Five Facts About Hebron You Won’t Learn on a Breaking the Silence Tour

Few places in the world are as intensely-contested as Hebron, an ancient city with significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Narratives abound, with Palestinian Arabs, human rights groups, and Israeli anti-occupation organizations portraying the city as suffering under Israeli control, while many Jews and Israelis focus on the right of the local Jewish community to exist, pointing out that no place in the world should be Jew-free, much less here — one of the most sacred sites in Judaism. With the “anti-occupation” narrative so strong, and with groups like Breaking the Silence repeatedly manufacturing headlines and influencing international leaders and cultural figures, some facts about Hebron are routinely downplayed.

It’s time to set the record straight.

Breaking the Silence Fails to Show Hebron as a Bustling, Thriving City

Breaking the Silence tour participants leave Hebron under the impression that it is a “ghost town”. This is not by a chance – it’s the precise term featuring prominently on a B’tselem-produced map of Hebron distributed by Breaking the Silence tour guides.

In fact, it’s nothing of the sort.

Believe it or not, but Hebron is a bustling, thriving city. Breaking the Silence tour participants are shown a very restricted fragment of the old town area, walking along one long street, known as King David Street to Israelis and as Shuhada (Martyrs) Street to Palestinians, before turning off at the end up another street and along a dirt track to visit local Palestinian activist group Youth Against Settlements. Tour participants then retrace their steps and head back to the beginning of their linear route to be driven back to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. The few streets in which Palestinian civilians are restricted compromise less than 1% of the entire city. The vast majority of the city does not undergo the restrictions imposed on the roads shown by Breaking the Silence.

To be sure, the streets in this area are worthy of attention, with Palestinian citizens prevented from walking and driving in much of them due to restrictions imposed after repeated outbreaks of violence. This is a complex place riven with decades-old tensions, violence and mutual mistrust. More than anywhere else, the effects are seen most clearly on these streets. But there’s a lot more to Hebron than this narrow section of the city.

Given that Breaking the Silence tour participants are taken straight back to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem before they have a chance to explore the city for themselves, they don’t get a chance to see Hebron life beyond the narrow confines of the few streets on the tour. An entire city is literally reduced to a few unrepresentative roads.

Since 1997, the city has been split into two zones. Israel controls H1, which accounts for approximately 20% of the city’s land. Israeli civilians are allowed in this area only. The remaining 80% of Hebron is overseen by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Breaking the Silence are told this. What they are not told is that while Israeli soldiers are permanently deployed in the Israeli-controlled side of the city, and frequently patrol alongside it, they rarely enter the vast majority of the city. Participants do not see the PA-controlled area, and consequently do not truly witness the largest and wealthiest city under PA control.

The city is home to multiple universities, including Hebron University with its 10,000 students. It also has the 8,000-seat Hussein Ibn Ali stadium, where the world-famous Barcelona soccer team hosted an open training session here in 2013. There aren’t any bars or theaters, as the city’s Muslims residents are markedly religious and conservative, but the city is dotted with hundreds of mosques.

Hebron is a growing, modern city, and boasts the Hebron Center mall, one of the biggest shopping malls in the Middle East.

See above the video of one person’s drive through the city. Note the presence of modern cars, including SUVs. While the city undoubtedly has room to develop, the new city center is a far cry from the dilapidated and abandoned properties observed in Breaking the Silence tours.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs Was Built by Jews, Who Were Then Forced Out

Upon arrival in Hebron, Breaking the Silence’s tour participants find themselves directly outside the magnificent Cave of the Patriarchs. Nevertheless, Breaking the Silence guides say barely a word about the building, only briefly referring to it as the place where the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs are believed to have been buried.

Although Breaking the Silence may gloss over the Tomb, there’s a considerable amount to say about this impressive structure that participants aren’t told about. The building itself can be split into layers. The cave complex believed to lie underneath the building is understood to be naturally-formed. Above it, a large structure made of massive stones was built by Herod, king of Judea, around 2,000 years ago during the Roman era. This building is the only one from the period in ancient Israel to have survived in its entirety. Over the centuries, the land was conquered by Christians and Muslims, who added their own religious structures to Herod’s monumental building. The Christian Byzantines built a large basilica and Church over the Cave of the Patriarchs, incorporating the Herodian structure into their structure. Jews were officially forbidden from living in the holy city.

Then in 638 CE, Sunni Muslims known as the Umayyads conquered the region and converted the church into a mosque. At this stage, the Muslim authorities were tolerant of Jewish prayer at the site. In the year 1100, the Crusaders conquered Hebron, expelled all the Jews, and reinstated the building’s use as a Church. The city was conquered in 1260 by Mamluks, and the site was turned back into a mosque. During this period, the Muslim authorities erected several minarets at the site, and encircled the the memorials to the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarch with Arabic verses in order to bestow a Muslim identity upon this Jewish holy site.

Under Israeli Control, Religious Freedom in Hebron is Better than Ever

The Mamluks were not as tolerant of the Jews as the previous Muslim rulers, and in 1267 barred Jews and Christians from entering the building. The persecution of the Jews by Muslims far outlasted the Mameluke reign, with their various successors retaining the policy. For approximately 700 years, Jews were not allowed to enter the site, instead only able to approach as far as the seventh step of the outside Eastern stairway.

Things changed dramatically in 1967, when the Israelis liberated Hebron and the entire West Bank region from Jordanian occupation. Whereas in Jerusalem the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, was swiftly turned over to the Islamic Waqf administration in the hopes of mollifying the Arab nations, Israel retained sovereignty over Hebron. However, as opposed to the lengthy period of Islamic rule in which Jews were banished from the site, under Israeli control equal access has been ensured.

Upon their return, Jews were able to resume holding prayers at the tomb. Sometimes Muslims and Jews would pray at the same time, with Israeli soldiers keeping the peace. This fragile arrangement was shattered in 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, a resident of nearby Kiryat Arba, went on a rampage and shot dead 29 Muslim worshipers and injured in excess of another 100 before running out of ammunition and being beaten to death.

In response, Israel divided the building into two zones, installing bulletproof walls to separate Muslims and Jews. The building comprises three smaller rooms and one larger hall. For the vast majority of the year, Jews are able to access these three rooms alone, while Muslims are allowed into the main hall above the area dedicated to the Patriarch Isaac. This arrangement gives Muslims the most prestigious room and more space inside the compound, but gives Jews the majority of the space when area outside the complex is taken into account.

For twenty days each year, this arrangement is disturbed in order to accommodate the festivals and solemn occasions on both the Muslim and Jewish calendars. Consequently, for ten days each year Muslims are allowed to access the entire complex. For another ten, Jews are accorded the same right. In this way, a delicate balancing act is preserved in which each side’s requirements are taken into consideration.

Similarly, the minarets, used by Islamic Muezzins to issue the call to prayer, are inaccessible to Jews at all times. The only person able to enter is the Muezzin himself, who is in possession of the sole key to the door. Each day, the Muezzin enters the Jewish side of the complex surrounded by armed Israeli border police. The border police act as an escort, clearing a path for the Muezzin and ensuring he has safe passage to the door.

The vast majority of visitors to Hebron under Breaking the Silence’s auspices would never know that for the first time in history, the rights of both Muslims and Jews to worship at the ancient tomb are being safeguarded.

Hebron Has Witnessed Centuries of Persecution Against the Jews

Breaking the Silence tours leave participants under the impression that hostility between Muslims and Jews is only a recent development, something occasioned by the rise of Zionism. This is distinctly false. Arab hostility is not a mere product of Israeli “occupation”, as some would have it, or “liberation”, as others would describe the events of 1967, in which Israel gained control of the city. Neither did Arab hostility to Jews first arise when Zionists headed to the Holy Land.

In fact, Hebron has been the site of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution. Well before the horrendous massacre of 1929, in which 67 Jews were cruelly massacred, a horrific episode which Breaking the Silence briefly reference in their tours, there were massacres in 1834 and 1517. Jews were uprooted from their homes, raped and murdered. Such horrific events were not unusual in the Ottoman Empire, with Jews routinely suffering from discrimination under their dhimmi status.

Attempts to portray the tensions between Jews and Muslims in Hebron as a result of Israeli policy, or of Israel’s existence, are clearly false.

Related Reading: The Hebron Massacre of 1929

Hebron is NOT a “Microcosm of the Occupation”

Breaking the Silence tours of Hebron depict the city,  or the select few streets tour participants are allowed to see during its tours, as a “microcosm of the occupation”. This is a demonstrably false claim: Hebron, with its small Jewish population of approximately 800 people living in the heart of a hostile city and surrounded by approximately 200,000 Palestinians, is a unique situation and very much the exception, rather than the rule. There is no other city under Israeli control in which a Jewish population is entirely surrounded at close quarters and guarded by hundreds of soldiers.

Hebron is also unique in its standing as the Hamas stronghold of Judea. During the bloody Second Palestinian Intifada, waves of suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Israeli civilians on buses, in cafes, in malls, and in the streets. Many of them came from Hebron. Over a decade later, assailants from Hebron featured prominently in a wave of terror attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. Israeli forces have repeatedly swooped in the city to prevent serious attacks.

For example, 11 suspects arrested in Hebron in February 2015 were planning suicide bombings and shootings. During the wave of violence over the winter of 2015-16, the Shin Bet security service released figures showing that a disproportionately high number of terrorists attempting to stab, shoot and drive over Jews came from the Hebron and Yattir region.

One clan in particular, the Qawasame tribe, is particularly powerful in Hebron, with an influential faction of several hundred members. This branch of the family, renowned as a radical opposition faction within Hamas, is known to push the terrorist group in a radical direction, and is said to frequently sabotage Hamas ceasefires with bombings and attacks in order to provoke Israeli responses which can then be used as a justification for further hostilities.

Members of the Qawasame clan were accused by the Shin Bet of kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers in 2014. The kidnapping led to a manhunt which ended setting in motion a chain of events leading to a full-blown war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Some say that the kidnapping was perpetrated by a rogue Hamas cell, while others believe that it was orchestrated by Salah al-Arouri, a man described as capable, charismatic, suspicious, and shrewd operator who functions from exile as Hamas’ “military commander of the West Bank.” More recently, in 2018, an all-female Hamas unit run by two senior male commanders was nabbed by Israel. Its members had been coordinating the flow of funding for terror, meeting with terrorists with blood on their hands exiled to Turkey, and were involved in recruitment.

The radical ideology and strength of Hamas in Hebron is a source of concern not only for Israel, but the PA as well. Hamas has focused great energy on investing in its infrastructure and networks in Hebron, at times directly challenging the Palestinian Authority, occasionally drawing a strong backlash, including arrests and beatings. Both Hamas and Fatah stand accused of torturing their political opponents.

Bonus Fact: Baruch Goldstein and Meir Kahane are Deeply Unpopular in Israel

Breaking the Silence tours to Hebron actually start outside the city, in a park on the outskirts of the adjacent town of Kiryat Arba. There, participants are primed to focus almost exclusively on violence perpetrated by Jewish extremists by being shown the grave of a Jewish terrorist, Baruch Goldstein, in a park named after a deeply controversial, far-right Jewish politician.

Breaking the Silence guides have repeatedly told unsuspecting participants that each year, around Purim time (the anniversary of the attack) the words Baruch HaGever (literally “blessed is the man,”) are found in graffiti around the country. The words derive from the Bible but are taken as a reference to Baruch Goldstein, suggesting he is “the man.” Having never seen such graffiti in over 13 years living in Israel, this writer was skeptical. Nevertheless, it’s hard to reject such a claim out of hand – even if one person hasn’t witnessed such a thing, perhaps others have.

In an attempt to determine the veracity of the claim, HonestReporting took to social media to ask Israelis if they had ever seen such graffiti. The answers received failed to confirm Breaking the Silence’s assertion. A number of respondents told that they had seen such graffiti over a decade ago, but certainly nothing recent. Perhaps there are certain areas where the phenomenon persists, but the onus is now on Breaking the Silence to back up its claim.

What is certain, however, is that Breaking the Silence Hebron tours neglect to mention that the IDF refused to allow Goldstein to be buried in the city’s Jewish cemetery. It also fails to tell visitors to Hebron that a nearby shrine and prayer area in his memory were razed by the Israeli military in 1999 following a Supreme Court ruling and the passage of a law designed to prohibit monuments to terrorists.

Breaking the Silence tour guides attempt to portray Goldstein as a figure with popular support in Israel, but in reality his political party, Kach, was banned by the Israeli electoral committee for its racism. Its successor, Otzma L’Yisrael, later renamed Otzma Yehudit, has come under repeated attack from across the political spectrum for promoting a “fascist ideology”, and its leader, Michael Ben-Ari, was disqualified by the High Court from running in elections in 2019 over his anti-Arab ideology and incitement. The party subsequently failed to enter the Knesset, and when a repeat election was called some months later, Otzma Yehudit, was unable to agree a merger with any other party, significantly reducing its electoral prospects.

Unsurprisingly, Breaking the Silence do not make clear to tourists that these elements are very much on the outside of the Israeli political scene and cannot be seriously referred to as mainstream.

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