Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan
Historian Moshe Ehrenwald says that the Jewish community in Mandatory Hebron not only ignored announcements that their Arab neighbors intended to slaughter them but spurned the Haganah's repeated offers of protection, leading to the loss of 67 lives.
The Hebron Yeshiva, 191
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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.
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/06/15/the-writing-was-on-the-wall/
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