Claverhouse
Royalist Freicorps Feldgendarme
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The Gravest Misgivings
Musing on Waifin's thread about thecurrent Gaza Incident I wondered who could have taught the Israelis the winsome combination of self-defeating incompetence and savage brutality that is their hallmark in dealing with Palestinians. What early influences guide them ?
Not caring much about the region --- few people have ever decided, apart from those powers dedicated to protect the Holy Places from one another, to think this is where I want to live other than zionists and the previous inhabitants now crammed into the West Bank and Gaza --- I chose to look it up.
So we come to the British Mandate. Now all Britons know that they are firm, but fair, people; who held territories in trust for those peoples; wanted only to be respected --- unlike the Yanks, who demand also to be loved --- who are not cruel or brutal --- unlike those crude Russians or devilish Germans --- and whose rule was justified by the fact they were completely Dedicated to Spreading Democracy. The last is true, but is a Bad Thing.
The British had no actual need for Palestine, other than to deny strategically to others: it was not part of the Empire, neither a colony ( such as Australiasia or Canada ) where one put surplus population, nor a temporary possession ( such as India or Burma ) which one milked and provided slightly better rule than the native rulers could attempt. So, although there was some brutality in the last, particularly when the British panicked ( The Indian Mutiny had incidents on both sides that made the War Between the States and nazi occupation forces seem restrained ) there was rarely any need or opportunity for atrocity. General Dyer's massacre at Amritsar was not best practice, but it was understandable --- mobs can do terrifying things --- and, as usual in India carried out by native troops only too willing to do it. So, in the absence of economic need for restraint ( as in India etc. ) and a lack of respect for Palestinians, together with Britain's commitment to the Jewish People to provide a National Home For Imported Jews Somewhere Far Away, they rather let themselves go.
The rest is from Wiki. I will repeat however that if the top nazis in General Gouvernement Poland had tried any of this stuff, in addition to their murderous shootings and slave-camps, they would have lasted only half the time they did. Plus they were hung.
The role of the Mandate Government and the British Army
Military law allowed swift prison sentences to be passed. Thousands of Arabs were held in administrative detention, without trial, and without proper sanitation, in overcrowded prison camps.
The British had already formalised the principle of collective punishment in Palestine in the 1924-1925 Collective Responsibility and Punishment Ordinances and updated these ordinances in 1936 with the Collective Fines Ordinance. These collective fines (amounting to £1,000,000 over the revolt) eventually became a heavy burden for poor Palestinian villagers, especially when the army also confiscated livestock, destroyed properties, imposed long curfews and established police posts, demolished houses and detained some or all of the Arab men in distant detention camps.
Full martial law was not introduced but in a series of Orders in Council and Emergency Regulations, 1936–37 ‘statutory’ martial law, a stage between semi-military rule under civil powers and full martial law under military powers, and one in which the army and not the civil High Commissioner was pre-eminent was put in place. Following the Arab capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in October 1938, the army effectively took over Jerusalem and then all of Palestine.
The main form of collective punishment employed by the British forces was destruction of property. Sometimes entire villages were reduced to rubble, as happened to Mi'ar in October 1938; more often several prominent houses were blown up and others were trashed inside. The biggest single act of destruction occurred in Jaffa on June 16, 1936, when large gelignite charges were used to cut long pathways through the old city, destroying 220–240 buildings and rendering up to 6,000 Arabs homeless. Scathing criticism for this action from Palestine Chief Justice Sir Michael McDonnell was not well-received by the administration and the judge was soon removed from the country. Villages were also frequently punished by fines and confiscation of livestock. The British even used sea mines from the battleship HMS Malaya to destroy houses.
In addition to actions against property, a large amount of brutality by the British forces occurred, including beatings, torture and extrajudicial killings. A surprisingly large number of prisoners were "shot while trying to escape".Several incidents involved serious atrocities, such as massacres at al-Bassa and Halhul. Desmond Woods, an officer of the Royal Ulster Rifles, described the massacre at al-Bassa:
Despite these measures Lieutenant-General Haining, the General Officer Commanding, reported secretly to the Cabinet on 1 December 1938 that "practically every village in the country harbours and supports the rebels and will assist in concealing their identity from the Government Forces." Haining reported the method for searching villages:
In addition to actions against villages the British Army also conducted punitive actions in the cities. In Nablus in August 1938 almost 5,000 men were held in a cage for two days and interrogated one after another. During their detention the city was searched and then each of the detainees was marked with a rubber stamp on his release. At one point a night curfew was imposed on most of the cities.
It was common British army practice to make local Arabs ride with military convoys to prevent mine attacks and sniping incidents: soldiers would tie the hostages to the bonnets of lorries, or put them on small flatbeds on the front of trains. The army told the unfortunate victims that any of them who tried to run away would be shot. On the lorries, some soldiers would brake hard at the end of a journey and then casually drive over the hostage, killing or maiming him, as Arthur Lane, a Manchester Regiment private recalled:
Nevertheless, it has been argued that British behaviour overall was good compared to most other examples where a foreign army suppressed a popular insurgency.
I'm thinking Genghis Khan or Tamerlane...
Arab Investigation Centres
Arab Investigation Centres were torture centres established by the British administration during the 1936-1939 Great Arab Revolt in Mandate Palestine.
The Centres were established on the authority of Sir Charles Tegart, a senior police officer ‘headhunted’ from British India. Victims were waterboarded and generally given the ‘third degree’ until they ‘spilled the beans’. One such centre in a Jewish quarter of West Jerusalem was closed only after colonial official Edward Keith-Roach, the governor of Jerusalem, complained to the High Commissioner. Keith-Roach argued that ‘questionable practises’ were counter-productive both in terms of the information gathered and the effect on local people's confidence in the police. The Anglican Archdeacon in Palestine believed police abuses were the cause of the violence rather than a response to it. He detailed the daily complaints from Arabs of beatings at the hands of rampaging police officers in a letter to the Mandate Chief Secretary in 1936. An Anglican Chaplain in Haifa also wrote to the Lord Bishop in Jerusalem, Graham Brown, in December 1937 about an incident he witnessed in which a suspect whose teeth were already knocked out before he was brought into the station was given another brutal beating:
Arab prisoners jumped to their deaths from high windows to escape their captors, had their testicles tied with cord, were tortured with strips of wood with nails in, had wire tightened around their big toes, hair was torn from their faces and heads, special instruments were used to extract fingernails, red hot skewers were used on detainees, prisoners were sodomised, boiling oil and intoxicants were used on prisoners, as were electric shocks, and water was funnelled into suspects’ stomachs. There were also mock executions.
Despite protests and revulsion expressed even by British officials and Anglican clergy extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings and general violence remained commonplace responses by the police during the Arab revolt.
Claverhouse
Musing on Waifin's thread about the
Not caring much about the region --- few people have ever decided, apart from those powers dedicated to protect the Holy Places from one another, to think this is where I want to live other than zionists and the previous inhabitants now crammed into the West Bank and Gaza --- I chose to look it up.
So we come to the British Mandate. Now all Britons know that they are firm, but fair, people; who held territories in trust for those peoples; wanted only to be respected --- unlike the Yanks, who demand also to be loved --- who are not cruel or brutal --- unlike those crude Russians or devilish Germans --- and whose rule was justified by the fact they were completely Dedicated to Spreading Democracy. The last is true, but is a Bad Thing.
The British had no actual need for Palestine, other than to deny strategically to others: it was not part of the Empire, neither a colony ( such as Australiasia or Canada ) where one put surplus population, nor a temporary possession ( such as India or Burma ) which one milked and provided slightly better rule than the native rulers could attempt. So, although there was some brutality in the last, particularly when the British panicked ( The Indian Mutiny had incidents on both sides that made the War Between the States and nazi occupation forces seem restrained ) there was rarely any need or opportunity for atrocity. General Dyer's massacre at Amritsar was not best practice, but it was understandable --- mobs can do terrifying things --- and, as usual in India carried out by native troops only too willing to do it. So, in the absence of economic need for restraint ( as in India etc. ) and a lack of respect for Palestinians, together with Britain's commitment to the Jewish People to provide a National Home For Imported Jews Somewhere Far Away, they rather let themselves go.
The rest is from Wiki. I will repeat however that if the top nazis in General Gouvernement Poland had tried any of this stuff, in addition to their murderous shootings and slave-camps, they would have lasted only half the time they did. Plus they were hung.
The role of the Mandate Government and the British Army
Military law allowed swift prison sentences to be passed. Thousands of Arabs were held in administrative detention, without trial, and without proper sanitation, in overcrowded prison camps.
The British had already formalised the principle of collective punishment in Palestine in the 1924-1925 Collective Responsibility and Punishment Ordinances and updated these ordinances in 1936 with the Collective Fines Ordinance. These collective fines (amounting to £1,000,000 over the revolt) eventually became a heavy burden for poor Palestinian villagers, especially when the army also confiscated livestock, destroyed properties, imposed long curfews and established police posts, demolished houses and detained some or all of the Arab men in distant detention camps.
Full martial law was not introduced but in a series of Orders in Council and Emergency Regulations, 1936–37 ‘statutory’ martial law, a stage between semi-military rule under civil powers and full martial law under military powers, and one in which the army and not the civil High Commissioner was pre-eminent was put in place. Following the Arab capture of the Old City of Jerusalem in October 1938, the army effectively took over Jerusalem and then all of Palestine.
The main form of collective punishment employed by the British forces was destruction of property. Sometimes entire villages were reduced to rubble, as happened to Mi'ar in October 1938; more often several prominent houses were blown up and others were trashed inside. The biggest single act of destruction occurred in Jaffa on June 16, 1936, when large gelignite charges were used to cut long pathways through the old city, destroying 220–240 buildings and rendering up to 6,000 Arabs homeless. Scathing criticism for this action from Palestine Chief Justice Sir Michael McDonnell was not well-received by the administration and the judge was soon removed from the country. Villages were also frequently punished by fines and confiscation of livestock. The British even used sea mines from the battleship HMS Malaya to destroy houses.
In addition to actions against property, a large amount of brutality by the British forces occurred, including beatings, torture and extrajudicial killings. A surprisingly large number of prisoners were "shot while trying to escape".Several incidents involved serious atrocities, such as massacres at al-Bassa and Halhul. Desmond Woods, an officer of the Royal Ulster Rifles, described the massacre at al-Bassa:
Now I will never forget this incident .... We were at al-Malikiyya, the other frontier base and word came through about 6 o'clock in the morning that one of our patrols had been blown up and Millie Law [the dead officer] had been killed. Now Gerald Whitfeld [Lieutenant-Colonel G.H.P. Whitfeld, the battalion commander] had told these mukhtars that if any of this sort of thing happened he would take punitive measures against the nearest village to the scene of the mine. Well the nearest village to the scene of the mine was a place called al-Bassa and our Company C were ordered to take part in punitive measures. And I will never forget arriving at al-Bassa and seeing the Rolls Royce armoured cars of the 11th Hussars peppering Bassa with machine gun fire and this went on for about 20 minutes and then we went in and I remembered we had lighted braziers and we set the houses on fire and we burnt the village to the ground... Monty had him [the battalion commander] up and he asked him all about it and Gerald Whitfeld explained to him. He said "Sir, I have warned themukhtars in these villages that if this happened to any of my officers or men, I would take punitive measures against them and I did this and I would've lost control of the frontier if I hadn't." Monty said "All right but just go a wee bit easier in the future."
As well as destroying the village the RUR and men from the Royal Engineers collected around fifty men from al-Bassa and blew some of them up with explosion under a bus. Harry Arrigonie, a policeman who was present said that about twenty men were put onto a bus; those who tried to escape were shot and then the driver of the bus was forced to drive over a powerful land mine buried by the soldiers which completely destroyed the bus, scattering the mutilated bodies of the prisoners everywhere. The other villagers were then forced to bury the bodies in a pit.
Despite these measures Lieutenant-General Haining, the General Officer Commanding, reported secretly to the Cabinet on 1 December 1938 that "practically every village in the country harbours and supports the rebels and will assist in concealing their identity from the Government Forces." Haining reported the method for searching villages:
A cordon round the area to be searched is first established either by troops or aircraft and the inhabitants are warned that anybody trying to break through the cordon is likely to be shot. As literally hundreds of villages have been searched, in some cases more than once, during the past six months this procedure is well-known and it can be safely assumed that cordon-breakers have good reasons for wishing to avoid the troops. A number of such cordon-breakers have been shot during searches and it is probable that such cases form the basis of the propaganda that Arab prisoners are shot in cold blood and reported as "killed while trying to escape".After the cordon is established the troops enter the village and all male inhabitants are collected for identification and interrogation.
The report was issued in response to growing concern at the severity of the military measures amongst the general public in Great Britain, among members of the British Government, and among governments in countries neighbouring Palestine.
In addition to actions against villages the British Army also conducted punitive actions in the cities. In Nablus in August 1938 almost 5,000 men were held in a cage for two days and interrogated one after another. During their detention the city was searched and then each of the detainees was marked with a rubber stamp on his release. At one point a night curfew was imposed on most of the cities.
It was common British army practice to make local Arabs ride with military convoys to prevent mine attacks and sniping incidents: soldiers would tie the hostages to the bonnets of lorries, or put them on small flatbeds on the front of trains. The army told the unfortunate victims that any of them who tried to run away would be shot. On the lorries, some soldiers would brake hard at the end of a journey and then casually drive over the hostage, killing or maiming him, as Arthur Lane, a Manchester Regiment private recalled:
... when you'd finished your duty you would come away nothing had happened no bombs or anything and the driver would switch his wheel back and to make the truck waver and the poor wog on the front would roll off into the deck. Well if he was lucky he'd get away with a broken leg but if he was unlucky the truck behind coming up behind would hit him. But nobody bothered to pick up the bits they were left. You know we were there we were the masters we were the bosses and whatever we did was right .... Well you know you don't want him anymore. He's fulfilled his job. And that's when Bill Usher [the commanding officer] said that it had to stop because before long they'd be running out of bloody rebels to sit on the bonnet.
British troops also left Arab wounded on the battlefield to die and maltreated Arab fighters taken in battle, so much so that the rebels tried to remove their wounded or dead from the field of battle. Sometimes, soldiers would occupy villages, expel all of the inhabitants and remain for months. The Army even burned the bodies of "terrorists" to prevent their funerals becoming the focus of protests.
Nevertheless, it has been argued that British behaviour overall was good compared to most other examples where a foreign army suppressed a popular insurgency.
I'm thinking Genghis Khan or Tamerlane...
Arab Investigation Centres
Arab Investigation Centres were torture centres established by the British administration during the 1936-1939 Great Arab Revolt in Mandate Palestine.
The Centres were established on the authority of Sir Charles Tegart, a senior police officer ‘headhunted’ from British India. Victims were waterboarded and generally given the ‘third degree’ until they ‘spilled the beans’. One such centre in a Jewish quarter of West Jerusalem was closed only after colonial official Edward Keith-Roach, the governor of Jerusalem, complained to the High Commissioner. Keith-Roach argued that ‘questionable practises’ were counter-productive both in terms of the information gathered and the effect on local people's confidence in the police. The Anglican Archdeacon in Palestine believed police abuses were the cause of the violence rather than a response to it. He detailed the daily complaints from Arabs of beatings at the hands of rampaging police officers in a letter to the Mandate Chief Secretary in 1936. An Anglican Chaplain in Haifa also wrote to the Lord Bishop in Jerusalem, Graham Brown, in December 1937 about an incident he witnessed in which a suspect whose teeth were already knocked out before he was brought into the station was given another brutal beating:
A second man came in who was in plain clothes, but whom I took to be one of the British Police, and I saw him put a severe double arm lock on the man from behind, and then beat him about the head and body in what I can only describe as a brutal and callous way. Once or twice he stopped and turned to the other people in the station, and in an irresponsible and gloating manner said "I'm so sorry"—"I'm awfully sorry." And then proceeded to punch the prisoner round the station again. A third man came in. He was in plain clothes, and was wearing a soft felt hat. He was, I think, British, and may have been a member of the Police Force, but I thought at the time that he was a soldier in civilian clothes .... But this man also made a vicious and violent attack on the prisoner, and punched him about the head and body .... I am gravely disturbed at the possibility that one of the men who was in the station, and who beat up the first person who was brought in was not a member of the police force, but a soldier—this was the man who was wearing a soft felt trilby hat .... I was for two years Chaplain to a prison in England, and in the course of my duties not infrequently witnessed the methods which police and prison warders were compelled to use with men detained or serving long terms of imprisonment, and can only say what I saw on this occasion sickened me and filled me with the gravest misgivings.
Palestinians themselves also made complaints to the authorities. There are accounts in Arabic of suspects being tortured, being beaten until they were unable to walk, being blown to bits, being left in open cages in the sun without sustenance, being beaten with wet ropes, ‘boxed’ and having their teeth smashed, of having their feet burnt with oil and of ‘needles’ being used on suspects and of dogs being set upon Arab detainees. British and Jewish auxiliary forces maltreated Arabs by having them hold heavy stones and then beating them when they dropped them. Guards also used bayonets on sleep-deprived men and made them wear bells around their necks and then dance.
Arab prisoners jumped to their deaths from high windows to escape their captors, had their testicles tied with cord, were tortured with strips of wood with nails in, had wire tightened around their big toes, hair was torn from their faces and heads, special instruments were used to extract fingernails, red hot skewers were used on detainees, prisoners were sodomised, boiling oil and intoxicants were used on prisoners, as were electric shocks, and water was funnelled into suspects’ stomachs. There were also mock executions.
Despite protests and revulsion expressed even by British officials and Anglican clergy extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings and general violence remained commonplace responses by the police during the Arab revolt.
Claverhouse
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