The citation in the “Official Gazette,” conferring the King’s police medal upon Cafferata, Assistant Superintendent of Police at Hebron, reads as follows:
“He displayed conspicuous gallantry in keeping at bay single-handed several hundred armed, excited Arabs, who attacked the Jewish quarter, on which they inflicted heavy casualties, thereby stopping and preventing further attacks on the Jews of Hebron.”
Far from admitting the gallantry of Cafferata, before whose eyes sixty Jews were killed and scores wounded, the Hebron refugees here charge him with inability, after giving Jewish representatives positive assurance that nothing would happen to them if they remained indoors.
Major Saunders, Deputy Commandant of Police, was similarly decorated because “during the period between August 28 and the arrival of the troops, by his dispositions, energy and example did admirable work in controlling the situation with the forces at his disposal,” the citation declares.
The question was also raised as to why the citation referred to Cafferata’s keeping the Arabs at bay “single handed,” when he had at his disposal more than twenty Arab police, and why he did not control them, and why they were powerless to prevent the massacre.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
