19 December 1937 On 19 December 1937, Constable Sydney Burr, based at Haifa in the British mandate of Palestine, wrote home to his parents describing the extrajudicial executions of Arabs suspected of participating in an insurgency against British rule. After expressing his disappointment at the ‘military courts’ which were ‘being so lenient and want too…
27 November 1937 At 8 am on the morning of Saturday 27 November 1937, Sheikh Farhan al-Sa’di, an Arab village elder, was executed by hanging at the crusader castle at Acre. Described in the British press as ‘a picturesque figure, six foot tall and bearded’ and as ‘one of the most notorious trouble makers in…
9 November 1917 On 9 November 1917, The Times published a letter, now remembered as the Balfour Declaration, which Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour had written a week earlier to Lord Rothschild. In it, he promised to back, ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’ Although it also stated that ‘nothing…
6 November 1937 On Saturday 6 November 1937, an officer in the North Staffordshire Regiment recorded in his diary how soldiers of the Black Watch beat twelve Arab villagers to death with their rifle butts in the Palestinian village of Silwan.1Â The incident occurred while troops were being deployed to crush an Arab rebellion against…
27 October 1933 On 27 October 1933, a large crowd of Arab protesters assembled in Jaffa’s central square. They were outraged at injustices committed by a British run administration, which refused to listen to the wishes of the Arab Palestinians who still numbered over three quarters of the country’s population. In particular, they were angry…
26 October 1938 On 26 October 1938, journalists were driven out to the Palestinian village of Mi’ar, east of Acre, to witness ‘a punitive measure.’ Arthur Merton, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, described it as a village ‘with a population of about 500… perched on a hill, looking most innocent with its clean white houses,’…
20 October 1938 Captain Orde windgate is still lauded as a hero who led daring raiding operations behind the Japanese lines in Burma during the Second World War. As tourists gaze up at his memorial, which stands just a two minute walk from Big Ben, few will be aware of the ugly reputation he earned…
3 October 1938 On 3 October 1938, Special Night Squad (SNS) soldiers, composed of British troops alongside Jewish auxiliary forces, commanded by Captain Orde Wingate, launched a surprise punitive attack on the villagers of Daburiyya in northern Palestine. The raid followed an Arab terror assault the previous evening on the town of Tiberias, killing 19…
18 September 1936 On 18 September 1936, Lieutenant General John Dill, who had arrived in Jerusalem five days earlier to take command of British forces in Palestine, informed Sir Cyril Deverell, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, that he intended to use Arab prisoners as hostages to protect military convoys from the threat of…
7 September 1938 Shortly before the dawn on the morning of 7 September 1938, a company of the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR), backed by several Rolls Royce armoured cars belonging to the 11th Hussars, surrounded the Palestinian village of al-Bassa, a large settlement of about two thousand Christian and Muslim Arabs located near the Lebanese…
