Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, fomented hatred by accusing the Jews of endangering the mosques and other sites holy to Islam and issued the call: Itback al-Yahud "Slaughter the Jews!"
The British occupied Palestine back then and they failed to stop the violence that erupted during seven days of riots in 1929.
On Friday, August 23, Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country. The Haganah mounted a defense while rumors spread throughout the country of Jews who were defiling Muslim holy places.
Despite the fact that Jews and Arabs in Hebron had been on good terms, were in business together and lived as neighbors, a mass of frenzied outside agitating Arab rioters attacked the Hebron Yeshiva where a student was murdered. The next day, which was the Jewish Sabbath, an Arab mob of hundreds surrounded homes where Jews sought refuge and cold bloodily murdered scores of Jews in a violent rampage.
The British police did NOTHING to protect the Jews or stop the violence and were thus culpable in the deaths of sixty-seven Jews and the wounds of hundreds.
A courageous peace seeking Palestinian Muslim woman of Hebron, went onto her roof top and broke a taboo, when she uncovered her head and let her hair down.
She saved untold many when she cried aloud, "There are no more Jews here!"
In 2005, Hebron held a few hundred illegal Israeli settlers, three thousand eighteen- to twenty-one-years-old Israeli soldiers and many Palestinian neighborhoods were only ghost towns.
The oppression hit me in my gut, for I felt as if I had entered into a scene from the ghettos the Nazi's forced the Jews into. I told Jerry that Hebron was hell and he replied, "You haven't seen anything until you see Gaza."
The narrow, winding stone streets of Hebron are centuries old, but in the 21st century; one side is Palestinian and the other is occupied by Israeli settlers. Their only connection to the other is a thick, deeply sagging netting that is strung above ones head and catches huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris that have been flung onto it by the colonialists.
In 2005, Jerry told me, "The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do what ever they want and get away with it. The CPT's run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting."
Upon formerly Palestinian homes, the settlers had painted graffiti, such as "GAS THE ARABS" and Stars of David.
In 2008, the netting apparently had been recently cleaned and I did not get to see any graffiti, for the Israeli Occupying Forces would not allow our group to enter into the settler's territory. We were coldly told that orders had come from above that the area was closed to anyone who is not Israeli until "a year from now."
D, who wore the red CPT cap calmly requested to see the order, for she knows that any Israeli soldier can make up orders on their own. While we waited for 'official proof', I conversed with the young soldiers as a mother.
While the commander sought a document that was written all in Hebrew, one of the men asked me what I wanted and I told them all, "I want shalom; peace and justice, which requires equal human rights for all. I want you all to spend your youth on the beach, not in a uniform, not as military occupiers."
I gave away a few of my WeAreWideAwake.org business cards and four of them agreed to stand with me for a photo. I posed with the universal sign of peace; two fingers in a V and a smile on my face.
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