Fondly remembering Hebron

Last weekend, Arabs demonstrated against the 1948 “disaster” inflicted on them by the creation of the state of Israel. Arab press watchdog the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has released a video that was broadcast on Hamas-Gaza TV, which places the Arab claims in perspective.

In the video, a 92-year-old Arab woman, originally from Hebron, glowingly recalls on Hamas-Gaza TV how in 1929 – almost 20 years before the 1948 “Nakba” – without provocation the Arabs of Hebron, including her father, massacred the peaceful Jewish neighbours they had lived beside for years. In the film, she makes it clear that she wants a repeat of the Hebron massacre.

On 24 August 1929, sixty seven Jews were massacred in an orgy of sadistic violence. Jewish children were murdered in front of their parents, limbs were severed, women were brutally raped and Jews were burned alive.

The British High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, issued a statement following the massacre, in which he stated:

“I have learned with horror of the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and bloodthirsty evil-doers, of savage murders perpetrated upon defenceless members of the Jewish population regardless of age or sex, accompanied as at Hebron, by acts of unspeakable savagery, of the burning of farms and houses in town and country and of the looting and destruction of property.

“These crimes have brought upon their authors the execration of all civilized peoples throughout the world.”

Lest it be considered that only elderly Arab ladies still desire Jewish blood, in an interview on Hamas Al Aqsa TV, Yunis al Astal, a member of the Palestinian Authority parliament, spelled out his organisation's vision for the genocidal annihilation of the Jewish people.

Al Astal described the ingathering of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel in terms of a divine plan that would give the Arabs “the honour” of annihilating “the evil of this gang.”

In a few years, he predicted, the Zionists will understand that they were brought here for the purpose of being slaughtered in “a great massacre.”

In terms reminiscent of Adolph Hitler’s anti-Jewish rants in the 1930s, al Astal said the Jews were more dangerous than all of the world's lethal birds of prey, dangerous reptiles and lethal bacteria put together.

Meanwhile, an official of the “moderate” Hamas party, said that the political programmes of both Fatah and Hamas were identical. This statement should cause concern in that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and Yunis al Astal wants to exterminate the Jews.