[News] Palestinians deserve reparations for Britain's colonial crimes

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/britain-palestine-balfour-colonial-crimes-reparations>
Palestinians
deserve reparations for Britain's colonial crimes
Joseph Massad - October 29, 2021
------------------------------

Palestinian billionaire Munib Masri recently announced
<https://www.alquds.co.uk/%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%85%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%8A%D8%AA%D8%AD/>
his intention to sue the British government over its issuance of the
1917 Balfour
Declaration
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/balfour-declaration-enduring-colonial-criminality>
and the crimes it committed during its colonial occupation of Palestine
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine>, declaring his hope
that the fairness of the British legal system would finally force the
British to apologise.

This was not the first such attempt: in 2017, the Palestinian Authority
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-authority-uk-balfour-declaration-israel-sue-israel-zionism-refuse-apologise-lawsuit-a7702866.html>
threatened to sue Britain if it did not apologise for the declaration. In
response, the government issued a statement saying it was “proud
<https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-authority-uk-balfour-declaration-israel-sue-israel-zionism-refuse-apologise-lawsuit-a7702866.html>”
of Britain’s role in the creation of Israel.

But is an apology really what Palestinians need from Britain, which
conquered and occupied Palestine for three decades, during which it opened
the country to Jewish colonists, leading to the theft of the Palestinian
homeland
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/4/10/how-britain-destroyed-the-palestinian-homeland>?
What about the atrocities that Britain committed against the Palestinian
people during this period, especially during their great revolt of 1936-39
<https://www.britannica.com/place/Palestine/The-Arab-Revolt>? Should
Palestinians not demand reparations?

Would not the money of Palestinian billionaires be better spent in pursuit
of reparations for the Palestinian people, rather than a meaningless
apology?

The Kenyans <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22790037> did so recently and
continue
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/23/mau-mau-rebellion-kenyan-victims-compensation-claim>
to
pursue their demands for reparations for the horrifying and cruel
oppression and torture to which Britain subjected the Mau Mau
revolutionaries in the 1950s. Would not the money of Palestinian
billionaires be better spent in pursuit of reparations for the Palestinian
people, rather than a meaningless apology?

Britain’s horrific suppression of the Palestinian revolt was of a different
order than its repression of Palestinian resistance in the 1920s and the
first half of the 1930s. The Palestinian media at the time, along with
Palestinian historians and revolutionaries, documented many of these
atrocities, as did the British and international press of the period.

One of its earliest and most egregious acts of wanton destruction was the
British military’s blowing up
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
in June 1936 of significant parts of the old city in downtown Jaffa, which
was then the major Palestinian commercial and cultural centre
<https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/palestineremix/lost-cities-of-palestine.html#/10>,
to make room for military vehicles and to prevent revolutionaries from
hiding in its narrow alleys. The British also destroyed parts of the rural
town of Jenin in October 1938 in pursuit of putting down the revolt.

British repression also included banning
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
Palestinian nationalist songs, flags and anti-colonial processions;
censoring or closing newspapers; and deporting foreign journalists
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/britains-pacification-of-palestine/screwing-down-the-population/4BA647D9F193F08107F47DF7F2F22611>
covering the atrocities.
Severe torture

In Nazareth in 1937, Palestinian militants assassinated the district
commissioner for Galilee, Lewis Andrews
<https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lewis-andrews>, and his British
bodyguard. Andrews, an Australian Protestant Zionist who had supported
Jewish colonisation of the Galilee, was deeply loathed by Palestinians. The
assassins were apprehended by the British, who arrested
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
hundreds of Palestinians in the process and subjected them to severe
torture, including sexual violence
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
and rape against women and men.

Another Australian
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
who
worked for the mandate reportedly went out in Jerusalem with revolver in
hand, shooting all Palestinians in sight in revenge for the death of his
compatriot. The British covered up
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
his
murder spree and sent him back to the Australian settler-colony.

Palestinian political prisoner Subhi
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Desiring_Arabs/TMnMC1vlxVMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=subhi>
al-Khadra
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Desiring_Arabs/TMnMC1vlxVMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=subhi>
described such torture in this August 1938 account: “The types of torture
employed are varied. They include beatings with fists and [stomping] with
boots … as well as using canes for beating and flogging to death … They
also included the starving of dogs and then provoking them and pushing them
to devour his flesh … [Another form of torture included the soldiers]
sodomizing them, as it seems that this was done to a number of people.”

Khadra
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Desiring_Arabs/TMnMC1vlxVMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=subhi>
added that the torture methods were motivated by “vengeance and a release
of the most savage and barbaric of instincts and of the concentrated spirit
of hatred that these rednecks feel towards Muslims and Arabs. They mean to
torture for the sake of torture and to satisfy their appetite for
vengeance, not for the sake of an investigation nor to expose crimes.”

[image: A British soldier aims a machine gun in Jerusalem during the
British mandate (AFP)]
A British soldier aims a machine gun in Jerusalem during the British
mandate (AFP)

Collective punishment against Palestinian towns and villages became uniform
through the use of extrajudicial executions and mass demolition of
Palestinian homes. British historian Matthew Hughes
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
has documented many of these horrors in his book on Britain’s
“pacification” of Palestine, noting that the use of white-supremacist
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
language against revolutionaries was commonplace among soldiers and
officers. Palestinian civilians were used as human shields
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
to protect British soldiers on trains and military vehicles. Palestinian
detainees were incarcerated in cages
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
under the sun, where many died of thirst and exposure.

The British also used forced labour
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
to compel Palestinian prisoners to build roads, and imposed financial
penalties
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
on their families. Palestinians were placed in concentration camps
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
and behind barbed wire in Jewish colonies, where the colonists would
humiliate them.

Hughes
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
reveals that “soldiers and police detained 528,000 people, for varying
periods of time from days to years, some imprisoned more than once, in
varying places, and this total - that exceeds the entire Muslim male
population of Palestine in 1938 - omits any detentions from December 1936
to August 1937. It equals 37 per cent of the entire population of Palestine
in 1938.”
Repression and massacres

In September 1938, the Royal Ulster Rifles
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
soldiers massacred Palestinians in al-Bassa village, following the killing
of four soldiers by a land mine placed by militants outside the village,
and survivors were forced to dig a mass grave for the victims, before the
soldiers burnt al-Bassa to the ground.

Other massacres
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
followed in the towns of Halhul and Bayt Rima. A British army officer wrote
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
in 1938 after the killing of two soldiers from the Royal Scots, which was
punished by blowing up half a Palestinian village: “Our only regrets are
that we have not been allowed to flatten the whole village ... I am sure
it’s the only way to deal with these people.”

The British also enlisted the help of Jewish colonists in repressing and
killing Palestinians, employing massive numbers of Jewish police
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>.
One of the more spectacular acts of collaboration was through the Special
Night Squads, organised by British officer Orde Wingate
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
in 1938. These death squads summarily killed Palestinians; men were lined
up outside in villages, and the squads
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
would shoot dead every eighth man to instil terror in the rest.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/britain-has-much-apologise-palestine>

Britain has much to apologise for in Palestine

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/britain-has-much-apologise-palestine>

After a Palestinian attack on Jewish colonists in Tiberias, the Jewish
death squads machine-gunned Palestinian residents of the village of
Daburiyyah
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>,
who had nothing to do with the attack. They whipped
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
villagers and put oil-soaked earth in their mouths after militants blew up
the British-owned Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline.

All in all, by the time the British crushed the revolt completely in 1939,
up to 9,000
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
Palestinians had been killed (including around 1,500 killed by militants
for allegedly collaborating with the British and the Zionists), and more
than 20,000
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
were
wounded. British military tribunals sentenced 110 Palestinian
revolutionaries to death, and they were hanged
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Britain_s_Pacification_of_Palestine/r1N-DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hughes,+Britain%E2%80%99s+Pacification+of+Palestine&printsec=frontcover>
.

Given this horrific British record of atrocities, would a mere apology be
sufficient? Rather than pursuing lawsuits to extract an unlikely apology
from an unrepentant colonial power such as Britain, the proper course of
action should be to demand reparations for the crimes committed and
destruction wrought by the British against the Palestinian people. This
could include lawsuits against corporations, banks and insurance companies
that were complicit in these atrocities.

While one might admire the octogenarian Masri
<https://www.alquds.co.uk/%D8%B1%D8%AC%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%B9%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%85%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%8A%D8%AA%D8%AD/>’s
commitment and pledge “to restore my rights and the rights of my people
before I die” on this upcoming anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, his
money and efforts would be better spent to benefit the Palestinian people
by demanding reparations and financial penalties, rather than a mere
apology.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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