The al-Kabri incident refers to a military operation carried out by the Israeli army during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War in retaliation for the ambush of the Yehiam convoy. On May 20, 1948, the Israeli Carmeli Brigade captured al-Kabri

Al-Kabri

Al-Kabri was a Palestinian Arab town in the Galilee located northeast of Acre. It was captured by the Israel Defence Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In 1945, it had a population of 1,520 and a total land area of 28,729 dunams. It is near the site of Tel Kabri.-History:Al-Kabri was known...

 , an Arab

Arab

Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...

 village in the northwest corner of the region of the British Mandate of Palestine that was later incorporated into the State of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. On March 27, 1948, hundreds of armed villagers and units of the Arab Liberation Army

Arab Liberation Army

The Arab Liberation Army , also translated as Arab Salvation Army, was an army of volunteers from Arab countries led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji...

 attacked a Jewish convoy near the village, killing forty-nine Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

. Six Arabs were also killed in the battle. Two months later the commander of Operation Ben-Ami gave operational orders given that day were to "attack with the aim of capturing, the villages of Kabri

Al-Kabri

Al-Kabri was a Palestinian Arab town in the Galilee located northeast of Acre. It was captured by the Israel Defence Forces during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In 1945, it had a population of 1,520 and a total land area of 28,729 dunams. It is near the site of Tel Kabri.-History:Al-Kabri was known...

, Umm al Faraj and Al-Nahr

Al-Nahr

al-Nahr was a Palestinian village 14 km northeast of Acre. It was depopulated in May 1948 after a military assault carried out by the Carmeli Brigade as part of the Israel Defence Force's Operation Ben-Ami. Immediately after the assault the village of al-Nahr was razed.-History:The twin...

, to kill the men [and] and to destroy and set fire to the villages." Benvenisti states that "the orders were carried out to the letter", while Morris writes that a number of villagers were apparently executed.

Al-Kabri was captured without any resistance and it was almost immediately depopulated. It was treated particularly harshly due to the villagers involvement with the destruction of the Jewish convoy. According to Walid Khalidi

Walid Khalidi

Walid Khalidi is an Oxford University-educated Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center...

, an 'undisclosed number of villagers were taken prisoner and some were killed' and others were killed during their dispersal in Galilee

Galilee

Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...

 when it was discovered that they had come from al-Kabri.

Published Accounts of the Incident

According to a Palestinian publication, Dov Yirmiya, who was company commander in the 21st battalion, reported:

Kabri was conquered without a fight. Almost all inhabitants fled. One of the soldiers, Yehuda Reshef, who was together with his brother among the few rescapees from the Yehi'am convoy

Yehi'am convoy

The Yehiam convoy was a Haganah convoy was sent from Haifa during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine to reinforce and re-supply the Yehiam kibbutz which had been holding out against constant Arab attacks...

, got hold of a few youngsters who did not escape, probably seven, ordered them to fill up some ditches dug as an obstacle and then lined them up and fired at them with a machine gun. A few died but some of the wounded succeeded to escape. The battalion commander did not react. Reshef was a brave fighter and as a rescapee from the Yehi'am convoy, enjoyed special status in the battalion. He advanced later to the grade of Brigadier General. He justified his action as an act of revenge.

Aminah Muhammad Musa, a female refugee from al-Kabri, reported:

My husband and I left Kabri the day before it fell... At dawn [the next day], while my husband was preparing for his morning prayer, our friend Raja passed us and urged us to proceed, saying that we should run... It was not too long before we were met by the Jews... They took us and a few other villagers... in an armoured car back to the village. There a Jewish officer interrogated us and, putting a gun to my husband's neck, he said "You are from Kabri?"... The Jews took away my husband, Ibrahim Dabajah, Hussain Hassan al-Khubaizah, Khalil al-Tamlawi, Uthman Iban As'ad Mahmud, and Raja. They left the rest of us... An officer came to me and asked me not to cry. We slept in the village orchards that night. The next morning, Umm Hussain and I went to the village... I saw Umm Taha on the way to the village courtyard. She cried and said "You had better go see your dead husband." I found him. He was shot in the back of the head.