While contemporary commentators often claim the Israeli-Arab conflict derives from Israeli military mistreatment of Arabs, the roots of Arab violence date back to the British Mandate era, when anti-Jewish massacres preceded the existence of a sovereign Jewish state by nearly two decades.
By Hezy Laing
The October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught against Israel is frequently contextualized by apologists as an inevitable explosion of popular rage resulting from decades of Israeli military blockades and political containment.
This prevalent narrative asserts that Palestinian violence is a direct reaction to modern Israeli policy and territorial administration.
However, a historical evaluation of anti-Jewish political violence in the region reveals that devastating massacres occurred long before the creation of the State of Israel or the onset of any contemporary territorial blockades.
The Hebron massacre of August 1929 serves as a stark historical refutation of the claim that Arab violence against Jews is merely a reaction to Israeli state policy.
During that period, under the administration of the British Mandate, the ancient Jewish community of Hebron lived in relative coexistence alongside their Arab neighbors without any Jewish state apparatus or military presence.
Yet, fueled by fabricated rumors from religious leadership claiming that Jews were attempting to seize the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, local Arab mobs turned violently against their Jewish neighbors.
Over the course of two days, rioters slaughtered sixty-seven Jewish men, women, and children, while destroying synagogues and forcing the survivors to flee a city they had inhabited for centuries.
The structural parallels between 1929 and 2023 reveal that the underlying drivers of these massacres transcend modern political grievances regarding borders or policy.
Just as Hamas utilized religious rhetoric and digital media to mobilize its assault on October 7, the instigators in 1929 relied on foundational anti-Jewish conspiracies to incite immediate violence.
The slaughter in Hebron demonstrates that Arab ideological hostility toward Jewish presence in the land predates the existence of the IDF, the liberation of Judea and Samaria, and the isolation of the Gaza Strip.
Ultimately, comparing these two historical tragedies shows that framing modern Palestinian violence solely as a reaction to 20th or 21st-century Israeli governance is factually incomplete.
Recognizing that massacres occurred decades before the founding of Israel is essential to understanding the deep-rooted, ideological nature of the conflict.
