Ynet’s Hebrew correspondent Yossi Melman revealed on Friday a secret that has been kept secret for 55 years, which is the death of 20 Egyptian soldiers who were cremated in the 1967 war and buried in an unmarked mass grave.
Melman said that the Israeli military commander who participated in that operation, Zain Bloch, now 90, informed him of the incident because he was the commander of the Nahshun division that participated in that battle.
“After 55 years of intense censorship, I can reveal that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive and buried in a mass grave by the Israeli army,” he wrote on Twitter. He wrote on his Twitter.
He noted that not marking the cemetery and not identifying the Egyptian soldiers, according to him, is a violation of the laws of war.
Breaking News 1/7: After 55 years of intense censorship, I can reveal that at least 20 Egyptian soldiers were burned alive by the Israeli army and buried in a mass grave, unmarked and unidentified, in violation of the laws of war, in Latron. are buried It happened in the Six Day War>>> pic.twitter.com/mMe3LGIAoz
– Yossi Melman (@yossi_melman) July 7, 2022
Harrah attempted to reach an IDF spokesperson for comment by phone, but no response was received at the time of publication.
Millman added: “Days before the war, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser signed a defense agreement with King Hussein of Jordan. Egypt deployed two commando battalions in the West Bank near the Latron region… Their mission was to attack Israel and It was the capture of Lida, the area and nearby military airports.
He said: “After the exchange of fire with the soldiers of the Israeli army and the members of Kibbutz Nehshon, some of the Egyptian forces escaped, some were captured and some fought bravely. At one point, the Israeli army set fire to thousands of hectares of uncultivated land by firing mortar shells. Wild bush in summer. dry”.
He continued: At least 20 Egyptian soldiers were killed in the bush fire, the fire spread quickly in the hot and dry bushes and they had no chance to escape. He dug a hole and pushed the Egyptian corpses and covered them with dirt.
Bloch, who was one of the Nehshon commanders, and others “watched in horror as the soldiers looted their personal belongings and left the mass grave unmarked,” Melman noted.
In the 1967 war, the second in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab forces, of which the Egyptian army was a major part, were defeated.
Melman quotes Bloch as saying after the military censorship was lifted: “Silence suits everyone. The few who knew didn’t want to talk about it. We were ashamed. But above all, this decision of the IDF among It was from the war.” He noted that official unclassified military documents exclude the Latron disaster.
Melman says that “both sides in the Arab-Israeli conflict committed war crimes” and added: “True democracy must face its past.”
Source: Lebanon Debate
