Author links two Arab massacres of Jews
Yardena Schwartz traces the roots of October 7 to the 1929 murders in Hebron
Author Yardena Schwartz helps us understand the current tragedy in the Middle East through a historic prism with her new book: “Ghosts of the Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict.”
The Emmy-award winning journalist, who grew up in Parsippany, reported from Israel for 10 years and will talk about her experiences there twice locally — on November 14 at Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston and on November 15 at Temple Beth Rishon in Wyckoff. (See below.) Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, PBS, ABC News, CBS News, and the Jerusalem Post. Her book is published by Union Square & Co., a division of Barnes & Noble.
Ms. Schwartz’s work of narrative nonfiction began with the discovery of a box of family letters in an attic in Memphis. In 2019, her mentor, the best-selling author and op-ed writer Yossi Klein Halevi, told her about that trove of Jewish history.
David Shainberg, a young Jewish man, lived in Hebron for a year before he was killed in the 1929 massacre. During that year, he wrote letters to his family every week, describing a beautiful place, both serene and spiritual. It was those long-forgotten letters that his descendants discovered, decades later.
Mr. Shainberg had moved to Hebron, in what was then British Mandatory Palestine, to study in the most prestigious yeshiva in the Holy Land. “At the time, Hebron was this beacon of peaceful coexistence in Palestine,” Ms. Schwartz said. “It was a place where Jews and Muslims lived side by side for centuries. They were friends with Arabs, spoke Arabic. The Sephardi men owned businesses with Arabs. They drank Turkish coffee together, played backgammon together.”
They were a small minority, 800 Jews among 20,000 Arabs, but they felt safe there, Ms. Schwartz said. “It’s the antithesis of the Hebron of today, which is the reality of a military apparatus — checkpoints and Israeli soldiers everywhere. Some of the most radical Palestinians in the Middle East conflict come from Hebron.”
A campaign of propaganda and disinformation led to the 1929 massacre, which was fomented by the leader of the Palestinian Muslims under British rule. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, began spreading the rumor that the Jews of Palestine were plotting to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque to rebuild their ancient temple in Jerusalem. Al-Husseini went on to become one of the most lavishly paid Nazi collaborators, the head of the Arab branch of the Ministry of Propaganda directed by Joseph Goebbels.
On August 24, 1929, 3,000 Muslim men brandishing swords, axes, and daggers slaughtered 67 Jews. Hundreds more were injured, and 133 were killed outside of Hebron that week. Women and teenagers were raped before they were killed. Elderly rabbis and yeshiva students were castrated. “This served as ground zero of the conflict in the Middle East,” Ms. Schwartz said. “It was hauntingly similar to the atrocities committed on October 7.”
Eerily, the same number of Hamas soldiers — 3,000 — murdered close to 1,200 people, abducted hundreds more, and injured thousands on October 7, 2023.
In Hebron in 1929, the attackers marched through the ancient Jewish quarter. “They did not distinguish between men, women, children, young, old,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Everyone was a target.”
Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups named the October 7 massacre Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, after the lies about the Al Aqsa Mosque from 1929. “They named it for a reason,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Hamas and the Palestinian Authority accuse Israel of contaminating Al Aqsa, seeking to destroy it. You see it in children’s educational material, on Palestinian TV, and in the Palestinian press. It’s also this rejection of any Jewish history in Israel.”
The lies have fueled the conflict in the past century. “The rejection of a Jewish right to sovereignty, a Jewish right to self-determination” have led to violence, she said.
The details of the 1929 massacres are hauntingly similar to the 2023 massacre. The gruesome reports of how men, women, children and even babies were slaughtered by their neighbors was horrifying, Ms. Schwartz said. But not everyone turned against the Jews. At least 200 were saved that day by their Arab neighbors who risked their own lives by hiding them in their homes.
On October 7, Hamas committed the atrocities, but on a much larger scale. “I never imagined anything even remotely similar would happen again,” she said. “It felt almost like Hamas had read the playbook of 1929.”
The perpetrators of the massacre in 1929 were hailed as heroes. At the same time, the Arab leadership and Arab press in Palestine denied that any atrocities were committed and blamed what happened on the Jewish victims.
The disinformation didn’t extend just to Arab leadership. “The British who controlled Palestine at the time of the massacre put in place restrictions on Jewish immigration and Jewish land purchases to try to appease Arab leaders,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Today we see many world leaders bending over backwards to try to appease Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. The world has seemingly failed to learn the lessons of history that appeasement is never going to work. And this conflict has only gotten worse and more deadly since 1929.”
In Palestine, Jews were 20 percent of a population of less than a million in 1929. “There was plenty room for everybody,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Jews were simply seeking to build new lives in their homeland because they were being driven out of Europe by pogroms. Many had been there for generations, for centuries, having come from Spain and Iraq.”
The 1929 massacre led to a rise in the popularity of Zionism, which the masses of Jews in Palestine still did not embrace. “It was still very controversial, more of a secular Ashkenazi movement,” Ms. Schwartz said. “There were no Sephardi Jews in the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Palestine from 1920 to 1948 and later became the Israel Defense Forces.”
The pious Jews then living in Palestine believed that the creation of the Jewish state and the return to Zion could happen only with the coming of the Messiah, through God’s will.
All of that changed after 1929. The Jewish community united around a common cause — Zionism.
“In the wake of 1929, the Haganah, joined by Sephardi Jews, split into other militias that wanted to be more on the offense,” Ms. Schwartz said. “Before they had a policy of restraint and would defend the Jewish communities from attacks.
“A group of Haganah members came to Hebron before the massacre and warned the Jewish community to either evacuate to Jerusalem or to allow Haganah fighters to help them defend themselves. The Jewish leaders of Hebron told them they trusted their Arab neighbors and they should leave.”
Many of the victims on October 7 were left wing Israelis who had protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for the previous nine months over its plan to overhaul the judiciary.
The October 7 massacre completely changed her book, Ms. Schwartz said. “My book was really going to focus on Hebron and much more this family in Memphis. Both these themes are very large parts of the story still. But the overarching theme of the book now and after October 7 are the parallels between these two massacres and how so much of this history has been ignored.
“That perspective needs to change because we’re only going to be condemned to another century of massacres if we continue to ignore the disinformation that fuels this conflict.”
Who: Yardena Schwartz
What: Will talk about her new book, “Ghosts of a Holy War,” twice this week.
IN LIVINGSTON
Where: At Temple Beth Shalom
When: On Thursday, November 14, at 7:30 p.m.
How much: It’s free
For more information and reservations: Go to tbsnj.org and scroll down, or call (973) 992-3600.
What else: Book will be sold and can be signed there.
IN WYCKOFF
Where: At Temple Beth Rishon
When: On Friday, November 15, during services that begin at 6 p.m. Dinner follows; it’s free, with reservations. Call the office at (201) 891-4466 or email templeoffice@bethrishon.org.
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