Attacks on Jews have again occurrred in Damascus. A number of Jews have been injured. Fifteen of the aggressors have been arrested.
About a fortnight ago (reported in the J.T.A. Bulletin of the 16th. inst.) three Jews were badly beaten in Damascus by Arabs, and police reinforcements had to be sent into the Jewish quarter to protect the Jewish population. Leaflets calling upon the population to boycott the Jews were distributed among the Arab population, the report added, creating an atmosphere of intense hostility against the Jewish population.
Anti-Jewish demonstrations occurred in Damascus in 1925, when Lord Balfour visited the city after he had opened the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the military had to be called out to disperse the rioters, who shouted “Down with the Balfour Declaration!”, demanding a united Syria, including Palestine.
The “Times” commenting on the riots at the time wrote that there was no “Jewish question” in Damascus, and suggested that they were “obviously organised in advance”, the “work of Arab Nationalists”.
A year later, during Passover 1926, there was an attempted blood libel in Damascus, an accusation being made against the Jews that they had killed a Christian boy to obtain his blood for Passover ritual.
In March of the present year, there was an attempt to start a blood libel in Aleppo, another important city in Syria.
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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.
