Jews Dragged From Their Homes To Perish By Sword and Knife In Wild Attack By Moslem Horde.

By Associated Press. CAIRO, Aug. 29.—Graphic accounts of the massacre at Hebron Saturday in which three score Jews, including fifteen American students, were killed in the sudden and overpowering attack of maddened Arab mobs, was given today by travelers arriving here from Palestine. Their narratives described horrifying scenes when the horde of natives, mostly from outlying villages, descended upon the town, broke into large Jewish houses, slaughtered all the inhabitants and mutilated the bodies.

Not even children escaped the fury of the assault. Before the authorities succeeded in restoring quiet, the attacking bands of Arabs had grown to about 5,000 and had run its deadly pillaging way throughout the large part of the Jewish section. It was not until Sunday morning that repressive measures were sufficiently successful to admit a survey of the situation and to begin the gruesome task of collecting the dead. In one house alone nineteen bodies were found. In some cases bodies were hanging from windows; in others they had been mercilessly thrown into the streets. In practically every instance death was caused by swords or knives. Even the young children of two and three years, many of them girls, did not escape the savagery of the attack. While the death roll in Hebron is estimated at nearly 60, only 10 Moslems were killed by the Jewish defense. The American Jewish casualties in the town were in the Rabbinical College, where the youths were pursuing their religious studies. Twenty-nine American students survived the attack. Valuable work in removing wounded Jews from Hebron to Jerusalem was done by the Zionist executive committee in Jerusalem which dispatched motor buses escorted by armored cars for this purpose. The Arab attitude toward the Jews in Hebron is by no means unanimously hostile, travelers report. There were cases at Hebron and elsewhere, they say, where Arab neighbors saved Jews from the fury of the mobs.

ROAD WORKERS STOICS

Seven Jews thus were protected in a village between Hebron and Jerusalem and subsequently they were evacuated to Jerusalem. In another case two fellow-workers saved a Jewish driver of a steam roller. There was a singular spectacle witnessed of Arab road workers diligently continuing at their tasks while trouble was going on all around them. There was no direct hostility to British officials performing their duties, travelers declared.

WIRES UNTOUCHED

A curious feature of the Hebron massacre was that during the whole trouble not a single telephone or telegraph wire was touched and the Arab operators stuck to their posts. Trouble broke out in Jaffa Sunday morning when the crowds of villagers attacked the suburb of Tel Aviv, but police drove them off. A serious situation developed when mobs gathered in the main square of Jaffa and attempted to burn the Governor’s offices. A detachment of the South Wales borderers were obliged to charge the crowds, which were soon dispersed at the point of the bayonet. Early Wednesday the aircraft carrier Courageous arrived and landed 700 men of the South Staffordshire regiment and a dozen airplanes, which are making reconnaissance flights from Ramleh airfield.

HAIFA OUTBREAK

The first serious outbreak at Haifa occurred Monday when several Jews were killed. Details of troops from the Battleship Barham quickly gained control of the situation. Another outbreak occurred at Haifa Wednesday morning when some Jewish houses were burned. Troops are now posted in such districts as Nablus, Beizan and Tiberias, and the whole situation is reported as becoming more and more under control. Throughout Tuesday night a certain amount of military action was necessary to deal with looters on both sides of the railway between Ramleh and Gaza. It was reported that Bedouin sheiks in the Beersheba district had informed the authorities they were unable to control their followers, who were determined to participate in the looting. Airplanes reported Wednesday morning they had sighted two columns proceeding from Beersheba toward Gaza, and two armored trains were dispatched with men from the Cruiser Sussex to protect the railway in the vicinity of Gaza. Trouble has been confined to fighting between Jews and Arabs with accompanying looting of Jewish property.

Original Source

August 29, 1929 | © The Baltimore News

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