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On May 1, 1921, a scuffle began in Tel Aviv-Jaffa between rival groups of Jewish Bolsheviks, carrying Yiddish banners demanding Soviet Palestine, and Socialists parading on May Day.
The neighboring Arabs who witnessed the incident, took this opportunity to attack Jewish shops and homes. They were joined by armed Arab policemen. The pogroms continued until May 7 and spread as far as Petah Tikva, Kfar Saba, Rehovot and other Jewish communities.
Fatalities were: 47 Jews, 48 Arabs. Wounded: 146 Jews, 73 Arabs.
After the riots, thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv, and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach.
The newspaper Kuntress whose author and co-editor Joseph Chaim Brenner was one of the victims, published an article Entrenchment: "on May 1 the age of innocence had ended."
The administration has made some arrests. After international outcry, the arrested Jews were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.
The Arab leaders submitted a petition to the League of Nations in which they expressed their grievances.
The high commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine Sir Herbert Samuel established an investigative commission headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Palestine Sir Thomas Haycroft. Its report has confirmed the Arab policemen's participation in the riots and also has deemed the actions taken by the authorities adequate. The report angered both Jews and Arabs: it placed the blame on the Arabs, but said that "Zionists were not doing enough to mitigate the Arabs' apprehensions".
In his speech on the occasion of royal birthday in June 1921, Samuel stressed the Britain's commitment to the second part of the Balfour Declaration and declared that Jewish immigration would be allowed only to the extent that it did not burden the economy. The Jewish immigration was suspended.
The Britain's policy regarding promise to establish Jewish National Home in Palestine, the reason behind the Mandate given them by the League of Nations, has changed by "fixing by the numbers and interests of the present population" the future Jewish immigration. A popular contemporary comment was that Samuel had revised the Balfour Declaration to mean the Jewish National Home had become the Arab National Home.
New bloody riots broke out in Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem on November 2, 1921, when five Jewish residents and three Arab attackers were killed.
Tel Aviv had been a bedroom community at the time of the Jaffa riots, with its workers commuting to Jaffa. However, when Jews started perceiving Jaffa as a hostile place due to the riots, they decided to develop a business district in downtown Tel Aviv, which eventually became renowned for its Bauhaus architecture.
See also
References - ISBN 1566631890 Weathered by Miracles: A history of Palestine from Bonaparte and Muhammad Ali to Ben-Gurion and the mufti (by Thomas A. Idinopulos)
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