Australian Gaslighter-in-Chief Nasser Mashni recently tweeted the following:
He has retweeted David Miller, a man so antisemitic that even notorious antisemite Tony Greenstein thinks his antisemitism is too much. Not only that, but the tweet references the David Duke notion of Jewish supremacy:
And Nasser Mashni has posted this while the Australian antisemitism royal commission holds its hearings.
Let’s leave aside the antisemitism for a second and examine the article Miller uses as “proof”, and for what Mashni at best seems to be explaining, and at worst justifying, the October 7 massacre:
Seems pretty clear cut. Or does it?
What happened at Deir Yassin is heavily disputed
On April 9, 1948, Jewish paramilitary fighters from the Irgun and Lehi attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin during the civil war phase preceding Israel’s independence. The village was strategically located near the road to Jerusalem. Fighting was intense, including house-to-house combat. After the battle, large numbers of civilians were dead, including women, children, and elderly villagers.
One of the most nuanced positions on what occurred is that of Benny Morris, one of the best-known historians of the 1948 war. He wrote that Deir Yassin massacre involved both a real battle and a massacre. He argued that the village was not simply a peaceful, defenseless place untouched by the war. There was armed resistance during the attack, and the fighting was intense. However, he also concluded that after the battle, Irgun and Lehi fighters killed civilians and prisoners, which is why he used the term “massacre.” Morris rejected some of the more sensational atrocity stories, especially claims of widespread rape or the famous inflated death toll of around 250. He accepted later research placing the deaths at roughly 100–110.
He also wrote that Arab leaders and broadcasters exaggerated aspects of the event for propaganda purposes, though the killings themselves were real. Morris also emphasized that the mainstream Haganah leadership disapproved of the operation by the Irgun and Lehi.
While Richard Monson’s account seems to suggest a straight-forward atrocity, there is no clear evidence he personally witnessed the killings at Deir Yassin themselves. This strongly suggests his reporting was based largely on things like interviews with survivors, accounts from Arab officials or witnesses, information circulating in Jerusalem afterward, and wartime rumor/propaganda networks common in 1948. That was actually typical of war correspondents at the time. Many journalists reported on atrocities after the fact rather than directly observing them.
I should also point out that the haters have been caught exaggerating Deir Yassin again and again.
Arab Massacres of Jews preceded everything
Even if you accepted in full Ronson’s account (which I don’t) pointing to an alleged atrocity not sanctioned by Israeli leadership as somehow justififying or explaining the October 7 massacre, two could play this game. And us Jews would win it. The Muslims in the area were massacring Jews even from the times of Ottoman rule. For example:
- 1517 – During the Ottoman conquest of the region from the Mamluks, Jews in Safed were attacked, looted, and some were killed, in what is described as one of the earliest anti-Jewish pogroms in Ottoman Palestine.
- 1660 – Druze and local Arab conflicts in the Galilee led to devastation in Safed and Tiberias and the Jewish communities there.
- 1834 – During the Peasants’ Revolt against Egyptian ruler Ibrahim Pasha, Arab and Druze mobs attacked the Jewish community in Safed. Jews were beaten, abused and killed, and homes and synagogues were looted. Jews in Hebron were also attacked and robbed.
This, of course, continued during the British Mandate of Palestine. For example:
- 1921 – Arab mobs attacked Jewish residents and immigrants in Jaffa, with dozens of Jews killed.
- 1929 – Arab rioters murdered 67 Jews in Hebron, including yeshiva students, rabbis, and longtime non-Zionist Jewish residents. Survivors were evacuated, ending a centuries-old Jewish community there. Arab rioters also killed Jews and destroyed homes in Safed during the same wave of unrest.
- During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Arabs attacked Jewish civilians, buses, farms, and neighborhoods. Hundreds of Jews were killed over those years.
- After the UN partition vote in November 1947, Arab militias and irregulars attacked Jewish convoys, settlements, and civilians. One notorious example was the Hadassah medical convoy massacre in April 1948, where 78 Jewish doctors, nurses, patients, and escorts were killed near Jerusalem.
You get the idea. Using Mashni’s logic, we would have been justified for massacring Arab civilians at Deir Yassin – or at least these preceding massacres could explain it.
But of course, that is not the lesson to take from history.
Most Jews do not look at the Hebron massacre, Safed pogroms, or Hadassah convoy massacre and conclude that murdering Arab babies is somehow “baked into” Arab identity. We do not take the crimes of some Arabs and turn them into a racial theory about all Arabs or all Muslims.
Yet that is exactly what David Miller does with Jews and Zionists – and what Nasser Mashni is amplifying during a period of exploding antisemitism in Australia.
And that is the real story here.
