Interview with a Palmach's member( Part 5) - The Ethnic cleansing process resulting in NAKBA

"For fifty or sixty years I’ve been torturing myself about this. But what’s done is done. It was done by order. And I won’t go into that, these are not things that … (long silence)."

Summary of a Testimony by Amnon Neumann Part 5

Public hearing at Zochrot, 61 Ibn Gvirol St., Tel-Aviv, June 17, 2010. The audience consisted of about twenty people. Initiated and organized by Amir Hallel. The testimony was video-recorded by Lia Tarachansky. Miri Barak prepared the transcription. Eitan Bronstein edited, summarized;

http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-palmachs-member-ethnic.html
http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2010/09/part-2-interview-with-palmachs-member.html
http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-palmachs-member-part-3.html 

http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-palmachs-member-part-4.html
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 ........Eitan Bronstein: You know, Amnon, we once met a soldier who had fought in Beersheba and he told us they shot people who had fled from Beersheba,people ran away and soldiers shot them, shot civilians.

Amnon Neumann: Yes, yes, yes. They ran away to the east and the south
and they were shot. That’s because it was, I saw it… OK, I did that too. Are we
done? Why should I go into details?

Eitan Bronstein: But you can describe exactly this thing, how you as a soldier,
you’re shooting people who you see aren’t shooting at you, how… how did
you understand it back then? Over there? That you had the full right to do it?

Amnon Neumann: I didn’t understand, I was 19.

Eitan Bronstein: So you just did it?

Amnon Neumann: I was a fool and I didn’t know. Yes. That’s why I’m in such
despair, because soldiers are always 19-20 years old, and they never sober
up until they’ve been through four battles. That’s the main point. And there will always be new 19-year-olds.

Amir Hallel: Was there an order to do it?

Amnon Neumann: Where I was, there was an order in one case. As I said, the
horrors of war are more difficult than the battles of war, which are not easy
either.

Eitan Bronstein: I heard recently about a testimony given by a Palmachnik,
[who had been] I think in Simsim, were you in Simsim?

Amnon Neumann: I was there after the village had been destroyed.

Eitan Bronstein: So maybe you’ve heard soldiers’ testimonies saying they
saved the Palestinian women from Palestinian men shooting their wives?

(Page 12)

Amnon Neumann: They didn’t save, our soldiers didn’t save anyone. Look, in
the heat of battle you don’t save anyone. And save just one person, yourself.
Right? You don’t save anyone. After that there was the big battle over Be’erot
Yitzhak. Really, a big and terrible battle.

Half of the men of Be’erot Yitzhak were killed there. How many were there?
There were 100, 40 were killed there, something like that. And we came from the direction of Sa'ad to save them and the platoons of the “Negev Animals” came from the other direction and then there was a battle.

We shot and they shot. In the end, they fixed their machine gun and mowed down the Sudanese. It was a lucerne field there. Straight, even. And then I saw from a distance, for the first and only time, how the Egyptian officers walk with pistols with the soldiers ahead of them, shooting, lying down, getting up, shooting. That was one of the elite units of the Sudanese army, which afterwards stayed in 'Iraq Suwaydan as well, until they conquered 'Iraq Suwaydan.

Amir Hallel: What do you mean when you say that those officers walked with
pistols?

Amnon Neumann: What reason did a poor Sudanese have for going and
getting killed? For what? Did he even know? Those were the British methods,
that there should be order. But the British didn’t have… it was also that way inWorld War I, rest assured. No one wants to die just like that. What did the
Sudanese have here? They were tall, giant, muscular negroes. After the battle our platoon went to collect the booty and the documents. That was our part.

Eitan Bronstein: What do you mean the documents?
 .

Amnon Neumann: Of the dead! What unit was it, what they did, right? We
walked there among… we turned everyone over, and… all that. Back then I
didn’t feel anything for these dead people. They were enemies and it’s good
that they died, right? I didn’t feel anything special..

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