President Herzog asks for forgiveness at Kafr Qasim Memorial for Arab victims of 1956 massacre

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Israel’s President Isaac Herzog visited Kafr Qasim on Friday and addressed the memorial for the victims of the Kafr Qasim Massacre, during which he asked for forgiveness on behalf of the State of Israel.

President Isaac Herzog at Kafr Qasim. (Amos Ben-Gershom/GPO)

The massacre of inhabitants of the Arab-Israeli village of Kafr Qasim occurred on October 29, 1956, on the first day of the Operation Kadesh, the Sinai Campaign. Israel Border Policemen killed 49 Arab civilians returning from work during a curfew of which they were unaware, imposed earlier in the day on the eve of the campaign.

Herzog is the second Israeli president to attend the annual memorial.

The incident is taught in the IDF as an explicit case of an illegal order given by an officer, one which must be disobeyed, the famous “black flag” flying over the illegal given order.

“I am standing here before you today with my head bowed and my heart pained, on the 65^th anniversary of one of the saddest events in the history of our country. An event whose gravity has never been in question. For it is clear to all of us: the killing and injury of innocents are absolutely forbidden. They must remain beyond all political arguments!” he declared.

“I bow my head before the memory of the forty-nine victims. I bow my head before you, their families, and before the inhabitants of Kafr Qasim throughout the ages, and on behalf of myself and the State of Israel, I ask for forgiveness,” he said.

“On this day, sixty-five years after the catastrophe, we shall pray and hope that the memory of the victims will stay with us as a lesson and a compass and that from the depths of the pain we shall sprout forth together with a shared future, one full of hope,” he concluded.

TPS