Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: After 40 years, a historian looks at IDF records

Upon deciding to open military archives which had been closed for forty years (1948-1988), Israel choose a professional historian, Benny Morris, to have the 'first look' at the records. In Morris' first book on this topic, he found the alleged Jewish 'purity of arms' was a myth. Morris, using Israeli Defense Force (IDF) records, confirmed that a massacre occurred at Deir Yassin, which included rapes and mutilations. The ethnic cleansing of Lydda, ordered by Ben Gurion, is documented, as is the Lydda Death march, which resulted in up to 350 civilian dead. If a Palestinian village did not surrender immediately, the IDF would execute some POW's and civilians, but would allow some survivors to escape, so that they could spread the word of IDF war crimes. Over 400 Palestinian villages were depopulated in 1948.