Hebron Massacre (1929)

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The Hebron massacre was the murder of 67 Jews by parts of the Arab population of Hebron . This was preceded by unrest between the warring Jewish and Arab national movements during the British mandate . The massacre occurred on August 23 and 24, 1929 and resulted in the complete expulsion of the Jews from Hebron.

prehistory

Of the 20,000 or so people who lived in Hebron in 1929, around 800 made up the Jewish community. This consisted primarily of Sephardic Jews who had lived peacefully with their Arab, Muslim or Christian neighbors in Hebron for centuries. Since the middle of the 19th century, the proportion of European Jews in Hebron has also grown, which caused conflicts, especially after the beginning of the British mandate and the increasing tensions between Zionists and Arab nationalists . These were expressed in isolated attacks, especially by young Arabs, on Jewish shops, disruptions to Jewish prayers in the Machpelah cave and other mobbing. However, Hebron was considered comparatively calm and unproblematic, which was one reason why the Hebron Jews, unlike Jews in other cities in the mandate area, had not prepared any self-defense measures.

trigger

In August 1929 a dispute over the use of the Western Wall escalated in Jerusalem . This was mainly due to political reasons. The two warring national movements of Jews and Arabs had declared the Western Wall an object of prestige and held rallies and demonstrations there, which in turn provoked counter-demonstrations and led to bloody clashes. On August 23, thousands of armed Arab peasants traveled to the city from the Jerusalem area, presumably on the initiative of the Grand Mufti and Arab nationalist Mohammed Amin al-Husseini , to attend an event on the Temple Mount . After nationalist speakers heated up the crowd, serious riots began and arbitrary attacks on Jewish passers-by began. Jewish nationalists responded with no less arbitrary acts of revenge. Both sides also used firearms. The British police underestimated the situation and called in reinforcements too late, causing the unrest in the city to spiral out of control.

Jewish resident of Hebron after the massacre
Destroyed house in Hebron

The massacre

At the same time, rumors spread in numerous Arab villages and towns that Zionists had attacked Muslims praying in Jerusalem and had brought holy Islamic sites under their control. While part of an angry crowd in Hebron made their way to Jerusalem, the first attacks on Hebron Jews took place on August 23. The police, which were also understaffed in Hebron, took up positions in front of Jewish houses and ordered residents not to step outside. For Shmuel Halewi Rosenholz, a yeshiva student of Polish origin, the instruction came too late. He was lynched by Arabs in the street, making him the first person killed. In the evening and at night there was a temporary calm. The chief officer of Hebron, the Briton Raymond Cafferata , tried to call for reinforcements during the night, but received the answer that due to the riots in Jerusalem no one was available.

On August 24 at around 9:00 a.m., an Arab mob armed with axes and knives began to storm Jewish houses in Hebron and loot Jewish, and in some cases also Arab, shops. Cafferata gave the order to shoot into the crowd, which initially had no effect. It wasn't until the police followed the mob into their homes that the violence slowly subsided. Among the 67 murdered Jews were mainly Ashkenazi men, but also 12 women and three small children under five. Most of the bodies were mutilated, many were tortured before they died, and numerous women were raped. The nine Arabs killed also included an Arab policeman who participated in the atrocities and was shot by Cafferata while he was about to kill a Jewish woman with a dagger.

Most of Hebrew's Jewish population was saved not by the understaffed British police, but by Arab neighbors. One of the survivors wrote to John Robert Chancellor , then High Commissioner for the Mandate Area for Palestine, that without the Arabs who would have defended the Jews, none of them would have survived. The Arab families hid 435 Jewish neighbors in their homes, sometimes at risk to their own lives.

Consequences and judgments

The surviving Hebron Jews were evacuated from the city, leaving their homes and anything they could not carry behind. The attempt by some survivors to return to Hebron was rejected by the British for security reasons. The victims also sought compensation in vain. The legal processing of the incidents by the British was marked by fear that the verdicts could provoke new unrest. The High Commissioner for the Mandate Area for Palestine, John Robert Chancellor, demanded a politically balanced decision from the judiciary. The court complied with his request and refrained from assigning specific guilt both in assessing the Jerusalem riots and in assessing the Hebron and Safed massacres . It was clear from the statements of Cafferata and other police officers involved that Arab leaders in Hebron were spreading rumors and giving nationalist speeches in order to stir up the mood and turn the crowd against Jews. Cafferata also said that some local clan leaders from the Hebron region reported that Mohammed Amin al-Husseini had asked them, under threat of punishment, to arm their village members and participate in the riots.

Ultimately, only individual perpetrators were sanctioned. Out of 25 Arabs sentenced to death for murder, three were executed. The others' death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Two Jews were also sentenced to death. Their sentences have also been commuted. Many of the perpetrators of the Hebron massacre could not be identified.

A few days later, in the course of the nationwide unrest, a pogrom broke out in Safed , in which 18 to 20 Jews were killed.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hebron Massacre (1929)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebron29.html
  2. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 343 .
  3. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 349 .
  4. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 350 .
  5. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 351-355 .
  6. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 355 .
  7. Sami Adwan; Dan Bar-On; Eyal Naveh; PRIME (Ed.): Side by side. Parallel histories of Israel-Palestine . The New Press, New York 2012, pp. 60 and 62 .
  8. Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine - Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . Pantheon-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-570-55009-5 , pp. 360-361 .