May the king find the courage to do the just thing if he truly believes that peace, justice and dignity is for everyone, and his commitment to protect “the most vulnerable in our society” is truly sincere.
King Charles visited Kenya two weeks ago and expressed “the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret” for the brutality and inhuman treatment of Kenyans by colonial Britain during their fight for independence. He recognized his country’s “wrongdoings of the past” which he cannot change. Now the question is: “When will he express sorrow or apologize to Palestinians whose humanity and dignity have been denied for over one hundred years by the actions of his great British Empire?” He can change today’s carnage in Gaza if he so will.
Please do not tell us that as the monarch he only exercises the ceremonial function of ribbon-cutting, thus has no power to decide the current war-stance of his nation. Imagine how powerful his voice for Palestinian peace could be? It is his duty to atone the past and deliver the Palestinians from the abyss of destruction initiated by his country more than a century ago.
We may cite the statement by the great British historian Arnold Toynbee (d. 1975): “A tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.” King Charles knows this. Yet Great Britain and his Western allies are reinforcing and prolonging this bloodshed and injustice.
King Charles travelled to Kenya in the midst of the continuing massacre of Palestinian children and women, proclaiming that one third of the world’s population of his Commonwealth is “united by peace, justice, tolerance, and mutual respect” and committing “to protecting our environment and the most vulnerable in our society.” Does our beloved monarch sincerely and truly believe what he said? Or is he like many other Western leaders who have abandoned their moral authority, and think that peace, justice and dignity is not for everyone, surely not for Palestinian children? This is the massage the king is sending to the entire world.
Hearing his commitment to protecting “the most vulnerable in our society,” many should feel humiliated – I am one of them. He exhibits his upright dishonesty and genuine disrespect of our common human values on the world stage by ignoring what is occurring in Palestine. The king turns a blind eye that his host country of Kenya just voted at the United Nations along with many others, calling for a ceasefire to killing Palestinians. How can we trust that his remorse for Kenyans was sincere, when he failed to even acknowledge the current Palestinian Catastrophe occurring in front of his own eyes? The fate befalling Palestinians was initiated by his forefathers in control of the British Empire. He cannot turn the other cheek.
The seeds for the Palestinian Catastrophe or ethnic cleansing (Nakbah) were planted by the British long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Colonial Britain facilitated the aspiration for the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine since the mid–1800s when Jews were just five to six percent among the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs. At that time Palestine was a vibrant region where orchards, fruits and vegetables were in abundance, with rich business and cultural activities, and where Muslims, Christian and Jews lived side by side. It was not “the desert” made to “bloom” with the creation of the State of Israel – as stated by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
The British assisted Zionism (Zion, being another name for Jerusalem, coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1885) in its efforts to drive Arabs out of their ancestral lands to achieve its own ambition. The Palestinians’ painful experience is like that of the indigenous populations of the New World and Australia at the hands of colonial Whites. The same “text-book case of genocide” is being perpetuated and maintained before our eyes while the king and the British leaders look the other way.
The adoption of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 was Britain’s public declaration to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. However, even before World War I (1914–1918) the British pressured the Ottoman Empire to allow migration of the Jews to Palestine, and in 1907 Jewish militias terrorized and forced 60,000 Palestinian farmers (fallahin) of Barj Bin Amer out of their farms in order to create their Jewish settlements.
After WW I Britain and other European powers divided the Arab Muslim world among themselves, and by 1919 the United Kingdom directly controlled Palestine through the creation of the British Mandate confirmed in 1922 by the League of Nations (predecessor of the United Nations). The main objective of the British Mandate is stated in its second clause: “The British Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under political, administrative and economic conditions that will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.” This is a reaffirmation with a clear directive for the goal stipulated in the Balfour Declaration. At that time the Jewish population of Palestine was less than ten percent.
In 1920 England appointed a staunch Zionist Herbert Samuel as the first British High Commissioner for Palestine. In the name of the Empire, Samuel quickly implemented the Mandate. He promoted and administered Jewish migrations and land acquisitions, as well as declaring Hebrew to be a new national language of Palestine in addition to Arabic and English. The British policy of supporting displacement of Palestinians is confirmed by the fact that in the first ten years of the British Mandate, the Jewish population more than double reaching 175.000.
The Empire also assisted Zionism in its military development. First, it trained members of Zionist militias Haganah and other groups, equipping them with the skills to use guns and weapons and to be more effective in their conflict against Arabs. The role of the senior British army officer Orde Charles Wingate (d. 1944) is well-recorded by historians. Wingate terrorized Palestinians by organizing special night rates of armed Haganah militias along with British volunteers against Palestinian villages suspected of harbouring “revolutionaries.”
Second, the British were actively engaged in disarming Palestinians while weaponizing Zionists. During their preparation for departure from Palestine at the end of their Mandate, the colonials often left their military camps at night and handed over these barracks along with weapons to the Zionists. Third, upon the outbreak of World War II the Empire enlisted many Zionist fighters to be part of the British army, giving them combat experience useful for their future war with the Palestinians. One of these was Yitzhak Rabin (d. 1995), former Prime Minister of Israel. In short, the British did everything to assist the creation of the State of Israel and at the same time the destruction of Palestinian life.
The brutality of British occupiers against Arab resistance to Britain’s colonial rule is reflected in other measures. The British crushed their revolts by killings their leaders and detaining their followers and sympathizers including women. They rounded up women and children into mosques, while hunting down men from house-to-house such as during “The Dark Cloud” operations. They put thousands of these men into concentration camps and abused them. Starving civilians by mixing their food stuffs such as oil and salt or lentils and flour was another way by which the British choked Palestinian morale. From 1938–1939 the Empire held dozens of military tribunals with at least 112 Palestinian leaders executed. Among them was the eighty years old revolutionary Farhan al-Sa‘adi of Jinin who was executed in the fasting month of Ramadan. The Greek Catholic Bishop of Acre Georgious Hajjar, better known as the ‘Bishop of the Arabs,’ was assassinated in his car in 1940. Thus, from 1936–1939 about 5,000 Palestinians were killed, while 14,000 others were wounded. This slaughter of Arabs can be compared with the much lower deaths of one hundred British soldiers and four hundred Jews during the same period.
Palestinians resisted Jewish migration and other colonial policies from the start. One of the largest and most widespread uprisings occurred in 1936 coordinated from the city of Jaffa when both men and women participated side by side. Britain cracked down on these revolts with harsh punitive punishment. Thousands were arrested, while many others were killed and wounded. Any suspected members of the uprisings were arrested and their homes were demolished. More than 200 houses were destroyed in Jaffa alone as a collective punishment, while houses of revolutionaries in other cities and villages also met the same fate. The colonials justified their house demolitions as a necessary measure to stop the revolts.
The resistance continued to this day. The difference is that while the British ended its Mandate of Palestine on May 15, 1948 (one day before the creation of the Jewish state), Israel then continued the British project of occupation but in its own name and on its own terms. In short, the Palestinian Catastrophe was possible because the English provided the “muscle” giving Zionism every tool it needed. Sadly, such an injustice continues to this very moment with conditions worsening every day. King Charles’s pronouncement of protecting “the most vulnerable in our society” appears to be merely an empty slogan.
Throughout the Mandate, the Jewish population continued to climb. By 1935 their number increased to 320,000, and at the time of the UN partition of Palestine in 1947 it reached 630,000 or one third of the entire population. The Palestinian inhabitants of both Muslims and Christians at that time were at 1,300,000 in total. In terms of land ownership, the Jews then possessed only seven percent, with Palestinians owning ninety three percent. But the UN divided the country giving the Israelis 56% with better fertile farming lands, while allocating the remaining 44% of land to Arabs. This unjust partition was rejected by the Palestinians.
The effect of the British policy of facilitating the dispossession of Palestinians that was formalized by the United Nations further deteriorated thereafter. The Palestinians had to combat double enemies: the British and the Zionists. Attacks followed by counter attacks, but just as we see now in Gaza, the fights were unbalanced. Palestinians lacked comprehensive strategies, skills, experience, and advanced weaponry. Therefore, they were easily routed. The massacre at Dayr Yasin in April 1948 during the Jewish Operation Nachshon is only one example.
The village of Dayr Yasin inhabited by about 700 Arabs was attacked by Jewish militias killing between 100 to 250 unarmed men, women and children. Israeli historian Benny Morris (b. 1948) speaks of the attack: the militias “ransacked unscrupulously, stole money and jewels from the survivors and burned the bodies. Even dismemberment and rape occurred.” Another report states: “Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality.” It is estimated that 15,000 Palestinians were killed in other areas of the country. The Dayr Yasin massacre sparked panic waves among Palestinians, and thousands fled their towns and villages in fear. Other attacks followed which eventually forced some 750,000 Arabs to flee their homes and became refuges at the event of Israel’s creation. Some of these refugees and their children are the current residents of Gaza who are now being bombarded. This 1948 massacre and the continuing wars against the Palestinians are a true tragedy of humanity swept under the rug by Euro-America.
Great Britain might not have been directly involved in the post-partition massacres of the Arabs, as they are not directly engaged in the Gaza war at the moment. Now it is the U.S.A. that serves as Israel’s patron. Yet the United Kingdom prepared the conditions through Jewish migration, its crushing of Palestinian resistance and advancement of Zionist paramilitaries. King Charles cannot wash his hands. He cannot change the past, but he can stand for the future. He should call for an immediate ceasefire before redressing his country’s brutal and inhuman treatment of Palestinians.
May the king find the courage to do the just thing if he truly believes that peace, justice and dignity is for everyone, and his commitment to protect “the most vulnerable in our society” is truly sincere.
Asna Husin, Ar-Raniry State Islamic University Darussalam in Banda Aceh, Indonesia
