How a 1929 Massacre of Jews in Hebron Foreshadowed Oct. 7
29th September 2024
On that date in 1929, “3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes, and daggers marched through the Jewish quarter of Hebron,” writes Yardena Schwartz. Before the day was over, the streets of the ancient city in British Mandate Palestine ran red with blood; 67 Jewish men, women and children were murdered, and the rest of the 800-strong Jewish community fled.
In her new book, “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Schwartz examines the day’s violence in forensic detail, and argues that the pogrom in Hebron, part of a spate of anti-Jewish riots that August, inspired the extremism on both sides that continues to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so intractable. Having revised her original manuscript after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, she argues that there is a direct line between the two attacks in how they shaped a century of bloodshed.
“If we continue to ignore that history and the role religion plays in this conflict, I think we’re just going to be destined to another 100 years of wars and massacres,” she told me in an interview on Thursday, a little over a week before the one-year anniversary of what she calls the “Black Sabbath.”
There is nothing new under the sun.