Jerusalem. The Biography

dogs!’ and poured into the Old City. An old Jew was beaten with sticks.
    Suddenly, recalled Khalil Sakakini, ‘the furore turned into madness’. Many drew daggers and clubs, crying, ‘The religion of Muhammad was founded by the sword!’ The city, observed Jawhariyyeh, ‘became a battlefield’. The crowd chanted ‘Slaughter the Jews!’ Both Sakakini and Wasif hated violence but were starting to loathe not just the Zionists but the British too.
    Storrs came out of the morning service in the Anglican Church to find Jerusalem out of control. He rushed to his headquarters in the Austrian Hospice, feeling as though someone ‘had thrust a sword into my heart’. Storrs had only 188 policemen in Jerusalem. As the riot intensified in the course of the next day, the Jews feared they would be wiped out. Weizmann burst into Storrs’ office to demand help; Jabotinsky and Rutenberg grabbed their pistols and mustered 200 men at police headquarters in the Russian Compound. When Storrs banned this, Jabotinsky patrolled outside the Old City, exchanging shots with Arab gunmen – that was the day the shooting really started. In the Old City, some streets of the Jewish Quarter were under siege, and Arab intruders gang-raped some Jewish girls. Meanwhile the British were trying to police the Holy Fire ceremony but when a Syriac moved a Coptic chair ‘all hell broke loose’, and the doors of the Church caught firein the brawl. As a British official left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a little Arab girl fell from a nearby window, hit by a stray bullet.
    One of Jabotinsky’s recruits, Nehemia Rubitzov, and a colleague covered their pistols with medical white coats and entered the Old City in an ambulance to organize the defence. Rubitzov, Ukrainian-born, had been recruited by Ben-Gurion into the Jewish Legion, changing his name to Rabin. Now, as he calmed the terrified Jews, he encountered and rescued ‘Red Rosa’ Cohen, a spirited ex-Bolshevik newly arrived from Russia: they fell in love and married. ‘I was born in Jerusalem’ said their son, Yitzhak Rabin, who as Israeli chief of staff many years later would capture Jerusalem. 15
    HERBERT SAMUEL: ONE PALESTINE, COMPLETE
     
    By the time the riots ebbed, five Jews and four Arabs were dead, 216 Jews and 23 Arabs wounded. Thirty-nine Jews and 161 Arabs were tried for their part in what came to be known as the Nabi Musa riots. Storrs ordered raids on Weizmann’s and Jabotinsky’s homes: Jabotinsky was found guilty of possessing guns and sentenced to fifteen years. Young Amin Husseini – ‘the chief fomenter’ of the riots, in Storrs’ words – was sentenced to ten years, but escaped from Jerusalem. Storrs sacked Mayor Musa Kazem Husseini, though the British naively blamed Jewish Bolsheviks from Russia for the violence.
    The liberal Weizmann and socialist Ben-Gurion continued to hope for a gradually evolving homeland and a modus vivendi with the Arabs. Ben-Gurion refused to recognize Arab nationalism: he wanted Arab and Jewish workers to share ‘a life of harmony and friendship’, but sometimes he exclaimed, ‘There’s no solution! We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want it to be theirs.’ The Zionists now started to reorganize their old Hashomer – the Watchmen – into a more efficient militia, Haganah – the Defence.
    Each act of violence fed the extremists on both sides. Jabotinsky absolutely recognized that Arab nationalism was as real as Zionism. He argued implacably that the Jewish state, which he believed should encompass both banks of the Jordan, would be violently opposed and could be defended only with an ‘iron wall’. In the mid-twenties, Jabotinsky split off to form the Union of Zionist-Revisionists with a youth movement, Betar, that wore uniforms and held parades. He wanted to create a new sort of activist Jew, no longer dependent on the genteel lobbying of Weizmann. Jabotinsky was adamant that his Jewishcommonwealth would be built with ‘absolute equality’ between the two peoples and without any displacement of the Arabs. When Benito Mussolini came to power in 1922, Jabotinsky mocked the cult of Il Duce – ‘the most absurd of all English words – leader. Buffaloes follow a leader. Civilised men have no “leaders”.’ Yet Weizmann called Jabotinsky ‘Fascistic’ and Ben-Gurion nicknamed him ‘Il Duce’.
    King Faisal, the hope of the Arab nationalists – was doomed by French determination to possess Syria. The French