Colonel David Smiley On Brutality

Between 1936 and 1947 in Palestine, British police used excessive force, mainly on the Palestinian Arabs, to find, prevent and control terrorist activities. Activities that many would consider brutal today include extreme beatings, blowing up houses, running over and maiming Arabs. All of which and more were fairly common according to British observers. The British observers that witnessed this brutality were mainly British soldiers with military experience. The British would describe the brutality very methodically, because they viewed the brutality as their job. Most officers did not feel the need to justify themselves because it had been a different time period and different things had been considered brutal to the British government. There

Colonel David Smiley and Arthur Lane were two such soldiers. When information regarding where a terrorist—although according to Smiley, they were not called terrorists at this point in time—might be hiding, Smiley and his team would surround a village and search out the terrorists. Smiley stated that it was never the British themselves that would beat up a suspect, but they would witness it or know it was occurring. He did not go into much detail, but Smiley did state that suspects were beaten by the Palestinian police and intimidation tactics were used as a normal part of his job. Arthur Lane described the brutalities he witnessed in much the same way as Smiley. Lane witnessed truck drivers using Arabs to go through an area to make sure the truck would not hit any bombs. After this was done, the driver would maneuver the truck so that the Arab fell off, and then would proceed to run him over, leaving him dead or maimed. The way he described this indicated that it was a common occurrence and not a one time occurrence. Lane describes this, like Smiley, as just part of the job. It was a way to protect the soldiers and then to dispose of the Arab once they were done using him. Neither Lane nor Smiley saw their actions or the actions of their peers as something more than their

However soldiers who were quite rough in their treatment of the Jewish people were very open about how the treatment was rough. They would also freely admit not to liking the Jewish people very much. Joe Tomlinson and Peter Roome Thomas said very similar things about their feelings and treatment of the Jewish people. Thomas had witnessed Jews shooting Arab refugees with a machine gun and never forgave them for this. Thomas returned fire on the Jews. He does not specify if his views on the Jewish people had been the same before the machine gun incident but he made it very clear in his interview that he did not like working with the Jews and did not want to treat them well. Tomlinson stated that the British knew they were rough and made sure to continue to be rough with the Jews. Like with Thomas, this rough treatment seems to stem from a strong dislike of the Jews because the British had helped them after Germany but the Palestinian Jews did not like the British. The soldiers most willing to admit rough treatment of the people in Palestine were those who were rough with the Jews due to