Op-ed: In light of its dark past, Britain’s involvement in building of PA’s army very problematic
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4371351,00.html
British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould is doing all he can for the Palestinian army, which he claims plays a crucial role in the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is urging Israel to transfer authority to the Palestinian army in areas B and C and reveals that the UK “invests in training the Palestinian security forces…We have senior and experienced officers embedded in Palestinian training academies.” But this reminds the Jews of other “experienced” British officers, such as Glubb Pasha and the other British commanders who built the Jordanian army and commanded over it during its invasion of the Land of Israel with the goal of thwarting the UN’s partition plan. These forces destroyed Gush Etzion and the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem and killed thousands of soldiers and civilians.
The Jews also remember the words of anti-Semitic general Evelyn Barker, commander of the British forces in the Land of Israel: “(We) will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.” Before Barker, during the pogrom of 1920, Col. Waters Taylor, financial adviser to the Military Administration in Palestine, explained to Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini that if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem during Easter, both General Bols (chief administrator in Palestine, 1919-20) and General Allenby (commander of the Egyptian force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt) would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.