This week 92 years ago, the events of the Holocaust took place in several places in Israel and Haifa among them. In cooperation with the association for the history of Haifa, the website Hai Pa - the news corporation brings the story of the difficult events and the murderous attacks on the Jewish community in Haifa.
Background to the events
On September 23, 9, the night of Yom Kippur, the British police removed a partition between men and women who had placed Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, contrary to the status quo left over from the Ottoman era. Following this, the leaders of the Arab public in the country, led by Haj Amin Al Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, began to incite against the Jews. Muslim clerics from Arab countries agreed with the mufti's demand to limit Jewish activity at the Western Wall, which is also holy to Muslims.
After several months of incitement, it seems that it did not fall on deaf ears and was manifested in harming the Jews.
Disorders begin
On 23/8/1929 after the Friday morning prayer, the many Muslims who came armed to the Temple Mount began to attack many Jews throughout Jerusalem and murdered 19 Jews. The next day, 67 Jews were massacred in Hebron by their Arab neighbors.
The violent events did not escape Haifa. In the evening of that day, an Arab mob attacked the Nachala neighborhood (now Rehovot Michael, Bar-Giora and the beginning of Arlozorov), led by Arab policemen who cooperated with the attackers. Only thanks to the shooting of the "Hagana" men was the attack repelled. For another three days the disturbances carried out by the Arabs in Haifa continued until the British landed hundreds of sailors and marines in the area and stopped the riots.
Due to the events, about 3,500 Jewish refugees were concentrated in Haifa (there were about 12,000 Jews in the city at the time) and three neighborhoods were evacuated. In the city, 6 Jews and a British citizen were murdered and over a hundred people were injured and a lot of material damage was caused.
Following the events, the British High Commissioner in Israel, John Chancellor, published a strongly condemning message which read:
Out of horror I learned to know the atrocities committed by gangs of bloodthirsty and savage killers of the people of Belial to the defenseless members of the Hebrew settlement without distinction of sex or age and which were accompanied, as in Hebron, by acts of indescribable barbarity, by burning houses and farms in the city and in the village and by acts of robbery and destruction.
These crimes brought upon their perpetrators the curse of all civilized peoples in all corners of the world.
My first duty is to maintain order in the country, and severely punish those who are found guilty of acts of violence.
Relations with the Arabs and the British deteriorated
A total of 133 Jews were killed in the incidents all over the Land of Israel, 6 of them were killed in Haifa. A number of Jewish settlements were destroyed and some were never rebuilt.
The Jewish settlement suffered a fatal blow from the Arab residents and the British did not make the work of restoration any easier. The British established a commission of inquiry to examine the reasons for the outbreak of events and the functioning of the police headed by Judge Walter Shaw. The committee criticized the performance of the mandate police, but cleared Mufti Al Husseini of responsibility. It even eventually led to the publication of Passfield's White Paper (the Second White Paper) in 1930, which limited the immigration of Jews to Israel and made it difficult to sell land to Jews.
The rift that was created in the relations between the Jews and the Arabs did not heal after the events, because a few years later, in 1936, the Arabs began further attacks on the Jews of Haifa and Jews in the rest of the country until 1939 in what later became known as the "Great Arab Revolt" or "The Events of XNUMX-XNUMX" "ninth".
The Haifa History Association recently completed a comprehensive study of the events in the city. It will be published at the end of the year in the "Haifa" association's newsletter.