Palestinian citizens in Kafr Qasem village in the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories on Monday 29 October organized events commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the massacre committed by Israeli border guards against the village’s residents in 1956.
Kafr Qasem residents first staged a mass demonstration toward the memorial built for the martyrs who fell in the massacre then visited the martyrs’ graves in the village’s cemetery.
Kafr Qasem mayor Adel Bdeir speaking to the Palestinian crowd said “We will never forget that horrible day and we will never forgive the murderers.”
Mohammed Baraka who heads a committee in charge of the Palestinian citizens’ affairs in the 1948 occupied Palestine called for reopening the investigation into the massacre in light of recent confessions by a high-ranking Israeli official.
Issachar Shadmi during an interview with Haaretz before he died in September 2018 said that the massacre was aimed at spreading fear and terror among the Palestinians of the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories and forcing them to flee to Jordan.
Baraka stressed that a new investigation should be opened so that Israeli criminals are held accountable for their crime especially that Shadmi admitted that his trial was only a “show trial”.
On 29 October 1956 the Israeli army ordered that Kafr Qasem and other neighboring villages be placed under a wartime curfew in the afternoon. The order was given to border police units before most of the village’s residents could be notified. Many of them were working in their lands.
As the villagers were returning to their homes unaware of the new Israeli measures the Israeli border guards without hesitation opened fire at them killing 49 including men women elderly people and children.
Following the massacre a military cordon was maintained around the village for months and a total ban on media coverage of the massacre was imposed.
Nonetheless news of the incident leaked out after left-wing activist Latif Dori collected testimonies from the injured held at Beilinson Hospital and after Knesset members Tawfik Toubi and Meir Vilner managed to enter the village two weeks later and investigate the rumors.
The Israeli government at that time led by David Ben-Gurion tried to cover up the massacre and held show trials for a number of Israeli border guards and soldiers involved in the crime and they were sentenced to different prison terms ranging between 7-15 years.
However none of the officers served out the terms of their sentences; Israel’s Court of Appeal reduced most of the sentences and some soldiers were pardoned by the president.
By 1960 less than four years after Kafr Qasem massacre all those involved in the crime had been released.
