The deaths of July 12 are regarded in the Arab world and by several historians as a massacre. Walid Khalidi calls it "an orgy of indiscriminate killing."Walid Khalidi, Introduction to Spiro Munayyer's "The Fall of Lydda" , Journal of Palestine Studies (1998), Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 80-98. Morris writes that the "jittery Palmahniks massacr[ed] detainees in a mosque compound."Benny Morris (2008), p.290. According to Gelber, it was a "bloodier massacre" than at Deir Yassin.Yoav Gelber. Palestine 1948, Sussex Academic Press, 2001, pp. 162, 318. Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela write that it was "an intense battle where the demarcation between civilians, irregular combatants and regular army units hardly existed."Alon Kadish and Avraham Sela (2005) "Myths and historiography of the 1948 Palestine War revisited: the case of Lydda," The Middle East Journal, 22 September 2005.
