The Jaffa riots (commonly known in Hebrew: מאורעות תרפ"א, romanized:Me'oraot Tarpa)[1] were a series of violent riots in Mandatory Palestine on May 1–7, 1921, which began as a confrontation between two Jewish groups but developed into an attack by Arabs on Jews and then reprisal attacks by Jews on Arabs.[2] The rioting began in Jaffa and spread to other parts of the country. The riot resulted in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs, with 146 Jews and 73 Arabs wounded.[3]
Events
Memorial for victims of the 1921 Jaffa riots, Petah Tikva
On the night of 30 April 1921, the Jewish Communist Party (precursor of the Palestine Communist Party) distributed Arabic, Hebrew, and Yiddishfliers calling for the toppling of British rule and the establishment of a "Soviet Palestine."[3] The party announced its intention to parade from Jaffa to neighbouring Tel Aviv to commemorate May Day. On the morning of the parade, despite a warning to the 60 members present from one of Jaffa's most senior police officers, Toufiq Bey al-Said, who visited the party's headquarters, the march headed from Jaffa to Tel Aviv through the mixed Jewish–Arab border neighbourhood of Manshiyya.[4]
Another large May Day parade had also been organized for Tel Aviv by the rival socialist Ahdut HaAvoda group, with official authorization. When the two processions met, a fistfight erupted.[4]Police attempted to disperse the about 50 communist protestors. A general disturbance quickly ensued and spread to the southern part of town.[5]
Dozens of British, Arab, and Jewish witnesses all reported that Arab men bearing clubs, knives, swords, and some pistols broke into Jewish buildings and murdered their inhabitants, while women followed to loot. They attacked Jewish pedestrians and destroyed Jewish homes and stores. They beat and killed Jews in their homes, including children, and in some cases split open the victims' skulls.[4]
At 1:30 pm, an immigrant hostel run by the Zionist Commission and home to a hundred people who had arrived in recent weeks and days was attacked by the mob, and though the residents tried to barricade the gate, it was rammed open and Arabs attackers poured in. The stone-throwing was followed by bombs and gunfire, and the Jewish hostel residents hid in various rooms. When the police arrived, it was reported that they weren't shooting to disperse the crowd, but were actually aiming at the building. In the courtyard one immigrant was felled by a policeman's bullet at short-range, and others were stabbed and beaten with sticks. Five women fled a policeman firing his pistol; three escaped. A policeman cornered two women and tried to rape them, but they escaped him despite his shooting at them. A fourteen-year-old girl and some men managed to escape the building, but each was in turn chased down and beaten to death with iron rods or wooden boards.[4]
Yosef Haim Brenner
The violence reached as far as Abu Kabir. The Jewish Yitzker family owned a dairy farm on the outskirts of the neighbourhood, in which they rented out rooms. At the time of the riots, Yosef Haim Brenner, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew literature was living at the site. On May 2, 1921, despite warnings Yitzker and Brenner refused to leave the farm and were murdered, along with Yitzker's teenaged son, his son-in-law and two other renters.[6][2]
As in the previous year's Nebi Musa riots, the mob tore open their victims' quilts and pillows, sending up clouds of feathers. Some Arabs defended Jews and offered them refuge in their homes; many witnesses identified their attackers and murderers as their neighbours. Several witnesses said that Arab policemen had participated.[4]
On May 2, Jews in the Haganah began launching reprisal attacks on Arabs – the first of their kind. Armed with automatic weapons, at least one group of Haganah militants broke into Arab homes with instructions to "destroy everything, sparing only small children." Their commander who gave the order reported "good results" in response to his instructions. The chief force behind the creation of the Haganah, Eliyahu Golomb, reported that at least one of the group's militants had killed a disabled Arab and his children in an orange grove. Several Jews were arrested, including one policeman, for their suspected involvement in the shooting of Arab civilians, but were not charged due to lack of evidence. Haganah archives indicate, however, there was a "grain of truth" to the charges. Of the 48 Arab dead, mostly killed by the British police force, it was unclear how many were killed in revenge attacks by Jews.[2]
High Commissioner Herbert Samuel declared a state of emergency, imposed press censorship, and called for reinforcements from Egypt. General Allenby sent two destroyers to Jaffa and one to Haifa. Samuel met with and tried to calm Arab representatives. Musa Kazim al-Husseini, who had been dismissed as Jerusalem's mayor on account of his involvement in the previous year's Nebi Musa riots, demanded a suspension of Jewish immigration. Samuel assented, and two or three small boats holding 300 Jews were refused permission to land, and were forced to return to Istanbul. At the same time, al-Husseini's nephew, Amin al-Husseini, was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a decision that later faced much criticism.
An American architect of Russian Jewish origin, Peres Etkes, who worked for the Mandatory authorities, secretly transferred a stock of rifles from the British-run Jaffa armoury to supply Jewish forces in the riots.[7] Fighting went on for several days and spread to nearby Rehovot, Kfar Saba, Petah Tikva, and Hadera.[4] British aircraft dropped bombs "to protect Jewish settlements from Arab raiders."[8]
Immediate aftermath
The riot resulted in the deaths of 47 Jews and 48 Arabs. 146 Jews and 73 Arabs were wounded. Most Arab casualties resulted from clashes with British forces attempting to restore order.[3] Thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach. Tel Aviv, which had been previously lobbying for independent status, became a separate city due in part to the riots. However Tel Aviv was still dependent on Jaffa, which supplied it with food, services, and was the place of employment for most residents of the new city.[4]Jewish casualties would have been higher had it not been for a British officer, Major Lionel Mansell Jeune, whose actions in intervening are credited with saving some 100 Jewish immigrants.[9]
The victims were buried at the Trumpeldor Cemetery, established in Jaffa in 1902. The newspaper HaTzfira reported that meetings across the country had been postponed, all parties and celebration had been cancelled and schools closed for four days. The newspapers on May 3 appeared with black borders.[10]
The newspaper Kuntress, whose author and co-editor Yosef Haim Brenner was one of the victims of the riots, published an article entitled Entrenchment. The article expressed the view that the Jews' outstretched hand had been spurned but that they would only redouble their efforts to survive as a self-reliant community.[4]
Some villages whose residents had participated in the violence were fined and a few rioters were brought to trial. When three Jews, including a policeman, were convicted of participating in the murder of Arabs, international outcry ensued. Although the Supreme Court ultimately acquitted them on grounds of self-defence, the incident served to continue the crisis of confidence between the Jewish community and the British administration. Three Arab men were tried for the murder of Brenner, but were acquitted due to reasonable doubt. Toufiq Bey al-Said, who resigned from the Jaffa police, was shot in the street; his assassin was dispatched by veterans of Hashomer in retribution for Brenner's murder, though another Jewish man was wrongly accused and acquitted.[4]
The Arab leaders submitted a petition to the League of Nations in which they expressed their demands for independence and democracy, noting that the Arab community contained sufficient educated and talented members to establish a stable representative democracy.[4]
Investigative commission
High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel established an investigative commission headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Palestine, Sir Thomas Haycraft (see Haycraft Commission of Inquiry). Its report confirmed the participation of Arab policemen in the riots and found the actions taken by the authorities adequate. The report angered both Jews and Arabs: it placed the blame on the Arabs, but said that, "Zionists were not doing enough to mitigate the Arabs' apprehensions."[4] The report concluded that, "the fundamental cause of the violence 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." .[11]
The report included an Appendix summarising the findings as follows.[12]
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 immediate cause of the Jaffa riots on the 1st May was an unauthorised demonstration of Bolshevik Jews, followed by its clash with an authorised demonstration of the Jewish Labour Party.
The racial strife was begun by Arabs, and rapidly developed into a conflict of great violence between Arabs and Jews, in which the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties.
The outbreak was not premeditated or expected, nor was either side prepared for it; but the state of popular feeling made a conflict likely to occur on any provocation by any Jews.
The general body of Jews is opposed to Bolshevism, and was not responsible for the Bolshevik demonstration.·
When the disturbance had once begun an already acute anti-Jewish feeling extended it into an anti-Jewish riot. A large part of the Muslim and Christian communities condoned it, although they did not encourage violence. While certain of the educated Arabs appear to have incited the mob, the notables on both sides, whatever their feelings may have been, aided the authorities to allay the trouble.
The police were, with few exceptions, half-trained and inefficient, in many cases indifferent, and in some cases leaders of or participators in violence.
The conduct of the military was admirable throughout.
The raids on five Jewish agricultural colonies arose from the excitement produced in the minds of the Arabs by reports of Arabs having been killed by Jews in Jaffa. In two cases unfounded stories of provocation were believed and acted upon without any effort being made to verify them.
In these raids there were few Jewish and many Arab casualties, chiefly on account of the intervention of the military.
This résumé is necessarily too condensed to be regarded as the expression of the conclusions of the Commission, except when read in conjunction with the report.
Consequences
In a speech in June 1921 on the occasion of the Royal birthday, Samuel stressing Britain's commitment to the second part of the Balfour Declaration, declared that Jewish immigration would be allowed only to the extent that it did not burden the economy. Those who heard the speech had the impression that he was trying to appease the Arabs at the Jews' expense, and some Jewish leaders boycotted him for a time.[4]
The Palestine government imposed fines on Arab villages and tribes believed to have been collectively involved in the riot. They were Tulkarm, Kakon, Kalkilieh, Kafr Saba, the Wadi Hawareth Bedouin and the Abu Kishik tribe.[13]
New bloody riots broke out in Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem on November 2, 1921, when five Jewish residents and three of their Arab attackers were killed, which led to calls for the resignation of the city's commissioner, Sir Ronald Storrs.[4]
The Irgun, officially the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.
Zionist political violence refers to acts of political violence or terrorism committed by Zionists in support of establishing and maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine. These actions have been carried out by individuals, paramilitary groups, and the Israeli government, from the early 20th century to the present day, as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Yishuv, HaYishuv HaIvri, or HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el was the community of Jews residing in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 25,000 Jews living in that region, and continued to be used until 1948, by which time there were some 630,000 Jews there. The term is still in use to denote the pre-1948 Jewish residents in Palestine, corresponding to the southern part of Ottoman Syria until 1918, OETA South in 1917–1920, and Mandatory Palestine in 1920–1948.
The 1920 Nebi Musa riots or 1920 Jerusalem riots took place in British-controlled part of Occupied Enemy Territory Administration between Sunday, 4 April, and Wednesday, 7 April 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Five Jews were killed and several hundred injured; four Arabs were killed, and eighteen injured; seven Britons were injured. The riots coincided with and are named after the Nebi Musa festival, which was held every year on Easter Sunday, and followed rising tensions in Arab–Jewish relations. The events came shortly after the Battle of Tel Hai and the increasing pressure on Arab nationalists in Syria in the course of the Franco-Syrian War.
The Tiberias massacre took place on 2 October 1938, during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Tiberias, then located in the British Mandate of Palestine and today located in the State of Israel.
The Night of the Trains was a sabotage operation of the British railways in Palestine on November 1, 1945. The operation was one of the first carried out by the Jewish Resistance Movement, before its official establishment, and symbolized its founding.
Zionist Commission for Palestine was a commission chaired by Chaim Weizmann, president of the British Zionist Federation following British promulgation of the pro-Zionist, Balfour Declaration. The Commission was formed in March 1918 and went to Palestine to study conditions and submit recommendations to the British authorities.
The Haycraft Commission of Inquiry was a Royal Commission set up to investigate the Jaffa riots of 1921, but its remit was widened and its report entitled "Palestine: Disturbances in May 1921". The report blamed the Arabs for the violence, but identified a series of grievances concerning the way their interests were apparently being subsumed to the interests of the Jewish immigrants, who were then around 10% of the population and increasing rapidly. Some measures to ease Arab unhappiness were taken, but Jewish communities were helped to arm themselves and ultimately the report was ignored. Publishing it was considered a propitiatory measure.
The Jewish insurgency in Mandatory Palestine, known in the United Kingdom as the Palestine Emergency, was a paramilitary campaign carried out by Zionist militias and underground groups—including Haganah, Lehi, and Irgun—against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between the Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939. The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat.
The Hebron massacre was the killing of sixty-seven or sixty-nine Jews on 24 August 1929 in Hebron, Mandatory Palestine. The event also left scores seriously wounded or maimed. Jewish homes were pillaged and synagogues were ransacked.
Operation Hametz was an operation to conquer towns around Jaffa conducted by Zionist forces as part of Plan Dalet shortly before the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine, in the civil war phase of the 1948 Palestine war. It was launched at the end of April 1948 with the objective of capturing villages inland from Jaffa and establishing a blockade around the town. The operation, which led to the first direct battle between the British and the Irgun, was seen as a great victory for the latter, and enabled the Irgun to take credit for the complete conquest of Jaffa that happened on May 13.
Abu Kabir was a satellite village of Jaffa founded by Egypt following Ibrahim Pasha's 1832 defeat of Turkish forces in Ottoman era Palestine. During the 1948 Palestine war, it was mostly abandoned and later destroyed. After Israel's establishment in 1948, the area became part of south Tel Aviv. Officially part of Giv'at Herzl, the adjacent Jewish neighborhood, the name Abu Kabir continued to be used. Part or all of Abu Kabir was officially renamed Tabitha by the Tel Aviv municipality in 2011.
Events in the year 1921 in the British Mandate of Palestine.
Jaffa, also called Japho, Joppa or Joppe in English, is an ancient Levantine port city which is part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, located in its southern part. The city sits atop a naturally elevated outcrop on the Mediterranean coastline.
The 1933 Palestine riots were a series of violent riots in Mandatory Palestine, as part of the intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine. The riots erupted on 13 October 1933 when the police broke up a banned demonstration organized by the Arab Executive Committee. The riots came as the culmination of Arab resentment at Jewish migration after it surged to new heights following the rise of Nazi Germany, and at the British Mandate authorities for allegedly facilitating Jewish land purchases. The second mass demonstration, at Jaffa in October, turned into a bloodbath when police fired on the thousands-strong crowd, killing 19 and injuring some 70. The "Jaffa massacre", as Palestinians called it, quickly triggered further unrest, including a week-long general strike and urban insurrections that resulted in police killing 7 more Arabs and wounding another 130 with gunfire.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
This is a timeline of intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine.
The Jaffa riots of April 1936, refers to a spate of violent attacks on Jews that began on 19 April 1936 in Jaffa. A total of 14 Jews and 2 Arabs were killed during the riots. The event is often described as marking the start of the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
The 1929 Palestine riots, Buraq Uprising or the Events of 1929, was a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 in which a longstanding dispute between Palestinian Arabs and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence, which also involved the British authorities.
On the evening of December 8th, 1947, about four-hundred well-trained Palestinians led by Hasan Salama attacked Hatikva a dense, working-class Temani neighborhood, and were repelled by 100 Jewish fighters, including elements of the recently-formed Haganah Givati Brigade.
References
↑ The word Tarpa being the transliteration of the Hebrew תרפ"א and which is no more than the Hebrew date 5681 Anno Mundi, corresponding to the year 1921 in the Gregorian calendar.
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