By Alex Crowe and Noel Towell
Teachers have been urged ahead of Anzac Day to draw attention to Australian soldiers’ violence in the Middle East by a pro-Palestine activist group “frustrated by resources that gloss over historical evidence to glorify war”.
Teachers and School Staff for Palestine Victoria has developed and distributed a new teaching resource – called “Challenging Anzac Day” – to thousands of teachers nationwide, encouraging them to share with students details of Australian troops’ role in the Middle East just after World War I.
Anzac Day marchers in Melbourne last year.Credit: Getty Images
The lesson guide urges teachers to tell children that members of an Australian Light Horse brigade raided and patrolled hundreds of villages, killing up to 137 civilians at Sarafand al-’Amar – also known as Surafend – in late 1918 in what was then Palestine.
“The brutal massacre committed by the ANZACs at Sarafand al-’Amar chillingly portended the Nakba, the catastrophic displacement of Palestinians in 1947-1949,” the resource says.
The Surafend incident, as it became known, was examined in recent years as part of the Australian Defence Force’s Brereton report, which found there was a reluctance among military command at the time to hold Australian forces to account for breaching prohibitions against killing civilians.
The pro-Palestine group’s resource also encourages teachers to tell students that Australian troops burned a village of 170 homes south of Cairo in 1919 and “arrested and flogged up to 250 seditious agitators”.
A spokesperson for the group, teacher Ohad Kozminsky, said the publication’s goal was to “challenge the dominant and irresponsible Anzac mythology”.
“We are frustrated by resources that gloss over historical evidence to glorify war and close off critical discussion of Australia’s role in violence and imperialism. Our students deserve better,” he said.
The Education Department said it did not endorse the group’s publication.
“Anzac Day is an important opportunity for the Victorian community to come together to recognise and express appreciation for the sacrifices made by those who have served in Australia’s armed forces,” a department spokesman said.
“Our curriculum includes Anzac Day resources that align with guidance from the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.”
Another spokesperson for the activist group, teacher Lucy Honan, said the publication had been shared with teachers at public and private schools via the group’s mailing list and Instagram page.
Honan defended the group’s distribution of new classroom material as encouraging student learning.
“The current curriculum asks students to analyse the Anzac myth. So this is a resource to help teachers teach to the current curriculum. It’s not an alternative curriculum,” she said.
“It’s a resource to support what teachers are already trying to do, which is support students with a deeper understanding of what the Anzacs were involved in.”
Peter Stanley, one of Australia’s leading military historians, confirmed on Thursday that the protest group’s claims about the actions of Light Horse members were historically correct.
“The Surafend massacre was only one atrocity. In suppressing the Egyptian rebellion, the Light Horse did act robustly and often brutally,” Stanley, who is an adjunct professor at UNSW Canberra, said.
“Anzac Day is not just about praising the actions of these men – it’s about understanding them, too.
“The Light Horse was used as part of an imperial military force which was fighting a nationalist uprising in Egypt in 1919 – and they had no compunction in acting brutally.
“We should not be embarrassed about that or try to conceal it or criticise, much less condemn those who seek to remind us that it happened.”
Another prominent military historian, Jean Bou, who wrote a history of the Australian Light Horse, agreed the activists had got their facts about the legendary unit right.
“While the colouring is passionate and reflects the group’s point of view, it’s not wrong. Australians did act as ‘enforcers of empire’, as I recall one historian describing it, in Egypt in 1919,” Bou said.
“It’s an uncomfortable truth of history, and yes, it was about imperialism.”
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