April 9: Arab village of Dir Yassin (contiguous to Jerusalem, currently the Har Nof area): Irgun and Lechi kill (Arabs say “massacre”) over 100 Arabs…roundly condemned/deplored/lamented by the Jewish establishment worldwide and by Haganah, but the negative repercussions have lasted decades.
Exaggerated reports of the already quite–severe matter possibly fueled the panic that became a significant factor in the 1948 Palestinian exodus – “the wound that does not heal.”
Lechi and Irgun maintain that the 100+ Arabs killed were para–military. Whatever precisely transpired at forsaken Dir Yassin, Lechi and the Irgun never fully politically recovered from the “collateral damage.”
Down–the–road, the future IDF (Israel Defense Forces) would adopt a strict code of Taharat Neshek (“purity of arms”) to distance Israeli troops further from potentially morally ambiguous situations and actions.
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Note that the Arab narrative regarding the 1948 Arab refugees differs radically from the Jewish/Israeli narrative. Thus the two respective groups base their convictions on radically diverging narratives. This is part of the reason that resolution of the conflict has proven so elusive.
It should be noted clearly, however, that the “Western” part of this equation operates within a milieu of a free press and unfettered debate, including a not–inconsiderable perpetually self–critical Jewish Left Wing, stretching back the entire duration.