ISRAEL: Day of Atonement

On the day of the Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, the army commander in central Israel ordered a 5 p.m. curfew enforced in Arab villages near the Jordan border. Colonel Issachar Shadmi told Major Shmuel Malinki of the border police that this order was to be strictly enforced, that any villager found abroad after the curfew hour was to be shot. In midafternoon Major Malinki passed the order along to his company commanders, adding, "May Allah have mercy on their souls." On the stroke of 5, Lieut. Gabriel Dehan deployed his...

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