Thread by @ireallyhateyou

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Snowballing Nakba: on December 30th 1947, three Irgun men - Moshe Levi, Shimon Damti and Moshe Bodek - arrived at the gates of the oil refinery in Haifa, where Arabs and Jews worked side by side. The men threw several homemade bombs, killing 6 Arab workers and injuring 42.

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Immediately after the bombing, Arab workers started attacking their Jewish co-workers, using rods and knives. 39 Jews were massacred, many were injured. Only about an hour after the incident started, British police arrived and dispersed the crowd.

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The next day, on new year's eve, more than 100 Zionist militants arrived at nearby Palestinian villages of Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa, where some of the Arab workers lived. The order given to the Haganah men was "to kill maximum adult men, destroy furniture etc."

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The Jewish forces started shooting indiscriminately and blowing up houses. Men were pulled out from their homes and shot. About 70 inhabitants were killed, among them some women and children. Three Haganah militants were killed as well.

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Following the massacre, many families from the two villages fled to Nablus, Jenin and Acre.
The Haganah attack had a demoralizing effect on the Arabs of Haifa, and some started fleeing the city in fear. By April 1948 almost half of the local Palestinian population was gone.

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On 21-22 April, Haifa was officially taken by Zionist forces. By mid-May, only 4,000 Arabs were still in Haifa, out of the pre-war population of about 65,000. They were rounded-up in the Wadi Nisnas ghetto.
Reports of the fall of Haifa spread quickly all across the country.

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Following the fall of Haifa and other events, such as the Deir Yassin massacre, Palestinian morale reached a new low. Panic spread, and many Palestinian villages were abandoned by their frightened inhabitants. The mass exodus helped Jewish forces take over the entire region

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Two and a half years ago, Moshe Bodek, probably the last man alive from the three Irgun militants who initiated the oil refinery bombing, died at the age of 93. A local Haifa news website eulogized him, saying he was "an admired, beloved teacher".

Images:
1. The oil refinery in Haifa
2. Palestine Post, 31.12.1948
3. Balad al-Shaykh in a British map from the 40's
4. "Dozens killed in two punitive actions taken by the Haganah, in Haifa and Salama", Haaretz, 2.1.1948
5. Haganah troops in Haifa, 1948
6. Palestinians fleeing Haifa, April 1948
7. Palestinians at the Haifa port, on their way to a new life as refugees. May 1948 (photo by John Philips)
8. Moshe Bodek (photo by Haaretz)

This is a repost of a thread I posted in 2022, a month after the death of Moshe Bodek.

Here's a tweet about another Zionist terrorist operation in Haifa in 1948 that included orders similar to the ones given in Balad al-Shaykh.

A few days ago in Balad al-Shaykh