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Title: | Hebron Jews are RETURNEES to their stolen property | |||
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| Name: | * BEN JABO | | |||
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| City: | USA | State: | | ||
| They were forced out in 1929 by Arab gangs. Read the story, get the facts.....Hebron massacre In Hebron, 67 Jews were murdered. Most of them were Ashkenazi men, but there were also a dozen women and three children under the age of three. Seven of the victims were yeshiva students from the United States and Canada. Dozens of people were wounded, including many women and children. Several cases of rape, mutilation and torture were reported.[2] All of the officials in Hebron itself were Arabs, and of its 40 policemen, only one was a Jew. Raymond Cafferata, the Assistant District Superintendent of the Palestine Police, had at his command 18 mounted policemen and 15 foot, the latter old men and of little use. On hearing from car-drivers of fighting in Jerusalem, Cafferata deployed special pickets to report any unusual movement from the city and issued a request to headquarters for reinforcements. Early on Saturday a crowd armed with staves and axes appeared in the streets and stoned to death two Jewish boys. Cafferata shot two of the mob and emptied his revolver into the crowd, but his saddle slipped and he fell to the ground, whereupon the crowd began attacking every Jewish house. Cafferata instructed his men to fetch rifles and to open fire, which they did, dispersing a portion of the crowd, but some of the remaining rioters, shouting "on to the Ghetto", managed to break through the pickets. Cafferata continued shooting, hitting many of the rioters, but his efforts were in vain; repeated calls for reinforcements from Jerusalem, Jaffa and Gaza did not produce help in time. Both Jewish and Arab businesses in the Bazaar were looted.[3] A consignment of police was sent from Jerusalem but was delayed by other violence on the way to Hebron and arrived hours too late. This later became the source of considerable acrimony.[4] Cafferata testified to the Commission of Enquiry in Jerusalem on 7 November that he had seen an Arab cutting a child`s head with an axe. Behind him was an ex-police-constable standing over a woman with a dagger in his hand. Cafferata shot the assailant, who shouted "Your Honor, I am a policeman". The Times reported Cafferata`s evidence to the Commission that "until the arrival of British police it was impossible to do more than keep the living Jews in the hospital safe and the streets clear [because he] was the only British officer or man in Hebron, a town of 20,000".[5] Many Jews survived by hiding in their Arab neighbors` houses[6] while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Romano on the outskirts of the city. The surviving Jews were later evacuated to Jerusalem. One third of the killed were students of the Hebron yeshiva. After the massacre, the remainder of the yeshiva was also moved to Jerusalem. On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned "the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evildoers... murders perpetrated upon defenceless members of the Jewish population... accompanied by acts of unspeakable savagery." |
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