The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

On April 9, 1948, as Zionist militias fought to establish a Jewish state, they closed in on the small village of Deir Yassin. The advance was led by the Irgun and their offshoot Lehi—two Zionist militias notorious for murdering civilians. The Lehi were openly racist, describing Jews as a “master race” and Arabs as a “slave race.” Setting up outside Deir Yassin, they battled the village’s Palestinian defenders throughout the day and, after taking the town, slaughtered at least a hundred inhabitants. The news of the massacre quickly swept across Palestinian communities and greatly aided the efforts of the advancing Zionist militias to purge the land of Arabs and build a “Jewish democracy.” I didn’t find out about Deir Yassin until I was back in America, but I likely drove past it several times. The remnants of the village are in Jerusalem, just a short drive from Yad Vashem. The proximity of the two sites staggered me. I called Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American friend I’d made in Ramallah, and vented my surprise. “They do this all the time,” he said. He told me about the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem—another site of memory, this one built directly on top of a Muslim graveyard.