299. Gaza: The Palestinian Revolt, The Black and Tans, & Bomber Harris (Part 9)

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0:35On the evening of the 15th of April 1936, three armed Palestinian Arabs rolled barrels into the road near Nurshams in the hills between Nablus and Tulkaram in what is now the northern West Bank. They forced passing vehicles to stop and demanded money to buy weapons and ammunition. In one truck, loaded with crates of chickens, they found Zvi Dannenberg and Israel Hazan. The gunmen shot them in cold blood. Hazan, a recent immigrant from Greece, died on the spot. The unnamed perpetrators were followers of Al Qasim, the revolutionary Palestinian leader we met in the last episode. Hello and welcome to Empire.

1:20Today we are discussing the Palestinian revolt of 1936, the first significant uprising of Palestinians. And as with the last episode, we are in the company of Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Harvard professor, friend of the show, Caroline Elkins is with us. Just let's start with that moment because, you know, we've talked about this. We've described a tinderbox of a situation since the British mandate. We've talked about sparks that could have ignited the region of into a full conflagration. And this is one such. Tell us a little bit about what happens after this shooting on the highway. First of all, thank you for having me back.

2:01And I think it's important to point out that what we see after this sort of April 15th, 1936 episode is a series of reprisals and counter reprisals. And I think one thing that we have to really focus on is the growth of militant nationalism and one clear indication of the ways in which the, if you will, the notable families, the al-Husseinis and the national shibis, that they are unable to hold things together. And they form the Arab Higher Committee. And within that, they're inclusive of many other political actors in the landscape. And it's in this moment that they declare a general strike. And it's a response to, in some ways, the push from below, which we see happening with Al-Qaslam's followers and also really centering around the two main issues that we've talked about before, the questions about immigration and the questions about land sales.

2:50And what we see happening through the 30s, beginning in 32, we have nearly 10 ,000 immigrants and we see a step up every year by almost 10 ,000 and then even more so in 35 with 62 ,000 Jewish people entering the country. And of course, understandably, as we discuss fleeing persecution from the Nazi regime, the banning of intermarriage, the creation in 35 of the Nuremberg race laws, such that between 1922, we had a little less than 10 % of the total population in Palestine were Jewish. And then we see a rise of the Jewish population by 35 to nearly 30%. And I think the last important point on this is at the end of the 1929 violence that we discussed, there's something called the Shaw Report.

3:36The British undertake the Shaw Report and the Shaw Report says we've got to get ourselves back to this dual obligation. There's a real problem around immigration and land sales. And they introduced something called the Passfield White Paper. Now, this all sounds very dull and boring and administrative things, but it's important. And it's important because that white paper says that it's going to introduce a policy of limiting Jewish immigration. What happens? What happens is Weissman works his magic back in London and he goes to the old armory. He goes to Lloyd George. He goes to Churchill. That white paper never sees the light of day.

4:10The point is, is that the rule of Balfour is going to remain in place and immigration and land sales, despite the fact that the British government is beginning to recognize this as a problem, they're going to do nothing about it. And so therefore by 36, we see this explosion happening in part because the British aren't going to intervene, and in part because we see a rise of militant nationalism. And this again highlights the double bind of this period. On one hand, if this hadn't been for the British mandate in Palestine, who knows what would have happened to those Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. They would have ended up landless and hopeless.

4:47And the fact that they could go to Palestine was incredibly important in the 1930s during the rise of Nazism. On the other hand, what we're seeing in this episode is the Arabs being pushed to the wall. A third of the fellaheen are now landless and unemployed, kicked off their land. And the Palestinian revolt that we're going to see and discuss in this episode is the expression of that frustration and the political impasse that the British have created through the Balfour Declaration, through the immigration. And I think one thing we should say is that before the British introduced the Balfour Declaration and opened up immigration into the land, that the Jewish communities, the Christian communities, and the Muslim communities had got on very well.

5:33There's a wonderful book by a man called Tufik Kenan, who is an anthropologist who had been in the Ottoman army, was a local Palestinian, but a very curious anthropologist looking at the sacred spaces in his country. And he describes places like in Bet-Sahur, where there's a church where the Christians regard it wholly to St. George, who is of course a Palestinian, where the Jews come and give sheep to the holy place that they regard sacred to the prophet Elisha, and the Muslims come because they believe the shrine is holy to Kizr, the green saint. And all over Palestine, you have this place of shared communities who in their own individual lives and individual communities have found ways to coexist and their different religions to intersperse with each other.

6:23This period, 1936, is the period that this pulls apart. The Palestinian Jews who have been living alongside their Christian and Muslim neighbors find themselves being pulled apart. Things reach such a pitch of fear and hatred as the revolt grows that we'll never see these people reconciled again. Can I ask you, Caroline? I don't know whether I'm just seeing parallels where there are none, But to me, the Nasser Sebi, the al-Husseinis and al-Qassam, this is a dynamic which seems familiar in, again, the India-Pakistan context, where you have the equivalence of feudal lords in these two very rich families who were leaders.

7:02And al-Qassam, who is bringing for the first time the language of jihad and a holy war into this region. Who can claim to represent the people? I mean, we're not talking about the sort of the leadership, but what about the people of Palestine? Where are they gravitating towards and why? First of all, it's a wonderful historical parallel that you're drawing. We certainly see this not just in the case of India, but as we move forward, we're going to see this in Malaya. We're going to see it in Kenya. Sort of the selecting, if you will, of respectable leaders that the British believe that they can rule through, who ultimately have a sort of a tenuous hold on the local populations until such time it becomes untenable, right?

7:41And we see that Mao Mao, we see this elsewhere. At this point in time, you know, we're looking at a moment, and I think we've discussed this a little bit before, which is we're seeing a kind of incipient state formation happening at a very grassroots level in the wake of Al Qasem's death. And everything from a boycott of goods produced by Jewish people, from self-help committees to education committees. And this is really being formed in rivalry to what the notables are doing. And so when we see the formation of the Arab hired commission, and we see the declaration of the general strike, in some ways, especially the Mufti has no choice.

8:20I mean, they have to move forward. There is a groundswell of demand to address the suffering of the local population. So it begins, and we see attacks including crop burning, wire cutting, sniping, and grenades thrown at Jewish vehicles on the main roads. Trees are cut down. Armbands begin to form. Bombs explode in Haifa and Jaffa. And the railway line to Egypt is sabotaged near Gaza. Tell us, Caroline, how it all unfolds and how serious a problem is this for the British? I think for the British, they finally declare in 1936 that they have a direct challenge to the authority of the British government in Palestine.

8:58I mean, newsflash, right? And ultimately what we see is we certainly see, as I mentioned before, reprisals and counter reprisals. At this point, it's somewhat amateurish, but it's real. In other words, you have members of the Arab population who are armed with makeshift weaponry, but there are killings, there are murders, there are crop burnings. And the element that we have to bring in is we have this paramilitary police force that is there. And that sort of esprit de corps of you fight repression with greater repression. And we're beginning to see this over and over again in terms of the response.

9:33And I think the important thing on this note is the Mufti negotiates a ceasefire. And during that ceasefire, the British produced something called the Peel Report. And the Peel Report comes back several months later and says it's time for partition. And what happens is it's this that then goes to the Permanent Mandates Commission at the League of Nations that we talked about before. And interestingly, what they're saying is that Britain's problem is they've lost their will. They need to use more repression to put this down. Even before that, though, in the British circles, you know, you've got a real sense of panic and lack of control.

10:08The British High Commissioner, Sir Arthur Wachup. Wachup? How do I say his name? Wachup. Wachup. Wachup. Okay. Good Scots border's name. Oh, good Lord. Anyway, look, he describes a state of incipient revolution. You've got another British official saying nothing happens during the day which makes the nights and shootings seem nightmarish and unreal. You have this sense that we can't be here like this for much longer because this is getting out of our control really quickly. And we may be killed in the process, Caroline. Again, it's a pattern that you see elsewhere in the world. Over and again.

10:44And you really put it so beautifully, Anita. I think this recurring pattern of the British and in this case, the Jewish population are the minority. Despite the growth, the Jewish population is still 30%. We still have, because there are various things going on administratively in terms of cutbacks, we have a very, what we call the thin white line of colonial administration, just the bare minimum that's needed. And even though you have this paramilitary force, it's certainly not enough to deal with any kind of major revolt. and they're trying to keep a lid on this. And remember, back in London, they keep saying, these reports keep coming out.

11:21Shaw reports saying, look, we've got immigration and land reform is needed. That shot down. The Pew report comes back saying, we've got a partition. This is not sustainable. And ultimately, remember, at this point, Britain is not calling the shots. The Permanent Mandates Commission for the League of Nations comes back and says, wait a minute, you need to declare martial law. You need to use more force. You need to use more repression. You're the problem, Britain. Get your house in order. Your job is to put this down and snuff it out. And that's precisely what they do when the second phase comes of the Arab Revolt in September of 1937, when we see the murder of a district officer.

11:59And so begins the next phase of the revolt. And that's when it's ultimately gloves off. And we should introduce to you now a character who's sort of charged with get control of the situation. And that's Sir Charles Teggett, who's a colonial police officer. And I came across him because of his policing experience in India. I mean, he sort of, you know, wrote handbooks for police officers in India about how to control mob and mob mentality. And he's sent to Palestine to do exactly the same, get a grip, which is what, you know, the British are being told by outside sources. How does he get a grip?

12:34And what kind of man is he? I mean, I have an inkling of what kind of man he is from his time in India, but what kind of man is he? Yes. I mean, he's legend amongst police officers and reviled by locals. He and John Anderson, who at that point is the top dog in the colonial administration in Bengal, and all this is happening in Bengal. Anderson, of course, goes back and is famously home secretary and introduces Defense of the Realm Act and enforces it back in the UK. Taggart is brought along. They try to knock him off about a half a dozen or more times, the local revolutionaries. And he is somebody who is ruling with an iron fist.

13:08He has no problem using torture. He has no problem putting people in the Ataman Island prison. He has no problem whatsoever in trying to basically assert British control and not, by the way, sort of by towing the line of rule of law. When they need to bring in a troubleshooter to Palestine, there's no question at that point who it's going to be. It's going to be Charles Taggart. And by the way, he comes with David Petrie. And David Petrie eventually becomes the head of MI5. And the two of them come in and put a game plan in place for how they're going to introduce more oppression in Palestine.

13:37And then a little quote from Tegert, perhaps to give you an insight into how the man's brain works. Running over an Arab, says Tegert, is the same as a dog in England, except we do not report it. So, I mean, that gives you some insight into what he's coming to this region with. And his policemen are no different from him. There's another who says, the military court started off well, but as we expected, they're being too lenient and want too much evidence to convict on. So any Johnny Arab who is caught by us now in suspicious circumstances is shot out of hand. There is an average of one bomb a day thrown in Haifa now, but few of them do much damage.

14:16One was thrown in a Jewish bus last night in the culprit court. We took him to his house, but there is no evidence, so we let him try to escape in the garden. Unfortunately, I will not have to attend the inquest. Tegert maybe is a name that you may not know unless you have been toiling in the same kind of fields that we have with colonial policing. But there is a name now that we're going to discuss that you will have heard of, and that is Boma Harris. Now, tell us why are we talking about Boma Harris, the hero of World War II, if you ask many people here in Britain who've studied in Britain, why are we talking about him in relation to Palestine?

14:52Harris, Taggart, and I'll come to Harris in a moment, but we have to think of 1930s Palestine during this period of the revolt as a convergence of some of the most important actors, whether they're in the RAF, whether they're in the police, whether they're in intelligence, whether they're in the military, along with legal codes that converge into Palestine to create a moment of sort of unbridled British colonial violence. Now, Harris cuts his teeth, of course, in at that point, what is Mesopotamia. He is one of the young hotshots in World War I. He stays on and they use sort of what is considered air control.

15:34Air control is this idea that you can use planes to solve your problem in these vast landscapes, whether it's over the deserts or on the northwest frontier of what they were having in London, of the cost of ruling empire. And he's introducing through sort of air control what they call forms of frightfulness, bombing. They're doing weapons testing in Mesopotamia. And by forms of frightfulness, I mean everything from, you know, the precursors to napalm, the use of flamethrowers and darts and long-delayed action bombs. This is Harris. This is what Harris is doing in the 20s. And eventually, in the 30s, when they need to have a convergence of folks, not just Taggart and Petrie who are doing sort of the kinds of work in the areas of interrogation and policing.

16:20Air control comes in and it's Bomber Harris who comes in and he is legendary in this area. And of course, many of them, and eventually we'll talk about others come in like Bernard Montgomery, Monty comes in and it is all the dress rehearsal terribly for what happens in World War II. And they are absolutely gloves off doing a whole range of things. And Bomber Harris fully believes in the impact of air control. And let's remind ourselves, there are certain laws about what you could and could not bomb. You can only bomb X number of feet from a village. This is all out the window. These folks are bombing everything.

16:54There's a particularly shocking passage in Legacy of Violence, your extraordinary book on colonial uprisings and policings. And you say heavy drinking was another pastime, sometimes followed with a good dust up in a local souk or cafe where Arabs were beaten and killed for sport. What do you mean by that? The normative, William, at this time was, you know, if they weren't killing Arabs for support, and by the way, I meant exactly what the words say. They would go up for good dust up and in order to sort of wrap up the night, they would beat up on shoot, whatever the case may be. As you were just pointing out in some of the quotes you used, the notion that the Arabs were less than human, that you could do this.

17:37And if they weren't doing that, then they were having sort of tarantula versus scorpion fights. I mean, the idea that in some ways, when you read and listen to some of the accounts that are going on in the Imperial War Museum, the degree to which these kinds of killings are discussed like it was yesterday's news, without even a shred of concern that these were human beings. There is some terrible quotes in your book. you have Bomber Harris quoted as saying, the only thing the Arab understands is a heavy hand. And he goes on about the value of bombing. We must, and under-sucksed consensus can, make up for lack of numbers by using rougher methods with the rebels than we dare do in peace.

18:19One 250-pound or 500-pound bomb in each village, that speaks out of turn within a few minutes or hours of having so spoken, or completely blocking out a few selected haunts pour encourager les autres. That phrase, I mean, pour encourager les autres, is a really interesting thing. It's a Voltaire quote from Candide where a naval captain is asked, why did you hang that man? He didn't do anything. He said, well, he didn't, but pour encourager les autres, just to warn the others who might be guilty that this could happen to them. And just to explicitly say what we mean by air action. Caroline, you say that the RAF dropped 112-pound delayed action bombs, dive bombed with regularity, front guns blazing, shook villages to the core with a series of 20-pound bombs.

19:06So they're actually using full air power to bomb Palestinian villages from the air at a time when there is a revolt, but it's not at wartime. Absolutely. And I think the one other point we want to add to this is that there's this idea, it's not just the use of tactics as a full-scale war. But there's the notion that violence against colonized populations has what's called a quote unquote moral effect. Now this term moral effect, which is introduced by Caldwell in his book, Small Wars, is a through line when we think about the nature of violence in the empire, and particularly here. So the idea is somehow or another, it has a civilizing effect, this kind of violence, not just to subdue through repression, but somehow or another, it's going to bring them to heel, almost like spare the rod, spoil the child, right?

19:53This idea of sort of a developmentalist element to it. And make no mistake, when you look at the writings of Chaim Weizmann, and he talks about the violence being unleashed in Palestine, he talks about the moral effect with the Arabs. It's a chilling kind of notion about what this violence is doing. And there are severe casualties. You write that one reconnaissance alone wiped out nearly 130 Arab rebels. And you quote a local doctor, H.D. Foster, who records in his diary that he watched airplanes rise and dive as they machine-gunned the ground beneath them, an unpleasant sight. Among them, he writes, was a shepherd who'd been tending his flock.

20:31When he'd been hit from the air, his abdomen had been severely wounded, and despite surgery, he died from internal injuries. So it's shepherds, it's people in olive groves, it's villages which have been declared under curfew, and these guys send airplanes against them. They bombed the villages, they used machine guns. And of course, there are massive civilian casualties in all these incidents. Absolutely. And also make no mistake, by this point, certainly by 1938, there's 25 ,000 members of the security forces, soldiers and policemen. This is the largest deployment of British forces abroad since the end of the First World War.

21:04This is a massive operation. Can I also, again, and I make no apology actually, I think it's quite interesting because this is not the first time that strafing from the air has been used in this way. Because in 1919, in Amritsa, after the Jalimana Bagh massacre, this madcarburi is down in the record as strafing people from the sky, not just people who are on the road or running away, but the villages that they might live in or the villages they may have gone into. So this sort of high collateral damage is a price for keeping the peace or keeping control. It's a recurring motif in different places where the British are running.

21:41I think if we think about Palestine in the 30s as this, as I said, convergence of all these different tactics, of all these different legal codes in the form of emergency regulations or statutory martial law. By the way, statutory martial law or emergency regulations are more permissive than martial law. When martial law is in place and it's lifted, troops can in theory be brought up on charges based upon common civil law. But in emergency regulations, no such thing can happen. So it's the most permissive form of rule of law, and I use that in quotes, so that by the time we get to the 1930s, we have the strafing.

22:21We have a whole range of different tactics and individuals moving them around the empire. But we also have what is now an airtight legal system that permits this to happen without any fear of consequences by the security forces who are enacting them. Now, we have one other crucial episode before we go to the break. On September the 26th, 1937, Palestinian insurgents murder an Australian colonial officer, L.Y. Andrews, who was the district commissioner in Galilee. Now, what happens in response to that is crucially important, because the British decide to tighten the screws, and at the top level, this is the crucial thing.

23:01And so they arrest the 200 leading Palestinian nationalist leaders, and they are deported to the Seychelles and to Cyprus, and they declare the Arab higher command illegal. What this means is that as we approach the end of the British mandate, those Palestinian leaders are still in exile or still in prison. And so while on the side of the yeshuv, the leaders are out and organizing, getting ready to declare a state, people like Ben-Gurin and Jabotinsky are working hard and working very efficiently with the authorities. But the Palestinian leadership is in exile and in prison, unable to do anything.

23:47We'll see you back after the break.

23:55Welcome back. Caroline, so just before we took the break, William and you were talking about the arrest or sort of the decapitation, if you like, of leadership for the Palestinian people. But it's not an entire decapitation. It's a partial one. And I mean partial in that one side is favored. We were talking about those two feudal families, if you like, the two wealthy families who were the leaders at one time. Only one set is put in prison. Talk us through that a bit. Yeah, what we see happening is this exile of many of those who are, if you will, associated with the Al-Husseini family. The Mufti himself and one of his cousins, Jamal Al-Husseini, is sort of in a cat and mouse game, eventually make their way to Damascus, where they set up an information office and are working to sort of supply rebel forces in Palestine.

24:42But most importantly, the Nassar Shibi family remains in Palestine and is now favored by the British government. And so, in other words, the British play into this rivalry that's going on. Now the rival family to the Al Husseinis is being used by the British government to form what are called peace bands and locally sometimes called peace gangs. And these really become sort of a force within the countryside that demands loyalty to the British government while the Arab revolt is going on and is known as dastardly and as brutal as some of the British forces themselves. In fact, there's one leader of the peace gang who's nicknamed the Butcher.

25:23And so what we see happening is sort of internal rivalries playing out and the British sort of bringing people in who they think are going to help them win this war while at the same time fueling a civil war. And in many ways, this is a classic sort of story, if we will, that we see in so many of these empire wars where they are anti-colonial in one dimension, but they're also civil wars that are fueled by the British policies that are going on during these revolts. And it becomes quite complicated. But what we certainly see happening is that there's this division that's going on at the top, whilst at the same time, a classic British theory is that if you get rid of the so-called leadership, these revolts will descend into kind of terminal frenzy.