1929 Arab Massacres: Hebron and the Wave of Violence Incited by the Grand Mufti
In August 1929, Arab mobs incited by Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini killed 133 Jews across Mandatory Palestine in a week of violence, including 67 in the Hebron Massacre. The Jewish community of Hebron — where Jews had lived continuously for centuries — was effectively ended. The British Shaw Commission (1930) found that the outbreak was "from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews," while also identifying Arab fears over Jewish immigration and land purchase as underlying causes; historians still debate how much responsibility it assigned to the Mufti.
The week of August 23–31, 1929, was the deadliest episode of Arab-on-Jewish violence in the pre-state period. Across Mandatory Palestine, 133 Jews were killed and hundreds wounded in mob attacks; 110 Arabs were also killed, most of them by British security forces (Wikipedia). The epicenter was Hebron, where the Jewish community — one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world — was destroyed in a single day.
The Hebron Massacre, August 24, 1929
Hebron had a Jewish community that predated the Arab conquest of the 7th century. In 1929 it had approximately 700 Jewish residents — most of them non-Zionist, Orthodox Jews with deep roots in the city.
On August 24, a mob of several hundred Arab men attacked the Jewish quarter of Hebron:
- 67 Jews were killed (some sources say 69). Victims included men, women, and children; many were mutilated.
- Survivors were hidden by Arab neighbors in an act of individual courage that British investigators later documented.
- The police force — one British officer (Raymond Cafferata) and about 40 local policemen — was overwhelmed and, in some accounts, slow to respond.
- Jewish homes, synagogues, and a yeshiva (Slabodka) were looted and destroyed.
About 435 Jews survived; most were reportedly sheltered by Arab neighbors (a claim historian Benny Morris disputes), and the survivors were then evacuated by British authorities. The remaining survivors fled. A small Jewish community returned briefly in 1931 but was evacuated again in 1936. The 2,000-year continuous Jewish presence in Hebron effectively ended in August 1929.
The Incitement
The violence was precipitated by a dispute at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in August 1929. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini — an Arab nationalist appointed by the British — spread false reports that Jews planned to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sermons, pamphlets, and newspapers amplified the claim.
The British Shaw Commission (1930) — appointed to investigate the violence — found:
"The outbreak in Jerusalem on the 23rd August was from the beginning an attack by Arabs on Jews for which no excuse in the form of earlier murders by Jews has been established."
The Commission specifically cited Arab leadership's incitement, though it spread blame across multiple parties in its broader analysis.
Broader Context
The 1929 massacres followed an earlier wave of violence in 1920–1921 and preceded the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt — all of which targeted the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine. This pre-state pattern is relevant to understanding the conflict's origins: the violence predated the State of Israel. The Shaw Commission linked it to the Western Wall dispute and Arab fears over Jewish immigration and land purchase; critics of that framing argue the violence targeted Jews as such, including long-established non-Zionist communities such as Hebron's.
Haj Amin al-Husseini went on to meet with Adolf Hitler in 1941 and to help recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS.
