Image via Wikipedia//The Maghen David reminding the Jewish victims in Hebron
On the night of 17 Av (23 August), the apparent peace between the 800 Jews of Hebron and their tens of thousands of Arab neighbors ended and after three days of confrontations 67 Jews were killed and the survivors relocated to Jerusalem. After the pogrom, the historical city hosting the Cave of the Patriarchs – where the Jews weren’t allowed to pray – was left without the Jews. The tragic event intervened in the context of a series of confrontations between Arabs and Jews, many instigated by the mufti in Jerusalem - who claimed that Jews were endangering Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem - and other religious leaders. The tragedy is known as Tarpat, an acronym for its date in the Hebrew calendar.
According to the tradition, in Hebron, Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah to bury Sarah. It was the first parcel of land owned by the Jewish people in their promised land. Ever since, religious Jews revered Hebron as the burial site of their matriarchs and patriarchs. Conquered, massacred and expelled over the centuries, Jews always returned to this sacred place. After 1267, under Muslim rule, no Jews were permitted to pray inside the magnificent enclosure, built by King Herod in the 1st century, that still surrounds the burial caves. But following the expulsion of Jews from Spain at the end of the 15th century, a small group of religious Jews rebuilt a community of study and prayer in Hebron.
Jewish immigrants, many of them Askenazim, were arriving in Palestine and were considered a threat for the Arab communities. Sephardi Jewish community in Hebron had lived quietly with its Arab neighbors for centuries. In 1925, the Slobodka Yeshiva, officially the Yeshiva of Hebron was opened. Yeshiva students lived separately from the Sephardi community, and from the Arab population. Due to this isolation, the Arabs viewed them with suspicion and hatred, and identified them as Zionist immigrants. Despite the general suspicion, however, one yeshiva student, Dov Cohen, still recalled being on "very good" terms with the Arab neighbors. He remembered yeshiva boys taking long walks late at night on the outskirts of the city, and not feeling afraid, even though only one British policeman guarded the entire city.
On a Friday, before Shabbat, Arab youths started throwing rocks at the yeshiva students, the first victim being Shmuel Rosenholtz on his road to the yeshiva. Friday night, Rabbi Ya’acov Slonim’s son invited any fearful Jews to stay in his house. The rabbi was highly regarded in the community, and he had a gun. Many Jews took him up on this offer, and many Jews were eventually murdered there. As early as 8:00 a.m. on Shabbat, Arabs began to gather en masse. They came in mobs, armed with clubs, knives and axes. While the women and children threw stones, the men ransacked Jewish houses and destroyed Jewish property. With only a single police officer in Hebron, the Arabs entered Jewish courtyards with no opposition.
Rabbi Slonim, who had tried to shelter the Jewish population, was approached by the rioters and offered a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community. Rabbi Slonim refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot. In the end, 12 Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered.
A few Arabs did try to help the Jews. Nineteen Arab families saved dozens, maybe even hundreds of Jews. Zmira Mani wrote about an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews who they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano.
The police station turned into a shelter for the Jews that morning of 18 Av. It also became a synagogue as the Orthodox Jews gathered there and said their morning prayers. As they finished praying, they began to hear noises outside the building. Thousands of Arabs descended from Har Hebron, shouting "Kill the Jews!" in Arabic. They even tried to break down the doors of the station.
The Jews were besieged in Beit Romano for three days. Each night, ten men were allowed to leave to attend a funeral in Hebron’s ancient Jewish cemetery for the murdered Jews of the day. Teenage girls, their mothers and grandmothers were raped and killed. Rabbis and their students were castrated before they were slain. A surviving yeshiva student recounted that he "had seen greater horrors than Dante in hell." The butchery in Hebron, Zionist and religious officials alleged, was "without equal in the history of the country since the destruction of the Temple." Sir Walter Shaw, chairman of an exhaustive British royal investigation, concluded that "unspeakable atrocities" had occurred.
When the massacre finally ended, the surviving Jews - 484 survivors, including 153 children - were forced to leave their home city and resettled in Jerusalem. A couple of days later, in Safed – one of Judaism four holy cities, together with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias - another massacre took place, with 18 Jews killed and 80 wounded. The events prompted the need for the creation of a Jewish defense force, and shortly after it was created the paramilitary organisaiton of Haganah, the nucleus of the Israel Defense Force.
Some Jewish families tried to move back to Hebron, but were removed by the British authorities in 1936 at the start of the Arab revolt. In 1948, the War of Independence granted Israel statehood, but further cut the Jews off from Hebron, a city that was captured by King Abdullah's Arab Legion and ultimately annexed to Jordan.
When Jews finally gained control of the city in 1967, a small number of massacre survivors again tried to reclaim their old houses. Then defense minister Moshe Dayan supposedly told the survivors that if they returned, they would be arrested, and that they should be patient while the government worked out a solution to get their houses back. Years later, settlers moved to parts of Hebron without the permission of the government, but for those massacre survivors still seeking their original homes, that solution never came.
Sources: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebron29.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300241762121888.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8AjYHgSquU
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