Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 19:26:52 -0400
From: bobhunt@erols.com
Subject: [libs4peace] (fwd) How the British fought terror in Jenin
To: Individual-Sovereignty@yahoogroups.com, libs4peace@yahoogroups.com ("Libertarians 4Peace")



GUEST COLUMN: How the British fought terror in Jenin

By Rafael Medoff

April, 18 2002

(April 18) 'Demolishing the homes of Arab civilians...  Shooting
handcuffed prisoners...  Forcing local Arabs to test areas where mines
may have been planted..."

These sound like the sort of accusations made by British and other
European officials concerning Israel's recent actions in Jenin.  In
fact, they are descriptions from official British documents concerning
the methods used by the British authorities to combat Palestinian Arab
terrorism in Jenin and elsewhere in 1938.

The documents were declassified by London in 1989.  They provide details
of the British Mandatory government's response to the assassination of a
British district commissioner by a Palestinian Arab terorist in Jenin
in the summer of 1938.

Even after the suspected assassin was captured (and then shot dead while
allegedly trying to escape), the British authorities decided that "a
large portion of the town should be blown up" as punishment.  On August
25 of that year, a British convoy brought 4,200 kilos of explosives to
Jenin for that purpose.

In the Jenin operation and on other occasions, local Arabs were forced
to drive "mine-sweeping taxis" ahead of British vehicles in areas where
Palestinian Arab terrorists were believed to have planted mines, in
order "to reduce [British] landmine casualties."

The British authorities frequently used these and similar methods to
combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in the late 1930s.

BRITISH forces responded to the presence of terrorists in the Arab
village of Miar, north of Haifa, by blowing up house after house in
October 1938.

"When the troops left, there was little else remaining of the once-busy
village except a pile of mangled masonry," The New York Times reported.

The declassified documents refer to an incident in Jaffa in which a
handcuffed prisoner was shot by the British police.

Under Emergency Regulation 19b, the British Mandate government could
demolish any house located in a village where terrorists resided, even
if that particular house had no direct connection to terrorist
activity.  Mandate official Hugh Foot later recalled: "When we thought
that a village was harboring rebels, we'd go there and mark one of the
large houses.  Then, if an incident was traced to that village, we'd
blow up the house we'd marked."

The High Commissioner for Palestine, Harold MacMichael, defended the
practice: "The provision is drastic, but the situation has demanded
drastic powers."

MacMichael was furious over what he called the "grossly exaggerated
accusations" that England's critics were circulating concerning British
anti-terror tactics in Palestine.  Arab allegations that British
soldiers gouged out the eyes of Arab prisoners were quoted prominently
in the Nazi German press and elsewhere.

The declassified documents also record discussions among officials of
the Colonial Office concerning the rightness or wrongness of the
anti-terror methods used in Palestine.  Lord Dufferin remarked: "British
lives are being lost and I don't think that we, from the security of
Whitehall, can protest squeamishly about measures taken by the men in
the frontline."

Sir John Shuckburgh defended the tactics on the grounds that the British
were confronted "not with a chivalrous opponent playing the game
according to the rules, but with gangsters and murderers."

There were many differences between British policy in the 1930s and
Israeli policy today, but one stands out - the British, faced with a
level of Palestinian Arab terrorism considerably less lethal than that
which Israel faces today, utilized anti-terror methods considerably
harsher than those used by Israeli forces.

The writer is visiting scholar in the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY.



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