Houses for riflesOne house spared per rifle returned · 1937 to 2021
One practice, eighty-four years
Houses for rifles
In 1937 the British army blew up three houses at Daharia, near Hebron, then marked more for demolition to match the number of rifles taken in a raid. They offered the village a rate of exchange: return a rifle, keep a house.
The rate of exchange changes. Sometimes it is rifles, sometimes a permit, sometimes a body held back from a funeral. The practice has a paper trail in ordinary American and British newspapers running from 1937 to 2021.