ARAB MASSACRES / RIOTS OF 1920 – 1939 (Spring 1936) No police appeared – except patrols which prevented Jews from going into Jaffa. Tel Aviv was in a tumult. The stoning of cars on the roads between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it appeared, was a minor accompaniment to the events in neighbouring Jaffa. There, a menacing Arab crowd had gathered outside the District Commissioner’s office claiming the Arabs had been killed in Tel Aviv. Assured that this was not true, the crowd nevertheless stood its ground – while groups of young men roved through the town, falling on individual Jews. Seventeen Jews were stabbed to death that day of 19 April 1936. A new pogrom was in progress. The pattern of British behaviour was in the tradition to which the Jews had become accustomed in earlier outbreaks during the eighteen years of British rule: elaborate inaction, except in preventing effective Jewish counter-action to Arab attack. * * * The “revolt” was a bizarre alliance between the Arab leaders and the British Administration against which they were presumed to be rebelling. The British Government’s purpose was not, of course, to hand over control of Palestine to the Arabs. It was essential however to limit Jewish progress and to freeze it before the Jews became strong enough to claim the independence implicit in the orginal British undertaking in 1917. A Jewish majority in Palestine would be unmanageable. The Jews therefore must remain a minority. Thus the true purpose of British policy would be achieved: Palestine would remain under British control and, as long as Jews and Arabs could be kept at each other’s throats, the necessity for that control would be manifest. The Arab National Movement, and the myth of Arab claims to a country they had briefly ruled a thousand years earlier, had been assiduously fostered by the Mandatory regime. Through centuries of Turkish rule it had never occurred to the Arabs to throw off the Turkish yoke, nor even to exert themselves to halt the transformation of large areas of the country into an uninhabited waste. In the first glow of Arab resurgence after the collapse, in 1918, of the Turkish Empire – a collapse to which the Arabs themselves made a contribution highly insignificant though eloquently inflated and dramatized by the imaginative T. E. Lawrence – the Arab leaders had no qualms about subscribing to the ideas of a Jewish State in Palestine. King Feisal of Iraq even signed a treaty of friendship with Dr. Weizmann. (see DOCUMENTS) At first, no doubt, conflicting purposes played their part in British policy. Nevertheless, during the British Military Occupation after the first World War the administration of the country was in the hands of a group of generals who could not tolerate Jews with European ideas and political pretensions and who dreamt of building a dependent Arab Empire which would be effectively ruled from London. After the League of Nations entrusted the country to British rule with the purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home it was their ideas to the contrary which were reflected in British policy and behaviour. Feeble Jewish reactions – which had a fascinating if tragic background – aided the process of retreat. By the early 1930s the policy had crystallized; and the British Government hoped to achieve their purpose by maintaining a state of tension in the country, punctuated by restriction of Jewish development. (see BRTISH OPPRESSION theme) The slow strangulation of the Jews of Eastern Europe was not sufficiently dramatic to light up the dimensions of Britain’s breach of her undertakings. Then however came 1933, with Hitler in power in Germany and suddenly there was an influx of Jews to Palestine, and the world became aware of their plight. The tragedy of the German Jews became the dynamo of Jewish development in Palestine, and the lesson of their sufferings as a minority underlined the simple arithmetic of the Zionist solution. Palestine witnessed a surge of Jewish progress. Left unchecked, the Jews would within a few years be in a commanding position in the country and British control mortally threatened. Mere demarches by Arab politicians, even if accompanied by sporadic violence, pale against the fires of Jewish need. Something dramatic, largely conceived, apparently irresistible, had to be set in motion to justify a conclusive, historic containment of the Jews. The “Arab Revolt” was thus incubated. Its devious detail was left to develop with circumstances, its ebb and flow and direction controlled so as not to endanger its central objective: the perpetuation of British rule. The mechanics of the “revolt” were simple. The Arab nationalist leaders, headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, who had been nurtured and inflated by deliberated British action, were repeatedly assured of Government goodwill. These gave point and direction to their incessant incitement of the Arab mass against the Jews. Ever since 1920 the most persistent slogan of the movement had been “Ad-dowlah ma’anah” – the Government is with us – whispered throughout the Arab coffee-houses and market-places. This however was not yet enough to induce the required semblance of nationwide solidarity. The Arab population, initially indifferent, remained to a large extent free of hostility to the Jews. Fratricidal violence became indispensable. The least publicized yet most significant aspect of the “Arab Revolt” was the terrorization of the Arab population. In the towns it was achieved at first by the calling of a general strike. The closing of shops was ensured by threatening pickets. *THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE “PALESTINE REBELS” WERE IMPORTED FROM IRAQ AND SYRIA AND WERE BILLETED ON THE ARAB VILLAGES. “Ad-dowlah ma’anah” soon proved to have as dual significance. Arab merchants discovered that the Government regarded the forced closing down of their businesses as perfectly legal, making even no formal motions of disapproval. Arab villages which appealed to the Government for protection or for arms with which to defend themselves against their armed “guests” were met with stony silence, and left to their fate. Most eloquent of all the phenomena of those days were the dead and sometimes mutilated bodies of Arabs who had refused to learn the lesson of solidarity. IN THE THREE YEARS OF “REVOLT” THE ARAB “REBELS” KILLED MORE ARABS THAN JEWS. The British went through all the motions of a great effort “to restore law and order.” Troops were poured into the country. Famous generals were sent successively to take command. There were always troops and police in evidence – after an attack and armed with orders which forbade them to do more than defend themselves. A popular point of attack for the Arab bands was near Bab el Wad, in the narrow valley in the Judean Hills about fifteen miles from Jerusalem on the only road to the coast. The Arab sharpshooters would sit on the crest of the hill and from the cover of rocks shoot at cars. These traveled in close convoy “protected” fore and aft by a British military escort. The burst of rifle or machine-gun fire invariably took its toll. The British soldiers would shoot back up the hill at the unseen attackers – and then drive on. The attackers returned tranquilly to coffee in their village. *(read FREE JERUSALEM by Zev Golan) An anonymous British soldier unwittingly gave a complete description of the pattern of the Arab revolt in 1936. His words were quoted in an article in the London New Statesman and Nation. “At night” he said “when we (are) guarding the line against the Arabs who came to blow it up, we often see them at work but are forbidden to fire at them. We may only fire into the air, and they, upon hearing the report, make their escape. But do you think we can give chase? Why, we must go on our hands and knees and find every spent cartridge-case, which must be handed in or woe betide us.” There were inevitably fluctuations in the application of the British Government’s design. A variety of punitive operations were carried out from time to time. When the boggy the British had created showed signs of turning his attentions in the wrong direction, in direct attacks on British authority or in conflict with some immediate British interest, local or international, his claws were quickly clipped. These shadings only heightened the dominant colouring if the Revolt. *To complete the pattern one more element was necessary to the British: that the Jews should not strike back. Counteraction on a large-scale by the Jews would have two consequences. Against the background of the given plight of the Jews in Europe, a fight for Jewish security in Palestine would enhance outside sympathy, would smudge the image of a hard-pressed Government having to placate rebellious Arabs. A far greater danger however was that the Jews would simply succeed in putting an end to the “revolt.” The British also may have felt that, in the course of quelling the “revolt,” the Jews might well make common cause with the moderate mass of Arabs. The Government insisted vigorously that the duty of “maintaining law and order” was its alone. Its forces were always available to impose a barrier to prevent counter-attack. As the British governments’ intention was in any case to keep the actual work of Arab destruction within bounds, they came, in the course of time, to close their eyes to elementary defense activities. Jewish agricultural settlements were permitted a fixed quantity of arms with which to repel attacks, and in the towns a small number of supernumary policemen – “ghafirs” – were enrolled to carry out patrol duties. Within these limits the “revolt’ raged unchecked: killing of Jews from ambush in the towns and on the highways, dynamite and bombs in Jewish buildings, cutting of communications, burning of fields, uprooting of trees, and finally mass-attacks on Jewish settlements. All the while a contrapuntal slaughter of Arab nonconformists continued. * * * (After the Zionist Congress voted for partition (summer 1937) … The Arab leaders rejected the plan outright. Nine months had passed since the declaration of the “truce.” They were ready to take up the offensive again. As smoothly as they had departed, Fawzi el Kaukji and his bands returned across the frontier to Palestine. The campaign of violence was resumed with redoubled vigor. Now, in recognition of its avoidable frictions, no new strike was organized. The terror was marked by better organization, by a greater diversity of tactics and by an even more systematic liquidation of Arab nonconformists. * * * INTENSIFIED ARAB TERROR: The Arab “revolt” zig-zagged now, and got out of hand. The British District Commissioner in Galilee was assassinated. The British reacted swiftly. They pounced on the members of the Arab Higher Committee and deported them to the Seychelles Islands. All except the Mufti. It was known that he was in the Old City of Jerusalem and British forces were said to be watching all the exits. The Mufti left the Old City, made his way to the coast and traveled by boat to Lebanon. There, at Bludan, he set up his headquarters and resumed the political leadership of the “revolt.” He was compelled to apply himself in large measure to the internal situation. A number of important Arab voices were now raised in blame of British for the situation and urging peace with the Jews. These had to be silenced or intimidated. The large scale murder campaign against the Mufti’s opponents now conducted by Kawkji’s bands created new tensions. The Mufti’s elaborate precautions for his safety were directed primarily at preventing assassination by embittered Arab enemies. (see JACK SIMON bio-sketch on assassination plot to remove the Mufti) The “revolt,” which had paled for a while after the Irgun’s summer reprisals, was resumed with a new intensity in the autumn. * * * ATTACKS ON SETTLEMENTS / ROSH PINA: The Arab attacks, especially on the agricultural settlements, attained a fierce rhythm. The “legal” force of Jewish auxiliary police, together with their “illegal” comrades in the Haganah, were usually able to repel attacks on the villages. There, for months on end, men and women worked by day and watched by night. Fortitude and bravery under attack became a daily phenomenon. In the towns the pattern was different. There were no mass attacks and, on the part of the Haganah, no response at all to the continuous series of shootings from ambush and hit-and-run destruction. The British Army now played a larger part in the Administration’s policy. A number of pitched battles were fought with Kaukji’s bands, which suffered heavy losses. They were the necessary price for the image of revolt. For the essential plan did not change. The “revolt” was to be kept within bounds. It was not to be crushed. ***The Arab fighters never numbered more than a thousand in the whole country at any one time. To prevent their doing irretrievable damage the Jewish static defense was sufficient. The prohibition of pursuit and counter-attack, by the Haganah and the British alike, guaranteed the life and continued service of the bands. The pitched battles waged by the British, heavily publicized throughout the world, added the desired verisimilitude to the image of a grave and irrepressible uprising. In short, the pot was kept boiling – at a heavy cost, in Jewish property and of lives, Jewish, Arab and British, all expendable in the pursuit of the ultimate objective: the imposition of the long-nurtured “political solution.” The tension reached breaking point at Rosh Pina. Almost nightly its fields were set on fire, the village itself was attacked. The death toll mounted. Again and again the Betarim and the Rosh Pina farmers rushed out to drive off the attackers and to save what was left of the crop. Lying between the village and the fields was a British army camp. At each attack a British force would arrive on the scene. Sometimes they arrived in time to join the defenders, among whom were five “legalized” ghaffirs, in driving off the attackers. They were always in time to prevent any pursuit. Shlomo Ben-Yosef had only the year before made his way from Poland “illegally” across the Syrian border into Palestine, and had at once been absorbed into the pelugah. He was a quiet, unobtrusive Young man from a typically poor Polish family, without the benefits of a higher education, and with a simple direct understanding. (*I will assemble the lame, and I will gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted. And I will make the lame a remnant, and those who were cast off a strong nation; and the Lord shall reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forever. Micah 4) Choking with bitterness and frustration in the face of the continuous permitted aggression, he recognized that the Rosh Pina trap was the microcosm of the larger trap in which Zionism itself was to be crushed. He was oppressed by the failure of the Jewish youth to take fate in its hands and fight back. He decided that he must do something, by some demonstrative act make a protest somehow to rouse his generation to the mortal danger and to their duty. Together with two younger members of the pelugah, Avraham Shein and Shalom Zuravin, he went out one afternoon in April 1938 to the main road and fired at an Arab bus. Nobody was hit. He then went back with his friends to a shed in the village, and waited, rifle in hand, to be arrested. For this, two months later, the British hanged him. Almost as though the killing of Ben-Yosef had been a signal he Arab terrorists released a wave of attacks, new in its undiscriminating ferocity. Here five Jews were massacred in their sleep – Here seven more killed in an attack at a settlement. Here nine wee killed in a bus. Shootings, stabbings, bombings, burnings over the length and breadth of the country. The Irgun retaliated on a large scale. Scores of Arabs were killed and many more injured in a series of attacks. Bombs exploded with cruel effect in the Jerusalem market-place and in Haifa. The Jewish Agency Press reacted with a flow of denunciation. This, they claimed, was what was bringing destruction on the community, on Zionism, on the Jewish people. SHAMIR ON THE ARAB RIOTS It must be noted … that the Arab RIOTS OF THE 1920s, 1930s and the 1980s are interconnected. Arab terrorism did not start with the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. It is far older than that. Neither the mission nor the target has changed. THE PURPOSE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE DISRUPTION (AT WORST) OR THE PREVENTION (AT BEST) OF JEWISH IMMIGRATION TO AND SETTLEMENT IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL. Nor have the Arabs ever kept this a secret. It is others who chose, for various reasons, to ignore or soften the loudly declared Arab war aims, dismissing them as Middle Eastern hyperbole. It is also noteworthy that Arab terrorism did not them have anything to do with the Arabs wanting to rule the country instead of the British – as we did, for instance. Not at all. The bloodshed was always directed against the Jews and had no motive except destruction. In 1936, when the Arabs turned on the British, it was only in relation to the Jews, to Jewish immigration, to doing away with the Jews. It was not to take over or to drive the British out of Palestine. Nor, when the British did leave and the State of Israel was created, did Palestinian Arabs attempt to assume control, or make use of, those areas of the country that were not part of the Jewish state – such as Judea, Samaria or the Gaza Strip – all inhabited exclusively by Arabs. Arab energy and money were invested instead in endless and fruitless bids to make life here unbearable for us. The Palestine Government for its part seemed both unable and unwilling to do anything about the riots. By demonstrating negligence, taking months to bring captured terrorists to trial and months more to draw up suitable regulations, by combining idleness with confusion, it gave the Arabs a sense of security; to the war-cry ‘Slaughter the Jews,’ they confidently added the words ‘The Government is with us,’ and no voice was raised from Government House in disagreement. In the end, it was London that lost patience with the Palestine situation. A British general, with no special feelings about the problem as such, restored order in four weeks. Working fast and refusing to listen to any arguments, he imposed stiff collective fines and long curfews, authorized immediate arrests and ordered the instant demolition of Arab houses wherever it was suspected that villagers were hiding terrorists, storing arms or otherwise giving aid and comfort. The terror subsided; the Arab general strike was called off; the country calmed down. And why not? General Dill had his orders; there were no television cameramen, no reporters, no media involvement. The Arabs understood the message and, although the sub-war (which is what it was) did not end, tentative peace came to Palestine for a while. * * * David Hacohen reported on the news of the Safad Massacre in 1929: In the bloody Arab riots of 1921, when Yosef Hayyim Brenner, the distinguished socialist pioneer and author, was among those murdered, I was not in Palestine. . . But in the second half of 1929, where there was a fresh wave of murderous Arab attacks throughout Palestine, from Hebron to Safed, I was back at home... I believe I was the first Jew to reach Safed from the outside after the massacre there. One Friday morning we heard that there had been a pogrom in Safed. We read the official announcement: "On August 29, at 6:15, disturbances broke out in Safed. The army arrived on the scene at 8:35 and immediately restored order. There were some fatal casualties and many houses were burnt. The Jewish inhabitants were at once transferred to safety. Since then calm has prevailed in Safed." August 29 was a Thursday. Throughout the day rumors continued to come in that the pogrom in Safed was still going on. But Government House provided us with no further information about events in Safed, which was included in the jurisdiction of the Haifa district commissioner. We had enough experience not to trust the reassuring official announcement... We set out on Saturday morning. . . I could not believe my eyes. . . I met some of the town's Jewish elders, who fell on my neck weeping bitterly. We went down alleys and steps to the old town. Inside the houses I saw the mutilated and burned bodies of the victims of the massacre, and the burned body of a woman tied to the grille of a window. Going from house to house, I counted ten bodies that had not yet been collected. I saw the destruction and the signs of fire. Even in my grimmest thoughts I had not imagined that this was how I would find Safed where "calm prevailed." The local Jews gave me a detailed description of how the tragedy had started. The pogrom began on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29, and was carried out by Arabs from Safed and from the nearby villages, armed with weapons and tins of kerosene. Advancing on the street of the Sefardi Jews from Kfar Meron and Ein Zeitim, they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing. They slaughtered the schoolteacher, Aphriat, together with his wife and mother, and cut the lawyer, Toledano, to pieces with their knives. Bursting into the orphanages, they smashed the children's heads and cut off their hands. I myself saw the victims. Yitshak Mammon, a native of Safed who lived with an Arab family, was murdered with indescribable brutality: he was stabbed again and again, until his body became a bloody sieve, and then he was trampled to death. Throughout the whole pogrom the police did not fire a single shot. The British police commander, Farradav, walked up and down the main street of the town, where everything was quiet, and did not go down to the scene of the massacre... The district commissioner defended his own conduct. He said he had known that the situation there was serious, and had therefore demanded that troops be sent in, but they had arrived too late. . . I was unsparing in my criticism of him for not having visited Safed. I said that this showed in the clearest possible way that the government was to blame for what had happened. Riots had been taking place for the past seven days, seven whole days since the Hebron massacre. Incitement to violence in the Safed mosques and provocative stone throwing and threats in the streets had been daily occurrences. The warship and troops had already arrived by then. The looting, destruction, burning, and killing had begun already on Thursday evening and continued all that night and all the next day. Why, then, had the government put out its falsely reassuring announcement? Instead of protecting the Jewish population and its property, the police commander had evacuated four thousand Jews from their homes to the courtyard of Government House, leaving their homes to be looted and burned. While the looting and killing were still going on, the police were searching the Jews for arms... My thoughts about the Safed tragedy gave me no peace for a long time. How had such a thing happened? What was the explanation for the terrible loss of Jewish life and property, 18 killed, about 40 wounded, and 200 houses burned and looted? (Republished with permission from the World Zionist Organization Web Site) * * * Tarpat (1929): Jewish Pride ================================ *The 1929 Arab Riots* On the eleventh of Av, 5689 (Aug. 17, 1929), bloody riots erupted in Eretz Yisrael. Hundreds of Jews were murdered or injured by Arab mobs during these uprisings. Worse hit was the Jewish community of Hebron. When the riots subsided, rumors spread throughout the Yishuv that the British authorities actually cooperated with the rioters. Accusations pointed specifically to Harry Charles Luke - the son of assimilated, Hungarian Jews (his father immigrated to England where he converted to Christianity). At the time, Mr. Luke served as Secretary General of the British Mandatory Government, and rumor had it that he encouraged the Arabs to murder and pillage the Jews. *I Order You!* During the rioting, Rav Kook called Mr. Luke on the telephone and demanded that he take stiff action against the Arab marauders. 'What can be done?' asked Luke. 'Shoot the murders!' replied Rav Kook. 'I have not received any such orders,' retorted the British official. "*I* order you!" said the Rav. "I demand this in the name of human dignity." *The Handshake* Sometime later, the heads of the British government in Palestine held a formal reception for the most prominent Jewish figures in the Land. Mr. Luke cordially held out his hand to Rav Kook, but the Rav refused to shake it, saying sternly, "I will not shake a hand stained with Jewish blood!" Afterwards, Luke said to the Rav: 'You Jews! Go and defend yourselves, but do not attack others.' The Rav replied: "Do not preach to us, you who violate the commandment of 'You shall not murder'! (Our rule is,) if someone rises to kill you, kill him first." The Rav's bold stance made a profound impression upon the entire Jewish world, as Avigdor HaMe'iri (a writer of the time) testified: "If not for one unique, extraordinary man, who stood guard over our national and human pride, we would now be rending our garments over the loss of our honor as well." News of the Rav's bold response spread swiftly throughout the Yishuv, creating an uproar wherever it reached. Most people praised his valor, but some criticized it, mainly out of fear that Mr. Luke would take revenge on the Jewish settlements, which were largely at his mercy. Whenever the Rav appeared in public, two opposing groups immediately formed, arguing boisterously for and against the Rav. *The "Brit"* Around that time, Rav Kook was invited to a "brit milah" (circumcision). Before the ceremony began, a heated debate broke out over the Rav's defiant response to the high- ranking officer, who represented the gentile lords of the Land. When the Rav realized what was happening, he signaled to his attendant, R. Meir David Schotland, a clever and learned man, to restore order to the crowd. R. Meir David rose at once and said emphatically: 'Gentlemen! Very soon, we will usher the newborn baby into the room and bring him into the covenant ("brit") of Avraham Avinu. At that time, we will all stand up and welcome him with the traditional greeting of "Baruch HaBa" ('Blessed is he who arrives'). 'I have two questions concerning this practice. First, why don't we greet a bar-mitzvah boy or a bridegroom in the same fashion? They at least would understand the meaning of our blessing, while the uncircumcised child surely does not. Second, why don't we bid farewell to the child after the circumcision by saying, "Baruch HaYotzei" ('Blessed is he who leaves')? Silence hovered over the crowd, as R. Meir David continued his words: 'The answer to these questions is quite simple. Sadly and shamefully, we Jews admire every uncircumcised Gentile we meet, taking every opportunity to show him respect, whether it is necessary or not. Therefore, when the yet uncircumcised child enters the room, we honor him by standing up and proclaiming "Baruch HaBa". However, after he is circumcised and becomes part of the Jewish people, we no longer show him any special respect - no "Baruch HaBa" and no "Baruch HaYotzei"'. It was clear towards whom R. Meir's words were directed. Rav Kook had dauntlessly stood up to a distinguished Gentile, publicly condemning representatives of the Mandatory Government for cooperating with the Arab rioters, and there were actually people who criticized him for this! [from 'An Angel Among Men' by R. Simcha Raz, translated by R. Moshe Lichtman, pp. 191-194] |
