1920’s
1920: British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill sends Black and Tans to put down the Irish Rebellion: (why this is relevent to our topic will become clear in 1922). The Black and Tans, named after the uniforms they wore, were out of work soldiers from WWI, with a mix of thugs, criminals, and ‘auxillaries’ among them. Led by Churchill’s friend Sir Hugh Tudor, they were given free license to shoot any Irish suspected of anything. They raped hundreds of Irish women and girls, bayoneted innocent people, looted homes, farms, and shops, and burned the center of Cork City to the ground. Photos of Cork’s 1921 destruction look much like Gaza today.
A hundred years later, Black and Tans remain among the most hated of England’s colonial terrorists sent over during 700 years of oppression. They were the highest paid mercenaries in the world at the time. The Irish resistance (considered terrorists by the British) killed over 500 Black and Tans & auxiliaries. They wounded over 600 more. Unknown others disappeared, either buried in the bogs or they took the money and ran for it.
1920 Winston Churchill, Head of British Colonial Office visits Palestine touching off small riot in Haifa. Two Palestinians killed.
November 1920, Bloody Sunday in Ireland. One of many parallels between Ireland and Palestine. Irish Republican Army dispatched teams to homes of ‘Cairo Gang’ members who were British Intelligence Operatives. IRA kills 14. That afternoon in reprisal British forces and auxillaries surrounded an Irish crowd watching an Irish football match fired over 270 rounds into the crowd killing 14 innocent people including 3 children and wounding 60. Next British authorities executed three IRA prisoners they’d been holding in prison claiming the men were killed trying to escape.
November 28, 1920 Kilmichael Ambush: Irish Republican Army 3rd West Cork unit led by Great War Veteran Tom Barry, ambushed British Auxiliary terrorists who’d been looting, raping, killing over the Irish countryside. Killed 16 of 18 British terrorists. Sophistication of the ambush caused shock in Britain. Lloyd George declares Martial Law in several Irish counties. England issued a proclamation that anyone taking part in the insurrection or harboring, aiding, abetting, inviting,, procuring “is liable on conviction by a Military Court to suffer DEATH.” (emphasis on Military Court mine-put in because in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians are tried in Military Courts while Jewish Colonists are tried in Jewish civil courts.)
December 11-12 British burn Cork, 3rd largest city in Ireland. In reprisal against the IRA. Black and Tans destroyed the city center, including City Hall and the Carnagie Library, while looting homes and shops, and shooting at residents including firemen trying to put out the fires. Britian issues officially sanctioned policy of reprisals. By the end of the month British hopes of normalizing their occupation of Ireland were gone. Instead of crushing the IRA, they’d revived it. (As with Hamas today, the IRA rejected a 1921 truce proposal from Lloyd George, because the terms called for the IRA to disarm). As with Israel 100 years later, occupation troops were aware they wouldn’t be prosecuted for murdering the Irish.
1920 In Palestine Zionists wages augmented with extra stipends by Jewish philanthropies to work as police and civil servants to fill the ranks with Jews, which rankled non-Jewish workers.
April 1920: Nebi Musa Riots in Jerusalem. Tensions between Arabs and Jews reach a boiling point. 5 Jews and 4 Arabs killed
1920-21: Haganah Terrorist Organization formed. Ostensibly to protect Jews, Haganah were the terrorist vanguard in the Middle East that would spawn even more violent offshoots (Stern Gang, Irgun, Palmach). The British Army embraced Haganah during World WarII and would morph into the Israeli Army in 1948. Haganah formed, Premier Jewish Terrorist Organization, or armed militia depending on who is talking, formed under control of the Jewish Agency. The British offered to recognize Hagana as a ‘force of armed constables’ that the British would call on in the event of [Arab] trouble. Journalist Phillip Graves wrote in 1923; “…the policy of secret arming which many of (the Zionists) was deplorable. They could not keep their mouths closed, but must needs tell Arabs.”
1920: Jewish Colonization Fund created by the Allual Zionist Congress. Funded Rutenberg water schemes. See 1922 below.
1920-1921: Meanwhile, back in the Emerald Isle: Empirical terrorist life was becoming ever more dangerous for the Black and Tans. As noted above, the Irish resistance had killed more than 500 Black and Tans and wounded 600 more. Black and Tans disappeared either by going AWOL or vanishing without a trace into an Irish bog or pig sty. Irish fighters sought contact at close range because they were naturally aggressive, had limited ammunition, and hit the enemy and left before reinforcements arrived.. Therefore the killed to wounded ratio was about 1:1 were the WW1 ratio was about 1:4. Tactics are similar to Hamas and Hezbollah for the same reasons.
1921 Population Census Palestine
Sunni Muslim 589,564
Shia Muslim 156
Total of Muslims 589,720
Christians 73,026
Jews and Samaritans* 83,957
Druses 7,028
Bahais 265
Hinuds and Sikhs
* 1,862
Population total 755,858
1921 “Dr. Eder, Chairman of the Zionist Commission, expresses his conviction to the British Commission of Inquiry on Disturbances, May 21, 1921 that. “… there can only be one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish predominance as soon as the numbers of that race are sufficiently increased. … he was quite clear that the Jews should, and the Arabs should not, have the right to bear arms, and he stated his belief that this discrimination would tend to improve Arab-Jewish relations.” (Graves).
April 1921 Jaffa Riots: (as with many things regarding the Jewish state, Wikipedia blames the Arabs. This narrative is from Al Jazeera May 2, 2021) With tensions between Jews and Arabs high over Jewish expansion into Arab agricultural lands (Zionist officials would later admit this was a primary driver of the riot). On April 20, 1921, Jewish Marxists marched through a Palestinian neighborhood against the British, met a rival group of Jewish Socialists also marching. Shouting and a punch-up began. British troops fired shots in the air to break it up. The neighborhood Arabs thought they were being attacked (again) by the Jews, or British, or both. They attacked the foreigners. In the ensuing riots over following days 47 Jews and 48 Arabs were killed. Arabs killed most of the Jews, British troops killed most of the Arabs. Hundreds of homes, mostly Arab, were destroyed. November, 1921; Jerusalem riot over large scale Jewish weapons smuggling: “There was a small riot, accompanied by loss of life, at Jerusalem in in the winter much excitement was caused among the Arabs by the official [eg British] discovery that certain Jewish residents had been importing relatively considerable quantities of firearms, both illegally and clandestinely, and that a sort of armed force had again been formed by some Jews.” (Graves)
1921: Golda Meir moves to Mandatory Palestine: Born in Kiev, Ukraine 1898, GM moved to Milwaukee in 1906, to Denver in 1913, then back to Milwaukee, thence to Palestine.
1922: Having learned that Jews were importing/stockpiling guns illegally, Arabs send delegation to London and Geneva, seeking help from the English who supposedly were in charge. Get nowhere.
May, 1922 Vatican objects to British Mandate at League of Nations, over subordinating native populations in Palestine to the Jews. Wants a commission to affirm rights of non-Jews to their Holy places.
June 1922: Brits push back a little against Zionist stated ambitions in Palestine. “In the statement the Colonial Office made it clear that, while the British Government reaffirmed the Balfour Declaration, It had no intention that Palestine “should become as Jewish as England is English,” that the Arab population, language or culture should disappear or be subordinated, and that any section of the population should have any other status than that of the rest of the citizens of Palestine in the eyes of the law. It was also formally laid down that the special position of the Zionist Executive in Palestine did not “entitle it to share in any degree” in the government of the country.” (Graves)
1922 “(the British Mandate for Palestine) had long been delayed through difficulties with the United States arising out of the claims of the Standard Oil Company…” (Graves)
1922 Vatican reiterates requests for British assurance that Jews won’t get preferential treatment and that Christian Holy Sites will be protected from Zionist take over.
1922 summary of principle Arab Grievances. (clipped synopsis from Graves)
a) Zionists leading British Administration to establish a National Home for Jews and not for benefit of all Palestinians.
b) British Governmennt’s official advisory body is the Zionist Commission which puts Jewish interests before all others.
c) Undue proportion of Jews in Government Service.
d) Part of Zionist agenda is flooding Palestine with greater commercial and organizing ability/resources that will usurp the rest of the population.
e) Jewish immigrants are favored in economic competition.
f) “That immigrant Jews offend by their arrogance and by their contempt of Arab social predjudices.”
g) Bolshevik immigrants sowing social and economic unrest.
Based on the above seven grievences there is widespread Arab belief that: “…the Zionist Executive in Palestine, working in conjunction with the world-wide Zionist Organization, is encouraging and organizing this immigration with the object of so strengthening the Jewish element in Palestine as to enable it to bit sooner, rather than later, for political supremacy in the country…”
1922: Another 30,000 Jewish immigrants have moved into Palestine since end of WWI ” the majority are Halutzim from Eastern and East Central Europe. Many of them are blond, bue-eyed people… Whatever their origin, whether they ae converted Slavs or descendants of the enigmatic Khazars, these Ashkenazi Jews are far more Europeanized in appearance than most of their Sephardic co-religionists from the Mediterranean lands, and the Arab therefore regards their coming not as the return of a long-lost but still recognizable kinsman, but as an invasion of Europeans, alien in speech, in customs and in appearance.” (Graves)
1922: there are now,”over sixty Jewish colonies in Palestine. The total population of the colonies is now between 18,000 and 19,000….the area of all the Jewish settlements is not far short of 150,000 acres. The value of the estates and settlements of the Jewish National Federation alone is estimated at 454,000 pounds.” (Graves)
1922: Colonials plan for construction of a harbor at Haifa, a trans-desert railway to Basra and the Persian Gulf and for the construction of a pipe-line to carry Mesopotamian oil to the Mediterranean (for Europe).
1922: ‘Rutenberg Scheme’ co-opting the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers from indigenous populations. Draining of Lake Huleh, building canals, and lowering the Dead Sea to expose potash and other chemicals (all later recognized as environmental disasters). The British Colonial office granted Rutenberg an exclusive, 70-year lease on July 04, 1922 before the British Mandate to Palestine was granted when the Brits had denied British and Arab applicants Long story short, the Zionists were given a monopoly of water and electricial generation in Palestine. P. Graves dismisses other bidders by saying the Gentile capitalists probably wanted too much of a return and, “The theory that the Arabs could have found the capital and the brains for such an undertaking may be rapidly dismissed.”
1922: Jewish National Fund buys land in Palestine. Keren Ha-Yesod (Foundation fund)
1922 Brits trying to put the best face on their support for Zionism and their betrayals of Arab Muslims and Christians: “Past political errors cannot be rapidly and easily expiated, and their results persist long after the policy inspired by them has been abandoned. …”The British Government, which, after its initial error of believing that the Zionists were the only force that counted in the Jewish world…harm had been done not only to Zionist but the British prestige, and has been at least as guilty.” “Our errors have been errors of omission, but they have led to errors of commission by the Zionists.
1922 British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill sends Black and Tans to Palestine. After Black and Tans atrocities rallied most of Ireland against the British, the country was no longer tenable for the occupiers. 3/4 of Ireland became the Free Irish Republic. Instead of disbanding them, Churchill sent the Black and Tans to Palestine, again under Hugh Tudor. *Black in Tans in Palestine explain this line from the famous Irish Rebellion Song,
‘Come Out Ye Black and Tans, Come Out and Fight Me Like a Man’
“Come out and tell us how ya slew,
them old Arabs two by two,
like the Zulu they had knives and bows and arrows.
Of how bravely you fought one, with your 16 pounder gun,
and you frightened
all the natives to the marrow.”
In the 1920’s America’s substantial Irish immigrant population was keeping an eye on events in the ‘auld country’. The British had to at least pretend to care what we Americans thought. Palestinians didn’t have that connection. The Black and Tans worked with, and trained the Zionists, rose in the ranks of the Palestine Police and were eventually replaced by Orde Wingate’s even more repulsive Special Night Squads in the second half of the1930’s. 1922 Lord Northrip visits Palestine. Fears that the Islamo-Christian Society would cause trouble, caused local authorities to order an armored car [just like England was using in Ireland in those days to surpress the Irish Rebellion] in case Northrip had to be rescued. An appalled Northrip, “…saw it as proof of the Arab contention that the country was ruled with an iron hand, and could not be persuaded that Palestine was not becoming “a second Ireland,” terrorized by aeroplanes and amoured cars…”
1923 British estimate 1,500,000,000 tons of potassium choloride and 300,000,000 tons of magnesium bromide could be mined from the Dead Sea.
26 January, 1923 Libyan desert tribes resist ethnic cleansing by Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini. Zionist Vladimir Jabotinski was a great admirer and flatterer of ‘Il Duce’ as we’ll see in the next decade.
23 December, 1923 Vladimir Jabotinsky forms Betar (aka Beitar) ultra nationalist movement in Riga, Latvia. Jabotinsky’s brownshirts. The movement was dedicated to transferring European Jews to Palestine to build a Jewish state by any means necessary. Numerous Israeli terrorists and politicians came out of Betar including Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir.
1924 Baron de Rothschild restructures Jewish colonization efforts he supports in Palestine. New name is the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA). Rothschild/PICA buys 125,000 acres of Palestinian land. In the late 1950’s PICA transferred most of its holdings to the State of Israel.
1929: Palestine Riots
1929: Libyan Genocide continues.