1929 Palestine HEBRON MASSACRE Book ATROCITIES PHOTOS Arab RIOTS Israel HEBREW

Description: PAYMENTS : Payment method accepted : Paypal & All credit cards. SHIPPMENT : SHIPP worldwide via registered airmail is $ 29 worldwide or $15 domestic . Will be sent inside a protective packaging .Handling around 5-10 days after payment. 1929 Palestine MASSACRE From 1922 through 1928 the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was relatively peaceful. However, in late 1928 a new phase of violence began with minor disputes between Jews and Arabs about the right of Jews to pray at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem. These arguments led to an outbreak of Arab violence in August 1929 when Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, fomented Arab hatred by accusing the Jews of endangering the mosques and other sites holy to Islam. Observers heard Husseini issue the call: Itback al-Yahud "Slaughter the Jews!" On August 22, 1929 the leaders of the Yishuv met with the British Deputy High Commissioner to alert him of their fears of a large Arab riot. The British officials assured them that the government was in control of the situation. The following day the Riots of 1929 erupted throughout the Palestine Mandate, lasting for seven days. On Friday, August 23, Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country. The Old City of Jerusalem was hit particularly hard. By the next day, the Haganah was able to mount a defense and further attacks in Jerusalem were repulsed. But, the violence in Jerusalem generated rumors throughout the country, many carrying fabricated accounts of Jewish attempts to defile Muslim holy places, all to inflame the Arab residents. Villages were plundered and destroyed by Arab mobs. While attacks on Jews in Tel Aviv and Haifa were thwarted by Jewish defenses, there were Jewish deaths in Hebron, where 67 Jewish men and women were slaughtered and Safed, where 18 Jews were killed, as well as scattered other losses totaling 133 Jewish deaths, with more than 300 wounded. The Arab violence in Hebron was one of the worst atrocities in the modern history of Israel. On the afternoon of Friday, August 23, 1929 Jerusalem Arabs came to Hebron with false reports of Jews murdering Arabs during the rioting there, even saying thousands of Arabs had been killed. Despite the fact that Jews and Arabs in Hebron had been on good terms, a mass of frenzied Arab rioters formed and proceeded to the Hebron Yeshiva where a lone student was murdered. The next day, the Jewish Sabbath, the killing continued as an Arab mob of hundreds surrounded homes where Jews sought refuge, broke in and murdered scores of Jews in a bloody rampage. The dead Jews that day included Eliezer Dan Slonim, a man highly esteemed by the Arabs. He was the director of the local English-Palestine bank whose many clients were Arabs, and was the sole Jewish member of the Hebron Municipal Council. He had many friends among the Arab elders, who had promised to protect him. Twenty-two people died in Slonim's house that day including his wife and two young children. By the end of the riot, during which the British police did nothing to protect the Jews or stop the violence, sixty-seven Jews were dead and hundreds wounded. The survivors were isolated in a police station for three days while the Arabs rampaged through their houses, stealing and destroying Jewish property, unmolested by the British authorities. At the end of the three days the Jews were sent to Jerusalem, exiled from their homes for the crime of being a victim of the Arab riot. Hebron's ancient Jewish quarter was empty and destroyed. For the next 39 years no Jew lived in Hebron, not until after it was liberated by the Israeli military during the Six Day War in 1967. The British Colonial Secretary, Lord Passfield, announced the formation of a Commission of Inquiry, which began its investigation of the riots in September 1929. (see Shaw Commission of Inquiry) A British expert was engaged to study the matter (the Hope-Simpson Report), and a new policy whitepaper was issued by Lord Passfield (the 1930 White Paper) ****** The 1929 Palestine riots, also known as the Western Wall Uprising or the Buraq Uprising, refers to a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 when a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence. During the week of riots, at least 116 Arabs and 133 Jews[1] were killed and 339 wounded.Sequence of events In September 1928, Jews at their Yom Kippur prayers at the Western Wall placed chairs and customary screens between the men and women present. Jerusalem commissioner Edward Keith-Roach, while visiting the Muslim religious court overlooking the prayer area, pointed out the screen, precipitating emotional protests and demands from the assembled sheiks that it be removed. Unless it was taken down, they said, they would not be responsible for what happened. This was described as violating the Ottoman status quo that forbade Jews from making any construction in the Western Wall area, though such screens had been put up from time to time. The British issued an ultimatum for its removal. When police officers in riot gear were then sent in, a scuffle took place with worshippers and the screen in question was destroyed. The intervention drew censure later from senior officials who judged that excessive force had been exercised without good reason. Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem exploited the incident by distributing leaflets to Arabs in Palestine and throughout the Arab world which claimed that the Jews were planning to take over the al-Aqsa Mosque. One consequence was that Jewish worshippers frequently were subjected to beatings and stoning.[3] On 15 August 1929, during the Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av, several hundred members of Joseph Klausner's Committee for the Western Wall, among them members of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism movement Betar youth organisation, under the leadership of Jeremiah Halpern, assembled at the Wall shouting "the Wall is ours".[3] They raised the Jewish national flag and sang the Hatikvah, the Israeli anthem. The authorities had been notified of the march in advance and provided a heavy police escort in a bid to prevent any incidents. Rumours spread that the youths had attacked local residents and had cursed the name of Muhammad.[4][5][6] On Friday, August 16 after an inflammatory sermon, a demonstration organized by the Supreme Muslim Council marched to the Wall and proceeded to beat Jewish worshippers and burn Torah scrolls, prayer books[7] and supplicatory notes left in the Wall's cracks, and returned to attack the next day.[3] Responding to subsequent Jewish protests, acting High Commissioner Harry Luke answered that "no prayer books had been burnt but only pages of prayer books." The riots continued, and the next day a young Sephardic Jew named Abraham Mizrachi was stabbed at the Maccabi grounds near Mea Shearim, in the Bukharan Quarter, and died the evening of the following day.[8] His funeral was turned into a political demonstration, and was suppressed by the same force that had been employed in the initial incident. A late-night meeting initiated the following day by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.[3] On August 20, Haganah leaders proposed to provide defence for 600 Jews of the Old Yishuv in Hebron, or to help them evacuate. However, the leaders of the Hebron community declined these offers, insisting that they trusted the A'yan (Arab notables) to protect them. The next Friday, 23 August, thousands of Arab villagers streamed into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray on the Temple Mount, many armed with sticks and knives. Harry Luke requested reinforcements from Amman. Towards 9:30 am Jewish storekeepers began closing shop, and at 11:00 20-30 gunshots were heard on the Temple Mount, apparently to work up the crowd. Luke telephoned the Mufti to come and calm a mob that had gathered under his window near the Damascus Gate, but the commissioner's impression was that the religious leader's presence was having the opposite effect. Inflamed by rumours that two Arabs had been killed by Jews, Arabs started an attack on Jews in Jerusalem's Old City. The violence quickly spread to other parts of Palestine. British authorities had fewer than 100 soldiers, six armoured cars, and five or six aircraft in country; Palestine Police had 1,500 men, but the majority were Arab, with a small number of Jews and 175 British officers. While awaiting reinforcements, many untrained administration officials were required to attach themselves to the police, though the Jews among them were sent back to their offices. Several English theology students visiting from the University of Oxford were deputised.[3] While a number of Jews were being killed at the Jaffa Gate, British policemen did not open fire. They reasoned that if they had shot into the Arab crowd, the crowd would have turned their anger on the police.[3] Yemin Moshe was one of the few Jewish neighbourhoods to return fire, but most of Jerusalem's Jews did not defend themselves. At the outbreak of the violence and again in the following days, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi demanded that weapons be handed to the Jews, but was both times refused.[3] By August 24, 17 Jews were killed in the Jerusalem area. The worst killings occurred in Hebron and Safed while others were killed in Motza, Kfar Uria, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Hebron massacre Main article: 1929 Hebron massacre In Hebron, Arab mobs killed 65-68 Jews[9] and wounded 58. The lone British policeman in the town, Raymond Cafferata, was overwhelmed, and the reinforcements he called for did not arrive for 5 hours (leading to bitter recriminations). Hundreds of Jews were saved by their Arab neighbours, who offered them sanctuary from the mob by hiding them in their own houses[3] while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Ramon on the outskirts of the city. When the massacre ended, the surviving Jews were forced to leave their homes[10] and were evacuated by the British,[3] while their property was seized by the Arab residents and occupied by them until after the Six Day War of 1967.[11] This massacre had a deep and lasting effect on the Jewish community of Palestine. Safed massacre Main article: 1929 Safed massacre In Safed, 18 Jews were killed (some sources say twenty) and 80 wounded. The main Jewish street was looted and burned. Commission of Enquiry Main article: Shaw Report A commission of enquiry led by Sir Walter Shaw took public evidence for several weeks. The main conclusions of the Commission were as follows.[12] [Material not in brackets is verbatim.] The outbreak in Jerusalem on the 23rd of 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 outbreak was not premeditated. [The disturbances] took the form, in the most part, of a vicious attack by Arabs on Jews accompanied by wanton destruction of Jewish property. A general massacre of the Jewish community at Hebron was narrowly averted. In a few instances, Jews attacked Arabs and destroyed Arab property. These attacks, though inexcusable, were in most cases in retaliation for wrongs already committed by Arabs in the neighbourhood in which the Jewish attacks occurred. [In his activities connected to the dispute over the Holy Places] the Mufti was influenced by the twofold desire to confront the Jews and to mobilize Moslem opinion on the issue of the Wailing Wall. He had no intention of utilizing this religious campaign as the means of inciting to disorder. ...in the matter of innovations of practice [at the Wailing Wall] little blame can be attached to the Mufti in which some Jewish religious authorities also would not have to share. ...no connection has been established between the Mufti and the work of those who either are known or are thought to have engaged in agitation or incitement. ... After the disturbances had broken out the Mufti co-operated with the Government in their efforts both to restore peace and to prevent the extension of disorder. [No blame can be properly attached to the British government for failing to provide armed reinforcements, withholding of fire, and similar charges.] The fundamental cause ... is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future. ... The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews. In our opinion the immediate causes of the outbreak were:- The long series of incidents connected with the Wailing Wall... These must be regarded as a whole, but the incident among them which in our view contributed most to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on the 15th of August, 1929. Next in importance we put the activities of the Society for the Protection of the Moslem Holy Places and, in a lesser degree, of the Pro-Wailing Wall Committee. Excited and intemperate articles which appeared in some Arabic papers, in one Hebrew daily paper and in a Jewish weekly paper... Propaganda among the less-educated Arab people of a character calculated to incite them. The enlargement of the Jewish Agency. The inadequacy of the military forces and of the reliable police available. The belief...that the decisions of the Palestine Government could be influenced by political considerations. The Commission recommended that the Government reconsider its policies as to Jewish immigration and land sales to Jews. This led directly to the Hope Simpson Royal Commission in 1930. A minority report asserted far more involvement on the Mufti's part. Hope Simpson Royal Commission, 1930 Main article: Hope Simpson Royal Commission The commission was headed by Sir John Hope Simpson, and on October 21, 1930 it produced its report, dated October 1, 1930. The report recommended to limit the Jewish immigration due to the lack of agricultural land to support it. Aftermath Altogether 195 Arabs and 34 Jews were sentenced by the courts for crimes related to the 1929 riots. Death sentences were handed down to 17 Arabs and 2 Jews, but these were later commuted to long prison terms except in the case of 3 Arabs who were hanged. Large collective fines were imposed on about 25 Arab villages or urban neighborhoods. Some financial compensation was paid to persons who lost family members or property.[13] A few dozen families returned to Hebron in 1931 to reestablish the community, but all but one family were evacuated from Hebron at the outset of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. The last family left in 1947. The Arabs in the region, led by the Palestine Arab Congress,[14] imposed a boycott on Jewish-owned businesses following the riots. ******* The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven Jews on 23 and 24 August 1929 in Hebron, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by false rumors that Jews were massacring Arabs[1] in Jerusalem and seizing control of Muslim holy places. This massacre, together with that of Safed, sent shock waves through Jewish communities in Palestine and across the world. 67 Jews were killed and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked; Nineteen local Arab families saved 435 Jews by hiding them in their houses even under their own life risk.[2] [3] The survivors were evacuated from Hebron by the British authorities. Many returned in 1931, but almost all left again during 1936–1939.[4] It also led to the re-organization and development of the Jewish paramilitary organization, the Haganah, which later became the nucleus of the Israel Defense Forces Background See also: 1929 Palestine riots and 1929 Safed massacre Hebron, located 30 km south of Jerusalem, is the second holiest site in Judaism, and one of the Jewish Four Holy Cities, and mentioned repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible. (Later, Hebron took on a place of significance for Muslims, though Hebron was almost never mentioned in Muslim literature before the tenth century.[5]) It is the location of the Cave of Machpelah, holding the Tomb of the Patriarchs of the Israelites, where Abraham, the first Patriarch of the Jews (father and grandfather to Patriarchs Isaac and Jacob, respectively), was buried, and where David was anointed King of Israel, reigning there until his capture of Jerusalem. In 1929, the Jewish Sephardic/Mizrachi community had been living in Hebron continuously for over 800 years under various imperial powers, and the Jewish Ashkenazi community had roots there that went back at least a century.[6] In Hebron in the early 1920s, periods of Arab harassment, involving cursing on the street, intimidation, various beatings, rocks through windows, and disturbances at the Cave of the Patriarchs, would disturb what was, by some accounts, an otherwise amicable relationship between the Hebron Jewish and Arab communities[7], notwithstanding a strong tradition of hostility to Jews[8]. In one such period the Jewish community registered several complaints with the British police, saying that not enough was being done to protect them. The Jews attributed some of the trouble to the Arab nationalist Muslim-Christian Association's activities, which included the spread of anti-Jewish songs and other incitement to hatred and violence.[6] On 15 August 1929, several hundred members of Joseph Klausner's Committee for the Western Wall, among them members of Vladimir Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionism movement Betar youth organisation, under the leadership of Jeremiah Halpern, assembled at the Western Wall in Jerusalem shouting "the Wall is ours".[6] They raised the Jewish national flag and sang the ballad of yearning for freedom and self-determination, "Hatikvah" ("The Hope"), which is the Israeli national anthem. The authorities had been notified of the march in advance and provided a heavy police escort in a bid to prevent any incidents. Rumours spread that the youths had attacked local residents and had cursed the name of Muhammad.[9][10][11] In response the day after the Supreme Muslim Council marched to the Wall and proceeded to beat Jewish worshippers and burn Torah scrolls, prayer books[12] and supplicatory notes left in the Wall's cracks, and returned to attack the next day.[6] The riots continued, and the next day a young Sephardic Jew was stabbed in the Bukharan Quarter, and died the following day.[13] His funeral was turned into a political demonstration, and was suppressed by the same force that had been employed in the initial incident. A late-night meeting initiated the following day by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.[6] On August 20, 1929, after Arab attacks in Jerusalem, Haganah leaders proposed to intervene and provide defense for the 750 Jews of the Yishuv in Hebron, or to help them evacuate. However, the leaders of the Hebron community declined these offers, insisting that they trusted the A'yan (Arab notables) to protect them. The following Friday, 23 August, inflamed by rumors that Jews were planning to attack al-Aqsa Mosque, Arabs started to attack Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. The rumors and subsequent violence quickly spread to other parts of British Mandate of Palestine, with the murders occurring in Hebron and Safed. Other assaults took place in Motza, Kfar Uriyah, and Tel Aviv. Hebron massacre All officials in the Hebron civil administration were Arabs. Of its 40 policemen, only one was Jewish. Raymond Cafferata, the Assistant District Superintendent of the Palestine Police Force, had at his command 18 mounted policemen and 15 on foot, of whom 11 were elderly men in poor physical condition. On the early afternoon of Friday, August 23, upon hearing from car-drivers of fighting in Jerusalem, Cafferata deployed special pickets to report any unusual movement from the city and issued a request to headquarters for reinforcements. Intending to travel to Jerusalem, a crowd of 700 gathered at the city's central bus station, and one man gave a speech. Cafferata addressed the crowd, trying to calm them by denying anything happened in Jerusalem. He then took eight mounted officers to patrol the Jewish homes, where he encountered the city's Rabbi, Yaakov Yosef Slonim Dwek. The Rabbi asked him for protection, while he came under a hail of stones from an Arab crowd. Cafferata told him and other Jews he came across to return to stay in their homes. After the Rabbi had obliged, Cafferata tried to disperse the crowd using clubs.[6] At 4:00 pm, an Arab crowd began gathering outside the Hebron Yeshiva and throwing stones through the windows. Only two people were inside, a student and the sexton. Upon being hit, the student tried to leave, only to find himself facing the Arab crowd, who grabbed him and stabbed him to death; the sexton survived by hiding in a well. Some hours later a group of mukhtars came to Cafferata. Cafferata attempted to get the mukhtars to assume responsibility for law and order, and asked for reinforcements. Some hours later a group of regional mukhtars came to Cafferata, and they relayed that the Mufti had told them to take action or be fined due to the 'Jewish slaughter of Arabs' in Jerusalem. Raymond Cafferata promised that all was well and bid them return to their villages and stay there. He slept in his office that night.[6] Early the following Saturday morning, a crowd armed with staves and axes appeared in the streets and attacked and killed two Jewish boys, one stoned to death and the other stabbed. Cafferata shot two of the attacking Arabs and emptied his revolver into the crowd, but his saddle slipped and he fell to the ground, whereupon the crowd began attacking every Jewish house. Cafferata instructed his men to fetch rifles and to open fire, which they did, dispersing a portion of the crowd, but some of the remaining rioters, shouting "on to the Ghetto", managed to break through the pickets. Cafferata continued shooting, hitting many of the rioters, but his efforts were in vain; repeated calls for reinforcements from Jerusalem, Jaffa and Gaza did not produce help in time. Both Jewish and Arab businesses in the Bazaar were looted.[14] A consignment of police was sent from Jerusalem but was delayed by other violence on the way to Hebron and arrived hours too late. This later became the source of considerable acrimony.[6] Cafferata testified to the Commission of Enquiry in Jerusalem on 7 November. The Times reported Cafferata's evidence to the Commission that "until the arrival of British police it was impossible to do more than keep the living Jews in the hospital safe and the streets clear [because he] was the only British officer or man in Hebron, a town of 20,000".[15] Many Jews survived by hiding in their Arab neighbors' houses, while others survived by taking refuge in the British police station at Beit Romano on the outskirts of the city. The surviving Jews were later evacuated to Jerusalem. One third of the killed were students of the Hebron yeshiva. After the massacre, the remainder of the yeshiva was also moved to Jerusalem.[6] On September 1, Sir John Chancellor condemned:- 'the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evildoers... murders perpetrated upon defenceless members of the Jewish population... accompanied by acts of unspeakable savagery.' 1929 Aftermath In total, 67 Jews were killed in Hebron; 59 died during the riots and 8 more succumbed to their wounds later. The remaining members, save one woman who refused to go, were placed on trucks and delivered to Jerusalem and all their property was seized by the Arabs.[16] Most of those killed were Ashkenazi men, but there were also a dozen women and three children under the age of three. Seven of the victims were yeshiva students from the United States and Canada. Dozens of people were wounded, including many women and children. Several cases of rape, mutilation and torture were reported in the Jewish press.[6] These claims were contested by Arab spokesmen. When the bodies were exhumed no conclusions could be made one way or another.[17] Altogether 195 Arabs and 34 Jews were sentenced by the courts for crimes related to the 1929 riots. Death sentences were handed down to 17 Arabs and 2 Jews, but these were later commuted to long prison terms except in the case of 3 Arabs who were hanged. Large fines were imposed on about 25 Arab villages or urban neighborhoods. Some financial compensation was paid to persons who lost family members or property. Some Hebron Arabs, amongst whom the President of Hebron's Chamber of Commerce, Ahmad Rashid al-Hirbawi, favoured the return of Jews to the town.[18] 160 Jews did return in the spring of 1931 with Rabbi Chaim Bagaio, but were evacuated, except for one family, again during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.[19] The last family left in 1947. As of 2008, hundreds of Jews live in Hebron again. Specific accounts of the massacre The House of Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek was born in Hebron in 1900. He was the son of Rabbi Yaakov Ben Yosef Dwek, the Rabbi of Hebron. Eliezer was a member of the city council, appointed by the government. He was also a director at the Anglo-Palestine Bank. Eliezer had excellent relations with the British and the Arabs, who had assured him that no riots would occur. Baruch Katinka, a member of the Haganah tells about his encounter with Eliezer Dan before the massacre: "Two days before the massacre, they told us about a need to go to Hebron with 10-12 people with weapons in order to defend the place. I believe we were 10 men and 2 women... We came to Hebron after midnight, and went into the house of Eliezer Dan Slonim Dwek, the head of the bank in the area and the head of the community. We woke him up and told him that we brought weapons and people. He started yelling and said that if he wanted any weapons he would request them but there's no need for them because he has an understanding with the Arabs, they need the credit, they're under his influence, and that they will not harm him. On the contrary he said, new faces in Hebron might just provoke them. During the argument, two Arab policemen went in and ordered us to go to the Police. The officer Cafferata met us in pyjamas and asked us who we were and what were we doing. We said we came for a walk. The officer preached us how dare we walk around during this time and said we must go back to Jerusalem escorted by the police. Two men stayed with suitcases in Dwek's house. They had the bombs with them, but the day after they came back to Jerusalem too, because Dwek forced them to leave. The next day, the massacre occurred".[20] After the first victim was killed on Friday, 40 people assembled in Dan's house, confident that because of his influence, no harm would come. On Saturday, the rioters approached the Rabbi and offered him a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community.[21] Rabbi Slonim Dwek refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot, along with one of his wives and 4-year-old son (another son, 3 years old, survived). In the end, twelve Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered. Raymond Cafferata After the massacre began, the Arab constables deserted, leading the rioters to where Jews were hiding[citation needed]. Cafferata testified: 'On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child's head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut, but on seeing me he tried to aim the stroke at me, but missed; he was practically on the muzzle of my rifle. I shot him low in the groin. Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as a[n Arab] police constable named Issa Sheriff from Jaffa in mufti. He was standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand. He saw me and bolted into a room close by and tried to shut me out-shouting in Arabic, "Your Honor, I am a policeman." ... I got into the room and shot him.'[22] Nineteen local Arab families saved dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the Jews. Zmira Mani wrote of an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews whom they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano[23] Molchadsky story In August 1929, Yonah Molchadsky was nearing the end of her pregnancy when, on August 23, the disturbing news reached them that there had been attempts to harm Jews in Jerusalem. The following day, Yonah started to feel labor pains and a doctor was called. "Don't give birth yet, wait a bit," he told her. But the pains got worse and the birth approached, so the family went to the neighboring family, an Arab family, who put them up in their basement. As Yonah gave birth to her second daughter in the basement of the Arab family's house, the masses outside began looking for Jews. Yonah related, after many years of silence, that the mob came to the home of the Arab family, looking for the Molchadskys. "We have already killed our Jews," the Molchadskys' hosts and saviors told the mob, who believed them and departed.[2] Survivors controversy Descendants of the survivors are divided, with some claiming they wish to return, but only once the occupation is over. Other survivors and descendants of survivors support the new Jewish community in Hebron.[24] Noit Gevas, daughter of a survivor, discovered that her mother had written an account of the massacre, published in Haareetz in 1929. In 1999 Gevas released a film containing testimonies of 13 survivors that she and her husband Dan had managed to track down from the list in "Sefer Hebron" ("The Book of Hebron"). Originally intended to document the story of the Arab who had saved Gevas's mother from other Arabs, it became an account of the atrocities of the massacre itself. These survivors (most of whom no longer live in Israel) are mixed as to whether they can forgive. In the film, "What I Saw in Hebron"[25] the survivors – now very elderly – describe pre-massacre Hebron as a kind of paradise surrounded by vineyards, where Sephardic Jews and Arabs lived in idyllic coexistence. The well-established Ashkenazi residents were also treated well – but the Arabs' anger was roused by followers of the Jerusalem Mufti as well as local chapters of the (Arab) Muslim-Christian Societies. The survivors interviewed in the film say that the Arabs from the villages essentially wanted to kill only the new Ashkenazim, because they saw Ashkenazim as more vulnerable and less chance of retribution to follow. When the riots started, representatives of the Arabs came to the chief Hebron Rabbi, Rabbi Slonim Dwek, with a proposal – if he allowed them to kill 70 students from the yeshiva in Hebron, they would not kill the other Ashkenazim or the Sephardim. Rabbi Slonim Dwek told them, "We Jews are all one people." He was the first person to be killed in the riots, as he held his eldest son, 4 years old in his hands, who was also ripped to pieces.[26] Noit Gevas's aunt thought that it all happened because in Hebron, there was an alienated Jewish community that wore streimels, unlike the Sephardi community, which was deeply rooted, speaking Arabic and dressing like Arab residents. Noit Gevas's mother had never wanted to tell the family anything. But in the contemporary article, she had told how Abu 'Id saved them and that the Arabs in Hebron were friends of the family, it had been Arabs from the villages and not the ones from Hebron who had done it. And she said that it all happened because of the Ashkenazim. Abu 'Id, saviour of Gevas's mother, shows off documents about the location of the house in which the Jews were hidden – the house where he lived with his father. The IDF confiscated the house, and today it houses a kindergarten for the settlers. ****** The Palestine Riots and Massacres of 1929 In the summer of 1929 the Arabs of Palestine initiated rioting and massacres against the Jewish population in several towns. The targets were not Zionists who had dispossessed Arabs of their lands, but for the most part Jewish communities of the "old Yishuv," communities that had lived in Palestine for many hundreds of years. The pogroms were of the same general character as pogroms that had taken place sporadically in Palestine for hundreds of years, usually referred to euphemistically by Jews of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron as "Meoraot" - "events." The worst massacres took place in Safed, Hebron, Jerusalem and Motza. Like the pogroms of past ages, these "disturbances" featured angry crowds stirred up over a religious or other dispute, Imams preaching "Kill the Jews wherever you find them" and mobs screaming "Aleihum" (get them) and "Itbach Al Yahood" - murder the Jews. In a few days, over a hundred Jews were murdered and several hundreds were wounded. The racist riots of 1929, like those of 1920 and 1921, were distinguished from those that took place under the Ottoman Turks by two features. Supposedly, Palestine was now under a British Mandate, and being built as a Jewish national home, a place of refuge and safety for Jews. The occurrence of the riots did tremendous damage to the Zionist cause, far beyond the actual loss of lives and property, because they it seem that Palestine was unsafe for the Jews after all, just like everywhere else. The second feature was that the riots were part of the anti-Zionist agitation stirred up by the Husseini family, even though they were not directed against Zionist settlers, but against the old communities. Throughout the 1920s, tension had been brewing between Palestinian Jews and Arabs for some time, with little or no action by the mandate government to alleviate it. The Arabs of Palestine had come to be dominated by two clans, the Husseinis and the Nashashibis. The Husseinis controlled the Palestine Arab Executive and Supreme Muslim Council. Haj Amin El Husseini was Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Nashashibis became the mu'aridan, the opposition. The Husseinis hoped to further their position by exploiting hatred against the Jews. The issue that generated tension was not land purchases or Jewish immigration. Though there had been large land purchases in the Valley of Jezreel, there was not much Jewish immigration during this period. The issue of contention was an imagined Jewish threat to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, centering around Jewish attempts to improve the facilities of the nearby wailing wall, a remnant of the Jewish temple, where they gathered for prayer. The wailing wall is part of the West Wall, Al Buraq, where according to Muslim belief, Muhammed tethered his horse when he was miraculously transported to Jerusalem. Thus, it is holy to Muslims too. There is no doubt that the mosque built on the site of the temple was never a source of joy for Jews, but Jewish tradition holds that the temple can only be rebuilt when the messiah comes. The Zionists certainly had no designs on the mosque itself. The wailing wall however, because of its proximity to the mosque of Al Aqsa, was long a source of friction. Islamic law holds that no non-Muslims may pray in proximity to a mosque while prayers are held in the mosque, because that would disturb the prayers of the faithful. The Jews of Jerusalem had gotten many warnings during the hundreds of years of Muslim rule, about prayer at the wailing wall or in synagogues in the Jewish quarter that supposedly disturbed the prayers of the Muslims. This "Holy Place" was a natural place of contention. In 1922, a Palestinian delegation to the Hajj (pilgrimage) in Mecca had declared: The Islamic Palestinian Nation that has been guarding al-Aksa Mosque and Holy Rock since 1,300 years declares to the Muslim world that the Holy Places are in great danger on account of the horrible Zionist aggressions... The Zionist Committee, which is endeavoring to establish Jewish rule in Palestine and to rob al-Aksa from the Muslims on the plea that it was built on the ruins of Solomon's Temple, aims at making Palestine a base of Jewish influence over the [Arabian] peninsula and the whole East. In 1928, the Muslims tried to get the British to confirm their rights over the Western Wall, including the space used by Jews for worship. Husseini had helped to organize refurbishing of the long neglected mosques in Jerusalem now he initiated new construction activities in October of 1928. Bricks from the "construction" fell "accidentally" on Jewish worshippers in the wailing wall area below. The Arabs drove mules through the prayer area. Muezins (the announcers of the mosques) who called the faithful to prayer turned up the volume in their PA systems so as to disturb the Jewish prayer. The Zionist community, especially the right, took up the challenge. Right-wing Zionists of the revisionist movement demanded Jewish control of the wall. Some even demanded rebuilding the temple, alarming the Muslims even more and providing a factual basis for the agitation. On August 14, 1929, about 6,000 Jews paraded in Tel Aviv and that evening, about 3,000 gathered at the wall in Jerusalem for prayer, a huge crowd for the then very cramped space. The next day the right-wing Betar revisionist youth paraded by the hundreds, carrying billy-club batons. Rumors circulated that the Jews were about to march on the Haram as Sharif - the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. The Arabs circulated inflammatory leaflets, apparently printed earlier. One read, "Hearts are in tumult because of these barbaric deeds, and the people began to break out in shouts of 'war, Jihad... rebellion.'... O Arab nation, the eyes of your brothers in Palestine are upon you... and they awaken your religious feelings and national zealotry to rise up against the enemy who violated the honor of Islam and raped the women and murdered widows and babies." The Jews had killed no-one, and had attacked no-one. On Friday August 16, after an inflammatory sermon, a mass of Arab demonstrators proceeded from the mosques to the Western Wall, where they burned prayer books. The British High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, was on leave in England. The acting British High Commissioner, Harry Luke, ignored the problem and claimed that "only pages" of prayer books had been burned. The British were woefully unprepared to deal with disturbances. In all of Palestine there were 292 British police. In Hebron, there was a single British police officer commanding a tine force of Arabs, many of them old, and one Jew. On August 17, a riot in the Bukharian Jewish quarter of Jerusalem left one Jew dead. The funeral, held August 20, turned into a mass demonstration with cries for vengeance. Beginning on August 22, Arab villagers, armed with sticks, knives and guns, gathered in the Haram as Sharif. Following Friday prayers and the usual inflammatory sermon on August 23, they poured out into the streets of Jerusalem and proceeded to murder and loot. By the time the riots were over in Jerusalem on August 24, 17 Jews were dead. The rioters opened fire simultaneously in several neighborhoods, evidence indicating that the massacres were probably orchestrated by the Supreme Muslim Council.Near Jerusalem, the small town of Motza was attacked by Arabs who killed every member of the Makleff family but one. A very young boy, Mordechai Makleff, hid under a bed. He grew up to be Chief of Staff of the IDF for a brief time during the War of Independence. Several settlements next to Motza had to be abandoned. In other settlements, the inhabitants were protected by friendly Arab neighbors. Kibbutz Hulda was evacuated by the British. Arab marauders burned the kibbutz. The British killed 40 Arabs there. The worst fury of the Arabs, however, was directed at the tiny ancient Jewish community of Hebron, where 64-67 Jews were massacred in a few hours of rioting on August 24, 1924. The British flew in additional reinforcements from Egypt and elsewhere. The riots spread to Tel-Aviv and Haifa and Safed. In Safed, 18 Jews were killed and 80 injured. In all 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed in the riots, 339 Jews and 232 Arabs were injured. Most of the Arabs were killed by the British police and some by the Haganah in self defense. There were also instances of Jewish atrocities. Jews broke into a mosque and destroyed a Quran. In Tel Aviv, Arabs killed four Haganah men, so the Haganah retaliated by raiding an Arab house and killing four people. The riots of 1929 changed the attitudes of Jews to the Arabs. Arthur Ruppin, who had helped found the Brit Shalom peace group, which advocated a binational state, withdrew from the group. He could no longer believe in Jewish-Arab coexistence. The writer Shai Agnon wrote, "I do not hate them [the Arabs] and I do not love them; I do not wish to see their faces. In my humble opinion we shall now build a large ghetto of half a million Jews in Palestine, because if we do not, we will, heaven forbid, be lost." The massacres of 1929 had thus launched two themes that were to recur in the history of Israel and Palestine: agitation related to the al-Aqsa mosques and the Jewish desire for separation from the Arabs of Palestine, for self-protection. The British were horrified by the massacre. However many of the British personnel had no great love for Zionism or Jews, and the British government was unwilling to subsidize Palestine, which would be required to support a large police force, and no desire to incur the enmity of the Arab world. They refused adamantly to allow any independent legal Jewish self defense force. The immediate consequences of the riots were that the British caved in to every demand of the Arabs. Though only a small number of Jews had immigrated to Palestine under the mandate, the British accepted at face value the claim of the Mufti that these immigrants, rather than the world economic depression, were at fault for the real or imagined woes of the Arabs of Palestine. In the year 1930, when unemployment reached 25% in some countries, Palestinian Arabs had an unemployment rate of 4%. This "misery" was the "fault" of the Zionist immigration. These were the findings of the Shaw commission which investigated the "causes" of the riots, and of the Hope-Simpson report, which was commissioned to justify the policy changes. Simultaneously with the Hope-Simpson report the British Government issued the Passfield White Paper, which made it clear that Britain intended to sharply curtail Jewish immigration. The Passfield White Paper of 1930 caused an uproar in Parliament however. Moreover, the League of Nations indicated that Britain would be violating the terms of its mandate to foster a national home for the Jewish people if it curtailed immigration. Consequently, Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald soon backed down and wrote a letter to Chaim Weizmann, read publicly in Parliament, which "explained" that "His Majesty’s Government never proposed to pursue such a policy." The British also issued a set of discriminatory regulations that restricted Jewish rights in the wailing wall, returning the situation to the same state as existed under the Ottoman Empire, when Muslim - Jewish relations were governed by the inferior dhimmi status of Jews in Islam. ********* For some time, the 800 Jews in Hebron lived in peace with their tens of thousands of Arab neighbors. But on the night of August 23, 1929, the tension simmering within this cauldron of nationalities bubbled over and, for 3 days, Hebron turned into a city of terror and murder. By the time the massacres ended, 67 Jews lay dead and the survivors were relocated to Jerusalem, leaving Hebron barren of Jews for the first time in hundreds of years. The summer of 1929 was one of unrest in Israel. Jewish-Arab tensions were spurred on by the agitation of the Mufti in Jerusalem. Just one day prior to the start of the Hebron massacre, three Jews and three Arabs were killed in Jerusalem when fighting broke out after a Muslim prayer service on the Temple Mount. Arabs spread false rumors throughout their communities, saying that Jews were carrying out "wholesale killings of Arabs." Meanwhile, Jewish immigrants were arriving in Israel in increasing numbers, further exacerbating the Jewish-Arab conflict. Hebron had, until this time, been outwardly peaceful, although tension hid below the surface. The Sephardi Jewish community in Hebron had lived quietly with its Arab neighbors for centuries. The Sephardi Jews (Jews who were originally from Spain, North Africa, and Arab countries) spoke Arabic and had a cultural connection to their Arab neighbors. In the mid-1800s, Ashkenazi (native European) Jews started moving to Hebron and, in 1925, the Slobodka Yeshiva, officially the Yeshiva of Hevron, Knesset Yisrael-Slobodka, was opened. Yeshiva students lived separately from the Sephardi community, and from the Arab population. Due to this isolation, the Arabs viewed them with suspicion and hatred, and identified them as Zionist immigrants. Despite the general suspicion, however, one yeshiva student, Dov Cohen, still recalled being on "very good" terms with the Arab neighbors. He remembered yeshiva boys taking long walks late at night on the outskirts of the city, and not feeling afraid, even though only one British policeman guarded the entire city. On Friday, August 23, 1929, that tranquility was lost. Arab youths started throwing rocks at the yeshiva students. That afternoon, one student, Shmuel Rosenholtz, went to the yeshiva alone. Arab rioters later broke in and killed him, and that was only the beginning. Friday night, Rabbi Ya'acov Slonim's son invited any fearful Jews to stay in his house. The rabbi was highly regarded in the community, and he had a gun. Many Jews took him up on this offer, and many Jews were eventually murdered there. As early as 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Arabs began to gather en masse. They came in mobs, armed with clubs, knives, and axes. While the women and children threw stones, the men ransacked Jewish houses and destroyed Jewish property. With only a single police officer in Hebron, the Arabs entered Jewish courtyards with no opposition. Rabbi Slonim, who had tried to shelter the Jewish population, was approached by the rioters and offered a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community. Rabbi Slonim refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot. In the end, 12 Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered. A few Arabs did try to help the Jews. Nineteen Arab families saved dozens, maybe even hundreds of Jews. Zmira Mani wrote about an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews who they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano. The police station turned into a shelter for the Jews that morning of August 24. It also became a synagogue as the orthodox Jews gathered there and said their morning prayers. As they finished praying, they began to hear noises outside the building. Thousands of Arabs descended from Har (Mount) Hebron, shouting "kill the Jews!" in Arabic. They even tried to break down the doors of the station. The Jews were besieged in Beit Romano for three days. Each night, ten men were allowed to leave to attend a funeral in Hebron's ancient Jewish cemetery for the murdered Jews of the day. When the massacre finally ended, the surviving Jews were forced to leave their home city and resettled in Jerusalem. Some Jewish families tried to move back to Hebron, but were removed by the British authorities in 1936 at the start of the Arab revolt. In 1948, the War of Independence granted Israel statehood, but further cut the Jews off from Hebron, a city that was captured by king Abdullah's Arab legion and ultimately annexed to Jordan. When Jews finally gained control of the city in 1967, a small number of massacre survivors again tried to reclaim their old houses. Then defense minister Moshe Dayan supposedly told the survivors that if they returned, they would be arrested, and that they should be patient while the government worked out a solution to get their houses back. Years later, settlers moved to parts of Hebron without the permission of the government, but for those massacre survivors still seeking their original homes, that solution never came. ***** Rehavam "Gandhi" Ze'evi (help·info) (Hebrew: רחבעם "גנדי" זאבי‎, born 20 June 1926, died 17 October 2001) was an Israeli general, politician and historian who founded the extreme right-wing nationalist Moledet party. He was assassinated by Hamdi Quran of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), becoming the only Israeli politician to be assassinated during the Second intifada. The re-capture of his assassins led to Operation Bringing Home the Goods. Ze'evi has been described as "virulently racist" and the strongest supporter of the ethnic cleansing of 3 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Early life and military career Rehavam Ze'evi was born in 1926 in Jerusalem. He joined the Palmach in 1942, and served in the Israeli Defence Forces after the creation of Israel. On May 15, 1948 he was a platoon leader in the lost battle of Malkiyah. His task was to block, with 30 men, the local Arabs who came to help the Lebanese army attack. One of the soldiers from that battle described the view when the sun rose and all the mountain in front of them was black with Arabs. Ze'evi succeeded in his task, but the battle was lost. Instead of destroying the first battalion of the Palmach, that retreated with many wounded, the Lebanese army went after Ze'evi's unit. Ze'evi left a wounded light machine gunner to cover a retreat, took all the weapons and the other wounded people, but left the bodies of the dead behind. From 1964 to 1968 he carried out the duties of the Chief of the Department of Staff in the Israeli General staff. The next 5 years he served as the Commander of the Central Military District (Hebrew: אלוף פיקוד המרכז). He retired in September 1973, only to rejoin the army at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War (October 6, 1973). A close friend of IDF Chief of Staff David Elazar, he was appointed "Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff" and was rarely away from Elazar's side during the Yom Kippur War. Ze'evi was a highly efficient staff officer, in contrast to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, and encroached somewhat into the latter's duties during the war. Ze'evi then served for several more months as the Chief of the Department of Staff. He finally retired, with the rank of major-general (אלוף) in 1974. Political career Zeevi started expressing his position regarding peace agreements with Arab states shortly after the six days war when he was still in active service. Zeevi argued that Israel should dictate settlement rather than striving for peace. He saw peace as danger because of the cultural proximity of the Mizrahi Jews to the Arabs and the thought about Israelis traveling to Arabs lands scared him In 1974 he became Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's consultant on combatting terrorism. The following year he was appointed as the prime minister's adviser on matters of intelligence. Ze'evi resigned from this position in 1977, when Likud's Menachem Begin became prime minister. In 1981, Ze'evi was appointed the director of the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel-Aviv. In 1987, he co-edited a series of books describing various aspects of the Land of Israel, based on artifacts from the museum. Ze'evi is famous for having one the largest collection of books about Israel and its history. In 1988, Ze'evi established Moledet (Homeland). His movement's platform consisted mainly in the population transfer of Arabs from Judea and Samaria ( the West Bank ) and the Gaza Strip to the neighboring Arab countries first proposed for all irredentist Arabs under Israeli control by Rabbi Meir Kahane. Ze'evi was greatly disappointed by the Madrid Conference of 1991, and consequently withdrew from the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir. He stayed in opposition for the following ten years. He disagreed strongly with the Labour governments of 1992-1996 (led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres) and 1999-2001 (Ehud Barak), however, he looked favourably on the Netanyahu government of 1996-1999 and supported it from the outside. In 1999, his Moledet movement united with Herut – The National Movement and Tkuma into a single faction — the National Union. Following the election of Ariel Sharon to Prime Minister in February 2001, Ze'evi joined the governing coalition and was made the tourism minister on March 7, 2001. On October 14 Ze'evi declared that his party would quit the government following the withdrawal of the Israeli Defence Forces from the Abu-Sneina neighborhood in Hebron. His resignation was to become active on October 17, 2001, at 11 a.m. Assassination Ze'evi was shot in the Jerusalem Hyatt hotel on Mount Scopus on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 by four gunmen. He was rushed to the Hadassah Medical Center hospital where he died before 10 a.m. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine took credit for the killing and stated that it was in revenge for the assassination of their secretary-general Abu Ali Mustafa, killed by Israel in August that year Israel alleges that Ahmed Saadat ordered Ze'evi's assassination. Thousands took part in his funeral. Four of Ze'evi's killers, Hamdi Quran, Basel al-Asmar, Majdi Rahima Rimawi, and Ahad Olma, fled to the Palestinian National Authority. Israel placed Yasser Arafat under siege in the Ramallah compound to force the handing over of the suspects. In April 2002 the US brokered a plan where the suspects were to be jailed in Jericho instead. Israel accepted the plan, in part in order to avoid angering the United States over an (unrelated) Israeli Cabinet decision to bar a U.N. fact-finding mission from investigating allegations surrounding Israeli army actions in a West Bank refugee camp. The four killers were arrested together with the head of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa'adat. They were imprisoned in a jail in Jericho and guarded by American and British forces. On March 14, 2006, the American and British guards left the jail, charging that the PNA was not sticking to the agreement reached with Israel. Shortly after, Israel launched Operation Bringing Home the Goods. Israeli troops stormed a Jericho prison and seized the five. In December 2007, Hamdi Quran confessed in an Israeli court to assassinating Ze'evi together with Basel al-Asmar after being instructed by PFLP member Majdi Rahima Rimawi. He was sentenced to 125 years in prison. In August 2007 Basel al-Asmar was convicted of murder by an Israeli court. In May 2008, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison. In July 2008, Majdi Rahima Rimawi, was convicted of murder by an Israeli court for his part of in planning the assassination. According to the verdict, Rehima was the one who supplied the gunmen with a photo of Ze'evi and the details of the hotel in which he would be staying, as well as with details about the layout of the hotel. He was sentenced to life in prison and an additional 80 years. In December 2008, Ahad Olma, who was the head of the PLFP's military wing at the time of the assassination, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in instigating and planning the assassination. In December 25, 2008, an Israeli military court sentenced Ahmad Sa'adat, the leader of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), to 30 years in prison for heading an "illegal terrorist organization" and for his responsibility for all actions carried out by his organization. Controversy Ze'evi publicly advocated the population transfer by agreement of 3.3 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to Arab nationsAccording to Ze'evi, this could be accomplished by making the lives of Palestinians so miserable they would relocate, by use of military force during wartime, or through an agreement with Arab nations Ze'evi first called for the expulsion speaking to the Moshe Dayan Political and Social Forum in Tel Aviv in July 1987, stating then it would be a voluntary transfer and that it was the only way to make peace with the ArabsAfter the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Ze'evi advocated the expulsion of Palestinians to the east side of the Jordan River, where they could serve as a human shield should the Iraqi Army seek to attack Israel In a radio interview in July, 2001, Ze'evi claimed that 180,000 Palestinians worked and lived illegally in Israel, then referred to them as "a cancer" and said that "We should get rid of the ones who are not Israeli citizens the same way you get rid of lice Ze'evi believed that Israel's more than 1 million citizens of Arab ethnicities should not be allowed to vote because they do not serve in the army. He also wanted Israel to lay claim to the country Jordan because it historically belonged to the Tribes of Israel - Gad, Reuven, and Menashe, and believed visitors to Israel must speak Hebrew During the Palestinian revolt, Zeevi stood out for his repeated calls on Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "lay waste to the Palestinian Authority", and to assassinate PLO leader Yasser Arafat. Binyamin Elon, who has been leading the Moledet party ever since Ze'evi's murder, has argued that Ze'evi did not hate Arabs. Diplomatic tension Ze'evi was also the cause of diplomatic rows. Serving as Minister without Portfolio, he called US President George H. W. Bush an "anti-Semite" during a Cabinet meeting in September 1991 In 1997 he called US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, who is Jewish, a "Jewboy", and challenged him to a fistfight. Organized crime allegation Ze'evi's most significant political rival was Ehud Olmert, elected Prime Minister of Israel in 2006, though their mutual distaste had no connection with their views on state policy. In 1975, the young Olmert called a press conference declaring that he had a list of organized crime figures in the capital that he would recommend for investigation. One was businessman Betzalel Mizrahi, who had been under Ze'evi's command during his military service. Allegations soon included a literal accusation of Ze'evi's protection of Mizrahi and other criminals. Ze'evi unsuccessfully sued Olmert for libel. Gandhi Nickname During his youth, Ze'evi went to school in Givat HaShlosha. One night he shaved his head, wrapped a towel round his waist and entered the food hall. The similarity to Mohandas Gandhi earned him Gandhi as his nickname, which stuck with him for the rest of his life. The nickname is also attributed to a long Arab dress he wore during his underground days in Palmach.Legacy As a soldier, Ze'evi's name was connected to the era in the 1960s-70's known as HaMerdafim (The Incursions/Pursuances). As Commander of the Central Military District, Ze'evi was tasked with defending the new Jordan Valley settlements from PLO guerrilla activities and pacifying the newly occupied Arab-Palestinian population. In the late 1960s Ze'evi formed the elite Sayeret Kharuv, an anti-terror company sized battalion, at the time when IDF Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev had begun to focus IDF manpower and budget on armoured tank units, resulting in huge cutbacks in infantry forces. Moledet never realized the vision Ze'evi had for the party. Instead of drawing masses away from the centre-right Likud, Ze'evi's party was seen as just another military personality party, just as Shlomtzion (Ariel Sharon), Telem (Moshe Dayan), and Yachad (Ezer Weizman) before it, and Tzomet (Rafael Eitan) and others after it. The factionalization of Israel's extreme right as a result of small ideological differences was not helped by Ze'evi's defection from Tehiya. Ze'evi was also known for his concern for Israel's captured or missing soldiers which is the reason he always wore a military identity disc with their names on his neck.In July 2005 the Knesset passed a law to commemorate Ze'evi's memory and educate future generations with his legacy . The highway Route 90 is named Gandhi's Road in honour of his service to the region, an honour resented by Palestinian and Bedouin residents of the Valley. A statue of him is erected in Eilat's promenade, named after Ze'evi. The communal settlement of Merhav Am was also named after him, as was the West Bank settlement Ma'ale Rehav'am. Ze'evi has 5 children and has given them all special Jewish-History related names. He named his first son 'Palmach', his second son Sayar 'Binyamin', and his 3 daughters Mesada, Ze'ela and Arava Palmach is also a member of Moledet and competed with Binyamin Elon for the party's leadership. ebay517

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