Jewish-Arab Politics and the Massacres of 1929
A Jewish mother and her injured child, victims of the Hebron Massacre in 1929.
After the wave of riots and massacres across the Old City of Jerusalem and Haifa in early 1920, the Arab community of British-occupied Palestine became increasingly galvanized over the “Jewish Question.” The decision by the victorious WWI Allied powers to divide the former Ottoman Arab territory into mandates of Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) was opposed by Arab nationalists such as Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was in exile in the no-man’s-land of modern-day Jordan. Al-Husseini met with other pan-Arab leaders in Damascus that May and formed the “Palestinian Arab Society” which avowed to oppose European colonialism, Zionism and Jewish immigration to the Promised Land. In its place, they advocated for the inclusion of Palestine as an autonomous state in the newly-declared Kingdom of Syria, which was led by Saudi-born King Faisal, the younger brother of King Abdullah the Hashemite. However, pan-Arab aspirations suffered a major blow when the French army refused to recognize the self-declared kingdom, instead occupying Damascus and deposing Faisal in July. Al-Husseini and his cohort turned away from a strategy of pan-Arabism centered in Damascus to one that focused on Palestinian Arab self-determination. A meeting of Arab Muslims and Christians at the Palestinian Arab Congress in Haifa in late 1920 was led by al-Husseini’s uncle, the deposed mayor of Jerusalem, and an agitator of the riots. Although an unofficial body whose authority was not recognized by the British, the PAC claimed to represent the various Arab communities in Palestine. They condemned Zionism and Zionist organizations in the Land, opposed the use of Hebrew as an official language, opposed the immigration of Jews, and declared British military occupation to be illegal on the grounds that it was not yet sanctioned by the newly-formed League of Nations in Europe.
In the wake of the riots, the British Government decided upon a change of leadership in Palestine to mediate the peace. Appointed to be the civilian High Commissioner for the Mandate of Palestine was Herbert Samuel, the British Jew and parliamentarian who had an instrumental role in the formation of a pro-Zionist lobby in London and the drafting of the Balfour Declaration. At his appointment in 1920, Samuel became the first Jew to govern the Promised Land since the end of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 CE. He initially struck a conciliatory tone, granting a general amnesty to all Arabs and Jews who were charged and convicted in connection with the riots. He eventually even extended that amnesty to Amin al-Husseini. But al-Husseini initially refused the olive branch in protest, choosing instead to remain in exile until the mufti of Jerusalem, his half-brother, died in 1921. As the position of Jerusalem’s mayor had been stripped from the al-Husseini tribe after the riots and given to their rival tribe, Samuel orchestrated for Amin al-Husseini to succeed his half-brother as mufti, or religious leader of the city. Al-Husseini eagerly accepted, taking upon himself the title of Grand Mufti, and integrating responsibilities for the Waqf, or Islamic charities in Jerusalem, which included the collection and allotment of large sums of money, as well as stewardship of Islamic holy sites such as the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Thus, al-Husseini’s opposition to Zionism and Jewish presence in the Land shifted from a political, pan-Arab advocacy to a narrative of global Islamic unity around a Muslim-controlled Palestine with Jerusalem as its focus, and al-Aqsa as its prize. The existence of any Jewish autonomy in the Land was cast as an erosion of the Dar al-Islam, or “House of Islam,” and the exercise of the Jewish religion in Jerusalem was portrayed as an attempt to usurp Muslim worship. Al-Husseini’s mentor was Egyptian Salafi intellectual Rashid Rida, who played a major role in the formation of the modern Islamic theology of an “Islamic State.” Besides al-Husseini, Rida’s disciples included early leaders in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, such as Sayyid Qutb, whose philosophy of achieving the Islamic State by means of violent jihad made him the intellectual grandfather of modern terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS. Rida acted as a counselor to al-Husseini until the former’s death in 1935.
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Jewish political parties began to form in post-war Palestine as well. The Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”) party had originally sprung up across Europe and the Russian Empire during the first decade of the twentieth century. As an umbrella Zionist organization, the party was made up of different factions. A radical leftist wing was made up of avowed communists who openly supported the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They were also distrustful of the Word Zionist Organization (WZO), which they considered to be “bourgeois.” The centrist wing of the party held to a moderate, socialist philosophy, and had no qualms about working with the WZO. Poale Zion eventually transplanted to Ottoman Palestine during the Second Aliyah, and after the British Mandate began, it failed to reconcile its factions and eventually spilt. Two moderate members of Poale Zion, David Ben Gurion and Yithak Ben Zvi, formed a new party named Ahdut HaAvoda (“Labor Unity”) in 1919. Both veterans of the Jewish Legion, Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi had a center-left philosophy that was grounded in a practical realpolitik, and they immediately set about building the institutions of Jewish politics, labor and self-defense which would form the nucleus of the future State of Israel. In 1920, Ahdut HaAvoda established the “General Organization of Hebrew Workers,” shortened in Hebrew to Histadrut, as a means of bolstering the Jewish working class in the Land. Histadrut became the most powerful labor union in Mandate Palestine, a position it still holds in the State of Israel today. After the riots of 1920, HaAvoda formed the Haganah defense forces, which was placed under the leadership of the Histadrut labor union, from which it recruited many of its members. The Haganah would eventually grow into the Israeli Defense Forces a quarter-century later. Both Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi would go on to have successful political careers in the State of Israel in the 1950’s and 60’s. Ben Zvi became Israel’s second and longest-serving president in 1952. Ben Gurion was elected as the first Prime Minister of Israel, serving between 1948 and 1954. He was elected to the premiership again in 1955 and continued to serve as Israel’s leader until 1963. HaAvoda is still Israel’s leading center-left political party today, boasting such leadership as Golda Meir, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, although it has been in decline for the last decade since the ascendency of the center-right Likud party to power in 2010 under Benyamin Netanyahu’s leadership.
As the 1920’s progressed, the political climate in Eretz Yisrael became increasingly polarized. The British Mandate in Palestine officially received legitimacy from the League of Nations in 1922, after which another wave of Jewish immigration began in 1924. Considered the Fourth Aliyah, it was made up of mostly Eastern European Jews, many of whom were escaping the anti-Semitic policies of the new government in Poland. Instead of establishing rural agrarian communities and kibbutzim, most of the 80,000 olim settled in urban, coastal areas, especially Tel Aviv, forming a working class and joining trade unions. An economic crisis ensued between 1926-28, as the cities struggled to absorb the sudden influx of 80,000 immigrants. Over one-quarter of them would eventually return to their nations of origin, unable to find work or sustain their livelihoods. However, the industrial machinery of the cities eventually caught up with the burgeoning labor force, and the recession was followed by an economic boom in 1928.
The leaders of the Palestinian Arab Congress were alarmed at the growth of the Yishuv during the 1920’s. Although deeply divided and factionalized, the PAC managed to present a united front against the Zionist program on several occasions, calling for an end to Jewish immigration to the Land and enacting boycotts against Jewish goods and services. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, led a Muslim campaign to restrict Jewish worship at the Western Wall. As the last remaining vestige of the Holy Temple, the Kotel was the holiest site in Judaism, and Orthodox Jews streamed into the plaza throughout the day to offer prayers and perform rituals. Muslims considered the Western Wall to be part of the Haram esh-Sharif, known otherwise as the Temple Mount, which was under Islamic jurisdiction.
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In 1925, Jewish National Fund president Menachem Ussishkin gave a public speech in which he exhorted, "Let us swear that the Jewish people will not rest and will not remain silent until its national home is built on our Mt Moriah [the Temple Mount].” The Al-Husseini faction interpreted Ussishkin’s remarks as a declaration of Jewish intention, and Zionist leaflets showing the Jewish flag atop the Temple Mount were picked up by Arab propagandists and reprinted as alleged evidence that Zionists were planning to occupy the Mount. As grand mufti, Amin al-Husseini began enacting measures to limit Jewish accessibility to the Western Wall. In 1928, he convinced local British authorities to declare that the Wall was Muslim property. The British police force ordered the removal of folding chairs from the Kotel plaza, as well as a screen that segregated male and female worshippers, on the grounds that these items constituted the establishment of an unsanctioned synagogue. When policemen arrived to remove the screen on the constable’s orders, they charged the Jewish worshippers around it, who in turn fought back to keep the screen in place. A brawl ensued which ended with the destruction of the screen. The incident became an international scandal among the global Jewish diaspora, but al-Husseini was just getting started. The mufti began a construction project on the Temple Mount above the Western Wall. Donkeys were brought through the Kotel plaza, leaving piles of dung, and Jewish worshippers were constantly harassed by the din of construction and doused by falling waste water. An Islamic muezzin was employed to lead the daily calls to Muslim prayer using a loudspeaker positioned next to the Kotel Plaza, which he did at the same times as the Jewish calls to prayer. Zionist leadership reacted to these provocations in anger. Ze’ev Jabotinsky called for “insubordination and violence” and worked with the Haganah and his youth movement Betar to organize protest marches around the Old City. Over 6,000 Jews attended one march in early August, as well as an element of Betar which approached the Wall with the Jewish flag while singing Hatikva, the Jewish anthem, and chanting “the Wall is ours!” Unfounded rumors spread that the youth had attacked Muslims with staves and iron bars.
In response, on August 15, 1928, al-Husseini’s Supreme Muslim Council led a counter-protest march to the Kotel. Jewish prayer books were destroyed, written prayers tucked in the Wall were torn out, and the Jewish attendant was assaulted. Chants arose proclaiming, “war…jihad…rebellion…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.” in the following days, the situation began to spiral out of control. An Orthodox Jewish boy was stabbed to death in Jerusalem after trying to retrieve his football from a nearby Arab field. The incident touched off a series of tit-for-tat attacks, injuring almost 20 Arabs and Jews. Despite the efforts of Zionist leaders to quell the violence and restore calm, the escalation continued. The WZO received urgent telegrams from the Land, describing a dire situation in which there was a “Government need of serious measures assuring public security.” On the morning of August 23rd, thousands of Arab Muslim worshippers came to pray at al-Aqsa, armed with sticks and knives. Another rumor had spread that Jews were about to march on the Temple Mount and claim it, and the Arab crowd had arrived to confront them. No such Jewish takeover was planned, but the presence of an angry mob in the mixed streets of Jerusalem was a recipe for trouble. Reports of an attack on Arabs who entered a Jewish neighborhood had spread through the ranks of the agitators by mid-day, and within an hour, the pogrom began. British police were severely undermanned and reinforcements had not arrived in time. Policemen were ordered to stay out of the fighting, in order to avoid the wrath of the mob. Most Jewish neighborhoods did not have access to firearms for self-defense. With minimal resistance, the Arab rioters killed 17 Jews on the first day. But as the anti-Semitic rumors drifted beyond Jerusalem, the worst was yet to come.
In the mixed Galilee community of Safed, just north of the Sea, one Scottish missionary described the events he witnessed as news reached the village from Jerusalem:
“On Saturday August 24, there was a demonstration of Moslems along the road…They came beating drums and breaking the windows of Jewish houses en route...On the afternoon of Thursday the 29th... one of our church members came running to tell us that 'all the Jews were being killed'…we heard rifle and machine gun fire all around us...Wild Arabs had come up from the valley unexpectedly into the Jewish quarter and began at once a systematic slaughter of the Jews. Some escaped with injury only but 22 were killed outright in the town...The inhumanity of the attack was beyond conception. Women were gashed in the chest, babies were cut on the hands and feet, old people were killed and plundered."
Another Jewish resident of the town described the savagery months later to the British inquiry:
“Advancing on the street of the Sefardi Jews from Kfar Meron and Ein Zeitim, they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing. They slaughtered the schoolteacher, Aphriat, together with his wife and mother, and cut the lawyer, Toledano, to pieces with their knives. Bursting into the orphanages, they smashed the children's heads and cut off their hands. I myself saw the victims. Yitshak Mammon, a native of Safed who lived with an Arab family, was murdered with indescribable brutality: he was stabbed again and again, until his body became a bloody sieve, and then he was trampled to death. Throughout the whole pogrom the police did not fire a single shot.”
In Hebron, just southwest of Jerusalem, the violence was even more widespread. The Jewish Haganah defense force had arrived days earlier to offer protection to the chief rabbi of the town, who mistakenly believed that he could work with the local Arab community to avoid conflict. The violence began on the afternoon of August 23rd, with windows smashed and a young yeshiva student stabbed to death. The following day, an Arab crowd met the son of the chief rabbi at his door. They offered to spare him and all of the Sephardi Jews, who had lived amongst the Arabs in Hebron for centuries, if he would agree to hand over all of the Ashkenazi Jews, who were more recent arrivals in the aliyahs, and who were distinct in dress and culture. The rabbi’s son answered, “we are all one people,” after which he was promptly slaughtered, along with his wife and four-year-old son. A mob of local Arabs from the surrounding countryside began roaming the streets of Hebron’s Jewish “ghetto,” along the road that led to Gaza. They systematically targeted every Jewish home. Once Jewish survivor described the scene,
“Right after eight o'clock in the morning we heard screams. Arabs had begun breaking into Jewish homes. The screams pierced the heart of the heavens. We didn't know what to do…. They were going from door to door, slaughtering everyone who was inside. The screams and the moans were terrible. People were crying Help! Help! But what could we do?"
Harrowing accounts would later be reported by dozens of witnesses. A reputable Jewish pharmacist, who had served both Jews and Arabs for decades, was forced to watch as his young daughter was raped and killed, before he himself was murdered. The British superintendent of Hebron, Ramond Cafferata, made a valiant effort to fend off the pogrom. His forces managed to kill several Arab attackers, but were ultimately overwhelmed, while requests for reinforcements were not immediately satisfied. Cafferata describes his arrival at one Jewish home in the midst of bloodshed.
“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. 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.”
Jewish businesses, synagogues and even a hospital that treated both Jews and Arabs was looted and burned. Despite the fact that most of their attackers were Arabs, hundreds of Jews also found refuge inside the homes of their sympathetic Arab neighbors. One such elderly Arab man named Abu Shaker even confronted the mob that came to his door in search of hidden Jews. His surviving guests later testified to his incredible, self-sacrificial courage.
“We sat silently in the sealed house and Abu-Shaker reported what was happening . . . The rioters had arrived. We heard them growling cries of murder . . . We also heard the voice of Abu-Shaker: ‘Get out of here! You won't enter here! You won't enter here!’ They pushed him. He was old, maybe 75 years old, but he had a strong body. He struggled. He lay in front of the entrance to the home, by the door, and cried out. ‘Only over my dead body will you pass through here! Over my corpse!’ One rioter wielded his knife over Abu-Shaker and yelled. ‘I will kill you, traitor!’ The knife struck him. Abu-Shaker's leg was cut. His blood was spilt. He did not emit any groans of pain. He did not shout, he only said, ‘Go and cut! I am not moving!’ The rioters consulted with each other: there was a moment of silence. Later we heard them leaving. We knew we had been saved. We wanted to bring our savior inside and bandage his wound and thank him. He refused and said that others might arrive and that his task has not ended yet."
In all, at least 133 Jews were killed by Arab rioters across Eretz Yisrael between August 23-29, 1929. At least 110 Arabs were also killed, almost all of them attackers shot by British police or Jewish militia. An inquest was ordered into the riots by British authorities, It resulted in the Shaw Report several months later, named after the commissions leader, Sir Walter Shaw. Although it placed blame for the riots squarely on the Arab assailants, it also portrayed the violence as the result of “unfair advantages” supposedly enjoyed by the Jewish Yishuv, and argued for restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases. It was a major blow to the Zionist movement, and it allowed the perception among the leadership of the Palestine Arab Council that anti-Semitic violence could be used to achieve their political aims, a perception which persists to the modern day.
Shortly after the pogrom, all of the Jewish residents of Hebron were evacuated from a town which they had continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years. Some would return briefly in the 1930’s before being evacuated again. The Jewish people would not return to Hebron until the city was captured from the Kingdom of Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967.
Meanwhile, the British mandate authorities began to craft the Shaw Report into policy in the 1930’s, restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases, just as a certain WWI veteran and author ascended to the chancellery of the German Reichstag. In retrospect, the timing could not have been worse, as a great European “whirlwind” loomed on the horizon.
