Etzion settlements in January of 1948. Several items appeared recently in the Hebrew press, and
my own article on the event appeared in the Jewish Press.
Briefly:
'Iin January 1948, Gush Etzion was surrounded by Arab militias. Jerusalem itself was also besieged and would soon be cut off and starved. An Israeli army did not yet exist; instead, a number of ragtag and poorly equipped Jewish militias attempted to defend the Jewish areas against the attackers. In cases where the Jewish militias failed, captured civilians were generally massacred by the Arabs. Many of the murdered Jews were Holocaust survivors.
'The Jerusalem militias sent out a company of 38 young men, half of them students from Hebrew University, to relieve the besieged Gush Etzion villages. It shows the desperation of the Israeli Jews at the time that a company of 38 people was considered a major reinforcement. The fighters carried heavy packs of food and ammunition, and so proceeded slowly. On the way to Gush Etzion, one militiaman fractured his ankle and was taken back to Jerusalem by two others, leaving the company with 35 fighters.
'They marched by night, led by two experienced scouts. But before reaching their goal, they were discovered by an elderly Arab shepherd. (A British version of events later had them detected by two Arab women shepherds.) The militiamen grabbed the shepherd, but were then faced with a moral dilemma. Some proposed shooting him on the spot, because, they said, if he were released he would immediately alert the Arab militias in the vicinity, who would attack the relief company. War is war, they argued, and the lives of hundreds of people depended on the success of their operation.
'Others among the Jewish militiamen objected. We cannot just kill him in cold blood, they said. Our military operation must be ethically pure. And we can't even tie him up and leave him in a cave - he might die there slowly, or he might escape and alert the Arabs. The shepherd (or shepherds in the alternative version) swore on all that was holy that if released, he would not breathe a word. In the end, the Jewish militiamen decided to release the shepherd. The shepherd immediately ran to the nearest village housing the Arab militias and alerted them to the presence of the Jews. The Arabs attacked the outmanned and outgunned Jews. Every single Jewish militiaman was massacred. Their bodies were horribly mutilated. Later, the Arabs demanded money from the British in return for the corpses.
'Even worse, the Gush Etzion villages were never relieved or reinforced. Without reinforcements, those villages eventually fell to the onslaught of the Arab marauders and the regular Jordanian army (the Arab Legion). When Kfar Etzion, the largest of the villages, fell, virtually the entire Jewish civilian population was massacred, 250 people in all. Only three Jews survived.'
In June 2005, a group of US Navy Seals were operating in Afghanistan against the Taliban, attempting to rescue other Americans, when they similarly were detected by three shepherds, one a child. They allowed the shepherds to go free. They alerted the Taliban. All but one of the Americans were killed.
Americans and Israelis are comrades in arms fighting Islamofascist terror, and sometimes also suffer from the same misplaced "compassion."
