1936 Tulkarm shooting

The 1936 targeted shooting of Jews on the road between Anabta and Tulkarm, "selected for death because they were Jews,"[1] took place in British Mandatory Palestine. It is widely viewed as the beginning of the violence within the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine.

Incident

On the evening of 15 April 1936, Arabs from the town on Anabta constructed a roadblock on the road between Nablus and Tulkarm, stopping about 20 vehicles moving along that road, and demanding arms and cash from the drivers. The Arabs separated the 3 Jewish drivers from the other drivers and occupants of the vehicles, and shot them. Two of the shooting victims died, one survived.[2][3][4] The Arabs shouted, "Go ahead for Hitler's sake," and told their victims that they were gathering the money and munitions to carry on the work of the "Holy Martyrs" who had worked with Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, (then recently killed,) with the goal of killing "all Jews and Britons in Palestine."[5]

One of the other drivers in the convoy, a German Christian, was left unmolested when he shouted "I am a Christian German."[5]

One of the dead, Zvi Danenberg (alt.: Zvi Tannenberg), was driving a truckload of crated chickens to Tel Aviv.[2] Danenberg survived for 5 days before dying of his wounds. Yisrael Hazan (alt. Yisrael Chazan) (70) died immediately after being shot, had recently immigrated to Palestine from Salonika.[2][6]

Yisrael Hazan

Yisrael Hazan was a 70-year-old immigrant who had arrived from Salonika four years before he was taken from the poultry truck along with Zvi Danenberg and murdered. He had come to Israel with his eldest son while his wife, who was ill, remained in Salonika, and was living in Florentin, Tel Aviv and working to earn a living in the poultry business. That son later returned to Salonika and, with his mother, was murdered in the Holocaust. A grandson grew up to become the first Sephardi pilot in the Israeli Air Force.[7] He is buried in the Trumpeldor Cemetery.[7]

Funeral and protests

Hazan's April 17 funeral in Tel Aviv was the scene of demonstrations with thousands of protestors marching against the British government of Palestine and against the Arab attacks on Jews.[2][4] “All the stores in the city were closed. The factories also stopped work during the funeral."[7]

The Anabta/Tulkarm shooting is widely seen as prelude to or as the beginning of the violence and killings of the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, which began on The Bloody Day in Jaffa, 19 April 1936.[2][7][8] Within days, memorial books were being sold with Hazan's photo on the cover, and a text describing him as "the first victim," and promising yizkor memorial prayers along with "pictures and facts" about Jews killed by Arabs during "Nissan 5696" (roughly corresponding to April 1936).[9]

Consequences

In the aftermath of the incidents in April, Britain adopted a form of statutory military law consisting of reprisals and collective punishment, which often served to strike at the population because actual fighters, who were supported by civilians, were difficult to identify. The measures taken included systematic destruction of Arab property during search raids, particularly in the rural areas; house demolitions,- often consisting of blowing up the finer houses in the area concerned- the looting of Palestinian property, though officially frowned on; the despoiling of food reserves;collective fines imposed on villages, and setting up military outposts in villages with the residents required to bear the burden by covering the expense. The British heavily censored Arab-language newspapers to conceal reports of their activities: the same did not apply to the Hebrew-language press which managed to get better coverage of the military's actions in the field.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Appendix V: Palestine: Public Security..
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Ian Black, Benny Morris (1981). Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services. Grove Press. p. 1. ISBN 0802132863.
  3. ↑ Morris, Benny (3 February 2011). "Fallible Memory". The New Republic. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  4. 1 2 Charles Townshend (historian) (7 July 1989). "The First Intifada: Rebellion in Palestine 1936-39". History Today. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  5. 1 2 "Front Page 1 - No Title, Wireless to New York Times" 18 April 1936 .
  6. ↑ "2 More Jews Die of Riot Wounds; 10 Wounded in New Jaffa Attacks". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 21 April 1936. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Ofer, Aderet (16 April 2016). "The Intifada That Raged More Than 10 Years Before Israel Was Established". Haaretz. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  8. ↑ Mustafa Kabha. "The Palestinian Press and the General Strike, April–October 1936: "Filastin" as a Case Study." Middle Eastern Studies 39, no. 3 (2003): 169-89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4284312.
  9. ↑ Segev, Tom (2001). One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. Macmillan. p. 366. ISBN 0805065873.
  10. ↑ Matthew Hughes, 'Lawlessness was the Law:British Armed Forces, the Legal System and the Repression of the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939,' in Rory Miller (ed.), Britain, Palestine and Empire: The Mandate Years, (2010) Routledge 2016 pp.141-156 pp.146-147.
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