A pogrom[a] is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews.[1] The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement).
Arabs wouldn’t have called something like the 1929 Palestine riots a “pogrom” or a “riot”, because they didn’t speak English, French, Yiddish, or Russian. Things have different names in different languages. They call it the Thawrat al-Burāq.
In English, we might use either the more specific Russian loanword pogrom, or the more general French loanwords riot or massacre. Labeling something a riot doesn’t mean it has to have been done by the French, and labeling something a pogrom doesn’t mean it has to have been done by the Russians, even if that’s the origin of the loanword…
Notice the sentence right above that:
Arabs wouldn’t have called something like the 1929 Palestine riots a “pogrom” or a “riot”, because they didn’t speak English, French, Yiddish, or Russian. Things have different names in different languages. They call it the Thawrat al-Burāq.
In English, we might use either the more specific Russian loanword pogrom, or the more general French loanwords riot or massacre. Labeling something a riot doesn’t mean it has to have been done by the French, and labeling something a pogrom doesn’t mean it has to have been done by the Russians, even if that’s the origin of the loanword…