Britian, Haj Husseini and the Arab Riots of 1920 destroying Jewish lives and property

Britian, Haj Husseini and the Arab Riots of 1920

The British administration did not just wait on events to foster implementation their policy of increased British control in the Middle East. 
They worked hard, simultaneously on a second front, in Syria, against the French. In July 1919, a "Syrian National Congress" demanded the unity of Syria (that is, to include Palestine) and the installation of Faisal as king. The French expressed a fear that this sudden materialisation from nowhere of a Syrian national movement and the reversal of the popular feeling against the Sherifians was the result of a British intrigue. The British replied with denials and reassuring statements. In fact, Allenby in Cairo and his subordinates in Palestine, G.O.C. General Bols and his Chief of Staff, Col. Waters-Taylor, were secretly pressing their home government to "accept the situation": to jettison their government's pact with the French, to abandon the Zionists, and to give Syria and Palestine to Faisal.

The plan, in the face of London's official Zionist policy, it had to be covered by an Arab cloak

The plan, however, could, not be pursued as a bald British purpose. In the face of London's official Zionist policy, it had to be covered by an Arab cloak, and quickly. The military administration itself began creating an Arab organisation that could then be presented as the authentic voice and representative of "the Arabs" in rejecting and combating the Zionists and the Zionist policy of the British government. Here began the history of the first Arab political organisation, the Moslem Christian Association (MCA). Its first branch, in Jaffa, was organised at the inspiration of the District Military Governor, Lt. Col. J. E. Hubbard -- who had formally proposed to his superiors in the administration the setting up of an Arab organisation -- and under the personal direction of the district head of British Intelligence, Captain Brunton. Not insignificantly, the most active and disproportionately numerous early recruits were Christian Arabs. Years later, a leading member of the military administration, Sir Wyndham Deedes, admitted that from its inception the Moslem Christian Association had enjoyed the support and financial aid of the British administration.¹
The purposes of the administration were now pursued by a stream of memoranda of protest and demands by the several branches of the MCA, dutifully forwarded to London with accompanying evaluations of their originality, spontaneity, sincerity, and the representative character of their signatories.

A "situation" had to be created

Memoranda, however, were not enough to generate quick action; a "situation" had to be created. Col. Waters-Taylor maintained contact with Faisal in Damascus, urging upon him action to assume power in Syria from the French. He assured him that the Arabs of Palestine were behind him and would welcome him as king of a "united Syria," that is, including Palestine. He urged him, moreover, "to stand up against the British Government for his principles." Early in 1920, this general effort at persuasion gave way to more specific inducement; money and arms were provided for the planned coup.²
In Jerusalem, Waters-Taylor and Col. Ronald Storrs, one of the original members of the Cairo school and now Governor of the city, established and maintained regular contact with the handful of militant Sherifians, notably Haj Amin el Husseini, the young brother of the Mufti of Jerusalem, and Aref el Aref. In early 1920, Waters-Taylor suggested to his and Storrs' Arab contacts the desirability of organising "anti-Jewish riots to impress on the Administration the unpopularity of the Zionist policy." A detailed critical report of all these activities was submitted to General Allenby by the political officer of the Palestine administration, Col. Richard Meinertzhagen. Allenby told him he would take no action.³

In March, the coup was carried out in Damascus and Faisal was installed as king, in Palestine there were riots - against the Jews

The spring of 1920 was chosen for action. In March, the coup was carried out in Damascus and Faisal was installed as king. In order to achieve a sizeable riot in Palestine, the country (in the words of the subsequent military Court of Enquiry) was "infested with Sherifian officers."⁴ who carried on a lurid agitation against the Jews. As the court noted euphemistically, the administration took no action against them.
On the Wednesday before Easter, Col. Waters-Taylor had a meeting in Jerusalem with Haj Amin el Husseini and told him "that he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world that the Arabs of Palestine would not tolerate Jewish domination in Palestine; that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall; and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols and General Allenby would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home" (Meinertzhagen, pp. 81-82).

Britain dispanded almost all Jewish regiments, soldiers and removed Jewish policemen from Jerusalem

That year, Easter coincided with the Moslem festival of Nebi Musa. Its celebration included a procession starting in Jerusalem, where the crowd was addressed by the Sherifians and told to fall on the Jews "in the name of King Faisal." For doubters, there was an even more convincing argument: Adowlah ma'ana -- the government is with us. This was a demonstrable fact; all but a remnant of the Jewish regiments, that had helped liberate Palestine had been disbanded over the preceding months; the few remaining soldiers were confined to camp at Sarafand. On the day of the outbreak, all British troops and Jewish police had been removed from the Old City; only Arab policemen were left.
The mob in the Old City, armed with clubs and knives, first looted shops. Then it caught and beat up or killed Jews and raped Jewish women. The Court of Enquiry -- itself a creation of the administration -- summed up: "The Jews were the victims of a peculiarly brutal and cowardly attack, the majority of the casualties being old men, women and children" (p. 76).
Zeev Jabotinsky and Pinchas Rutenberg had in the preceding days hastily organised a Jewish self-defence unit. Their way into the Old City was barred at the gates by British troops.
In the first flush of enthusiasm, a British military court compounded the offence in traditional fashion: The defenders were punished. Jabotinsky was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment and twenty of his followers were given lesser terms. But Haj Amin and el Aref had operated too openly for any government publicly to ignore their guilt. Though they escaped across the Jordan, they were sentenced in absentia to ten years' imprisonment each.

"A Pogrom in Jerusalem"

The British government, however much whitewash it was willing to splash over the events in Jerusalem, had to react to the outcry that went up in Europe and the United States at the phenomenon of a pogrom in Jerusalem. Nor could it ignore the factual inside information it received. Meinertzhagen, as a representative of the Foreign Office, sent a new, detailed report derived from an independent intelligence unit he had established. This, time, he bypassed Allenby and wrote directly to the Foreign Office.
As a result, the sentence on Jabotinsky was quashed; the most obvious conspirators, including Bols and Waters-Taylor, were removed; the military regime was replaced by a civil administration. Storrs, more subtle than his colleagues, remained, and he was not alone.⁵ The Arabist purpose of the Cairo school did not change but was carried over into the civil administration of Palestine and pervaded and finally dominated the Mandatory regime.

It did not succeed in creating an Arab "nation" in Palestine in 1918

It did not succeed in creating an Arab "nation" in Palestine. In 1918, at the height of his campaign to register Arab achievements, Colonel Lawrence himself had cautiously confessed in one of his confidential reports:



"The phrase Arab Movement was invented in Cairo as a common denominator for all the vague discontents against Turkey which before 1916 existed in the Arab provinces. In a non-constitutional country, these naturally took on a revolutionary character and it was convenient to pretend to find a common ground in all of them. They were most of them very local, very jealous, but had to be considered in the hope that one or the other of them might bear fruit."⁶In 1919 and 1920, despite the historic transformation that had taken place around them, the Arabs had not changed. When in July 1920 the French in Syria decided on a firm stand and ordered Faisal to leave the country, he meekly complied. The popular forces which his British sponsors attributed to him did not show themselves. In Jerusalem that Easter, even the Arab mob in the marketplace, before they attacked Jews, had to be fired by religious incitement, by the invocation of a living king, by the visible evidence that their victims were defenceless, and by the assurance that their violence would be welcomed by the British rulers.

"Arab national feeling," he wrote, "is based on our [British] gold and nothing else"

The political officer to the administration went even further: "Arab national feeling," he wrote, "is based on our gold and nothing else" (Meinertzhagen, p. 83).
In the early years of the civil administration, there was still a running policy conflict between the British statesmen who had been responsible for, or associated with, the negotiations with the Zionists and the undertakings made to them and the purveyors of Laurentian pan-Arabism. The Laurentians, however, contrived to fill key posts in the Palestinian administration, and some of them were inevitably recruited to fill the posts in the Middle Eastern Department of the Colonial Office, which in 1921 took over responsibility for Palestine.
The Cairo-Khartoum school, moreover, found an unexpected ally in the first chief of the civil administration, Sir Herbert Samuel. Samuel, precisely because he was a Jew, soon found himself in the position of either following the advice of his subordinates or being considered insufficiently British. In striking contrast to his English soldier-successor, Lord Plumer, who adhered as best he could to the status quo and to the brief he had from Whitehall, Samuel allowed his administration to develop naturally the anti-Zionist themes of the military administration it had replaced. An anti-Zionist official named Ernest T. Richmond, in government employ as an architect, was manoeuvred by Storrs (as is now made clear by the British government archives) into the post of assistant secretary (political), whose duties were formally those of chief adviser to the High Commissioner on Moslem affairs.⁷

British advice to Arab agitator-leaders

Richmond, receiving a salary to carry out the London government's official policy, openly spent his time in the administration on efforts to undermine it. He gave advice to the Arab agitator-leaders. He became their intermediary and self-appointed spokesman. It was at the initiative and under the tutelage of Richmond, Storrs, and their colleagues, and under their inspiration, that the Sherifian instigators of the pogrom of 1920 were now brought back into the arena to build up a political machine so that they could claim to speak for the "Arabs of Palestine."
Haj Amin el Husseini was hiding across the Jordan to avoid serving his jail sentence. Since no other candidate for this kind of leadership had appeared among the Arabs, Samuel was persuaded by Storrs to pardon Haj Amin -- and his colleague Aref el Aref -- as a "gesture"; and they returned to Jerusalem. When the incumbent Mufti of Jerusalem died soon afterward, the Moslem religious leaders convened as an electoral college to recommend a short list of three candidates from whom the High Commissioner would have to make the appointment. Haj Amin entered the contest. He had no special qualification to be the head of Moslem community in the city. He was twenty-years old and his education must have been over well before he was twenty-one, since he had served in the Turkish Army certainly before 1917. In the poll, he received the lowest number of votes and thus could not be included in the recommended list of three.

Haj Husseini appointed by British as Mufti of Jerusalem - even though he received the lowest number of votes from the Moslem community

Richmond launched an energetic campaign to get Samuel to appoint him nevertheless. He urged upon him the "expert" view that the poll was unimportant, that Haj Amin was the man the "Moslem population" insisted on. A virulent agitation was let loose within the Moslem community against the successful candidate, Sheikh Jurallah, who was described, among other things, as a Zionist who intended to sell Moslem holy property to the Jews. Samuel gave way. He did not in fact send Haj Amin the letter of appointment and it was never gazetted. Haj Amin simply "became" the Mufti of Jerusalem. Thus, this man, imposed on the Moslem community, became and remained, for most of the crucial years of the Mandate, the director and spearhead of the war on Zionism. The Moslem dignitaries, whom even the backward Turks had not accustomed to such outrageous interference or dictation, nevertheless took the hint. They knew now beyond any doubt what the British power expected of them.
When he started on his career, however, Haj Amin's followers were few, and he had no sources of finance for the political task projected for him. This, too, had been thought of. The administration then set up a body called the Supreme Moslem Council. Haj Amin, now clothed with the authority of Mufti and authentic favourite of the British, was elected its president without difficulty. His position was entrenched: The appointment was for life, so that no opposition could ever unseat him democratically. He and his pliant subordinates became the arbiters of all Moslem religious endowments and expenditure. Many Moslems became dependent on him for their livelihood. He controlled an annual income of more than £100,000, for which he was not accountable. (By today's values, this would be equivalent in purchasing power to about $2 million.) Such was the origin of the organised "national movement" of the "Arabs of Palestine."

Haj Husseini's next attack, the defenceless Yeshiva community of Hebron in 1929

The means of organising propaganda and violence against Zionism and the pattern of its organisation were thus assured. A short localised attack took place in 1921 and simultaneous onslaught in several areas in 1929. This latter attack was again distinguished by the choice of helpless, defenceless people as its target-in Hebron the bulk of the community of rabbis and yeshiva students and their wives and children were slaughtered -- and by the blatantly benevolent neutrality of the British forces of law and order, one of whose first acts was to disarm the Jewish villages. In 1936 came the last and most protracted offensive, officially organised by an informal political body called the Arab Higher Committee; it was led by Haj Amin el Husseini, still Mufti and still President of the Moslem Supreme Council.
In the intervening years, the men of the Cairo school -- as they progressively increased their dominance in Palestine as well as over the central policies in the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office -- were able to deepen and diversify their campaign against Zionism. During those years, their propaganda identified Zionism with Bolshevism -- an image carrying instant demonic conviction with devout Christians as well as devout Moslems. During those years, the Lawrence myth was built into the popular history of the age, and with it the story of the "Arab Revolt" gained credence. Now the Arabs, and even the Arabs of Palestine, gradually came to play a major role in the liberation of the country from the Turks. Now, too, the claim promoted by Lawrence and embellished by Oriental imagination about how the Arabs had been "let down" by the British was broadcast as historic truth. The very real and significant Jewish share in Allenby's campaign in Palestine on both sides of the Jordan was not mentioned. 

The Balfour Declaration had become a document to protect the rights of Arabs, not Jews

The Balfour Declaration was somehow twisted at one and the same time into a discreditable transaction and a meaningless document that promised the Jews nothing, and guarenteed the rights of Arabs over Jews in Palestine.
During those years, in order to match the unique relationship of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, the "rights of the Palestine Arabs" were manufactured and endowed with the fictitious historical continuity which serves as the substance of present-day Arab propaganda.
1. J. E. Hubbard to Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, November 20, 1918. Israel State Archives, Pal. Govt. Secretariat File No. 40. Quoted in Y. Porat, Tsemihat Hatenua Ha’aravit Hapalestinait 1918-1929 (Tel Aviv, 1971), P. 24.
2. Samuel, Unholy Memories, p. 9.
3. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary 1917-1956 (London, 1959), pp. 55-56.
4. Report of Court of Enquiry, FO 371/5121, p. 38.
5. Henrietta Szold, the American Zionist leader, described Storrs as "an evil genius, who despises Jews." Marvin Lowenthal, Henrietta Szold (New York, 1942), pp. 186-187.
6. T. E. Lawrence, Secret Despatches from Arabia (London, 1939), p. 158.
7. FO 371/5267 file E 9433/8343/44; FO 371/5268 files E 11720/8343/44, 11835/8343/44.

Anti-Jewish Violence in Pre-State Palestine/1929 Massacres

Arab violence against Jews is often alleged to have begun with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 or as a result of Israel's capture in 1967 of territories occupied by Jordan. But even before the Mandate for Palestine was assigned to Great Britain by the Allies at the San Remo Conference (April 1920) and endorsed by the League of Nations (July 1922), Palestinian Arabs were carrying out organized attacks against Jewish communities in Palestine. Systematic violence began in early 1920 with murderous assaults by groups of local Arabs against settlements in the north and by Muslim pilgrims against Jerusalem's Jews. Again in 1921, Arab rioters attacked Jews in Jaffa and its environs. The primary agitator behind these attacks was Haj Amin al Husseini, who marshalled Arab discontent over Jewish immigration into violent riots. In 1929, Husseini and his associates fomented a violent jihad as they called upon Muslims to "defend" their holy places from the Jews. As a result, pogroms were carried out across Palestine. Arab villagers sympathetic to Jews were often targets of murderous attacks by their Arab brethren as well. British forces were sharply criticized for not policing the territory adequately, for sympathizing with the Arabs, and for standing by and allowing havoc to be wreaked upon Jewish communities in Palestine. In 1936, the Arab Higher Committee, led by Grand Mufti Husseini, launched a campaign of anti-Jewish violence across Palestine. Accompanied by a six-month-long strike, the campaign became known as "The Arab Revolt." As the British increasingly became targets of Arab violence, they used massive force to suppress the aggression. The revolt was finally quashed in 1939. The resulting White Paper of 1939 reversed British commitment to a Jewish State (the raison d'etre of the Mandate) and drastically limited Jewish immigration into Palestine. 1920-21: Attacks and Riots Josef Trumpeldor Organized anti-Jewish violence began in earnest at the beginning of 1920. In January, Arab villagers attacked Tel Hai, a Jewish settlement in the Galilee near the Syrian border (then under French control), killing two members. Two months later, on March 1, 1920, hundreds of Arabs from a nearby village descended on Tel Hai again, killing six more Jews. Among them was Josef Trumpeldor — a Russian wartime hero who had fought in the Russo-Japanese war and who organized the defense of the settlements in the Galilee. During the months of March and April, over a dozen Jewish agricultural settlements in the Galilee were attacked by armed Palestinian Arabs. These included Kfar Tavor, Degania, Rosh Pina, Ayelet Hashahar, Mishmar Hayarden, Kfar Giladi and Metulla. (Four of these — Hamara, Kfar Giladi, Metulla and Bnei Yehuda were evacuated after being repeatedly attacked, and the latter was completely abandoned.) Around the same time, during the Passover and Easter holidays, a group of Palestinian Arab "Nebi Musa" pilgrims (making their annual pilgrimage from Jerusalem to the site they believed was Moses' tomb), were incited by Haj Amin al Husseini's anti-Jewish rhetoric to ransack the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and launch violent anti-Jewish riots. The violence, which took place between April 4 and April 7, claimed the lives of nine people — five Jews and four Arabs — and left 244 wounded, the vast majority Jews. The British military administration, sympathetic to the Arabs, did not allow the Jews to arm themselves. Jewish victims of Nebi Musa riots Ze'ev Jabotinsky Ze'ev (Vladimir ) Jabotinsky, a Russian journalist and Zionist activist, organized the defense of the Old City Jews with demobilized soldiers from the Jewish Legion who had participated in the British military campaign against the Ottomans. (Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor had organized and helped lead the Jewish volunteer military units that had fought with the British.) When the British authorities finally quelled the riots, Jabotinsky and 19 associates were arrested for possession of illegal weapons. Jabotinsky was stripped of his commission in Palestine, and was sentenced to 15 years of penal servitude. The Arab aggressors, by contrast, received much lighter sentences. Worldwide protests, however, forced the British to shorten and eventually revoke the sentences of Jabotinsky and his associates (as well as the incarcerated Arabs). Haj Amin al Husseini Meanwhile, Haj Amin al Husseini and other Arab leaders continued to incite  against the Jews. On May 1, 1921, Arab rioters and policemen with knives, pistols and rifles took to the streets of Jaffa, beating and murdering Jews, and looting Jewish homes and stores. Twenty-seven Jews were killed and 150 were wounded. Attacks by Arab villagers spread to the Jewish communities of Petach Tikvah, Rehovot, Hadera, and as far north as Haifa. According to an Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine to the League of Nation, dated June 1921: Troops were employed and suppressed the disturbances, and the attacks on the [Jewish] colonies were dispersed with considerable loss to the [Arab] attackers. Martial law was proclaimed over the area affected, but much excitement prevailed for several days in Jaffa and the neighbouring districts, and for some weeks there was considerable unrest. 88 persons were killed and 238 injured, most of them slightly, in these disturbances, and there was much looting and destruction of property. There were no casualties among the troops… A commission of inquiry, led by Sir Thomas Haycraft, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Palestine, was set up to investigate the causes and circumstances of the riots and concluded that the violence was due to Arab resentment of Jewish immigrants to Palestine. As a result, the British High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, ordered a temporary halt to Jewish immigration. Ships carrying Jews were not allowed to land in Palestine. In November 1921, another Arab attack on the Jewish quarter of the Old City was repelled by the Haganah, Jewish defense volunteers. 1928-1929: Jihad against Jews Between 1918 and 1928, the Jewish population in Palestine doubled, to about 150,000. Palestinian Arabs were concerned about this and their leaders, with Haj Amin al Husseini at the forefront, fanned the flames of hatred and suspicion. Husseini, now the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, used the Western (Wailing) Wall — the last remnant of the Jewish Holy Temple compound — as a focal point for his anti-Zionist campaign. In September 1928, a small group of Jews erected a "mechitza" (a divider to separate men and women during prayers) for Yom Kippur prayers at the Western Wall. The British forcibly dismantled the divider, but Husseini used this incident as a pretext to incite Muslims. He accused the Jews of attempting to seize Muslim holy sites, including the al Aqsa Mosque. Arab rioters on Temple Mount, 1929 (from: Pillar of Fire) A virulent propaganda campaign calling for jihad against the Jews resulted in the frequent beating and stoning of Jews worshipping at the Wall and culminated in widespread, murderous riots across Palestine in August 1929. August 15, 1929 was Tisha B'Av, the day on which Jews commemorate the destruction of the Holy Temple. Thousands of Jews marched to the Wall to protest British restrictions on Jewish prayer there, and to reaffirm their Jewish connection to the holy site. They displayed their nationalistic fervor by singing Hatikvah (later to become Israel's national anthem). The following day, mobs of armed Arab worshippers inflamed by anti-Jewish sermons, fell upon Jewish worshippers at the Wall, destroying Jewish prayer books and notes placed between the stones of the wall. On August 17, a Jewish boy was killed by Arabs during ensuing riots in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Bukharan. According to the Davar newspaper of August 20, 1929, incitement against the Jews was rampant, especially in the Jerusalem and Hebron area. Rumors were spread that Jews had cursed Islam and intended to take over their holy places; Muslims were told that it was their duty to take revenge. "Defend the Holy Places" became the battle cry. On August 23, more than 1000 Arabs launched attacks on Jews throughout Jerusalem. Forty-seven people were killed. This was followed by widespread attacks on Jews throughout Palestine. Again, the British forbade Jews to organize armed self-defense units and within several days, 133 Jews had been killed and 339 wounded. Arab attackers sustained high numbers of casualties (116), almost all of whom were killed by British police trying to quell the violence. Jewish leaders reported that Arab attacks showed evidence of organized warfare; Arab assaults on Jewish communities extended from as far south as Hebron to Haifa, Safed, Mahanaim and Pekiin in the north. A state of emergency was declared and martial law was imposed by the British.   1929 Hebron Massacre A trail of blood running down the stairs of a Jewish home in Hebron According to Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre Van Passen who was in Palestine at the time, fabricated pictures of Muslim holy sites in ruins were handed out to Hebron Arabs as they were leaving their mosques on Friday, August 23, 1929. The captions on the pictures claimed that the Dome of the Rock was bombed by the Zionists. That evening, armed Arabs broke into the Yeshiva (Talmudic academy) and murdered the lone student they found. The following day, an enraged Arab mob wielding knives, axes, and iron bars destroyed the Yeshiva and slaughtered the rest of the students there. A delegation of Jewish residents on their way to the police station was lynched by an Arab mob. The mob then proceeded to massacre Hebron's Jews — both Sephardi and Ashkenazi — who had lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors for years. With only one British officer supervising, the Arab police made no attempt to prevent the massacre. The head of Hebron's Ashkenazi community, Rabbi Ya'akov Slonim, had been on good terms with his Arab colleagues and offered his home as a refuge to Hebron's Jews, believing that they would be spared. But the mob broke in and killed the Rabbi, members of his family and all those assembled there. Van Passen gave the following account, revealing an attempted cover-up by British officials: Photo of some of the members of the Slonim family, murdered in the massacre What occurred in the upper chambers of Slonim's house could be seen when we found the twelve-foot-high ceiling splashed with blood. The rooms looked like a slaughterhouse. When I visited the place in the company of Captain Marek Schwartz, a former Austrian artillery officer, Mr. Abraham Goldberg of New York, and Mr. Ernst Davies, correspondent of the old Berliner Tageblatt, the blood stood in a huge pool on the slightly sagging stone floor of the house. Clocks, crockery, tables and windows had been smashed to smithereens. Of the unlooted articles, not a single item had been left intact except a large black-and-white photograph of Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Around the picture's frame the murderers had draped the blood-drenched underwear of a woman. We stood silently contemplating the scene of slaughter when the door was flung open by a British solder with fixed bayonet. In strolled Mr. Keith-Roach, governor of the Jaffa district, followed by a colonel of the Green Howards battalion of the King's African Rifles. They took a hasty glance around that awful room, and Mr. Roach remarked to his companion, "Shall we have lunch now or drive to Jerusalem first?" In Jerusalem the Government published a refutation of the rumors that the dead Jews of Hebron had been tortured before they had their throats slit. This made me rush back to that city accompanied by two medical men, Dr. Dantziger and Dr. Ticho. I intended to gather up the severed sexual organs and the cut-off women's breasts we had seen lying scattered over the floor and in the beds. But when we came to Hebron a telephone call from Jerusalem had ordered our access barred to the Slonim house. [Van Passen, Pierre, Days of Our Years, Hillman-Curl, Inc., New York 1939] In total, sixty-seven Jews were killed and 60 were wounded. The Jewish community in Hebron was destroyed. Those who survived the Hebron massacre became refugees In 1931, the community attempted to rebuild, but during the riots of 1936, the British authorities evacuated Hebron's Jewish residents and did not allow them to return to their homes. Hebron, one of the four cities holy to Jews, which, for many centuries, had a Jewish presence, remained Judenrein for over 30 years. It was only in 1968, after Hebron came under Israel's control, that Jews resettled there. 1929 Safed Massacre Barely a week after the Hebron massacre, Safed, another one of the four Jewish holy cities, was subject to the same depredations. On August 29, 1929, Arabs from Safed and nearby villages assaulted and murdered their Jewish neighbors, burning and pillaging their homes. Witnesses called it a pogrom. Eighteen Jews were killed, 40 wounded, and 200 houses were burned and looted. The following is an eyewitness account by David Hacohen, who immigrated in 1907 to Israel from Russia and later served in the Israeli Knesset from 1949-69:  I believe I was the first Jew to reach Safed from the outside after the massacre there. One Friday morning we heard that there had been a pogrom in Safed. We read the official announcement: "On August 29, at 6:15, disturbances broke out in Safed. The army arrived on the scene at 8:35 and immediately restored order. There were some fatal casualties and many houses were burnt. The Jewish inhabitants were at once transferred to safety. Since then calm has prevailed in Safed" ... ...We had enough experience not to trust the reassuring official announcement... We set out on Saturday morning. When at noon we entered the town through the main road, I could not believe my eyes. . . I met some of the town's Jewish elders, who fell on my neck weeping bitterly... Inside the houses I saw the mutilated and burned bodies of the victims of the massacre, and the burned body of a woman tied to the grille of a window. Going from house to house, I counted ten bodies that had not yet been collected. I saw the destruction and the signs of fire. Even in my grimmest thoughts I had not imagined that this was how I would find Safed where "calm prevailed." The local Jews gave me a detailed description of how the tragedy had started. The pogrom began on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29, and was carried out by Arabs from Safed and from the nearby villages, armed with weapons and tins of kerosene. Advancing on the street of the Sefardi Jews from Kfar Meron and Ein Zeitim, they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing. They slaughtered the schoolteacher, Aphriat, together with his wife and mother, and cut the lawyer, Toledano, to pieces with their knives. Bursting into the orphanages, they smashed the children's heads and cut off their hands. I myself saw the victims. Yitshak Mammon, a native of Safed who lived with an Arab family, was murdered with indescribable brutality: he was stabbed again and again, until his body became a bloody sieve, and then he was trampled to death. Throughout the whole pogrom the police did not fire a single shot. The British police commander, Farradav, walked up and down the main street of the town, where everything was quiet, and did not go down to the scene of the massacre... Instead of protecting the Jewish population and its property, the police commander had evacuated four thousand Jews from their homes to the courtyard of Government House, leaving their homes to be looted and burned. While the looting and killing were still going on, the police were searching the Jews for arms... [Hacohen, David, Time to Tell: An Israeli Life 1898-1984, English translation from the original Hebrew, Cornwall Books, New York 1985] 1936-39 Toward the end of 1935 and the beginning of 1936, Arab demonstrations were held against Jewish immigration and purchase of land in Palestine. Tensions between the Arab and Jewish population grew. On April 15, 1936, Arabs attacked Jewish vehicles on the highway and murdered three Jews. The following night, two Arabs were shot by unidentified masked gunmen, in what the Arab community believed to be a reprisal attack by Jews. The gunmen were not identified, but soon false rumors were spread that Jews had murdered Arabs in the Jaffa area, upon which a Jewish bus was attacked and local Jews were assaulted. Within days, Arab mobs were assaulting and murdering random Jews and destroying Jewish property. The violence — including murders, ambushes, plunder and arson — quickly spread throughout the country, and was accompanied by a general Arab strike to put a stop to Jewish immigration and the sale of property to Jews, and to demand the establishment of an Arab national government. It was the beginning of a three-year-long campaign of terrorism against Jews and British soldiers and officials, orchestrated by the Arab High Command led by Haj Amin al Husseini and known as the "Arab Revolt." Onslaught of Arab Terror, 1936: April 15, 1936: 3 Jews in Tulkarm killed by Arabs. April 19: 9 Jews in Jaffa killed by Arabs. April 20: 5 Jews in Jaffa killed by Arabs. April 22: Jewish woman in Jaffa killed by Arabs. April 26: Jewish houses in Nazareth and Beit Shean burned by Arabs. April 26: An Arab mob beats up Jewish boy in Jerusalem. April 28: 4 Jewish farm workers in Migdal injured by Arabs. April 29: Arabs burn down a Jewish forest in Balfouriya. April 29: Arab mob forms in Jerusalem, but British police break it up before Jews harmed. May 1: 2 Jews in Haifa killed by Arabs. May 3: Arab mob burns down Jewish timber yard in Haifa. May 4: Jewish orchards in Mishmar Ha-Emek burned by Arabs. May 4: Arabs destroy 200 acres of wheat in Ramat David. May 5: 500 orange trees uprooted in Tel Mond by Arabs. May 7: Arabs fire on Jewish bus in Beit Dagan. May 10: Arabs burn crops and haystacks in Givat Ada. May 10: Arabs uproot newly planted olive grove in Zikhron Yaakov. May 11: Arabs burn Jewish crops in Ramat David. May 12: Arabs burn threshing floor in Zikhron Yaakov. May 13: 2 elderly Jews murdered by Arabs in Old City. May 13: Jewish shops in Haifa stoned by Arabs. May 13: More orchards burned in Mishmar Ha-Emek. May 16: 3 Jews in Jerusalem exiting a cinema are shot dead by Arabs. May 19: Arabs kill a Jew in the Old City of Jerusalem. May 20: 2 Jews wounded during Arab attack on bus. May 24: Arabs severely wound a Jewish guard at Majd el Krum. May 25: Arabs kill a Jew at Hebrew University. From May 30 - June 13, 1936, in more than 11 attacks, the Arabs destroy over 30,000 trees planted by Jews, as well as many fruit orchards,crops and barns. Telephone wires are cut throughout the district, roads are barricaded, and bridges and culverts are mined. Volunteers from Syria and Iraq aid the Arabs in their attacks. May 31: Jew at Givat Shaul killed by Arabs. June 1: Jewish bus passenger killed by Arab rifle fire. June 5: 5 Jewish passengers injured when Arabs threw bomb at bus in Haifa. June 6: Jewish girl severely injured by Arab fire while traveling on bus. June 8: Arabs attack Jews on their way to the Dead Sea Potash works. In the third month of terror (June 16 - July 17) campaign, 9 Jews were killed, mostly in Arab ambushes on buses, and 75,000 trees planted by Jews were destroyed. The Arab campaign of murder, intimidation, and sabotage continued through 1939, and on occasion, sparked isolated Jewish reprisals. According to the Report of the British government for 1937: The [Arab] terrorist campaign took the form of isolated murder and attempted murder; of sporadic cases of armed attacks on military, police and civilian road transport; on Jewish settlements and on both Arab and Jewish private property..." In 1938, public security in Palestine "continued to cause the administration grave preoccupation. [Report by the British Government to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1937] According to the Report of the British government for 1938: The main difference between the course of events in 1938 and that in 1937 lay in the gradual development during 1938 of Arab gang warfare on organized and to a certain extent co-ordinated lines. By the end of the year, as the result of the arrival in the autumn of large military reinforcements, this gang organization was first dislocated and finally reduced to comparative impotence in the field. But in the towns terrorism persisted and the roads were still largely unsafe for normal traffic. In fact, the events of 1938 succeeded in seriously affecting the economic and social life of the country to an extent far greater than was the case in 1937. [Report by the British Government to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1938] 1938 Tiberias Massacre On October 2 1938, an organized groups of Arab attackers massacred 21 Jews — including three women and 10 children between the ages of one and twelve — in the Old Jewish Quarter of Tiberias. The Arabs stabbed, shot and burned their victims. The New York Times described the organized rampage: New York Times article about the Tiberias massacre Not since the riots of 1929, when Arabs fell on Jewish men, most of whom were rabbinical students, as well as women and children, in the ancient towns of Hebron and Safed, has there been in Palestine such a slaughter as the attack of last night. The main synagogue of the town was destroyed by fire, and the district offices, the police station and the British police billet were fired on. The attack apparently was well organized, since the Arab gang, before descending on Tiberias, cut all telephone communications. Coming in two parties from opposite directions at a given signal, which was a whistle blown from the hills surrounding the town, the firing began simultaneously in all quarters... ...The bandits rushed to the central synagogue and, finding there a beadle named Jacob Zaltz, killed him and then set the building afire... ...the Arabs broke in and stabbed and burned to death Mr. Kabin [an elderly American Jew who had recently come to Palestine] and his sister... From there the bandits went on to the house of Joshua Ben Arieh, where they stabbed and burned to death Joshua, his wife and one son, and then shot dead his infant son. In the same house three children of Shlomo Leimer, aged 8, 10, and 12, were stabbed and burned to death. Proceeding farther, the Arabs broke into the house of Shimon Mizrahi, where they killed his wife and five children, ranging in ages from 1 to 12 years, and then set fire to the house.... [New York Times, Oct. 4, 1938] The three-year campaign of violence was finally suppressed in 1939, after which a British White Paper limited Jewish immigration into Palestine. As a result, many of the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were denied a haven from destruction.

What Were the Arab-Jewish Conflicts of 1920 and 1921?

General Reference

Samih K. Farsoun, PhD, Professor of Sociology at American University, in his 1997 book Palestine and Palestinians, wrote the following: "Palestinian discontent with the new British order [mandate] arose in April 1920 on the occasion of the Nabi Musa festival. A minor incident led to an assault by Palestinians on a procession of Jews. Although it was investigated by a British-appointed commission, the commission's recommendations were not published. Riots also occurred on May Day 1921 in a charged Palestinian and regional political climate: Arab discontentment with the results of the San Remo (Allied) conference, which awarded the eastern Arab mandates to Britain and France, led to political tension in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon and a revolt in Iraq.  In Palestine mass Jewish immigration commenced in accordance with the British policy of establishing a Jewish national home. Palestinians perceived the arrival of 10,000 Jewish immigrants between December 1920 and April 1921 as a harbinger of the future. A riot that started in Jaffa between radical leftist and centrist Zionist groups quickly involved the Palestinians, who also attacked the immigration hostel, a symbolic target of their hostility. Forty-eight Palestinians and forty-seven Jews were killed and 219 people wounded. From Jaffa, Palestinian rioting spread to rural areas, fueled by wild rumors of Jews killing Arabs. Several Palestinians were killed by British soldiers in an effort to defend Jewish settlements." 1997 - Samih K. Farsoun, PhD

Esco Foundation For Palestine, a research foundation, in its 1947 study Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies Vol. 2 contained the following: 1920 "When the Syrian Congress met in March, 1920, and elected Faisal as King of United Syria, the fires of Arab nationalism flared up in Palestine. To the Arabs, the Jews now appeared as the chief obstacle to the achievement of a union of Palestine with Syria in the newly created independent Syrian State. The Arabs in Palestine, moreover, had reason to believe that "the Government was with them," that is, that the British Administration would not look with disfavor on action which would demonstrate Arab opposition to the French and to the Zionists.  The Moslem festival of Nebi Musa provided the occasion for setting off the explosive forces. On this year the festival fell on April 4th. After several thousand pilgrims had arrived in Jerusalem, a political demonstration was staged in which a large picture of Faisal was displayed. Cries directed against the Jews were shouted by leaders in the procession, and agitators incited an attack. Marchers in the procession fell upon the Jews with sticks and knives; the Arab police remained passive or in some instances joined the rioting. The British troops finally succeeded in quelling the disorders and detained several hundred Arabs for the night in a mosque. Disturbances broke out again when they were released in the morning. The Government was finally forced to disarm the Arab police, proclaim martial law and hand over the control to the military. Order was not restored until two days after the outbreak."  1921 "An illegal parade of Jewish Communists clashed with the regular Labor Day procession of the Jewish Labor organizations which had been authorized by the Government. The excitement offered an opportunity for Arab bands to attack both. A bloody riot ensued, followed by a horrible massacre in the Immigration House at Jaffa and thirteen Jews were killed. On the outskirts of Jaffa, Joseph Chaim Brenner, a leading Hebrew writer, was murdered together with the whole family whom he had visited at the time. There were reprisals on the part of the Jews in and around Jaffa; a number were killed and many on both sides wounded.  The general excitement spread throughout the country; armed bands of Arabs attacked and looted several Jewish colonies. Petach Tikvah, the oldest Jewish agricultural settlement, which employed many Arab agricultural workers and which was reputed to have good relations with the Arabs, was subjected to a serious attack in which Bedouins of the neighboring Abu Kishk tribe participated. The attackers were about 2,000 strong and some of them had rifles, but the colony managed to defend itself for several hours until it was saved by a squadron of Indian cavalry which happened to be on the march from Jenin to Jaffa. Another attack was held up by a squadron of planes and then dispersed by an Indian regiment. About fifty Arabs were killed in the encounter and there were four deaths among the Jewish colonists. An attack against Rehovoth was repelled by the inhabitants.  The Civil Administration proved powerless to maintain order; the police, mostly Arab, proved unreliable. The troops had to be called in before order was restored. In all, 88 persons were killed and 238 wounded."