New book draws line from 1929 Hebron Massacre to horrific events of October 7
In ‘Ghosts of a Holy War,’ Yardena Schwartz investigates the lies and denials that have fueled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for a century, pushing a solution further away
A young American-born man named David Shainberg was murdered in a massacre carried out by Arabs fueled by radical Islam and the erroneous claim that the Jews planned to conquer Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Shainberg, a yeshiva student, was not killed in last year’s October 7 Hamas-led terror onslaught. Rather, he was beaten to death by Arab neighbors wielding swords, knives, and clubs in Hebron nearly a century ago. Shainberg was not the only victim. All told, 67 Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered, dozens injured, and hundreds traumatized in the Hebron Massacre of August 24, 1929.
The Jewish survivors were evacuated to Jerusalem. After Jews had resided in Hebron for millennia and lived there peacefully side by side with Muslims for centuries, the city became Judenrein until Jewish settlers returned in 1968.
A new book by Yardena Schwartz titled “Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict” shows how echoes of the Hebron Massacre continue to reverberate far beyond the West Bank city that is now home to the most radical of Israelis and Palestinians.
“This book was [originally] going to tell the story of how Hebron went from being the [Biblical] cradle of the Jewish people to one of the deepest wounds of this conflict, and how this beacon of coexistence became the antithesis of coexistence,” Schwartz told The Times of Israel in a recent interview from her home in New York.
The author referred to Hebron being home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, believed to be the burial place of six of Judaism’s seven patriarchs and matriarchs. The structure built by Herod the Great is also holy to the Muslims and is known as the Ibrahimi Mosque.
The book’s impetus was a cache of long, detailed letters written by Shainberg from Hebron to his family members in Memphis, which a relative found decades later. The letters were shared with a senior English-language Israeli journalist, who suggested to Schwartz that she take them on as a book project.
Schwartz was well into her meticulous historical research and interviews for the book when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists brutally butchered 1,200 men, women and children, and kidnapped 251 to the Gaza Strip, on October 7, 2023.
“October 7 completely transformed this book… After October 7, I still tried to write the book as I had envisioned, but I couldn’t get the words onto the paper. It didn’t make sense anymore. I felt that the parallels between Hebron 1929 and October 7 were just so overwhelming, haunting, and chilling that that was what I had to write about,” she said.
Schwartz, a journalist, put aside the book for a few months to focus on reporting on the hostages. She spoke with many hostage families about their efforts to bring their family members home. Through those conversations and by reporting on the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and others during the massacre, she felt like she was “walking into the pages of history.”
“I realized that the book I needed to write was about what the echoes of Hebron 1929 on October 7 tell us. It would be about the failure to heed the lessons of history, what those failures have brought, and how a century of history has been ignored in the process of trying to resolve this conflict. We’re only going to be destined to another century of massacres if we continue to ignore those lessons,” Schwartz said.
A key lesson is that the religious dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be ignored. Nor can the Jews’ being indigenous to the Land of Israel be denied. Schwartz argues that continued Palestinian armed struggle fueled by Islamism and a rejection of a shared future in the land perpetuates the cycle of violence.
“The role of radical Islam and this insistence on violent armed struggle as the only way forward has been counterproductive. This failure has not just fueled a century of needless death and destruction but also put the goal of a Palestinian state further and further into the distance,” Schwartz said.
“It became clear as I researched the history of not just Hebron, but the conflict itself, that massive attacks on Jews or in Israel have accelerated the very forces and causes the attacks sought to destroy. For instance, in 1929, the massacre ended up strengthening Zionism and rallying native Jews of Palestine, who hadn’t been united around Zionism. It convinced them that only a Jewish state with its own army could protect them because the British had absolutely failed. Similarly, October 7 has destroyed Gaza and has placed hopes for a Palestinian state further into the distance,” she said.
A large part of “Ghosts of a Holy War” is a review of Israeli and Palestinian history from the British Mandate through the 1967 Six Day War, as well as an explanation of the holy significance of Hebron for both Jews and Muslims.
The book’s other sections are more interesting for those already familiar with this material. These include the birth and growth of the radical Israeli settler movement in Hebron, the descriptions of the separation of Israelis and Palestinians in today’s Hebron, the militarized nature of the city’s Israeli-controlled zones, and their impact on everyday Palestinians.
Schwartz, an American who lived in Israel from 2013 to 2023, first visited Hebron as a Columbia University journalism student in 2011.
“It was the first time I saw the consequences of the occupation of the West Bank up close… I saw how Palestinians walk the streets [of areas of Hebron held by Israel] with their heads down because there are soldiers at every corner… I imagined how they would feel… It struck me that I, as a graduate student from New York, had more freedom to walk on these streets than they did,” Schwartz said.
“This place that is so holy had become just this giant military base and I didn’t feel any of the spirituality and sanctity of the place, which was tragic,” she said.
The author’s hundreds of hours of reporting in Hebron between 2019 and 2023 reveal both sides of the narrative. On the one hand, there are her conversations with ultranationalist settlers such as Baruch Marzel and others who revere Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who in 1994 carried out a massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, killing 29 Muslim worshipers and wounding 125.
Conversely, she speaks at length with Palestinians in Hebron who deny the Jews’ connection to Judaism’s second holiest city. They tell her that Jews never lived there as good neighbors with Muslims for centuries and that the 1929 massacre never occurred.
“I remember how utterly shocked I was to hear these denials of Jewish history and the massacre. And yet, today, in our new reality, these denials are everywhere. They’re not just coming from extremist Palestinians in Hebron, but also from Columbia [University] students — Western, white, privileged children — denying history and insisting that Jews are [foreign colonialists],” Schwartz said.
“Ghosts of a Holy War” ends with October 7 and its aftermath and ongoing repercussions. It also circles back to the memory of David Shainberg. He, like 24 other victims that day, was a Hebron Yeshiva student.
Uninterested in assimilationist American Jewish life or Zionism, Shainberg was unusual for his time. He sought a simple, spiritual life of Torah study and teaching in the Holy Land. He planned to bring his fiancee over from New York, marry her, and raise a family.
Shainberg lived nearly a year in Hebron before his murder. He wrote home about Muslim authorities preventing Jews from praying at the Western Wall and spreading lies about the Jews wanting to destroy Al-Aqsa to build a Third Temple.
Like the October 7 victims a mere day before their deaths, he had no idea this weaponized hate would imminently wipe him out.
Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Yardena Schwartz
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