Hebron proves: It’s the Jew-hatred

 

 

This is the anniversary of the horrific 1929 attacks on Jews in Hebron.

As Wikipedia writes:

At about 8.30 am Saturday morning, the first attacks began to be launched against houses where Jews resided,^[17] after a crowd of Arabs armed with staves, axes and knives appeared in the streets. The first location to be attacked was a large Jewish house on the main road. Two young boys were immediately killed, and the mob entered the house and beat or stabbed the other occupants to death.

[Police superintendent Raymond] Cafferata appeared on the scene, gave orders to his constables to fire on the crowd and personally shot dead two of the attacking Arabs.^[17] While some dispersed, the rest managed to break through the pickets, shouting "on to the ghetto!" The requested reinforcements had not arrived in time. That later became the source of considerable acrimony.^[19]

According to a survivor, Aharon Reuven Bernzweig, "right after eight o'clock in the morning we heard screams. Arabs had begun breaking into Jewish homes. The screams pierced the heart of the heavens. We didn't know what to do…. They were going from door to door, slaughtering everyone who was inside. The screams and the moans were terrible. People were crying Help! Help! But what could we do?"

Soon after news of the first victim had spread, forty people assembled in the house of Eliezer Dan Slonim. Slonim, the son of the Rabbi of Hebron, was a member on the city council and a director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank. He had excellent relations with the British and the Arabs and those seeking refuge with him were confident they would come to no harm. When the mob approached his door, they offered to spare the Sephardi community if he would hand over all the Ashkenazi yeshiva students. He refused, saying "we are all one people," and he was shot dead along with his wife and 4-year-old son.^[36] From the contemporary Hebrew press it appears that the rioters targeted the Zionist community for their massacre. Four-fifths of the victims were Ashkenazi Jews, but some had deep roots in the town, yet a dozen Jews of eastern origin, Sephardim and Maghrebi, were also killed.^[35] Gershon Ben-Zion, for example, the Beit Hadassah Clinic pharmacist, a cripple who had served both Jews and Arabs for 4 decades, was killed together with his family: his daughter was raped and then murdered.^[19]

This wasn't about Zionism. People who lived in Hebron for generations - Ashkenaz and Sephardic - were slaughtered. It was pure Jew-hate. Anyone who pretends that Arabs are merely anti-Zionist are whitewashing and justifying antisemitism. And that means that they are condoning antisemitism when it is relabeled as anti-Zionism.