Last week, the Israeli prime minister’s
spokesman Mark Regev spoke feelingly to American broadcaster Greta Van Susteren
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMPVOx4wyw)
of “These mendacious allegations that somehow Israel is threatening the Muslim
holy sites in Jerusalem when nothing can be further from the truth … Israel has
meticulously always protected the holy sites of all faiths, but nevertheless
the Islamic extremists were putting out these accusations, these conspiracy
theories, about so-called Israeli intentions, and unfortunately they were
echoed by the Palestinian Authority, by President Abbas and his people, and
this created a crisis which fed the violence…”
These present events invoke the anti-Jewish
rioting by Arabs that broke out in Eretz Israel in August 1929: Jerusalem on
the 23rd, Hebron on the 24th, and Safed on the 29th. I once blogged about one woman’s reminiscences
of the Hebron riots here, and gruesome reading they make (http://daphneanson.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/they-stuck-sword-down-his-wifes-throat.html). A video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3tMvGgCEx0)
contains further testimony from survivors, and for the terrible details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre.
The [London] Times (14
September 1929) contained a report by its Jerusalem-based “special
correspondent” examining “The Outbreak and its Causes” of the riots, which
happened, incidentally, when many senior members of the Mandate administration
were on leave. “To understand the explosion in Palestine, it is necessary to
review the immediate causes of the outbreak,” he began. “For convenience, the point of departure may
be taken as Thursday, August 15, when the younger Zionists asked leave to
celebrate the feast of Ab [Av], which commemorates the destruction of the
Temple, by marching in procession to the Wailing [sic; Western] Wall and
holding a service there. Previous
requests had been refused. This year,
though the Wailing Wall had become a bone of contention between Moslem and Jew,
the request was granted, under certain restrictive conditions.”
He went on:
‘So on August 15 the Jews marched out
escorted by the police, and in the Old City all went well. But at the Wall they broke the agreement,
unfurled the Zionist flag, and sang the anthem “Hatikvah”. The Moslems were indignant and arranged a
counter-demonstration for the morrow, which was the eve of the Prophet’s
Birthday. After prayer in the Aksa Mosque
they swarmed through the Bab-el-Magharba (Moorgate) to the Wailing Wall and
marched along the Wall. They did no
damage worth mention, and satisfied with this reprisal for what they deemed an
encroachment on their rights, withdrew in good order into the sacred area about
their chief mosques (the Haram esh Sherif [Temple Mount]).
On Saturday, the 17th, at a
Jewish football match, the ball was kicked into a beetroot patch belonging to a
Moslem. It could not even be returned
without a brawl. A Jew was stabbed, but
the police prevented serious fighting.
On the Saturday and Monday there was considerable effervescence in the
city, but nothing occurred beyond some attacks on Arabs passing through the
Jewish quarters to and from their villages.
On Tuesday, the 20th, the victim [Avraham Mizrachi] of the
“football scrimmage” died in hospital, and the question of his funeral added a
new complication. To avoid a collision
efforts were made to get the Jews to bury him at dawn. The younger Jews refused, and demanded a
processional funeral to the Wailing Wall.
The authorities objected. Their view
prevailed, and the Jews agreed to adhere to the traditional route past the
Damascus Gate out to the cemetery at the foot of Mount Scopus, and to hold the
funeral at 6 a.m. It was not until 10
a.m. that it started. All went well until
the procession reached the Post Office where the street bifurcates. Here the younger Zionists tried to break the
police cordon. The police resisted and
several Jews were struck with batons.
Eventually the procession was forced back on to the agreed route and the
funeral ended quietly.
Thursday was outwardly calm, but there was
electricity in the air. Towards evening
groups of armed Moslems drifted in from Nablus and Bethlehem, and their
convergence towards the Old City continued throughout the night and the next
morning. It was known that trouble was
brewing. The authorities, scenting
danger, took the customary precautions, and brought in the armoured cars of the
Royal Air Force from Amman to Ramleh.
As soon as the midday prayer was over the
unprecedentedly large congregation tumbled out of the Haram into the Old
City. The main body went towards the
Jaffa Gate. All were armed. Many carried a miniature arsenal round their
bodies; most had knives, and as they passed they brandished bludgeons and shouted
excitedly. A group went to Herod’s Gate,
where they murdered the Jewish lawyer Mr Wiener [London-born Harold Marcus
Wiener, who in addition to being a lawyer was a biblical scholar and
archaeologist], who had spent all his time and money in trying to reconcile Jew
and Arab. At the Damascus Gate a Jewish
family of four persons was brutally murdered by another group.
On reaching the Jaffa Gate the main body
split up into two. One went towards the
station, crossed the bridge and entered the old Montefiore quarter, where an
orgy of crime ensued. Some seem to have
returned to their villages after these exploits. But the rest, with the parties from the other
gates, attacked Sheikh Badr and Mea Sh[e]arim, north of the New City, where
they split again into bands which roamed over the quarter, leaving death and
destruction in their wake. The situation
was quite out of hand …’
So as well as summoning armoured cars from
Ramleh and declaring a curfew, the authorities requested all British residents
to enrol as special constables, and by 4 p.m. they had 100, including students
and their principal from the Anglican theological college Wycliffe Hall, Oxford,
who were visiting the Holy Land.
The
Times correspondent continued:
‘By now bands of armed Arabs were roaming
everywhere, attacking everyone who looked like a Jew. The Old City, however, was quiet. Towards evening the bands withdrew to the
outskirts and “sniped” from the hills around the city. This continued all night – in fact, for
several nights. The handful of British
police and special constables had an exacting time. But what they lacked in numbers they
certainly made up for in energy and influence, for no sooner did any of them
appear than the looters made off.’
Reinforcements were rushed in from Egypt,
and on Sunday a battalion of the South Wales Borderers arrived under Brigadier (later
Lieutenant-General Sir) William Dobbie, who would subsequently play a key role
in restoring order to Jaffa.
‘By this time Jerusalem was not the only
storm centre,’ the correspondent reported.
‘Saturday morning saw riot and violence at Hebron, Ramleh, Lydda,
Nablus, and Beisan. The worst excesses
were at Hebron, where Jews were murdered with almost inconceivable brutality,
and Kolonia, near Jerusalem, where the Jews were butchered and their farms set
on fire. Into the flames were cast the
bodies of two Jewish children who had already been killed. But once the troops arrived they averted fresh
calamities.’ Had it not been evident by
Friday, 30 August, that there were enough troops in Palestine equal to any
eventuality, ‘the Friday prayer would have again been followed by rioting. That the day passed without any serious
outbreak save at Safed showed that the crest of the outburst had passed.’
The correspondent stressed that he did not
mean to usurp the role of the Commission of Inquiry, but nevertheless could not
avoid making certain observations, which included:
‘That there has been Zionist provocation is
certain, but nothing the Jews could have said or done could justify the utter
brutality with which they were attacked.
In the light, moreover, of one’s knowledge of what took place in Egypt
in 1919, the way in which the Jerusalem affair was speedily followed by trouble
in other places, and the infiltration of armed Moslems into the city on the eve
of the outbreak, arouses more than a suspicion that there was some preconcerted
plan. The activities of some of the more
prominent Moslems, and notably by one of the Ulema [Islamic religious scholars],
tend to confirm this impression…’
The
Times later reported (11 November 1929) that, testifying
before the Commission of Inquiry, Captain John Alexander Mulloy Faraday,
assistant commissioner of police at Safed, where Arab violence towards Jews had
broken out on 29 August, noted that although Safed was not “a Zionist town” and
Jews had been living there for many years alongside Arabs, cries of “The faith
of Mohamed has risen with the sword!” and “We want no Jews in Arab Palestine!”
were among the sentiments hurled.
