Ad Kan organization calls on government to tear down memorial to Arab terrorists who helped murder 67 Jews in the infamous 1929 Hebron massacre.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

An organization that fights anti-Israel activities called on the government Sunday to take down a monument in the Israeli city of Akko (Acre) that memorializes three Arab terrorists who took part in the brutal 1929 massacre of Jews in the city of Hebron.

“Murderers of Jews do not deserve a place of honor and commemoration” in Israel, said Zur Falk, who heads the legal department for Ad Kan.

In a statement on its Facebook page Ad Kan appealed to Interior Minister Aryeh Deri to remove the monument by virtue of his authority.”

The plaque in the Muslim cemetery in the city of Akko, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the port city of Haifa, commemorates three murderers – Muhammad Jamjoum, Fuad Hijazi, and Ataa Al-Zir, who took part in the 1929 riots in which Jews were murdered in Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem.

While most of the perpetrators of the massacres that killed over 100 Jews had their sentences commuted, Jamjoum, Hijazi, and Al-Zirthree “committed particularly brutal murders [of Jews] at Safed and Hebron,” according to the report by British Government to the League of Nations.

They were convicted of attacking British soldiers and murdering Jews in the 1929 Hebron Massacre, in which 65 Jews were murdered, and were executed by the British in 1930.

However, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) documented that the Palestinian Authority marks the execution of the murderers each year. Last year the official PA television station marked the execution of “the three heroes” and used the opportunity to add that they have become “a legend of self-sacrifice for the homeland.” That broadcast added, “Souls that have been sacrificed for their country will not die.”

According to PMW, the PA’s glorification of violence “constantly reinforces its message that dying while carrying out an act of terrorism is an outcome that guarantees that the souls of the terrorists do not die.”

In June the Israeli-Arab Balad political party commemorated the 90th anniversary of the execution of the three terrorists who massacred Jews in Mandate-era Palestine, via a post on their official Facebook page. The post referred to the three as “the martyrs of the Al-Buraq revolution,” using the Palestinian nationalist term for the 1929 massacres against Jews around the country.

Ad Kan says that the memorial is used as a “center of pilgrimage” for high schools and youth movements in the Arab public and noted that the erection of the monument is a violation of the law prohibiting the erection of memorials in memory of perpetrators of terrorist acts.

In their letter to Deri, the organization said the establishment of a memorial to murderers is a “grave moral failure” that “could very likely lead to copycats” who might choose “to join the group of ‘heroic martyrs.'”

Although Ad Kan filed a complaint two weeks ago, the monument is still standing and Israel Police appeared to pass the buck, issuing a statement saying “the case was transferred” to the national headquarters “for guidance on the issue and continued processing by the unit that is taking care of it,” the news website 0404 reported.

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On the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance at a ceremony marking the 90th anniversary of the 1929 Hebron massacre, 17 Likud MKs urged him to renew building in the historic city.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak at Wednesday’s commemoration of the 1929 Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron in his first visit to the ancient city in 21 years.

Once a decade there is an official ceremony marking the murder of 67 Jewish residents of Hebron and the wounding of dozens more by an Arab mob on August 24 70 years ago, in what was then British-mandate Palestine.

In 2009, the highest government official present was Supreme Court justice Elyakim Rubinstein, and the ceremony took place in the ancient Jewish cemetery.

This time around, Netanyahu, who has not made an official visit to the city since 1998, will give a speech at one of the two state ceremonies that will be held in the much larger open space in the compound near the Cave of the Patriarchs.

The timing of his return to the controversial city in which about a thousand Jews live in section under Israeli control among over 150,000 Arabs under Palestinian Authority control is no coincidence, as it will give the prime minister another chance to shore up his right-wing credentials just two weeks before elections.

Hebron activists know this as well, and told newspaper Maariv on Tuesday that they expect action more than words.

“For many years the Jewish community in Hebron has been working to give back to the owners – which is the Jewish community of the city – the ancient wholesale market,” they said.

“Nine months ago a legal breakthrough was achieved: The Attorney General approved to discontinue the [Arab] Hebron municipality’s hold on the market, and to plan a large Jewish neighborhood there instead. The only thing remaining to implement this historic decision is the prime minister’s approval. We expect Netanyahu to declare this decision in his speech on Wednesday.”

The market area was originally bought by a Jewish rabbi for communal use in 1807, but following the 1929 massacre, the British forced all remaining Jews to leave the city.

When the region was occupied by the Jordanians after Israel’s War of Independence, the municipality leased its buildings to Arab vendors.

After a Jewish doctor, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Arabs in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994, the area was evacuated and has remained vacant ever since. It took until 2018 for all the legal difficulties to be ironed out, even though the Jewish ownership of the land was upheld in court several times.

Last November, then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman ordered that the planning of the new residential project should go ahead, but facts have yet to be established on the ground.

Seventeen Likud ministers and Knesset members have now taken the opportunity of the upcoming anniversary to sign a letter urging Netanyahu to get the building started.

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