Hebron, 24 August 1929: the massacre that uprooted a four-century-old Jewish community

Nineteen years before the State of Israel was founded and 38 years before the Six-Day War, Hebron, a city in Judaea whose name runs through the Bible, lost in two days a Jewish community that had lived there continuously since the 16th century. The massacre of 23–24 August 1929 was the deadliest episode of the riots that swept Mandatory Palestine that week. It also revealed another side of life as neighbours. Arab families in Hebron risked their lives to hide Jews. This account examines what happened, what a British commission concluded and what became of the city, including the 1994 massacre of Muslim worshippers by a Jewish man.

Hebron before 1929: an old community of modest means

In Jewish tradition, Hebron is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where Genesis places the burial of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was King David’s first capital. Under the Ottomans and then the British Mandate, Jews were forbidden to enter the shrine ³.

The modern community dates to the 16th century. In 1540, Rabbi Malkiel Ashkenazi bought land and had a Jewish quarter and the Avraham Avinu Synagogue built ¹². The community that grew there was Sephardi, descended from exiles from Spain. Its members spoke Arabic and lived for centuries among Muslim neighbours. Ashkenazi Jews, mainly Chabad Hasidim, joined them in the 19th century ³¹².

In 1924–25, part of the great Lithuanian yeshiva of Slabodka, Knesset Israel, moved to Hebron. By 1929 it had nearly 200 students, making it the country’s largest yeshiva. Several came from the United States ¹⁰¹². These young men, who lived apart from both Sephardi Jews and Arabs, changed the character of the community. On the eve of the riots, about 700 to 800 Jews lived in Hebron ³⁹.

The dispute over the Wall and the spread of rumours

The starting point was Jerusalem’s Western Wall. On Yom Kippur in 1928, British police removed a screen Jewish worshippers had set up to separate men and women in the narrow prayer alley. The incident became a political and religious issue, and more Muslims began using the alley ⁸. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, made the Wall a Muslim cause. In late July 1929, he secured British permission to open a new gate to the mosque compound. On 2 August, the Society for the Defence of Al-Aqsa took an oath before him ⁸. Twelve years later, the same man was in Berlin. See the Mufti of Jerusalem’s meeting with Hitler.

On 15 August 1929, the fast of Tisha B’Av, some 300 Jewish youths, many of them members of Betar, marched to the Wall carrying the blue-and-white flag and chanting “The Wall is ours”. The procession was provocative but committed no violence. False rumours of attacks on Muslims circulated immediately ⁸. The following day, 16 August, a march organised by the Supreme Muslim Council proceeded from Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Wall. Jewish worshippers were beaten, a Torah scroll was torn and prayer books were burned ¹⁸. In the following days, a young Jewish man was killed on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem ⁸.

On the night of 22–23 August, armed villagers converged on Al-Aqsa ⁸. On Friday 23 August, after prayers, word spread that Jews had killed two Arabs. Violence broke out in Jerusalem and spread across the country that day ¹. The Haganah, the Jewish defence organisation, had offered to send men to Hebron. Community leaders had declined, trusting their Arab neighbours and landlords to protect them ¹.

Two days in Hebron, 23–24 August 1929

On Friday afternoon, 23 August, young Arabs threw stones at yeshiva students. One student, Shmuel Rosenholtz, was killed inside the building, the first fatality ³⁴. Hebron’s police force had just one British officer, its commander, Raymond Cafferata ¹³⁹.

At about 8am on Saturday 24 August, a crowd armed with knives and axes entered the Jewish quarter and went from house to house ⁴¹⁰. Yaakov Yosef Slonim, Hebron’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, survived and gave an account to JTA. His son Eliezer Dan was killed. Meir Franco was the chief Sephardi rabbi ⁹¹⁷. Eliezer Dan Slonim had opened his home to people who were afraid. More than a third of those killed that day died there ⁴¹¹. Bodies were mutilated ¹. British High Commissioner John Chancellor later wrote: “I do not think that history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years” ⁸.

The most frequently cited toll is 67 Jewish men, women and children killed. Twelve were Sephardi and 55 Ashkenazi. They included 24 yeshiva students, eight of them Americans. Several dozen people were wounded ³⁸¹⁰¹¹. On the evening of 25 August, the US consul general in Jerusalem, Paul Knabenshue, telegraphed Washington an initial count of 45 killed, 51 seriously wounded and 20 slightly wounded, with 12 American students among the dead ⁵.

Survivors were taken to the Beit Romano police station, where they remained for three days. Each night ten men were allowed out to bury that day’s dead in the old Jewish cemetery ⁴. Three days after the massacre, the British evacuated the 484 survivors, including 153 children, to Jerusalem. The wounded were treated at Hadassah Hospital ³⁹. The Avraham Avinu Synagogue and homes had been looted ⁴.

The neighbours who hid Jews

The whole town did not take part in the massacre. Arab families opened their doors to their Jewish neighbours, sometimes standing up to the crowd. A landlord, Abu Shaker, stood in the doorway of the house where members of the Slonim family were hiding. Another refused the crowd entry to the house where a 17-year-old student, Dov Cohen, was concealed in a pit ⁹¹⁰. A neighbour named Abu Id Zeitoun, his brother and his son protected Zmira Mani’s family at sword point until a policeman arrived ⁴. Historian Hillel Cohen cites the Kastel, Abushdid and Capiloto families, who pleaded with their neighbours: “Are we not brothers?” ⁶.

Counts vary. After the massacre, Rabbis Franco and Slonim drew up a list naming 19 Arab rescuers ⁴⁹. Other counts refer to 22 families who saved “dozens, if not hundreds” of Jews ³. Dubnov’s review of Hillel Cohen’s book mentions 28 families ⁷.

The week’s toll and the Shaw Commission

The violence lasted until 1 September and also reached Safed ⁶⁷. Across the country, 133 Jews were killed and several hundred wounded. Of the 116 Arabs killed, most died at the hands of British police and troops restoring order (some counts put the Arab death toll at 110) ⁴⁷. Hillel Cohen also notes that Jews killed innocent Arabs that week, among them the imam of the Abu Kabir mosque near Jaffa, murdered by a group led by a Jewish policeman. Other Jews saved Arabs from lynching in Jerusalem ⁶⁷.

On 4 September 1929, London appointed a commission of inquiry chaired by the jurist Sir Walter Shaw. Its report appeared in March 1930 ². It found that the outbreak in Jerusalem on 23 August had from the start been an attack by Arabs on Jews, that it had not been premeditated and that “a general massacre of the Jewish community at Hebron was narrowly averted” ¹². The commission concluded that the Mufti had not organised the campaign over the Wall with the intention of provoking disturbances. Labour member Henry Snell signed a dissenting note ². He assigned the Mufti greater responsibility for the agitation and criticised his failure to try to control it ¹⁸. The commission traced the underlying cause to fears among some Palestinian Arabs for their political, national and economic future in the face of the Jewish national home, immigration and land purchases ². The Jewish National Council and the Jewish Agency rejected these conclusions ².

The British government responded on 21 October 1930 with Lord Passfield’s White Paper restricting Jewish immigration and land purchases. Following protests, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald qualified its provisions in a letter to Chaim Weizmann on 13 February 1931 ¹⁶.

The return in 1931 and the British evacuation in 1936

In 1931, part of the community returned to Hebron under Rabbi Haim Bajayo ⁹¹². The experiment lasted five years. On 23 April 1936, at the start of the Arab Revolt, the British authorities evacuated the Jewish families who had returned ³¹². According to a local account of the Bajayo family, Yaakov Ezra’s family remained in Hebron until 1947 ¹⁹.

Hebron came under Jordanian control in 1948. Jordan proclaimed its annexation of the West Bank on 24 April 1950 ⁴²⁰. Under Jordanian administration the Jewish quarter and old cemetery were demolished. The Avraham Avinu Synagogue was used as a rubbish dump and cattle pen ¹². The community’s fate intersects with that of Jews in Arab countries in those years. See the exodus of Jews from Arab countries.

After 1967: Kiryat Arba, the Jewish quarter, 1994 and 1997

The Israeli army entered Hebron on 8 June 1967 ¹². Survivors of 1929 tried to recover their houses, but the government opposed the move ⁴. In April 1968, a group led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger rented the Park Hotel for Passover and announced it would stay. After five weeks, the government moved the group into a nearby military administration building ¹²¹³. In 1970, Golda Meir’s government authorised the construction of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron. The first residents arrived in 1971, and 105 homes were completed in autumn 1972 ¹²¹³.

In 1979, women and children from Kiryat Arba moved into Beit Hadassah in the city centre. In May 1980, six yeshiva students were killed outside the building. The government then decided to re-establish a Jewish community in the city itself ¹²¹³. In 1996, about 450 Jews lived there alongside 100,000 Palestinians ¹³.

On 25 February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a doctor from Kiryat Arba, opened fire on Muslim worshippers at prayer at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and killed 29 ¹²¹³¹⁵. In June 1994, a state commission of inquiry chaired by Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar concluded that he had acted alone. It recommended barring armed settlers and off-duty soldiers from entering the shrine with weapons, separating Jewish and Muslim prayer spaces and taking firm action against the already banned Kach and Kahane Chai movements ¹⁵.

On 17 January 1997, Israel and the PLO signed the Hebron Protocol in Jerusalem. H1, about 80% of the city, came under Palestinian police authority. In H2, where the city’s Jews lived, Israel retained security control. A Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was established ¹²¹⁴. Writing in 2019, Colin Shindler put the number of Jews living in central Hebron at a few hundred, among some 250,000 Arab residents ¹¹.

Chronology

• 1540 — Rabbi Malkiel Ashkenazi buys land and establishes the Jewish quarter and the Avraham Avinu Synagogue ¹².
• 1924-1925 — Slabodka’s Knesset Israel yeshiva moves to Hebron ¹⁰¹².
• 1928, Yom Kippur — British police remove a screen erected by Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. The dispute over the Wall begins ⁸.
• 1929-08-15 — Some 300 Jewish youths march to the Wall. 16 August — A Muslim counterdemonstration takes place and prayer books are burned ¹⁸.
• 1929-08-23 — Violence breaks out in Jerusalem. The first death in Hebron comes that afternoon ¹³⁴.
• 1929-08-24 — The Hebron massacre kills 67 Jews, according to the most widely accepted count ³¹¹.
• 1929-08-27 — The 484 survivors are evacuated to Jerusalem ³.
• 1929-09-04 — The Shaw Commission is appointed. Its report appears in March 1930 ².
• 1930-10-21 — The Passfield White Paper. 1931-02-13 — MacDonald writes to Weizmann ¹⁶.
• 1931 — Some members of the community return under Rabbi Bajayo ⁹¹².
• 1936-04-23 — The British evacuate the community that returned in 1931 ³¹². According to the local account of the Bajayo family, Yaakov Ezra’s family remains in Hebron until 1947 ¹⁹.
• 1948 — Hebron comes under Jordanian control. Annexation is proclaimed on 24 April 1950 ⁴²⁰.
• 1967-06-08 — The Israeli army enters Hebron ¹².
• 1968-04 — Moshe Levinger’s group takes rooms at the Park Hotel for Passover. The first seder falls on the evening of 12 April ¹²¹³²¹. 1970–1971 — Kiryat Arba is established ¹²¹³.
• 1979 — Families move into Beit Hadassah. 1980-05 — Six Jews are killed outside the building ¹²¹³.
• 1994-02-25 — Baruch Goldstein kills 29 Muslim worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. 1994-06 — The Shamgar report appears ¹⁵.
• 1997-01-17 — The Hebron Protocol establishes zones H1 and H2 ¹⁴.

Sources

1. Sir Walter Shaw et al., « Report of the Commission on the Palestine Disturbances of August 1929 » (Cmd. 3530, mars 1930), extraits reproduits dans Terrorism: Essential Primary Sources, Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/hebron-massacre
2. Shira Klein, « The Shaw Commission and British Disillusionment with Zionism », Center for Online Judaic Studies, https://cojs.org/?p=8192
3. Jewish Virtual Library, « The Hebron Massacre of 1929 », https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-hebron-massacre-of-1929
4. Jewish Virtual Library, « Pre-State Israel: The Hebron Massacre (August 1929) », https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hebron29.html
5. Paul Knabenshue, consul général des États-Unis à Jérusalem, télégramme au secrétaire d'État, 25 août 1929, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1929, vol. III, doc. 21, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1929v03/d21
6. Hillel Cohen, « How the 1929 Hebron massacre invigorated the Zionist movement », +972 Magazine (trad. de l'hébreu, paru d'abord dans Haokets), 5 mars 2013, https://972mag.com/how-the-1929-hebron-massacre-invigorated-the-zionist-movement/67101/
7. Arie Dubnov, « Arie Dubnov on Hillel Cohen's Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict » (recension de Hillel Cohen, Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1929, Brandeis University Press, 2015), Marginalia Review of Books, 1er février 2016, https://themarginaliareview.com/?p=8399
8. Yardena Schwartz, « Western Wall, 1929: A Tisha B'av protest is ground zero of the Arab-Israeli conflict » (extrait de Ghosts of a Holy War), The Times of Israel, 2 août 2025, https://www.timesofisrael.com/western-wall-1929-a-tisha-bav-protest-is-ground-zero-of-the-arab-israeli-conflict/
9. Toby Klein Greenwald, « The Hebron Massacre » (version abrégée d'un article de Jewish Action, été 2004), Aish.com, https://aish.com/53789612/
10. Bayla Sheva Brenner et Toby Klein Greenwald, « Remembering the 1929 Hebron Massacre », Jewish Action (Orthodox Union), été 2019, https://jewishaction.com/jewish-world/history/remembering-the-1929-hebron-massacre/
11. Colin Shindler, « Hebron 1929 », The Jewish Chronicle, 5 septembre 2019 (reproduit sur le site de l'auteur), https://www.colinshindler.com/hebron-1929/
12. Communauté juive d'Hébron, « History of Hebron: a time line » (site de la communauté juive d'Hébron ; source partisane, utilisée pour les dates locales), https://hebron.org.il/en/history-of-hebron-a-time-line/
13. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, « Behind the headlines: Hebron historically at center of Israeli-Palestinian conflict », 1997, https://jta.org/archive/behind-the-headlines-hebron-historically-at-center-of-israeli-palestinian-conflict-2
14. Gouvernement d'Israël et OLP, « Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron », 17 janvier 1997, texte reproduit par l'Avalon Project (Yale), https://cdn.britannica.com/primary_source/avalon/20th_century/hebron.asp
15. Jewish Telegraphic Agency, « Hebron massacre inquiry exonerates government, IDF; blames Goldstein only », 27 juin 1994, https://www.jta.org/archive/hebron-massacre-inquiry-exonerates-government-idf-blames-goldstein-only
16. Jewish Virtual Library, « British Palestine Mandate: British White Papers » (Livre blanc de Passfield, 21 octobre 1930 ; lettre MacDonald, 13 février 1931), https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-british-white-papers
17. JTA, témoignage du père survivant, https://www.jta.org/archive/eye-witnesses-describe-horrors-of-the-moslem-arabs-attacks-at-hebron-on-saturday-august-24
18. Dissidence de Snell, https://www.jta.org/archive/snell-attributes-greater-responsibility-to-mufti-and-arab-executive-leaders-blamed-for-innovations
19. Famille Ezra, histoire locale, https://hebron.org.il/en/the-bajayo-family-and-the-last-rabbi-of-hebron/
20. Annexion de 1950, https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/134
21. Pessa’h 1968, https://www.hebcal.com/holidays/pesach-1968

The story in 30 seconds

Read the main facts at a glance and share the link.

1. On 23–24 August 1929, Arab rioters killed 67 Jews in Hebron, including 24 yeshiva students, by the most cited count. One British policeman was stationed there.
2. Hebron’s Arab families risked their lives to hide Jewish neighbours. One list names 19 rescuers. The British evacuated the survivors to Jerusalem.
3. The community, uprooted 19 years before Israel’s founding, returned in part in 1931 and left in 1936. On 25 Feb 1994 Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers.

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