As I read this highly falsified "Testimony" I sat in stunned silence realising that members of the "computer-based illiterate - cellphone dependent" generation outside of Israel are exposed to this outrageously falsification of a well documented incident that occured on December 30, 1947 at the, then British owned Mandatory oil refinery in the Haifa bay area.
What is NOT mentioned - ad nausem- as it flies in the face of their mendacious tale of the events of their Nachba- and is ALWAYS "blissfully omited" by apologists for the “Arabs of the Mandated Areas” such as Rami Canaan in this story of this “poor refugee Aisha Al-Furani” is the WELL documented recorded true facts from the
These "neutral" records provide a specific, often clinical perspective on these events. Because the British were the sovereign power at the time, their records are now housed in the National Archives in Kew (UK) or within the Israel State Archives. They focus on the timeline of British Mandatory law enforcement failure and the sequence of escalation.
According to these British CID archived reports we learn the REAL DOCUMENTED HOSTORICAL TRUTH regarding the “poor refugee Aisha Al-Furani's” village Balad al-Sheikh and NOT mendacious revisionist history by the perpetual UNWRA refugees.
One of the reasons that led to Balad al-Sheikh being depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (also known as the Nakba) was because the village was the home of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who even before the establishment of the state, acted against the Jewish Yishuv and was a leader who inspired local villagers to commit brutal murderous attacks on the Jews of the area of Haifa.
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was killed by the British Mandatory authorities in 1935, following his role in the killing of a Mandatory policeman and was buried there and his grave became a “Palestinian” symbol of resistance and of Palestinian terrorism.
Even today members of the Hamas terror organization fight in his name and carried out the October 7th massacre with green headbands bearing his name on their foreheads!
After the United Nations voted for the Partition Plan (Resolution 181) in November of 1947, Arab attacks on Jews were escalating rapidly across British Mandatory Palestine. Jewish Kibbutzim, agricultural Villiages and transportation in various parts of British Mandatory Palestine were violently and murderously attacked by "local Arab villagers" -according to the recorded British CID documents "Under the guidance of the Grand Mufti Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini".
During December 1947, tensions had reached a boiling point.
According to the archived British CID reports Balad al-Sheikh, which stood on the road between Haifa and Jewish kibbutzim and farming villages Afula and Beit Shean in the Yizrael valley, was a center for attacks on Jewish transportation.
The village was "depopulated" during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (also known as the Nakba).
The events occurred in three main stages: increasing attacks by village and area Arab residents on Jewish civilian buses and trucks, retaliatory raid at the turn of the year and the final capture of the village in April.
The spark, that led to the Irgun (Etzel) attack was "An eye for an eye" attack on the Arabs working at the British owned oil refinery for the increasing Arab "resistance" against the Jewish civilian residents of the area of Haifa.
Prior to the incident at the oil refinery on December 30, 1947, 1700 Arabs and 470 Jews worked their, not including the British management.
At approximately 10:20 AM exactly one month after the United Nations voted for the Partition Plan (Resolution 181), British CID police reports recorded, that two bombs were thrown from a passing vehicle (identified as a black car or taxi) into a crowd of roughly 100 Arab day-laborers outside the refinery gate who were waiting at a bus stop or seeking employment. Six Arabs were killed and 42 were wounded.
One of the most critical aspects of the British records is the admission of a delays in intervention.British records show that although the refinery was owned by the British (Consolidated Refineries Ltd), it took nearly an hour for police and military units to arrive after the Arab riot began inside the gates.
In the internal reports, CID Summary, they recorded a a "spontaneous reaction" and scene of "uncontrolled mob violence" within minutes of the Irgun's bombs exploding outside the gate, where Arab workers inside the refinery (who previously had relatively good relations with their Jewish coworkers) turned on the Jewish staff and used "industrial tools, iron bars, and pickaxes" to attack Jewish coworkers. The CID noted that the British management was unable to exert any authority once the riot began.
In the ensuing riot, 41 Jewish workers were killed and 49 were injured.
After the the murderous attack on the Jewish workers of the refinery, many of those Arabs who carried out the debauchery returned to Balad Al-Sheikh.
Despite condemning the Irgun's initial bomb attack as an "act of madness".
All of this is recorded in the British CID records as recounted by Zachary Lockman in his book "Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948" whe he focuses on how the violence at the Haifa Oil Refinery shattered a rare instance of inter-communal labor solidarity.
In his book, Lockman analyzes the 1947–1948 events in a section titled "The Descent into Madness" where he provides specific casualty figures and observations that sometimes differ slightly from other contemporary sources.
British records provide the "official" version of the Haganah/Palmach attack on the village of Balad al-Sheikh Raid (Dec 31, 1947).
The Haganah launched a massive retaliatory raid on the village of Balad al-Sheikh where those Arab refinery workers who participated in the murder of their Jewish co-workers lived.
In the Haganah’s retaliatory raid on the village, according to "Arab testimony" recorded by the CID, the Haganah attackers used mortars and explosives to demolish houses while residents were inside the attack "killed some sixty men, women, and children and destroyed several dozen houses".
According to records cited by historians like Benny Morris and Yoav Gelber, from the official history of the Haganah (specifically the Sefer Toldot HaHaganah) and the internal reports of the Palmach units involved.
The official operational order issued to the 170 men of the First Battalion of the Palmach( Hebrew Plugot Maḥatz, "Strike Companies") who were the elite combined strike forces, the orders were quite specific:
"To encircle the village, and to inflict harm on the largest possible number of men, to damage property, but to refrain from attacking women and children."
Furthermore the Hebrew records often use the term "טוהר הנשק" (Purity of Arms) to discuss these incidents in hindsight—debating whether the "deviation" at Balad al-Sheikh was a failure of this moral code or a tragic necessity of the 1948 conflict.
The retaliatory raid on the village of Balad al-Sheikh began in the dark of night (it was a 2:00 AM raid). 170 members of the Palmach that carried out the attack were "forced to deviate from the line agreed upon" because they were met with severe resistance from within residential structures in the village by the village residents and elements of the Grand Mufti's Army of the Holy War (Jaysh al-Jihad al-Muqaddas) who used the civilian structures as their combat positions.
Due to the "heat of battle" those Palmach commanders claimed they could not distinguish between "combatants" and "non-combatants" once a house was identified as a source of fire.
And because the Arabs used their homes as implacements the fighters of the Palmach unit fired into these houses and used explosives to silence the resistance, resulting in "unintentional" civilian deaths.
The Palmach and the official Haganah General Staff (HGS) internal report initially claimed 21 killed (including 2 women and 5 children) at under the stress of close-quarters urban combat were "regretfully" killed due to the military necessity and the tactical chaos.
Arab records say 60-70 dead (many women/children). The Times (London), January 2, 1948: contemporary report, titled "17 Killed In Attack On Arab Village," initially provided lower figures. The discrepancy arose from whether the count only included identified "combatant" males or every body found in the destroyed homes.
In the "Testimony of Aisha Al-Furani" she states:
"On their way to fetch water, a group of the Haganah gang caught them and executed them behind the port and they were added them to the 600 Men, Women, and Children massacred in my village."
However, according to WO 261/573 and the RASC War Diaries, the Haifa Port was a "sealed military enclave." The idea that a "Haganah gang" could enter this hyper-guarded military zone, execute civilians at a water point, and leave without the RASC or the Royal Marines recording a major security breach is historically untenable. If there had been mass executions at the port—Wilks have recorded it exposing the Quora testimony as a fabric of lies.
Zachary Lockman in his book "Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948" on page 353, he explicitly states:
"The Jewish attackers killed some sixty men, women, and children and destroyed several houses." His research relies heavily on labor records and press reports from the time, noting that the sheer scale of the funeral processions in Haifa the following day supported the higher casualty figures
The Haganah recorded that the objective was to destroy the homes of "refinery rioters." They argued that because the attack was a surprise raid intended to destroy property and "punish" the adult male population, the collapsing of houses with explosives inevitably led to deaths among family members who had not or could not flee.
Some internal diaries and later testimonies from Palmach members - some of whom were related or friends of the 39 butchered Jewish refinery workers. Later admitted that the "retaliatory zeal" emotional intensity of the previous day's refinery massacre led to a "harshness" in the field.
The following file series contain the primary cables, police summaries, and high-level reports from the British administration in Palestine to the Colonial and Foreign Offices in London:
CO 537/3855: This file contains "Palestine: Situational Reports" from 1948. It includes detailed telegraphic correspondence from the High Commissioner describing urban and rural violence.
CO 733/477: This series often covers police reports and local intelligence summaries (CID reports) during the final months of the Mandate.
FO 371/68502: Foreign Office records that include "intelligence summaries" regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Haifa sub-district.
WO 261/573: War Office monthly historical reports for the Palestine Command, which provide the British military's perspective on the Balad al-Sheikh raid and the subsequent refinery investigation.
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