Ninety-seven years ago, on Aug. 24, 1929, armed Arabs carrying knives, axes and iron bars broke into Jewish homes in Hebron. Within two hours, 66 Jews were slaughtered, the vast majority of them defenseless.
Two- and 3-year-old children, young girls and yeshivah students endured unimaginable horrors: Heads were severed, throats were slit, women were raped in front of their family members, eyes were gouged out, and hands were chopped off. Ben-Zion Gershon, a pharmacist who had devotedly treated Arab residents for decades and saved hundreds of them, was brutally tortured before being murdered, along with his family members. At the Slonim house, 22 souls were massacred, and infants like 1-year-old Shlomo and 2-year-old Menachem Segal met their deaths with horrifying cruelty that can still be read about online.
The incitement came directly from Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who spread lies about Jewish “theft” of the Western Wall, and then incited the masses with cries of Allahu Akbar! (“God is great!” in Arabic) and “Slaughter the Jews!” The Mufti built his power through extremist religious education systems and the dissemination of deep-rooted hatred of Jews—the exact same hatred that Hamas adopted into its 1988 charter.
However, the central historical dimension that reveals itself time and again is not limited solely to religious-Muslim nationalism, but includes a partnership from the radical left.
As early as 1929, the Marxists celebrated the slaughter of Jews. The Yiddish-language Communist Party newspaper Morning Freiheit in New York published cartoons condemning the Jews who defended themselves. The Soviet Comintern called for the establishment of a “Soviet Sovietistan” and supported the pogroms out of a revolutionary mindset that echoes to this day: “In a country like Palestine, a revolutionary movement without pogroms is impossible,” communists wrote.
These ideological roots date back even earlier, appearing inter alia in Karl Marx’s writings (On the Jewish Question), in which he equated Judaism with capital and usury; saw the liberation of the world as liberation from Judaism; and supported the Ottoman jihad against Russia in the hope of igniting a regional revolution.
The political climate since Oct. 7 ...
Nearly a century has passed since the events of Hebron, but the red-green alliance has not vanished; it has merely taken on a new form, strengthening within the public, academic and political sphere in the West, and all the more so since the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The moment the scale of the slaughter, rape and kidnapping committed by Hamas in the border communities became clear, one would have expected a wall-to-wall universal condemnation.
Instead, we witnessed an astonishing and alarming phenomenon: Vast segments of the progressive and socialist left at leading universities in the West rushed to justify, whitewash and even celebrate the acts of atrocity.
The crowds that filled the streets of New York, London and Berlin under the slogans “From the river to the sea” were not merely protesting the policies of the Israeli government; they replicated that same historical pattern of behavior in which violence against Jews is justified as an “anti-colonial struggle” or as part of a “global revolution.” Modern socialist organizations adopted the narrative of Islamic jihad, replacing religious language with the terminology of “social justice” and “resistance to oppression.”
Thus, murderous terrorists were transformed into “freedom fighters” and innocent massacre victims into representatives of “colonialism.”
Organized antisemitism in the West today presents a perfect symbiosis: Radical socialism provides the theoretical framework and public legitimacy on campuses and in parliaments, while extreme Islamism provides the execution and fanatical religious motivation. From the Mufti al-Husseini to the progressive student cells of the 21st century, the goal remains the same: the demonization of Israel and the undermining of the Jewish people’s very right to live in security in their homeland.
History teaches us that when the radical left allies with jihad, the target and the victim have always been and remain the Jews. Today, more than ever, it is our duty to identify this alliance and fight it without compromise.
