[4] Another large May Day parade had also been organized for Tel Aviv by the rival socialist Ahdut HaAvoda group, with official authorization.
A fourteen-year-old girl and some men managed to escape the building, but each was in turn chased down and beaten to death with iron rods or wooden boards.
[6][2] As in the previous year's Nebi Musa riots, the mob tore open their victims' quilts and pillows, sending up clouds of feathers.
Armed with automatic weapons, at least one group of Haganah militants broke into Arab homes with instructions to "destroy everything, sparing only small children."
The chief force behind the creation of the Haganah, Eliyahu Golomb, reported that at least one of the group's militants had killed a disabled Arab and his children in an orange grove.
Several Jews were arrested, including one policeman, for their suspected involvement in the shooting of Arab civilians, but were not charged due to lack of evidence.
[2] High Commissioner Herbert Samuel declared a state of emergency, imposed press censorship, and called for reinforcements from Egypt.
Samuel assented, and two or three small boats holding 300 Jews were refused permission to land, and were forced to return to Istanbul.
[3] Thousands of Jewish residents of Jaffa fled for Tel Aviv and were temporarily housed in tent camps on the beach.
The newspaper HaTzfira reported that meetings across the country had been postponed, all parties and celebration had been cancelled and schools closed for four days.
[10] The newspaper Kuntress, whose author and co-editor Yosef Haim Brenner was one of the victims of the riots, published an article entitled Entrenchment.
The article expressed the view that the Jews' outstretched hand had been spurned but that they would only redouble their efforts to survive as a self-reliant community.
Although the Supreme Court ultimately acquitted them on grounds of self-defence, the incident served to continue the crisis of confidence between the Jewish community and the British administration.
Toufiq Bey al-Said, who resigned from the Jaffa police, was shot in the street; his assassin was dispatched by veterans of Hashomer in retribution for Brenner's murder, though another Jewish man was wrongly accused and acquitted.