The NYT and Hebron History Fit to Print
Elhanan Zelig Roch lost a hand in the 1929 Hebron massacre, in which Arabs killed 67 Jews
Less than two weeks after The New York Times’ highly selective history of the West Bank village of Battir (Beitar), the “Paper of Record” brings us a selective history of the city of Hebron. Jody Rudoren’s July 6 article about a Hebron area meeting of Jewish and Muslim spiritual and community leaders, along with rightest European Parliament members, recounts:
Hebron, home to about 150,000 Palestinians and 900 Jews, has been practically the opposite of peaceful since Israel began occupying the West Bank in 1967. Its Cave of the Patriarchs was the site of a massacre in 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, a doctor from the large neighboring settlement of Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Muslims praying at the mosque. It was the only city excluded from the Oslo accords, and it was the subject of its own pact in 1997 separating the two communities and restricting their movements. Clashes continue, sometimes daily.
Of course, Hebron’s bloody history began long before “Israel began occupying the West Bank in 1967.” Before the 1994 Hebron massacre of 29 Muslim residents, at the hands of Baruch Goldstein, there was the 1929 Hebron massacre of 67 Jewish residents, at the hands of their rampaging Arab neighbors. The survivors fled for Jerusalem, and the holy city of Hebron was emptied of Jews for the first time in centuries.
But, like with the recent Battir story, The New York Times ignored the Jewish history of the contested site, choosing to supply readers only the Palestinian history.
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