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Flying Dutchman wrote:Start with Jaffa 1921 and Hebron 1929...

1921 started with:

Arabs massing in Jaffa, all brandishing clubs, knives, hatchets and metal pipes and hysterically chanting "itbach el-Yahud (slaughter the Jews)."

Samuel met with Haj Amin on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, however, riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah, instigated by the Mufti, left 43 Jews dead. Following these riots England established the Haycraft Commission to evaluate the cause of these riots. The appendix of the report reads, “The fundamental cause of the Jaffa riots and the subsequent acts of violence was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents . . . the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties.”

Following these riots, Haj Amin consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim religious funds in Palestine. He used his authority to gain control over the mosques, the schools and the courts. No Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. As the “Palestinian” spokesman, Haj Amin wrote to Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1921, demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Churchill issued the White Paper of 1922, which tried to allay Arab fears about the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper acknowledged the need for Jewish immigaration to enable the Jewish community to grow, but placed the familiar limit of the country's absorptive capacity on immigration. Although not pleased with Churchill’s diplomatic Paper, the Zionists accepted it; the Arabs, however, rejected it.

Despite the disturbances in 1920-1921, the yishuv continued to develop in relative peace and security. Another wave of riots, however, broke out in 1924 after another wave of pogrom’s sent 67,000 Polish Jewish refugees to Palestine. After a week of skirmishes in Jerusalem between the Haganah and Arab mobs, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lay dead. The yishuv’s main concern at that time was its financial difficulties; the economic crisis of 1926-1928 led many to believe that the Zionist enterprise would fail due to lack of funds. Zionist leaders attempted to rectify the situation by expanding the Jewish Agency to incorporate non-Zionists who were willing to contribute to the practical settlement of Palestine.

Much of Tel Aviv University is built on the ruins of the destroyed village of Sheikh Muwannis. Prior to its destruction, about 2,000 people lived in the village, which had more than 200 houses and two elementary schools, one for boys and one for girls. In March, 1948, the Irgun violated an agreement between the village and the Haganah and infiltrated the village, kidnapping five of the village leaders. This act inspired the flight of not only residents of this village but from many Palestinians in the surrounding coastal plain. This sequence of events, too, is well documented: Benny Morris describes it in _The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949_, published in 1987 by Cambridge University Press.

Regarding the riots of 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936 to 1939: each of these events is embedded in a more complicated and complex history than the phrase 'Arab violence against Jews' allows. Each case includes a multitude of factors and forces, including the British colonizers and their different strategies for holding power, different Arab forces vying for control, and Jewish groups competing with each other. It is not, and has never been, enough to tell the story of Arab-Jewish conflict as a simple aggressor-victim relationship. We recommend a few books dealing with these topics: Mark LeVine, Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005) and Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996).


One has to wonder: why are American Jews denying what Israeli Jews willingly acknowledge? The city of Tel Aviv is built in good measure on destroyed Palestinian villages and the conquest of Jaffa.