Nabi Musa riots

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The Nabi Musa Riots ( Arabic انتفاضة موسم النبي موسى) took place from April 4 to 7, 1920 in the old city of Jerusalem . On the occasion of the Muslim celebrations in honor of the Prophet Moses , a pogrom against the Jewish population took place. The riots occurred just before the Sanremo Conference , which sealed the region's fate for decades to come. According to the historian Tom Segev , the unrest "was, in a sense, the starting signal for the struggle for the Land of Israel".

background

Anti-Zionist demonstration at Damascus Gate , March 8, 1920

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire had left a power vacuum, which the victorious powers of World War I, Great Britain and France, thought to compensate for with a "civilization mission" in the region. Both powers had set up a military administration under joint supervision, the so-called Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA), which was later to be divided into the French-dominated League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon and the British mandate for Palestine . The contents and proposals of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement signed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 were discussed intensively by both Zionist and Arab leaders. The principle of self-determination of the peoples should not be applied to Palestine . These developments following the First World War led to radicalization in the Arab world.

In the course of 1919 relations between the Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem had deteriorated considerably. There had been a confrontation between Mayor Musa Kazim al-Husaini and the committed Zionist Menachem Ussishkin who had just immigrated . At the end of an unsuccessful conversation, Ussishkin reminded the mayor that the Jews had wandered the desert forty years before reaching the Promised Land . The mayor smiled and replied that this happened because they had not listened to Moses , and he suggested that they listen to Moses (that is, to himself) now so that they do not have to wait another forty years until the goal is reached will. In his report, Ussishkin summed up the meeting as follows: Husaini was an enemy of the Jewish people. ^ The death of Joseph Trumpeldor in the Battle of Tel Chai on March 1, 1920 worried Jewish leaders. They turned to the military administration several times to request security measures for the yishuv . However, their fears went largely unnoticed by British leaders , including Military Governor Ronald Storrs and General Allenby , despite Chaim Weizmann , head of the Zionist Commission for Palestine, warning Storrs of an impending pogrom . After the Syrian Congress called for independence from Greater Syria in the Kingdom of Syria on March 7, 1920, mass demonstrations took place in all the cities of Palestine on March 7 and 8, 1920, whereupon shops were closed and numerous Jews were attacked. The attackers chanted “Death to the Jews!” And “Palestine is our country, the Jews are our dogs!”, Which rhymes in Arabic.

A request by Jewish leaders to the military administration to allow Jewish settlers to be armed in view of the lack of British troops was not taken into account. Nevertheless organized Zeev Jabotinsky along with Pinhas Rutenberg the training of Jewish volunteers, including members of the Maccabi -Sportclubs and veterans of the Jewish Legion , the long in one month gymnastics and combat trained. The volunteers formed the Jewish self-defense called Maginnej ha-ʿĪr Jerūschalajim ( Hebrew מָגִנֵּי הָעִיר יְרוּשָׁלַיִם 'Defender of the City of Jerusalem' ) under Jabotinsky's command. According to Jabotinsky, their education took place in public in schoolyards, and at least once he and his people went on a parade through the city.

procedure

Nabi Musa festival in Jerusalem, April 4, 1920
Musa Kazim al-Husaini, Mayor of Jerusalem

The Muslim Nabi Musa festival takes the form of a procession from Jerusalem to the tomb of Moses near Jericho . It coincides with the Christian Easter and is traditionally traced back to Saladin , who is said to have tried to contrast the Christian processions in the Via Dolorosa with an Islamic counterpart.

4. April

The festivities began on April 2nd in a calm mood. On the day the violence broke out, all British troops and Jewish policemen had been withdrawn from the old city, leaving only Arab policemen. On Sunday, April 4th, around 70,000 people gathered on the site below the old town walls, with banners , flags and weapons. Because of the noise of the assembled crowd, the officials on the balcony of the Jerusalem Arab Club are unable to deliver their speeches. From the town hall, however, Mayor Husaini, journalist Aref al-Aref and later Grand Mufti Amin al-Husaini called on the crowd to use violence against Zionists and Jews. Portraits of King Faisal I are held up, whereupon the crowd breaks out in calls for independence.

At 10.30 am, Arab crowds began rioting against Jewish shops and residential areas at the Jaffa Gate . The attackers were armed with knives and clubs and a few firearms. There was murder, vandalism, looting and an unknown number of rapes. Jewish self-defense groups tried to protect their own people during the pogroms. Dozens of demonstrators were arrested the following night but released the next day.

April 5th

The riots continued the next day, with the Jewish self-defense groups being pushed back in their attempt to advance into the Old City. There were further attacks against Jews and looting of homes. At the end of the afternoon, Storrs announced a state of emergency , but revoked it later that night.

April 6th

The following day the rioting continued to a lesser extent. Two men from Jabotinsky’s group, who had hidden weapons under white coats, made their way to the old town, had around 300 Jews evacuated and instructed the Jewish residents to have stones and hot water ready on their roofs in order to repel the attackers. Outside the old city, there was an exchange of fire between men around Jabotinsky and gypsies who had camped between the Jewish quarter of Mea Shearim and the Arab quarter of Sheikh Jarrah .

British soldiers looked for weapons from Jewish participants. They found nothing with Chaim Weizmann, but three rifles, two revolvers and 250 cartridges with Jabotinsky, who was arrested only after repeated insistence on his part, released shortly afterwards and arrested again a few hours later. Jabotinsky and 19 of his colleagues who had also been arrested were finally transferred to Akkon prison .

On April 7th, order was restored.

Balance sheet

The balance of the unrest was: five dead, 216 injured and 18 seriously injured on the Jewish side; four dead, including a little girl from a ricochet , 23 injured and one seriously injured on the Arab side. Seven British soldiers were injured in the clashes.

The actual trigger for the violence could never be precisely determined. Witnesses said both Jews and Arabs were held responsible for the riots before a subsequently appointed British committee of inquiry. Khalil as-Sakakini (1878–1953), a Palestinian writer and eyewitness to the events, writes in his autobiography So I Am, oh world , that the general excitement turned almost to a frenzy. After he escaped unharmed from the crowd, he fled to the park, deeply disgusted and depressed by the madness of the people. Moshe Smilansky wrote in Haaretz that there had been no confrontations like this for a hundred years, and he affirmed that it was a conflict between two nations. In the same newspaper the historian Joseph Klausner warned : "If the Arabs think they can incite us to war and win the war because we are in the minority, then they are making a big mistake."

consequences

The military governor Colonel Ronald Storrs came under fire because hardly any troops were available to restore order. Despite the history of riots on the occasion of the festival during the Ottoman period and warnings from the Zionist Commission, Storrs did not expect violence. A few days before the celebrations he had warned the leaders of the Arab community to calm down, but had taken no further security measures. He later defended himself with the difficult circumstances: The streets of the old town were steep and narrow, impassable for vehicles and horses, and one had to consider the psychological situation in the city. In Jerusalem, the unexpected clang of an empty petrol can on the stones could cause panic. After all, the police at his disposal were inexperienced and not properly trained; there were only eight officers among the 188 men.

The events sparked tumultuous reactions in England and throughout the Jewish world, and the British government quickly convened a committee of inquiry to meet in Jerusalem. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen , head of the British espionage department in Cairo , took this opportunity to astonish his superiors by giving full support to the accusations made by the Zionist representatives. The British authorities sentenced more than 200 people, mostly Arabs, to prison terms after the pogrom. The future Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husaini and the well-known journalist Aref al-Aref fled the country before their negotiations over the Jordan . The mayor Musa Husaini was deposed and replaced by Raghib an-Naschaschibi . At the beginning of May 1921 the riots in Jaffa , with massacres of the Arab and Jewish civilian populations.

At the Sanremo conference , the shock of the Nabi Musa riots and Chaim Weizmann's firsthand testimony led to the conclusion that a civilian government would be more effective and less provocative than the military administration. Less than a week after the mandate for Palestine was transferred to Great Britain, the Supreme Court stripped the military of mandate territory and established a civil administration. Sir Herbert Samuel became the first High Commissioner for the Mandate Area.

Web links

Commons : Nabi Musa Riots  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

literature

  • Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel . 4th edition, Munich, 2005, chapter Nabi Musa 1920 . Pp. 142-161. Online partial view
  • Benny Morris : Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999 . J. Murry, London 2000. ISBN 2-87027-938-8 .
  • Walter Laqueur : A History of Zionism . Schocken Books, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8052-1149-8 .
  • Samuel Katz : Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine . Taylor Productions, 2002. ISBN 978-0-929093-13-0 .
  • Howard Morley Sachar: The emergence of the Middle East: 1914-1924 . Knopf, New York 1969.
  • Howard Morley Sachar: A History of Israel. From the Rise of Zionism to our Time . Knopf, New York 2007. 3rd edition. ISBN 978-0-375-71132-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 142.
  2. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 145.
  3. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 143.
  4. ↑ a b Museum of Heroism. The secrets of the unearthly and subterranean city of Akko. In: akko.org.il. Retrieved February 24, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 149.
  6. ^ Samuel Katz: Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine . P. 64.
  7. ↑ a b Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. Pp. 142-161.
  8. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. Pp. 152-153.
  9. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 143.
  10. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 155.
  11. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 147.
  12. ^ Howard Morley Sachar: A History of Israel. From the Rise of Zionism to our Time . P. 123.
  13. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 155.
  14. ↑ Tom Segev: Once upon a time there was a Palestine. Jews and Arabs before the founding of the state of Israel. P. 159.

Coordinates: 31 ° 46 ′ 36 ″  N , 35 ° 14 ′ 3 ″  E