48 human beings were massacred - and we have forgotten them
http://972mag.com/48-human-beings-were-massacred-and-we-have-forgotten-them/81313/
When a country accepts responsibility for such a significant event in its past, one might expect it to erect a monument to the victims,, to sponsor the annual memorial ceremony and to honor the memory of those murdered rather than leave the matter to the families left behind, as if it were their problem alone.
For most citizens of Israel, the 29th of October was just another day. But not for Israel’s Arab citizens. On this date in 1956, 57 years ago — the first day of the Sinai Campaign (the coordinated attack on Egypt by Israel, Great Britain, and France) —the Kafr Qasim massacre took place. A Border Police unit shot and killed 48 villagers — women, men, and children — and wounded 13 more.
Instead of addressing the massacre and its public implications head on, the government of Israel banned publication of the story. Two Knesset members, Meir Vilner and Tawfik Toubi (along with Latif Dori, who was not an MK) reached the village the next day, collected testimonies from the residents and raised the issue in the Knesset plenum. As a result, the massacre found its way to the international news media, and subsequently to the local pressl. In 1957, the perpetrators of the atrocity were tried and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Within a year, however, they had all been released.
