The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict - Yardena Schwartz

On August 24, 1929, 3000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes and daggers, marched through the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron (the second holiest city in Judaism), and massacred every Jew they could find. In just a few hours, 67 unarmed Jewish men, women and children were dead. Families were burnt alive. Infants were slaughtered in their mother’s arms. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors. Women and teenage girls were raped. Men were castrated. 

This horrific pogrom was incited by a disinformation campaign spearheaded by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Years later, he fled Palestine as a wanted man by the British and moved to Berlin where he lived from 1941 – 1945, met with Hitler and other SS officials, and became Head of the Arab Bureau of the Nazi’s Ministry of Propaganda. For that, and his other activities, after the war, he was placed on the UN’s List of Nazi War Criminals. He fled to Cairo then Beirut where he lived an open life. Haj Amin al-Husseini was never brought to trial. His cousin was Yasser Arafat whom he took on as his protégé.

In her important book, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict, award-winning journalist and author, Yardena Schwartz points out that we can’t understand the Arab-Israeli conflict today without understanding what happened during that massacre in Hebron, two decades before the establishment of the State of Israel. 

Yardena is our latest guest on The One Way Ticket Show where we focus on the book, highlighting a number of inconvenient truths many academics and journalists avoid.  Yardena weaves the thread that runs from 1929 through to the present time, including Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. She points out how the West has difficulty understanding how religion in the Middle East continues to fuel violence. 

As for Yardena’s one way ticket destination of choice? She selected British Mandate Palestine where she would work as a journalist, bringing stories of the region to the world.

This episode fills in many historical gaps and offers insights which may surprise you. I hope you tune in and share. I also hope you add the book to your reading list.

Yardena is an award-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated producer who was based in Israel for a decade until 2023. Her reporting from four continents has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, The Economist, TIME, National Geographic, and Foreign Policy. Yardena previously worked at NBC News and MSNBC.

Yardena graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School in 2011, received an Emmy nomination for her work at MSNBC in 2013, and the RNA award for excellence in magazine reporting in 2016.

She now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and children.

For more on Yardena, visit: https://www.yardenaschwartz.com/