Israel accused of torture, murder and concealment of Egyptian POW bodies in 1967

The remains of at least eighty Egyptian soldiers have been discovered buried under a Zionist tourist park in Occupied Palestine.

During the 1967 war, an elite Egyptian army unit sustained heavy losses west of Jerusalem. The bodies were interred in a mass grave, in fields tended but not owned by Kibbutz Nahshon. The story was hushed up and the fields became part of the Mini Israel park. One of the people involved in burying some of the bodies wonders why no one has asked him about it until now. Adam Raz

 

The Israeli government plans to investigate reports of a mass grave in central Israel containing the bodies of Egyptian commandos who were killed during the 1967 Middle East war, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday.

Lapid’s office said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi brought up the issue in a call after two Israeli newspapers published witness accounts suggesting there was an unmarked grave near Latrun, an area between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where Israel’s army fought the Egyptian soldiers decades ago.

The following article is written by Motasem A Dalloul:

Prominent Israeli journalist Yossi Melman on Friday [July 8] revealed details of a war crime committed by the Israeli military during the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syrian Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

1/7 Breaking News: After 55 years of heavy censorship, I can reveal that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burnt alive and buried by IDF in a mass grave, which wasn't marked&without being identified contrary to war laws, in Latrun. It happened during the Six Day's War>>> pic.twitter.com/mMe3LGIAoz

— Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) July 7, 2022

In a Twitter thread, Melman, a correspondent for military affairs, said the Israeli occupation army burned alive at least 20 Egyptian soldiers and the next day used a bulldozer to dig a mass grave and bury them.

The mass grave area was annexed to the Israeli Kibbutz Nahshon, which was built on the land of a Palestinian neighborhood called Wadi El-Latrun, 25 kilometers west of Jerusalem and 14 kilometers southeast of ‘Al-Ramla. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the story was “hushed up and the fields became part of Mini Israel Park.”

“After 55 years of heavy censorship,” Melman wrote:

“I can reveal that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive and buried by the IDF in a mass grave, which was unmarked and unidentified unlike the laws of war, at Latrun. It happened during the Six Day War. »

While Melman found that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers had been burned alive at the time, other sources, including Haaretz, put the number at 80 unidentified and unlocated buried victims.

Melman said the war crime was committed in no man’s land, but Haaretz revealed that the land was a Palestinian neighborhood “whose residents had recently fled or been expelled and whose homes had been razed.” It refers to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 – the Nakba.

To all objective observers around the world, Israel is clearly a rogue state that has committed numerous war crimes and possesses the worst and most immoral army that continues to commit daily crimes against Palestinians in the territories. occupied Palestinians and in historic Palestine.

When this rogue state commits a crime, its military and politicians dare to claim that such incidents are isolated events.

In 1995, three months before his assassination, former Israeli Prime Minister Ishak Rabin declared:

“The Israel Defense Forces have earned their glory as a human army whose soldiers are endowed with special moral values”.

However, the reality is quite the opposite and the revelation or the crime of having burned Egyptian soldiers alive is further proof of this.

Then-Israeli army commander Ze’ev Bloch, now 90, told Melman and other news outlets that at the time of the massacre of Egyptian soldiers, he saw Israeli soldiers “looted the personal effects [of dead Egyptian soldiers] and left the mass grave without any landmarks”.

Looting [of remains] and leaving unmarked graves without notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

I am sure that other investigations in the same area will bring evidence of other war crimes.

The Haaretz report suggests that the Israeli occupation army used prohibited phosphorus bombs to ignite the fire that killed the Egyptian soldiers, who had surrendered or wanted to flee.

It also raises the question of another violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the killing of soldiers who are hors de combat through injury or surrender.

The scene of burning alive and killing prisoners of war was horrifying, according to direct witness Bloch, who added:

“We were ashamed”, but stressed that the massacre was an “army decision”.

In 1995, Arye Biro, recounted how he killed 49 Egyptian prisoners of war in cold blood in 1956, even telling reporters, according to the Associated Press [AP], that he was ready to do the same thing again. And despite that, he says, “I don’t think I’m a war criminal. »

Biro said he was protecting others who shared the decision on the POW massacre.

According to the AP report, Israeli historians revealed that Biro’s actions were far from isolated, with Israeli veteran and author Michael Bar-Zohar claiming that prisoner killings had taken place “in all the wars of Israel” and “had been treated with indulgence” and suppressed by the rulers.

The same report quotes Israeli military historian, Aryeh Yitzhaki, as saying Israeli troops committed several massacres during the 1967 war – when Nobel Peace Prize [sic] laureate Rabin was army chief – during which around 1000 Egyptian prisoners were shot.

Bar-Zohar also told AP,

“Two cooks armed with knives… simply slaughtered three prisoners. This scene keeps haunting me. »

On June 9 and 10, 1967, some 400 Egyptian and Palestinian prisoners were massacred in the sand dunes of El-Arish, Yitzhaki said, adding that there were six or seven other incidents in which Israeli troops opened fire on prisoners of war.

The so “moral” army was aware of this and was probably happy about it. Yitzhaki also told the AP that a crime report submitted to his superiors was locked in a safe at military headquarters. “The entire army leadership, including (then) Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Chief of Staff Rabin and the generals were aware of these things. No one bothered to report them,” Yitzhaki concluded. So where is the moral?

On Twitter, Melman claimed that Arabs and Israelis had “committed war crimes” during the wars, but he criticized Israel for “presenting itself as a democracy” while covering up its shameful past under the guise of national security, and adding that “a true democracy must face its past”.

Israel accused of torture, murder and concealment of Egyptian POW bodies in 1967