Speaker 1: Foll Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, the podcast,
Speaker 2: whose title is also its description. Thanks Thanks, I workshop
Speaker 2: that one. I was walking my dog when I came
Speaker 2: up with that one. With me today is Matt Leeb,
Speaker 2: who is a comedian, an anti Zionist Jew, and a
Speaker 2: podcast host of the podcast pod Yourself a Gun, which
Speaker 2: is also a literally named podcast. It is a podcast
Speaker 2: about how to find podcasts with which to get information
Speaker 2: about three D printing firearms.
Speaker 3: That's one hundred percent of what it's about. It's a
Speaker 3: little bit about the wire and the sopranos, and it's
Speaker 3: a lot a bit about how to make that gun
Speaker 3: that killed Chinzo Abbey.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: It's most wonderbutcast, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You reached your target audience on that show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know what I'm talking to. It's cool
Speaker 3: Zone Media. Yeah, you guys, you have an audience of
Speaker 3: a certain type, and they're the type of people I like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on for the topic.
Speaker 2: But before we talk about the topic, we're gonna talk
Speaker 2: about Sophie, who's our producer.
Speaker 1: I'm wow.
Speaker 2: And that's good. Ian who is our audio engineer. Everyone
Speaker 2: has to say hi to Ian Hi. I. Our theme
Speaker 2: music was written for us by Unwoman and today, Matt,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's
Speaker 2: been a sort of it's not don't worry, We're not
Speaker 2: going to talk about modern affairs, current affairs, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: going to the past. But there is there's been a
Speaker 2: bit of a k fluffle going on over in the
Speaker 2: Holy Land. I don't know if you've heard about this.
Speaker 3: You know what, I'm gonna be honest with you. I
Speaker 3: don't know much about it. I uh, I just you know.
Speaker 3: I I go on to TikTok and the kids are
Speaker 3: telling me to uh to dance and be pro Palestine,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, okay, I want to be cool.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I want the kids to like me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is why I did a pretty amazing speech
Speaker 2: that everyone check out.
Speaker 3: You can you can check out that speech on you know,
Speaker 3: one of those one of those social media apps.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No. I obviously I know a little bit about it,
Speaker 3: and which is why I've decided to put my entire
Speaker 3: career at risk in order to talk about it. That's
Speaker 3: that is a thing that I feel at least educated
Speaker 3: enough to talk about. And I also feel like you
Speaker 3: don't actually need to be that educated to talk about it.
Speaker 3: But that's just my personal opinion.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, I think that there's there's plenty to know,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the basics you can learn fairly
Speaker 2: quickly by looking at the situation. Yeah, but this week
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about some of the many,
Speaker 2: many Jews and Israelis and some other internationals who haven't
Speaker 2: bought into the Zionist line and have thrown down alongside
Speaker 2: of and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Speaker 3: Hell, yes, I love it. These are my people, These
Speaker 3: these are my Jews. These are the ones that I
Speaker 3: hang out with the most, and you know, try to
Speaker 3: get arrested with the most, try and fail. I was
Speaker 3: telling y'all before the pod started the speech. We did
Speaker 3: an action over at Hollywood and Highland where we you know,
Speaker 3: did a sit in at an intersection and it was
Speaker 3: raining like the one rainy day in La and we
Speaker 3: were there. We were ready to get arrested. We had
Speaker 3: done a zoom meeting with a lawyer who told us
Speaker 3: how being arrested, how to get arrested, how to get arrested,
Speaker 3: which is you know where these are Jewish anti Zionist groups.
Speaker 3: We of course are going to talk to a lawyer first. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we're very organized with it. But then it
Speaker 3: just kept raining and raining, and eventually the organizer was like, guys,
Speaker 3: we you know, we're obviously not going to leave until
Speaker 3: there's a cease fire, but also it's really rainy and
Speaker 3: health is important, and so we're just gonna we're all
Speaker 3: gonna go home and just dry off and live to
Speaker 3: fight another day. So yeah, I still count that as
Speaker 3: getting arrested though, you know, and legally it also counts
Speaker 3: as being arrested. Yeah, so you know, it's good the
Speaker 3: best of both worlds. I got to be dry in
Speaker 3: my home and now I have to go to court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was I was saying that, like, being
Speaker 2: willing to get arrested civil disobedience is amazing, and then
Speaker 2: managing to go to a thing where you're going to
Speaker 2: get arrested and then not getting arrested is actually bonus points, right,
Speaker 2: because then you get to you know, live to fight
Speaker 2: another day and all right. Yeah, yeah, spend the next
Speaker 2: six months of your life caught up in court, or
Speaker 2: you know, several years of your life caught up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for those who don't know. And I didn't
Speaker 3: know this beforehand because I'd never been arrested for a
Speaker 3: civil disobedience before. I have been arrested once in a Bloomingdale's.
Speaker 3: No sorry, it was a Robinson's May for stealing a
Speaker 3: usc sweater from my friend. And but that was a
Speaker 3: mall cop. But I did get handcuffed, and.
Speaker 1: You yourself so wonderfully, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: It was the one. Have you ever been to the
Speaker 3: West Side Pavilion, Soldier?
Speaker 1: Have I been to the West Pavilion?
Speaker 3: Yes? In the before times, when we were young, there
Speaker 3: was this great mom called the West Side Pavilion. There
Speaker 3: was a Robinson's May there, and me and my brother
Speaker 3: used to steal a lot. And then it's everywhere, and.
Speaker 1: Then it turned into a mazees and it was gloriously messy,
Speaker 1: and you can never find anybody to give your money to,
Speaker 1: and so people just stole things.
Speaker 3: Yeah and uh, and then one time it's not illegal
Speaker 3: to steal. No, it's it's not. It's actually redistribution of wealth.
Speaker 3: And yeah, no, and then we they handcuffed us and
Speaker 3: took us up. They didn't take us up the elevator
Speaker 3: to the security depot. They took us up three escalators,
Speaker 3: no elevator escalators. So we were put oh yeah, publicly humiliated,
Speaker 3: just and we were I was in fifth grit.
Speaker 2: Now you look cool? Oh okay, yeah, yeah, you look
Speaker 2: cool as hell. You're handcuffed in fifth grint.
Speaker 3: No, I was crying.
Speaker 1: They could see you from the sabarro. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people throwing their hot dog and a stick at me.
Speaker 3: But no, if you if you get arrested for a
Speaker 3: civil disobedience I learned is that you basically you have
Speaker 3: one year in which to not get arrested again. Uh,
Speaker 3: and then your record you know, gets cleared or they
Speaker 3: won't press chargers. But if you get arrested again, then
Speaker 3: they can press charges for the previous arrest. And so
Speaker 3: this is a case by case to be clear, Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: not going very differently for different people at different times.
Speaker 3: It sometimes happens that way, yes, And I to be clear,
Speaker 3: I'm not a lawyer. I'm someone who was once in
Speaker 3: a zoom call with the lawyer. I know a thing
Speaker 3: or two.
Speaker 2: It's okay. The the political arrests I've had, I refuse
Speaker 2: to give my name, as did like one hundred other
Speaker 2: people each time. Nice and so eventually they just let
Speaker 2: us out. Although one of the times I got taken
Speaker 2: to foreign attention because I was in a different country
Speaker 2: and it was actually really shitty.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, that sounds that's too brave for me,
Speaker 3: brave for me to be real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone else is like, yeah, this is so cool,
Speaker 2: We're so brave, and I'm like, it's cool. I'm not broken.
Speaker 2: It's cool.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not scared. Yeah, I am brave.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna be in cogniti behavioral therapy ten years
Speaker 2: from now talking about this.
Speaker 3: This is not trauma, this is normal.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So okay, we've talked before on this show a little
Speaker 2: bit about how as long as there's been Zionism, there's
Speaker 2: been an awful lot of Jews, entire movements of Jews,
Speaker 2: and often at various points of the majority of Jewish
Speaker 2: people in different areas who are like, no, I'm good,
Speaker 2: I have no interest in Zionism. If you want to
Speaker 2: hear more about it, people can go back and listen
Speaker 2: to the episode of did with Miriam about the Warsaw
Speaker 2: getto Uprising to talk about some of the different groups
Speaker 2: of Zionists and anti Zionist Jews working in different places
Speaker 2: in Eastern Europe. And so there's been left wing anti Zionists,
Speaker 2: there's been secular Jewish anti Zionists. There's been orthodox anti Zionists, yes,
Speaker 2: and there still are and you'll see all of folks
Speaker 2: like that at all kinds of demonstrations and things now.
Speaker 2: And of course there was also a lot of zionistsh
Speaker 2: as soon as they got to Palestine as part of
Speaker 2: the Zionist Project, they were like, wait, but there's people here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You guys kind of said something about like empty
Speaker 3: lots of land. Yeah, there's pictures of someone's family in
Speaker 3: this house.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so there have been people, unfortunately not the
Speaker 2: majority necessarily of the settlers, but a lot of people
Speaker 2: have shown up and have become anti Zionists as a
Speaker 2: result of seeing what happened with the Zionist project. Other
Speaker 2: people called it ahead of time, and other people figured
Speaker 2: it out later.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so briefly, I'm going to talk about two of
Speaker 2: those movements, but we're mostly going to talk about stuff
Speaker 2: from about twenty years ago or so.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: One of them is a more philosophical position than a movement.
Speaker 2: One is a Yiddish word, it's doykite. Which means hereness,
Speaker 2: kite being a suffix that means nis in Yiddish, so
Speaker 2: like Yiddish kite means jewishness. This is the extent of
Speaker 2: my Yiddish knowledge. Unfortunately, DUEI kite is basically where I am,
Speaker 2: is my home, And this was a major part of
Speaker 2: a lot of anti zion Is Jewish organizing one hundred years. Basically,
Speaker 2: the main argument in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
Speaker 2: century was between Jews who were like, we got to
Speaker 2: go back to Israel and others were like, honestly, Jewish
Speaker 2: culture is as much created by the diaspora as anything else.
Speaker 2: This is just as legitimate, and we belong wherever we are,
Speaker 2: which conveniently also at all other things aside means not
Speaker 2: creating a settler colonial state. So that one I was
Speaker 2: like a little bit.
Speaker 3: Of a moral advantage, right yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Well one is clearly more moral and ethical than the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A slogan I can date back at least to
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen translates to wherever we live, that's homeland. A
Speaker 2: lot but not all of the diasporists were leftists communists
Speaker 2: like they were leftists, they were communist socialists and anarchists.
Speaker 2: The Jewish Labor Bund was a formation that existed a
Speaker 2: bunch of places. Basically that was leftist Jews fighting for
Speaker 2: the right to organize as Jews within larger political structures.
Speaker 2: And they're really interesting and we've talked about them before
Speaker 2: on the show. We'll talk about them more later. I
Speaker 2: actually thought that this week was going to be like
Speaker 2: one half was going to be like nineteen hundred and
Speaker 2: one half, it was going to be like the year
Speaker 2: two thousand, and then it turns out it's all the
Speaker 2: year two thousand, I mean, be talking about or like,
Speaker 2: because there's so much. Yeah, and one thing that happened
Speaker 2: to the historical Bundists, unfortunately, is that they they tended
Speaker 2: to stay and fight since that was kind of their thing, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: an awful fucking lot of them died in World War Two.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: Also, well every aspect of Jewishness and also leftism in
Speaker 2: Europe more broadly. Yeah, there's a newer word that folks
Speaker 2: are using called diasporism. This was coined by author Melanie K.
Speaker 2: Kantrowitz in her two thousand and seven book The Colors
Speaker 2: of Jews, and this book is mentioned as the foundation
Speaker 2: to it. She says that diasporism is quote it quote
Speaker 2: embraces diaspora, offers a place we might join with others
Speaker 2: who value this history of dispersion, others who stand in
Speaker 2: opposition to nationalism and the nation state, who choose instead
Speaker 2: to value border crossing. And so this is not the
Speaker 2: only name that people will use now. But I was
Speaker 2: looking into these names because like a lot of people
Speaker 2: are like, I'm an anti Zionist Jew, or other people
Speaker 2: will be like, I'm a non Zionist Jew. And then
Speaker 2: other people have been looking for like ways of being
Speaker 2: like what's our what's our like positive thing that we're saying.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, yeah, how do we do something that's
Speaker 3: not immediately anti something else?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, totally, And some things are just worth being
Speaker 2: anti and then you know, sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So more and more Jewish people now are breaking free
Speaker 2: from the narrative that's taught that was taught to them
Speaker 2: through their religious education. And what's really interesting to note
Speaker 2: about this is that for a lot of people, at
Speaker 2: least a lot of the people that I was reading,
Speaker 2: this is not a break from religion or tradition. I
Speaker 2: spent a while reading all these narratives of different diasporists,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them talk about how it meant
Speaker 2: literally just skipping a generation and talking to their grandparents
Speaker 2: instead of their parents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. I mean it is it's
Speaker 3: it's not a break religiously, it's not even much of
Speaker 3: a break culturally, you know, because the cultural aspects of
Speaker 3: Zionism kind of extend to a couple of songs here
Speaker 3: and there. Obviously Israeli flags and you know, shul and
Speaker 3: and your temple, even your reform temples, you know, have them,
Speaker 3: your synagogue, But you know, it's more about kind of
Speaker 3: a a ret conning of the religion and the culture
Speaker 3: in order to fit as Zionis narrative. So it's kind
Speaker 3: of just about brushing away some of those Zionis cobwebs
Speaker 3: that have showed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. I think people
Speaker 2: who listen to this know that I'm not Jewish, but
Speaker 2: I spend a lot of my time learning about this
Speaker 2: particular thing. And yeah, so the left in Israel is
Speaker 2: a mess to Israeli author Uri Gordon wrote in twenty
Speaker 2: twelve of the left in Israel, what is important to
Speaker 2: understand is that in Israel today, any association with the
Speaker 2: term left is by itself enough to brand one is
Speaker 2: disloyal and outside the mainstream consensus. Israeli society is becoming
Speaker 2: increasingly entrenched in its siege mentality, viewing international censer of
Speaker 2: the occupation of Palestine as a threat to the very
Speaker 2: existence of the Jewish people. In such a context of
Speaker 2: collective hysteria, aligning oneself explicitly with the left is tantamount,
Speaker 2: in the eyes of many Israelis, to consorting with the enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and this gets that what you were just saying, No,
Speaker 2: go sorry, no, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, yeah, it is Listen, I'm not I am not Israeli.
Speaker 3: And so my knowledge of the dynamics within Israel obviously
Speaker 3: are based on hearsay from Israeli friends. I have anti
Speaker 3: Zionist Israeli friends and just regular ass Israeli friends and
Speaker 3: from reading. So I can't claim to know what it's
Speaker 3: like to be a leftist in Israel. But yeah, essentially,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's already a stigma, like you'll see
Speaker 3: it a lot in kind of the uh, the way
Speaker 3: that you know, the news media in Israel talks about
Speaker 3: a lot of the hostages who are taken on the seventh.
Speaker 3: You know, if there is you know, any kind of
Speaker 3: video of you know, like the woman who shook Hamas
Speaker 3: is one of the Hamas soldiers hands and whatnot, you'll
Speaker 3: see them disregarded. Oh well, they're a leftist, and it's
Speaker 3: just automatically assumed, like oh, okay, so they're a trader anyways,
Speaker 3: so of course they're gonna, you know, participate in Palestinian propaganda.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it is a dirty, dirty word.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting in particular because Hamas is not a
Speaker 2: leftist organization.
Speaker 3: No, it's absolutely not.
Speaker 2: It replaced the leftist organization theo is. Yeah, the idea
Speaker 2: that like, well, of course the leftists are all Islamisists
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's like yeah, no, yeah, no, I mean people in
Speaker 3: terms of left and right when it comes to everything
Speaker 3: that gets funneled into America, in terms of the way
Speaker 3: we look at left and right. It is very funny
Speaker 3: to see how many people think that, like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: leftism is when you are an Islamic religious fundamentalist. Just like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 3: We just like to we like to throw terms around
Speaker 3: for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but despite this attempt, And it's funny to read
Speaker 2: that quote from twenty twelve because it's like, oh, shit's
Speaker 2: gotten so much.
Speaker 3: Worse since then, so much worse.
Speaker 2: Yes, And you know, this is the we're talking about
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff we're talking about is sort
Speaker 2: of the thing that kind of tried to head off
Speaker 2: where where Israel has gone since. Yes, but today we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about some of the people from Israel
Speaker 2: and elsewhere who have worked in solidarity with the movement
Speaker 2: for a Free Palestine. And we're talking about them not
Speaker 2: because they're like more noble or more important than Palestinian people,
Speaker 2: but because, like, I think that showing people breaking the
Speaker 2: media consensus or like the breaking the media narrative, I
Speaker 2: think is a very useful thing to do.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yeah, And you know, I think there
Speaker 3: is kind of a general thought about leftism and the
Speaker 3: Israeli left as like being nonexistent, which is like, is
Speaker 3: a little too I don't know what the word is,
Speaker 3: like clib It's like it's it's reductive because it is,
Speaker 3: the Israeli left is not non existent. It's there is
Speaker 3: not zero resistance. There's a pretty wide ranging history of
Speaker 3: leftism in Israel. It's just that it's it's grown weaker
Speaker 3: and weaker and weaker and more and more marginalized. And
Speaker 3: of course, you know, in our current times it is
Speaker 3: it's almost not even acknowledged because of the fact that
Speaker 3: you know, you've got an event like the Seventh and
Speaker 3: then you've got patriotism takes over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, and the comparisons to okay, topic, Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what I was gonna say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, we'll get in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So at some point we're going to go further
Speaker 2: back into history of the area. And we talked some
Speaker 2: of this on our episode about hunger strikes with Sharene,
Speaker 2: So if you want to hear about some of that stuff,
Speaker 2: you can go back and listen to the hunger strikes
Speaker 2: episodes pretty recent and but for now, I think that
Speaker 2: a lot of what we want to be talking about
Speaker 2: star with the Second Intifada at the turn of the millennium.
Speaker 2: But since this is cool, people did cool stuff, and
Speaker 2: I didn't allow myself to go back to the year
Speaker 2: nineteen hundred despite well, I mentioned the bond, but yeah,
Speaker 2: in order to talk about the Second Intifada, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: talk about the first intifada. Hell yeah, which is these
Speaker 2: sick deal Wait, no, no, I probably shouldn't do that
Speaker 2: as my transition. Well I have to do an ad
Speaker 2: transition anyway. But here's some stuff you can buy that's
Speaker 2: totally not related to any of this, and I don't
Speaker 2: tell you inherently support.
Speaker 3: And we're back back.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna go to the late eighties to the
Speaker 2: first antifada. Antifada means shaking off in Arabic. It's one
Speaker 2: of those words that like sounds super scary or whatever.
Speaker 3: Like modern America, every Arab word sounds scary. Everything terrifies people. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3: Wait till people found out about algebra or that.
Speaker 2: In Arabic, Christian used the word allah because it means god. Right, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not a different god. Yeah right, it's just the
Speaker 2: word for it. People are We're not a smart country, No,
Speaker 2: we are not. So the defense minister of Israel, he'll
Speaker 2: come up later, was this guy, Yitzakrabin, and he had
Speaker 2: an iron fist policy of fighting Palestinian nationalism, which never
Speaker 2: makes anyone happy when the stated thing is called iron fist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's already that hostile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this involved deporting a fuck ton of people
Speaker 2: and increasing the settlements. Israel Is basically trying to annex
Speaker 2: all Palestine, Lots of Palestinians getting murdered all the time.
Speaker 2: And then on December ninth, nineteen eighty seven, an idf
Speaker 2: armored truck, the Israeli Defense Force armored truck, crashed into
Speaker 2: a civilian car, killing four Palestinians in front of hundreds
Speaker 2: of witnesses. And Palestinian folks were like, hey, that seemed
Speaker 2: like maybe it was on purpose that you drove this
Speaker 2: giant military vehicle into this, and the idea of was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: totally wasn't sure. And anyone who's alive right now and
Speaker 2: has any basic modicum of media literacy understands that the
Speaker 2: Israeli government lies to their fucking teeth, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's pretty much you throw a stone at
Speaker 3: any you know, Israeli news headline and you'll you'll hit
Speaker 3: a lie. It's yeah, that's what they do mean, is
Speaker 3: really news headline throwing a stone? Yeah, that's right. Throwing
Speaker 3: a stone is a great example something that's going to
Speaker 3: get me put in administrative detention. But no, like it's
Speaker 3: not unique to absolutely not to Israel to be a
Speaker 3: to do heavy state propaganda and lie about what their
Speaker 3: military does. But it is also important point out that,
Speaker 3: you know, taking the the the line of you know,
Speaker 3: the standard line that the IDF puts out as foolish
Speaker 3: as you know, doing the same thing in America. It's
Speaker 3: trust in governments or the police, I was going to say,
Speaker 3: or trusting the cops, you know, and they're it's uh no,
Speaker 3: they lie. They lie all the time, pretty much every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and every side of the struggles that we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about is also lying or is
Speaker 2: often lying. But the Israeli government just like going above
Speaker 2: and beyond, you know, they're they're the gold medallists here.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, they really got a lot of practice.
Speaker 2: In Yeah, they they're like Americans that way. M Palestinian
Speaker 2: folks were really fucking mad about this for some odd reason,
Speaker 2: maybe it was all the other recent extra judicial murders
Speaker 2: that the IDEF had been doing. So the next day,
Speaker 2: someone threw a molotov at a passing IDF patrol car.
Speaker 2: The IDEF opened fire on the angry crowd and killed
Speaker 2: one person, a seventeen year old who they say was
Speaker 2: the person who through the Maltava maybe I don't know,
Speaker 2: and wounded sixteen other people and so shit was on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and before people, you know, I don't know, if
Speaker 3: you probably don't have listeners who sit here and go
Speaker 3: not ah, but in case you do, before people think like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: this is obviously you know, PLO plot in order to
Speaker 3: you know, do all this. This caught the PLO completely off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this was a completely organic uprising, and in fact, the
Speaker 3: you know, the PLO was like, ah, shit, how do
Speaker 3: we how do we get for this? Yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 3: how do we get some control of this? And well,
Speaker 3: I mean, I assume we'll find out later that did
Speaker 3: not end up being totally a good thing.
Speaker 2: No, but I'll Actually, I think that you might be
Speaker 2: able to fill in some of the gaps of when
Speaker 2: I was of the research I was doing about this,
Speaker 2: because some of it is about the PLO's attempt to
Speaker 2: try to direct some of the first antifada, but I
Speaker 2: think it's also where noting just semantically, because I think
Speaker 2: it's fun pointing out that at the time, no one
Speaker 2: was walking around being like, oh, this is the first
Speaker 2: empty fada.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Hey, guys, we're gonna
Speaker 3: do the first one we're gonna do yeah, or even
Speaker 3: just get like, hey, guys, you know, get up, we're
Speaker 3: doing the Intifada. It was it was not it was organic.
Speaker 3: It was the straw that broke the camel's back. Is
Speaker 3: when the idea of you know, plowed into those people
Speaker 3: and uh, and it just went off as most you know,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Uprising sunprisons are yeah, are they?
Speaker 3: You know, it's there's always a group of revolutionaries out
Speaker 3: there somewhere who are in a cafe and go, oh fuck,
Speaker 3: they're rising up.
Speaker 2: But we didn't shit, but we're the vanguard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're the vanguard. What the hell? Why'd I print
Speaker 3: these shirts?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, you know, and then they run the catch
Speaker 2: up and like sometimes they do really good work when
Speaker 2: they run and catch up, and other times they try.
Speaker 3: To fuck it up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so this uprising, which I hope i'll talk more
Speaker 2: about some of the time, but we'll talk about a bit.
Speaker 2: It lasts until nineteen ninety three. More than eighty thousand
Speaker 2: Israeli soldiers were deployed into the area that they occupied.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the top that whole those years,
Speaker 2: around sixteen hundred Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, and
Speaker 2: around two hundred Israelis were killed by Palestinians. Yeah, overall,
Speaker 2: the Antifada was not the first. Antifada, was not a
Speaker 2: militaristic movement, and it was not one that aimed to
Speaker 2: use lethal force. Yeah, relatively peaceful actually.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There were roughly three power players that I've been able
Speaker 2: to locate, organizationally speaking, in Palestina at that point. The
Speaker 2: most prominent is the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which
Speaker 2: is a coalition of different communists and social democratic organizations.
Speaker 2: Fatah is the most prominent among them, with Yaser Arafat
Speaker 2: being the main guy. And I grew up in the nineties,
Speaker 2: so I didn't know who he was, but his name
Speaker 2: was everywhere, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Then there's the Islamic organizations, and at the time, I
Speaker 2: believe this was mostly the group Islamic Jihad, but shortly
Speaker 2: after the Antipada kicked up, a little known group called
Speaker 2: Hamas was formed. Then there's a third type of organization
Speaker 2: that was actually the organization that largely coordinated the Antifada,
Speaker 2: which was community councils. And as you mentioned, the Antipada
Speaker 2: start off as a spontaneous uprising, and then these other
Speaker 2: groups get their shit together and they form the Unified
Speaker 2: National Leadership of the Uprising, the UNLU, which did all
Speaker 2: kinds of interesting shit. They led grassroots to mutual aid
Speaker 2: projects and kind of basically it's like, while the Marxists
Speaker 2: and the Islamists are arguing about who should be in charge,
Speaker 2: the people were like, well, we're in charge.
Speaker 3: We're just going to do this.
Speaker 2: It was not a central vanguard the UNLU. It was
Speaker 2: neighborhood committees, and they pushed for people to stop paying
Speaker 2: access to Israel. They literally referred to this as no
Speaker 2: taxation without representation, which is you know, obviously that wild.
Speaker 3: If that sounds familiar, yeah, there's a reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's where the phrase comes from. And
Speaker 2: they also boycott at Israeli goods and started growing more
Speaker 2: and more of their own food. Originally, at least the
Speaker 2: parts led by the UNLU intended to refrain from lethal violence.
Speaker 2: This was not a moral stance. They didn't feel that
Speaker 2: it would be a moral for them to defend themselves
Speaker 2: with lethal force, but it was a strategic one. They
Speaker 2: were like, look, we'll get crushed.
Speaker 3: We can't.
Speaker 2: Shoot to death the modern militarized army of Israel. Yes,
Speaker 2: the PLO tended to agree, and for the first year
Speaker 2: Hamas and Islamic Jihad also agreed. Women led at every
Speaker 2: level of the First Intifat. I read this whole long
Speaker 2: article about this. It's pretty interesting, partly because before it
Speaker 2: so many of the men who were leaders in their
Speaker 2: community who were dead or imprisoned or locked up. And
Speaker 2: since everyone involved, including Israel, is a very patriarchal society,
Speaker 2: they didn't notice that women lead things.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Every major faction had a women's committee, and since all
Speaker 2: the organizing was illegal, they all met as like knitting
Speaker 2: circles and like cooking groups and shit, which fucking rules.
Speaker 2: That is great, and they weren't really suspected because of patriarchy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the whole thing, due to repression, the whole UNLU. I'm
Speaker 2: avoiding saying it because it's tongue twister.
Speaker 3: To me, I have no idea.
Speaker 2: It's a tongue twister. It went underground all along. Israel's
Speaker 2: kind of murdering the shit out of everyone. They're collective
Speaker 2: punishing the shit out of everyone. The UN of course,
Speaker 2: comes in and it's like, hey, Israel, cut it out,
Speaker 2: you're being bad. And Israel's like no, it's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, They're like no, yeah, bugs, bunny meme.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no, yeah, exactly, this is going to come up.
Speaker 2: This It would be shocking to the modern audience because
Speaker 2: now everyone obeys international law, especially Israel. Right and overall,
Speaker 2: the PLO and a lot of other folks generally wanted
Speaker 2: what was called the one state solution in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: and specifically they were fighting for a singular, secular state
Speaker 2: for Jews and Arabs alike, a democratic society, right right.
Speaker 2: When people say one state solution, they either mean this
Speaker 2: good nice thing, or they like mean a secular democratics like,
Speaker 2: they mean the either the version that doesn't have two
Speaker 2: sets of laws for two different ethnic groups, right right, right,
Speaker 2: or they mean an apartheid state. Yes, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: this is the issue with the you know, talks of
Speaker 2: one state solution, is that or they will assume you
Speaker 2: mean if they're you know, Zion is taking you in
Speaker 2: bad faith, they will assume you mean a all Arab
Speaker 2: Palestinian state in which the Jews have been driven into
Speaker 2: the sea, which is not what the one state solution means.
Speaker 2: Despite the Twitter accounts you can point at and go,
Speaker 2: but this one said I should move back to Poland
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, some asshole on Twitter is always going
Speaker 2: to say something stupid.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And so the one state solution was overall the
Speaker 2: vibe until and the Twesday solution first, or I got
Speaker 2: to tell my in the early eighties. But the thing
Speaker 2: that at least that I was reading talks about really
Speaker 2: picking up during the first Antifada and the Twoesday solution
Speaker 2: was a compromise, right, it was a fine Israel, you
Speaker 2: get all the shit you had before nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: which is an awful lot, seventy eight percent of right
Speaker 2: what used to be Palestine, and then each country is independent.
Speaker 2: And this could be called the no one is happy solution, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: because at least currently a majority of the Palestinians in Israel,
Speaker 2: Israelis reject the two state solution, even though it's most
Speaker 2: what most political groups are claiming they're pushing for. I
Speaker 2: think Israel is very clearly pushing for the one apartheid
Speaker 2: state solution.
Speaker 3: Rights, that's what they want, But the two state solution
Speaker 3: is just I mean, it's considered in at least in America,
Speaker 3: the standard liberal kind of safe. You know, this is
Speaker 3: my way of saying I want peace is you know,
Speaker 3: I want a two state solution, which I understand. I
Speaker 3: mean I used to be that way too sure. I
Speaker 3: used to be like, yeah, two states, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: And then I realized that there's still that problem of
Speaker 3: the ethnic demographics in Israel. Yeah, have to be held
Speaker 3: at a certain level of Jews and Arabs and then
Speaker 3: you and if they're not, you've got a something weird
Speaker 3: gonna happen.
Speaker 2: So we'll go on yeah, no, and we'll get to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this uprising it worked. I mean, it didn't solve
Speaker 2: the problem, right, but it forced international attention and it
Speaker 2: got people involved in the peace process, and it is
Speaker 2: why people sat down to the table and started looking
Speaker 2: to negotiate.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, in nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety five, Israel
Speaker 2: and the PLO signed some peace accords called the Oslo
Speaker 2: Accords because they were signed in Oslo. Again, accords not
Speaker 2: usually very interestingly named.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This created the Palestinian National Authority. It gave Palestinians a
Speaker 2: limited authority over the Palestinian territory. And this was supposed
Speaker 2: to be temporary. It was a five year temporary thing,
Speaker 2: at the end of which, in the year two thousand,
Speaker 2: the Palestine In state was going to be created. And
Speaker 2: this involved signing. This accord involved the PLO acknowledging the
Speaker 2: state of Israel, which is a pretty major compromise when
Speaker 2: someone comes into your house and takes three quarters of it.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, and you're also agreeing to you know, this
Speaker 3: kind of like nebulous possibility of continued settlement and restriction
Speaker 3: and you're still agreeing to it on good faith in
Speaker 3: the hopes that you can come to a compromise later
Speaker 3: like huge, huge.
Speaker 2: And so the it which is worth pointing out because
Speaker 2: the world in the nineties and it's still the media line,
Speaker 2: especially the Israeli media line, but people don't tend to
Speaker 2: believe it anymore, which is great. People still view the
Speaker 2: Palestinians as the people who refuse to compromise and the
Speaker 2: reason that this fell apart. But I'm gonna I knew
Speaker 2: some of this, but reading the rest of it, I
Speaker 2: didn't think I could get angrier about what's happening right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's where that's your first mistake. You
Speaker 3: can always get more incensed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the PLO acknowledged the state of Israel,
Speaker 2: which is a major compromise. It rescinded that recognition in
Speaker 2: the year twenty eighteen. Basically it was like, we will
Speaker 2: recognize you when you go back to recognizing us. That
Speaker 2: was the whole point, you know, And so sixteen is like, ah,
Speaker 2: they don't recognize as well anyway, whatever. Yes, the creation
Speaker 2: of Palestinian Authority was a huge blow to all the
Speaker 2: grassroots organizing and the women's organizing. Under the Palestinian Authority,
Speaker 2: women required a guardian to apply for a passport for example.
Speaker 2: Right this is there was There was some not good
Speaker 2: stuff about them. Yes, the Oslo Accords made no one happy.
Speaker 2: The militant Palestinian organizations considered it to be an unacceptable surrender.
Speaker 2: Right wing Israelis were like, this is when bullshit's sell
Speaker 2: out nonsense. And I guess if it actually worked in
Speaker 2: the end, maybe people will be singing a different team.
Speaker 2: But it did as far as I can tell, the
Speaker 2: introduction of the Tuesday solution of the Oslo Accords were
Speaker 2: a victory for one interested party, and that party was
Speaker 2: capitalism and US interests. Yep, Because the guy who signed
Speaker 2: for Israel Yet, Zakrabin, he is now the prime Minister.
Speaker 3: He's moved up in the world. He's no longer just
Speaker 3: the Minister of Defense. He's no longer just the iron
Speaker 3: fist guy exactly. Now, no longer just breaking bones. Now
Speaker 3: he's shaking hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the prime Minister has more power in Israel
Speaker 2: than the president does.
Speaker 3: Basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the privatization guy. He is the like, sell
Speaker 2: off everything to multinational corporations guy. He is the bringing
Speaker 2: for an investment guy. And he's a big part of
Speaker 2: moving Israel away from the socialized economy that it kind
Speaker 2: of started with because, for better or worse, Israel started
Speaker 2: off like mostly by the leftist Zionists. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: he moved into a privatized economy. And just think for
Speaker 2: a minute about how even messier politics and discourse on
Speaker 2: Twitter would be if Israel was still the leftist Zionist
Speaker 2: state and doing all the same shit, because they would
Speaker 2: be doing the same shit, but.
Speaker 3: Right, right, but they would be I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: their version of that, of course, is just doing neoliberal
Speaker 3: identity politics and economics intertwined. You know that it's still
Speaker 3: messy now because they will you know, fly gay flag
Speaker 3: and Gaza and say, see, we're good, but it would
Speaker 3: be even worse and messy if they were fucking hammer
Speaker 3: and sickle leftists. And yeah, just like Tanky Twitter is
Speaker 3: just like Zionists. All of a sudden, you're like, god,
Speaker 3: fucking damn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Fortunately Israel totally that respector of gay rights, where
Speaker 2: gay people can totally get married.
Speaker 3: Just kidding they hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, look into that.
Speaker 3: By the way, you know marriage Israel or hetero sexual
Speaker 3: interfaith marriage. Yes, it's real goal, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: But Rabin he's really into bringing in foreign investment, privatizing
Speaker 2: the shit out of everything, and he is seen as
Speaker 2: a champion of peace for fighting for the peace process.
Speaker 2: He also and I know people can change their tune,
Speaker 2: but I think it's worth pointing out he served as
Speaker 2: a commander during the Knakma of nineteen forty eight and
Speaker 2: once signed in order to expel people from their home
Speaker 2: so that Israelis could come in and steal people's homes.
Speaker 2: So he signed the accords, which pissed off the right
Speaker 2: wing so much that this far right guy yglamr he
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I should murder the Prime minister.
Speaker 2: So he listened to Matt Leaps podcast I'm Just Gone.
Speaker 3: He learned how to make the shinzo abbe gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he so that part isn't true, but
Speaker 2: the rest of it is true. He murdered the prime minister.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes he did. And you know, it was at
Speaker 3: a time when the politics on the in the right,
Speaker 3: i mean in Israel, on the right were doing some
Speaker 3: stuff you might look at as familiar for right wing
Speaker 3: politics in America. A lot of you know, targets superimposed
Speaker 3: over the face of being, you know, in posters and stuff.
Speaker 2: Like being like, we're going to kill this guy, and
Speaker 2: then they do, We're going.
Speaker 3: To kill this guy stuff, and then they actually did it.
Speaker 3: And the person that you know, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 3: you'll get to this, a person who was one of
Speaker 3: the biggest cheerleaders of going against the Oslo Accords and
Speaker 3: was running for Prime minister bib and yahoo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you make of the conspiracy
Speaker 2: theory that says that shin Bet the sort of FBI
Speaker 2: of Israel knew about the assassination, didn't do anything.
Speaker 3: Have you heard this?
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm always I lean against most conspirats. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: so hard when it comes to Israel because they they
Speaker 3: are like that, you know, and and so is the
Speaker 3: United States. And I still even you know, in US
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, you know, I'm still like, I'm willing to
Speaker 3: entertain them, but I'm not you know, I don't put
Speaker 3: much stock into them because I don't think you need
Speaker 3: shin Bet to actually like not do something for this
Speaker 3: to have happened, like they maybe they could have stopped it,
Speaker 3: maybe they couldn't have It's I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know these things. I always just I look
Speaker 3: at them and I go, ah, it's possible. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I need to have some faith in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can't just be thinking everything's conspiracy.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that that makes sense to me, because
Speaker 2: it also like it doesn't in my mind. It kind
Speaker 2: of doesn't matter in the end, you know, Like exactly
Speaker 2: the basis of it is that one of you Gall's
Speaker 2: best friends in the right wing movement was an undercover informant,
Speaker 2: and basically the Israeli government was like, well, yeah, but
Speaker 2: he didn't know about the assassination attempt, and like, uh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that seems possible. He might not have been like sitting
Speaker 2: around with hanging out with his friends, being like, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I'm gonna do tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I'm an assassinated guy.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna kill him.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, But in Israel, it is a very popular conspiracy
Speaker 3: theory and a lot of people on the right end
Speaker 3: the left, you know, it's it's pretty mainstream. It's their
Speaker 3: Kennedy assassination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of people think that that was the
Speaker 3: case at the very at the very least, that you know,
Speaker 3: they could have stopped it and didn't. And then there's
Speaker 3: people think it was just straight up you know, a
Speaker 3: political assassination done by the actual sinebit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But fortunately with the centrist capitalists sort of peace loving
Speaker 2: president freshly dead obviously all of Israel rallied around him
Speaker 2: as a martyr and pushed for the two state solution
Speaker 2: to crack down on right wing extremism. Or or he
Speaker 2: was replaced by Benjamin.
Speaker 3: Not Yeah, at the head of a right wing coalition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're still dealing with today, who cranked up all
Speaker 2: the illegal settlements.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, it was.
Speaker 2: And so the left becomes further and further isolated from
Speaker 2: the left. The rest of Israeli society around this point.
Speaker 2: And one thing that I read was that it it
Speaker 2: was actually the failure of the Oslo Accords that pushed
Speaker 2: the Israeli Zionis Left towards becoming the Israeli anti Zionis left,
Speaker 2: basically being like, oh, we thought we were going to
Speaker 2: actually not be occupiers. We thought we had a way
Speaker 2: out of that where we could have our two states
Speaker 2: and settle down and hang out in peace. But that
Speaker 2: didn't happen. Yeah, and so the Zionist project has fewer
Speaker 2: and fewer excuses left at this point, besides, of course
Speaker 2: their motto, which is we're winning, so fuck you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know how you can be a winner, Matt
Speaker 2: leaps now by if you sign up for Cooler Zone media,
Speaker 2: you don't have to listen to these ads. You only
Speaker 2: have to listen to the Truians.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh man, dude, that's the best of both worlds,
Speaker 3: where you get the perfect transitions into the ads. I
Speaker 3: think we can all agree absolutely nothing more perfect than
Speaker 3: a cool Zone media and transition but without actually having
Speaker 3: to listen about you know, fertilizers or whatever whatever your
Speaker 3: programmatic ads are trying to sell.
Speaker 2: Here's those programmatic ads that you totally can just press
Speaker 2: forward fifteen, can spout four times music again, but don't Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we're back, so you go a mirror. He's still
Speaker 2: in prison. He's a political cause for the right wing.
Speaker 2: Probably the only reason is still in prison is that
Speaker 2: the legislature had to pass a specific law that says
Speaker 2: whoever is president is not allowed to pardon this specific guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is a kind of impressive, like fuck this guy,
Speaker 2: but that is an impressive feat.
Speaker 3: And it's also it says a lot about the state
Speaker 3: of Israeli politics that you have to pass that law.
Speaker 3: That's true, that you have to pass a law, and
Speaker 3: it's like this is the one murderer. We can't let
Speaker 3: it out. Yeah, Like it is quite wild. It's quite wild. Indeed,
Speaker 3: because they knew, they were like, oh he's good because
Speaker 3: you know, you go is not unpopular in a lot
Speaker 3: of Israel. He's actually quite quite popular, quite uh praised
Speaker 3: for what he did. Ye great and to this day
Speaker 3: is still proud of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his brother who was one of the conspirators, like
Speaker 2: actual conspirator, not conspiracy theory conspirator, but like nor planning
Speaker 2: and went to prison for it. And was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was part of the planning. And then he's now
Speaker 2: out of prison and he's campaigning for his brothers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean now's the time. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So the Oslo Accords they didn't work. The final nail
Speaker 3: in that coffin was the two thousand Camp David Summit
Speaker 3: at Camp David, Maryland, which goes into the theory that
Speaker 3: nothing good happens in Maryland.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: I don't know why for the Wireland, that's true.
Speaker 3: The Wire is good. Baltimore.
Speaker 2: Baltimore is like not by this sag.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if you're listening and you're in Maryland, if you're
Speaker 2: in Baltimore, it's okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you're in.
Speaker 1: Baltimore, it's all listen to the Wire podcast.
Speaker 3: And listen to The Wire yourself, the Wire yourself, well,
Speaker 3: pod yourself a gun.
Speaker 2: Okay. I've never I've never seen more than like four
Speaker 2: or five episodes of the Wire. So this is why
Speaker 2: I haven't listened to your podcast. Do I how does
Speaker 2: this work? Do you do? You watch the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You watch the Wire and then do it at this
Speaker 1: but you could do either at.
Speaker 2: The same time, Like, how does this how do you
Speaker 2: recommend a new wire.
Speaker 3: I recommend people just jump into it, even if they
Speaker 3: have never seen a single episode, because it is asking
Speaker 3: a lot for someone to watch an entire TV show.
Speaker 3: But if you must, you can always you know, binge
Speaker 3: it like, start watching some episodes and then you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to, you can watch an episode, listen
Speaker 3: to episode, watch an episode, listener episode. We do every
Speaker 3: episode and it is it's it's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3: And you know, even for people who don't like tv rewatch.
Speaker 3: You know, I've heard people say it's it's more than
Speaker 3: just tv rewatch. Plus I do a parody song that's
Speaker 3: a synopsis of every episode. Wait really and yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: then yeah I did. My best one was I did
Speaker 3: this Paparazzi by Lady Gaga. But it's about Presibuluski, who
Speaker 3: is a cop. Yeah, he's a character on the show.
Speaker 3: You'll you'll like it, probably, I don't know. Probably.
Speaker 2: So the other thing that happened in Maryland, the only
Speaker 2: of the two things that happened in Maryland. I'm from Maryland.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm talking shit on Maryland. I should make
Speaker 2: that pa.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Just so that everyone who's docsing me as like one
Speaker 2: more piece of information. Yeah, all right, So they show
Speaker 2: up to Camp David, Palestinian negotiators, including Yaser Arafat. They
Speaker 2: went in prepared to accept Israel's right to seventy eight
Speaker 2: percent of historic Palestine and except remaining only on the
Speaker 2: twenty two percent that they currently controlled the West Bank
Speaker 2: and the Gaza Strip. Yeah, they were even willing to
Speaker 2: do some land trades on a one to one basis
Speaker 2: for some of the land that Israel really wanted. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we really want this, like one little part, you know,
Speaker 2: mm hmm. And their one demand was that they were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: if this is our territory, if this is a state,
Speaker 2: Israel has to withdraw from our territory because we are
Speaker 2: now a sovereign state, right, And they weren't willing to,
Speaker 2: as one of them put it in negotiat or put
Speaker 2: it compromise further on the compromise that they had already made.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They also wanted all Palestinian refugees to have a right
Speaker 2: of return so they go back and this stuff they own,
Speaker 2: whether it's in Palestine Israel and stuff like that, you know, right,
Speaker 2: Israel was like, we hear that, we hear that that's
Speaker 2: what you want. What if instead, and this is basically
Speaker 2: the same thing. Anyone who's listening will totally understand this is
Speaker 2: basically the same thing. How About you get seventy three
Speaker 2: percent of the West Bank because we really like the
Speaker 2: West Bank. Yeah, and you get one hundred percent of
Speaker 2: the Gaza strip, and we get to keep the largest
Speaker 2: settlements within your borders. And the West Bank will be
Speaker 2: split in half by an Israeli controlled road, and it'll
Speaker 2: be split into four cantons, of which one is entirely
Speaker 2: entirely Israeli, with Israeli controlled borders between each of the cantons.
Speaker 2: So your state is now divided into four more parts.
Speaker 2: And Israel would control all your air space of course naturally,
Speaker 2: and and your.
Speaker 3: Water yeah, oh got it didn't even against the water part. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and your water as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we can put troops in your quote unquote state
Speaker 2: anytime we want, if we decide it's an emergency, and
Speaker 2: there's no right of return because literally their stated reason
Speaker 2: is because they would ruin the Jewishness of Israel. They
Speaker 2: did not want any more ethnic minorities than they already had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the.
Speaker 2: State of Israel because for folks, so the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 2: most of its population is descended from refugees displaced from
Speaker 2: other parts of Palestine when Israel took it all.
Speaker 3: In forty eight. Yeah, it's like I think over, I
Speaker 3: think it's seventy eight percent forty eight ers and descendants
Speaker 3: of forty eight ers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh come yeah, that makes sense. And not every
Speaker 2: Palestinian was displaced. So Israel has and had and has
Speaker 2: a sizable air of minority of Israeli citizens. That minority
Speaker 2: is about twenty one percent, and that's all they can stemic, right, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so Palestine was like why did you fucking fly
Speaker 2: us here?
Speaker 3: Like why are we here?
Speaker 2: How is this? How is this a state? Like what
Speaker 2: are you offering us?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: And you see the fucking Clinton's running around being like,
Speaker 2: you know, we offered Palestine a state, but they didn't
Speaker 2: take it. Yeah, this is the state they didn't take.
Speaker 2: Because this is still a major media talking point, right, Oh,
Speaker 2: we offered Palestina state and they didn't take it. Both
Speaker 2: Israel and America blamed the failure of the summit on
Speaker 2: the fucking on the PLO.
Speaker 3: Who were already compromising to a degree that most Palestinians
Speaker 3: were not four. No, they were already compromising so much
Speaker 3: that like, had they had they agreed to this, it
Speaker 3: wouldn't have mattered, Yeah, because Israel would have continued their
Speaker 3: incursions as is now their right, and Palaesinians would still
Speaker 3: be living in this uh non state in which a
Speaker 3: foreign army can do whatever the fuck they want.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the fact that they said no to this, people
Speaker 3: in the room, you know, on Israel's side have later
Speaker 3: gone on to say, yeah, I wouldn't have taken I
Speaker 3: wouldn't have taken that deal either. No, why would you
Speaker 3: take a deal? It's terrible.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of one of our most recent episodes.
Speaker 2: It might be the most recent episode that we did
Speaker 2: on the show was about Lakota resistance to the American Empire,
Speaker 2: and over and over again, America would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: just come to the table to talk, and they'd be like, fine, well,
Speaker 2: put down the guns, we'll come talk. This is what
Speaker 2: we want. We're willing to accept this, you know, limited
Speaker 2: thing that, and then they'll be like, no, just kidding,
Speaker 2: you don't get anything. And they'll be like, yeah, why
Speaker 2: why am i here? Why am i here. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: brings us to the second Inti Fautam, the background from
Speaker 2: which is this week's main the main story of this week, which,
Speaker 2: in classic cool people form, will mostly emerge next episode,
Speaker 2: you know, first episode context. The second Inti Faoutum was
Speaker 2: not as peaceful. Framing it this way is dangerous. It
Speaker 2: was less peaceful than the first one. Right, well, the
Speaker 2: first one with a peaceful because is real, kept murdering people.
Speaker 3: But right, right right peaceful on the pro Palestine. So yeah, yes.
Speaker 2: Starting in nineteen ninety six, Israel started making contingent The
Speaker 2: Israeli government started making contingency plans for if the two
Speaker 2: thousand summit failed, about all the shit that they were
Speaker 2: going to go steal. As soon as this didn't work,
Speaker 2: so the Palestinians also made contingency plans for all the
Speaker 2: shit they were going to not let get stolen. Framing
Speaker 2: and around a Palestinian violent uprising is like if someone
Speaker 2: is laying siege to me outside my house for five
Speaker 2: years and then I make some plans to defend my house.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like I am the source of violence
Speaker 2: in that situation.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: Riots broke out in Jerusalem in September two thousand over
Speaker 2: an Israeli politician, Sharon doing some provocation shit where he
Speaker 2: shows up in helicopter and is being a dick. Yes,
Speaker 2: Palestinians threw some stones, so Sami Samy Palestinians through stones,
Speaker 2: the idea fired one point three million bullets.
Speaker 3: Yep, in the.
Speaker 2: First couple of days. Jesus, a French mediator who was
Speaker 2: like trying to was trying to be in the middle
Speaker 2: of all this, you know, is trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to make this work, was like, it is hard
Speaker 2: to convince the world that this is like a samey
Speaker 2: same thing, or that the Palestinians are the aggressors, right
Speaker 2: while Israel is shooting people from helicopters for throwing rocks. Yeah, overall,
Speaker 2: any given clash at this time period had about a
Speaker 2: ten to one casualty ratio. Ten Palestinians killed forevers every
Speaker 2: Israeli and soon it is a more violent clash than
Speaker 2: the First Intifada, although we're going to talk about aspects
Speaker 2: outside of that. But there's a stronger Islamic influence on
Speaker 2: the violent parts of the resistance movement this time around.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: And you know, I want to say unfortunately. But you know,
Speaker 3: at the same time, I mean just like I don't
Speaker 3: fucking live there. No, I know exactly if I'm in
Speaker 3: that position, I can't tell you I wouldn't fucking yeah,
Speaker 3: drawn to the point of madness.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also just like so no, go ahead, sorry.
Speaker 3: No, it's just say, you know, it's it's like I
Speaker 3: I'm a guy who understands political optics, and I'm also
Speaker 3: a guy who had an older brother who bullied him
Speaker 3: a lot. Had no but like, you know, yeah, yeah
Speaker 3: we're cool.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah I didn't. I wasn't implying I killed him, but
Speaker 3: I did think about suicide bombing him. No, but it
Speaker 3: is the point being that, you know, it's uh, you
Speaker 3: know it is it gets violent, yeah, on the pro
Speaker 3: Palestine side.
Speaker 2: No, And honestly, like I where I'm at personally, I
Speaker 2: have like literally no ethical qualms with people's right to
Speaker 2: self defense. I have no qualms with people targeting Israeli
Speaker 2: military instructures and stuff. But the thing that Hamas is
Speaker 2: famous for is of course being as long terrorists or whatever,
Speaker 2: because they do terrorism. Starting nineteen ninety four, seven years
Speaker 2: after their formation, they declared that they were willing to
Speaker 2: target Israeli citizens and not just military targets.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The reason that they did that was because in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, an American Israeli settler named Baruch Goldstein threw
Speaker 2: a grenade into a mosque in Hebron and then opened fire,
Speaker 2: killing twenty nine on armsiville.
Speaker 3: Yes, this guy, by the way, Baruch Goldstein. He later
Speaker 3: he's well, he's no longer with us.
Speaker 4: Rip. But a.
Speaker 3: Super right wing fascist Israeli named Ben Vere, who is
Speaker 3: you know, been in the Israeli right, literally called the
Speaker 3: Israeli fascist Zionist wing of Zionism is now in power,
Speaker 3: has a portrait of Bruck Goldstein in his home.
Speaker 2: Oh my fucking I'm god, I'm not. It's funny that
Speaker 2: this whole thing leads to lots of situations where I
Speaker 2: am not surprised, but I'm still shocked.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it's like when you see it's because the
Speaker 3: Israeli right in our I don't know, in our kind
Speaker 3: of like news media is essentially just portrayed as like, oh,
Speaker 3: these are like these religious whack job settlers and whatnot,
Speaker 3: and then people essentially just talk about them as this
Speaker 3: kind of like, ugh, I know they're annoying, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and people I think forget how much of this state
Speaker 3: is caters to these people and their ideology. And so
Speaker 3: when you hear like someone would have a portrait of
Speaker 3: a mass wearing Israeli terrorist in their home, you'd be like, well, certainly, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's respectability. Respectability of politics would dictate that a person
Speaker 3: who is pro that wouldn't say it, you know, out loud,
Speaker 3: or have a portrait of the person who did that.
Speaker 3: But you'd be wrong, Yeah, you'd be yeah, no that yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: So that's why. So that's why that that's why Hamas
Speaker 3: was like, oh fuck it, we're you going for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, civilians and they and it's like it doesn't make
Speaker 2: it okay because to the wrongs don't make a right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you can, you can fucking understand it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not it's not this, you know, again with
Speaker 3: the narrative around Israel Palestine, it's not that Islam is
Speaker 3: terror and violence. That's that's the whole thing, you know.
Speaker 3: It's like they try to like reduce like Islam and
Speaker 3: anyone who is Muslim into this like you know, archetype
Speaker 3: of the terrorist who just kills because it is they
Speaker 3: believe in their book it says you're allowed to kill
Speaker 3: the Heathens. It's like, no, there's very real political reasons
Speaker 3: around it that are very specific to this conflict, very
Speaker 3: specific to Israel Palestine, to the back and forth of
Speaker 3: the violence between them. It is not like just ah, well,
Speaker 3: it's because they're born that way or their religion tells
Speaker 3: them to be that way. It's you know, we like
Speaker 3: to be reductive when it comes to Islam because of
Speaker 3: the fact that it's easy for Americans to understand they
Speaker 3: hate us for our freedoms. You know, boom done. No
Speaker 3: need to think about any context outside of I'm free
Speaker 3: and you hate that our women wear bathing suits.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Massa's statement was that if Israel did not discriminate against
Speaker 2: fighters and civilians, they would before between If did not
Speaker 2: discriminate between fighters and civilians, then they would be forced
Speaker 2: to respond in kind, but they would stop targeting civilians
Speaker 2: as soon as Israel did. Time after time, they offer
Speaker 2: Israel a quid pro quo, no more targeting civilians, agreement,
Speaker 2: and time after time, Israel's like, now we're good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And at the start of the second Antifada, Hamas wasn't
Speaker 2: wildly popular before the second anti Fada started, about ten
Speaker 2: percent of Palestinian supported Hamas. A year and two it
Speaker 2: seventeen percent died. By two thousand and six, they were
Speaker 2: democratically elected as the governing force in the Gaza Strip,
Speaker 2: defeating Fatah the Yaesir Arafat's group, who I think died
Speaker 2: right around this time.
Speaker 3: Yes, two thousand and four I think keeped okay, and
Speaker 3: four or five, But yes, that's that is what happened.
Speaker 2: And I don't I don't like Hamasa's policies or their tactics.
Speaker 2: But the only reason they are not perceived as a
Speaker 2: legitimate force is because that Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as
Speaker 2: a state. That is the only reason.
Speaker 3: And they also didn't recognize the election of Hamas when
Speaker 3: the elections happened. Yeah, they did not recognized the election
Speaker 3: and they actually democracy right exactly, and they tried to
Speaker 3: get you know, they tried to coordinate a coup by Fatah,
Speaker 3: who was you know, the Plos political party, and that
Speaker 3: coup did not work out. And you know, if you
Speaker 3: hear about you know, Palestinian on Palestinian crime around the
Speaker 3: time of Hamas, you'll mostly see hamas As like, oh,
Speaker 3: they got into power and they just started killing the
Speaker 3: political opposition. It's like, no, they tried to they tried
Speaker 3: to undo the election, right, they tried to undo the election.
Speaker 3: And it's worth noting there's not been an election since. Yah,
Speaker 3: so when well and so, but also when here, when
Speaker 3: you hear people say, you know, well they voted for
Speaker 3: you know, they voted for Amas. You know the fifty
Speaker 3: percent or I forget a huge number of Palestinians are children,
Speaker 3: and uh, we're not alive or voting age in two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, and so the idea that they would
Speaker 3: be responsible for Hamas being in power is fucking atrocious.
Speaker 3: And even if they were, it would be fucking a
Speaker 3: tros right. No, I did not vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when he became governor, and if he had started terminating
Speaker 3: all the other states and then they collective collectively punished
Speaker 3: all of California, you'd be against that. It was a
Speaker 3: very I'm really dragging that metaphor out, but you get it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and absolutely, And plus he has that sword, yeah, dude,
Speaker 3: Conan sword. Yeah, he would have stopped man, he would
Speaker 3: have stopped all the collective punishment that I'm imagining in
Speaker 3: my brain.
Speaker 2: And now tell you would have personally gone out there
Speaker 2: and done it. So the second indefautam as before the
Speaker 2: election of Hamas, and it's the background story to the
Speaker 2: thing that is today's story, because not all the uprising islamisist. Basically,
Speaker 2: the Palestinian authority was increasingly central during this point, but
Speaker 2: the popular assemblies are still around. They're alienated from the
Speaker 2: centralized authority. But they organized an entire movement focused on
Speaker 2: strategic nonviolence. And again I'm not making an ethical statement
Speaker 2: about that, but they did it, and I think it's cool.
Speaker 2: I think it was an interesting strategy. The main issue
Speaker 2: was the wall called the security fence or the apartheid
Speaker 2: wall or the segregation wall, or Wikipedia calls it the barrier,
Speaker 2: because I think that's New.
Speaker 3: York Times is line around it, because they like I
Speaker 3: always like to find a neutral term for prison bars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And in contrast to some of the other stuff,
Speaker 2: this new movement involves an awful lot of women, and
Speaker 2: soon they had solidarity from internationals and from Israelis. The
Speaker 2: first network for solidarity at this time, at least that
Speaker 2: I ran across, was called ta Ayush. This was a
Speaker 2: network of hundreds of activists. I believe israelis both Jewish
Speaker 2: and Arab citizens of Israel, and they would bring food
Speaker 2: to besieged cities and towns, defend Palestinian farmers from settlers
Speaker 2: and soldiers as they worked their lands. And though this
Speaker 2: particular group continue to be woven throughout the story, basically
Speaker 2: there's a lot of cool stuff that's going to happen,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of different groups that are all
Speaker 2: going to be doing it, and they're going to be
Speaker 2: coming from slightly different angles and working together to do
Speaker 2: really cool shit.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and one, you get another organization, the
Speaker 2: International Solidarity Movement, and this is a Palestinian led organization
Speaker 2: which brings volunteers from around the world to participate in
Speaker 2: non violent direct action against settlements and occupation. They're pretty rad,
Speaker 2: they're very consciously supporters of diversity of tactics, and I
Speaker 2: think that this statement like gets at the balance between
Speaker 2: why is strategic nonviolence and the right wing hates them.
Speaker 2: Because of the following statement, as enshrined in international law
Speaker 2: and UN resolutions, we recognize the Palestinian right to resist
Speaker 2: Israeli violence and occupation via alogity mint arms struggle. However,
Speaker 2: we believe nonviolence can be a powerful weapon in fighting oppression,
Speaker 2: and we are committed to the principles of non violent resistance.
Speaker 2: And so the right wing like loses their shit over this,
Speaker 2: being like they're clearly terrorists, they say, right there. Ism
Speaker 2: actions include everything from mass demonstrations to forming human chains
Speaker 2: to block soldiers from fucking with Palestinians, like when Palacine
Speaker 2: needs to go and tear down military roadblocks, they'll defend them.
Speaker 2: They will also break curfew to escort kids to school.
Speaker 2: Soon they move to human shielding and witnessing and they
Speaker 2: start staying in home slated for demolition and they're like
Speaker 2: riding with ambulances and shit. And this is like two
Speaker 2: thousand and one to two thousand and five ish is
Speaker 2: sort of their heyday. They're still around in Amatrona. The
Speaker 2: information I have is between two thousand and one and
Speaker 2: two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, that's what we are focusing on.
Speaker 2: Israel makes a huge deal out of Hamas and it's
Speaker 2: human shields right now, And the implication is that Hamas
Speaker 2: keeps civilians around just so they can like do their evil,
Speaker 2: nefarious shit, and that they've like forced or brainwashed all
Speaker 2: these civilians.
Speaker 3: Right, or they've literally tied them to their chest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, yeah, exactly. In reality, the human shield movement
Speaker 2: is brave as fuck, people from relatively privileged positions who
Speaker 2: are generally voluntarily acting to protect civilians and activists.
Speaker 4: M hmm.
Speaker 2: There were For example, we talked about this last time,
Speaker 2: but I just I was so interested in all the
Speaker 2: parallels between this episode and the last episode. There were
Speaker 2: white voluntary human shields at the occupation of Wounded Knee
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies by the American Indian Movement, and
Speaker 2: it was the people who lived there already were like, no,
Speaker 2: we'll stay, and then they can't murder everyone because there's
Speaker 2: white people here. And then the media was like they've
Speaker 2: kidnapped these white people. Of the white people are like, no,
Speaker 2: we're here on purpose, we live here, fuck you. Or
Speaker 2: on their side there are neighbors, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds relatively familiar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the what kind of human shielding that
Speaker 2: the ism was doing. To quote an article from The
Speaker 2: Stranger quote, when a Palestinian was shot a while ago
Speaker 2: near the Rapa Egypt border crossing and Israeli soldiers wouldn't
Speaker 2: let anyone walk into the area to retrieve the body.
Speaker 2: The ismmers say that they took a stretcher, walked into
Speaker 2: the area despite Israeli fire, picked up the body and
Speaker 2: removed it for burial. And that's who the ism were
Speaker 2: and are. And so in two thousand and three, Israel
Speaker 2: thought about this and they said, what if we just
Speaker 2: kill these people? Can we get away with that cat
Speaker 2: we just kill them? Do you think we can kill
Speaker 2: a twenty three year old blonde American woman in broad
Speaker 2: daylight get away with it?
Speaker 3: Ah, you don't know until you try. Well, you don't
Speaker 3: know until you try.
Speaker 2: Well, I answer that question on WEDNESDAYD since that's a
Speaker 2: shitty cliffhanger. The answers, yes, they can, and they will.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they can.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean you probably guess that, yeah, by our tone
Speaker 3: of a you know, silly resignation to the horrors of
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so we will talk. We'll tell that story
Speaker 2: and some more stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's a really amazing story. And I'm so glad.
Speaker 3: I was hoping that we were going to talk about
Speaker 3: Rachel Corey in this episode or in this series, because
Speaker 3: she is an incredible martyr and uh, should be someone
Speaker 3: who more people know about what happened to her and
Speaker 3: what she did and what happened to her family subsequently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you like the why yeah, thanks, yep.
Speaker 2: If you like making light of bad things that are
Speaker 2: represented on television screens, because the Wires about that's right.
Speaker 3: Yes, you'll love Pod Yourself a Gun a TV rewatch podcast.
Speaker 3: We went through all of the Sopranos, and we are
Speaker 3: about to end season four of the Wire and then
Speaker 3: there's only one more season after that until we find
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Speaker 3: And also, like I said, I want to learn how
Speaker 3: to make that chinzo abbe gun. Pod Yourself a Gun
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts and also follow me on Instagram. Uh,
Speaker 3: and you'll see some of my anti Zionist Jewish videos.
Speaker 3: They're they're funny and stupid, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And well received by everyone. They're they're really good.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I I you know, there was a time where this
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Speaker 3: a shitty a shitty timeline, so finally, yeah, these jokes
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