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Trigger warning: This post contains references to sexual violence.

To quote the song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — the title song of their album “Deja Vu” — “We have all been here before.” Or, even, Yogi Berra: “It’s deja vu all over again.”

Ever since the horrors of October 7, 2023, Jews have been wondering: What did that moment remind us of?

Yardena Schwartz has an answer; check out our podcast interview with her.

October 7 reminds Jews of what happened in Hebron on August 24, 1929. In her book “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Yardena writes:

On that morning, 3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes, and daggers marched through the Jewish Quarter of Hebron. They went from house to house, raping, stabbing, torturing, and in some cases castrating and burning alive their unarmed Jewish victims…Infants were slaughtered in their mothers’ arms. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors. Women and teenage girls were raped. Elderly rabbis and yeshiva students were mutilated. Sixty-seven Jewish men, women, and children were murdered, and dozens more wounded…The British High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine, Sir John Chancellor, wrote in his diary, “I do not think history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years.”

Those attacks were not limited to Hebron, the most ancient place of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, where Abraham purchased the cave of Machpela as a burial place. Those attacks were also in Jerusalem and spread to other cities, as well.

Why should these stories matter?

Because, to coin a phrase: What happened in Hebron has not stayed in Hebron.

First, the religious nature of the conflict. Many people assume that the Arab-Israel dispute is about land, boundaries, nationality. If only that were true.

It is, at its core, about theology. When Arabs attacked Hebron in 1929, they screamed: “Allah hu-akhbar!”

What was the presenting issue in the Hebron massacre? The rumor that the Jews were planning on taking over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Har Ha-Bayit, Haram al-Sharif — above the Western Wall. It is a sacred site for Muslims and is the holiest site in the world for Jews. Ever since the Six Day War of 1967, when Israel took the Old City of Jerusalem and east Jerusalem, that site remains under the control of the Jordanian government, which limits Jews’ access.  

Nevertheless, Arabs have used the rumor that “the Jews” have designs on the Temple Mount as an excuse for violence. That was precisely what happened on October 7. As Yardena writes:

The forces that drove Arabs in Hebron to slaughter their Jewish neighbors in 1929 were identical to the forces behind October 7. Just as the riots of 1929 were fueled by passions surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, so too was Hamas’s “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” On one level, this is a conflict like many others, involving borders and other rational issues. But as the line connecting the 1929 massacre with the Hamas massacre of 2023 makes clear, the religious dimension of this conflict cannot be ignored.

And the cries on October 7? Not: “Free Palestine.” Not even: “F- Israel.”

Rather: “Allah hu-akhbar!”

And Hamas, who screamed those words while murdering and raping and mutilating and taking hostages — that is who radical leftists are supporting?!?

It is still a holy war. I just never thought that the “cool kids” would enlist in it.

Second, the sexual aspects of the massacre. Trigger warning. We know about the gruesome sexual violence — rapes and mutilations — that occurred on October 7.

It happened in Hebron, 1929, as well. 

What did the attackers say? “This Saturday every one of us will have a Jewish woman. … They will have their Sabbath, but we will have the pleasure.”

Check out the Netflix series “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem.” It is the story of a Jewish family in Jerusalem in the 1920s and 1930s. One episode shows the Arab attacks in Jerusalem, which include the rape of the mother — which results in the birth of a little girl. 

And yes, there were acts of sexual violence and mutilation against men as well.

Third, bad leadership. Who was it who alleged, in 1929, that the Jews were going to take control of the Temple Mount — planning on rebuilding their ancient Temple on its grounds?

One of the greatest villains of modern history: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, the father of Palestinian nationalism. Al-Husseini riled up the Arabs of Hebron, and beyond. He would later flee Palestine for Berlin and become Hitler’s chief Arab propagandist. In the Balkans, he trained an elite cadre of Muslim SS troops to attack the Jews of the land of Israel.

I first “encountered” the grand mufti in the famous film “Exodus,” about the creation of the state of Israel. His presence is invisible, but his evil was all too present. In one scene, his henchmen attack an Arab village and hang its leader who had a warm relationship with the Jews. Even as a child, that scene scarred me.

Politically and morally, every Palestinian leader has his DNA: from Yasir Arafat (his cousin), to Hamas. It has been self-destructive.

That bad leadership has major ramifications for today:

The rejection of a proposal for a two-state solution by every Palestinian leader in history began with the Grand Mufti, who dismissed the first two-state solution in 1937. He did so again in 1947, when the UN voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Palestine could have gained independence for the first time in its history…The mufti’s political descendants have rejected every two-state solution they have been offered since. Their dedication to armed struggle has made life for Palestinians ever more hopeless, the prospects for peace ever more distant. It has also allowed Israel to expand the settlement enterprise, which began in Hebron.

Yes, the Jewish settlement in Hebron is its own moral challenge. Baruch Goldstein’s lethal attack on the mosque in Hebron in 1994 is its own despicable chapter in Jewish history.

I asked Yardena: What gives her, and us, hope?

First, she said: The recent demonstrations in Gaza against Hamas show that there are many Palestinians who are willing to reject the malignant, destructive legacy of the grand mufti and his political descendants.

But there is a second note of hope.

Here is what it was like in Hebron, 1929. Prior to the massacre, the Arabs and Jews of Hebron had lived together in relative amity. That was the horror: Many of the victims knew their assailants by name.

But also: In Hebron, 1929, two dozen Arab families risked their lives to save Jews, and as a result 250 Jews and their descendants owe their lives to these courageous people.

Likewise, there were Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who helped Jews on October 7.

Not as many as we needed.

But it is never as much as we need.