Book Talk: Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Book Talk: Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict
In 1929, in the sacred city of Hebron—then governed by the British Mandate of Palestine—there was no occupation, state of Israel, or settlers. Jews and Muslims lived peacefully near the burial place of Abraham until one Saturday morning when nearly 70 Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors. The Hebron massacre was a seminal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict, key to understanding its complexities. The echoes of 1929 in Hamas’s massacre of October 7, 2023, illustrate how little has changed—and how much of our perspective must change if peace is ever to come to this tortured land and its people, who are destined to share it. Drawing on her extensive research and wide-ranging interviews with both sides to tell a timely, eye-opening story, the speaker will position the war between Israel and Hamas into a historical framework.
Yardena Schwartz is an award-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated producer who was based in Israel for a decade until 2023. Her reporting has appeared in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, TIME, National Geographic, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, among other publications. Yardena previously worked at NBC News, including stints at the Today show, Nightly News with Brian Williams, and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports. She graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School in 2011, received an Emmy nomination for her work at MSNBC in 2013, and the RNA award for excellence in magazine reporting in 2016. Yardena now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband and children. Ghosts of a Holy War is her first book.