Coexisting with the “Palestinians”

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bwas the Klinger gasoline storage house. As flames and smoke bleaped into the air, the mob entered homes of the Jews they had bknown for years, stabbing, beating, raping, looting. The wind bcarried the flames onward; ironically, this saved many Jewish blives as the mob rushed to save their own homes. But eighteen bJews were dead and more than eighty others injured. Almost all bthe victims were elderly or women, many of whom had pleaded bwith their slaughterers to remember the favors they had done bthem over the years.

bThe same evening, the small Jewish settlement in Ein bZeitim was decimated. Three Jews were murdered, the rest fled bto Safad, and their homes went up in flames. In the northeast bpart of the Galilee, the settlement of Yesud Ha’Ma’ale was de- bstroyed by its “good neighbors” from the Arab village of Tlail.

bIn essence there was not a Jewish community of any conse- bquence that was not attacked. Scores of Jews were slaughtered, band damage was estimated in the millions of English pounds. It bwas a shattering blow to the young Jewish community which bhad caught a glimpse of the reality of the “Palestinian.” But bnowhere was the full extent of “Palestinian” horror manifested bmore clearly than in the ancient city of Hebron.

Hebron

bLong before the name “Palestinian” was invented, the bHebrew people, children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, lived in bHebron. There Abraham purchased the Cave of Machpela, and bthere the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the nation were buried. bHebron was the city given unto Caleb, the son of Jephune, for bhis faith in G-d. There David ruled as king for seven years before bgoing to Jerusalem, and there Jews and Judaism were entwined bfor 3,500 years.

bThere, in 1929, occurred a massacre that took more Jewish blives than Kishinev.

bIt was a hot Friday morning, 17 Av in the year 5689 (Au- bgust 23, 1929). Again, there was no Jewish state, no Jewish “oc- bcupation forces,” no “occupied territories,” to give the Arabs breasons to cry out against Zionism. In Hebron there lived some b500 Jews, mostly Sephardic, many with roots going back hun- bdreds of years. Just a few weeks earlier the city had been visited bby the Rebbe of Lubavitch. Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, b