"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 4
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/part-2-interview-with-palmachs-member.html
http://palestinefreevoice.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-palmachs-member-part-3.html
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(Page 8)
Amir Hallel: The inhabitants of the village?
Amnon Neumann: No, the armed people were foreigners there, they came to
defend the village. Qawuqji told them, Fight, fight the Jews—we’ll come help
you from Acre. No help and no nothing. At Sumayriyya near Regba it was the
same thing. It characterized them in the south too, where I was, and also in
the north. With the locals there was almost … in the north there were more
battles, even difficult battles.
Eitan Bronstein: You’re saying it was a battle with armed people who were not the inhabitants of the village, in Burayr. But at the same time there were still residents of Burayr in the village?
Amnon Neumann: Yes!
Eitan Bronstein: So, there was a battle?
Amnon Neumann: There was a battle, and there was also a small murder and
similar things and then the inhabitants ran away completely.
Eitan Bronstein: Yes, there are testimonies about a massacre having taken
place in Burayr.
Amnon Neumann: You’ve heard about it?
Eitan Bronstein: Yes.
Dan Yahav: I wrote about it, it appears in my “Purity of Arms”.
Amnon Neumann: It does?
Dan Yahav: Yes.
Amnon Neumann: I don’t want to deal with it.
Dan Yahav: And in other villages as well.
Amnon Neumann: I know, I don’t want to deal with it!
Dan Yahav: Allow me a minute, I see the topic of the expulsion is a very
sensitive topic. You were a soldier, I was also a soldier, and when I fought I
wouldn’t know exactly what was happening in the area. But there are
wonderful descriptions in the Negba archive.
There is a wonderful description of a kibbutz member! He sees the expulsion, he sees the convoy with the children and everything and it reminds him of terrible things the Jewish people has been through. The same thing is available at Shmaria Gutman’s in Na’an, regarding Lud, Lud and Ramle, about the expulsion.
(Page 9) Amnon Neumann: Oh, right, right.
Eitan Bronstein: Today it is sensitive for you to recall it?
Amnon Neumann: (quietly) Yes, it is.
Amir Hallel: You said there was a time when you would pass through Bureir
and at some point you stopped.
Amnon Neumann: Yes, we couldn’t pass through them because the shooting
was too strong, and our miserable armored vehicles couldn’t handle it. So we
drove through Ashkelon, Isdud, Ashkelon, Barbara, Bayt Jirja, down to Nir-
'Am. Part of the route was even a dirt road. I want to note that the people I
was with over there, in our platoon everyone were born in this country. In the
other platoon there were others, including immigrants and people who hadn’t grown up with the country’s air of decency, an air of people who knew what they were going to do, who gave their lives without thinking twice.
Eitan Bronstein: What was the atmosphere among the people in terms of the
feelings they had about what happened then, during that time?
Amnon Neumann: It was a horrible period: we were sure that the Egyptians
would wipe us out, especially after they had cut off the Negev. We didn’t know that the Ninth Battalion was getting organized in the north and would come and break the siege, we didn’t know that. That was later on, in Operation “Yoav”.
Eitan Bronstein: So in terms of the feeling, there was a feeling that it was like
the end?
Amnon Neumann: That’s what I observed, unpleasantly. There was also a
second platoon with us in Burayr. One guy, an Egyptian Jew, came here and
said—excuse me—“I fucked her and shot her”.
Eitan Bronstein: Did you hear him say it?
Amnon Neumann: No, I was told about this later, I didn’t see him. And then
they ran, the people who were there and saw her, a 17-year-old girl, he had
put a bullet through her head. I approached the platoon commander, who was from Tel Yosef, and I told him, I told him, I think he should be killed. So he
said, Stop it you! We’re all going to die in a week or two, what are you
messing around with here … that was the mood back then.
Later on the situation got better. We saw the Egyptians weren’t worth much, and they can be wiped out, and we really did attack the cannons and destroyed them and killed lots of Egyptians there. And after that the situation stabilized.
Amir Hallel: What happened to that guy? (Page 10)
Amnon Neumann: Nothing. What happened to him? Don’t ask! Don’t ask what
happened.
important. Just as I wasn’t important. He was killed later, but killed in a terrible way. But why is that important? A lot of my friends were killed not in a terrible way.
Eitan Bronstein: Can we get back to that harsh expression you mentioned.
From that word you understood that there had been a rape there followed by
murder?
Amnon Neumann: I didn’t see it, but people ran and saw it. They saw that girl
lying there with a bullet in her head.
Dan Yahav: But they had washed her there, she was clean.
Amnon Neumann: I didn’t see and didn’t ask, how do you know?
Dan Yahav: I’m telling you, I know.
Amnon Neumann: This particular case?
Dan Yahav: Yes.
Amnon Neumann: With this Egyptian?
Dan Yahav: Yes, yes.
Amnon Neumann: I see you’ve done some research.
Dan Yahav: They washed her, prepared her and then did what they did.
(Silence)
Amnon Neumann: I didn’t know these details and I never wanted to go into the thick of things.
Dan Yahav: By the way, the IDF archive is unwilling to this day to open
documents related to cases of rape. It’s still [a matter of] “Israel’s security”.
(Long silence)
Amnon Neumann:After that I was in Beersheba.There was a short battle there. It wasn’t a big battle, four or five hours and that’s it. There was a chain of Egyptian military posts there, 10km after Beersheba, and we attacked them, and it was the first time I encountered, in Beersheba, what we called (Page 11) the “French commando”. It was a unit made up of immigrants from Morocco.
They were trained in Beersheba, in the alleys of Beersheba, and they attacked there. It was ok, we drove out the Egyptians, the Egyptians didn’t
hold out anywhere for very long. It was the first time I saw soldiers walking
around among the dead Egyptians. It turned out they had been looking for
gold teeth in the officers’ mouths. I went crazy. My conceptual world was
different.
hold out anywhere for very long. It was the first time I saw soldiers walking
around among the dead Egyptians. It turned out they had been looking for
gold teeth in the officers’ mouths. I went crazy. My conceptual world was
different.
Lia Tarachansky: Were there cases of disobedience to orders? Did anyone
get up and leave rather than go all the way through with it?
Amnon Neumann: Where? With us? No. Never. Everyone went all the way
through with it and to the bitter end.....
through with it and to the bitter end.....
To be continued on Tuesday September 14
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