Anonymous Soldiers

by Bruce Hoffman

  For at least four hundred years, the small Jewish enclave in Hebron had lived in peace with its Arab neighbors. One of four holy cities in Judaism (Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Safed are the others), Hebron is the site of the biblical Cave of the Patriarchs, a place sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah are believed to be buried. The five hundred or so Orthodox, apolitical and mostly non-Zionist, Jews who lived there had remained blissfully aloof from the nationalist ferment that had gripped Palestine for most of the preceding decade. Indeed, according to two Jewish survivors, even as news of the violence that had convulsed Jerusalem reached Hebron on Friday afternoon, the anxious Jewish community took comfort from the assurances received from their Arab neighbors that “there could never be a pogrom” in Hebron because the city had remained so quiet during all prior disturbances. Hebron’s Arabs had told Raymond Cafferata, the assistant district superintendent and the only British police officer in the city, the same thing. A letter written by the Hebron residents Aharon Reuven Bernzweig and his wife, Breine Zuch Bernzweig, to their children only days later describes the tragic chain of events that unfolded over the next twenty-four hours. It corresponds with the testimony Cafferata gave before the Shaw Commission the following November.29

  Friday afternoon in Hebron was tense but quiet. News began to trickle in of the violence in Jerusalem. Groups of Arabs were reportedly roaming Jerusalem’s streets and had beaten several Jews. Cafferata, accordingly, instructed the Jewish community to stay inside and lock their doors. “Suddenly, just one hour before candle lighting,” the Bernzweigs recounted, “pandemonium broke loose. Window panes were smashed on all sides. In our building, they broke every window and began throwing stones inside. We hid ourselves. They were breaking windows in all the Jewish homes. Now we were in deathly fear.” But just as the Jews began to panic, mounted police arrived, and, according to the Bernzweigs, “all became still outside. We thought our salvation had come.” As soon as he had learned of the attacks, Cafferata ordered his meager force of eighteen mounted Arab police and fifteen elderly Arab foot patrolmen—who, he later recalled, were “practically useless” because of their age—to the Jewish quarter and to the city’s outskirts, respectively, to report any suspicious traffic coming from Jerusalem. He also contacted police headquarters in Jerusalem and urgently requested reinforcements. None, however, could be spared. Although there were fewer than three dozen policemen to contend with a population of twenty-four thousand Arabs in Hebron and another sixty thousand in the surrounding area, the patrols that Cafferata had deployed proved effective, and there were no further incidents that night. But any hope that the worst had passed was soon shattered.30

  Early Saturday morning, cars packed with Arabs brandishing long iron bars, big knives, and axes, and screaming that they were going to slaughter Jews in Jerusalem, raced up and down Hebron’s streets. Mounted on horseback, Cafferata cautiously eyed the crowd now gathering before him. Suddenly two Jewish yeshiva students appeared. In an instant, the mob was after them. Cafferata intervened, shooting two Arabs and emptying his pistol before the swarming mass enveloped both him and the two students. The latter were mercilessly stoned to death, while Cafferata was knocked off his horse. Jumping to his feet, he ordered the handful of policemen beside him to form a firing line and shoot into the crowd. Although some of the rioters dispersed, others, shouting, “On to the Ghetto,” simply rushed past Cafferata and his men. Just after 8:00 a.m., the first sounds of a massacre in progress were heard. “Screams pierced the heart of the heavens,” the Bernzweigs recalled. Cafferata took off in pursuit. In his report to headquarters, he described what happened next:

  On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a police constable named Issa Sherif from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out—shouting (in Arabic) “Your Honour, I am a policeman.” … I got into the room and shot him.31

  The carnage went on for another two and a half hours before Cafferata and his men were able to restore at least a semblance of order. Hebron would account for the largest toll of Jewish deaths and injuries in the violence that continued for another week. Sixty-four Jews lay dead, and fifty-four others were wounded. Only one had been killed by a bullet; all the others had variously been stabbed, hacked, bludgeoned, or stoned to death. Had some Arab families not hidden or protected their Jewish neighbors, Cafferata later reflected, “not a Jewish soul in Hebron would have been saved.” That was how the Bernzweigs survived.32

  But the Jewish community in Hebron was no more. The remaining 435 persons were evacuated three days later “practically naked and barefoot,” having lost everything. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a group of politically far-right Orthodox Jews, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger and calling themselves Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), reestablished a continuing Jewish presence in Hebron’s Jewish quarter that has been a source of contention in contemporary Palestinian-Israeli relations since. As for Cafferata, he was awarded the King’s Police Medal for gallantry and thereafter was known as “the Man of Lead” for having single-handedly stood down seven hundred rioters that Saturday morning and rescued Hebron’s Jews.33

  The rest of Palestine, meanwhile, was collapsing into anarchy that same Saturday morning. Just as the anti-Jewish violence was abating in Hebron, it was gathering momentum outside Motza, a village to the west of Jerusalem. A crowd of Arabs descended on a house belonging to a Jewish family, killing the father and mother, their two daughters, a son, and two guests before setting it and an adjacent stable on fire (one son escaped). Farther north, Arab mobs tried to storm the police barracks in Nablus and attacked Jews in the town of Beisan (now called Bet Shean). By noon, the situation throughout the country was so perilous that the PPF informed Luke that the police could no longer accept responsibility for public security. An RAF group captain, the most senior military officer then present in Palestine and Trans-Jordan, assumed command of all security force operations. In hopes of dampening any further incitement, the Palestine government also ordered the suspension of all newspapers. Only in Jaffa and Haifa, however, were the police successful in preventing any escalation of the anti-Jewish violence.34

  Astonishingly, it was not until Tuesday, August 27, that any meaningful number of reinforcements had either set out for or arrived from Egypt and Malta. These included three battalions of troops (approximately eighteen hundred men), a company of armored cars, an RAF squadron, and five warships with landing parties equivalent to a battalion in strength. They did not, however, make it in time to save the Jews of Safed. Another ancient Jewish city of piety and learning, Safed is perhaps best known as the spiritual center of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Like Hebron, it had been seemingly immune to the violent political currents that had continually swept through Palestine in recent years. By August 29, nearly a week had passed without incident since the disorders had commenced in the south. It might have been reports that a detachment of British troops was en route to Safed to protect its small Jewish population that inflamed the city’s ten thousand Arab residents, but whatever the case, that morning an Arab mob rushed into the Jewish quarter and within twenty minutes had killed fifteen Jews and injured thirty-three others. As in Hebron, it was a young British police officer, Assistant Superintendent J. A. M. Faraday, who saved the day. The lone Briton among a small contingent of Arab police, his prompt intervention averted further bloodshed. The troops arrived two hours later, but even their presence could not prevent the looting and burning of Jewish homes that continued until the end of the month. As at Hebron, the report of the Palestine government’s d
irector of health cited the ferocity of the attacks on Safed’s Jews as evidenced by the multiple injuries sustained from knives, sticks, staves, clubs, and other blunt instruments.35

  What had begun eleven months earlier as a dispute over some furniture being brought to the Western Wall ended in August 1929 with the deaths of 133 Jews and injuries to 339 others. Arab casualties were nearly as high—116 killed and 232 wounded. However, whereas the former were the victims of lawlessness and wanton bloodletting, the latter were mostly inflicted by government security forces attempting to maintain order. At least twenty Jewish communities across Palestine had come under Arab attack. This unprecedented violence was a turning point in the history of both British rule and Arab and Jewish relations.36

  For the British, the 1929 riots necessitated yet another investigative commission, another white paper, and another clarification of government policy at the expense of Zionism. The Shaw Commission, named for its chairman, a distinguished colonial judge, arrived in Palestine only weeks after the disturbances. Its report was issued the following March and concluded that the Arab violence was “neither provoked, premeditated, nor directed against the British Administration.” Instead, it was prompted by Arab fears of Jewish political and economic domination that would lead to the loss of their land and livelihood. “Excessive” Jewish immigration in 1925 and 1926 and attendant land purchases, the commission’s members believed, had heightened these concerns and set in motion the tragic chain of events that culminated in the widespread violence.37

  The mufti and the Arab Executive (AE)—the committee established in 1920 by Palestine’s Arab leaders to represent their community—were exonerated from any complicity in either planning or inciting the disturbances. The report, however, blamed both for fostering the climate of hatred and vituperation that had led directly to the disorders (in a written dissent published as an annex to the report, one of the commission’s members, a Labour MP named Henry Snell, pointedly disagreed with this conclusion and placed the onus of responsibility on the mufti). The Palestine government was also held blameless for its response once the rioting had begun. The report made several recommendations, the most important of which was that the British government issue a clear statement of policy pledging itself to safeguard the rights of Palestine’s non-Jewish communities—especially with respect to Jewish immigration and land purchase. Another recommendation called upon the government to issue a clear statement regarding its policy on Jewish immigration as well as to conduct a review of how the annual quotas were determined. It further recommended that “non-Jewish interests” also be accorded some voice in immigration policy.38

  Although the report generally satisfied the Arabs, the Arab Executive argued that it should also have called for the cessation of Jewish immigration, a ban on Jewish land purchase, and the establishment of a democratic government in Palestine based on proportional representation. The Yishuv bristled at being blamed and punished for the violence directed against it. The official Zionist response to the report, however, chose to emphasize the need for a clear and expanded government commitment to protect the Yishuv alongside the initiation of an official program whereby Jews would be trained and armed in their own defense. One of the report’s positive outcomes for the Yishuv, accordingly, was the subsequent establishment of a Jewish special auxiliary constabulary within the PPF, complete with sufficiently stocked armories.39

  The League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission took an especially dim view of the report, rejecting its conclusion that the disturbances were not premeditated and that they therefore could have been neither anticipated nor prevented. The British government and the Palestine administration were faulted not only for ignoring “the social and economic adaptation of the Arab population to the new conditions due to Jewish immigration” but for having stationed insufficient security forces in Palestine, thus failing to provide “the essential condition for development of the Jewish National Home, security for persons and property.” The British government was nonplussed by the criticism and simply ignored it.40

  The Shaw Commission Report also set in motion a complete overhaul of the PPF. The riots had clearly revealed the damage done to the police by cutbacks in funding. The police’s failure either to prevent or to contain the riots, however, was also the product of the force’s Arab contingent and its inadequate intelligence apparatus. As had happened in 1920 and 1921, many Arab police not only had made no effort to stop the violence but had joined the attacks on Jews. This disgraceful behavior was somewhat mitigated by the gallant performance of the force’s relatively new British Section. Although for the time being there was no formal reversal of policy, it was obvious that in the future the British Section would be primarily responsible for public security. Indeed, more than twice as many British as Palestinian recruits (523 versus 221) entered the force following the riots. To redress the PPF’s overall manpower deficiency, the Colonial Office granted permission for the immediate recruitment of an additional fifteen British and thirteen Palestinian senior officers and more than five hundred British and two hundred Palestinian constables.41

  The other problems undermining the police force’s performance were less easily dealt with because their amelioration required changes in the police force’s policy, orientation, and structure. The Colonial Office, accordingly, asked Herbert Dowbiggin, the inspector general of police in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the PPF and make recommendations on its reorganization.42

  With respect to the force’s British contingent, Dowbiggin sought to engage them more in the day-to-day policing duties of crime prevention and patrolling. He hoped that this would better integrate the British police with their Arab and Jewish counterparts and also give them a better understanding of the country’s populace and local conditions. In addition, Dowbiggin recommended that the number of police stations be increased from 88 to 116 and that army units be co-located with police. He believed this was necessary both to buttress the defenses at isolated posts and to facilitate the rapid deployment of a well-armed intervention force to nip any trouble in the bud. Accordingly, two British infantry battalions totaling some fifteen hundred men along with twelve aircraft and seven armored cars were permanently stationed in Palestine.43

  Dowbiggin, though, was especially scathing in his criticism of the police force’s criminal investigation department (CID), describing it as the “weakest spot in the Force.” He blamed it for the police force’s failure to appreciate the depth of Arab discontent or to anticipate the violence that it ignited. As the department specifically charged with the acquisition, analysis, and dissemination of political intelligence, the CID had also been faulted by the Shaw Commission for failing to furnish the PPF with the information that should have warned of the disturbances. Dowbiggin concluded that this was because the department was too narrowly focused on monitoring actual subversive political activities as opposed to fully understanding the country’s religious and social dynamics.44

  The changes to intelligence gathering and analysis that Dowbiggin mandated were systemic and far-ranging. The CID was to be reorganized into specific sections responsible for both criminal investigation and countering subversion.45

  The broader policy implications of the Shaw Commission Report, fortunately for the Yishuv, proved less durable. A new government white paper—known as the Passfield White Paper—followed in October 1930. It further clarified Britain’s obligations to Palestine’s Arab and Jewish communities, revising the Jewish immigration quota to include a condition that it not adversely impact Arab employment. The white paper also committed the government to fulfill the Arab leadership’s long-standing demand for a proportionally representative legislative council and to facilitate some limited, future immigration of non-Palestinian Arabs to the country. The Passfield White Paper is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it again confirmed the impression among Palestine’s Arabs that government policy could indeed be influenced by violence. Second, its provi
sions were never implemented. Four months later, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wrote to Weizmann assuring him that Jewish immigration would continue without either government interference or any reference to Arab job prospects—in effect reversing the Passfield White Paper. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Arabs termed this additional clarification of policy the MacDonald “Black Letter.”46

  Meanwhile, courts sitting in Palestine were busy adjudicating the cases of some 700 Arabs accused of murder and looting and of about 160 Jews who, despite claiming to have acted in self-defense, had been charged with murder. Fifty-five Arabs were convicted of capital crimes and nearly half that number sentenced to death, as was one Jew. However, the high commissioner commuted the sentences to life imprisonment for all but three Arabs, who were hanged in June 1930. The condemned men were heralded by their co-religionists as “heroes, martyrs, and victims of imperialism.”47

  For Palestine’s Arabs, the disturbances were regarded as the first tangible manifestation of an uprising against Britain’s support of Zionism. The rapidity with which the entire country was summoned in the name of Islam and in defense of Jerusalem’s Noble Sanctuary was not lost on the mufti and his acolytes. “Instead of abstract nationalist slogans about self-determination, majority rights, etc.,” the historian Yehoshua Porath explains, “they now had a concrete symbol which was clearly understood by the Muslim masses.” The effective fusing of religion and politics enabled Haj Amin to burnish his reputation and position himself as the Palestinian Arabs’ preeminent leader. Arab disquiet would henceforth neither abate nor be sated by anything short of Britain’s unambiguous disavowal of the Balfour Declaration.48