Post-war and Arab world (1945–1970)
Fall of the Etzion Bloc
13 mai 1948·Kfar Etzion
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the locality fell and some of the defenders and prisoners were massacred
Kfar Etzion was the principal of the four localities of the Etzion bloc, established between Jerusalem and Hebron and cut off from the rest of Jewish territory from the start of the civil war. Besieged for months, supplied by convoys and then by air, the bloc was attacked by the Arab Legion and irregulars on the eve of the proclamation of the State.
The locality fell on the thirteenth of May. A number of the defenders and inhabitants who had surrendered were massacred on the spot; a few survivors were saved by officers of the Legion and taken prisoner. The three other localities of the bloc capitulated the following day.
The memory of Etzion has become one of the founding narratives of Israeli Memory of the war; the bloc would be rebuilt after the Six-Day War.
- Period :
- Post-war and Arab world (1945–1970)
- Type :
- Massacre
- Region :
- Land of Israel
- Country :
- Israël
Benny Morris, *1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War* ; Encyclopaedia Judaica.