Hebron, 1929, and the Al-Aqsa Flood, 2023
In 1929, marauding Arabs, having whipped themselves up into a murderous fury in Hebron, the second holiest city in Judaism, turned on their Jewish neighbors and slaughtered every last Jewish man, woman, and child — 69 in all — who did not manage to escape. The attacks, which began on August 24, saw mobs armed with knives, axes, and clubs targeting Jewish homes and institutions.
Elder of Ziyon notes that the anniversary of the Hebron riots is coming up in less than two weeks. Looking forward to this ghoulish anniversary, Arabs have been publishing articles about their “great victory” at Hebron in 1929 over the Jews. More on their celebration of the Hebron massacre, and the link being made to the 2023 Al-Aqsa Intifada, can be found here:
Palestinians don’t only celebrate October 7.
They also celebrate Hebron 1929.
Elder of Ziyon, August 10, 2025:
The anniversary of the deadly 1929 riots that killed over 100 Jews in Palestine is coming up.
Nesan.net has an article about 1929 painted in glowing colors and lies:
The “Buraq Revolt” was the first Palestinian uprising against the attempts to Judaize Jerusalem during the British Mandate. Large-scale clashes broke out between Arabs and Jews at the Buraq Wall (the western wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque) on August 15, 1929. The revolt culminated on August 23, 1929, with dozens killed and wounded.
The Buraq Revolt erupted when Jews organized a massive demonstration at the Buraq Wall on August 14, 1929, to mark what they called the “anniversary of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple,” claiming it was a place reserved for Jews alone.
The next day, August 15, 1929, they followed it with a massive demonstration through the streets of Jerusalem, reaching the Buraq Wall. There, they chanted, “The Wall is ours,” and sang the “Zionist national anthem,” while simultaneously insulting Muslims.
The British police had been informed of the demonstration in advance and sent large forces to escort the Jewish demonstrators.
On the third day, Friday, August 16, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, Muslims rallied to defend the Buraq Wall, which the Jews intended to seize. Violent clashes erupted between the two sides, sweeping across much of Palestine.
None of this is true.
The revolt saw clashes between Palestinians on one side and Jews and Mandate forces on the other in Hebron, Safed, Jerusalem, Jaffa, and other Palestinian cities, lasting for days.
Nesan.net’s use of the word “Palestinian” is an anachronism. The word “Palestinian” in 1929 referred only to Jews. And there were no “clashes” between Arabs and Jews in Hebron — only murderous attacks by Arabs, armed with axes, knives, and scimitars, on helpless Jews.
The Palestine Bulletin at the time shows that the only violence in the first days were by the Arabs against a single Jew – a shammash, or beadle – who didn’t flee the Kotel on that Friday:
Many have previously noted the parallels between the 1929 atrocities and October 7. Women raped, their breasts cut off, children murdered, men castrated, unarmed Jews burned alive by a bloodthirsty Arab crowd in an orgy of antisemitic violence.
But it is not only Jews who draw the parallel – Arabs do as well. The Arabic Post wrote about 1929 also in glowing terms, exactly thirty days after October 7, to cement the idea that they were both glorious rebellions against the Jews.
Since October 7, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Gaza City has been witnessing a war that has resulted in the deaths of more than 10,000 people and the injury of more than 30,000 in just one month. Some have described the war as a genocide of the city’s population by the Israeli occupation army.
However, this uprising was not the first in the history of occupied Palestine. The year 1929 witnessed the first uprising against the Jews in the city of Jerusalem, which is also called the Three Martyrs’ Uprising or the Buraq Revolution.
The Buraq Revolution was the first Palestinian uprising against the attempt to Judaize Jerusalem during the British Mandate.
The “Palestinian” Arabs make a direct connection from the murderous Arab attack on the Jews of Hebron in 1929, to the even more murderous Al-Aqsa Flood attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. In both cases, civilians were the targets — men, women, children, babies. Torture, rapes, mutilations and murders characterized both the attacks in Hebron in 1929, and those carried out by Hamas in 2023. The Arabs depict themselves as brave warriors, fighting the perfidious Jews who had supposedly planned to attack the Arabs in Hebron. but were foiled by the Arabs who struck first. The systematic killing of every Jewish man, woman, and child who could be found in Hebron is presented as a necessary preemptive attack. In the same way, the Al-Aqsa Flood attack has been described as an act of “resistance against the occupation,” even though there had not been a single Israeli “occupier” in Gaza since 2005.
The Palestinian Arabs are proud of what Hamas on October 7, 2023, and just as proud of what other Arabs did, in similar fashion, in Hebron 96 years ago. Here’s a brief summary of that earlier attack:
The massacre began on 23 August when local Arabs began staging small-scale attacks. American Jewish immigrant Aharon Reuven Bernzweig, who was visiting Hebron with his wife at the time, later wrote to his family, “We had forebodings that something terrible was about to happen—but what, exactly, we did not know.” He added, “I was fearful and kept questioning the local people, who had lived there for generations. They assured me that in Hebron there could never be a pogrom, because as many times as there had been trouble elsewhere in Eretz Israel, Hebron had remained quiet. The local population had always lived very peacefully with the Arabs.”
By the next day, the violence had escalated, and mobs went door to door screaming, “Kill the Jews.” The angry crowd broke into Jewish houses and castrated, raped, and murdered the inhabitants. Many Jews went into hiding, and some were saved by Arab neighbors who hid Jewish friends until the violence had ended.
In his letter, Bernzweig described an Arab family who had protected him and dozens of other Jews: “Five times the Arabs stormed our house with axes, and all the while those wild murderers kept screaming at the Arabs who were standing guard to hand over the Jews. They, in turn, shouted back that they had not hidden any Jews and knew nothing.”
British High Commissioner Sir John Chancellor later wrote of the massacre: “The horror of it is beyond words. In one house I visited not less than twenty-five Jewish men and women were murdered in cold blood.”
The massacre marked the end of the Hebron Jewish community’s continuous presence in the city. While a few Jews returned to Hebron two years later, they were eventually evacuated by British authorities, who did not want to risk the outbreak of another massacre. Jews would eventually return to live in Hebron after the Six-Day War, but the dynamic coexistence that had prevailed up until 1929 would never be restored.
This is the massacre that Arabs are proudly celebrating just now, and presenting it as a harbinger of greater massacres to come, including the latest and the bloodiest, that took place on October 7, 2023.
Let Elder of Ziyon have the last mordant word:
“Let’s give them a state!”
