The High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, has given a pardon to four Arabs from Safed who were convicted for being concerned in the death of several Jews during the massacre in August 1929. Three of them, Haj Khalil Gheinan, Shukhi Ibrahim Khaled and Abdul Rani Kadoura, were serving life-terms for burning down the homes of the Jews Brenzin and Goldzweig, causing an aged Jewess, Scheindel Goldzweig to be burnt to death. The fourth prisoner, Salim Bastouni, was originally sentenced to a term of 15 years imprisonment for burning down the house of the Jewish family Segal, but the sentence was afterwards reduced to five years. All four are stated to be over the age of 70, and released for this reason.
Solomon Goldzweig, the husband of the woman who was burnt to death, a man of over 72 years of age, when he appeared as a witness at the trial, refused to answer to questions put to him in Arabic, saying that it was the language of murderers. These people, he said, have been my neighbours, and I have been their friend for many years, and now they have left me widowed, desolate and brokenhearted. He had left his house when the riots began, he said, in order to ask a neighbour what he could do to assure the safety of his wife and himself. Suddenly he saw his own house surrounded by a mob setting fire to it. When he managed to make his way into the house he found his wife already dead.
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.
