Untold History of Hebron

Here is the story about the Hebron massacre of Jews by Arabs in 1929. This history needs to be publicized a great deal more and hammered into the heads of those putrid ignoramuses from academia and other assorted leftists and rifraff who falsely claim that Jews living in Hebron and elsewhere in Judea and Samaria are “occupiers” who have “stolen” Arab land. It was the Jews who were mass murdered and ethnically cleansed and who's property was stolen. The British authorities at the time either tacitly approved of the Arab rampage by standing by and doing nothing to stop them or in some cases they actually incited the Arabs. Those Jewish “settlers” who came to Hebron after the six day war merely returned to claim land that their family members were driven out from or had been murdered.

The Hebron Massacre 1n 1929

Eighty years ago, an Arab mob went on a rampage and murdered 69 Jews.

by Toby Klein Greenwald, AISH

On August 23, 1929, the day before the Hebron Massacre, rumors were circulating about anticipated riots, but of the 700 Jews who lived in Hebron, most did not believe anything bad would happen to them. They considered their relations with their Arab neighbors to be strong, based upon years of friendship and shared experiences. Moreover, the Arab Governor of Hebron, Abdullah Kardos, had promised the Jews that they would not be harmed.

According to first-hand accounts recorded in Sefer Hevron, [1] the most comprehensive book on the history of Hebron, some Jewish notables in the city, among them Eliezer Dan Slonim, the highly respected manager of the Hebron branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the son of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Slonim, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Hebron, met to discuss the situation. When they couldn’t resolve their differences of opinion, they went to consult with Rav Meir Franco, the chief Sephardi rabbi of Hebron. Together they decided to bring the Jews who were scattered in outlying areas to homes in the city center, where they thought it would be safer.

As they walked out of the meeting, they were met with a barrage of stones thrown by Arab youths. Yet, shortly after the Arabs finished their Friday prayers, Arab notables came to Slonim to reassure him that no harm would come to the Jews of Hebron.

These notables were either misinformed or misinforming. At 2:30 that Friday afternoon, a young Arab on a bicycle, coming from Jerusalem, called out to the Arabs of Hebron that the Jews were murdering thousands of Arabs in Jerusalem. Other Arabs in cars followed him, shouting that Jews were attacking Arabs (rather than vice versa, as it was in reality).
The riots were hardly spontaneous.

According to The Martyrs of Hebron, which was written by Leo Gottesman, who was a student at the Slabodka yeshivah but was not present at the time of the massacre, [2] the author’s brother was on his way back to Hebron for Shabbat in a cab filled with Arabs, when he saw them eyeing him and snickering. He realized that something was afoot; when his hat blew out an open window, he used it as an excuse to leave the cab and escape back to Jerusalem.

The riots were hardly spontaneous. The mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, (who would, in the ensuing years, offer help to Hitler) had been preaching venomously against the Jews. In 1924 the Moslem Wakf began the instigating against the Jews’ connection to the Kotel, and in 1928, the mufti further provoked a dispute about the Kotel, claiming that the Jews were trying to take control of the mosques on the Temple Mount. The Moslems argued that the Kotel was holy to them because Mohammed had tied his horse there before he went up to the Temple Mount. (To this [3]day, in fact, the Moslems call the pogroms of 1929, “the pogroms of the horse.”) On erev Tishah B’Av 1929, a week before the Hebron Massacre, a large demonstration was held by the Jews, in the plaza before the Kotel, in an attempt to affirm the Jewish connection to the Kotel.

In the aftermath of the demonstration, the mufti encouraged riots around the country. To what extent he merely “encouraged” them and to what extent he actually orchestrated them is still a matter for research, according to Aryeh Klein. “I believe he orchestrated them,” says Klein, “but it is difficult to prove.” Since the British were blatantly pro-Arab, he was able to stir them up unhindered. In Motza, for example, a suburb of Jerusalem, there was the cruel murder of the Makleff family. There were murdered the day before the Hebron Massacre. One of the three children who survived — Mordechai Makleff — became the fourth chief of staff of the IDF.

Hebron Jews were particularly vulnerable since they had made the city more modern and economically prosperous. While the Arabs who wanted modernity regarded the Jewish presence as a blessing, those who didn’t, despised the Jews and led the incitement.
Read the whole thing. Read about it here also.