A ceremony in memory of the 67 victims of the 1929 Hevron Massacre will be held Tuesday evening in the ancient Jewish cemetery in the city. Community spokesmen said that for anarchist and far-left activists, today was just another day of provocations.
In late August of 1929, Arab mobs in Jerusalem began targeting Jewish neighborhoods in violent attacks. Within a short time, Arabs throughout the rest of the Land of Israel were rioting, lynching and perpetrating massacres against the Jewish population of towns such as Hevron, Tiberias, Tzfat and Motza. Within a few days, thanks to the incitement of the Nazi-aligned Muslim leader Haj Amin Al-Husseini, over one hundred Jews were murdered and several hundred more wounded.
In Hevron, where the rolling pogrom arrived on August 23, 1929 (17 Av 5689), Arab residents of the city murdered 67 of their Jewish neighbors in one day, and destroyed or pillaged Jewish property. Over 400 Hevron Jews survived the massacre by taking refuge in the homes of 28 local Arab families. As a result of the massacre and the subsequent appeasement efforts by the British colonial government towards the Arab population of the Palestine Mandate, the Jewish community of Hevron essentially came to an end. It was briefly revived, but a second series of attacks in 1936 ended all Jewish presence in the city, until it was conquered by the State of Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. A new Jewish neighborhood was established in Hevron in 1968.
Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the modern Hevron Jewish community, told Israel National News on Tuesday morning that anarchists and international members of the anti-Jewish far-left arrived in Hevron. They are continuing to cause trouble, according to Arnon.
"This is a phenomenon that we are, unfortunately, used to here in Hevron," Arnon said. "In the past, the anarchists
Police officers in Hevron have admitted that they have to allow the far-left provocateurs to come in.
blocked roads, posted inciting announcements in the streets and made contact with local terrorists as part of their provocations. But today this provocative visit is more grating, because it is the day of the memorial for those murdered."
Arnon said that the fact that the anti-Jewish activists would want to be in Hevron is not a surprise, "but that the police granted them a permit to come here specifically today, and is providing them protection - that is chilling." Although occasionally, the police do forbid entry to the far-left activists, he noted that the police protection offered them today is significantly lacking at all times for Jews seeking to pray on the Temple Mount, which is under Muslim administrative control.
"The State Prosecutor's Office backs up the activity of the anarchists, despite the fact that there is incitement to murder here. They dare to claim that they do not incite," Arnon said. "The division of labor is that left-wing activists go on patrols and make other provocations in the field and the Prosecutor's Office backs them up from its side."
Arnon said that police officers in Hevron have admitted that they have to allow the far-left provocateurs to come in from time to time, because they have no general support from the police legal department to keep the troublemakers away.