Long before the State of Israel was born, British Mandate Palestine was the scene of one of the worst pogroms ever perpetrated outside of Europe. The 1929 massacre of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron, the burial place of Abraham, was one of the most seminal events in the Arab-Israeli conflict — until October 7, 2023, and Hamas’s gruesome massacre of 1,200 men, women, and children, and their abduction of 250 others. One century apart, the echoes of 1929 in 2023 are key to understanding the complexities of what is, at its core, a holy war between Abraham’s children. Award-winning journalist Yardena Schwartz draws on her extensive research and wide-ranging interviews with both sides to tell the story of the world’s most enduring conflict. Through the never-before-told story of a young American who moved to what was then Palestine in 1928, Yardena expertly weaves 100 years of history in the Holy Land to demonstrate how the issues today cannot be fully understood without the context of ground zero of this century-old war.
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Nonfiction
Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict
- From the Publisher
September 1, 2023
Discussion Questions
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