1929 Hebron massacre
Encyclopedia
The Hebron massacre refers to the killing
of sixty-seven Jews
on 23 and 24 August 1929 in Hebron
, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of Muslim
holy places. This massacre
, together with that of Safed
, sent shock waves through Jewish communities in Palestine and across the world.
67 Jews were killed and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; nineteen local Arab families saved 435 Jews by hiding them in their houses at great risk to themselves. The survivors were evacuated from Hebron by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all left again during 1936–1939. It also led to the re-organization and development of the Jewish paramilitary organization, the Haganah
, which later became the nucleus of the Israel Defense Forces
.
, and mentioned repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible
. (Hebron was a place of significance for Muslims too, as the prophet Abraham, recognized by all "Abrahamic" faiths, was laid to rest there.) It is the location of the Cave of Machpelah, holding the Tomb of the Patriarchs of the Israelites, where Abraham
, the first Patriarch of the Jews (father and grandfather to Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob, respectively), was buried, and where David
was anointed King of Israel, reigning there until his capture of Jerusalem. In 1929, the Jewish Sephardic/Mizrachi
community had been living in Hebron continuously for over 800 years under various imperial powers, and the Jewish Ashkenazi community had roots there that went back at least a century.
Despite growing tensions between the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, an otherwise peaceful relationship existed between the Jewish and Arab communities of Hebron, notwithstanding a strong tradition of hostility to Jews. In one such period the Jewish community registered several complaints with the British police, saying that not enough was being done to protect them. The Jews attributed some of the trouble to the Arab nationalist Muslim-Christian Association's activities, which included the spread of anti-Jewish songs and other incitement to hatred and violence.
On 15 August 1929, several hundred members of Joseph Klausner
's Pro-Wailing Wall Committee
, among them members of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism
movement Betar
youth organisation, under the leadership of Jeremiah Halpern
, assembled at the Western Wall
in Jerusalem shouting "the Wall is ours". They raised the Jewish national flag
and sang the song "Hatikvah
" ("The Hope"), which later became the Israeli national anthem. The authorities had been notified of the march in advance and provided a heavy police escort in a bid to prevent any incidents. Rumours spread that the youths had attacked local residents and had cursed the name of Muhammad
. In response the day after the Supreme Muslim Council
marched to the Wall and proceeded to beat Jewish worshippers and burn prayer books and returned to attack the next day. The riots continued, and the next day a young Sephardic Jew was stabbed in the Bukharan Quarter
, and died the following day. His funeral was turned into a political demonstration, and was suppressed by the same force that had been employed in the initial incident. A late-night meeting initiated the following day by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni
, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.
On August 20, 1929, after Arab attacks in Jerusalem, Haganah
leaders proposed to intervene and provide defense for the 750 Jews of the Yishuv
in Hebron
, or to help them evacuate. However, the leaders of the Hebron community declined these offers, insisting that they trusted the A'yan (Arab notables) to protect them.
The following Friday, 23 August, inflamed by rumors that Jews were planning to attack al-Aqsa Mosque
, Arabs started to attack Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. The rumors and subsequent violence quickly spread to other parts of British Mandate of Palestine, with the murders occurring in Hebron and Safed
. Other assaults took place in Motza
, Kfar Uriyah, and Tel Aviv
.
, had at his command 18 mounted policemen and 15 on foot, of whom 11 were elderly men in poor physical condition. On the early afternoon of Friday, August 23, upon hearing from car-drivers of fighting in Jerusalem, Cafferata deployed special pickets to report any unusual movement from the city and issued a request to headquarters for reinforcements. Intending to travel to Jerusalem, a crowd of 700 gathered at the city's central bus station, and one man gave a speech. Cafferata addressed the crowd, trying to calm them by denying anything happened in Jerusalem. He then took eight mounted officers to patrol the Jewish homes, where he encountered the city's Rabbi, Yaakov Yosef Slonim Dwek. The Rabbi asked him for protection, while he came under a hail of stones from an Arab crowd. Cafferata told Rabbi Dwek and other Jews to return to their homes and stay there. After the Rabbi had obliged, Cafferata tried to disperse the crowd using clubs.
At 4:00 pm, an Arab crowd gathered outside the Hebron Yeshiva and threw stones through the windows. Only two people were inside, a student and the sexton
. Upon being hit, the student tried to leave, only to find himself facing the Arab crowd, who grabbed him and stabbed him to death; the sexton survived by hiding in a well. Some hours later a group of mukhtar
s came to Cafferata. Cafferata attempted to get the mukhtars to assume responsibility for law and order, and asked for reinforcements. Some hours later a group of regional mukhtars came to Cafferata, and they relayed that the Mufti had told them to take action or be fined due to the 'Jewish slaughter of Arabs' in Jerusalem. Raymond Cafferata promised that all was well and bid them return to their villages and stay there. He slept in his office that night.
Early the following Saturday morning, a crowd armed with staves and axes appeared in the streets and attacked and killed two Jewish boys, one stoned to death and the other stabbed. Cafferata shot two of the attacking Arabs and emptied his revolver into the crowd, but his saddle slipped and he fell to the ground, whereupon the crowd began attacking every Jewish house. Cafferata instructed his men to fetch rifles and to open fire, which they did, dispersing a portion of the crowd, but some of the remaining rioters, shouting "on to the Ghetto
", managed to break through the pickets. Cafferata continued shooting, hitting many of the rioters, but his efforts were in vain; repeated calls for reinforcements from Jerusalem, Jaffa and Gaza did not produce help in time. Both Jewish and Arab businesses in the Bazaar
were looted. A consignment of police was sent from Jerusalem but was delayed by other violence on the way to Hebron and arrived hours too late. This later became the source of considerable acrimony.
Cafferata testified to the Commission of Enquiry in Jerusalem on 7 November. The Times
reported Cafferata's evidence to the Commission that "until the arrival of British police it was impossible to do more than keep the living Jews in the hospital safe and the streets clear [because he] was the only British officer or man in Hebron, a town of 20,000".
Many Jews (435) survived by hiding in their Arab neighbors' houses, while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Romano on the outskirts of the city. The surviving Jews were later evacuated to Jerusalem. One third of the killed were students of the Hebron yeshiva
. After the massacre, the remainder of the yeshiva was also moved to Jerusalem.
On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned:-
men, but there were also a dozen women and three children under the age of three. Seven of the victims were yeshiva
students from the United States and Canada. Dozens of people were wounded, including many women and children. Several cases of rape, mutilation and torture were reported in the Jewish press. These claims were contested by Arab spokesmen. When the bodies were exhumed no conclusions could be made one way or another.
Altogether 195 Arab
s and 34 Jews were sentenced by the courts for crimes related to the 1929 riots. Death sentences were handed down to 17 Arabs and 2 Jews, but these were later commuted to long prison terms except in the case of 3 Arabs who were hanged. Large fines were imposed on 22 Arab villages or urban neighborhoods. The fine imposed on Hebron was 14,000 pounds. Financial compensation totaling about 200,000 pounds was paid to persons who lost family members or property.
Some Hebron Arabs, amongst whom the President of Hebron's Chamber of Commerce, Ahmad Rashid al-Hirbawi, favoured the return of Jews to the town. 160 Jews did return in the spring of 1931 with Rabbi Chaim Bagaio, but were evacuated, except for one family, again during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. The last family left in 1947. As of 2008, hundreds of Jews live in Hebron again
.
Descendants of the survivors are divided, with some claiming they wish to return, but only when Arab and Jewish residents can find a way to live together peacfully. Other survivors and descendants of survivors support the new Jewish community in Hebron.
Baruch Katinke, a member of the Haganah
tells about his encounter with Eliezer Dan before the massacre:
After the first victim was killed on Friday, 40 people assembled in Dan's house, confident that because of his influence, no harm would come. On Saturday, the rioters approached the Rabbi and offered him a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva
students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community. Rabbi Slonim Dwek refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot, along with one of his wives and 4-year-old son (another son, 3 years old, survived). In the end, twelve Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered.
Nineteen local Arab families saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the Jews. Zmira Mani wrote of an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews whom they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano.
newspaper in 1929. In 1999 Gevas released a film containing testimonies of 13 survivors that she and her husband Dan had managed to track down from the list in "Sefer Hebron" ("The Book of Hebron"). Originally intended to document the story of the Arab who had saved Gevas's mother from other Arabs, it became also an account of the atrocities of the massacre itself. These survivors (most of whom no longer live in Israel) are mixed as to whether they can forgive.
In the film, "What I Saw in Hebron" the survivors – now very elderly – describe pre-massacre Hebron as a kind of paradise surrounded by vineyards, where Sephardic Jews and Arabs lived in idyllic coexistence. The well-established Ashkenazi residents were also treated well – but the Arabs' anger was roused by followers of the Jerusalem Mufti as well as local chapters of the (Arab) Muslim-Christian Societies.
According to Asher Meshorer (Zemira Mani's son and Noit Geva's father), his aunt (Zemira Mani's sister - who was not present in Hebron during the massacre) had told him that the Arabs from the villages essentially wanted to kill only the new Ashkenazim. According to her, there was an alienated Jewish community that wore streimels
, unlike the Sephardi community, which was deeply rooted, speaking Arabic and dressing like Arab residents.
When the riots started, representatives of the Arabs came to the chief Hebron Rabbi, Rabbi Slonim Dwek, with a proposal – if he allowed them to kill 70 students from the yeshiva in Hebron, they would not kill the other Ashkenazim or the Sephardim. Rabbi Slonim Dwek told them, "We Jews are all one people." He was the first person to be killed in the riots, as he held his eldest son, 4 years old in his hands, who was also killed.
The Mani family was saved by an Arab neighbour, Abu 'Id Zeitun, who was accompanied by his brother and son. Nowadays (in 1999), according to Abu 'Id Zeitun, the house in which the Jews were hidden – his father's house - had been confiscated by the IDF
, and today it houses a kindergarten for the settlers.
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
of sixty-seven Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
on 23 and 24 August 1929 in Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were massacring Arabs in Jerusalem and seizing control of Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
holy places. This massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
, together with that of Safed
1929 Safed massacre
The 1929 Safed pogrom took place on 29 August during the 1929 Palestine riots. Eighteen Jews were killed and eighty wounded. The main Jewish street was looted and burned...
, sent shock waves through Jewish communities in Palestine and across the world.
67 Jews were killed and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; nineteen local Arab families saved 435 Jews by hiding them in their houses at great risk to themselves. The survivors were evacuated from Hebron by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all left again during 1936–1939. It also led to the re-organization and development of the Jewish paramilitary organization, the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
, which later became the nucleus of the Israel Defense Forces
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
.
Background
Hebron, located 30 km south of Jerusalem, is the second holiest site in Judaism, and one of the Jewish Four Holy CitiesFour Holy Cities
The Four Holy Cities , is the collective term in Jewish tradition applied to the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed: "Since the sixteenth century the holiness of Palestine, especially for burial, has been almost wholly transferred to four cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and...
, and mentioned repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
. (Hebron was a place of significance for Muslims too, as the prophet Abraham, recognized by all "Abrahamic" faiths, was laid to rest there.) It is the location of the Cave of Machpelah, holding the Tomb of the Patriarchs of the Israelites, where Abraham
Abraham
Abraham , whose birth name was Abram, is the eponym of the Abrahamic religions, among which are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...
, the first Patriarch of the Jews (father and grandfather to Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob, respectively), was buried, and where David
David
David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...
was anointed King of Israel, reigning there until his capture of Jerusalem. In 1929, the Jewish Sephardic/Mizrachi
Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews or Mizrahiyim, , also referred to as Adot HaMizrach are Jews descended from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus...
community had been living in Hebron continuously for over 800 years under various imperial powers, and the Jewish Ashkenazi community had roots there that went back at least a century.
Despite growing tensions between the Arab and Jewish communities of Palestine following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, an otherwise peaceful relationship existed between the Jewish and Arab communities of Hebron, notwithstanding a strong tradition of hostility to Jews. In one such period the Jewish community registered several complaints with the British police, saying that not enough was being done to protect them. The Jews attributed some of the trouble to the Arab nationalist Muslim-Christian Association's activities, which included the spread of anti-Jewish songs and other incitement to hatred and violence.
On 15 August 1929, several hundred members of Joseph Klausner
Joseph Klausner
Joseph Gedaliah Klausner , , was a Jewish historian and professor of Hebrew Literature. He was the chief redactor of The Hebrew Encyclopedia...
's Pro-Wailing Wall Committee
Pro-Wailing Wall Committee
The Pro–Wailing Wall Committee was established in Palestine on 24 July 1929, by Joseph Klausner, Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University, to promote Jewish rights at the Western Wall....
, among them members of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...
movement Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...
youth organisation, under the leadership of Jeremiah Halpern
Jeremiah Halpern
Captain Jeremiah Halpern was a Revisionist Zionist leader in Palestine who first came to prominence when he served as aide de camp to Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s when the latter was head of the Haganah in Jerusalem.Halpern, a certified ship's captain, was known as Rav...
, assembled at the Western Wall
Western Wall
The Western Wall, Wailing Wall or Kotel is located in the Old City of Jerusalem at the foot of the western side of the Temple Mount...
in Jerusalem shouting "the Wall is ours". They raised the Jewish national flag
Flag of Israel
The flag of Israel was adopted on October 28, 1948, five months after the country's establishment. It depicts a blue Star of David on a white background, between two horizontal blue stripes...
and sang the song "Hatikvah
Hatikvah
"Hatikvah" is the national anthem of Israel. The anthem was written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew from Zolochiv , who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s....
" ("The Hope"), which later became the Israeli national anthem. The authorities had been notified of the march in advance and provided a heavy police escort in a bid to prevent any incidents. Rumours spread that the youths had attacked local residents and had cursed the name of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
. In response the day after the Supreme Muslim Council
Supreme Muslim Council
The Supreme Muslim Council was the highest body in charge of Muslim community affairs in Mandate Palestine under British control. It was established to create an advisory body composed of Muslims and Christians with whom the High Commissioner could consult...
marched to the Wall and proceeded to beat Jewish worshippers and burn prayer books and returned to attack the next day. The riots continued, and the next day a young Sephardic Jew was stabbed in the Bukharan Quarter
Bukharan Jews
Bukharan Jews, also Bukharian Jews or Bukhari Jews, or яҳудиёни Бухоро Yahūdieni Bukhoro , Bukhori Hebrew Script: יהודיאני בוכאראי and יהודיאני בוכארי), also called the Binai Israel, are Jews from Central Asia who speak Bukhori, a dialect of the Tajik-Persian language...
, and died the following day. His funeral was turned into a political demonstration, and was suppressed by the same force that had been employed in the initial incident. A late-night meeting initiated the following day by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni
Jamal al-Husayni
Jamal al-Husayni , , was born in Jerusalem and was a member of the Husayni family.Husayni served as Secretary of the Palestinian Arab Action Committee and the Muslim Supreme Council. He was founder and chairman of the Palestine Arab Party and its delegate to the Arab Higher Committee, led by his...
, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was a historian, Labor Zionist leader, the second and longest-serving President of Israel.-Biography:...
were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.
On August 20, 1929, after Arab attacks in Jerusalem, Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
leaders proposed to intervene and provide defense for the 750 Jews of the Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
in Hebron
Hebron
Hebron , is located in the southern West Bank, south of Jerusalem. Nestled in the Judean Mountains, it lies 930 meters above sea level. It is the largest city in the West Bank and home to around 165,000 Palestinians, and over 500 Jewish settlers concentrated in and around the old quarter...
, or to help them evacuate. However, the leaders of the Hebron community declined these offers, insisting that they trusted the A'yan (Arab notables) to protect them.
The following Friday, 23 August, inflamed by rumors that Jews were planning to attack al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa Mosque also known as al-Aqsa, is the third holiest site in Sunni Islam and is located in the Old City of Jerusalem...
, Arabs started to attack Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. The rumors and subsequent violence quickly spread to other parts of British Mandate of Palestine, with the murders occurring in Hebron and Safed
Safed
Safed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
. Other assaults took place in Motza
Motza
Motza ת is a neighbourhood in the western edge of Jerusalem, Israel, located 600 metres above sea level. In the Judean Hills, surrounded by forest, it is a relatively isolated place connected to Jerusalem by the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and the winding mountain road to Har Nof...
, Kfar Uriyah, and Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
.
Hebron massacre
All officials in the Hebron civil administration were Arabs. Of its 40 policemen, only one was Jewish. Raymond Cafferata, the Assistant District Superintendent of the Palestine Police ForcePalestine Police Force
The Palestine Police Force was a British colonial police service established in the British Mandate for Palestine on 1 July 1920, when High Commissioner Herbert Samuel's civil administration took over responsibility for security from General Allenby's Occupied Enemy Territory Administration...
, had at his command 18 mounted policemen and 15 on foot, of whom 11 were elderly men in poor physical condition. On the early afternoon of Friday, August 23, upon hearing from car-drivers of fighting in Jerusalem, Cafferata deployed special pickets to report any unusual movement from the city and issued a request to headquarters for reinforcements. Intending to travel to Jerusalem, a crowd of 700 gathered at the city's central bus station, and one man gave a speech. Cafferata addressed the crowd, trying to calm them by denying anything happened in Jerusalem. He then took eight mounted officers to patrol the Jewish homes, where he encountered the city's Rabbi, Yaakov Yosef Slonim Dwek. The Rabbi asked him for protection, while he came under a hail of stones from an Arab crowd. Cafferata told Rabbi Dwek and other Jews to return to their homes and stay there. After the Rabbi had obliged, Cafferata tried to disperse the crowd using clubs.
At 4:00 pm, an Arab crowd gathered outside the Hebron Yeshiva and threw stones through the windows. Only two people were inside, a student and the sexton
Sexton (office)
A sexton is a church, congregation or synagogue officer charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard. In smaller places of worship, this office is often combined with that of verger...
. Upon being hit, the student tried to leave, only to find himself facing the Arab crowd, who grabbed him and stabbed him to death; the sexton survived by hiding in a well. Some hours later a group of mukhtar
Mukhtar
Mukhtar meaning "chosen" in Arabic, refers to the head of a village or mahalle in many Arab countries as well as in Turkey and Cyprus. The name refers to the fact that mukhtars are usually selected by some consensual or participatory method, often involving an election. Mukhtar is also a common...
s came to Cafferata. Cafferata attempted to get the mukhtars to assume responsibility for law and order, and asked for reinforcements. Some hours later a group of regional mukhtars came to Cafferata, and they relayed that the Mufti had told them to take action or be fined due to the 'Jewish slaughter of Arabs' in Jerusalem. Raymond Cafferata promised that all was well and bid them return to their villages and stay there. He slept in his office that night.
Early the following Saturday morning, a crowd armed with staves and axes appeared in the streets and attacked and killed two Jewish boys, one stoned to death and the other stabbed. Cafferata shot two of the attacking Arabs and emptied his revolver into the crowd, but his saddle slipped and he fell to the ground, whereupon the crowd began attacking every Jewish house. Cafferata instructed his men to fetch rifles and to open fire, which they did, dispersing a portion of the crowd, but some of the remaining rioters, shouting "on to the Ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
", managed to break through the pickets. Cafferata continued shooting, hitting many of the rioters, but his efforts were in vain; repeated calls for reinforcements from Jerusalem, Jaffa and Gaza did not produce help in time. Both Jewish and Arab businesses in the Bazaar
Bazaar
A bazaar , Cypriot Greek: pantopoula) is a permanent merchandising area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the "network of merchants, bankers and craftsmen" who work that area...
were looted. A consignment of police was sent from Jerusalem but was delayed by other violence on the way to Hebron and arrived hours too late. This later became the source of considerable acrimony.
Cafferata testified to the Commission of Enquiry in Jerusalem on 7 November. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
reported Cafferata's evidence to the Commission that "until the arrival of British police it was impossible to do more than keep the living Jews in the hospital safe and the streets clear [because he] was the only British officer or man in Hebron, a town of 20,000".
Many Jews (435) survived by hiding in their Arab neighbors' houses, while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Romano on the outskirts of the city. The surviving Jews were later evacuated to Jerusalem. One third of the killed were students of the Hebron yeshiva
Slabodka yeshiva
Hebron Yeshiva, also known as Yeshivas Hevron, or Knesses Yisroel, and originally as Slabodka Yeshiva, is known colloquially as the "mother of yeshivas" and was devoted to high=level study of the Talmud. The yeshiva was located in the Lithuanian town of Slabodka, adjacent to Kovno , now...
. After the massacre, the remainder of the yeshiva was also moved to Jerusalem.
On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned:-
'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.'
1929 Aftermath
In total, 67 Jews were killed in Hebron; 59 died during the riots and 8 more succumbed to their wounds later. Most of those killed were Ashkenazi JewishAshkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
men, but there were also a dozen women and three children under the age of three. Seven of the victims were yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
students from the United States and Canada. Dozens of people were wounded, including many women and children. Several cases of rape, mutilation and torture were reported in the Jewish press. These claims were contested by Arab spokesmen. When the bodies were exhumed no conclusions could be made one way or another.
Altogether 195 Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s and 34 Jews were sentenced by the courts for crimes related to the 1929 riots. Death sentences were handed down to 17 Arabs and 2 Jews, but these were later commuted to long prison terms except in the case of 3 Arabs who were hanged. Large fines were imposed on 22 Arab villages or urban neighborhoods. The fine imposed on Hebron was 14,000 pounds. Financial compensation totaling about 200,000 pounds was paid to persons who lost family members or property.
Some Hebron Arabs, amongst whom the President of Hebron's Chamber of Commerce, Ahmad Rashid al-Hirbawi, favoured the return of Jews to the town. 160 Jews did return in the spring of 1931 with Rabbi Chaim Bagaio, but were evacuated, except for one family, again during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. The last family left in 1947. As of 2008, hundreds of Jews live in Hebron again
Committee of The Jewish Community of Hebron
The Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron is the municipal body of the Israeli settlers of the city of Hebron, on the West Bank. The community constitutes a Regional Committee, included the Har Hebron Regional Council. The mayor/spokesman of the community is David Wilder. Beit HaShalom, , was...
.
Descendants of the survivors are divided, with some claiming they wish to return, but only when Arab and Jewish residents can find a way to live together peacfully. Other survivors and descendants of survivors support the new Jewish community in Hebron.
Specific accounts of the massacre
The House of Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek
Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek was born in Hebron in 1900. He was the son of Rabbi Yaakov Ben Yosef Dwek, the Rabbi of Hebron. Eliezer was a member of the city council, appointed by the government. He was also a director at the Anglo-Palestine Bank. Eliezer had excellent relations with the British and the Arabs, who had assured him that no riots would occur.Baruch Katinke, a member of the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
tells about his encounter with Eliezer Dan before the massacre:
- "Two days before the massacre, they told us about a need to go to Hebron with 10-12 people with weapons in order to defend the place. I believe we were 10 men and 2 women... We came to Hebron after midnight, and went into the house of Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek, the head of the bank in the area and the head of the community. We woke him up and told him that we brought weapons and people. He started yelling and said that if he wanted any weapons he would request them but there's no need for them because he has an understanding with the Arabs, they need the credit, they're under his influence, and that they will not harm him. On the contrary he said, new faces in Hebron might just provoke them. During the argument, two Arab policemen went in and ordered us to go to the Police. The officer Cafferata met us in pyjamas and asked us who we were and what were we doing. We said we came for a walk. The officer preached us how dare we walk around during this time and said we must go back to Jerusalem escorted by the police. Two men stayed with suitcases in Dwek's house. They had the bombs with them, but the day after they came back to Jerusalem too, because Dwek forced them to leave. The next day, the massacre occurred".
After the first victim was killed on Friday, 40 people assembled in Dan's house, confident that because of his influence, no harm would come. On Saturday, the rioters approached the Rabbi and offered him a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community. Rabbi Slonim Dwek refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot, along with one of his wives and 4-year-old son (another son, 3 years old, survived). In the end, twelve Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered.
Raymond Cafferata
After the massacre began, the Arab constables deserted, leading the rioters to where Jews were hiding. Cafferata testified:'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. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. 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 in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out-shouting in Arabic, "Your Honor, I am a policeman." ... I got into the room and shot him.'
Nineteen local Arab families saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the Jews. Zmira Mani wrote of an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews whom they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano.
Molchadsky story
In August 1929, Yonah Molchadsky was nearing the end of her pregnancy when, on August 23, the disturbing news reached them that there had been attempts to harm Jews in Jerusalem. The following day, Yonah started to feel labor pains and a doctor was called. "Don't give birth yet, wait a bit," he told her. But the pains got worse and the birth approached, so the family went to the neighboring family, an Arab family, who put them up in their basement. As Yonah gave birth to her second daughter in the basement of the Arab family's house, the masses outside began looking for Jews. Yonah related, after many years of silence, that the mob came to the home of the Arab family, looking for the Molchadskys. "We have already killed our Jews," the Molchadskys' hosts and saviors told the mob, who believed them and departed.1999 documentary film
Noit Gevas, daughter of a survivor, discovered that her grandmother, Zemira Mani (who was the granddaughter of Hebron's chief Sephardic rabbi, Eliyahu Mani), had written an account of the massacre, published in the HaaretzHaaretz
Haaretz is Israel's oldest daily newspaper. It was founded in 1918 and is now published in both Hebrew and English in Berliner format. The English edition is published and sold together with the International Herald Tribune. Both Hebrew and English editions can be read on the Internet...
newspaper in 1929. In 1999 Gevas released a film containing testimonies of 13 survivors that she and her husband Dan had managed to track down from the list in "Sefer Hebron" ("The Book of Hebron"). Originally intended to document the story of the Arab who had saved Gevas's mother from other Arabs, it became also an account of the atrocities of the massacre itself. These survivors (most of whom no longer live in Israel) are mixed as to whether they can forgive.
In the film, "What I Saw in Hebron" the survivors – now very elderly – describe pre-massacre Hebron as a kind of paradise surrounded by vineyards, where Sephardic Jews and Arabs lived in idyllic coexistence. The well-established Ashkenazi residents were also treated well – but the Arabs' anger was roused by followers of the Jerusalem Mufti as well as local chapters of the (Arab) Muslim-Christian Societies.
According to Asher Meshorer (Zemira Mani's son and Noit Geva's father), his aunt (Zemira Mani's sister - who was not present in Hebron during the massacre) had told him that the Arabs from the villages essentially wanted to kill only the new Ashkenazim. According to her, there was an alienated Jewish community that wore streimels
Shtreimel
A shtreimel is a fur hat worn by many married haredi Jewish men, particularly members of Hasidic groups, on Shabbat and Jewish holidays and other festive occasions. In Jerusalem, the shtreimel is also worn by 'Yerushalmi' Jews...
, unlike the Sephardi community, which was deeply rooted, speaking Arabic and dressing like Arab residents.
When the riots started, representatives of the Arabs came to the chief Hebron Rabbi, Rabbi Slonim Dwek, with a proposal – if he allowed them to kill 70 students from the yeshiva in Hebron, they would not kill the other Ashkenazim or the Sephardim. Rabbi Slonim Dwek told them, "We Jews are all one people." He was the first person to be killed in the riots, as he held his eldest son, 4 years old in his hands, who was also killed.
The Mani family was saved by an Arab neighbour, Abu 'Id Zeitun, who was accompanied by his brother and son. Nowadays (in 1999), according to Abu 'Id Zeitun, the house in which the Jews were hidden – his father's house - had been confiscated by the IDF
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
, and today it houses a kindergarten for the settlers.
See also
- List of massacres in Palestinian Territories
- 1920 Palestine riots1920 Palestine riotsThe 1920 Palestine riots, or Nabi Musa riots, took place in British Mandate of Palestine April 4–7, 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem....
- Jaffa riotsJaffa riotsThe Jaffa riots were a series of violent riots in Palestine on May 1–7, 1921, which began as a fight between two Jewish groups but developed into an attack by Arabs on Jews during which many were killed...
1920 - 1938 Tiberias massacre1938 Tiberias massacreThe Tiberias pogrom took place on October 2, 1938 during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, in the city of Tiberias. Tiberias was then located in the British Mandate of Palestine and today is located in the State of Israel.-History:...
- Mohammad Amin al-HusayniMohammad Amin al-HusayniHaj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine. From as early as 1920, in order to secure the independence of Palestine as an Arab state he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of a violent riot...
- Shaw ReportShaw ReportThe Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 or Shaw Report of March 1930 was a British report of a Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Sir Walter Shaw, a distinguished jurist, and consisting of three members of the British parliament, Sir Henry Betterton , R.Hopkin...
- Beit HaShalomBeit HaShalomBeit HaShalom, , or the Al Rajabi House settlement is a four-story structure that housed a local Hebron Jewish community of 25 families, youth and yeshiva students. The structure is located on the main road linking Kiryat Arba to the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron...
- Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948 is a book published in 2004 by Hillel Cohen about the sale of land and other cooperation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel.-Overview:...