From Hebron Massacre to October 7: A Century-Long Red-Green Alliance Against Jews
Ninety-seven years after the 1929 Hebron massacre, Shimon Rafali, deputy chairman of the Security Policy Institute of the Bitkhoonistim movement, draws a direct line between the incitement that led to the 1929 pogroms and the radical Western support for Hamas and justification of the October 7, 2023 massacre. On August 24, 1929, armed Arabs attacked Jewish homes in Hebron with knives, axes, and iron rods, killing 66 Jews, mostly defenseless civilians including toddlers and yeshiva students, with horrific acts of violence and sexual assault. The incitement originated from Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spread false claims about the Western Wall and incited the masses with cries of "Allahu Akbar" and "Kill the Jews." He built his power through extreme religious education and deep-rooted antisemitism, the same hatred adopted by Hamas in its 1988 charter.
Rafali highlights that the historical dimension also involves radical leftist complicity. In 1929, Marxists celebrated the Jewish slaughter, with the communist newspaper "Morning Freedom" in New York condemning Jewish self-defense and the Soviet Comintern calling for a "Soviet Arabistan" while supporting pogroms. These ideological roots trace back to Karl Marx’s writings, which associated Judaism with capital and usury and supported Ottoman jihad against Russia hoping to spark regional revolution.
Nearly a century later, this red-green alliance has not disappeared but evolved, gaining strength in Western academia, politics, and public discourse, especially after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks involving mass killings, rapes, and kidnappings in Israeli border communities. Instead of universal condemnation, many progressive and socialist left-wing groups in leading Western universities justified or even celebrated the atrocities. Massive protests in New York, London, and Berlin under slogans like "From the river to the sea" echoed the historic pattern of justifying violence against Jews as anti-colonial struggle or global revolution.
Modern socialist organizations have adopted the Islamic jihad narrative, replacing religious language with terms like "social justice" and "resistance to oppression," turning murderous terrorists into "freedom fighters" and innocent victims into symbols of "colonialism." Today’s organized antisemitism in the West is a symbiosis: radical socialism provides theoretical and public legitimacy on campuses and parliaments, while extremist Islamism supplies execution and religious fanaticism. From Mufti al-Husseini to 21st-century progressive student cells, the goal remains demonizing Israel and undermining Jewish rights to security in their homeland. Rafali concludes that history teaches when radical leftism allies with jihad, Jews have always been the target and victims, and now more than ever, it is imperative to identify and fight this alliance uncompromisingly.
