On Friday, August 23rd, 1929, exaggerated rumors about the extent of Jewish violence against Palestinians and the desecration of holy sites in Jerusalem reached the Palestinian community of Hebron (Al-Khalil, in Arabic). What started as incensed Palestinians throwing stones at Jewish homes, and ultimately the stabbing to death a young yeshiva student, soon erupted in a full-blown riot: The next morning, more Palestinians entered the Orthodox Jewish community of Hebron and killed 67 Jews of various ages and backgrounds—all of whom were unarmed, and who had earlier refused to collaborate with Zionist militias on account of their theological opposition to Zionism. At the same time, dozens of Palestinian families in Al-Khalil sheltered hundreds of their Jewish neighbors from the violence.
August 1929 was a time of widespread protest and violent riots which had broken out all over Palestine in response to the growing British colonial repression, Zionist anti-Palestinian agitation, and ideological splits within the Palestinian national movement. The events of August 1929—which left 116 Palestinians and 133 Jews dead by the end of the month—are referred to differently in different sources, depending on their perspective: “riots,” “happenings,” or, in much of the Palestinian press, “uprisings.” Often, they are referred to metonymically as “the Hebron massacre” or “the Hebron pogrom,” particularly in Zionist historical memory.
These events substantially changed the political allegiances of Jewish communities outside of Palestine. Up to this point, left-wing and Communist Yiddish newspapers in America had diverse positions on Zionism, ranging from passive support to agnosticism to explicit anti-Zionism. After 1929, many Yiddish papers slid rightward, openly embracing aspects of Zionism they once rejected in response to what they saw as antisemitic, Eastern European-style “pogroms” at the hands of “the barbarous Arabs.” ….more
