Simon BrookeOct 27

Britain sent the Black and Tans — a unit infamous for atrocities and viciousness — to #Palestine during the mandate. I did not know this until today. I cannot imagine anyone doing anything so stupid and irresponsible.

The #GazaGenocide has a long history, and we are even more responsible for it than I had guessed.

Empire: 298. Gaza: The British Occupation of Palestine (Part 8)
Starting from: 00:30:07

Media file: https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/A27C8C/traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT1774247812.mp3?updated=1760389179#t=1807

Show threadBashStKid

@simon_brooke @Wen Deploying shock troops to enforce imperial control through murder and torture sounds pretty much on brand.

Little civilian control, simply move them further away when they particularly fucked up. Probable stepping stones of Ireland, to the Middle East, then to India, and if that wasn’t enough, Malaya or Hong Kong.

Oct 27 at 8:25pmWeb
Show threadSimon BrookeOct 27

@BashStKid @Wen Or Kenya.

I had this faintly horrifying idea for a research project: pick, at random, a dozen places where Britain has established a colonial administration, and compare the deaths by violence per hundred thousand people for the fifty years before colonisation with the fifty years after.

I feel the results would be... sobering.

Show threadmike805Oct 27

@simon_brooke @BashStKid @Wen True, but the French or Spaniards left an even bigger and bloodier mess.

Come out ye' black and tans!
Come out and fight me like a man!
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders!
Tell her how the IRA,
made you run like hell away,
from the green and lovely lanes of Killeshandra!

[They've been at it for a long time apparently.]

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28
@mike805 @BashStKid @Wen Aye, whitabootery. Never mind the harms for which we are responsible, those nasty boys over there did worse.
Show threadmike805Oct 28

@simon_brooke @BashStKid @Wen People will rant on about colonialism, but this is something many cultures have done. Look at the Aztecs.

Western civilization gets all the blame mainly because we had a technological advantage, and were able to do colonialism on a grand scale.

Most of the people that Europeans displaced, had themselves conquered that land by force before we got there.

The exceptions being small islands that could only support one tribe. Those were peaceful until we wrecked them.

Show threadBashStKidOct 28

@mike805 @simon_brooke @Wen “We have got the Maxim gun and they have not”

The rate of forced displacement in modern times became fast enough to make assimilation and seasonal-only travel unnecessary.

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen I knew the UK had some responsibility for the mess in #Palestine, but I did not know that we'd not only kept military units and commanders with a known history for committing atrocities against civilians in the payroll, we've also sent them into known flashpoints. There's no way this can have been represented as responsible or ethical statecraft. Crimes against humanity were not a concept in the 1930s, I think, but murder certainly was.

/Continued >>>

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen If the Black and Tans had been subjected to mass court martials and dishonourable discharges after their actions in the Irish Civil War, they wouldn't have been teaching #Irgun the techniques of #Terrorism fifteen years later. If Bomber Harris had been court martialed and imprisoned after bombing villages in #Palestine, there would have been no #Dresden Firestorm.

/Continued

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen If he'd been court martalled after gassing villages in #Kurdistan, would there have been gas chambers at #Auschwitz? *Something* gave the Germans the impression this was something they could get away with. If a British officer could gas civilians and get promoted, why shouldn't they?

/Continued >>>

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen Officers from the #Palestine mandate — who had been directly engaged in atrocities — went on to lead MI5. Did the pass on their experience to the #CIA? Do we owe #BlackOps and #GuantanamoBay to the torture rooms and concentration camps we established in Palestine, or are the US nasty enough to come up with that shit on their own?

/Continued >>>

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen

And more: why are the RAF *still* (apparently) flyimg daily reconnaisance flights over #Palestine? Is it because of RAF fighting support for Jewish terrorists in mandate #Palestine? Is the #IDF's scorched earth policy in #Gaze doctrine they learned through the Black and Tans, Duff, and Wingate's fostering of the #Irgun?

/Continued >>>

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen These threads of evil crawl down through history, and if we don't cut them off, stamp on the remains and deter immitation, they will keep crawling.

When, after #October7, the RAF started their daily reconnaisance flights over #Gaza, the UK government (probably) didn't know that #Israel intended #GazaGenocide. But precisely because they had daily eyes in the sky, seeing everything that happened, by January 2024, they must have known.

/Continued >>>

Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen The aircrews and in particular those operating the surveillance equipment must have known. The analysts must have known. The chain of command, right up to the top, must have known, or else were derelict in their duty of supervision.

And that goes right up to Prime Minister #Starmer himself.

Service personnel are required —by the 4th Nuremberg Principle — to disobey orders which would require them to act in support crimes against humanity.

We need a public enquiry.

.

Show threadBashStKidOct 28
@simon_brooke @mike805 @Wen Of course they knew. Who was setting the daily flight targets? Who was doing the initial analysis, and handing it off to the Israelis? Who was coordinating intel with Cheltenham and the US for the Fifth Fleet oversight?
All of that stuff goes into the PM’s digest, it’s unavoidable.
Show threadSimon BrookeOct 28

@BashStKid @mike805 @Wen well, that's what I think. So at what point did someone start relaying up the chain of command, "there seem to be a disturbingly high proportion of civilian casualties here."

I mean, if that *really* *never* happened, there's a great deal more wrong with the basic training of our service personnel than even I imagined.

#GazaGenocide
#Complicity
#WarCrimes
#UKPol

Show threadBashStKidOct 28
@simon_brooke @mike805 @Wen I’m sure exactly that has happened. And then folks have been told this is above their pay grade, and what’s wanted is their analysis, not their opinions.
Show threadBashStKidOct 27

@simon_brooke @Wen You’re right, I was kind of going with the old split in the Colonial Office between India/Far East and Africa that continued as a kind a lineament/fault up to the present.

But everyone looks at each other and goes “At least we’re not the Belgians”.