The Palestinian Authority, the Hebron Massacre, and ‘The Three Heroes’

Ignoring the incitement to kill Jews and instead, blame Jews.

By Hugh Fitzgerald, FPM   7.9.22

Hebron is one of the four holy cities in Judaism – the others are Jerusalem, Safed, and Tiberias – and second only to Jerusalem in religious significance. It is in the center of Hebron that the Cave of the Patriarchs is located, where religious Jews believe that four “prestigious couples,” Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people, are buried.<
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Hebron has been inhabited by Jews uninterruptedly for at least two thousand years, except in the period beginning on August 24, 1929, when a massacre of 67 Jewish men, women, and children took place, and the 435 Jews who survived were soon evacuated by British soldiers, leaving the city without any Jews. Many returned in 1931, but almost all of them had again to be evacuated at the outbreak of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt in Palestine.

The massacre of 1929 began when Arabs in the city were incited to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to attack Arabs in Jerusalem and seize control of the Temple Mount. These rumors were baseless, of course, but that would be learned only after the Arabs had completed their killing spree. The 67 Jews were murdered with knives and axes by hysterical mobs, their bodies often mutilated both before and after death, with women raped before being killed, and pregnant women cut open. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged and synagogues were ransacked.

The 1929 Hebron massacre remains deeply imprinted in the minds of Israelis, as the site of one of the worst massacres of Jews by Arabs in the pre-war period. It was the particularly atrocious nature of those killings, and the fact of Hebron’s religious importance, and the pusillanimous behavior of the British officlals and military men who, with one exception, did nothing to stop the massacre, that have imprinted that episode on Israeli minds.

This year, as it does every year, the Palestinian Authority celebrated the Hebron murderers. While the Jews mourn the victims every August 24, the Palestinians are proud of the men who cut open and eviscerated pregnant women, mutilated the bodies of men, and caught children on the edge of their knives. The P.A. holds a celebration to honor the “heroes of Hebron.” And this year, as every year, the Western press pays no attention to this ghoulish celebration. To do so, after all, would make the Palestinians look bad, and we can’t – can we? – have that.

A report on this failure of the international media to take any notice of the P.A.’s celebration of “Hebron 1929” is here: “Here’s Why Media Are Ignoring Palestinian Authority’s Glorification of 1929 Hebron Massacre,” by Gidon Ben-Zvi, Honest Reporting, August 24, 2022:

On August 24, 1929, 67 Jews in Hebron, then part of British Mandatory Palestine, were killed by Arabs incited to violence by baseless rumors that Jews were plotting to seize control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

While the massacre started in Hebron, rampaging Arabs also murdered Jews in Jerusalem and Safed. Over the course of one week, Arabs killed 130 Jews.

The Hebron Massacre sent shock waves through Jewish communities in Palestine and around the world. It led to a more coordinated Jewish defense, manifested in the professionalization of the Haganah — the official militia of the Jewish community in Palestine — that later became the nucleus of the Israel Defense Forces.

But even though the Hebron Massacre generated widespread news coverage around the world in 1929, the annual celebration by the Palestinian Authority (PA) of the pogrom until the present day is simply ignored by the international press.…

Maurice Hirsch has written extensively about the PA’s ongoing love affair with the perpetrators of the Hebron Massacre. Every year, as Hirsch notes in Palestinian Media Watch, Israel’s supposed peace partner marks the execution of three Hebron Massacre murderers — Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir — by the British mandatory government.

Though many more Arabs killed Jews that fateful August 24, only three of them were sentenced to death by the British Authorities. It is these three who are celebrated as “heroes” by the P.A. every year.

In 2019, PA TV marked the execution of “the three heroes” and used the opportunity to add that they have become “a legend of self-sacrifice for the homeland” and that “souls that have been sacrificed for their country will not die.”

This is nothing less than PA-sanctioned incitement to kill Jews….

Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir were not “fighters.” The Jews of Hebron were not armed, and could not fight back. All three of the P.A.’s “heroes” were killers, preying on defenseless Jews And they were joined by many others who escaped punishment.

The P.A. supports Palestinian murderers in myriad ways. It has its “Pay-For-Slay” program, that provides generous subsidies to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists (“martyrs”) killed while committing their attacks. At present, the total spent annually by the P.A. on the “Pay-For-Slay” program is about $330 million. This vast program both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism.

In addition, the P.A. names schools, streets, squares, and sports competitions after dead terrorists. It plasters the pictures of terrorists, dead and alive, on the walls of the P.A.’s cities. It broadcasts celebrations of their “deeds” on television shows. And it celebrates, every August 24, a particularly gruesome episode of Arabs murdering Jews in Palestine. This annual celebration has been deliberately ignored by the world.

The Hebron Massacre is called by the P.A. “the Al-Buraq Rebellion.” Al-Buraq is the fabulous wingèd steed that Muhammad supposedly rode from the top of the Temple Mount up to the seventh heaven and back within a 24-hour period. Calling the killings the “Al-Buraq Rebellion” is to reaffirm that Hebron’s “heroes” were only answering the non-existent call of the Arabs in Jerusalem who were said – baselessly – to have been attacked by Jews who also hoped to seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

There have never been – not this year nor in any other year – reports in the Western media on the P.A.’s celebration of the killers who murdered Jews in Hebron on August 24,1929. Not a word about this annual ghoulish tribute has been written in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, or Bild, and not a word has been spoken about it on the BBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Canal Cinq, Deutsche Welle.

Just one question: Why?

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