The Hula massacre took place between 31 October and 1 November 1948. Hula is a village in Lebanon 3 km west of KibbutzManara, not far from the Litani River. It was captured on October 24 by the Carmeli Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces without any resistance. The women and children were expelled, most of the men aged between 15 and 60 were shot. In total between 35 and 58 men were executed in a house which was later blown upon top of them. Two officers were responsible for the massacre. One of them, first lieutenant Shmuel Lahis, who served as Company Commander, put on trial in an Israeli military court where he was given a seven-year sentence later reduced on appeal to one year, and was released in 1950. He received a retrospective presidential amnesty in 1955. He became a lawyer, and later Director General of the Jewish Agency. Many Israelis opposed to this appointing because of his involvement in the Hula massacre. At his trial, Lahis put forth the defence that the crime had been committed outside the borders of Israel. The military court rejected this defence but gave Lahis a postponement so that he could appeal this point to the High Court of Justice. In the same HCJ case, the Israeli government argued that the HCJ did not have the right to interpret military law. In February 1949, the HCJ rejected both the claim of Lahis and the claim of the government, allowing the trial to continue.
At the time of Lahis' nomination to head the Jewish Agency, Lahis's immediate superior in the Carmeli Brigade, Dov Yermiya, wrote to Jewish Agency Chairman Arie Dulzin about Lahis' role in the 1948 massacre. After Lahis' appointment in the role, the controversy was reported in the Israeli media and caused debate in the Knesset. Yermiya's letter was later published in the newspaper Al Hamishmar. After the Dulzin found out Lahis's actions he detained him and reported the crime to the brigade and sent a new officer to command the company. Dulzin's response to Yermiya's letter said that Lahis' past had been known to the Jewish Agency since 1961. It also revealed that when Lahis had applied to be registered as a lawyer in 1955 the matter had been examined by the Israeli Legal Council. It was decided that the act which was the reason for Lahis' trial at the military courts was "not an act that carries with it a stigma".
