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Lessons from a Jerusalem Pogrom
(Mosaic) Sean Durns - On April 4, 1920, the Nebi Musa riots in Jerusalem, named for the Muslim festival memorializing the birth of Moses, left five Jews dead, 211 injured, and at least two women raped. As Bruce Hoffman documented in his 2015 book Anonymous Soldiers: "A large Arab crowd had gathered just outside Jaffa Gate. Egged on by tendentious speakers from the nearby Arab Club, the crowd began to chant the rhyming Arabic couplet: 'Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!'" When trying to make sense of Arab violence in the Middle East, Western analysts tend to fall back on predictable cliches: riots result from resentment, oppression, poverty, or perhaps "ancient hatreds"; where the riots involve Palestinians, they are also the result of frustrated national aspirations. In the case of the Nebi Musa riots, none of these explanations fit. To the extent that national aspirations were involved, they had nothing to do with Palestinian statehood, and everything to do with the incorporation of Palestinian Arabs into Greater Syria. The riots were an attempt to influence Arab opinion by showing support for Syrian rule of the territory. Moreover, the British rewarded Haj Amin al-Husseini, who addressed the crowd before the riots, by creating the position of grand mufti of Jerusalem for him. He concluded that the risks of instigating pogroms were low, and resorted to this tactic in 1929 and then again from 1936 to 1939. The writer is a senior research analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).