Another Occupation?

You may have heard of Hebron, a small city in the West Bank. There are 120K Arabs and ~7000 Jews (only 500 actually in the city, 6500 next door in Kiryat Arba). There were no Jews there in 1968, and settlement of the city didn't start (illegally) until 1972. The Israeli army must be deployed there to protect them. (Both areas are now legal.)

On the surface this seems like an injustice. Why are Israelis moving into an Arab area?

First, Hebron is one of the 4 holy cities of Judaism, second to Jerusalem.

Hebron is first mentioned in the book of Genesis (13:18), where Abraham is found pitching his tent. Later when Sara, his wife, dies - in Kiryat Arba that is Hebron, Genesis 23:2 - he buys a field and the burial cave of Machpela for her (Genesis 23:9, 17-20). In fact all the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and - three of the four - mothers, Sara, Rebecca, and Leah lived there, and were buried there in the Caveof Machpela. It was so important to Jacob, that seeing his end nearing, he called his 12 sons to gather around him, and promise that when he dies, they will leave Egypt to bring his body back to Hebron for burial (Genesis 49:29-31).

Second, there have always been Jews there until modern times.

After the expulsion of Jews from Spain(1492), Hebron's Jewish population began to grow; Spanish Jewish exiles resettling in Hebron became evident by the beginning of the 16th century. In the second half of the 16th century, you find the rising power of the Hebron, on the one hand, and the decline of Safed as a spiritual and economic center, on the other. Toward the end of the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th centuries some of the most important kabbalists - Jewish mystics - of Safed moved to Hebron. Kabbala and mysticism made a deep impression on the Jewish life of Hebron. By the 17th-18th centuries, a large flourishing community lived in Hebron, whose main economy was grape growing and wine production. But the Arab-Muslim hordes, as they so often would do, went on a religiously inspired rampage - Islam forbids wine or any alcohol - and they killed, forcibly converted, or drove out many from the Jewish community. But Jews continued to live there, eventually recovering, and by the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population reached 1,500. There was even a hospital in Hebronby 1895.

Third, for many of them, their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were murdered there or forced to flee.

As to the last point, was this because of the 1948 war for Israel's independence? No. It happened TWO decades before.

Pierre Van Paassen was in Palestine and provides a graphic account of the 1929 pogrom against the Jews of Hebron in his book Days of Our Years, from which the following comes. Van Paasen shows that the Mufti of Jerusalem was behind the riots and slaughter and accuses the British administration of aiding and abetting the Mufti.

Falsified photographs showing the Omar mosque of Jerusalem in ruins, with an inscription that the edifice had been bombed by the Zionists, were handed out to the Arabs of Hebron as they were leaving their place of worship on Friday evening, August the twenty-third. A Jew passing by on his way to the synagogue was stabbed to death. When he heard of the murder, Rabbi Slonim, a man born and bred in the city and a friend of the Arab notables, notified the British police commander that the Arabs seemed to be strangely excited. He was told to mind his own business. An hour later the synagogue was attacked by a mob, and the Jews at prayer were slaughtered. On the Saturday morning following, the Yeshiva...was put to the sack, and the students were slain. A delegation of Jewish citizens thereupon set out to visit the police station, but was met by the lynchers. The Jews returned and took refuge in the house of Rabbi Slonim where they remained until evening, when the mob appeared before the door. Unable to batter it down, the Arabs climbed up the trees at the rear of the house and, dropping onto the balcony, entered through the windows on the first floor.

Mounted police--Arab troopers in the service of the government-- had appeared outside by this time, and some of the Jews ran down the stairs of Slonim's house and out into the roadway. They implored the policemen to dismount and protect their friends and relatives inside the house and clung around the necks of the horses. From the upper windows came the terrifying screams of the old people, but the police galloped off, leaving the boys in the road to be cut down by Arabs arriving from all sides for the orgy of blood.

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. A heavy guard had been placed before the door. Only then did I recall that I had inadvertently told a fellow newspaperman in Jerusalem about our gruesome discoveries.

On the same day of the Hebron massacre, the Arabs had rioted in Jerusalem, crying: "Death to the Jews! The government is with us!" The fact that the attacks on Jewish communities in different parts of the country had occurred simultaneously was interpreted by the Mufti's newspaper Falastin as irrefutable evidence of the spontaneity of the outburst of Arab indignation. The Acting High Commissioner, Mr. H.C. Luke, had informed newspapermen that the government had been completely taken unawares. Yet a full ten days earlier it was he who had ordered the various hospitals, and especially the Rothschild clinic of which Dr. Dantziger was chief surgeon, to have a large number of beds in readiness in view of the government's expectation of a riotous outbreak.

Here's how he described the British actions. (Source: Pierre Van Paassen, The Forgotten Ally, New York, 1943; Dial Press)

...the Holy Land was in turmoil. Life came to a standstill as the ordinary safeguards of government ceased to function. The mob, in itself not very numerous or impressive, dominated the scene. Sir John Chancellor, the High Commissioner, was on leave of absence, and his place at the top had been taken by Harry Luke, the Chief Secretary, as Acting High Commissioner.

This gentleman appeared to be in a blue funk (disappointed, nervous) in the first days of the rioting, when I called on him at Government House in Jerusalem. ``The situation has gotten out of hand,'' he repeated over and over again, ``and just at a moment when there are no troops within easy call.''

I asked him if there were no arms on hand either.

"Plenty,'' he said.

"Well, then there is nothing to be afraid of,'' I suggested. ``Give me a gun and give a few more British subjects a gun, and we can keep order. If need be, you could arm a few thousand Jews. They are being attacked by people who seem to have plenty of arms. It would be logical, in view of the fact that the government does not possess the means to protect them, that they be allowed to defend themselves.''

"But that would mean civil war,'' objected Mr. Luke.

"Well, you pretty well have a civil war on your hands as it is.''

"We, the government, would merely become a third party of disorder if I carried out your suggestion,'' he said.

"Disorder? By suppressing disorder you do not become disorderly,'' I remarked. ``The Mufti's clique is the party of disorder, The Jews, whatever your objection to them may be, are the party of order. I have looked at the Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and elsewhere. They are the lowest dregs of the population, uncouth hooligans, gangsters and cutthroats. As against them the Jews represent civilization here.''

"Ah,'' he objected again, ``but you must keep in mind that the government is neutral, must be impartial in this quarrel between Jews and Arabs. We are the watchdog...''

"Neutral and impartial when it is a question of barbarism versus civilization, when it is a case of gangsters attacking peaceful innocent citizens as those whose bodies I just saw piled up in a house in Hebron? .... Can one be neutral in a case like that? Isn't being neutral in such a case, tantamount to taking sides, if one leaves the way open for more attacks, more murders of women and children?''

"By the way,'' Mr. Luke broke in, "are you a Jew?''

"No,'' I answered, "must one be a Jew to want fair play?''

"What then do you suggest?'' he asked.

"I can suggest nothing,'' I replied, "I am only a newspaperman looking on ....''

"Quite so,'' he came back, ``But you could be immensely useful to the government of Palestine. You represent a great liberal journal in America (the late New York Evening World), and we are very sensitive to American public opinion. I want you to have full facilities to probe the matter, to find out what really happened here, and to tell in what a grave predicament the government of Palestine was placed, caught between two fires, as it were...''

"But I cannot say that,'' I returned. ``You have just said the government is neutral. I can never hope to explain to the American newspaper reader that in the presence of an unprovoked attack by gangs of hoodlums on a peaceful community, the government looked on as an impartial spectator. Americans won't understand that. They expect something else from a government.''

"What, for instance?''

"Well, a whiff of grapeshot, for instance - a few volleys fired into the air by the police ... you can't be neutral in a case like that.''

"Well, no, but impartial we are...''

"You call that impartiality when a man like Captain Caffaretta of Hebron comes in and calmly relates how he watched the mob invade a rabbi's home and slaughter twenty-seven persons there.''

"There were only twenty-six killed,'' interrupted Mr. Luke.

"Yes, twenty-six adults and one baby of three months, that makes twenty-seven by my count .... Watch human beings being killed, he an officer in the British army, with a police guard at his beck and call and a service revolver in his pocket. One or two shots in the air by Caffaretta, and the mob would never have entered Rabbi Slonim's house.''

The truth is often different from first appearances.