gather the city’s Jewish leaders. He had an important message to relay. Slonim agreed and invited various rabbis and elders, including his 49-year-old father, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yaakov Yoseph Slonim, and Meir Franco, the 63-year-old Chief Sephardic Rabbi.
Gathered in the bank, Cohen and Kirschenboim told the men that the Jews of Hebron were in danger of an impending riot. The Haganah wished to send reinforcements to protect them. The young spy presented two options: the Haganah would either send a group of fighters with weapons to safeguard the city’s Jews, or they could transfer the Jews from Hebron to Jerusalem until it was safe to return.
The leaders of Hebron’s Jewish community were unanimous. “Neither this nor that is necessary,” said Eliezer, an imposing figure who stood more than 6 feet tall, with suntanned skin and dark brown eyes. “No harm will come to the Jews of Hebron,” he insisted, owing to the warm relations that had prevailed between them and their Arab neighbors. The rabbis echoed Eliezer, assuring Cohen and Kirschenboim they had nothing to fear. The Arabs of Hebron were their friends.
Cohen abruptly left the meeting and walked out of the bank and into a Jewish home nearby, where he changed into his alias, Ibrahim Da’er. Dressed in his abaya and keffiyeh, he went to the market. After walking around for a while and finding nothing out of the ordinary, he entered a busy café and took a seat. Soon after, a man came in and invited four other patrons to the home of Sheikh Taleb Marka, an associate of the Grand Mufti who represented Hebron in the Palestine Arab Executive and led Hebron’s Muslim Association. Two of the men returned a few minutes later and summoned another customer at the café to the sheikh’s house. Cohen returned to the market, asked someone where Sheikh Marka’s house was, and walked in.
Marka, whose black beard was peppered with white hair, was telling the men seated around him about the Jewish plot to conquer Al-Aqsa. Once the Jews of Jerusalem had seized it, Marka explained, the Jews of Hebron planned to conquer Ibrahimi Mosque—the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. “The Jews who live amongst us and nursed from our mothers’ milk, it is they who will betray us more than the Moscovites,” said Marka, using the derogatory term for Jews who had come to Palestine from Eastern Europe. “It will be a great deed to slaughter them first.”
Cohen returned to the Jewish Quarter, changed back into his usual clothes, went to the bank, and told the Jewish leaders who were still gathered there what he had seen and heard. “Please,” he begged them, “allow a group of Haganah fighters to come here and protect the Jews of Hebron.” Still, they insisted there was no need for armed Jews in Hebron. The Haganah’s presence would do more harm than good, they argued. They invited several Arab leaders of Hebron to the bank to make their case. “Even if all the Jews of Palestine are killed, not a hair will fall from the head of a Jew in Hebron,” vowed one of the sheikhs. Eliezer Slonim asked Cohen and Kirschenboim to leave. That day, Cohen met with Ben-Zvi and gave him what he called a “black report” on the situation in Hebron.
Shortly after midnight that night, Eliezer awoke to a knock at his front door. He pulled himself out of bed and opened the door to find a group of unexpected visitors: twelve members of the Haganah and their suitcases. Dressed in civilian clothes, their bags packed with guns, bullets, and explosives. There would soon be an attack on the Jews of Hebron, the militants told Slonim. They had come—Baruch Katinka, nine young men, and two young women—to defend the community.
Slonim, tired and frustrated, brought the group into his house and proceeded to scold them. “If there was a need for men and weapons, I would request them myself!” he shouted. “There is no need because the Arabs won’t raise a hand against us. On the contrary, new faces in Hebron will only provoke them.”
Then came another knock at the door. Two Arab policemen entered the house and told the visitors to come to the police station. Ten of them followed, while two managed to stay at Slonim’s house with the suitcases of weapons. Arriving at the station, the Haganah fighters were met by the British Chief of Police, Raymond Oswald Cafferata, who was wearing his pajamas.
Born in Liverpool, 32-year-old Cafferata had joined the Palestine Police in 1921. Recruited from the Black and Tans, British reinforcements for the Royal Irish Constabulary who were known for their brutality during the Irish War of Independence, Cafferata had just been assigned to Hebron. Since his arrival on August 2, he had barely scratched the surface of the place and its people. He had met with just a few of the local Arab leaders and hadn’t yet gotten to know the city’s Jewish community. The only Englishman stationed in Hebron, Cafferata commanded a paltry force of 33 constables, nearly half of them elderly or in poor shape. All but one of the policemen were Arabs.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Cafferata asked the group of Haganah men and women at the station. They had come for a hike, they told him. It was a pitiful cover story considering they had arrived well after dark and tensions in the country were worse than they had ever been. Like Slonim, Cafferata was out of patience. Now was no time for hiking, he lectured them. “Go back to Jerusalem at once,” he commanded. And so they went, leaving Hebron’s Jews to defend themselves with nothing more than their prayers.
Slonim was the only Jew in Hebron with a gun. On Friday morning, he told the two Haganah men who had stayed at his house with their suitcases to drive back to Jerusalem as well.
This was not the Haganah’s first foray into Hebron. In 1928, Haganah commander Yaakov Pat had paid a visit to the Hebron Yeshiva. He met with a group of students and asked them what they would do if Arab riots broke out in Hebron. “Without a doubt, we would defend ourselves,” they told him.
“How would you do that if you don’t have the necessary training?” he asked.
“With the help of God,” they said.
