Non­fic­tion

Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Mas­sacre in Pales­tine that Ignit­ed the Arab-Israeli Conflict

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2023

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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