Tiberias massacre (1938)

Tiberias massacre (1938)

Tiberias massacre (also known as the Tiberias pogrom or the Night of Tiberias) was a racist Arab Muslim attack on the Jewish population of Tiberias on 2 October 1938, during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine. Arab attackers entered the Jewish Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood, murdering Jewish civilians, including women and children, and setting homes and the synagogue on fire. Contemporary and later accounts describe the attack as a coordinated assault against a largely defenseless Jewish neighborhood. Nineteen Jews were killed, including eleven children, according to several accounts, while contemporary reports gave a death toll of 20 or 21.

The massacre shocked the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine and contributed to renewed efforts to organize Jewish civilian self-defense.

Background

During the British Mandate, Tiberias had a mixed Jewish and Arab population. In the period preceding the attack, however, the Jewish defenses in Tiberias were poorly organized. The Haredi, non-Zionist Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood had approximately 2,000 residents, but only 36 were active members of its defense organization. On the night of the attack, only 15 defenders were present, and the available defensive positions could not all be manned.

The northeastern defensive positions had previously been dismantled on the assumption that an attack from the direction of the Sea of Galilee would be unlikely. At the same time, Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads were operating elsewhere in the Lower Galilee. According to the supplied account, Wingate was apparently misled that day by distorted information provided by organizers of the attack on Tiberias.

The massacre occurred during a period of escalating violence in the Arab Revolt. The violence had resumed in September 1937 following the assassination of Lewis Andrews, the British District Commissioner for the Galilee, in Nazareth. The Arab Higher Committee was subsequently outlawed by the British authorities, while Haj Amin al-Husseini fled Palestine and eventually became involved with the Axis powers during the Second World War.

The attack

As night fell on 2 October 1938, Arab attackers blocked roads leading to Tiberias with stone barriers. At approximately 9:00 pm, the city came under fire from several directions. At the same time, a group of approximately 70 Arab attackers entered Tiberias from the northeast. The group divided into two parts: one entered Kiryat Shmuel, while another attacked the government building and the Public Works Department warehouse, setting them on fire.

The attackers who entered Kiryat Shmuel encountered little resistance. They began their assault at Beit Shemesh on Herzl Street, at the corner of Ohel Yaakov Street, and proceeded down Herzl Street, breaking into houses, murdering residents and burning buildings.

In one house, a mother and her five children were murdered. In another, an entire family of four was killed. Other contemporary accounts reported the murder of Shimon Mizrahi's wife and five children, ranging in age from one to twelve, after the attackers broke into their house and set it ablaze. Joshua Ben Arieh, his wife and son were also stabbed and burned to death, while their infant son was shot. Three children of Shlomo Leimer, aged eight, ten and twelve, were stabbed and burned to death.

The synagogue was set on fire, and its caretaker was murdered beside a Torah scroll. A contemporary account reported that after returning from the funeral, residents found another pile of burning remains in the synagogue.

The attack continued for approximately forty minutes according to one account, although another contemporary account stated that the attackers remained in the neighborhood for approximately two hours. The attackers eventually withdrew without having encountered organized resistance. Two Jewish Settlement Police members, or notars, who attempted to assist the neighborhood were ambushed and killed.

Contemporary witnesses described particularly brutal treatment of the victims. A report published shortly after the massacre stated that the attackers ate food in a house they had invaded and even danced a dabke in the street during the attack. The same account said that eyewitnesses heard chants of "Allah Akbar" and calls to kill Jews.

The same contemporary report stated that the attackers' orders were given by a commander speaking a European language and translated into Arabic for the attackers. It also described the use of incendiary bombs and reported that some victims were burned alive. Ten of those killed and burned were children from three families; two children, a brother and sister, were reportedly found held together after being burned.

The account further stated that the attackers deliberately concentrated on a street known to contain mostly elderly Jews who were unable to defend themselves. A house whose resident possessed a government-licensed firearm was reportedly avoided by the attackers. Two Jewish guards successfully defended the courthouse on the main street, preventing the attackers from entering it.

Aftermath

Alex Morrison, a British truck driver, sympathetic to Arabs, who arrived in Tiberias shortly after the attackers had left, described the aftermath as one of the most horrifying sights he had witnessed. He reported seeing the bodies of men, women and children throughout the neighborhood and observed the remains of children still burning in a building believed to have been a nursery. According to Morrison, fuel appeared to have been poured over the children before they were set on fire.

Morrison also described the condition of the murdered women, stating that their bodies showed evidence of extremely brutal knife attacks.

As the attackers retreated from Tiberias, they encountered an ambush near Mitzpeh by the Special Night Squads. Five of the retreating attackers were killed.

The massacre was widely remembered as a particularly severe episode of the Arab Revolt. A contemporary report characterized it as the worst slaughter of Jews in Palestine since the 1929 Hebron massacre, while later accounts likewise emphasized the deliberate targeting of women, children and elderly residents.

According to later accounts, the attack demonstrated to the Jewish community the dangers of relying on inadequate external protection and contributed to renewed preparations for civilian self-defense.

Contemporary Jewish accounts

The Jewish newspaper Haboker reported on 4 October 1938 under the headline "20 Martyrs of Tiberias" and described the death of a mother together with her six children.

Ha-Tsofeh, reporting on 9 October 1938, emphasized that Kiryat Shmuel had previously lived peacefully alongside its Arab neighbors. The newspaper characterized the assault as an attack by neighboring Arab villagers rather than an outbreak of spontaneous local anger. It described the attackers as entering the neighborhood at approximately 9:00 pm, carrying out their actions with little resistance, eating food in an invaded house and dancing in the street.

The same report emphasized that the victims were disproportionately elderly people, women and children and argued that the attackers' choice of targets indicated that they knew the residents of the affected street were largely unable to defend themselves.

Possible Nazi connection

A January 1939 article in Haaretz reported allegations that Nazi propaganda centers in Cairo and Baghdad were involved in supporting terrorism in Palestine and presented the Tiberias massacre as having been prepared by Nazis. The supplied material presents this as an allegation rather than an established fact.

Historical assessments

The massacre has subsequently received attention as a relatively neglected episode of the Arab Revolt. The Jewish Virtual Library described it as the "Forgotten Tiberias Pogrom of 1938", while a later Jerusalem Post-related account characterized the event as a massacre in which 19 people, including 11 children, were murdered.

The National Library of Israel has likewise described the attack as a carefully coordinated nighttime assault in which roadblocks were established, communications were disrupted and Jewish defenders were caught unprepared. Its later account states that 19 Jews, including 11 children, were murdered and connects the event to the subsequent development of Jewish civilian defense organizations.

Victims and death toll

Accounts supplied for the event differ slightly regarding the total number of Jewish victims. Later accounts commonly give the figure as 19 Jews, including 11 children. Contemporary reports, however, used figures of 20 and 21 Jewish victims. The discrepancy appears in the historical reporting itself and is therefore reflected in accounts of the massacre.

See also

• 1929 Hebron massacre
• List of some of noted crimes committed by Muslims against Jews since the 7th century till 1948 re-established State of Israel

References

Sources

[1] Haboker, 4 October 1938, "20 Martyrs of Tiberias - The blood of a mother was mixed with the blood of her six children." National Library of Israel.

[2] Ha-Tsofeh, 9 October 1938, "Tiberias." National Library of Israel.

[3] Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "21 Jews Slain in Tiberias Massacre, Worst Since ’29; Synagogue, Homes Razed", 4 October 1938.

[4] Yitzhak Tesler, "The rioters sat down to eat, and no one came to help: Tiberias' black day", Ynet, 4 May 2022.

[5] National Library of Israel, "From the Tiberias Massacre to October 7: The Origins of Israel’s Civilian Defense Units", 30 April 2026 / 6 May 2026.

[6] Material supplied concerning the organization of the defense of Tiberias, the Kiryat Shmuel attack, the Special Night Squads and the ambush near Mitzpeh.

[7] "Arab Revolt (in Palestine) — The Resumption of the Revolt."

[8] Tom Segev, Ueme ha-kalaniyot: Erets Yisrael bi-tekufat ha-Mandat, Keter, 1999, p. 336.

[9] "The Forgotten Tiberias Pogrom of 1938", 2 October 1938, Jewish Virtual Library.

[10] Haaretz, 6 January 1939, "Nazi propaganda in [Palestine] E.Y. Propaganda centers in the Near East, Cairo and Baghdad. — Who is behind the terrorists — The Tiberias massacre was prepared by the Nazis." National Library of Israel.

[11] "Tiberias night - the massacre that was forgotten", TheMarker Cafe, 22 April 2015.

[12] Chelsea Queen, "The Tiberias Massacre of 1938", Medium, 22 September 2025.

[13] Dov Lipman, "Did Arab Violence Really Start With the ‘Occupation’?", HonestReporting, 20 August 2019.

[14] National Library of Israel, Facebook post concerning the Tiberias massacre and civilian defense.

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

Lord Peel to W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."