A Palestinian Arab village near Jerusalem, now destroyed and the site of a Jerusalem neighborhood. On April 9, 1948 (one month before Israel’s Declaration of Independence), it was the scene of a massacre with fateful consequences for Palestinians. The village of 600 Palestinian Arab inhabitants had signed a non-aggression pact with the Haganah (the precursor to the Israeli army) in order to avoid the violence already spreading throughout the area. Dissident Jewish paramilitary groups, notably the Irgun and Lehi/Stern Gang, attacked the village, reportedly informing the Haganah of their plans. The Irgun narrative maintains that their forces called on the village to surrender, and that they only entered Deir Yassin after Palestinian forces opened fire, inflicting casualties. By the time Irgun and Lehi fighters entered the village, most men had fled. The militias killed and raped many of those remaining. Haganah forces eventually moved in and ended the massacre. Those not killed were paraded through the streets of Jerusalem and then sent to the city’s Arab sector. The number killed was originally reported at 254, but more recent studies by both Palestinian and Israeli scholars suggest that the real figure was between 94 and 120. Reports of the massacre played a significant role in inducing Palestinians to flee their villages and towns across Palestine. The Arab attack on the Jewish medical convoy to the hospital on Mount Scopus a few days later, in which 77 Jews, mostly medical personnel, were killed, was at least partly in revenge for Deir Yassin. See McDaniel, Daniel A. and Marc H. Ellis. Remembering Deir Yassin: The Future of Israel and Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1998; Herzog, Chaim. Arab-Israeli Wars. New York: Vintage Books, 2005; and Kimmerling, Baruch and Joel S. Migdal. The Palestinian People: a History. London: Harvard University Press, 2003.  http://www.justvision.org/glossary/deir-yassin