Witness testimonies
editDue to the lack of technical evidence, historians' narratives of the Deir Yassin massacre are largely based on witness accounts. Either in the form of reports produced before or shortly after the attack, or in interviews conducted by historians many years later. The trustworthiness of this material has been questioned; the attackers were incentivized to minimize their role in the atrocities and to overstate the village's resistance to justify the large number of deaths, the survivors, at least initially, were incentivized to exaggerate them in order to arouse the Arab countries. Haganah officials, according to some historians, also wanted to exaggerate the atrocities due to infighting between the militias of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine).
The following witnesses are main sources for historians:
- Hahanah personnel
- David Shaltiel: Haganah commander in Jerusalem.
- Meir Pa'il: Intelligence officer with the Palmach. His testimony has been called into question by Israeli historian Uri Milstein who claims that he despised Irgun and Lehi.
- Mordechai Gichon: Haganah intelligence officer who became a historian after the war.
- Zvi Ankori: Gadna (Haganah's youth organization) commander who arrived at the scene on April 12, 1948. He testified in 1982.
- Yitzhak Levi: Haganah chief of intelligence in Jerusalem. He published his memoirs Nine Measures in 1986.
- Irgun and Lehi fighters
- Benzion Cohen: Highest-ranking Irgun commander in Deir Yassin.
- Mordechai Raanan: Irgun district commander present in Givat Shaul.
- Mordechai Weg: Commander of Palmach's Harel 4th brigade.
- Menachem Begin: Irgun leader. He wasn't at the scene of Deir Yassin but gave his blessing to the operation. He published his account of the war in his 1950 book The Revolt.
- Yehoshua Gorodenchik: Irgun physician.
- Yehuda Lapidot: Irgun commander who was second-in-command in the attack of the village. After the war he became an academic and in 1992 he published his memoir Besieged Jerusalem 1948: memories of an Irgun fighter.