St George - Lydda - Ramle and ethnic cleansing by the Zionists

This is a window in a small curch on the Sykes estate in Yorkshire, belonging to Sykes of the Sykes-Picot agreement. It shows St George and the flag of Jerusalem and celebrates the liberation from the Muslim Turks in WW1 by General Allenby of Armageddon.

By a curious coincidence St. George the patron saint of England (whose flag we will see too much of this summer in the World Cup)was entombed at Lydda (Diaspolis) now Hebrew Lod, where there was (circa 6th Century AD) a cult of St. George.

Perhaps we should celebrate the most notorious act of what we now call ethnic cleansing undertaken after WWII, in the area. On the direct orders of Ben - Gurion, countersigned by future Prime MInister Yitzak Rabin, on July 12 and 13, 1948, Israeli forces, led by Moshe Dayan, expelled the 50,000 residents of the towns of Lydda and neighboring Ramle. Which ended in the notorious Lydda/Ramle death march. This Operation Danny (Mivtza Dani in Hebrew) was to remove the threat the two towns had on the Tel Aviv / Jerusalem road. The attack was undertaken by the palmach (the irregular terrorists of the Hagana, Stern gang) initially and on the direct order of Ben-Gurion Israeli forces eventually expelled the 50,000 residents of the towns of Lydda and neighboring Ramle.

Previously the area was softened up as explained by Yigal Allon, the commander of the Palmach who said he had Jews talk to the Arabs in neighboring villages and tell them a large Jewish force was in Galilee with the intention of burning all the Arab villages in the Lake Huleh region. The Arabs were told to leave while they still had time and, according to Allon, they did exactly that.

Yitzak Rabin, later to become Israeli Prime Minister, wrote in his memoirs that "there was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten or fifteen miles" required to reach Arab positions. Before they left, the townspeople were "systematically stripped of all their belongings,"

Eventually the refugees from Lydda and Ramle made their way to refugee camps near Ramallah along with many others. The whole exodus was over 800,000 people with unknown dead. Count Folke Bernadotte, Swedish nobleman and United Nations mediator, attempted to offer aid. He later wrote that "I have made the acquaintance of a great many refugee camps, but never have I seen a more ghastly sight than that which met my eyes here at Ramallah." (Later that year, Bernadotte was murdered by the Stern Gang. One of its leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, became Israeli Prime Minister in 1983.)

Erskine Childers, British journalist and broadcaster, writing in The Spectator, May 12, 1961:
... the immediately responsible officer was Moshe Dayan…Kimche has described how, on July 11, 1948, Dayan with his columns: “drove at full speed into Lydda, shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population.“ Ramallah, on the road to which these particular Arabs — numbering over 60,000 from this one area alone — were herded, was up in the Judaean hills, outside Zionist-held territory.

Simha Flapan, Israeli journalist and historian in “The Birth of Israel,” 1987, p. 100:

The most significant elimination of these “Arab islands” took place two months after the Declaration of Independence. In one of the gravest episodes of this tragic story, as many as fifty thousand Arabs were driven out of their homes in Lydda and Ramleh on July 12-13, 1948…In Lydda, the exodus took place on foot…With the population gone, the Israeli soldiers proceeded to loot the two towns in an outbreak of mass pillaging that the officers could neither prevent nor control.

Kenneth Bilby, correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, who entered Lydda the second day it was occupied, writing in “New Star in the New East,” New York, 1950, p. 43:

Moshe Dayan led a jeep commando column into the town of Lydda with rifles, Stens, and sub-machine guns blazing. It coursed through the main streets, blasting at everything that moved...the corpses of Arab men, women, and even children were strewn about the streets in the wake of this ruthlessly brilliant charge.

British General John Glubb, Commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, in “A Soldier with the Arabs,” Harper, 1957, p. 162:

No sooner were the enemy in the towns [Lydda and Ramle] than they set about an intensive house-to-house search, all men of military age being arrested and removed to concentration camps. Then Israeli vans fitted with loudspeakers drove through the streets, ordering all the remaining inhabitants to leave within half an hour...Suffice it to say that houses were broken into and women sufficiently roughly handled to give point to the warning to be clear of the town in that time.

Perhaps thirty thousand people or more, almost entirely women and children, snatched up what they could and fled from their homes across the open fields. The Israeli forces not only arrested men of military age, they also commandeered all means of transport.

This is the exodus, note the absence of men.

2 Interesting Footnotes

By Yuval Azoulay wrote an article in Haaretz 31/08/2004

"Jewish residents in Ramle are trying to block the opening of an Arab school in the Kiryat Menachem neighborhood, fearing it will harm property values and increase crime. The Jewish residents, mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union and veterans from the Bukharan community, are demanding that Mayor Yoel Lavi prevent the school's opening Wednesday"......

This week the Jerusalem Post (and elsewhere)has the story of a find of three (very large) gold bracelets and the six silver ones, as well as an assortment of money, were discovered inside a jar found at the site these date from early Arab period (638-1099 AD ).

"This is the first time gold bracelets have been found in an organized archeological excavation," said Arab-period archeologist Ayala Lester. Hmmm early Arab Period.Could be St.George's wife's jewellery ?

March 30th is the Land Day in Israel when the Palestinians remember the ethnic cleansing. Perhaps we could remember St George's burial, say on Holocaust Day and combine the two memorial remembrances together. Apply to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. .. I am going to- send me an e-mail if you would like to join in.
Pic of the Ramle bracelets - early Arab.