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Victims of the 1929 Riots
 
Mathilde A. Tagger  - project coordinator
Introduction
From 1922 through 1928 the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Palestine was relatively peaceful. However, in late 1928 a new violent phase 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 Hadj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, fomented Arab hatred by accusing the Jews of endangering the mosques and other sites holy to Islam. On August 14, 1929, 6,000 Jews marched in Tel Aviv chanting "The Wall is ours". The next day, hundreds of Jews demonstrated at the Wall. On Friday, August 16, 1929, after an inflammatory sermon, a demonstration organized by the Supreme Muslim Council, marched to the Wall and proceeded to burn prayer books and supplicatory notes left in the Wall's cracks. On Friday, August 23, the violence quickly spread to other parts of the Palestine when Arab mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Motza, Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and other parts of the country, Arab policemen often joined the mobs. While attacks on Jews in Tel Aviv and Haifa were somewhat limited by local Jewish defenses, there were Jewish deaths in Hebron, where 67 Jewish men and women were cruelly slaughtered and Safed, where 18 Jews were killed, as well as scattered other losses totaling 133 Jewish deaths, with more than 300 wounded.

The annotated index of books gives some biographical information on the victims as well as a description of the conditions in which they were murdered.
References:
Berezin, A.Tz. [May the people of Israel Remember the Saint Victim of 1929]. Jerusalem, 1930. (Hebrew)
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1999. New York, Vintage Books 2001.
Offical Notice of Those Murdered in the 1929 Riots
A list of all those killed in the riots of 1929 - published on August 30, 1929.
The notice at the bottom states that the British banned the publishing of newspapers, and therefore the information was published in special editions. On the 30th of August, the number murdered reached 113, and by the end of the riots it reached 133.
   
Picture Postcards of the Desecration that Took Place

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Last updated 05/12/2007