The Forgotten Tiberias Pogrom of 1938

The year 1938 was especially violent in the Holy Land. It was the midst of a violent three-year nationalist uprising known as the Arab Revolt. Led by the father of Arab nationalism in Palestine, Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini , the Arabs founded the Arab High Committee and set three key demands for ending the violence: ending all Jewish immigration, banning land sales to Jews, and giving Arabs control of Mandatory Palestine, leaving them to deal with the Jews.

A steady stream of incitement in schools, the Arab press, and houses of worship ensued, along with a call to boycott Jewish products. In April 1936, Arab terrorists attacked a Jewish bus and killed two. This event unleashed a cycle of tit-for-tat violence which saw the death of many Jews and Arabs.

One area that saw many violent attacks on Jews was Tiberias. In May 1938, a Jew was killed by an explosion and, in September, three Jews were murdered, and a Jew and an Arab were wounded by four Arab terrorists.[1]

Tiberias was a poorly defended city with only a couple dozen British police officers and a small number of supernumerary Jewish constables called Notrim or Ghaffirs. Earlier, the head of the Jewish Agency, Moshe Sharett, had petitioned the British government to arm additional Jews. He also asked for mobile patrols around Tiberias and other Jewish towns and cities. Both requests were rejected by the British and the concern by the Jewish Agency was deemed “exaggerated.”

On October 2, an Arab terrorist cell occupied the hills surrounding Tiberias.[2] They waited for the cover of darkness to begin their well-planned operation. At 9 p.m., the terrorists cut the telephone lines into Tiberias so the victims could not call for assistance. Two terrorist cells hiding in the hills entered city from the north and south. Five minutes later, the terrorists remaining in the hills sounded a shrill whistle loud enough so both cells could hear it. This signaled the beginning of the attack.

The small local police force was taken by surprise. The terrorists first hit the office of the British district commissioner, the police station, and the quarters where British police were housed hoping to weaken or eliminate any defenses.

The attackers then went to the central synagogue and set it on fire. The caretaker of the synagogue Ezekiel Katz, 42, was trapped inside and burned to death.

The terrorists also burned down the local post office before making their way to the Jewish neighborhood of Kiryat Shmuel, north of the old city, armed with bombs, rifles, daggers, and torches. That is when the “systematically organized and savagely executed”[3] carnage began.

The terrorists set fire to several Jewish wooden homes. They entered the house of Joshua Ben-Arieh where he, his wife Shoshanna, and one of their sons, Arieh, were stabbed to death and then set on fire. There younger son Moshe, only 18 months old, was shot to death. Visiting the Ben-Arieh family were three siblings – Chaim age 12, Rivkah age 10, and Ezra age 8. The terrorists stabbed and burned to death all three children.

While Shimon Yochanan Mizrahi was on patrol in another part of town, terrorists stormed his house and killed his wife Rachel, 26, and all five of their children ages 12, 5, 3, 2, and 1. The Arabs also attacked a third house, the home of Menachem Kabni, 60, and his wife Dora, 40. Both were American citizens. Mr. Kabni had been the beadle of a synagogue in New York for 30 years. Rabbi Asha Werner, who had been visiting Tiberias at the time, reported that the infiltrators stabbed the couple to death and burned their bodies. Miraculously, Mr. Kabni’s sister Esther managed to escape the execution.[4]

In total, the terrorists set six Jewish houses on fire and savagely murdered anyone they could find inside. Two supernumerary Jewish constables, Israel Bookman and Zvi Chatzkeleviz, and an additional Jewish man, Jacob Gross, died in a gun fight valiantly trying to stop the attacks. Several other Jews were seriously injured. All but four of the victims were stabbed to death and set on fire.[5]

Police and troop reinforcements did not arrive in Tiberias for 25 hellish minutes because Arabs from the surrounding hills fired on them as they approached the city. The first to arrive was the Transjordan Frontier Force stationed in the village of Samakh. They managed to fight their way through an ambush and road obstructions set near the hot springs to the south.[6]

The fighting lasted until 11 p.m., two grueling hours, until the British police and armed forces, along with Jewish constables, repelled the terrorists. British troops then pursued the attackers to the nearby village of Lubya. Fighting continued until morning and the terrorists suffered 50 casualties. When all was said and done, twenty-one Jews were murdered, including seven men, three women, and eleven children. The Times of London’s story on the fighting was headlined, “Jewish Children Butchered.”[7]

The massacre could have been much worse. A brigade of Jewish constables from a nearby Jewish village called Mizpah encountered a terrorist cell on their way to attack the city and engaged them. They managed to kill six of the terrorists and seized one German and four English rifles, along with ammunition.[8]

Immediately after the pogrom the British Mandatory government placed a curfew on the city. It was only allowed to be broken for a funeral procession for the victims that walked past the ruins of the still smoldering synagogue while the dead body and destroyed Torah scrolls lay inside.[9]

Chief Rabbis, Isaac Herzog and Jacob Meir, sent a joint appeal to British secretary Malcolm MacDonald, “Palestine Jewry is deeply horrified at the Tiberias massacre and sacrilege. In G-d's name, we appeal to you to end the terror.”[10]

Sharett would add, “The murders were a terrible price to pay for arousing the authorities to take urgent measures.”[11]

Attacks on Tiberias continued afterward. They set rock barricades and other obstacles on the road to the city so that British reinforcements would have a difficult time arriving. Less than a month later, on October 27, the Jewish Mayor of Tiberias, Zaki El Hadef, was shot to death by an Arab terrorist in broad daylight in the middle of the old city.[12] What was unique about Mr. El Hadef is that he presided over a council that consisted of four Jews, two Muslims, and one Christian. He came from an ancient Mizrachi family that settled in Tiberias in 1715. He spoke both Hebrew and Arabic fluently and was by all accounts loved by all the residents of the city. He was a man for all people who at the start of the Arab Revolt in 1936 managed to pass a motion in the municipal council appealing for peace. Nevertheless, he could not save himself from extremist violence.

After the pogrom at Tiberias, Sharett sent a message to the Arab Palestine Defense Committee in Damascus, one that would be repeated over and over by Jewish leaders but which always fell on deaf ears – that the Jews in Palestine extend a hand of peace and cooperation to the Arabs of Palestine, but if it is not accepted the Jews will not be intimidated and the Arabs should know that violence and murder will not deter the Jews from re-establishing their homeland in the land of Israel.[13]