LIES ABOUT BRITAIN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 28, 13 November 1939, Page 8

LIES ABOUT BRITAIN.

GERMAN RADIO TECHNIQUE. The reckless character of the’charges made in the Berlin broadcasts in Arabic against the conduct of British troops in Palestine is illustrated by the announcement made on July 13 that on June 21 terrible outrages had been perpetrated upon the village of Beit Hanina during a search for arms, and that these outrages had been concealed by an official communique, but had been revealed byi a- .petition sent to tho High Commissioner by the village headman, writes tho diplomatic correspondent of “The Times” on July 19. What really happened was this:

Information was received by the British that the _ inhabitants of Beit Hanina had kidnapped two meri belonging to another village. A patrol of the 2nd Battalion, the West Yorkshire Regiment, accordingly visited Beit Hanina on June 19 and found that the story xvas time, the two men kidnapped having been handed over to a notorious bandit leader, Abdul Kader Husseini, who took them to Beit Inun, a, village some six miles away. On June 20 the patrol visited Beit Ilian and found that both tho kidnapped men—one an old man who had merely gone into the hills to look for missing goats had been brutally murdered. The patrol handed over the bodies to their own villagers for decent burial. The headmen of Beit Hanina, knowing that their complicity in the crime had been discovered, fled to escape arrest; but before doing so tried to hide their guilt by sending a petition to the High Commissioner in which they made wholly unfounded allegations that foodstuffs had been destroyed, women beaten, and children maltreated.’ It is this document that the Berlin radio lias used without troubling to inquire into the real facts. Actually, no action was taken against the villagers, no food destroyed, and no one suffered any hardship except the unfortunate men who were kidnapped and murdered by the connivance of the headmen who fled to escape punishment.

The Berlin radio has now adopted a new technique in making such charges. After the announcement of some alleged British atrocity an unnamed person speaks in Arabic and affirms that he witnessed the crime. No doubt Arab students in Germany can be induced by various forms of persuasion to -pose as eye-witnesses.