This paper is based on research conducted in London, Oxford, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in 2011–12, and addresses the British and Zionist effort to criminalize Arab political agitation in Palestine during the revolt of 1936, as well as Arab resistance to this effort. It argues that the proclaimed democratic commitments of 1930s British imperial discourse––especially as they pertained to "A" mandates such as Palestine/Transjordan––compelled the British to adopt the Zionist framing of the revolt; namely, that the rebellion was less a nationalist uprising than it was a crime wave. For to the extent that regional and international observers recognized the nationalist dimensions of the uprising, the British claim to be guiding the peoples of their mandates across the threshold of nationhood was discredited. And conversely, to the extent that the British were repressing crime––rather than suppressing a national movement––in Palestine, they could maintain the democratic pretense of the mandates system. The British and Zionist portrayal of the 1936 revolt as a crime wave involved two basic discursive strategies. The first was the overstatement of the Arab Higher Committee’s coordination with various armed rebel groups (what the British and Zionists referred to, significantly, as "gangs"). The second was the simultaneous understatement of both groups' connections to the broader popular movement constituting the rank and file of the uprising. These two discursive strategies culminated in a depiction of the rebellion as the work of a minority of criminal elements, which either terrorized or hoodwinked the broader Arab population of Palestine into following their lead. The popular mass of Palestinian Arabs were thereby rendered two-dimensional figures, devoid of political insight or agency, and by extension of genuine national consciousness. While the British and Zionists attempted mightily to impose this narrative on the unfolding of events in 1936 Palestine, they faced formidable Arab resistance. Arab newspapers took up the criminological gauntlet thrown down by their critics, explicitly casting both Zionists and their British backers as the true criminals. At the same time, in both their attire and their tactics, Arab rebels came increasingly to resemble a modern army, rather than the “gangs” to which British and Zionist officials and pundits constantly made reference. The paper argues, finally––and perhaps most significantly––that much of the modern scholarship on the revolt reproduces the above-mentioned Zionist and British framing, often at the expense of historical accuracy.