You mentioned Kishnev. That is one of the most infamous pogroms ever to take place in Europe. And yet the massacre in Hebron was both more deadly and more gruesome than the Kishnev pogrom, which drove tens of thousands of Jews to flee Eastern Europe, not just for Palestine, but also for the United States. And so this idea among anti-Semites in Europe was that Jews didn't belong there. They often told Jews, go back to Palestine. And Jews had listened. They went back to Palestine. They went back to their homeland. And there they were seemingly being told, you don't belong here either.

Before we begin today's conversation, I want to take a moment to say the names of seven Americans being held today for well over a year in Gaza by Hamas terrorists. These are their names. Omer Nutra, Idan Alexander, Sagi Dechelchen, Keith Siegel, Itaychen, and Gadi and Judy Haggai. In the days ahead, most Americans will slow down and turn inward for the holidays, gathering with family or going on vacation. At this time, though, I thought we should do everything we can to make sure these hostages are household names here in America, the same way Brittany Griner and Evan Gerskovich were constantly cited everywhere in the news media by celebrities and by professional athletes and by our political leaders from both parties. Why don't we do the same for the seven Americans who have been through hell at the hands of Hamas and are in captivity in the dungeons of Gaza. Sam Harris, Sheryl Sandberg, Scott Galloway, and I recently made a short video to put a spotlight on these Americans. We'll link to it in the show notes. Every American should know about our fellow Americans in captivity as we demand that all the hostages held in Gaza be freed. Now on to today's episode. August 23rd 1929 almost 100 years ago marks the day of what is often referred to in history as the 1929 Arab riots a wave of pogroms waged by the local Arab population in then Palestine against the local Jewish community. These pogroms began in Jerusalem and quickly spread to other cities and towns, including Hebron, Safed, Jaffa, and Haifa. The largest and most savage of these pogroms was the Hebron massacre on August 24th and the Safed massacre on August 29th. The riots largely subsided by August 29th after 113 Jews were slaughtered. you read about the savagery of these pogroms, they sound eerily similar to what took place on October 7, 2023. It was not just the nature of the violence, but it was the language, the same language, the terms, the description of the objectives of the massacre, it all sounds so familiar. With us today is Yardenna Schwartz, who has just penned a new book called Holy War, the 1929 massacre in Palestine that ignited the Arab-Israeli conflict. This meticulously researched book examines the 1929 Hebron massacre, where a staggering number of Jews were murdered out of nowhere by their Arab neighbors and friends. Yardena Schwartz is an award-winning journalist, an Emmy-nominated producer. Her reporting has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and The Economist, she worked as a producer for NBC News. Yardena has reported from four continents and spent a decade as a journalist reporting from Israel. Yardena Schwartz on 1929, the harbinger of October 7th.