1929 Hebron massacre
The massacre was perpetrated by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.The massacre formed part of the 1929 Palestine riots, in which a total of 133 Jews and 110 Arabs were killed, the majority of the latter by British police and military,[5] and brought the centuries-old Jewish presence in Hebron to an end.[10][11] The Jewish community was divided between relatively recent European (Ashkenazi)[8] immigrants and an older population of descendants of Sephardic Jews who had inhabited the town for eight hundred years.The progressive trends of the new Western arrivals in Palestine, represented by both foreign powers and modernising Jewish philanthropists and organisations, were a different matter altogether.Though Jews had suffered numerous vexations in the past, and this hostility was to take an anti-Zionist turn after the Balfour Declaration,[16] a peaceful relationship existed between both communities.[12] Rumours, apparently part of an organized campaign, spread that Jewish youths had also attacked Arabs and had cursed Muhammad; Husseini's activists handed out fliers that appeared to have been pre-published appealing, with inflammatory religious rhetoric, to Muslims to avenge "the honor of Islam.The rioting soon spread to the Jewish commercial area of town[23][24] and the next day, August 17, a young Jew was stabbed to death.On the evening of Thursday, August 22 and early the next morning, Arab villagers armed with sticks and knives gathered at the Haram al-Sharif.[19][26] During the morning prayers, a nationalist preacher exhorted the Muslim faithful to fight against the Jews until the last drop of blood; gunshots were heard coming from the compound to excite the crowd.[26] Inflamed by rumors that Jews were planning to attack al-Aqsa,[citation needed] Arabs left the compound and were spoken to by Husseini, who was instructed by the British authorities to calm the crowd, but they became more excited.On August 20, a group travelled to Hebron in the middle of the night and met with a Jewish community leader, Eliezer Dan Slonim.The group was soon discovered and Police Superintendent Raymond Cafferata, an officer recruited from the Black and Tans,[30] ordered them to return to Jerusalem.The Hebron police were greatly relieved, on the morning of the 24th, to note that a contingent of armed Arab locals had departed the city to lend strength to forces in Jerusalem.[12] He then arranged for a mounted patrol to be sent to the Jewish quarter, where he encountered Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Slonim who asked for police protection after Jews had been attacked with stones.[12] At about 8.30 am Saturday morning, the first attacks began to be launched against houses where Jews resided,[10] after a crowd of Arabs armed with staves, axes and knives appeared in the streets.Cafferata appeared on the scene, gave orders to his constables to fire on the crowd and personally shot dead two of the attacking Arabs.[13] Gershon Ben-Zion, for example, the Beit Hadassah Clinic pharmacist, a cripple who had served both Jews and Arabs for 4 decades, was killed together with his family: his daughter was raped and then murdered.[12] After the massacre, Cafferata testified:[12][29] On hearing screams in a room, I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword.Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a[n Arab] police constable named Issa Sheriff from Jaffa.I got into the room and shot him.Rabbi Jacob Joseph Slonim, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Hebron, stated that after his Arab acquaintances had informed him that local hooligans intended to attack the talmudical academy, he had gone to ask for protection from District Officer Abdullah Kardus, but was denied an audience with him.Later on after being attacked in the street, he had approached the chief of police, but Cafferata refused to take any measures, telling him that "the Jews deserve it, you are the cause of all troubles."The massacre lasted an hour and a half, and only after it had died down, did the police take action, firing shots into the air, whereupon the crowds immediately dispersed.[34] According to one account, Torah scrolls in casings of silver and gold were looted from the synagogues and manuscripts of great antiquity were pilfered from the library of Rabbi Judah Bibas.[40] Aharon Reuven Bernzweig related that an Arab named Haj Eissa El Kourdieh saved a group of 33 Jews after he insisted they hide in his cellar.[42] According to Malka Slonim, an aged Arab called Abu Shaker defended them:[43] We sat silently in the sealed house and Abu-Shaker reported what was happening ...[44] Eighteen days after the massacre, the Jewish leadership requested that bodies be exhumed to ascertain whether deliberate mutilation had taken place.[50] On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned:[citation needed] the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evildoers... murders perpetrated upon defenceless members of the Jewish population... accompanied by acts of unspeakable savagery.Sheik Taleb Markah was charged with being one of the chief instigators of the Hebron massacre.The Agency did not agree to the idea of reconstituting a mixed community, but rather pressed for the establishment of a Jewish fortress wholly distinct from the Arab quarters of Hebron.Residents, terrified that Israeli soldiers might massacre them in retaliation for the events of 1929, waved white flags from their homes and voluntarily turned in their weapons.[60] In the metanarrative of Zionism, according to Michelle Campos, the event became 'a central symbol of Jewish persecution at the hands of bloodthirsty Arabs'[61] and was 'engraved in the national psyche of Israeli Jews', particularly those who settled in Hebron after 1967.
1929 Palestine riotsSynagogue of Abrahamold Jewish cemeteryHebronMandatory PalestineAl-AqsaShaw CommissionHope Simpson EnquiryPassfield white paperIntercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine1920 Nebi Musa riotsBattle of Tel HaiJaffa riots1933 Palestine riotsArab RevoltSpillover of WWIIJewish insurgencythe Saison1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory PalestineTemple MountJews in Hebron1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestinecenturies-old Jewish presence in HebronHaganahIsrael Defense ForcesTomb of the PatriarchsHebron YeshivaAshkenaziSephardicBalfour Declarationanti-ZionistWestern WallHajj Amin al-HusseiniJewish national flagMuhammadsermonSupreme Muslim CouncilbeadleOld City of JerusalemMea ShearimBlack and TansPalestine Police ForcesextonmukhtarsghettoAnglo-Palestine BankSephardiMaghrebianAvraham Avinu SynagogueBenny MorrisThe Baltimore Newsmass gravesThe TimesJewish Agencydisturbances of 19361948 Palestine warSix-Day WarIsraelWest BankJordansettlement programPalestinian AuthorityKiryat ArbaZionismHillel CohenMizrahi JewsHaaretzstreimelsList of killings and massacres in Mandatory Palestine1920 Palestine riots1938 Tiberias massacreShaw ReportBeit HaShalomPalestinian political violenceIsraeli–Palestinian conflict in HebronFarhudHistory of the Jews in HebronWayback MachineSegev, TomLa Question de PalestineBell, J. BowyerGilbert, MartinBoard of Deputies of British JewsJewish Virtual LibraryJewish Telegraphic AgencyDavid T. ZabeckiOren, MichaelMatthew LevittAngelfireLaurens, HenryMorris, BennyRubinstein, AmnonZeitlin, SolomonIsraeli–Palestinian conflictIsraelisIsrael PoliceMossadShabak (Shin Bet)PalestiniansAll-Palestine ProtectoratePalestine Liberation Organizational-Aqsa BrigadesChildrenJenin BrigadesLions' DenPFLP-GCSabireen MovementSons of ZouariArab LeagueHezbollahMoshe ArensAmi AyalonEhud BarakDavid Ben-GurionNaftali BennettMenachem BeginMeir DaganMoshe DayanAvi DichterYuval DiskinBenny GantzEfraim HalevyDan HalutzTzipi LivniGolda MeirShaul Mofaz