Those ‘heroes’ who massacred Jews in 1929
Those ‘heroes’ who massacred Jews in 1929
Today marks 90 years since the Hebron Massacre of 67 Jews. Rampaging Arabs also murdered Jews in Jerusalem and Safed. In total, Arabs murdered 130 Jews in the course of just one week.
While the massacre took place in 1929, more than 60 years before its creation, the Palestinian Authority has wholeheartedly embraced the event, glorifying three of its participants and perpetuating the spark that ignited the carnage.
In the aftermath of the massacres, British mandate forces arrested and prosecuted dozens of Arabs. While most of the death sentences handed down were commuted to life imprisonment, three Arabs who, according to a report by the British government to the League of Nations, “committed particularly brutal murders at Safad and Hebron” were put to death on June 17, 1930.
Every year the PA marks the execution of these three murderers, Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir.
In 2016, a spokesman for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party even went as far as demanding that Britain should “submit an official and public apology to our people… and to the families of the Palestinian Martyrs (Shahids) who were executed in cold blood by the British Mandate forces on June 17, 1930.”
He also called for including the names of the heroes of the Al-Buraq revolution in the “Martyrs’ list” of the national Palestinian prisoners’ movement, “because their cause contains the uniqueness of the Palestinian historical narrative and it holds within it the fragrance of the experience of a remarkable Palestinian struggle and the historical story of our people since the British Mandate.”
He added, “The eternal national event of the death as martyrs of the three heroic prisoners should be noted in order to remind Britain and the world of the tragedy of our people and its expulsion by force from its lands.”
The PA and Palestinians refer to the massacre as the Al-Buraq revolution. The PA justifies the murder of 130 Jews saying that it was in response to Jews marking the fast of the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av – the day on which both Jewish Temples were destroyed – by singing the Jewish national anthem at the Western Wall. The PA refers to Western Wall as the Al-Buraq wall.
This year too, the PA instigated and initiated violence, in rejection of Jews’ right to visit the Temple Mount on the 9th of Av.
The three murderers are today an integral part of the Palestinian terror glorification, and Palestinians refer to them in their songs.
Singer Raed Kabha, for example cites “From Acre Prison” as being one of the most famous songs written by popular poet Nouh Ibrahim, who was a prisoner in the Acre Prison several years after the hanging of the three heroes [i.e., murderers Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir], which perpetuated the memory of the heroes and became an epic in the popular literature and a famous national song.
‘From Acre Prison went forth the funeral
Of Muhammad Jamjoum and Fuad Hijazi.
Take revenge for them, my people,
Against the [British] High Commissioner and his people.’”
It would appear that in the 90 years that have passed since the massacre very little has changed. Palestinians still consider the murderers of Jews as heroes to be emulated and the Temple Mount is still used as a rallying call for violence against Jews.
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Lt. Col. (res) Maurice Hirsch is the Head of Legal Strategies for Palestinian Media Watch. He served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps. In his last position he served as Director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria. Tweets @mauricehirsch4
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/those-heroes-who-massacred-jews-in-1929/