Balad al-Shaykh massacre


was a Palestinian Arab village that suffered a massacre during the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine.

Incident

On the night of December 31, 1947, to January 1, 1948, the Palmach, an arm of the Haganah, attacked the town of Balad al-Shaykh while the residents were asleep, firing from the slopes of Mount Carmel. The attack was perpetrated in retaliation for the killing of 39 Jews during the Haifa Oil Refinery massacre the day before, 30 December 1947, which itself was triggered by the attack of the Zionist paramilitary group, the Irgun, who threw a number of grenades at a crowd of 100 Arab day laborers who had gathered outside the main gate of the British-owned Haifa Oil refinery looking for work, resulting in 6 deaths and 42 wounded. The Jewish agency condemned the Irgun for the "act of madness" that preceded the killing of Jewish workers at the Haifa oil refinery but at the same time authorized the raid on Balad al-Shaykh.
Israeli historian Benny Morris writes:
A contemporary report in The Times refers to 17 Arab dead, including one woman, and thirty-three injured, among them eight women and nine children. The Jewish casualties were three dead and two injured.
During the same day twelve Jews and four Arabs were injured in several cases of bomb throwing and shooting in Haifa.

Legacy

The land of the former village is today part of the Israeli town of Nesher.