Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
19 October
BRITISH-ZIONIST RECONQUEST OF JERUSALEM OLD CITY
On this day in 1938, the British military finally recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem from Palestinian rebel fighters who had taken it. During the 1936-39 uprising, the British had lost control of most of Palestine to the fighters, except for a few cities. By early October, the rebel-controlled area included the Old City. After four days of fighting, however, the British stormed the Old City and slowly regained control. The British strategy for control was harsh repression, often using Zionist irregulars as loyalist troops.
التعاون البريطاني - الصهيوني في إعادة احتلال مدينة القدس
19 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1938، استولى الجيش البريطاني أخيرًا على مدينة القدس القديمة من المقاتلين الفلسطينيين الذين استولوا عليها. وقد فقد البريطانيون السيطرة على معظم فلسطين للمقاتلين باستثناء عدد قليل من المدن، خلال انتفاضة 1936-1939. في أوائل أكتوبر، كانت المنطقة التي يسيطر عليها المتمردون تشمل المدينة القديمة. بعد أربعة أيام من القتال، اقتحم البريطانيون المدينة القديمة واستعادوا السيطرة عليها ببطء. اتبع البريطانيون استراتيجية القمعً الشديدً للسيطرة على المدن، وغالبًا ما استخدموا القوات ألصهيونية غير النظامية كقوات موالية.
According to the website of veterans of the British Palestine Police
"Despite Tegart's Wall and Wyngate's Night Squads, the Arab rebels succeeded in capturing the old city of Jerusalem and using it as a base of operations, with all gates locked from the inside. Secret passages from the Old city gave access to the not fully explored Solomon's quarries beneath the hill on which the old city was built, so siege methods did not end the occupation although they did keep the rebels from taking over New Jerusalem.
The situation in Palestine warranted a further influx of British troops but while the situation in Europe remained volatile, the British government could not spare them. Once the Munich pact had been signed at the end of September 1938, however, Britain was free to send more troops to Palestine. These troops succeeded in putting down the rebellion before WWII started but the means they used were brutal, leading in a couple of cases, to massacres which horrified the police."
90 second newsreel back in Britain: "So careful has Britain's army been to avoid unecessary violence..."
In 2012 Churchill was honoured with a statue in Jerusalem for his assistance to Zionism. He had always regarded the Arab population in Palestine as a “lower manifestation” of humanity. Contemptuously dismissing their claims, he told the Peel Commission during the Palestinian revolt: "I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right."
Classically educated Churchill was referring to Æsop's fable, 'The Dog in the Manger', to claim that Palestinians were begrudging Zionist Jews their takeover of Palestine even though Palestinians were supposedly unable to do anything useful with the land. At the Palestine Royal Commission (Peel) of 1937, while Britain was brutally suppressing the Palestinian anti-colonial revolt, Churchill stated that he believed in making Palestine an “overwhelmingly Jewish state”.
He went on: “I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”.
Four years later he wrote of his desire for a ‘Jewish state’to be established after the second war world. The establishment of the colonial settler state however was done on the watch of the British Labour Party under Attlee, who were always there to back their Tory counterparts when it came to British foreign policy.
An Indian view of racist Churchill