"Lest we Forget the Surafend Massacre. 10 December 1918. Mass killing of Palestinian villagers by ANZAC forces."

Mural in Gladigal / Sydney in memory of the victims of the premeditated massacre against the villagers of Sarafand al-Amar and a Bedouin camp by occupying Australian, New Zealand and Scottish soldiers in 1918.

The Australian participants in the murders were members of the Light Horse Brigade.

In his book Bersheeba, Australian journalist Paul Daley says this about the attitudes of Australian troops towards the Arabs in Palestine:

"For a lot of these [Australian] guys who joined the light horse, the 'natives' were aboriginal people… These guys would have grown up with living memory or family memory of massacres in and around rural properties from which Aboriginal people were dispossessed. So there was a parallel, I believe, between the way they viewed, on a human scale, the Bedouin and the town Arabs and the Aboriginal people back home."

The Princess of Wales departs after attending the Service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey as part of the ANZAC Day commemorations on 25 April 2026 in London, England.

ANZAC day, Ardlethen.

“General Birdwood told an English colonel of the old British ramrod type, just how difficult it was to make the Australians understand that they must salute their officers. ‘In fact,' he said, 'they rarely take any notice of us, and show no reverence for officers.'

The colonel was righteously indignant and muttered something about ‘teach the beggars a lesson if he had them!’ General Birdwood smiled and went on to relate this story: He was going the rounds of the trenches when he came upon a big Queenslander doing sentry duty who, beyond a casual glance, took no notice of the general. Presently, however, he saw a shell coming, and yelled, 'Duck your bloody head, Birdie!’

'And what did you do?" gasped the horrified colonel, evidently expecting to hear of a court-martial.