A Persistence of Savagery

The cry went up: “Al Aksa is in danger … kill all the Jews wherever you see them!”  

And so they came with axes and meat cleavers and hacked the Jews to death.

I speak not of this week, but of August 1929 when 67 Jews were hacked to death in Chevron in response to the same Al Aksa war cry based on the same blood libels of Arabs being killed by Jews.

It seems bizarre that just last week, in Chevron for Shabbat Chayei Sarah, I walked along Rechov Tarpat (1929) talking about that massacre which came so close to repeating itself this week in Jerusalem. 

I was walking with Arieh Kiselstein whose father (pictured here with his injured father and sister) was 4 years old when rescued from under a heap of slain Jewish bodies.  At the time of the Chevron massacre, there was only one British policeman in charge of the whole town.  Fortunately this time our own police responded quickly enough to prevent many more deaths.

The lesson is that however much our people have progressed in 85 years – from hapless refugees to citizens of the most powerful and successful state in the region – our enemies have not changed one iota from the bloodthirsty automatons of jihadi incitement they’ve always been.

Before the 1929 massacre, Jews and Arabs had an almost idyllic coexistence in Chevron.  Jewish doctors treated Arab patients and Arab kids babysat for Jewish families in complete trust and harmony. This is the kind of co-existence the current-day Osloists and peaceniks still dream of as part of their Two-State Solution.  But Chevron 1929 was a wake-up call to our people just as shrill as last Tuesday should be.

This was not about Abbas. He is a man of straw.  This is way above his pay-grade.

This is being orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood with dreams of re-creating the Ottoman Empire as a Sharia caliphate with its capital in Jerusalem.

Having been unceremoniously turfed out of Egypt within an inch of reaching ultimate presidential power, the Brotherhood now seeks new relevance in the region and has chosen Jerusalem as its new powerbase.  Its tentacles are everywhere, including the White House which regularly entertains the leaders of its American chapter, known as CAIR; the Council on American Islamic Relations.  And the Brotherhood now has the patronage of Qatar, the world’s new spigot of terror funding and sponsors of Hamas.

In 1929 the Arabs offered Chevron's Sephardi community leader Rabbi Slonim a deal: hand over the local yeshiva boys and we will let your families live. The rabbi refused and was shot dead. 

In the end 55 of the 67 killed were yeshiva boys.

Just as 1929 was not a massacre of kibbutzniks, Tuesday’s attack was not against a secular target or any ‘symbol of the Zionist occupation’.  And as we all know, Har Nof is hardly an IDF recruitment centre. Think of Mercaz Harav, and the school in Toulouse and you will realize that these were not attacks on Zionism, but on Judaism itself.

The lesson of 1929 was that co-existence is an illusion which will only last as long as the next imam’s cry of Itbah al-Yahud.  We need to separate ourselves from the Arabs and to stop employing them in our stores, restaurants and building sites. There are hordes of peace-loving Filipinos and Eastern Europeans who will be only too pleased to take their places and their jobs in our land of milk and honey without lusting daily for Jewish blood.

Here is a sobering video account of the Chevron massacre.

ה' ינקום דמם