1929 Hebron Massacre - Background

Background

See also: 1929 Palestine riots and 1929 Safed massacre

Hebron, located 30 km south of Jerusalem, is the second holiest site in Judaism, and one of the Jewish Four Holy Cities, 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. On Friday, August 16 after an inflammatory sermon, a demonstration organized by the Supreme Muslim Council marched to the Wall. The Acting High Commissioner summoned Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini and informed him that such a demonstration being held at the Wailing Wall was unprecedented, and would be a terrible shock to the Jews who regarded the Wall as a place of special sanctity. At the Wall, the crowd burnt prayer books, liturgical fixtures and notes of supplication left in the Wall's cracks, and the beadle was injured. The rioting spread to the Jewish commercial area of town.

Inflammatory articles calculated to incite disorder appeared in the Arab media and one flyer, signed by "the Committee of the Holy Warriors in Palestine" stated that the Jews had violated the honor of Islam, and declared: "Hearts are in tumult because of these barbaric deeds, and the people began to break out in shouts of 'war, Jihad ... rebellion.' ... O Arab nation, the eyes of your brothers in Palestine are upon you ... and they awaken your religious feelings and national zealotry to rise up against the enemy who violated the honor of Islam and raped the women and murdered widows and babies." 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 Palestine, with the murders occurring in Hebron and Safed. Other assaults took place in Motza, Kfar Uriyah, and Tel Aviv.