How can we see the Palestine- Israel conflict from a Qur'an alone perspective

[almarh0m]

Craig Murray: Worse Than You Can Imagine
April 26, 2024
Save
The author has no doubt the Western political elite are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians at a much deeper level than the people have yet understood.


Sunak and Netanyahu in Israel, Oct. 19, 2023. (No. 10/Wikimedia Commons)

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk



Governments cannot take big decisions extremely quickly except in the most extreme of circumstances.

There are mechanisms in all states that consider policy decisions, weigh them up, involve the various departments of the state whose activities are affected by that decision, and arrive at a conclusion, though not necessarily a good one.

The decision to stop aid funding to UNRWA, the specialized U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians, was not taken by numerous Western states in a single day.

In the U.K., several different government ministries had to coordinate.

Even within only a single ministry, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO,), views would have to be coordinated through written submissions and interdepartmental meetings between the departments dealing with the Middle East, with the United Nations, with the United States, with Europe and then of course between the diplomatic and development wings of the ministry.

That process would include seeking the views of British ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Doha, Cairo, Riyadh, Istanbul and Washington and to the United Nations in Geneva and in New York.

It is not necessarily a lengthy process but it is not a day's work, and nor would it need to be. There was no practical impact to making the announcement of cutting UNRWA funding a day sooner or a day later.

Consider that the parallel process had to be completed in the United States, in Canada, in Germany, in Australia and in all the other Western powers that contributed to starvation in Gaza by cutting aid to UNRWA.

All of these countries had to go through their procedures, and it could only be by prior coordination – weeks in advance – between these states that they announced all on the same day the destruction of the life support system for Palestinians, then in absolute need.

And then consider that we now know for certain that the Israelis had produced no evidence whatsoever of UNRWA complicity in Hamas resistance, on which these decisions in all those states were allegedly based.

I have no doubt at all that the Western political elite, paid tools of the zionist machine, are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and ethnic cleansing of Gaza at a much deeper level than the people have yet understood.

The refusal by Labour leader Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to contemplate ending arms sales and military support to Israel is not due to inertia or concern for the arms industry. It is that they actively support the destruction of the Palestinians.

Within an Hour


British barrister Malcom Shaw arguing for Israel before the World Court on Jan 12, 2024. (UN TV Screenshot)

The coordinated decision of the Western nations to fast track famine by stopping UNRWA funding was announced within an hour of the ICJ ruling that Gazans were at immediate risk of genocide, driving from the headlines that adverse ruling against Israel.

This sent the clearest signal in response that the Western powers would not be stopped from genocide by international law or institutions.

The Western powers give not a fig for 16,000 massacred Palestinian infants. No evidence of mass graves in hospitals will move them. They knew genocide was happening and continued actively to arm and abet it.

This genocide is the desired goal of the West. No other explanation is remotely plausible.

I have never believed the spin that Joe Biden is trying to restrain Benjamin Netanyahu, while simultaneously arming and funding Netanyahu and using U.S. forces to fight alongside him.

Biden is making no effort to restrain Netanyahu. Biden fully supports the genocide.

My reading of this was reinforced when I was looking back at the Israeli murders on the Mavi Mamara in 2010, when they killed ten unarmed aid workers attempting a Freedom Flotilla aid delivery to Gaza.

Israel's actions were clearly both murderous and in breach of international law. Biden as vice president defended Israel staunchly then.  It is essential to understand that Genocide Joe has always been Genocide Joe. I wrote:

"Joe Biden took the lead in defending the raid to the U.S. public. In an interview with PBS, he described the raid as 'legitimate' and argued that the flotilla organizers could have disembarked elsewhere before transferring the aid to Gaza.

'So what's the big deal here? What's the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?' Biden asked about the humanitarian mission. 'Well, it's legitimate for Israel to say, 'I don't know what's on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people.'"

Biden is not being outplayed by Netanyahu. He is actively abetting Netanyahu and shares with him the objective of full Israeli occupation of Gaza after the Palestinian people are killed or expelled into Sinai.

He also shares with Netanyahu the aim of a wider regional conflict in which the U.S. and Gulf states ally with Israel against Iran, Syria, Yemen and Hezbollah. This is their joint vision of the Middle East – Greater Israel, and U.S. hegemony operating through the Sunni monarchies.

"This genocide is the desired goal of the West. No other explanation is remotely plausible."

If you believe all the spin from the White House about Biden trying to restrain Netanyahu, I suggest you look instead at the White House and State Department spokesmen refusing to accept any single instance of Israeli atrocity and deferring to Israel on every single crime.

I am currently in Pakistan, and I must say it has been a great refreshment to be in a country where everybody understands why ISIS, Al Nusra etc. never attacked Israeli interests, and sees precisely what Western governments are doing over Gaza. What is understood by developing nations is thankfully understood by Gen Z in the West as well.

The Arab regimes of the Gulf and Jordan are dependent upon Israeli and U.S. security services and surveillance for protection from their own people.

The lack of really massive street protest against their own regimes by Arab peoples is a direct testimony to the effectiveness of that vicious repression, particularly when states like Jordan actually fight alongside Israel against Iranian weapons.

The anti-Iranian card is of course the trick both Biden and Netanyahu have left to play. By promoting an escalation with Iran, Western politicians were able to default to a position of claiming the case for arming Israel was proven – and I think were genuinely perplexed to find the public did not buy it.

The political class, across the Western world and the Arab world, is utterly divorced from its people over Gaza.

We are seeing worldwide repression, as peaceful conferences are stormed by police in Germany, students are beaten by police on American campuses, and in the U.K. old white people like me suffer the kind of continual harassment long suffered by young Muslim men.

This is not the work of Netanyahu operating as a rogue. It is the result of the machinations of a professional political class across the Western world welded to zionism, with the supremacy of Israel as an article of fundamental belief.

Times are not this dark by accident. They were designed to be this dark.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 Post Views: 807
Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu Craig Murray Gaza Genocide Joe Biden Keir Starmer

[111111]

peace:

How can we see the Palestine- Israel conflict from a Qur'an alone perspective

a clear question is stated and the hypocrite only speak of the nonsense of good and evil, peace and love, love each other.

What the quran ordains in a situation like the current one:

4:75And what is it with you? You do not fight in the cause of Allah and for oppressed men, women, and children who cry out, "Our Lord! Deliver us from this land of oppressors! Appoint for us a saviour; appoint for us a helper—all by Your grace."
4:76Believers fight for the cause of Allah, whereas disbelievers fight for the cause of the Devil. So fight against Satan's ˹evil˺ forces. Indeed, Satan's schemes are ever weak.

that if the palestinians were Muslim. but they are a people living on tradition rather than the word of Allah in quran and previous scriptures. they are more alike to the jews.

Mslim are the aouther layers of bark of the tree of Allah. Mumin are the core. the hypocrite are the dirt that adderes to the bark.

[almarh0m]

Profs Urge NYT to Probe False Oct. 7 Rape Story
April 30, 2024
Save
More than 50 journalism professors call for an independent review into the debunked NYT story "Screams Without Words."



The New York Times headquarters, 620 Eighth Avenue, 2019. (Ajay Suresh, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

By Julia Conley
Common Dreams

Nothing can "reverse the damage done to Palestine and to Palestinians," said the professors, "but the Times could still reverse some of the damage it has done to itself with its silence."

A front-page New York Times story that Israel used to galvanize public support for its U.S.-backed assault on Gaza must be subject to an independent review, more than 50 journalism professors said in a letter to the newspaper on Monday, as growing protests signified widespread outrage over the destruction that followed the bombshell article.

The professors, many of whom worked as full-time journalists before turning to academia, wrote to Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, executive editor Joe Kahn, and international editor Philip Pan, calling for a "thorough and independent review" into the article "Screams Without Words: Sexual Violence on Oct. 7."

The letter urged the newspaper to form a commission made up of journalism experts to examine the "reporting, editing, and publishing processes" for the story.

The article came under scrutiny shortly after it was published, having been reported by not only international correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman but also two inexperienced freelancers based in Israel. One, Anat Schwartz, is a "former air force intelligence official" with whom the Times cut ties after it was revealed that she had "liked" a social media post calling for Gaza to be turned into a "slaughterhouse."

"It appears that extraordinary trust was invested in these individuals and the Times would benefit from publicly explaining the circumstances that justified such unusual reliance on freelancers for such an important story," the professors wrote. The academics included Mohamad Bazzi of New York University, Shahan Mufti of University of Richmond, and Jeff Cohen, who retired from Ithaca College.

Mufti joined Northwestern University assistant professor Steven Thrasher in gathering the signatures. He told The Washington Post that after "serious consideration and deliberation," the academics "came to the conclusion that this is necessary."

'Facts' Without Evidence

In addition to questions that have been raised about Schwartz's and Sella's experience and bias, the professors pointed to the newspaper's acknowledgment on March 26 that "new video evidence 'undercut' some important details" in "Screams Without Words," as well as Gettleman's comment suggesting he did not view the information in the story as hard "evidence."

"Can the paper 'establish' fact if its own reporter does not consider his information 'evidence'?" asked the professors.


In March, a spokesperson for Kibbutz Be'eri told The Intercept that victims of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel were not sexually assaulted, and the family of one woman who was a key figure in "Screams Without Words" has denied the report's graphic details of sexual abuse were true.

The Intercept also wrote that in reporting on the alleged sexual assaults, Schwartz relied on interviews with a rescue group that was "documented to have mishandled evidence and spread multiple false stories about the events of October 7, including debunked allegations of Hamas operatives beheading babies."

Al Jazeera journalist Laila Al-Arian called Monday's letter a "major development" and urged the Times to "do the right thing."

The methods used by Schwartz, The Intercept noted earlier this month, were the building blocks for a story that "instantly served as a powerful reference in a mounting campaign waged by Israel and its supporters" to excuse Israel's assault on Gaza.

"The impact of The New York Times story is impossible to fathom," the professors wrote.

"This is wartime and in the minds of many people, the Times' story fueled the fire at a pivotal moment when there might have been an opportunity to contain it before, as the International Court of Justice has ruled, the situation devolved into the 'plausible' realm of genocide. Considering these grave circumstances, we believe that the Times must waste no time in extending an invitation for an independent review."

External Review 'Appropriate'


An missile attack on Gaza in October, 2023. (Ali Hamad of APAimages for WAFA, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The article, said one signatory, Sandy Tolan of the University of Southern California, was published "as the death toll mounted in Gaza, and criticism was beginning to focus more on Israel."

"Being cognizant of the potential damages of and consequences of the timing," Tolan told the Post, "given that it didn't appear to be as well-reported as it should have been, there's all the more reason why an external review is appropriate."

The signatories pointed out that there is significant precedent for newspapers conducting independent reviews of articles that have raised questions about bias and veracity.

"If an independent review finds that the Times did nothing gravely wrong, then it will be a win not just for the Times but for all journalism," the professors wrote.

"In the worst case, if an investigation does find remarkable errors or negligence in the way the newsroom operated, nothing that the Times would do in response could ever reverse the damage done to Palestine and to Palestinians but the Times could still reverse some of the damage it has done to itself with its silence."

"Doing nothing, however," they added, "and allowing a cloud of doubt to hang over this historically consequential story will ensure that all the journalism that The New York Times produces in the course of this conflict will remain under a dark shadow."

Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 Post Views: 1,947
Tags: A.G. Sulzberger Anat Schwartz Jeff Cohen Jeffrey Gettleman Jo

[almarh0m]

Israel's Brutality Draws on British Rule
May 8, 2024
Save
Britain's "mandate" over Palestine from 1920-48 left an apparatus of repression which Israel inherited and still uses today in its ferocious war on Palestinians, writes A. Bustos.


Members of the U.K. Royal Commission during the Palestine "disturbances" of 1936. (Library of Congress)

By A. Bustos
Declassified UK

Israel's present use of collective punishment against Palestinians owes much of its origins to British rule in Palestine.

So too do the aerial bombardments, military raids, use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and the infrastructure of military law deployed against an occupied, overwhelmingly civilian population.

Britain ruled Palestine during its "mandate" between 1920-48, and its repressive infrastructure came into full force during the 1936-39 Great Arab Revolt.

In 1936, Palestine erupted into a national uprising following two decades of peaceful resistance against British rule and several failed uprisings over the 1920s, as the political and economic situation became dire for the Arab majority.

The uprising called for an end to British support for Zionist colonisation and a guarantee of Palestinian self-determination. Britain, however, saw it as a threat to its rule and responded with brutal repression.

By the end of the revolt, 10 percent of the adult male Arab population were either killed, wounded, imprisoned or exiled by the British.

This brought the revolt to an end, devastated Palestinian society and left it defenceless against Zionist militia groups during the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe). Then, over two-thirds of the Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed from their country to establish the state of Israel.

Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has argued that the armed suppression of Arab resistance during the revolt was among the most valuable services Britain provided to the Zionist movement.

Martial Law


Palestine resistance fighters against the British mandate, 1936. (PLO Collection, Institute for Palestine Studies, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

To crush the revolt, Britain brought Palestine under martial law, building on counterinsurgency tactics it had refined in other colonies like Ireland and India.

As historian Matthew Hughes explains, in response to the 1936 uprising, British authorities renewed local laws enacted during the 1920s, referring to them as "emergency laws", to impose collective punishment against Palestinians.

This allowed the mandate government to impose curfews, censor written materials, occupy buildings, as well as arrest, imprison and deport individuals without trial while suspending the right to counsel, policies Israel still enforces against Palestinians today.

Far from distinguishing between armed rebels and civilians, Britain enforced collective punishment against the entire population. Mining the declassified files, David Cronin describes how "Britain's elite decided early on that Palestinians should be targeted en masse".

By 1937, Palestine was under effective military rule. During the mandate period, Britain had put in place a legal system which was designed to prevent Palestinian political organising while also giving itself broad powers.

Camps & Prisons


Israeli prison camp at Sarafand, November 1948. (Palmach archive Yiftach 1st Battalion D company Volume 2 album, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

British military rule turned large parts of the country into prisons. Military law made it possible to hand out swift sentences, meaning large-scale detentions of peasants and urban workers.

Detainees were held, often without trial, in extremely overcrowded camps with inadequate sanitation. In May 1939, answering a parliamentary question, colonial secretary Malcolm MacDonald confirmed that there were 13 detention camps in Palestine housing 4,816 people.

This included several concentration camps (as Britain itself referred to them) like Sarafand al-Amar, located at the largest military base in Palestine, which held thousands of prisoners.

Other camps included Nur Shams, near Tulkarem, and Acre prison on the Mediterranean coast which also hosted Palestine's largest prison.

At one point the overcrowding was so bad it became necessary to release veteran detainees whenever new ones were arrested. In 1939 the number of detainees rose to over 9,000, 10 times the figure of two years previously.

According to Palestinian prisoner rights group, Addameer, at least six of the major Israeli prison and detention centres today were built during the mandate era. These include Kishon, Damon, Ramleh, Ashkelon, Megiddo and Al-Moscobiyeh (the Russian Compound) which are still used by Israel to imprison Palestinians.

Administrative Detention


Palestinian Youth Accord for Prisoners rally in Gaza support of Palestinian administrative detainees on a mass hunger strike, May 12, 2014. (Joe Catron, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

In November 2023, following a four-day humanitarian "pause" between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli government released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. This shone a spotlight for Western audiences on the fact that thousands of Palestinians are regularly imprisoned today in Israeli jails.

What drew most attention was that so many of them, including children, were held under the policy of administrative detention, an unlawful process that allows Israel to hold detainees without charge or trial.

However, Israel appears to have inherited the practice from the British, who regularly detained thousands of Palestinians without trial. Following its establishment in 1948, Israel has practised detention without trial as a staple of military rule.

After the end of the revolt in 1939, Britain strengthened the powers of the mandate administration and in 1945 introduced the Defence (Emergency) Regulations. Ironically, this was in response to violence carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups at that time.

Israel incorporated these regulations and most other British mandate laws into the Israeli Law and Administration Ordinance of 1948. It used them against Palestinians inside Israel between 1948-66 and then extended them to Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

These laws would be used repeatedly in response to popular uprisings thereafter, this time against Israeli rule.

A 1989 report by Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq describes how Israeli commanders issued a proclamation in 1967 affirming that the Defence (Emergency) Regulations were to remain in force.

Even though they had been terminated by Britain at the end of its mandate, Israeli leaders kept and continued to use them against Palestinians.

In 2019, Human Rights Watch highlighted eight cases where Israeli authorities used military orders to "prosecute Palestinians in military courts for their peaceful expression or involvement in non-violent groups or demonstrations" using, among other measures, the Defence (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 inherited from Britain.

Charles Tegart's Fence


"Tegart's Wall", actually a barbed wire fence, Palestine 1938–1940. (Map prepared for the Survey of Palestine, 1944, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

To fight the 1930s revolt, Britain sent Sir Charles Tegart, who had previously headed the police force in colonial India, to Palestine where he built much of the infrastructure used to intern suspects. Tegart built so-called Arab Investigation Centres which were used as torture chambers.

He established a special centre in Jerusalem to train interrogators in torture where suspects underwent brutal questioning, involving humiliation, beatings, and physical mistreatment.

Colonial administrator Edward Keith-Roach recounted in his memoirs that the purpose of these centres was to train police officers "in the gentle art of 'third degree'" for use on Arabs until they "spilled the beans".

Israeli historian Tom Segev describes how Tegart "built dozens of police fortresses around the country and put up concrete guard posts, which the British called pillboxes, along the roads".


Tegart Fort at Kibbutz Sasa, Upper Galile, Israel, 2010. (Ranbar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Tegart's best-known recommendation was that a huge fence be erected along Palestine's northern border, which came to be known as "Tegart's fence".

To construct it, he enlisted the help of the Jewish Agency, the main organisation encouraging Jewish settlement to Palestine. The contract to build it was awarded to construction company Solel Boneh which was a project of the Histadrut, the leading Zionist trade union in Palestine and Israel's national trade union today.

Solel Boneh also built the new police buildings, popularly known as the "Tegart Fortresses". A 2012 BBC profile on Tegart describes how many of them are still used today.

Located mainly in the north of the country they are now situated near the Israeli border with Lebanon but instead of British troops, they are manned by Israeli soldiers.

Military Tactics

Britain used both ground troops and air power through the Royal Air Force against Palestinian rebels during 1936-39. Following the termination of the Munich Agreement made by Britain with Nazi Germany in 1938, Britain sent over 100,000 troops to Palestine, flooding the country with soldiers.

On 7 May 1936, the high commissioner for Palestine, Arthur Wauchope, sought "general covering approval" from the Colonial Office to impose collective punishment on cities and towns where acts of disobedience occurred.

He promptly received the go-ahead and chose Nazareth, Safed and Bisan to be penalised.

In June 1936, British forces destroyed large parts of the Old City of Jaffa. The army blew up between 220 and 240 multi-occupancy buildings, rendering up to 6,000 Palestinians homeless.


Palestinians in Jaffa in the 1920s. (Frank Scholten, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

While the level of destruction then seems small in comparison to the massive Israeli bombardment in Gaza today, the use of disproportionate force and collective punishment during a military operation felt mainly by civilians is not new to Palestine.

After crushing the general strike that had been declared by the newly formed Arab Higher Committee, with many of the key figures involved imprisoned or exiled, the second phase of the revolt from 1937 saw a large armed uprising sweep through most of the country, reaching its peak in 1938.

To combat this, British forces would take their repression to Palestine's rural countryside where most of the armed groups were.

Village Raids

To hunt down and eliminate those involved in the uprising, the British regularly cordoned off entire villages, followed by deadly raids. British troops would ransack homes, often destroying property, in search of rebel fighters or weapons.

Palestinian men found with weapons or even bullets were shot dead. Many were killed without any evidence of involvement in military activities.

During raids, British soldiers would often round up the inhabitants and imprison them in open-air pens with barbed wire. Villages would be collectively fined for attacks against British soldiers if the attacker was believed to hail from, or live near, the village in question.

In addition, the homes of suspected attackers and their relatives were demolished, a policy which Israel uses against convicted, or suspected, Palestinian militants today.

Two villages subjected to abuses were al-Bassa and Halhul, which both became the subject of a 2022 BBC report, following a petition from survivors calling for official recognition and an apology from the British government.

This report found that "the historical evidence involved includes details of arbitrary killings, torture, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment."

It added: "Much of it was conducted within formal policy guidelines for UK forces at the time or with the consent of senior officers." 

Israeli military raids into Palestinians villages in the West Bank are a daily part of life and have escalated since 7 October 2023.

Human Shields


British soldiers on an armoured train car with two Palestinian Arab hostages used as human shields, 1936. (Chaim Kahanov and Zecharia Oryon, Jewish Settlement Police, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Another tactic Britain used was to force Palestinian civilians to accompany them on patrols. They were made to sit, unprotected, at the front of military convoys while driving through areas with high rebel activity and even to drive over mines to blow them up before British troops proceeded.

This tactic had come from British rule in India and was known as "minesweeping". Many Palestinians were killed or seriously injured this way.

Britain effectively used Palestinian civilians as human shields, which Israeli forces have been filmed doing repeatedly in both the West Bank and in Gaza for years.

In December 2023, two Palestinians, a 15-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man in Gaza, claim they were used as human shields by Israeli soldiers, the boy saying they strapped him with bombs before forcing him into a tunnel. In Israel's 2014 assault against Gaza, similar allegations were made.

In the West Bank there have been numerous videos showing Israeli soldiers taking Palestinian civilians and forcing them to sit or stand blindfolded in front of Israeli vehicles as they conduct operations.

In some cases, they have even placed civilians onto the front of those vehicles to deter other Palestinians from throwing rocks at invading Israeli forces, just like Britain did during the revolt.

This historical context is especially important to understand now, as Israel has for years accused Palestinian groups like Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Despite there being little evidence to support this claim (and that the available evidence actually shows Israeli forces doing it themselves) the key historical context is that British troops used it against Palestinian civilians during the Great Revolt.

Orde Wingate & Special Night Squads


Brigadier Orde Wingate in India in 1943. (No 9 Army Film and Photographic Unit, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

The most explicit case of British-Zionist collaboration in repressing the revolt came with the entry into Palestine of the British general Orde Charles Wingate and his creation of the Special Night Squads (SNS).

Wingate, an intelligence officer and committed Christian Zionist, was tasked by the British Army with training Jewish fighters to patrol the Iraq Petroleum Company's pipeline.

With the SNS, he created his own private militia drawn from recruits within the Haganah, the Zionist military organisation, training them in ambush and assassination tactics.

Describing himself as a firm believer in Zionism, Wingate reportedly told his men that "the Arabs think the night is theirs. The British lock themselves up in their barracks at night. But we, the Jews, will teach them to fear the night more than the day".

Together with Yitzhak Sadeh, commander of the Palmach, the main strike force of the Haganah, and future founder of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), Wingate took the SNS on nightly raids against Palestinian villages.

After attacks against the pipeline occurred, his Night Squads would invade nearby villages at dawn, rounding up all the male inhabitants. Forcing them to stand against the wall, the squads then whipped the men's bare backs.

At times, Wingate would humiliate the villagers, other times he shot them dead. According to Segev, the men under his command said behind his back they thought he was mad.

Israeli military historian Ze'ev Schiff argued that Wingate "left his mark as the single most important influence on the military thinking of the Haganah".

A lexicon issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense many years after his death states:

"The teaching of Orde Charles Wingate, his character and leadership were a cornerstone for many of the Haganah's commanders, and his influence can be seen in the Israel Defense Force's combat doctrine."

Two of Israel's leading future commanders both served under Wingate in the SNS: Moshe Dayan, who became the IDF's chief of staff and Yigal Allon, a future IDF general and foreign minister.

Dayan said Wingate "taught us everything we know" and that "even when nothing happened, we learned much from Wingate's instruction".

Allon described how "by attaching Jewish fighters to his units, he [Wingate] also helped to provide facilities for practical training... He regarded himself, in practice, as a member of the Haganah and that was how we all saw him – as the comrade and, as we called him, 'the Friend'."

Major General Bernard Montgomery


General Bernard L. Montgomery watching a tank movement in North Africa, November 1942. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

After Wingate, the most notorious British military figure in Palestine during the revolt was Bernard Montgomery. "Monty", as he was known, was a short-tempered, old-fashioned soldier who rejected any suggestion that the revolt was a national uprising, instead describing the rebels as "bandits".

He introduced the Bren gun to Palestine, replacing the old Lewis submachine gun the British had been using and gave his men simple instructions on how to deal with the rebels: kill them.

Having previously served in Ireland, launching operations against Irish rebels in 1921, he often made comparisons between the two colonies.

Montgomery was preoccupied with how Britain had lost control of most of Ireland. He thought too many concessions had been made to Sinn Fein. Therefore, his conclusions for Palestine were that Britain should suppress any expression of national identity.

He ordered any Arab caught wearing the chequered headscarf (the Keffiyeh) to be "caged". He also floated the idea of chaining people's legs as punishment.

Since Israel's own military occupation of 1967 began, authorities there have repeatedly waged campaigns against Palestinian national symbols. The Palestinian flag has been targeted across the West Bank, Jerusalem and inside Israel itself and is regularly removed from public view and confiscated.

Much like the British during the revolt, Israeli authorities see Palestinian national identity as a threat and work to stamp it out.

A.Bustos is a researcher with a masters degree in Near and Middle Eastern studies from SOAS University of London and before that studied history and politics. He works as the assistant director at Palestine Deep Dive.

This article is from Declassified UK.

Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

[111111]

peace:

How can we see the Palestine- Israel conflict from a Qur'an alone perspective

a clear question is stated and the hypocrite only speak of the nonsense of good and evil, peace and love, love each other.

What the quran ordains in a situation like the current one:

4:75And what is it with you? You do not fight in the cause of Allah and for oppressed men, women, and children who cry out, "Our Lord! Deliver us from this land of oppressors! Appoint for us a saviour; appoint for us a helper—all by Your grace."
4:76Believers fight for the cause of Allah, whereas disbelievers fight for the cause of the Devil. So fight against Satan's ˹evil˺ forces. Indeed, Satan's schemes are ever weak.

that if the palestinians were Muslim. but they are a people living on tradition rather than the word of Allah in quran and previous scriptures. they are more alike to the jews.

Mslim are the aouther layers of bark of the tree of Allah. Mumin are the core. the hypocrite are the dirt that adderes to the bark.