frandroid

I have a bunch of library books I'm not reading, but now Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine has come through and there's a super long queue for the holds, so I *HAVE* to read it. So I've decided to read a chapter a day. In Chapter 2, he describes the Great Revolt of 1936-39 against the British Mandate, and the British response. It has uncanny similarities with the current war on Gaza.

Well over a hundred such sentences of execution were handed down after summary trials by military tribunals, with many more Palestinians executed on the spot by British troops.* Infuriated by rebels ambushing their convoys and blowing up their trains, the British resorted to tying Palestinian prisoners to the front of armored cars and locomotives to prevent rebel attack, a tactic they had pioneered in a futile effort to crush resistance of the Irish during their war of independence from 1919 to 1921. Demolitions of the homes of imprisoned or executed rebels, or of presumed rebels or their relatives, was routine, another tactic borrowed from the British playbook developed in Ireland. Two other imperial practices employed extensively in repressing the Palestinians were the detention of thousands without trial and the exile of troublesome leaders.

* For a chilling account of arbitrary summary executions of Palestinians by mixed units of British soldiers and Zionist militiamen under the command of Orde Wingate see Segev, One Palestine, Complete, 429-32. Wingate comes off as a murderous psychopath in Segev’s account; he adds that some of his men privately considered him to be mad. The Israeli Ministry of Defense later said of him: "The teaching of Orde Charles Wingate, his character and leadership were a cornerstone for many of the Haganah’s commanders, and his influence can be seen in the Israel Defense Force's combat doctrine"