The Israeli Confessions

Biro, the commander, does not deny the order given to attack the truck. He does not now even deny that the shooting was one-sided, but it is difficult to win over the impression that this changes the picture as far as he is concerned. He simply does not understand even now how they managed to load so many people in one truck.”I have developed a feeling of keeping the finger on the trigger”

Biro:

“When I shot someone and he is hit, I feel it in my hand, between the fingers. But that time a strange thing happened. As soon as I gave the order to fire, I myself started shooting from a Carl Gustav rifle I had taken as booty at the Mitla. I started emptying clips into the people on the truck and for some reason I felt as though I hit a person with each bullet I fired, but still, they remained standing as though the bullets had gone in one side and left through the other without leaving holes in their stomachs. I was stunned. That was a big mystery to me. Only later, when I shouted to halt fire and went over to the truck, I understood what had happened. The truck was so crowded that the people inside did not have room to fall. Those who died; died standing up.”

Shaul Ziv claims that the affair of the truck at Ras Sudar did not end there. In fact, it did not even really begin.

Ziv:

“Sometimes, in the kibbutz, you can see a wagon loaded with cans of milk being dragged from the barn, after the day’s milking, and if a can overturns and spills, the whole wagon begins to drip from all sides, within seconds. I remembered that when I stood there, next to the Fedayin truck after the attack. It was simply horrifying. Blood ran from every crevice in the truck in huge amounts. When the back door was opened, the bodies tumbled out one on top of the other, all at once. I estimate that there were 40-50 people there. It was difficult to count in the mess of flesh that formed there. They fell on each other, at the side of the road, next to the truck. All or most of them were dressed in white jellabas, which were not so white by then. I saw enough shocking scenes when I commanded the naval commando, but this was especially terrible. Even if I had seen worse things in my lifetime, that case was especially enraging because I could not bear the thought that we shot people without a battle. What was more terrible was that after we removed the dead bodies from the truck we found that there were about 20 people still living. Most of them were bleeding. One had a hole in the arm, another in the jaw but they were alive. I have no idea how they survived after that barrage of fire. Perhaps it was due to the huge mass of people in the truck who, with their bodies absorbing one bullet after another, shielded those who managed to push back into the center. I don’t know. In any case, I remember clearly that when the truck was emptied of the bodies, our guys tied the hands of those who were still alive. At that time I did not know what was going to be done with them and I was already concerned with entirely different matters. I think that I received an order to move to Sharm al-Sheikh and was hurrying to get my gear in order. Suddenly I saw our storage manager, H., who was never considered to be a big hero, and K., Biro’s deputy, running towards the truck, climbing into the driver’s compartment and starting to fire barrages inside. I froze. They did not stop for a second, they did not take a rest to change clips in their guns. They fired and fired and fired until their arms got tired. I do not remember whether any other guy joined them in that massacre, but I clearly remember the two of them standing in the driver’s compartment and pounding the 20 prisoners tied in the truck. A bullet didn’t hit one of the prisoners right, it went directly into the main artery in the neck and a fountain of blood spewed on their clothes, drenching them. I thought that it would never end. “

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