11 AUGUST
FO MEMO – DON’T CONSULT ARABS – ZIONISM IS ‘OF FAR PROFOUNDER IMPORT.’
[ 11 August 1919 ]
Today in 1919, Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour addressed a secret memo to Lord Curzon, Leader of the House of Lords, for circulation among cabinet ministers. It explained that ‘in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.’1
THREE SHOT DEAD AND ANOTHER DIES AFTER A MOCK EXECUTION IN BELFAST
[ 11 August 1971 ]
On 11 August 1971, three men became the last of ten innocent civilians shot dead by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment in West Belfast, during a three day round up of men under emergency powers of detainment. Two days earlier, 600 troops of the First Battalion had been ordered to search the Ballymurphy estate. They went house by house, kicking in or shooting down doors and dragging men from their beds.
The area was still flooded with troops on 11th when two civilians, John Laverty, 20 years and Joseph Corr, 43 years, were fatally injured by live fire in Whitecliff Parade. On the same day, John McKerr, 49 years, was also gunned down while working at Corpus Christi Church and Paddy McCarthy, a 44 year old community worker, died of a heart attack after soldiers subjected him to a mock execution.2 Six other innocent civilians, including Father Hugh Mullan, a Catholic priest, had been shot dead at Ballymurphy on the first day of the searches on 9 August and another, Edward Doherty, 31 years, was killed near a barricade on the nearby Whiterock Road on the 10th.
[ see also 9 August 1971 ]
FOOTNOTES
- Myra Immell, Perspectives on Modern World History: The Creation of the State of Israel, Greenhaven Press, Missouri, 2010, p. 130.
- Sofia Petkar, “Troubles Tragedy: What happened in the Ballymurphy Massacre of 1971 and how many people were killed in Belfast’s Bloody Sunday,” The Sun, 8 September 2018, accessed online at url https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7208655/ballymurphy-massacre-1971-belfast-bloody-sunday/
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