Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, normally a podcast about
Speaker 2: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 2: all of history, where I read a story about a
Speaker 2: historical monster or some sort of terrible event to a
Speaker 2: guest who's coming in cold this week. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: doing my best to not embarrass myself in front of
Speaker 2: the guest who knows a lot more about the subject
Speaker 2: than that A lot of it. Doctor, doctor ocurred, welcome
Speaker 2: back to the show. Thank you again for your time.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: It is kind of cool that we have several like
Speaker 1: PhDs on staff because James James Doubt also also a doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Joe.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was declared a doctor by the
Speaker 2: state of New Jersey one time.
Speaker 1: My brother's a doctor that count there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't let doctorbe anything, which really sucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's an oncologist, so we're not even in
Speaker 1: the same like lettering system.
Speaker 2: But you know what, you don't have prescription abilities, do
Speaker 2: you don.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately political science does not have that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would have gotten a policy PhD if I
Speaker 2: could have prescribed stuff.
Speaker 1: Robert is not the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's always the time relevant. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 2: of relevant down do you want to plug anything up
Speaker 2: front before we get back into the story.
Speaker 4: There's the Handbook on Authoritarianism in the Air World, Yes,
Speaker 4: out with Glimsbury Politics, open access, so people could just
Speaker 4: google and read us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds much better. One of the sources for
Speaker 2: this that I read, which was useful in some ways,
Speaker 2: is like the Oxford Handbook in the History of Terrorism,
Speaker 2: which is very again, very useful for certain things, and
Speaker 2: also like we're we're not going to get into this,
Speaker 2: but in nineteen forty six, uh, I think it was
Speaker 2: the Good which is like the militia associated with Bitar,
Speaker 2: which is like a right wing Zionist group that is
Speaker 2: today become like its descendant is Netanyahu's party, bomb the
Speaker 2: King David Hotel and kill a bunch of people, and
Speaker 2: the Oxford it's really fun when you like read what
Speaker 2: the British said about it's an active terror, when you
Speaker 2: read what like everyone at the time said about its
Speaker 2: an act of terrorism, and then you read the Oxford
Speaker 2: Encyclopedia of Terrorism, They're like, well, because the targets were
Speaker 2: primarily governmental, we can't call this an act of terrorism.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, but if it had been like Arab
Speaker 2: nationalists who bombed a hotel, it would be.
Speaker 4: Terrorism, right, yeah, right, academics, I can't even right. I'm
Speaker 4: a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Facts. We're going to talk about Vladimir Yebatinsky a lot
Speaker 2: more in these episodes. So, as we said last time,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who grows up in Odessa. Uh.
Speaker 2: He is from a fairly young age, really concerned with, like,
Speaker 2: you know, fighting back against these programs by establishing Jewish
Speaker 2: self defense groups. And after he's close for a period
Speaker 2: of time with Theodore Herzal, but he also has some
Speaker 2: like breakoffs with him and his issue with a lot.
Speaker 2: He does not get along with most Zionists in his
Speaker 2: day because he is really right wing. He does not
Speaker 2: like these labor unions, he does not like the socialist
Speaker 2: politics that a lot of these Zionists have. He's very
Speaker 2: against that sort of stuff. And after Herzel dies in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh four, Yebtenski becomes seen as the leader among
Speaker 2: right wing a leader among right wing Zionists. He's a
Speaker 2: very big feat. He goes by Zeev Yebatinski most of
Speaker 2: his life, but he's still known as Vladimir at this
Speaker 2: point in time, we'll talk about why that change happens.
Speaker 2: And you know, after Herzel dies, he's a political leader
Speaker 2: for a while, and then you know, the war starts
Speaker 2: and he has to take a job as a newspaper editor.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen fifteen he's reporting from North Africa and
Speaker 2: he tours a refugee camp in Egypt for Jewish deportees
Speaker 2: from Ottoman Palestine. And we'll talk about this later too.
Speaker 2: The Ottomans start deporting a lot of these European Jews
Speaker 2: from Palestine during the war and current entry in the
Speaker 2: International Encyclopedia of the First War World War by Ari
Speaker 2: Dubnov and Brian Horowitz quote soon thereafter, he reached the
Speaker 2: conclusion that the Ottoman Turks would lose the war in
Speaker 2: Palasin would fall into the hands of the Entan powers.
Speaker 2: It was in this context that he came up with
Speaker 2: the idea of encouraging Jews to volunteer for the British
Speaker 2: army and secure a future Palestine for the Jews. And
Speaker 2: this is unfortunately a really smart play for him. Tom right,
Speaker 2: he's a really smart guy and this works very well
Speaker 2: for him, Yeah, very much, unfortunately, And it is worth
Speaker 2: noting like he does kind of see where things are going, right,
Speaker 2: it's very accurate to say that the entent's going to
Speaker 2: take over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Zionism would not have really survived without British support.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. That's a big part of the
Speaker 2: story we're gonna be telling today. So despite the fact
Speaker 2: that he's gotten no personal military experience, he does not
Speaker 2: actually join this Jewish legion, right. Jebtinski grows close to
Speaker 2: a guy named Joseph Trumpeldoor, a Russian Zionist military veteran
Speaker 2: who had fought in the Russo Japanese War which had
Speaker 2: happened not that much earlier, and had been decorated by
Speaker 2: the Czar for his like valorine combat and stuff. And
Speaker 2: the two of them approach a general, a British general
Speaker 2: named Sir John Grenfell Maxwell, who is commanding British troops
Speaker 2: in Egypt, and they're like, hey, we want to take
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys who've been like brought to
Speaker 2: kicked out of Palestine and put in camps in Egypt
Speaker 2: are willing to fight for the British Empire against the Ottomans, Right,
Speaker 2: And Maxwell's at first like, I don't know if this
Speaker 2: is a good, like, you're not really soldiers. Is this
Speaker 2: really going to help things at all? This might just
Speaker 2: be more trouble than it's worth. But he also like,
Speaker 2: there's not enough manpower, you know, especially not in that theater.
Speaker 2: So he's not gonna like show he's not going to
Speaker 2: turn down the potential to have a few thousand more
Speaker 2: fighters on his hands necessarily either, right, all of these
Speaker 2: and he brings this idea up to some of the
Speaker 2: other British general officers, and they're all kind of reluctant.
Speaker 2: As much as they want these fighters, they also don't
Speaker 2: want to endorse the Zionist idea necessarily, And they also
Speaker 2: don't want to endorse an offensive on Palestine at the time,
Speaker 2: which is what you know, these these people are really
Speaker 2: pushing for, is to like, let us invade the place
Speaker 2: we just got kicked out of, and the British don't
Speaker 2: really want to do that at the moment. But Maxwell
Speaker 2: agrees to form a Jewish volunteer force that will fight
Speaker 2: alongside the British military and other parts of the Turkish front.
Speaker 2: So as this is all happening, World War One escalates
Speaker 2: a lot of sectarian hatred and anger that had been
Speaker 2: slowly building in Palestine for years. The Ottomans, who are
Speaker 2: paranoid about foreign spies and influence, issue a declaration immediately
Speaker 2: after the start of the war that subjects of hostile
Speaker 2: nations must leave the country. This caused immediate confusion. Some
Speaker 2: Jewish residents in Palestine were exempted because they'd start and
Speaker 2: I should say some Jewish residents who were had immigrated
Speaker 2: from Europe are exempted because if you had come to
Speaker 2: Palestine from Europe and you had become a naturalized citizen
Speaker 2: of the Ottoman Empire, which there was a way to do,
Speaker 2: then you didn't get deported, right, But if you hadn't
Speaker 2: bothered to do that, they would deport you because the
Speaker 2: Ottoman's argument was, well, that proves that you were not loyal, right,
Speaker 2: because you had an opportunity and you didn't take it.
Speaker 2: And part of why a lot of ashkinasm don't take
Speaker 2: the opportunity to become naturalized Automan subjects is, as I've noted,
Speaker 2: they don't want to integrate right, and this sometimes extends
Speaker 2: to failing to make legal arrangements, and a lot of
Speaker 2: these people are going to suffer because they don't want
Speaker 2: to do that. During the war years, Ahmed Pasha, the
Speaker 2: Ottoman military governor of the Levant, launched the first of
Speaker 2: two major deportations of Jews from Jaffa in December of
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen. This is called Black Thursday, that's what it
Speaker 2: comes to be known, and this is the forced expulsion
Speaker 2: of about six thousand Russian born Jewish immigrants. A total
Speaker 2: of about two hundred and seventy seven Jews from Jaffa
Speaker 2: are exiled to Alexandria, where many of them are put
Speaker 2: in detainment camps. That are you know these You should
Speaker 2: assume these are as nice as any enemy subject detainment
Speaker 2: camps ever are in a war, especially World War One,
Speaker 2: when people don't really have good medicine. Now, as I
Speaker 2: noted in Episode one, foreign born Jews in Palestine had
Speaker 2: previously often benefited from more support than Arab Jews, and
Speaker 2: we see evidence of this fact even during the war,
Speaker 2: in the fact that in May of nineteen fifteen, the
Speaker 2: New York Sun published an investigation into the cruel treatment
Speaker 2: or of they call them Palestinian Jews. These are mostly
Speaker 2: European Jews, would come right by the Ottoman government, and
Speaker 2: this outrage fuels Zionists like to marrige Yabatinski, who'd started
Speaker 2: his career trying to organize Jewish self defense units in Russia. Well,
Speaker 2: the Zionist movement officially announced neutrality in the war and
Speaker 2: moved its HQ to Copenhagen from Hamburg as a result,
Speaker 2: because it doesn't really make much sense for the Zionists
Speaker 2: to pick aside in World War One. Honestly didn't make
Speaker 2: much of a sense for anyone to pick a side
Speaker 2: in World War One. It was a stupid fucking war, right,
Speaker 2: But Yabutinsky because he's realized that the Ottomans are going
Speaker 2: to lose the war by nineteen fifteen, and he gets
Speaker 2: the approval from Maxwell to create this voluntier force. You know,
Speaker 2: by nineteen sixteen or so, this force is in the
Speaker 2: field and it's starting to actually gain combat experience. It's
Speaker 2: known initially as the Assyrian Jewish Refugee Corps. They're about
Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty men in the unit at first.
Speaker 2: The other nickname they're known by is the zion Mule
Speaker 2: Corps or ZMC, and Jebatinski hates both of these nicknames,
Speaker 2: by the way, he considers them dishonorable and shameful to
Speaker 2: his people. But if you know the British military, I
Speaker 2: actually it's hard for me to interpret Zion Mule Corps
Speaker 2: anything but kind of you say, it's like not super woke,
Speaker 2: but it's a sign of fondness. If like that's how
Speaker 2: I kind of interpret the way the British are naming them.
Speaker 2: Maybe other people feel I think there's like some debate
Speaker 2: about that, but this is and when I say fondness,
Speaker 2: I don't mean that in like a good way. I
Speaker 2: mean in the way like the British were fond of
Speaker 2: a lot of their African like like military like tried to.
Speaker 4: Kind of like stuff r Cerchole.
Speaker 2: Right, they call them fighting races. Right, that was like
Speaker 2: a term the British used. Right, That's what I mean
Speaker 2: by fond Right. Not to say it's not racist or anything.
Speaker 2: Yebatinski never fought in the ZMC, but most of the
Speaker 2: man power came from Russian born Jews who'd been expelled
Speaker 2: by the Ottomans. Now the unit eventually receives a more
Speaker 2: official name. It becomes the thirty eighth Battalion of Royal Fusiliers,
Speaker 2: although it's still more often referred to as the Judaean
Speaker 2: Regiment The unit motto was first to Judah, which should
Speaker 2: spell out Yabatinsky's purpose for creating this unit. He wanted
Speaker 2: Jews to receive combat experience and training so that they
Speaker 2: could fight their neighbors in Palestine and the British government
Speaker 2: if necessary, to ensure the of the state of Israel.
Speaker 2: From the beginning, Vladimir is like, not only does this
Speaker 2: give us combat experience and guns and might get us
Speaker 2: in good with the British And that could help because
Speaker 2: they'll be in charge next and we want them to
Speaker 2: like us. But even if they don't, if we understand
Speaker 2: how the British military works, then we can fight them
Speaker 2: when we need to. Right, That's part of his gain.
Speaker 2: He's a smart guy. This is really good strategy. Now.
Speaker 2: The worst deportations from Palestine occur under Jemal Pasha in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, and Jemal sees his work as necessary to
Speaker 2: subjugate the budding Jewish national project in Palestine. He is
Speaker 2: not just worried that these are unloyal, he's anti Zionists. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a big a motivating factor for this dude. And
Speaker 2: because Jaffa was home to a large foreign born Jewish population,
Speaker 2: who were slowly spinning tel Aviv up from a suburb
Speaker 2: to a city. This is where their focus fell on
Speaker 2: most heavily. Pasha saw himself as a warrior for Islaw
Speaker 2: and he wanted to crush Zionism. But as this article
Speaker 2: in the Journal of Israel Affairs by Glinda Abramson makes clear,
Speaker 2: he hated Zionism because it was a nationalist movement out
Speaker 2: of a desire to destroy the Jewish community in Palestine
Speaker 2: as a whole. Quote. Like many Ottoman statesman, Jimal had
Speaker 2: witnessed the nationalist movements of the Balkans of the late
Speaker 2: nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and he was committed to
Speaker 2: ensure that nothing similar would emerge in the Levant. While
Speaker 2: he was in charge in Syria, they used to say,
Speaker 2: if Shimal Pashus scratched his nose, he was thinking of
Speaker 2: sending them to exile. If he stroked his beard, he
Speaker 2: was thinking of whether or not to forgive them. However,
Speaker 2: if he twirled his mustache, be afraid, for the conversation
Speaker 2: was on a path that may lead to death. So
Speaker 2: kind of a hard gal get bearings ug.
Speaker 4: I mean just to say like Arabs see him as
Speaker 4: extremely repressive, like Palestinians see him as extremely repressive. So
Speaker 4: he has like different types of repression for different communities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is and that's the really important point.
Speaker 2: He is not anti Zionists because he's racist. He's also
Speaker 2: anti Arab nationalists. He's anti anyone who doesn't want the
Speaker 2: other exactly right, exactly. That's this guy's big issue, right,
Speaker 2: not to say that. I'm sure he believed things that
Speaker 2: we would call racists, but that's not his motivation. Motivation
Speaker 2: is the Ottoman Empire. Right now, one of the diplomats
Speaker 2: who fought hardest to stop Pasha from doing these violent
Speaker 2: deportations was and this shows you how different the times were,
Speaker 2: the German consul to the Ottoman Empire, because the Germans
Speaker 2: and the Ottomans are allies, and the German guy is like,
Speaker 2: you guys are really mean to these people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh well that's cynic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But Pasha would not be swayed. He believed that
Speaker 2: Zionists wanted to quote tear part of the body of
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire off, which they did, and he was
Speaker 2: a diehard Automan loyalist. As a result of his persecution
Speaker 2: and the wartime shortages, investment in the Zionist project overseas
Speaker 2: and in Palestine halted during this period. One Jewish exile
Speaker 2: during this time described the war riors in Palestine this way,
Speaker 2: and I want to emphasize his description would also describe
Speaker 2: how most Arab Muslims would experience the same period of time,
Speaker 2: as they were also disfavored, unloyal minorities fighting an active
Speaker 2: war against the Ottoman Empire. Quote. They took products from
Speaker 2: the shops, flowers, sugar, rice, and so on. They ordered
Speaker 2: the bakers to bake bread without payment until there was
Speaker 2: no bread or flour left in the city. They ordered
Speaker 2: all kinds of laborers and workers to work without payment,
Speaker 2: and their families went hungry. In addition, they grabbed everyone
Speaker 2: walking in the street, roped them together, and took them
Speaker 2: to dig pits, once again without payment or food. They
Speaker 2: confiscated the warehouses of large and small trees to make
Speaker 2: boxes to carry the stolen oranges to their camps. They
Speaker 2: took all the leather and skins from the warehouse to
Speaker 2: make shoes for the army. So yeah, Outam and Empire
Speaker 2: are not cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my family history, Like I don't know because I'm
Speaker 4: not a historian, but I don't know if it counts
Speaker 4: as a famine, but they remember this time as like
Speaker 4: famine like conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, it is a famine. People starved to dead. Yeah, Jews, Muslims,
Speaker 2: a lot of people starved to the population of Palestine
Speaker 2: drops by I think like four or five percent during
Speaker 2: this period. Disease too, is rampant. You know, this is
Speaker 2: not just Palestine diseases. There's a horrible fucking plague that
Speaker 2: comes at the end of World War One that kills
Speaker 2: fucking millions and millions of people. Right, So Jimmel dissolves
Speaker 2: the few units of Jewish guards that had existed to
Speaker 2: protect you Wish neighborhoods. Doctors were conscripted and taken to
Speaker 2: the front, so hospitals had to close, which also caused
Speaker 2: and helped make worse massive outbreaks of dysentery and typhoid
Speaker 2: that only got worse as soldiers came home from the war.
Speaker 2: So by the time of the armises, Yeah, here's the
Speaker 2: exact number of Palestine's population had fallen by six percent in
Speaker 2: four years. That is catastrophics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is kind of strong, like yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, that's the equivalent of like what like
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty million Americans and four years dead something
Speaker 2: like that, if like it were to happen here at
Speaker 2: least like this just by back of the hop but
Speaker 2: like a lot, right, that's a massive number of people
Speaker 2: to die.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when nineteen nine and obviously we all lived through.
Speaker 2: Think about how the pandemic, what it did to American society.
Speaker 2: Did it make people like more understanding of each other
Speaker 2: and like less angry?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were still messed up. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine if it had killed like three thousand times
Speaker 2: as many people proportionally or something like that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So yeah, when nineteen nineteen dawned, the Ottoman Empire was
Speaker 2: no more. In the Balfour Declaration meant the new British
Speaker 2: Mandate had promised to bring some sort of Jewish state
Speaker 2: into being. Frustration and rage over this was mixed with
Speaker 2: nationalist ambitions from Arab Muslims and Christians alike, who grew
Speaker 2: more hostile to both the British and the Zionists. Many
Speaker 2: longtime residents of Palestine were distraught by the conflict that
Speaker 2: came alongside nationalism. In his book Lives in Common, Clin
Speaker 2: writes that members of the old Sephardic Jewish community in
Speaker 2: Jerusalem often expressed a sense of sadness and bewilderment about
Speaker 2: the death of the old days. Quote. Nationalisms suddenly intruded
Speaker 2: on their lives and those of their Muslim neighbors and
Speaker 2: imposed its hatreds and wars on them. The construction of
Speaker 2: the national eye involved the rejection of prior identities, including
Speaker 2: that of being Arab Jews, and that it's both really
Speaker 2: bleak and it's also why as this goes on, I
Speaker 2: was trying very hard to differentiate between European born Jewish immigrants,
Speaker 2: Sephardic Arab Jews. Increasingly it's just Arabs and Jews in
Speaker 2: terms of how people talk about it and think about it,
Speaker 2: and how the international community talks about and thinks about it.
Speaker 2: That hasn't happened yet, certainly not right, not by nineteens
Speaker 2: right exactly and flattening right, and that that is happening,
Speaker 2: and that's you know, obviously, there's a genocide going on
Speaker 2: in Gaza right now, and genocide is not the right
Speaker 2: word for just like the end of an identity. But
Speaker 2: I don't think there is a good word for what
Speaker 2: happens when something like that occurs, right, I don't know it.
Speaker 2: I don't really know what to refer to that as honestly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not even assimilation, because it's like a direct
Speaker 4: result of political people there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: The war's end also brings an influx of new foreign
Speaker 2: born Zionist leaders, as well as a return of thousands
Speaker 2: of exiled Jews, including many who came back with arms
Speaker 2: and military experience. Right by the end of the war,
Speaker 2: Jebatinski's Judean Division numbered more than five thousand men. The
Speaker 2: International Encyclopedia of the First World War summarizes their service
Speaker 2: this way, Gebatinski in pattern. It's one of the leaders,
Speaker 2: one of the direct leaders of the forces. Relationships with
Speaker 2: the Egyptian Expeditionary Force higher command were not free of friction,
Speaker 2: as it clearly contained a number of anti Semitic officers
Speaker 2: who made the lives of the legionnaires difficult. At various points.
Speaker 2: The legion did not arrive for service until after General
Speaker 2: Allenby's conquest of Jerusalem. They proved useful in the final
Speaker 2: battles and then in guarding POWs. In nineteen nineteen, the
Speaker 2: British government began to decommission the Legion. Jebatinski struggled for
Speaker 2: the Legion's survival, claiming that the absence of Jewish armed
Speaker 2: forces would lead to violence against Jews. And you know,
Speaker 2: first off, one of the reasons why there's conflict, and
Speaker 2: this is going to be relevant as much as overall.
Speaker 2: The British Mandate is way definitely going to side with
Speaker 2: the Zionists and enable them, especially in this period. There's
Speaker 2: at least an equal number of British military officers who
Speaker 2: are more siding with the Arabs and are very much
Speaker 2: hesitant to embrace like the Zionist vision of things, and
Speaker 2: who certainly want like they don't want it to just
Speaker 2: be Muslim states, but they want integrated Arabs or independent
Speaker 2: Arabic states.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This comes out of like elo arts and stuff. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of British officers who are not in this
Speaker 2: period of time bought into the Zionist thing. The British
Speaker 2: Mandate though, is very much going to side with the
Speaker 2: Zionists over Arab nationalists in many cases, not that they
Speaker 2: don't also fight them kill them. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: violence between the British Mandate and some of these different
Speaker 2: Zionist groups, as we'll talk about two. So the fact
Speaker 2: that Yabatinski thinks that if this military unit is decommissioned,
Speaker 2: it's going to lead to violence against the Jews. His
Speaker 2: fears there would seem to be reinforced by the escalating
Speaker 2: violence of the Ottoman state near the end of the war,
Speaker 2: and the fact that this causes escalating nationalist hostilities too.
Speaker 2: One of the major Muslim festivals we talked to us
Speaker 2: a bit was Nebi Musa right, and this is named
Speaker 2: after a holy site near Jericho said to be the
Speaker 2: tomb of Moses. Palestinian Muslims would celebrate for seven days,
Speaker 2: starting just before Good Friday, and in prior years, as
Speaker 2: I've talked about, and we read a quote about this
Speaker 2: in the first episode, the festival was often attended by
Speaker 2: all faiths, as one Jewish resident the Holy City recalled,
Speaker 2: a warm and happy atmosphere prevailed among us. We knew
Speaker 2: that they were honoring the memory of a prophet and
Speaker 2: a man of God, whom we also accepted, and that
Speaker 2: is obviously one reason why there's so much religious solidarity.
Speaker 2: Muslims think Moses was pretty important too, rite, so it
Speaker 2: wouldn't gotten this in previous years. It would make you
Speaker 2: feel really comforted, right that, like, well, these people believe
Speaker 2: something different, but we have some commonalities. But during the
Speaker 2: war things had curdled and in nineteen nineteen, by nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen the Nebi Musa celebration, a lot of the speaking
Speaker 2: around it, because they're speakers at these events, right, were
Speaker 2: really anti Zionists and anti British right because they're Arab nationalists, right,
Speaker 2: and Arabs are furious that their own nationalist aims have
Speaker 2: been thwarted. We talk about this in the Lawns episodes,
Speaker 2: but the Arabs get really fucked over by the British
Speaker 2: after fighting for independence. You know, they had fought as
Speaker 2: well alongside Britain and the Ottomans, and World War One
Speaker 2: had ended with the Balfour Declaration, but it had not
Speaker 2: ended with a similar commitment to their aims though they
Speaker 2: had also fought right and so a lot, a lot
Speaker 2: of these people think that the new British mandate is
Speaker 2: giving preferential treatment to foreign born Zionist immigrants simply because
Speaker 2: they're also seen as being European, and they are. In
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty, things get valid, Yeah, yeah, you know what
Speaker 2: else is valid? Sponsors there's there's not a This is like.
Speaker 1: A horrible episode to break this.
Speaker 2: This is a really bad episode for a break transition. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I know we're.
Speaker 1: Doing We're doing our best here, friends.
Speaker 2: We're back. So as I said, after the war, nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen kind of the first post war Nebbi Mussa festival,
Speaker 2: it's known as like well, there's a lot of like
Speaker 2: anti Zionist and anti British Mandate speeches and things get
Speaker 2: really tense, and there's especially like uncomfortable for a lot
Speaker 2: of the and particularly a lot of the even the
Speaker 2: non Zionists like Jewish attendees the celebrations, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty the next year, things get uglear. Several Arab leaders
Speaker 2: give speeches against Scionist immigration, but it's not really known
Speaker 2: what the trigger is before rioting breaks out. And this
Speaker 2: is like really bad. But you'll notice, as I read
Speaker 2: the death toll, this is not like a one sided thing,
Speaker 2: right like these whatever else happened, it seems like the
Speaker 2: amount of force being deployed was, if not entirely accurate.
Speaker 2: Neither of these size has like a massive like edge
Speaker 2: on the other in terms of their ability to deploy violence.
Speaker 2: Five Jews are killed in the rioting, along with four
Speaker 2: Arab Muslims, and hundreds of people are injured. And the
Speaker 2: wake of the riot, a number of local Muslim leaders
Speaker 2: condemn the violence, but a great deal of damage had
Speaker 2: already been done. It's very hard to restore the kind
Speaker 2: of trust that had existed before something like this. And
Speaker 2: there's some really heartbreaking quotes in Lives in Common with
Speaker 2: especially as like some there are some communities that just
Speaker 2: like clear out entirely, and like the Jews, they're move
Speaker 2: in with and start forming in these communities, especially that
Speaker 2: had been more integrated of like Sephardic Jews, and like
Speaker 2: move in and start living in common with these like
Speaker 2: Zionist communities because they don't feel safe anymore, and that
Speaker 2: decreases the amount of solidarity and the amount of understanding
Speaker 2: between these communities, and it just everything is going to
Speaker 2: get a lot uglier in the wake of this. Right,
Speaker 2: the riots also provide Yabotinsky with an excuse to do
Speaker 2: what he did best, which is form local self defense
Speaker 2: militias and arm them with illegally gotten firearms, and he
Speaker 2: does that right Like. Yabutinsky's very active during the riots,
Speaker 2: and he is arrested immediately afterwards by the British and
Speaker 2: charged with illegally using British military forces because he'd gathered
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys who think in some cases
Speaker 2: were still British soldiers and use them in his militias,
Speaker 2: and he'd taken a lot of weapons that did not
Speaker 2: belong to him. So he is arrested and sentenced to
Speaker 2: imprisonment in Oker. Like most militant true believers, prison only
Speaker 2: increased his sense of certainty in what he was doing.
Speaker 2: He changes his name during this brief prison sentence from
Speaker 2: Vladimir to Ziev, which is a Hebrew name ze apostrophe
Speaker 2: ev is how it's at least it's anglicized. The spelling
Speaker 2: is usually anglicized as and he's only in prison for
Speaker 2: three months, So again we see would a similar guy
Speaker 2: who is an Arab Muslim have only gotten what happens
Speaker 2: for the same crime or when you have been hunger shot?
Speaker 2: Right exactly, So we're already seeing and this is going
Speaker 2: to tell massively the fact that and that which you
Speaker 2: brought up is really important, the fact that because there
Speaker 2: are militant Arab nationalist groups, right, and you know these
Speaker 2: are like Palestinian Muslims, and when they do things, they
Speaker 2: very much often tend to either get killed or imprisoned
Speaker 2: and always have their guns taken away, whereas that doesn't
Speaker 2: always happen to these Zionist groups and their leaders, and
Speaker 2: it allows them to continue building power and organization in
Speaker 2: a way that is forced to exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they not only killed them, they killed
Speaker 5: them publicly. Yeah, and they really you know, decimated political
Speaker 5: leadership during this time. So like the anti British Man
Speaker 5: sentiment was very much materially connected to the fact that
Speaker 5: people were feeling extremely repressed.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, And you don't get me wrong. Most of
Speaker 2: the Ziatists really hate the Mandate too. It's just they
Speaker 2: hate it because, like it's not giving them everything they
Speaker 2: want at once.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly different reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are all there are also, like
Speaker 2: the Mandate will assassinate some Zionist leaders. That does happen too,
Speaker 2: And likewise, there are Zionist groups that are assassing a
Speaker 2: lot of British officials. That happens a ton, mostly after
Speaker 2: a lot of the period we're talking about, but it's
Speaker 2: starting in this time. So the Hashimer was reformed after
Speaker 2: the war, and in nineteen twenty and it's an extension
Speaker 2: called the Hashimer, called the Haganah was created. In its
Speaker 2: initial conception, the Haganah was a defensive militia and you'll
Speaker 2: see that as I and like the Oxford Encyclopedia terrorism
Speaker 2: was like, it's not really a terrorist group. It was
Speaker 2: a purely defensive militia. It was defensive in its main orientation.
Speaker 2: But purely is not at all accurate, right, really not
Speaker 2: act unless.
Speaker 5: You count ethnic cleansing as like defensive self defensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Haganah secret nineteen twenty four constitution declared that
Speaker 2: its objective was to protect the Jewish community in Palestine.
Speaker 2: But again I should remind you that the precursor Hagana's
Speaker 2: motto of the Hagana's motto was Judeo was lost by
Speaker 2: blood and fire and will rise again by blood and fire.
Speaker 2: So while the Hagana is on paper at defensive force,
Speaker 2: over the years they work clandestinely with other militias and
Speaker 2: gangs and also clandestinely form other militians and gangs that
Speaker 2: are very much offensive, and they also do offensive as
Speaker 2: we'll talk about themselves. In nineteen twenty three, Ziev Jabatinski,
Speaker 2: now living in Riga, founded a right wing youth movement
Speaker 2: called Bitar, which was opposed to both the older left
Speaker 2: wing labor movement focused Zionist groups and defensive militias and
Speaker 2: the British Mandate. And again Bitar is the precursor to
Speaker 2: Benjamin Nettan Yahoo's Lukud Party, right like they therefore follows
Speaker 2: the other right there. Yeah, they're fascists and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of there's a really good article called Jabatinski the
Speaker 2: Fascist Right that talks about a lot of the similarities
Speaker 2: between some of these and especially Mussolini's fascist groups because
Speaker 2: don't they wear shirts. Yes, they do wear brown shirts,
Speaker 2: and there are attempts to work with and they do
Speaker 2: work with two A degree Mussolini's government, until Mussolini gets
Speaker 2: so inbed with Hitler that they have to push more
Speaker 2: anti Semitic laws. Like there's a lot of sympathy with
Speaker 2: the the Italian fascists and some of these these right
Speaker 2: wing Zionist groups. That's a really important thing that's going
Speaker 2: on right now too. I'm not talking about it enough
Speaker 2: in these episodes. There's so much to get over, but
Speaker 2: that is a really important thing that you should know
Speaker 2: that when I say right wing, I don't mean like
Speaker 2: kind of conservative on tax policy, right, that's what I'm talking.
Speaker 4: Healthcare policies are a little different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're they're not. Yeah, they're they're they're they're fascist,
Speaker 2: like proto fascist fastest you know, you could. Academics will quibble, like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of similarities. They're wearing brown shirts, right,
Speaker 2: and what else do you need? It out there? And
Speaker 2: as the twenties roared on, violence in the Holy Land
Speaker 2: only grew more common, and it takes a bunch of
Speaker 2: different forms, from street fights between gangs. And some of
Speaker 2: these are you could call them Arab nationalist gangs and
Speaker 2: Zionist gangs. Some of are just like gangs of people
Speaker 2: who are like Jewish and Muslim and live in towns
Speaker 2: and they're like pissed, right, they're teenagers fighting or whatever.
Speaker 2: And some of them are organized militant gangs and terrorist
Speaker 2: groups that are doing as targeted murders and assassinations of
Speaker 2: each other. Right. And of course there's also riots periodically,
Speaker 2: and a lot of these riots will wind up targeting
Speaker 2: Jewish neighborhoods. That happens repeatedly over the years, and it
Speaker 2: really hard. The violence and the constant temple violence hardens
Speaker 2: a lot of people, and it also causes a lot
Speaker 2: of people to change their minds and beliefs. And in
Speaker 2: many ways this is in a tragic and it makes
Speaker 2: them a lot meaner and more aggressive, but not always.
Speaker 2: And this brings me to a really tragic and really
Speaker 2: complicated story. Have you ever heard of Jacob Israel de Haan? No,
Speaker 2: this I'm glad to get to tell you because I
Speaker 2: hadn't note about this guy either, and he's a really
Speaker 2: interesting fellow. So Jacob was born in eighteen eighty one
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands, just as the first wave of Zionist
Speaker 2: my grace from Europe began. He became a teacher and
Speaker 2: a writer, and he published his first novel in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh four, which is again the same year as The
Speaker 2: Kitchen of Pagram. This book was a fictional account of
Speaker 2: the author's homosexual relationship with a real scholar, Arnold Alatrino,
Speaker 2: who was married, although a public defender of homosexuality. So
Speaker 2: what people generally think is happening is that Dehan is
Speaker 2: having an affair with this guy who's like publicly married
Speaker 2: but also like an advocate for queer people and is
Speaker 2: queer himself, and he writes a book fictionalizing it but
Speaker 2: using the real dude's name, which is kind of fucked up.
Speaker 2: Like it's really messy. This man is messy. Dehn is
Speaker 2: considered one of the greatest poets in the history of
Speaker 2: the Netherlands, right, but he's like, he is messy. This
Speaker 2: man is so fucking messy. He gets fired from his
Speaker 2: newspaper gig as a result of this book because it
Speaker 2: causes like a real problem, and also his newspaper get
Speaker 2: writing a children's column, so the fact that he's written
Speaker 2: this book does not make him seem like the best
Speaker 2: guy to be writing this column because he's like publicly
Speaker 2: accused a guy of like, you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: it's messy. They also have to alter the book to
Speaker 2: like take the name of an actual married dude out anyway,
Speaker 2: and his fiance because he has a fiance that he's
Speaker 2: like marrying to like hide the fact that he's gay.
Speaker 2: She like actually helps buy up all the copies of
Speaker 2: his original books get rid of this. In nineteen oh seven,
Speaker 2: de Han married a gentile woman and published a second
Speaker 2: This had been the fiance and published a second novel
Speaker 2: about us. And so, first off, by the way, you
Speaker 2: should see, he marries a gentile woman. This is not
Speaker 2: a guy who is a super strict believer. I don't
Speaker 2: even think he would call himself a believer in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh seven. Really he's Jewish, you know, is an identity
Speaker 2: as an ethnicity. But he's not really faithful in this
Speaker 2: period of time. So he publishes a second novel, and
Speaker 2: this one is about a sado masochistic relationship between a
Speaker 2: man and a boy. Now this is going to be
Speaker 2: relevant to talking about Dehn. But like in this period
Speaker 2: of time and a lot of countries, pedophilia and homosexuality
Speaker 2: are the exact same thing under the law, and that
Speaker 2: causes some real the uncomfortable situations and some really uncomfortable
Speaker 2: writing from a number of figures European figures in this
Speaker 2: period of time, to Han is not the only one.
Speaker 2: And we don't really know, like did he was he
Speaker 2: actually like a pederist? Is this just like a thing
Speaker 2: he wrote about? Because you know, cultury, a lot of
Speaker 2: weird stuff's going on at the time. I don't really
Speaker 2: know how to entirely delineate all of that right, But
Speaker 2: this is a complicated man. He is very queer, and
Speaker 2: he is very much in the counterculture of his day.
Speaker 2: You could not be much more in the counterculture of
Speaker 2: his day than this guy is. So, despite some questionable
Speaker 2: decision making, he gets a doctorate of law in nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 2: But to Han can't find prestigious work as a lawyer,
Speaker 2: so he starts writing and publishing poetry, and his work
Speaker 2: is noted I'm not a good judge of poetry from
Speaker 2: this part of the world, but his work is noted
Speaker 2: as both being very Jewish and very sexual. Right, he's
Speaker 2: super horny, and he's he's like very much chimber of
Speaker 2: the Jewish community and influenced by it. Right, He's very controversial,
Speaker 2: but his poems are white celebrated today He's still considered
Speaker 2: one of the best poems the Netherlands ever produced. And
Speaker 2: he starts to develop a degree of respect as a
Speaker 2: public eccentric. Right, he kind of crosses over from being, Oh,
Speaker 2: this guy is someone you don't want to This guy
Speaker 2: is like a weirdo who's into some stuff that we
Speaker 2: don't approve of, and you don't want to talk to him.
Speaker 2: To this guy's a weirdo. We celebrate because he's a
Speaker 2: great artist, right, he crosses that barrier, you know, during
Speaker 2: this kind of period of.
Speaker 1: Time, because he's very Juish and very horny, very Jewish,
Speaker 1: very horny, that is how people describe to Han, and
Speaker 1: very queer.
Speaker 2: He visited Russia near the end of the Tzardom, and
Speaker 2: this really seems to have an influence on him, right,
Speaker 2: seeing how Jewish people are treated in Russia. He visits
Speaker 2: prisons and seeing how prisoners are treated by the czar,
Speaker 2: he becomes an activist, right, and his experiences in the East,
Speaker 2: Lee didn't become both a Zionist and an observant Jew.
Speaker 2: And this is He's also nearing middle age, so maybe
Speaker 2: he becomes Orthodox during this time mid life crisis.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Per an article Inherits by David Green, in nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 2: Dehan decided to immigrate from Amsterdam to Jerusalem. A letter
Speaker 2: to British Zionist leader Heim Weizmann, he wrote, with typical
Speaker 2: self assurance, that I am not leaving Holland to improve
Speaker 2: my condition. Neither materially nor intellectually. Will life in Palestine
Speaker 2: be the equal to my life here. I am one
Speaker 2: of the best poets of my generation and the only
Speaker 2: important Jewish national poet Holland has ever had. It is
Speaker 2: difficult to give up all this. So first off, you
Speaker 2: can say this is the guy who was a high
Speaker 2: opinion of himself. And second this is a guy who
Speaker 2: seems very committed to the Zionist project. But after he
Speaker 2: moves to Palestine, he lives through these years we've been
Speaker 2: talking about of rap. He comes there as the violence
Speaker 2: is starting to escalate. He sees the riots, and he
Speaker 2: sees these assassinations and counter assassinations and these beatings as
Speaker 2: he's teaching law and writing for a Dutch newspaper, and
Speaker 2: he starts to become critical of the Zionist project right
Speaker 2: as a result of what he's seeing, this violence really
Speaker 2: turns him off of it. Eventually he meets an anti
Speaker 2: Zionist rabbi who is This guy is also a really
Speaker 2: interesting figure, Joseph heim Sonenfeld. Sonenfeld is the guy, the
Speaker 2: rabbi who founded an ultra orthodox anti Zionist community in
Speaker 2: Palestine called Ida Haridit and was it spokesman. And he
Speaker 2: was also, like Dehan, really controversial. Sexually, he gets accused
Speaker 2: of being a pedophile. Today, I don't know how accurate
Speaker 2: those allegations are. He is definitely a guy who publicly
Speaker 2: made a habit of trying to shock Christian morals as
Speaker 2: a protest against homophobia. And I don't know how to
Speaker 2: judge him accurately in terms of what he's done, in
Speaker 2: part because both of these guys are anti Zionists, there's
Speaker 2: also a lot of propaganda against them. I don't know
Speaker 2: what's true and what's not about their sexualities and what
Speaker 2: they did or didn't do. In nineteen twenty two, Dehan
Speaker 2: takes a case to defend a Hareadi political movement protesting
Speaker 2: against the need to pay an excise tax that Zionist
Speaker 2: authorities had placed on Matso. So these are anti Zionist
Speaker 2: Jews in Palestine who do not want to pay an
Speaker 2: excise tax that the Zionists want them to pay. Right,
Speaker 2: he represents them in court, I think successfully, and he
Speaker 2: starts becoming more and more of an anti Zionist activist
Speaker 2: in Palestine. And because remember, this guy is a celebrity.
Speaker 2: I know when I say I a famous poet, that
Speaker 2: doesn't sound famous today, in like nineteen twenty two, a
Speaker 2: famous poet could be pretty goddamn famous. And Dahn is
Speaker 2: very famous, and so he starts meeting with European political
Speaker 2: figures and talking about anti Zionism, and because he's such
Speaker 2: a beloved artist, this really starts to worry a lot
Speaker 2: of Zionists in Palestine. He also meets with Hussein bin Ali,
Speaker 2: the king of now Saudi Arabia, and they start talking
Speaker 2: about forming a Palestinian state that would be like multi
Speaker 2: racial or religious, multi ethnic, you know, like not a
Speaker 2: Zionist date right now, Obviously de Han's not anti Semitic.
Speaker 2: He wants the British out, and he wants Palestine to
Speaker 2: be an indicopendent country. He just is no longer a Zionist.
Speaker 2: He thinks that Jews and Muslims and Christians and presumably
Speaker 2: atheist weirdos like him and his friends should all live
Speaker 2: in relative harmony. Right so he's no longer supporting a
Speaker 2: Jewish state, and this really is going to cause problems
Speaker 2: for him, David Green continues. By now Dehn had become
Speaker 2: a liability to the Zionist movement and a special dangerous
Speaker 2: because of the platform he now had for spreading his
Speaker 2: views in London, where critical decisions about Palestine were being
Speaker 2: made in Jerusalem, he became persona non grata among Zionists,
Speaker 2: including his law students. One anecdote has him walking with
Speaker 2: a Dutch visitor who observed that as people passed them
Speaker 2: into the street, they were spitting on the sidewalk. The
Speaker 2: visitor thought this was a sign of disrespect, to which
Speaker 2: de Han responded, According to Dutches, his Storian Ludy gibbles, Oh, no,
Speaker 2: they spit on the street out of respect for you,
Speaker 2: your presence. Otherwise they would have spit in my face.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's very honest.
Speaker 2: Yes, is such an issue? He reads me me, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does not have illusions. Early on the morning of
Speaker 2: June thirtieth, nineteen twenty four, as he left the synagogue
Speaker 2: and shar Zadek Hospital on Jaffa Road, Dehn was shot
Speaker 2: three times. He died immediately. And you know this is
Speaker 2: the British Mandate issues a reward for information about the killer.
Speaker 2: No one ever comes forward, No one's ever caught, right, obviously,
Speaker 2: and for a long time people just kind of assumed
Speaker 2: the Haganah had done it. But we didn't know the
Speaker 2: Hagana had done it until an Israeli businessman named Avraham
Speaker 2: Tahomi came forward in the nineteen eighties. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about Abraham a little bit later too. Abraham had
Speaker 2: been with the Haganah in the nineteen twenties, and he
Speaker 2: claims that when he assassinated Dehn, he was working under
Speaker 2: the orders of Yitzak benz v, the future second President
Speaker 2: of Israel and an officer in the Hagana at the time.
Speaker 2: To Homie insisted, I have no regrets because Dehn wanted
Speaker 2: to destroy our whole idea of Zionism. And I just
Speaker 2: tell you a lot because Dehn is very much saying
Speaker 2: we need an independent state that the British don't run.
Speaker 2: He just doesn't want it to be racist.
Speaker 3: It doesn't want it to be exclusion are Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an interesting like journey that he took to ethno nationalism.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh wait.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it shows like someone who whatever else you want
Speaker 2: to say about him, looks at as soon as he
Speaker 2: realizes how much violence is going to have to happiety,
Speaker 2: He's like, no, it's not worth it. That's horrible. I
Speaker 2: don't want that. A poet like that's.
Speaker 3: Not my I mean, that's the whole thing with like
Speaker 3: cultural Zionists, right, I mean, I don't know, I'm not
Speaker 3: a historic of Zionism, but like my understanding is they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, we belong here, we should have some you know,
Speaker 3: stake here, but we should definitely not be exclusionary and
Speaker 3: no nationalist coast right, that's suffer too much badness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, As I've tried to say, Zionism doesn't mean
Speaker 2: one thing. There are a lot of like, you know,
Speaker 2: cultural zionis is one is a good term for the
Speaker 2: people who like their idea of what Zionism means is
Speaker 2: like well, like the Jewish kind of community that we
Speaker 2: want to create. It's not necessarily a political state. It's
Speaker 2: like a like an actual community, but it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: require us to have political power and be the only
Speaker 2: ones with it. That's not what I a lot of
Speaker 2: people are advocating for. Obviously, those folks become less common
Speaker 2: as everything gets hardened and everything gets a lot more violent,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them get killed.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You see, if you are one of those kind of
Speaker 2: people like Dahan, who is willing to like rethink your
Speaker 2: ideas and push for a much more integrated and less
Speaker 2: aggressive thing than these really aggressive Zionists are going to
Speaker 2: kill you if they think you're going to get any far,
Speaker 2: because that's what happens to de Han, right, and his
Speaker 2: death is often called the first political assassination in the
Speaker 2: Zionist community, the first assassination of a Jew buy other Jews,
Speaker 2: right like that, and it's not going to be the last,
Speaker 2: by the way, but it is really important because it
Speaker 2: kind of breaks that barrier, and violence of every kind
Speaker 2: is going to grow a lot more common. In the
Speaker 2: late twenties and thirties, and Tel Aviv and Jaffa, two
Speaker 2: cities joined by the hip by the thirties, there were
Speaker 2: constant conflicts over the fact that Jewish kids would visit
Speaker 2: brothels and gambling dens run by Arabs in downtown Jafa,
Speaker 2: just as Arab kids went to Tel Aviv to do
Speaker 2: the same thing. Right, there are like criminals. There are
Speaker 2: like Arab Muslim criminals who like run brothels and run
Speaker 2: drugs and whatnot in the legal dancing houses, and there's
Speaker 2: like Jewish like organized criminal gangs that do the same thing.
Speaker 2: And they both tend to have a lot of appeal
Speaker 2: to like members of the opposite commun unity, which causes
Speaker 2: like the a lot of like the you know, particularly
Speaker 2: the mothers and fathers because they're often kids, to start
Speaker 2: moral panics about, oh, the Arabs are corrupting our kids,
Speaker 2: the Jews are corrupting our kids, right, And the reality
Speaker 2: is that like kids like to go do stuff they're
Speaker 2: not supposed to do. And if you're growing up in
Speaker 2: Tel Aviv, go in to downtown Jafa to go like
Speaker 2: into a brothel is going to seem like the most transgressive.
Speaker 3: Thing you can do one.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Whereas if you're a Muslim growing up in Jaffa,
Speaker 2: Tel Aviv's going to have a similar appeal. Right. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: this is very funny. The British solve the problem with
Speaker 2: all these brothels by first they crack down on the
Speaker 2: brothels and like close them down, and then that just
Speaker 2: means all the brothels are illegal, and they realize that, like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, we actually have a problem keeping like enough
Speaker 2: salt of our soldiers healthy because all of our soldiers
Speaker 2: are going to the brothels obviously they're soldiers. And so
Speaker 2: the British mandate establishes a bunch of official brothels so
Speaker 2: that they can make sure they don't lose too many
Speaker 2: soldiers to VD right, and they keep by the way,
Speaker 2: these brothels are stopped with both like Arab and ashkanasm women, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's what the part of what the British Mandate
Speaker 2: is doing. Like they're deliberately like recruiting a mix of
Speaker 2: women to like run like people these brothels as part
Speaker 2: of like a public health measure. I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously there's still illegal brothels, and it's not
Speaker 2: uncommon you see brothel owners and like including like a
Speaker 2: lot of Jewish brothel owners will get murdered by Zionist
Speaker 2: gangs for corrupting the community. The same thing happens Arab
Speaker 2: nationalists will murder you know, Arab brothel owners for similar reasons.
Speaker 2: Because these are also people are becoming more religious hardline
Speaker 2: right or religiously hardline newspapers publish constant allegations that one
Speaker 2: community is corrupting the other. There's tons of complaints from like,
Speaker 2: you know, people in Tel Aviv that these these Arab
Speaker 2: men are coming over to aglar women, and complaints from
Speaker 2: like in Jaffa of like these rowdy young Jewish kids
Speaker 2: are coming in and like causing problems, right, like you
Speaker 2: see a lot of those complaints in the newspapers. And
Speaker 2: sometimes as much as it turns into like conflict, it's
Speaker 2: also evidence of the fact that these are still deeply
Speaker 2: tied communities. Young people are hanging out together, young people
Speaker 2: are going over to each other's like downtown margins, and
Speaker 2: they're just there's intermarrying and other kinds of inter stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm going to quote again from Life's in
Speaker 2: Common here. Romance has sometimes developed between Britons and young
Speaker 2: women in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Jewish underground militias
Speaker 2: fought this phenomenon, tracking and on occasion interrogating girls who
Speaker 2: socialized with British soldiers and civilians and with Arabs. Some
Speaker 2: were executed on charges of providing intelligence to the enemy.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's we're not going to be talking
Speaker 2: about enough, but there are a lot of like mixed relationships,
Speaker 2: and these are often very common. You have a lot
Speaker 2: of really awful stories about like when you know, the
Speaker 2: violence boils over during the Arab or bolt and stuff.
Speaker 2: You have a lot of families broken up that are
Speaker 2: had been inter faith families. Like there's but they're is
Speaker 2: that is happening here, and it's a mix of these
Speaker 2: people just trying to live their lives and also totally
Speaker 2: unwittingly becoming flashpoints because other members of the community get angry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, their identities are like to complicated. Can I just
Speaker 3: plug the episode I did about my great.
Speaker 2: Ground there here please? Yea yeah, yeah, yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Could happen here if people are interested in like one
Speaker 3: particular story that happens to be my in my family history.
Speaker 3: There's there's that, but it's I mean, kind of more broadly,
Speaker 3: I think we need to understand like the lens of
Speaker 3: like sexual politics here is an important one to see
Speaker 3: the conflict through because it remains like the way that
Speaker 3: both like the British but also then the Israeli government
Speaker 3: weaponizes kind of maybe less less progressive sexual politics in
Speaker 3: some of these communities is a relevant thing to understand.
Speaker 3: I mean it continues until.
Speaker 2: Today, yeah, absolutely. Nineteen twenty nine is a particularly bad
Speaker 2: year for violence in Palestine after Zionist leaders refuse British
Speaker 2: offers to shared Arab Jewish reports. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of talk about like representation and like moving towards an
Speaker 2: independent state in Palestine because the mandate the British never
Speaker 2: like own Palestine. That's not how they're thinking about it either.
Speaker 2: They are from the beginning though, that they're going to
Speaker 2: leave at some point. And so the British, you know,
Speaker 2: they have Zionist leaders and you know, Arab leaders come
Speaker 2: to the table and they're talking about trying to figure
Speaker 2: out some sort of system, and the British make an
Speaker 2: offer that would have had shared Arab Jewish representation, right,
Speaker 2: and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, you know, and the
Speaker 2: Arabs are generally in agreement with this, but the Zionists
Speaker 2: do not. They do not want to come to the table,
Speaker 2: they don't want shared representation. So this pisses off the
Speaker 2: Grand Mufti. It piss off a lot of people. And
Speaker 2: the Grand Muffy starts speaking out about a future Jewish
Speaker 2: takeover of the Temple Mount, right, And he starts giving
Speaker 2: speeches telling like they're trying to take over, they're trying
Speaker 2: to take over the Temple Mount. They're trying to push
Speaker 2: us out of our of our home. And there are newsletters,
Speaker 2: news articles that are published at the same time about
Speaker 2: a series of land purchases that had been made by
Speaker 2: the Jewish National Fund that inflamed the now decades old
Speaker 2: arguments over how much land Jewish immigrants should be allowed
Speaker 2: to buy. This is all further incensed by years of
Speaker 2: constant conflict over who should be allowed to do what where,
Speaker 2: particularly at the Western Wall, which is also part of
Speaker 2: the al Oxa Mosque. Now, there had been friction over
Speaker 2: this forever pretty much, at least at times, but in
Speaker 2: the past a genuine desire of most Muslims and Jews
Speaker 2: to let each other do their thing tended to win out.
Speaker 2: You don't see that staying true by the late twenties,
Speaker 2: and shit just keeps getting uglier and uglier until August
Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty nine. And we're talking about you know,
Speaker 2: the politics of this, you know the ongoing back and forth,
Speaker 2: and the religious dimensions of this. But I also don't
Speaker 2: want you to forget the fact that everything boils over
Speaker 2: in August when it's really fucking hot, which is just
Speaker 2: throughout history always when riots and stuff tend to be
Speaker 2: at their worst everywhere when it's hot, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just people. Per an article in EPSCO quote, the unrest
Speaker 2: was initially sparked by the installation of a portable screen
Speaker 2: by Jewish worshippers at the western wall on Yam Kapur,
Speaker 2: aimed at separating men and women during prayer. The location
Speaker 2: is significant to both Jews as a remnant of the
Speaker 2: ancient temple and Muslims, who viewed as part of the
Speaker 2: Al Axa Mosque complex. Following escalating tensions and protests from
Speaker 2: both sides, violence erupted when rumors spread the Jewish groups
Speaker 2: intended to attack Muslim holy sites. The riots escalated over
Speaker 2: several days, resulting in substantial loss of life, with two
Speaker 2: hundred and forty nine fatalities recorded, one hundred and thirty
Speaker 2: three Jewish and one hundred and sixteen Arab, alongside hundreds
Speaker 2: of injuries. The violence extended from Jerusalem to other areas
Speaker 2: such as Hebron and Safed, where Jews faced brutal attacks,
Speaker 2: and obviously, like Jewish communities are being attacked at the
Speaker 2: same time you see in the death toll, this is
Speaker 2: not these groups are still not completely out of proportion
Speaker 2: with each other in terms of their capacity to do violence.
Speaker 2: Right when you have like Zion militias and these Arab
Speaker 2: nationalists militias, they're kind of at parody still. You kind
Speaker 2: of see that in the death toll.
Speaker 3: You know, just say it's more like a fight than
Speaker 3: like a pagrom, like essentially or something.
Speaker 2: There are brawls in there are programs. There are eight
Speaker 2: neighborhoods that are attacked that don't have defense, right, and
Speaker 2: people are forced out of their homes and lose their houses.
Speaker 2: And there are also massive street fights, and there's counter
Speaker 2: fights and counter attacks. I don't know if like pagram,
Speaker 2: I don't know who gets to determine that it's a
Speaker 2: mix of different kinds of violence. This is happening over days,
Speaker 2: and it happening in multiple cities, right, So it's not
Speaker 2: the same everywhere, right, But it's not a situation is
Speaker 2: where like it's just one group of people dying, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's certainly not the case. And this is this is terrible,
Speaker 2: and there is a lot of violence against innocent people
Speaker 2: and a lot of particularly a lot of like civilian
Speaker 2: Jewish communities. And this is one of those terrible moments
Speaker 2: that historians often see is having sort of locked in
Speaker 2: the worst possible future. Right that this is not necessarily
Speaker 2: the point of no return, but it's one of the
Speaker 2: points that makes it very hard for things to get better, right,
Speaker 2: And the Western Wall rights are a really important point
Speaker 2: for things getting worse in Palestine. Afterwards, Jewish militias increase
Speaker 2: in size and number, and they began building and importing
Speaker 2: more arms. Antisemitic violence rises, as to assassinations and property
Speaker 2: destruction by groups like your Gun. Again. That's the good.
Speaker 2: Is the right wing militia that bitar the right wing
Speaker 2: party forms in Palestine. We'll talk about them too a
Speaker 2: little bit more here now I should note it in
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I should also do an ad break, I guess,
Speaker 2: and we're back. So nineteen twenty nine. Also August of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine also sees the horrific Hebron massacre. That's
Speaker 2: kind of part of this whole swell of violence where
Speaker 2: this about seventy people are actually murdered. But because the
Speaker 2: community Hebron is tiny, there's only six or seven hundred
Speaker 2: Jews I think in Hebron at this period of time,
Speaker 2: and because homes are destroyed, the community is basically destroyed.
Speaker 2: That's how a lot of people see it, Like huge
Speaker 2: numbers of Jews and Hebron are like forced out of
Speaker 2: their homes, and a lot of people will say like
Speaker 2: that's kind of the end of the Jewish community as
Speaker 2: it had existed previously, right, and that's also going to
Speaker 2: bring a lot more violence. In fact, it's this nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine program that inspires a debate within the Haganah
Speaker 2: over how the organization should proceed. Abraham to Homy again,
Speaker 2: the guy who's killed the han becomes closely tied to
Speaker 2: Yabatinsky and Batar, and he urges a split and he
Speaker 2: forms a group and originally initially called the Haganah b
Speaker 2: Or there's like an apostrophe b. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's like literally ab or if it's I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: Hebrew's not my strong suit here. It's initially just a
Speaker 2: split off of the Haganah, and it's renamed Etzel, and
Speaker 2: then in nineteen thirty one it's named renamed Irgun or
Speaker 2: the National Military Organization, and this becomes the Militant Terrorist
Speaker 2: Arm of Bitar. Rgun is a terrorist group. There is
Speaker 2: no other way to look at your gun as a
Speaker 2: terrorist than as a terrorist group, right, And in order
Speaker 2: to kind of make that clear, I want to talk
Speaker 2: to you about, you know, what Abraham Tahomi believed. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from a paper in the Institute
Speaker 2: for Palestine Studies by Maher Sharif. Abraham to Hoomi declared
Speaker 2: that political violence and terrorism were legitimate means in the
Speaker 2: Jewish national struggle for the land of Israel. Pretty simple, right,
Speaker 2: not a You don't have to read into him much
Speaker 2: to call him a terrorist. He does. Irgun is the
Speaker 2: largest right wing gang at the time, but it's not
Speaker 2: the only one. And in short order they're going to
Speaker 2: be joined by like the Stern Gang. I think Getzel
Speaker 2: is the other name of the Stern Gang, and there's
Speaker 2: several others, right And in short order, these different gangs,
Speaker 2: as they're often called, we might call them terrorists, cells
Speaker 2: or insurgent groups, you know, that would be a more
Speaker 2: modern term for them. They start causing problems for the
Speaker 2: British Mandate. They launch a lot of attacks and assassinations
Speaker 2: on British officers, and the British are kind of bewildered.
Speaker 2: They're bewildered both by this nineteen twenty nine wave of
Speaker 2: vice program or you know, riots, whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call them, that really scares the British Mandate, that really
Speaker 2: convinces them that, like, we probably can't stay here like this.
Speaker 2: There's a ticking clock on how long we can keep
Speaker 2: things under wraps here, and it also convinces the Mandate
Speaker 2: we have to take some major steps to try to
Speaker 2: turn down the temperature because things are dangerously close to
Speaker 2: outright war. Right, because they're the British, they pick the
Speaker 2: worst ways to try to fix all that, well, not
Speaker 2: the worst ways, but they do maybe the right thing
Speaker 2: in ways that are only going to make the situation worse.
Speaker 2: So they zero went on immigration from Europe of Zionist
Speaker 2: Jews and land ownership policies as major causes of discord.
Speaker 2: And obviously, as we've talked about, these are major causes
Speaker 2: of discord. But they immediately throttle Zionist immigration into Palestine
Speaker 2: and that infuriates. By the time they do that, you
Speaker 2: could say, well, of course, you know, what else are
Speaker 2: they going to do? But when you do that, after
Speaker 2: like years of it just happening without nearly as much
Speaker 2: it and there's like tens of thousands of heavily armed
Speaker 2: and organized zion groups in the country, many of whom
Speaker 2: had been initially armed and trained by the British, I
Speaker 2: should say also, it's just it's it's gonna just cause
Speaker 2: more violence, right, They immediately try to crack down on
Speaker 2: this thing, and the people that they've given guns to
Speaker 2: and training start fighting them a lot harder.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This sparks increasing conflict, sometimes deadly between you know, the
Speaker 2: British authorities and these different militias. And while the Hagana
Speaker 2: try not to get involved directly with attacking the British Mandate.
Speaker 2: Part of why er Gun and the Stern Gang and
Speaker 2: these other gangs exist and they do have ties to
Speaker 2: the Haganah is so that the movement can do attacks
Speaker 2: in the British Mandate without like the Hagana, you know,
Speaker 2: getting directly involved. Right. David Rappaport, who wrote the influential
Speaker 2: article The Fourth Wave September eleventh and the History of Terrorism,
Speaker 2: includes Ergun and lee High sorry lee High is the
Speaker 2: other name of the Stern Gang as examples of the
Speaker 2: second wave of terrorism. The first was the anarchist wave,
Speaker 2: which it started in Russia in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: and the second was an anti colonial wave. But there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people who disagree with Rapaport's claim because
Speaker 2: it's not really right to look at the violence of
Speaker 2: a group like Irgun or Lehigh or the Haganah as
Speaker 2: anti colonial like terrorism or anti colonial insurgency. It's not
Speaker 2: really anti colonial violence period. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: from the Oxford Handbook of the History of Terrorism. Unlike
Speaker 2: violent conflicts in other parts of the world during that period,
Speaker 2: the Jewish struggle for self determination Palestine cannot be characterized
Speaker 2: as anti colonial for two main reasons. First, while both
Speaker 2: air Gun and especially lee High targeted British officials, Palestine
Speaker 2: was never part of the British Empire. Furthermore, one of
Speaker 2: the main initial objectives of the mandate was to facilitate
Speaker 2: the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. Anti colonial struggles are
Speaker 2: generally associated with uprisings of indigenous populations against foreign rule.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of Jews from the Irgun and Lehigh
Speaker 2: who struggled for the establishment of the independent State of
Speaker 2: Israel were immigrants, while their main opponents, namely the Palestinians,
Speaker 2: were natives of the land. Very important point to keep
Speaker 2: in mind.
Speaker 3: I'm surprised if the Oxford Handbook was thus honest.
Speaker 2: They did say that at least yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean terrorism studies is just a offenccessful, so this
Speaker 3: is yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that part of it was right. I have
Speaker 2: some issues with that. But yeah, Now, all of these
Speaker 2: pressures keep building and building, as does the violence, until
Speaker 2: things come to a head again in the Great Arab
Speaker 2: Revolt of nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you'll hear called the Great Palestinian Revolt. I want to
Speaker 2: quote now from an article in the journal Origins by
Speaker 2: Ori Yehudai. Historians date the beginning of the Great nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six to nineteen thirty nine Arab Revolt as it
Speaker 2: came to be known, to the killing of two Jews
Speaker 2: by Palestinian Arabs near the town of Karm on April fifteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six, followed by Jewish retaliation against Palestinians that
Speaker 2: expanded into riots and Jaffa and Tel Aviv. So that's
Speaker 2: like a really short summary of kind of what happens.
Speaker 2: Everything I've discussed over these last two episodes also is
Speaker 2: part of why this revolt happens, right, This increasing anger
Speaker 2: at the Mandate, this increasing anger at ze Ionism, all
Speaker 2: of the violence between these different communities that have occurred,
Speaker 2: All of that is a big part of what leads
Speaker 2: to this revolt.
Speaker 3: And fifty years at this point, Bry you know, basically
Speaker 3: nationalism being suppressed on one side.
Speaker 2: Right right, and another cause also can't be divorced from
Speaker 2: is the coming of Nazism to Germany, which causes a
Speaker 2: massive surch in Jewish immigration into Palestine that makes them
Speaker 2: more than a quarter of the population by nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 2: To quote from Oriyhudai again, the Zionists built their settlements
Speaker 2: on land purchased from Arab owners living in Palestine or
Speaker 2: in neighboring Arab countries. The transactions had a devastating impact
Speaker 2: on Palestinian society, as they often involved the removal of
Speaker 2: Palestinian peasants from the land. The distress of thousands of
Speaker 2: uprooted peasant families, coupled with frustration over the failure of
Speaker 2: traditional leadership to halt Zionism, led to a grassroots uprising
Speaker 2: launched by younger nationalist activists on April twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty six. Palestinian political parties temporarily put aside their differences
Speaker 2: and created a coordinating body called the Arab Higher Can
Speaker 2: or AHC, headed by a Haaji Amin al Husseini, the
Speaker 2: Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. And the first thing that happens
Speaker 2: and what's called now the Great Air Revolt is a
Speaker 2: six month general strike that is peaceful. Right. This is
Speaker 2: an attempt of by a large organized body of Palestinian
Speaker 2: Arabs to address their grievances with the British mandate via
Speaker 2: a general strike, which is what everyone says should be
Speaker 2: the right way to do something like this, Right, you like,
Speaker 2: peacefully but firmly state your demands and without using violence,
Speaker 2: create a way to disrupt life in so that the
Speaker 2: people who are running things make concessions to you. Right Like,
Speaker 2: that's like how you're supposed to try to improve things
Speaker 2: like in the West. That's what we say, right, rather
Speaker 2: than violence, right, but nothing like. The British not only
Speaker 2: ignore them, they outright refuse the demands of this committee.
Speaker 2: Right because the committee is demanding an end to Jewish
Speaker 2: immigration and land purchase and an independent national government. Now
Speaker 2: there's room, as there always has been, for a negotiation here,
Speaker 2: but the British refuse. And after six months of peaceful striking,
Speaker 2: a rebellion breaks out and it turns into a general
Speaker 2: uprising against the British and the Zionists, and it gets
Speaker 2: very ugly. There's a number of different rebel groups some
Speaker 2: of them carry out attacks on Jewish civilians too. This
Speaker 2: is a really brutal time, but that's not the majority
Speaker 2: or even all of what's happening. Certainly, the violence convinces
Speaker 2: the British that the Mandate is untenable and that they're
Speaker 2: going to need to create a Jewish state immediately, and
Speaker 2: they drop plans to do this. The initial plans would
Speaker 2: transfer because of where they're and I think that their
Speaker 2: initial idea for this Jewish state they want to make
Speaker 2: is about seventeen percent of Palestine, right, and because of
Speaker 2: the way they draw it up, it's going to require
Speaker 2: the transfer. That's the term they use, of two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand Arab Palestinians out of this new Jewish territory and
Speaker 2: about one thousand Jews are going to need a vice versus.
Speaker 2: So you see, I mean that's a really good I
Speaker 2: look right there at just the discrepancy between how the
Speaker 2: Mandate treats these two sides is they think it's reasonable
Speaker 2: to ask two hundred thousand Arab Muslims to leave their
Speaker 2: homes in exchange for like a thousand Jews doing the
Speaker 2: same on the other side, right, which is like I
Speaker 2: just think those numbers are kind of useful to look
Speaker 2: at next to each other, right, So the Zionist leadership
Speaker 2: accepts everything the British offer except the size of their borders,
Speaker 2: which is worth noting. The Palestinian leadership says, no, this
Speaker 2: isn't really at all.
Speaker 5: Would we do that?
Speaker 2: Why would we like? What?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 5: On what?
Speaker 2: The rebellion goes on until fall of nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: when the British send in a big old army to
Speaker 2: murder their way out of the problem, or re summarizes.
Speaker 2: The British sent twenty thousand troops to Palestine and used
Speaker 2: harsh measures against the rebels, including house demolitions and executions.
Speaker 2: They outlawed the AHC, arrested and expelled activists, and disarmed
Speaker 2: the Palestinians. Their vote was suppressed by the summer of
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine, leaving a toll of approximately five thousand Arab,
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifteen Jewish and one hundred British deaths.
Speaker 2: And this is the most lopsided death toll we've seen.
Speaker 2: Obviously the British are largely responsible for that, but you
Speaker 2: know what you've seen here. The British have sent a
Speaker 2: couple really important messages with how they've dealt with this. First,
Speaker 2: they've told the Palestinians that peaceful protest is not going
Speaker 2: to get you shit. And second they've told the Zionists
Speaker 2: that your arms and militias are acceptable and your years
Speaker 2: of militant organizing are working. These are not great messages
Speaker 2: to send. This is going to cause problems for everybody.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Once World War Two gets started, a great number of
Speaker 2: Jewish fighters in Palestine again sign up to fight with
Speaker 2: the British. And they do this for both the incredibly
Speaker 2: understandable reason of wanting to fight the Nazis and for
Speaker 2: the same reason Yapotenski had wanted a Jewish legion World
Speaker 2: War One so that they could get more arms and
Speaker 2: experience for their upcoming war of independence. But the conflict
Speaker 2: with the British doesn't end just because they're ostensibly on
Speaker 2: the same side of this growing war. In nineteen forty,
Speaker 2: the Central Office for Jewish Immigration chartered three ships to
Speaker 2: take Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine. Once these ships docked,
Speaker 2: the British refused to let the refugees off. They had
Speaker 2: enacted by this point the White Paper Policy to curb
Speaker 2: Jewish immigration, and they planned to deport these people and
Speaker 2: not by the way back to Romania, and to do
Speaker 2: so transferred all of the Jewish refugees from these three
Speaker 2: ships to one boat called the Patria, which was docked
Speaker 2: at Haifa and bound for Mauritius. That's where they were
Speaker 2: going to unload these people, so they weren't going to
Speaker 2: be in Palestine.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So you've got this boat full of have you heard
Speaker 2: of the Patria case?
Speaker 3: By the way, No, this is a new to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really important point. That's kind of
Speaker 2: the point we're going to end on. I didn't really
Speaker 2: know about this either. So you've got this boat and
Speaker 2: it's got these refugees from the Holocaust, right like, docted
Speaker 2: at Haifa, and the British are going to send it
Speaker 2: off to Mauritius. And there's a massive debate within the
Speaker 2: Haganah for what to do here. Now. During World War two,
Speaker 2: the Haganah's unofficial motto was fight the white paper like
Speaker 2: there is no world war and help the British like
Speaker 2: there is no white paper. So they wanted to stop
Speaker 2: these people from being howard it right for a lot
Speaker 2: of reasons. But when you get into the habit as
Speaker 2: the Hagana has by this point of stockpiling guns and explosives,
Speaker 2: every problem starts to look like maybe guns and explosives
Speaker 2: are the solution, right, Like, that's just a human universal
Speaker 2: I want to quote now from an article in the
Speaker 2: Museum of the Jewish People. Amateurism, negligence, and perhaps even
Speaker 2: an inherent subconscious disrespect for the refugees blinded their eyes.
Speaker 2: The Hagana commanders acted against experts advice and placed a
Speaker 2: bomb in the rickety side of the old ship rather
Speaker 2: than under the machines area where there would be no passengers.
Speaker 2: And their idea here, at least the claim that the
Speaker 2: Hagana makes is that we wanted to set off a
Speaker 2: small explosion so that they would have to evacuate the ship.
Speaker 2: And once they've evacuated these refugees into Palestine, it'll be
Speaker 2: a lot easier to keep them here. Right There's You
Speaker 2: could certainly run into theories that they intended it to
Speaker 2: be as big as it was. But whatever the cause is,
Speaker 2: in the official senses that they fucked up and were
Speaker 2: just really bad with their explosives. They completely screw up,
Speaker 2: and they blow this to Kingdom, fucking calm and they
Speaker 2: kill two hundred and sixty seven Jewish refugees. Right, it
Speaker 2: is a horrible catastrophe, and it is still today known
Speaker 2: as the Patry Disaster. Is seen as the largest catastrophe
Speaker 2: in which Jews cause the death of other Jews. Two
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty seven total people die in the bombing.
Speaker 2: They're not actually all Jewish, but the vast majority of
Speaker 2: them are, and another one hundred and seventy two are injured. Now,
Speaker 2: the Haganah again says that we miscalculated. This was a
Speaker 2: horrible fuck up on humanitarian grounds. Though the British respond
Speaker 2: to this by saying, okay, all of the survivors get
Speaker 2: to stay, and so what message has the Mandate sent
Speaker 2: the Haganah by exactly right, And this is where I'm
Speaker 2: going to end things. Again, it's an arbitrary point. Any
Speaker 2: point I would pick is, but I think by this
Speaker 2: point you see everything that's going to lead us in
Speaker 2: to the Nakba to forty eight, Like everything has been
Speaker 2: established now there's not really a turning back point, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it is because of what the messages
Speaker 2: the British have sent, both that they've cracked down and
Speaker 2: debilitated and killed so many of these Palestinian leaders, and
Speaker 2: they have just continued to yield and aid and a bet,
Speaker 2: you know the Hagen even while they're carrying out terrorist
Speaker 2: attacks that in a lot of cases kill you know,
Speaker 2: British civilians and their own civilians. Right. The lesson they
Speaker 2: have sent is bombing and violence is the way to
Speaker 2: get what you want, and we will give you everything
Speaker 2: if you just do a little bit more of it.
Speaker 2: That's what the British are saying in nineteen forty, right,
Speaker 2: And everything that comes after that is I think pretty
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say predictable, but you get I think kind
Speaker 2: of where everything else happens at this point.
Speaker 3: I think the discrepancy is also really important to highlight
Speaker 3: here because when nineteen forty it happens, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of maybe pro Israel readings of that event or
Speaker 3: propaganda around that event is that, oh, all of these
Speaker 3: Arab countries attacked Israel, but in fact they were armed
Speaker 3: like three to one. And it's because of this discrepancy
Speaker 3: that's like continued through time that the British have allowed
Speaker 3: for them to like build up their material power. So
Speaker 3: even with those Arab countries coming in in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: when Israel declares itself after Palstins are ethically cleansed, like
Speaker 3: it's it's nothing compared to what the Israeli gangs are
Speaker 3: able to do, which are an IDEF and all.
Speaker 2: About yeah, it's become the IDF. In this period, and
Speaker 2: obviously there continue to be conflicts between like the Irgun
Speaker 2: and the Haganah because they're not in agreement about, among
Speaker 2: other things, yourgun wants to be the military of Israel
Speaker 2: right at a certain point, and you know there's I
Speaker 2: did debate should I have talked ended this more at
Speaker 2: like the bombing of the King David Hotel, But I don't,
Speaker 2: you know, which is something people should be aware of.
Speaker 2: You know, it's another and that I think the was
Speaker 2: your gun and Monoch and begin was like a major
Speaker 2: figure in sort of helping to mastermind that terrorist attack.
Speaker 2: But I you know, by this point in time, you've
Speaker 2: seen both like the community that had existed previously, you
Speaker 2: know seventeen eight or in the eighteen ags that we
Speaker 2: started talking about, has been forcibly broken down and also
Speaker 2: broken just because like the massive changes that have swept
Speaker 2: the culture have meant that like people don't feel the
Speaker 2: same about who they are anymore in a lot of.
Speaker 3: Cases, and it's very difficult to say you're an Arab Jew,
Speaker 3: right when there's not really space for you in either
Speaker 3: nationalism essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then of course.
Speaker 3: I mean you're not even getting to the part of
Speaker 3: like all of the Arab Jewish migration that happens in
Speaker 3: the aftermath of Israel's creation and how the state treats them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean today I think there are over fifty percent
Speaker 3: of the population of Jewish Israelis, but you wouldn't know that,
Speaker 3: like there's so much similarity between them and their Palestinian
Speaker 3: enemies essentially, but because of like you said, the identity
Speaker 3: has been.
Speaker 2: Erased, right, And that's why there aren't Arab Jewish communities
Speaker 2: and a lot of these different Middle Eastern North African
Speaker 2: countries that had existed up intol the forties. Is because
Speaker 2: after the established to the State of Israel, both there's
Speaker 2: reprisals against them. They also feel safe from moving to Israel.
Speaker 2: But yeah, as you said, there's like a it causes
Speaker 2: there are huge within Israel, like sectarian divides between different
Speaker 2: points of origin, right, and none of that goes away
Speaker 2: you know, and the it's all, it's all just I
Speaker 2: keep thinking back. The thing I can't really get out
Speaker 2: of my head because I hadn't really known about this
Speaker 2: kind of relationship is the relationship between these Arab Muslims
Speaker 2: who were descended from the people who got kicked out
Speaker 2: of you know, modern day Spain and Portugal Liberia, and
Speaker 2: the Sephardic Jews who are the same right, and this
Speaker 2: this beautiful awareness they have that like we're part of
Speaker 2: each other's past, and you know, even though that they're
Speaker 2: not the same religion, they've preserved a lot of our
Speaker 2: past even better than we did, and so like we
Speaker 2: have this degree of love towards them that doesn't I
Speaker 2: don't think that exists anymore that interrelate those communities in
Speaker 2: a relate like that which.
Speaker 3: Those Youdays have been a race essentially. But like said,
Speaker 3: do you know what's a really interesting anecdote around this
Speaker 3: community is there was a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon who
Speaker 3: kind of remembered vaguely that her grandmother had like very
Speaker 3: specific customs around certain holidays and like kind of strange
Speaker 3: things that her neighbors didn't share. Turns out her grandmother
Speaker 3: was originally from this Jewish community that was expelled from Spain.
Speaker 3: So the Palestinian refugee in Lebanon was able to get
Speaker 3: Spanish citizenship on the basis of being a descendant of
Speaker 3: jew right, Yeah, I mean absurd.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absurd. And also like just one more piece of
Speaker 2: evidence that like the long history of like inter relationship
Speaker 2: and like community, like intercommunal existence is way older than
Speaker 2: sectarian hatred, you know, like, h it's just sad.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it's funtor rethink nationalism. I don't know believe.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe it didn't work out great. Maybe maybe it
Speaker 2: was mostly bad. Maybe yeah, I don't know. You know
Speaker 2: what's not mostly bad? The book you just helped put together.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, The Handbook on Authoritarianism in the Air
Speaker 3: World is out now with Bluemsbury Politics. I'd also recommend
Speaker 3: my again my episode for it could happen here about
Speaker 3: my great grandmother And if people are interested in the
Speaker 3: Arab Jewish question, look up the Israeli Black Panthers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very interesting little anecdote there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, well that's going to do it for us
Speaker 2: at Behind the Bastards this week, and uh yeah, come
Speaker 2: back next week where we'll talk about I know, probably
Speaker 2: a dictator or something. I'll give you guys. I'll give
Speaker 2: you guys a fun one, a fun one, and they're
Speaker 2: none of them are fun ones. I'll give you guys
Speaker 2: a different one sounds good.
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