The Hebron File

Author’s Preface

In mid-August 1929, the Arabs of Jerusalem, Hebron and the nearby villages assembled in Hebron, went on a rampage and massacred Jewish residents of the city. About 60 Hebron Jews were brutally slaughtered and hundreds of others were wounded. British police on the spot did not intervene until the massacre had run its course.

            Nine years earlier, after World War One and after Britain had conquered “Palestine” (actually, the Biblical Land of Israel) from the Turks who had ruled it until then, the League of Nations made one of its most important decisions: to grant a national home for the Jews in all of Palestine, that is, from the Mediterranean Sea on the west all the way to the borders of Iraq on the east, including both the eastern and western banks of the Jordan River. This was only one of the decisions made by the League of Nations pertaining to the final borders of all the Arab countries in the Middle East. In light of this decision Jews from all over Europe and the United States and North Africa began to immigrate to what was to be the Jewish homeland. Britain, which had taken Palestine from the Turks, received a mandate from the League of Nations to govern Palestine until representatives of the Jewish nation could assemble, organize, take over the reins of government and establish its state.

            The name “Palestine,” a mispronunciation of “Philistine,” was given to the Biblical Land of Israel 2000 years ago by the Greeks and then the Romans, who eventually conquered the state of the Jews and exiled most of its residents. This is the name used by the Arabs who settled there. Jews never used the name “Palestine.” “Zion” or "Eretz Israel" – the Land of Israel – is the name that has always appeared in Jewish prayer books. Nor was Palestine ever completely without Jewish settlement. A Jewish representation remained in cities and villages around the country from the time of the great exile until the mass immigration in the late 1940s.

            The League of Nations’ decision to make Palestine the Jewish national home was recognition of the right of Jews to return to their ancient homeland as well as a way of thanking the Jews in Palestine for their active support for the Allied Forces during World War One. The Jewish Brigade, formed by the Jews in Palestine, fought alongside the Allies against the Germans and Turks who then ruled Palestine, while the Arabs of Palestine fought on the side of the Turkish and German forces against the Allies.

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