מתוך עדותו של אריאל שרון שפקד על
הפעולה: Sharon tells the background of this raid in his own words, writing on pages 85 and 86 of Warrior, “At times the successes were mixed with tragedy and sometimes controversy, as happened at the village of Kibbiya in mid-October. The raid on Kibbiya was mounted in response to a particularly horrendous incident at the town of Yehud, where terrorists murdered a young mother named Susan Kanias and her two infants, one and three years old, while they were asleep. The police investigation indicated that the killers had infiltrated from the direction of Kibbiya, a Palestinian village near the border . . . . “The paratroop officer and I were informed that General Headquarters had decided to carry out a retaliatory operation against Kibbiya . . . . “This would be the first major Israeli reaction to Arab terrorism. . . .” On page 88, Sharon continues the story: “The orders were clear. Kibbiya was to be a lesson. I was to inflict as many casualties as I could on the Arab home guard and on whatever Jordanian army reinforcements showed up. I was also to blow up every major building in the town. A political decision had been made at the highest level.” In Sharon’s book he excuses himself, claiming he did not know there were people in the houses. He says on pages 89, 90, “According to the radio, sixty-nine people had been killed, mostly civilians and many of them women and children. I couldn’t believe my ears. As I went back over each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years Israeli reprisal raids had never succeeded in doing more than blowing up a few outlying buildings, if that. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their houses rather than runn ing away. In those big stone houses where three generations of a family might live together, some could easily have hidden in the cellars and back rooms, keeping quiet when the paratroopers went in to check and yell out a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened.”