Part I: Stateless -- The floating palace -- The all-too-promised land -- The grand Mufti -- Memphis meets Palestine -- City of Abraham -- Breathing holy air -- A premonition -- It won't happen here -- Prelude to a massacre -- Black Sabbath -- Mourner's Kaddish -- The list -- Red Tuesday -- Revolution -- The first two-state solution -- The Mufti and the Führer -- Army of the holy war -- Between independence and catastrophe -- Ingathering of the exiles -- Part II: Homeland -- The first settler -- Revenge of renewal -- The mayor -- Heirs to the Mufti -- A day at the museum -- A tale of two Hebrons -- Kahane lives -- Warning signs -- The Al-Asqa flood -- Hostage nation -- To the grave

"In 1929, in the sacred city of Hebron--then governed by the British Mandate of Palestine--there was no occupation, state of Israel, or settlers. Jews and Muslims lived peacefully near the burial place of Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish and Arab nations, until one Saturday morning when nearly 70 Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors. The Hebron massacre was a seminal event in the Arab-Israeli conflict, key to understanding its complexities. The echoes of 1929 in Hamas's massacre of October 7, 2023, illustrate how little has changed--and how much of our perspective must change if peace is ever to come to this tortured land and its people, who are destined to share it. Noted journalist Yardena Schwartz draws on her extensive research and wide-ranging interviews with both sides to tell a timely, eye-opening story. She expertly weaves the war between Israel and Hamas into a historical framework, demonstrating how the conflict today cannot be understood without the context of ground zero of this century-old war, which began long before the occupation, the settlements, or the state of Israel ever existed."--