Talk:Hula massacre

Removed:

 * 'The only modern sources for this information seem to be:

What is the point of listing secondary sources like that, and what is a "modern source" anyway? --Zero 00:53, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) An article by R. Barkan from the Mapam(?) newspaper Al Hamishmar, title not given, quoting a letter from eyewitness Dov Yirmiya, translated in the Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. VII, no. 4 (summer 1978), no. 28, pp. 143-145.
 * 2) References (to the above?) in Hadawi, Bitter Harvest, p. 89;  Morris, Birth, p. 350, note 37; Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p. 165.
 * 3) The above were referenced from Chomsky's article Scenes from the Uprising and in discussions on middleeastinfo.org

That's what a References section is for; I wasn't ready to create another top-level section for it, but perhaps should have. The point is to help people strengthen a weak article by a) identifying weaknesses, and b) giving them places to begin research. +sj+ 00:56, 2004 Feb 21 (UTC)


 * Most of the above is discussion, it belongs in the Talk page. Chomsky is irrelevant.  What does Morris' footnote say in full? --Zero 02:06, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The above are cites themselves cited in Chomsky and online. Very 4th-hand info. +sj+

I have the Journal of Palestine Studies article and checked what is here against that. I'll look to see if Morris has a more direct citation of sources. --Zero 00:58, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC) (much obliged -- +sj+)

The original Birth of Morris only helps a little. On p230 Morris quotes a 1948 report by Galili (Head of Haganah Staff) that at Saliha "94...were blown up in a house". In the footnote, Morris writes "This is the only reference I have found to an atrocity at Saliha. Perhaps Galili (or Cohen [who took the minutes --Zero]) had confused the name of the village and was referring to the atrocity that had taken place in the Lebanese village of Hule, in which 34 villagers were murdered by IDF troops." He gives no reference for Hule, which is unusual for him but I guess it is peripheral to his book since it was in Lebanon. Morris lists Hule amongst the places where there was a massacre also in two of his later books (1948 and After and Righteous Victims) but no citation there either. The value of 34 does not appear in the JPS article, so Morris must have some other source. To add confusion, he has clearly found more information about Saliha because in his Haaretz interview a month or two ago he named Saliha as "one of the worst cases...(70-80 killed)". We can only hope that all this is clarified in his recent revision Birth...Revisited which I have on order but it didn't arrive yet. I'll bring this note up to date when it arrives. --Zero 04:43, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm annoyed that I can't find much information about past members/admins of this org; it would be nice to find better information about Lahis, if he is for real; what years he was Secretary General, what year he was tried, etc. Since there was an Israeli trial just after the massacre, it should be all over the Hebrew-language papers from back then... +sj+ 12:05, 2004 Feb 24 (UTC)

The fact that Shmuel Lahis was Secretary of the Jewish Agency in 1980 is clear from. An earlier or later appointment as Treasurer can be seen at. I also found a 1981 journal article (nothing to do with Hula) that calls him Director-General of the JA. (Variations in the name of the position are prob just translation differences.) His term as Sec Gen was something like 1978-1981 but I don't have a solid source for that. Anyway, I don't know why you imagine that Al Hamishmar would make up something like that. As for the trial, you have a misunderstanding. Military trials like this were conducted in secret and highly classified. Even today these archives are mostly not available to historians. It is most unlikely that anything appeared in newspapers at the time. --Zero 13:12, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Of course the original newspaper wouldn't make something like that up, but the name or position could have been garbled when it was re-reported by these article-writers and book-authors. -+sj+

I also found a translation of a 1979 article by Uri Avnery in Haolam Hazeh where he mentioned "the mass murder of 34 villagers by the war criminal Shmuel Lahis who was appointed Director-General of the Jewish Agency a year ago". (There's the value 34 that Morris gave.) --Zero 13:12, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)
 * Good. Add cite for that article to the page?

In Birth...Revisited, Morris cites a 2000 book published by the IDF/Ministry of Defense Press, and also a military communique of December 1948. Morris also cites his own interview with Yirmiya. --Zero 04:37, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * the personal inverview is very interesting... any direct quotes from Morris?  -+sj+

The paragraph added after the quote (which I remember reading from the original article) seems garbled... a confirming source would help clear it up. I'd love to know the actual terms for "stigma", what the full quote from the referenced "response" was, and how it could be that the JA of 1978 had known anything "since 1961". -+sj+ 05:13, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

I restored the commented section. I don't know why you mentioned Indimedia, which I have not even looked at. My source was the Journal of Palestine Studies, reference cited. The information given there is from the letter written by Arie Dulzin, the Chairman of the JA, to Dov Yirmiya, in reply to the latter's complaint about the appointment of Lahis as Director General. Since this comes from the interview with Yirmiya published by Al Hamishmar, one can assume that the text of Dulzin's letter was provided by Yirmiya. The quote I gave with the word "stigma" in it is exactly what appears in JPS as a quote given by Dulzin -- the letter of Dulzin which is translated at length in the article contains this as a quotation attributed to the Israeli Legal Counsel, April 20, 1955. I don't know the original Hebrew word translated as "stigma" and don't have time to research it, but the meaning in the context is clear enough. Lahis had applied for registration as a lawyer and the rules required him to be of good character. This matter was not regarded as sufficient to exclude him (and I don't find that surprising at all). Morris does not quote Yirmiya explicitly but gives an account of the whole affair which agrees with this article.


 * You should make it clear that not only the quote, but the paragraph following, come from Al Hamishmar via JPS. Seeing as the only ref for this bit is this chain of two Palestinian sources, it also seems appropriate to couch those sentences in a more speculative light.  And Dulzin deserves mention here!  +sj+
 * Excuse me, but Al Hamishmar was a Jewish newspaper and JPS is an academic journal. Neither are "Palestinian sources". I'll mention Dulzin. --Zero 21:43, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I also removed the phrase about the "rebirth" of the JA, which I did not put there. I cannot find anything that says the JA had not existed continuously; for example the history on the JA site does not mention anything about a break in existence. --Zero 06:07, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * surprisingly hard to get JA info. Here's a ref which also seems to mention a "reconstitution" in 1971:  JCPA article; it also notes that twenty years ago there was 'only one' real reference about the JA...  +sj+ 15:06, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

Amnesty
The sentence about the "amnesty in 1950 and then presidential amnesty in 1955" is very strange. Israel has no amnesty other than presidential amnesty. What is the source for this information? Gadykozma 19:34, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Here is the complete relevant section from Al Hamishmar (according to the JPS translation cited in ref 1 at the top of this page).
 * At the trial, at which Yirmiya was called on to give evidence, Lahis was convicted of the murder of people in Hula in Lebanon between October 31 and November 1, 1948, and sentenced to seven years in prison on July 17, 1949. The defence appealed to a Military Court of Appeal which reduced the sentence from seven years to one year in prison.  On April 20, 1950, Lahis was given an amnesty from the sentence and later given a second, "unconditional amnesty" on July 29, 1955, by President Ben Zvai.
 * That is all I have about the amnesties. I assume that the first one was some military thing since the trial was a military trial.  It's also possible that one of the amnesties was general (applying to a class of persons) and the other was personal, but that's only a guess.  --Zero 03:04, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

OK, I have a guess. April 20, 1950 would be 8 months after he was sent to prison, which would be 2/3 of his term. Releasing a prisoner after 2/3 term in Israel is standard (the conditions are that the prisoner repents or something like it), and cannot be considered "amnesty". If you have no further information, how about removing the word "amnesty" for the 1950 release?
 * Fair enough. I did it. --Zero 09:23, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1959 ruling
I found a 1959 Supreme Court ruling related to this case. Feel free to remind me if I didn't cite it in the article for a week or two. --Zero 11:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

WTF ??
this article is complete bull. it has no sources and it's completely wrong. Also this supposed ruling is not existant, there was never any ruling of a MASSACRE. These all allegations were refuted entirely later. Needs to be deleted. Amoruso
 * Reverted. Please don't slap tags on multiple pages the way you just did. Instead, you should bring arguments specific to the article and the cites to back it up. See WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV. Your changes turns up on the NPOV backlog and other backlogs -- Steve Hart 00:57, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Where are the reliable resources?
This article is full of rumors and un-professional sources of information (a newspaper?). Ive looked for more information on this case so we could write a true and well- based article, but the only reference I found was Benny Moris. I think it is very problematic and therefore this article should be deleted till the facts will be known.

(ScottyNolan (talk) 10:13, 21 June 2012 (UTC))

Lemma
Please stop this edit war and use the talk page to come to an agreement regarding the lemma. --LeastCommonAncestor (talk) 13:40, 23 July 2012 (UTC)