The slaughter of Jewish residents of Hebron by Arabs of the same city in 1929 was the worst, most significant of all the bloodshed against the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine. On Aug. 23 and 24, 1929 (Friday and Saturday, respectively), 67 Hebron Jews were murdered, cutting off Jewish life in the city, which had existed there continuously for hundreds of years.
New research by historian Dr. Moshe Ehrenwald has found that the Jews of Hebron ignored dozens of signs received before the riots broke out, which if heeded could have prevented the awful murder of 67 people. The Haganah (the paramilitary Jewish defense group that eventually became the Israel Defense Forces) offered to protect and help the Jews of Hebron, but the offer was rejected.
The fact that the riots of 1920 and 1921 never reached Hebron, as well as the good and even neighborly relations between the Jews and many of the Arabs in Hebron – not to mention the belief that the British would protect them as they did in previous incidents – led the city's Jewish leaders to make the grave mistake of thinking that they would not be victims of the same violence. Ehrenwald recently made his findings public in a lecture at a conference on research in Judea and Samaria studies hosted by the Kfar Etzion Field School.
Hundreds of pieces of evidence, documents, and writing that Ehrenwald perused appear to show us that the writing was on the wall, and writ large.
As clear as could be
It was almost spelled out: On Friday, Aug. 16, 1929, when the conflict over the Western Wall heated up, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini began inciting against Jews and claiming that they intended to capture the Temple Mount and destroy the mosques, sermons in the Cave of the Patriarchs mosque focused on exactly the same subject. An associate of the grand mufti, Araf al-Araf, preached there, calling on the Arabs to "kill Jews, but not today. Wait until Friday [apparently meaning a week from then]."
That same day, Rabbi Meir Franco, the chief Sephardi rabbi of Hebron and a rabbinical court judge, heard that Sheikh Mahmoud Hamor had also preached against the Jews who supposedly wanted to seize the Temple Mount. On Aug. 21, Franco was informed by shop owner Yosef Kamer that he had heard from Arab acquaintances that they intended to leave for Jerusalem to avenge themselves against the Jews.
Rabbi Haim Bajayo, a teacher and shochet [kosher slaughterer] in Hebron, had heard two sheikhs issuing instructions to Arab protesters on the Friday before the riots: "Don't touch any Jew today, because we must wait until next Friday for orders." Bajayo never reported this to the police, thinking that it would never happen. What's more, at 3 p.m. on the Friday of the massacre, Bajayo heard Sheikh Taleb Maraka speaking before dozens of Arabs, calling on them to avenge "the blood that was spilled in Jerusalem." And even then the words made no impression.
Yehuda Leib Shneerson, who ran the Eshel Abraham Hotel with his father Haim Shlomo, reported that on Sunday, Aug. 18, Arab children were bragging about how they would "slaughter all the Jews" the next Saturday. Businessman Eliezer Gabbai said that on Wednesday, Aug. 21, two Arabs came into his store to purchase goods and began negotiating with him, suggesting that he sell them everything cheaply because in three or four days all the goods in Gabbai's store would be stolen. Resident Moshe Buzaglo, also a shop owner, heard from one Abdel Raheem Farah that "when the Jews of Jerusalem are attacked, there will also be an attack on the Jews of Hebron." Buzaglo later heard from peasants in Abdel Raheem's own shop that the slaughter of the Hebron Jews would begin on Saturday, Aug. 24.
More testimony came from a journalist who left Hebron on Aug. 22, the only Jewish passenger on his bus. He heard the Arab passengers talking about what would happen after the Friday prayers on the Temple Mount.
Eliyahu Gozlan overheard a conversation between three Hebron carpenters who were discussing procuring weapons. When he tried to find out why they needed weapons, one of them answered, "to kill Jews." On Thursday, two days before the massacre, laborers who worked for a local carpenter told Shlomo and Meir Gozlan that the next day "there would be a war against the Jews."
A full two weeks before the riots and killing, butcher Yisrael Avraham Lahava and cheesemaker Nissim Ezra had heard that the city's Arabs didn't plan to leave a single Jew alive. Ezra even said that a week before the riots, Arabs told him that Sheikh Maraka and his son Zahoudi, as well as Mayeed al-Hattib, telling Arab residents that anyone who owned a weapon should go to war and slaughter all the Jews.
The number of testimonies Ehrenwald collected, only a few of which are cited here, showing that the Jews of Hebron had prior knowledge of the impending massacre is astonishing. But what is more astonishing is the response of the Jewish community elders to the reports.
Zvia Hadash, the wife of Rabbi Meir of the Slabodka Yeshiva, and Shifra Ben Gerson, wife of the yeshiva secretary, were in the market and overheard on Arab telling another, "Those two are getting ready for the Sabbath, but we'll enjoy it and anyone who wants can have a Jewish woman." The two told their husbands what they had heard, and they all went to Eliezer Dan Slonim, a community leader and bank manager who represented the Hebron Jewish community on the city council. Slonim was in a meeting with Arab dignitaries. He calmed down the worried couples and told them that no one would harm Jews in Hebron because of the good relations between Jews and Arabs. Slonim even shared the report with his guests, and they confirmed his words of comfort.
Leah Gozlan overheard a conversation between Saad Maraka and Issa Arfa about the need to kill every Jew in Hebron. She told her husband and brother-in-law, but they did not take her seriously. On the eve of the massacre, Shneerson saw Sheikh Maraka inciting a mob of about 30 Arabs, telling them that "thousands of Muslims have been killed in Jerusalem. Avenge their blood through the Jews of Hebron." Shneerson was frightened and ran home.
On Saturday, Aug. 24, at 8:30 a.m., Sheikh Maraka entered the Shneerson family's hotel, stayed for about 15 minutes, and promised the owner, Haim, that he shouldn't be scared. That nothing would happen. There was no reason to bar the doors. About an hour after the sheikh left, the riots began. Maraka himself stood on the steps of Slonim's home across the street from the hotel and urged the Arabs around him to attack.
Shaky coexistence
Ehrenwald notes that only a few years earlier, the leaders of the small Hebron Jewish community, which numbered about 700 compared to 18,000 Arab residents, convinced the heads of the Slabodka Yeshiva in Lithuania to move it to the Holy Land and reestablish the yeshiva in Hebron. They promised that Hebron was quiet. Ehrenwald thinks that part of the "it won't happen here" approach could be ascribed to the community leaders' fear of letting the Slobodniks know about the serious threats from the Arabs after they were promised that the city was safe. The yeshiva heads also opposed their students being trained to use arms. Only a year earlier, the Slabodka yeshiva boys tried to calm Yaakov Pat, head of the Jerusalem region in the Haganah, who wondered how they could defend themselves if they were ever attacked. They responded: God help us.
The good relations with many of the Arabs in the city before the Western Wall conflict erupted also contributed to the Jews' sense of confidence. The Jews would walk freely in the local market and buy from Arab-owned shops. On the first of every Hebrew month, the Muslim guard at the Cave of the Patriarchs would let them ascend as far up as the 11th step, rather than the customary seventh step. They traveled back and forth to Jerusalem on Arab buses, and Jews and Arabs attended each other's weddings.
Once, important Arab personages attended a ball held in honor of the head of the Slabodka Yeshiva, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein. On Purim in 1925, Arabs danced with the yeshiva students. From time to time, the students would visit local villages on donkeys. Only 10 days before the massacre, Slonim secured a special permit from the city's Arab leadership for Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Shneerson – the leader of the Lubavitch Hassidic sect – and three of his cohort to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Three days before the slaughter, two Haganah officials – Aharon Haim Cohen and Saadia Kirschenbaum – came to Hebron. They told the community leaders of their grave concern over rumors of the imminent riots and killing, and presented two options: the community could evacuate, or the Haganah could send people to protect them.
"The community leaders rejected both options," Ehrenwald says.
"They insisted that relations with the Arabs were good, so they weren't afraid. Cohen, who spoke Arabic, wasn't convinced. He dressed in Arab clothing and spent a few hours among the Arabs of Hebron, and heard about the plans to 'slaughter the Jews.' When he returned to the community elders with the news, he suggested that they bring in a few Haganah members. But they [the leaders] argued that doing so would cause them harm.
"Two days before the massacre, despite the community's resistance, the Haganah sent 12 of its members to Hebron, carrying their personal guns, bombs, and more weapons to distribute to the yeshiva students there," Ehrenwald reveals.
This angered Slonim, who claimed that the Arabs would never dare to attack the Jews as long as he was head of the community because he managed the bank and they needed credit. He demanded that the Haganah fighters return to Jerusalem, refused to take their guns, and told them he had a pistol of his own. While they were at Slonim's, two Arab policemen arrived and took 10 of the Haganah members into custody. The Haganah told the police chief that they had stopped over on their way to Beersheba. The chief got mad and sent them back to Jerusalem.
Too little, too late
Later, Avraham Ikar, commander of the Haganah in Tel Aviv, testified that a day before the riots, a group of Haganah members had been dispatched to Hebron, but that "not only did the Jews of Hebron not welcome them, they asked them in every way possible to go back to Jerusalem, because their presence could stir up the Arabs."
Haganah fighter Sigmund Nesher, one of the group that was kicked out of Hebron, said after the massacre: "Twelve of us left for Hebron in two cars, with guns, but the Jews turned us out on our ear and wouldn't receive us. The police chief, who hated Jews, asked us to get out faster."
Only on Friday, Aug. 23, did the Jewish community leaders start to understand how grave the situation was. Ehrenwald's research describes the action it took, which was too little, too late. Only at the very last minute did it occur to the Jews of Hebron to defend themselves, and they had only three pistols. Only five people knew how to use them. Even then, Slonim continued to argue – perhaps hoping the Arabs would take note – that he believed his Arab friends and the governor, who had promised him that nothing serious would happen. One of the few weapons the community had was Slonim's own pistol, and it is unclear whether he used it. Slonim was killed in the massacre along with over 20 people who had sought shelter in his home in the belief that no evil would befall them there. After the massacre, policeman Hanoch Brodlinsky testified that Slonim had been buried with his pistol in his pocket.
On the night of Saturday, Aug. 24, a Haganah member from Jerusalem met a comrade by the name of Ben David, one of the 12 who was sent to Hebron, who was weeping and berating himself: "We're responsible for the massacre in Hebron, because we listened to the rabbis," Ben David cried.
Ehrenwald notes that while many Hebron Jews were rescued from the riots by Arabs, the community leadership was mistaken in its confidence that their Arab neighbors wouldn't hurt them. Take Issa Arafa, for example. He was a close friend of Slonim's and spent time with him on Friday and Saturday only hours before the riots. He later took an active part in the murders in Slonim's own home.
Ehrenwald says that things in Hebron could have turned out completely differently if the community leaders had allowed the Haganah fighters to defend them.
"After all, the massacre stopped as soon as the police carrying guns starting firing in the air. Even if the Jews had used the three guns they had properly, it could have led to different results," the historian observes.
