August 1929

On 15 August 1929, the Bet Sefer le-madrikhim organised a march to the Western Wall.1 Its purpose was to protest the continuous Arab interruption of Jewish religious services at this location – the outer wall of the Temple compound – and to re-energise Jewish claims to it. It acted, however, without consulting the Revisionist Executive or Betar in Palestine. At least 90 percent of the protesters were unaffiliated individuals. The Bet Sefer distributed leaflets, advertising the march on behalf of ‘Zionist Revolutionary Youth’. The procession of 300 was led by a young man carrying a black-edged flag and accompanied by a British representative, Major Kingsley-Hitt. The silent march ended as it began, in an orderly fashion.

The following day, however, a Muslim demonstration took place which was anything but orderly. It ended with the dispersal of Jewish worshippers and the burning of prayer books with little interference from the understaffed police.

Ha'aretz considered the Jewish demonstration to have been a catalyst of the Muslim demonstration – and did not mince its words. The secularists and the socialists did not look upon the Wall in the same fashion as the nationalists and the religious. The Zionist Executive meeting at the Zurich congress appealed for calm. The die, however, had been cast. The mufti of Jerusalem, the leader of Palestinian Arab nationalism, attempted to capitalise on this wave of discontent. The mufti's rumour mill about Zionist annexation of the Temple Mount and a multitude of Muslim deaths sparked off a spiral of violence in the Jerusalem area which led to the subsequent killing of 59 Jews in Hebron on 24 August and another 20 in Safed on 29 August. In all 133 Jews were killed in the 1929 disturbances and more than 120 Arabs perished – mainly at the hands of the British.

The Commission of Enquiry under Sir Walter Shaw laid the blame for the violence at the door of the Jews and defined the Jewish demonstration ‘as having been more than any other single incident an immediate cause of the outbreak’.