July/August 2006

http://alawda.newjerseysolidarity.org

Inside the Lines: Dawud Assad

It was well before sunrise, early in the morning of April 9, 1948. Dawud Assad, like most everyone in the peaceful village of Deir Yassin, was asleep. Deir Yassin was at the time surrounded on all sides but the west by Zionist occupiers, but a sort of gentleman's agreement existed between them and the native Palestinians of Deir Yassin; neither side wanted to engage in armed struggle. The Zionist occupiers had left westerly passage through which the Palestinians of Deir Yassin could enter and leave their village unharmed.

Dawud, age 17 at the time, shared a bedroom with his grandmother, his six-year-old sister, and his two-year old brother. At approximately four in the morning, the family heard shooting outside. Dawud and his grandmother assumed that it was the Zionists shooting at each other. What else could it be? Fifteen minutes later, when more shots rang out, the family became worried and looked out the window to the west. All that could be seen was fire.

Dawud Assad, speaking in New York City April 9, 2006. (Photo: Noel Winkler)

Dawud and his family ran upstairs to the roof and saw how close the fire actually was. As the shooting continued, it became clear that the village was under siege. This was not Zionist attacking Zionist; it was a deliberate attack on the peaceful village. From the rooftop, Dawud and his family could see what would later be confirmed as commandos sent in from the Irgun and the Stern Gang storming their sanctuary, at the orders of Menachim Begin.

The Zionists were attacking from all sides. There appeared to be no means of escape, and Dawud's family, in the darkness of the early morning broken only by hostile fire, became deathly afraid. Dawud's uncle, a medaled officer from the former Ottoman military, was on the roof shooting back, desperately trying to protect what was rightfully his. Dawud stood by his uncle and watched the scene unfold with utter horror and disbelief.

In the house, confusion ensued. At the village border, armored cars were trying to scale two ditches surrounding the village. The ditches had been built by the Ottomans to protect Deir Yassin. Attempting to keep the Zionist commandos and their tactical vehicles out of Deir Yassin, villagers had left piles of dirt on both sides of the two ditches, hoping to render them impassable. But the Zionists went underneath and filled in the gaps with dirt, allowing their armored cars to pass into the village.

Dawud and his uncle, alone on the roof, went back downstairs into their house. Dawud's grandmother and two younger siblings were already there. By this time, however, two Zionist commandos, both female, had entered the house. Suddenly, Dawud's uncle fell to the floor. He was too old to out outrun the commandos. One of them shot at him and he went down. To add to the insult, the second female commando fired a round of shots into Dawud's dead uncle. Dawud, his grandmother, and his sister and brother witnessed all of it.

Dawud ran as fast as he knew how. He ran towards the west, the only possible route of escape he could think of. He got low to the ground and dragged himself on his belly and crawled westward. Suddenly, a deafening noise stopped him. A Zionist had just shot at him, aiming to kill. Fortunately, Dawud was close enough to the ground that only some of his hair got shot off. By this time, Dawud was beyond fear.

It soon became clear that the Zionists were taking captives. Dawud's mother and six-year-old sister were both taken captive and brought into the house where the Zionists were holding all of their prisoners. But Dawud's two-year-old brother wanted some bread to eat. Their grandmother took the small child to the center of the village, in search of both bread and the boy's captive mother.

Suddenly, Dawud's grandmother and two-year-old brother fell to the ground. The Haganeh, which had slated the removal of Palestinians from Deir Yassin as part of Plan Dalet, had shot them in cold blood. Dawud's six-year-old sister had been quick enough to move out of the way when she saw her approaching grandmother and brother crumple to the ground. The Haganeh gave her some sugar and took her to the house being used to hold captives, and she was reunited with her mother there, who had already been captured.

Dawud's mother desperately wanted news of her family. Dawud's six-year-old sister told their mother that her grandmother and little brother had been shot and were lying in the middle of the street. Dawud's mother begged an officer to take her to see for herself. The officer brought her to the bodies, and she saw Dawud's grandmother covered in blood. However, there was no blood on her two-year-old son. Could he be alive?

Dawud's mother reached down to take his little hand to see if he was still alive. The officers told her to put his hand down or she would be shot. She was taken back to the captive house, never knowing if her son had still been alive. Inside the captive house, children were screaming because they were scared of the grenades the Zionists had begun throwing at them. Why grenades? Surely this was too much. Dawud's sister explained that since some Zionists had been killed by the villagers defending themselves, the Zionists responded by lobbing grenades at everyone and everything.

The Zionist officers then told the captives to take all their clothes off so that all of their jewelry could be removed and stolen. For many of the women forced to strip, wearing jewelry had always been a way to carry one's wealth wherever one went. Now even this was being stolen. The naked captives were then paraded through the Zionist settlements surrounding Deir Yassin on all sides but the west.

As news of the massacre, al Nakba, spread, family from other parts of Palestine desperately tried to enter Deir Yassin to find their loved ones. Dawud's father, who had been in Gaza, made it to the house of captives, which was near the Jaffar gate. Anyone who was still alive from the village was in that house. Relatives came and cried the names of those they hoped to find. "Fatima! Maryam! Ali!" called Dawud's father. But only his wife, Dawud, and six-year-old daughter were left alive.

In a Red Cross report which the Zionists tried to destroy, it was noted that at least 250 villagers had been brutally murdered, and their bodies had been stuffed down a well. The British, who were supposed to be a protective force in the area, had been too afraid of the uncontrollable invading Zionists to even dare come near the village and help their Palestinian protectorates.

Today, Dawud Assad lives in Edison with his wife, and is very active in the Arab-American community. His story is one we must never forget. It reminds us that the Zionists lied when they claimed there was no one living in the land they had slated to steal. To this day, Zionist expansion continues, and Palestinian villages are destroyed home by home, tree by tree. We must not sit by and complacently allow this brutality to continue. We must remember al Nakba and the precedent it set for future generations of Zionists.

Dawud still holds firm to his belief of the right to return. It is something that will never die in the Palestinian diaspora, and must not. The genocide practiced by the Zionists even before the divisions of Palestine 48 was left unchecked by the British out of fear for their own lives. After all, even though Palestine was still under British rule until May 1948, the Zionists were killing the British in Palestine and hanging them from trees. We must not let the memory of the Deir Yassin massacre fade. Every Palestinian has the right to return to his or her original homeland, no matter how brutally it was originally seized and occupied by the Zionists.