Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
24 August
BLOODY 1929 RIOTS DRIVEN BY FEAR OF ZIONIST PLANS
On this day in 1929, bloody week-long inter-communal riots erupted in Palestine, with 133 Jews and 116 Palestinians killed. “Hundreds of Jews were saved by their more benevolent Arab neighbours, who offered them sanctuary from the mob by hiding them in their own houses.” A UK enquiry concluded “The fundamental cause is the...fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews”.
سبب أعمال الشغب الدموية عام 1929 هو الخوف من الخطط الصهيونية
24 أغسطس
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1929، اندلعت أعمال شغب طائفية دامية في فلسطين استمرت أسبوعًا، حيث قُتل 133 يهوديًا و 116 فلسطينيًا. "تم إنقاذ مئات اليهود من قبل جيرانهم العرب الخيّرين، الذين قدّموا لهم ملاذا من المتظاهرين بإخفائهم في منازلهم". خلص تحقيق بريطاني إلى أن "السبب الأساسي هو ... خوف العرب من حرمانهم وسيلة العيش بسبب الهجرة اليهودية وشراء الأراضي، وبمرور الوقت سيصبحون تحت السيطرة السياسية لليهود".
What distinguishes Zionism from other colonial movements is the relationship between the settlers and the people to be conquered. The avowed purpose of the Zionist movement was not merely to exploit the Palestinian people but to disperse and dispossess them. The intent was to replace the indigenous population with a new settler community, to eradicate the farmers, artisans and town-dwellers of Palestine and substitute an entirely new workforce composed of the settler population.
Walter Laqueur acknowledges in his History of Zionism that, “A D Gordon and his comrades wanted every tree and every bush to be planted by Jewish ’pioneers’.” Gordon coined the slogan “conquest of labor” [Kibbush avodah]. He called upon Jewish capitalists, and the Rothschild plantation managers, who had obtained land from absentee Turkish landlords over the heads of the Palestinian people, “to hire Jews and only Jews”. He organized boycotts of any Zionist enterprise which failed to employ Jews exclusively, and prepared strikes against the Rothschild colonists, who allowed Arab peasants to sharecrop or to work, even as cheap labor.
Thus, the “Labour Zionists” employed the methods of the workers’ movement to prevent the use of Arab labour; their objective was not exploitation but usurpation.
The UK Shaw Commission of enquiry into the riots reported:
"The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not occurred or would have been little more than a local riot, is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future...The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews."
The Shaw Commission findings led to another enquiry, the "Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development" by Sir John Hope Simpson, which pointed out the disturbing activities of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in dispossessing Palestinian labourers:released on October 21, 1930. The report recommended limiting Jewish immigration based on the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine and pointed to
"Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land became extra territorial. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived forever from employment on the land...
"It is impossible to view with equanimity the extension of an enclave in Palestine from which the Arabs are excluded. The Arab population already regards the transfer of lands to Zionist hands with dismay and alarm. These cannot be dismissed as baseless in light of the Zionist policy described above."
Hope-Simpson pointed out that Zionist Jewish-only labour policy extended to all Jewish enterprises such that displaced Arab farmers could not find non-agricultural employment. "There can be no doubt that there is at present time serious unemployment among Arab craftsmen and among Arab labourers...Arab unemployment is serious and general."
10-minute video of Palestine in the 1920s. The world the Zionist movement destroyed. https://youtu.be/_9jHU-SFpB8