Major George Derek Cooper OBE MC (28 May 1912 – 19 May 2007) was a British Army officer, campaigner for refugees, and supporter of the Palestinian people.
His mother married one of his father's fellow officers from India, Major George Dominic Heyland.
He was mobilised on 2 September 1939, and worked on the project to build field defences against the expected Nazi invasion in 1940.
Having volunteered to join the Second Household Cavalry Regiment, he landed in Normandy on 13 July 1944, serving in France, Belgium, and at the battle for Nijmegen bridge on the road to Arnhem.
He was awarded the Military Cross in 1948 for his service defending the Arab population in Jaffa from the advancing Yishuv forces, in the weeks after the Deir Yassin massacre.
Both enjoyed the Irish countryside, and the Donegal "season" centred on Glenveagh Castle, the summer residence of American art collector Henry McIlhenny, and his friend Derek Hill.
They gave aid to refugees who had escaped across the Danube from Hungary during the 1956 revolution, joining a Save the Children Fund relief team at Andau in Austria.
The Coopers joined a Save the Children relief effort again in 1962, following the Buin Zahra earthquake on 1 September which killed around 12,000 people and rendered 22,000 homeless.
They established the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians in 1984. Cooper published his diary from the Second World War in 1997 under the title Dangerous Liaison.
A biography by John Baynes, For Love of Justice: the life of a quixotic soldier was published the same year.