Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the
Speaker 2: very worst everything you don't know about the worst people
Speaker 2: in all history. It's kind of the initial point, but
Speaker 2: we also go back to our name when looking at
Speaker 2: kind of the remit of this show, and one of
Speaker 2: the things we try to do is get like behind
Speaker 2: the bastards, including like the very worst people in the
Speaker 2: world today. And we've already done an episode on Benjamin
Speaker 2: nettan Yahoo prior to October seventh and kind of this
Speaker 2: most recent escalation into genocide and Gaza, and I didn't
Speaker 2: really feel like, you know, returning to net Yahoo well,
Speaker 2: was kind of think this show does best covering like
Speaker 2: things that are currently happening and like breaking news. That's
Speaker 2: kind of why we've started. It could happen here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I'm among other things in the last year. So
Speaker 2: one of the best things we've done there is bring
Speaker 2: on doctor Donna al Kurd to help us report on
Speaker 2: and you know, not just stuff in Palestine, but you've
Speaker 2: done a lot of really good work for us data
Speaker 2: and so I want to bring you on as a
Speaker 2: guest and talk about a subject that I think is
Speaker 2: in your wheelhouse and also really important today. But thank
Speaker 2: you for coming back.
Speaker 1: You should recall you doctor Elker the whole episode.
Speaker 3: No, doctor, please don't do that. It's super awkward.
Speaker 2: It is cool, I mean, yeah, but first off, have
Speaker 2: you been and yeah, pluggables and stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I'm I'm doing. I'm existing. You know, many
Speaker 4: Bostonians are right now. But I'm happy that I edited
Speaker 4: this handbook called the Handbook on Arab Authoritarianism that just
Speaker 4: came out and it's open access, and so that has
Speaker 4: been a shining thing for me right now. So yeah,
Speaker 4: thanks for asking.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds great. I can't wait to read that.
Speaker 2: I've been I've been doing some. I for one of
Speaker 2: the things I read for this book, which is kind
Speaker 2: of about like the birth of terrorism in Palestine in
Speaker 2: the Holy Land prior to the knock, but prior to
Speaker 2: the establishment of the state of Israel. This episode, if
Speaker 2: you had like an education like me, because I remember
Speaker 2: as a kid, most of what I was told about
Speaker 2: the series of conflicts there was that like number one,
Speaker 2: it's been going on for thousands of years, that's always
Speaker 2: been happening. And number two that it's like primarily religious
Speaker 2: and always has been primarily religious. In dimension that like,
Speaker 2: those are the two truths about it, and kind of
Speaker 2: when people are saying that, one thing they're kind of
Speaker 2: tacitly saying, I think is that like Muslims and Jews
Speaker 2: can't live together, right, Like that is they don't tend
Speaker 2: to directly say that, But that's what you're meant to believe.
Speaker 2: If those two first things are true, right, and that
Speaker 2: they're both this is news to you, and that they're
Speaker 2: both they can't live.
Speaker 3: Together, but they're also both crazy exactly.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And none of that's true to the conflict.
Speaker 2: Right for one thing this you could I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: obviously stuff that happened in ancient times is relevant for
Speaker 2: a variety of reasons, just because history is never you know,
Speaker 2: discreete right, But if you go back to like eighteen eighty,
Speaker 2: you can get a really good grounding and everything that's
Speaker 2: really relevant to the conflict today. Right. I mean, maybe
Speaker 2: you disagree with that. If so, I yield to your experience,
Speaker 2: But that's kind have been sort of what I've come
Speaker 2: to feel like kind of reading into it that that's
Speaker 2: you really that's a really good grounding and kind of
Speaker 2: everything relevant to the to the day starts in the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, Like it's not that ancient.
Speaker 4: Right, No, No, absolutely, Like if I'm always anytime I
Speaker 4: talk about this or any time I teach about this,
Speaker 4: Like my main takeaway is like, this is a very
Speaker 4: recent conflict and recent in the grand scheme of human history,
Speaker 4: and it's about nationalism.
Speaker 3: It's about it really boils.
Speaker 2: Down, it's about nationalism. And yeah, and one of the
Speaker 2: important things to understand is that prior to the outbreak,
Speaker 2: I mean, prior to a lot of things, I mean,
Speaker 2: Zion isn't being one of them, but nationalism because it's
Speaker 2: I mean, Arab nationalism and also European nationalism are deeply
Speaker 2: tied to all of this. Among other things, Jews and
Speaker 2: Muslims and Christians got along reasonably well in Palestine for not,
Speaker 2: you know, never, Like no multicultural society is ever completely
Speaker 2: devoid of conflict, right, but there's a lot of I mean,
Speaker 2: one of our sources for this is a book called
Speaker 2: Lives in Common that really goes into how different things
Speaker 2: used to be there and how the fundamental conflict has
Speaker 2: nothing to do with faith. Right, So I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about like that, how how we got to kind
Speaker 2: of the point of no return, before the estab before
Speaker 2: you know, nineteen forty eight, and before the Nakama, right, Like,
Speaker 2: how did things and how did the Ottoman Empire and
Speaker 2: the British Mandate kind of help push things along to
Speaker 2: the point of no return?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: So that's I think what we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: this week, because yeah, that's just I was initially planning
Speaker 2: to do episodes a little bit different, probably on Monocam
Speaker 2: Bigan or on Vladimir Yebatinski, But it just it seemed
Speaker 2: to make more sense to cover it this way, in
Speaker 2: part because I actually didn't feel like just focusing on
Speaker 2: like one guy and trying to like sort out like
Speaker 2: how things went so wrong through a single It just
Speaker 2: didn't seem like the right way to do this.
Speaker 3: Now, this is more comprehensive, I would say, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. So the story that I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell this week starts in the eighteen eighties and ends
Speaker 2: around nineteen forty with a major terrorist bombing that kind
Speaker 2: of sets the stage for a lot of stuff going
Speaker 2: on today. But to start, we need to go back
Speaker 2: to Palestine during the Ottoman era, and when we talk
Speaker 2: about this period, the first thing I need to get
Speaker 2: across is that people living in Palestine during like the
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds and even the early nineteen hundreds would not
Speaker 2: have considered Palestinian a useful identity within the territory, because
Speaker 2: if you're like Muslim or Christian or Jewish, you're still
Speaker 2: a Palaestin. Like no one, like someone identifying themselves a
Speaker 2: Palestinian would not tell you what they believed, what community
Speaker 2: they were a part of, necessarily, right in like eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean these were Ottoman provinces. They happened to be there. Yeah,
Speaker 4: different communities happened to be.
Speaker 2: There, Yeah, exactly. And you know, in eighteen eighty or so,
Speaker 2: the majority of residents in any city in Palestine would
Speaker 2: have identified as Arab, including most Jews. And this is
Speaker 2: not a category that you see a lot of people
Speaker 2: claim today Arab Jew, right, But for a very long
Speaker 2: time there were large community of Arab Jews spread throughout
Speaker 2: the Middle East and North Africa, And in some ways,
Speaker 2: these episodes are the story of why many of those
Speaker 2: communities ceased to exist, right, Because that's also very tied
Speaker 2: up in the State of Israel and the wars that
Speaker 2: happened as a result of that all that stuff. Right,
Speaker 2: this is one of the communities that kind of, in
Speaker 2: a number of reasons not purely ceases to exist, but
Speaker 2: it also gets transmuted. People stop identifying that way, right.
Speaker 2: And there's when we talk about Arab Jews, there's a
Speaker 2: really it seems to be kind of muddled distinction between
Speaker 2: that and like Sephardic Jews, where a lot of Sephardic
Speaker 2: Jews would have considered themselves Arab Jews and spoken Arabic primarily,
Speaker 2: but it kind of varied, right, that was more common,
Speaker 2: as I understand, And like Hebron where the majority of
Speaker 2: the Jewish community and Hebron in this period was extremely
Speaker 2: Arabic and would have very rarely spoken kind of the
Speaker 2: language that most Sephardics spoke, which is Spanish derived. We'll
Speaker 2: talk about that, yes, Ladino, right, it was noted like
Speaker 2: in Hebron, they would only use Ladino and songs that
Speaker 2: like occasionally, right if there was like people in who
Speaker 2: might have been from like another city or something during
Speaker 2: like a religious celebration, right, Whereas in Jerusalem Ladino was
Speaker 2: a lot more common. Right, So you know, stuff like that,
Speaker 2: It is kind of a blurry distinction between Sephardic and
Speaker 2: Arab Jews, and there's this.
Speaker 4: Category also ms Rahim that kind of slumps Arab and
Speaker 4: Middle Eastern Jews from Iran and in Arab countries kind
Speaker 4: of all together, that becomes kind of a catch all term,
Speaker 4: I think, especially after the creation of the State of Israel.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and I'm not the best. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: kind of hopefully not screw this up too much. These
Speaker 2: are very complicated, you know when we kind of talk
Speaker 2: about how these the terms and how identity has shifted
Speaker 2: in these communities over this period of time, Like it's
Speaker 2: more than we'll totally get into today. But you need
Speaker 2: to understand that, like, among other things, when you're talking
Speaker 2: about the eighteen eighties in Palestine, when most Palestinians were
Speaker 2: be they Arab, you know, or Muslim or Christian or
Speaker 2: Jewish or whatever, if they were getting angry at a
Speaker 2: foreign power in those days, that power was the Ottomans, right,
Speaker 2: Like that was the enemy for a lot of basically everybody,
Speaker 2: right or it was like the ruler that you just
Speaker 2: kind of like assumed, well, you probably can't do any
Speaker 2: better than this, right, this is just life.
Speaker 3: You know, you are upset about taxes, you're upset about.
Speaker 2: The drugs, right, right, exactly exactly. And also the Ottomans
Speaker 2: are Turks, right, the rulers are foreigners, They're not Arab,
Speaker 2: and you know, the empire is a foreign one that's
Speaker 2: holding a lot of arabsy it's holding Arabs in some
Speaker 2: form of bondage, right, And obviously a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: Jewish people are not like the Jewish religion is not
Speaker 2: is also especially in parts of the you know, it
Speaker 2: varies treatment in different parts of the Ottoman Empire, but
Speaker 2: they're not considered equal under the law, so they and
Speaker 2: also Christians have a lot of issues with the Ottomans.
Speaker 2: But Arab nationalists, which are increasingly becoming a thing in
Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds, are also really angry at the Ottomans.
Speaker 2: Everybody's pretty pissed at the Ottomans. They're not a good empire,
Speaker 2: especially by this point in time, right, Like things aren't
Speaker 2: going They're the sick man of Europe is kind of
Speaker 2: the term people use. So in addition to being foreigners
Speaker 2: who are drafting people and taxing them, they're also just
Speaker 2: not holding up super well, right, And it's kind of
Speaker 2: increasingly obvious to everybody. But one of the things the
Speaker 2: existence of the Ottomans does is like a ruler over
Speaker 2: all the different religious groups and ethnic groups, is that
Speaker 2: it mitigates a degree of internal conflict because everybody kind
Speaker 2: of has this foreign power that they all see as
Speaker 2: like the asshole, right, and it does kind of make
Speaker 2: people fight less with each other. I do think that's
Speaker 2: a little bit of what's going on in this period.
Speaker 2: I think there's some solid area that comes from everyone
Speaker 2: being angry at the same foreign power. Right. So Yakav Yahoshua,
Speaker 2: a Jewish resident of Jerusalem in this time and a
Speaker 2: future Israeli, wrote of this period quote, the residential courtyards
Speaker 2: of the Jews and Muslims were common. We were like
Speaker 2: one family. We were all friends. Our mothers poured out
Speaker 2: their hearts to Muslim women, and they poured out their
Speaker 2: hearts to our mothers. The Muslim women accustomed themselves to
Speaker 2: speaking the Ladino language. This is his recollection of what
Speaker 2: life was like in this period of time, and he's
Speaker 2: not recalling any kind of religious conflict really, Like that
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be certainly his primary memory of this time.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of solidarity and it's accurate to
Speaker 2: note that. And you run across a couple quotes like
Speaker 2: this in Lives in Common that some Arab Muslims would
Speaker 2: see Arab Jews or Sephardic Jews as one of the
Speaker 2: terms I've heard is like inferior locals. And they don't
Speaker 2: mean that in they racial or religious sense. They mean that,
Speaker 2: and then they have not been here as long. They're locals,
Speaker 2: but they haven't been here as long. And that's true
Speaker 2: for a lot of these, especially like Sephardic Jewish communities,
Speaker 2: because you can tell this by the fact that they
Speaker 2: speak Ladino, right, which is derived from Old Spanish. Because
Speaker 2: many Sephardics were the remnants of the Iberian Jewish community
Speaker 2: who'd been exiled. And one of the things this actually
Speaker 2: does is there's a lot of solidarity between some of
Speaker 2: these Sephardic Jewish communities and some Arab Muslim communities who
Speaker 2: are descendants themselves of the Arabs that were kicked out
Speaker 2: of Iberia. And there's this kind of belief pretty wide
Speaker 2: spread that some of these Sephardic communities have done a
Speaker 2: better job or the best job of maintaining some of
Speaker 2: like the musical and artistic culture of that you know,
Speaker 2: community that was largely driven entirely driven out by the Christians. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's this really deep and we I don't think
Speaker 2: these relationships exist very much anymore, but this very deep
Speaker 2: relationship between these two different religious groups who are both
Speaker 2: exiles from the same place and wound up in Palestine,
Speaker 2: which I actually just wasn't aware that that was a
Speaker 2: dimension of life in that period of time. I find
Speaker 2: it really interesting, especially when you think of how far back,
Speaker 2: you know, the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Iberia
Speaker 2: is from this point in time. We're talking hundreds of years,
Speaker 2: and these are still really meaningful community relationships. I just
Speaker 2: find that fascinating. Now, depending on the city and community,
Speaker 2: the difference between like how these communities saw themselves and
Speaker 2: conflicts between them would would vary and be blurry. But again,
Speaker 2: in places like Hebrawn, the Jewish community spoke Arabic as
Speaker 2: the first language and only occasionally included Lidno songs and
Speaker 2: worship celebrations, right, So it did change depending on where
Speaker 2: you were a Jewish resident of the Old City in
Speaker 2: Jerusalem or Al Kuds during this time. Alaihu Ali Yashar
Speaker 2: wrote that during his youth quote, we heard Arabic and
Speaker 2: spoke it utterly, freely with our neighbors. Yakov Alazar, another resident,
Speaker 2: recalled Muslim women and mixed religion housing in a mixed
Speaker 2: religion housing development, volunteering to draw extra water the day
Speaker 2: before the Sabbath so as not to disturb their Jewish neighbors.
Speaker 2: Like you, hear a lot of stories of this, of
Speaker 2: religion and faith that's like lived in common and like
Speaker 2: this really kind of deeply emotionally affecting degree of religious
Speaker 2: solidarity and even co celebration of a lot of different
Speaker 2: religious holidays, as we'll talk about now. Before we get
Speaker 2: into some of those more positive stories, there is another
Speaker 2: fact of life in Palestine in like this period of time,
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, that we need to address,
Speaker 2: which is that for a shockingly long time, slavery still
Speaker 2: existed there. Right, People bought and saw old and slaved
Speaker 2: Africans for longer than you'd expect. And this is not
Speaker 2: just in Palestine. This is a decent chunk of the
Speaker 2: Middle East and in North Africa. In bits in his
Speaker 2: book Trade Yeah, yeah, And this is by the way,
Speaker 2: slavery is practiced and utilized by Jews and Muslims and
Speaker 2: Christians in this period of time. There's not seemed to
Speaker 2: be a major religious difference between who is buying slaves.
Speaker 2: It's a wealth thing if you can afford it, and
Speaker 2: you don't have a moral issue with it. You have
Speaker 2: slaves in this period of time, some people do, It's
Speaker 2: not super common. Klein notes that the Old City had
Speaker 2: a market where African girls specifically were bought and sold
Speaker 2: that operated until eighteen eighty nine, even though the Sultan
Speaker 2: had outlawed the trade in eighteen forty six. Per lives
Speaker 2: in common quote, In about eighteen eighty him Aharon Valero
Speaker 2: bought an Ethiopian girl who was around ten years old
Speaker 2: when the central government enforced the emancipation of slaves in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: The girl chose to stay with Valero's family and converted
Speaker 2: to Judaism. A few hundred descendants of these slaves still
Speaker 2: live in the Old City, and what is called the
Speaker 2: black or slave compound not an aspect of history that
Speaker 2: we talk about a lot, but uh, and.
Speaker 3: They consider themselves Palestinian today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yea, and it's it is I have heard
Speaker 2: this occasionally brought up in order to slander like Palestinians today,
Speaker 2: as if it was something that only one religion did.
Speaker 2: And as that quote makes clear, there were plenty of
Speaker 2: Jewish slaveholders in old Palestine. It was a money and
Speaker 2: a morals thing. If you were okay with it, you
Speaker 2: did it, you know. Coming into the eighteen eighties, the
Speaker 2: Jewish population in Palestine numbered around twenty five thousand, and
Speaker 2: Zionism as a political movement is not really There is
Speaker 2: some immigration from Europe, but it's not really a major
Speaker 2: political movement until like eighteen eighty two. And this is
Speaker 2: when you see a bunch of smaller Jewish organizations in Europe,
Speaker 2: some which had been sending migrants to establish farms or
Speaker 2: might move to cities in Palestine for a period of
Speaker 2: time before this, start to coordinate on like a large
Speaker 2: scale right. And that's part of the story, but not everything,
Speaker 2: because why is eighteen eighty one eighteen eighty two when
Speaker 2: this really gets going. Well, there's a lot of shit
Speaker 2: going on in Europe that makes it seem like a
Speaker 2: really good idea for a lot of Jewish people to
Speaker 2: get the fuck out of places like Russia. A big
Speaker 2: fuel for this wave of migration comes in the wake
Speaker 2: of the assassination of Tsar Alexander the Second by anarchists,
Speaker 2: Russia blamed the Jews, as they usually did, and a
Speaker 2: program followed in the city of Kirovorad. And this is like,
Speaker 2: this isn't basically modern day Azerbaijan, if I'm understanding it,
Speaker 2: I think it's generally a ZERI is like the region
Speaker 2: that this is like attributed to. I'm not sure specifically
Speaker 2: what country now, but like that's kind of the area
Speaker 2: this is occurring in. But it spreads out of kind
Speaker 2: of that community to the entire pale of settlement. And
Speaker 2: there's like a year and a half or two of
Speaker 2: horrific violence against Jews in a large portion, yeah, massive,
Speaker 2: And this kind of it leads to the Tsar passing
Speaker 2: what are called the May Laws in eighteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: which further restrict where Jews could go and what jobs
Speaker 2: they can have. And it makes a lot of people
Speaker 2: want to leave. But the Oxford Encyclopedia of the History
Speaker 2: of Terrorism it does something else too. This also expedited
Speaker 2: the consolidation of Jewish nationalism. The most significant essay of
Speaker 2: the time was Auto Emancipation by Leon Pinsker, in which
Speaker 2: he advocated the idea of self determination for the Jewish
Speaker 2: people in their ancient homeland. Now it's worth talking about
Speaker 2: all this and talking about what's happening in Russia as
Speaker 2: how it helps to fuel Zionism. But it's also worth
Speaker 2: noting very few of the people who are fleeing Russia
Speaker 2: and other Jews who are fleeing Russia and other Eastern
Speaker 2: European countries in this period choose to go to Palestine.
Speaker 2: That's about of the huge number of refugees. By the way,
Speaker 2: a lot of Jews leave Russia in the period immediately
Speaker 2: after eighteen eighty one ety two, about three percent of
Speaker 2: them immigrate to Palestine, right, And this first wave, by
Speaker 2: the way, it's both not big and also a lot
Speaker 2: of them don't stay. Right. Of that three percent of
Speaker 2: refugees who come into Palestine as significant, some people say most.
Speaker 2: Some sources say most leave pretty soon after because it's
Speaker 2: like a pretty different climate than Russia. You know, lot
Speaker 2: of people who are used to growing up there maybe
Speaker 2: move to Palestine. They're like, oh, I can't handle this
Speaker 2: is just yeah, it's not right. New York's way easier, right,
Speaker 2: or somewhere else, you know, because it's hard, and it's
Speaker 2: hard to farm in the desert, right, Like it's not
Speaker 2: the easiest place in the world, and there's not a
Speaker 2: massive amount that's going to because one of the things
Speaker 2: that causes problems is that some of these refugees who
Speaker 2: do stay, these early Zionists, a lot most of them
Speaker 2: settle in cities, and a lot become very integrated, but
Speaker 2: many settle in the country and start farms, or small
Speaker 2: numbers settle in the country and start farms. But even
Speaker 2: though it's not a lot of them, because resources are scarce,
Speaker 2: and because you know, at this point, by the time
Speaker 2: you've had an area that's been farmed and you know,
Speaker 2: peopled as long as Palestine has, there's not just a
Speaker 2: bunch of like good land that nobody is using, right.
Speaker 4: And they don't understand like indigenous farming. Like they're not
Speaker 4: talking to the locals. They're really not adjusting well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not adjusting well. And there are conflicts, there's
Speaker 2: you know, and in this period, theolence, I don't see
Speaker 2: a lot of reports about it being like hugely generally
Speaker 2: hugely serious. It's mostly like petty theft and property damage, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's some complaints from some of these
Speaker 2: Jewish farmers to the Automan authorities, but obviously the Automan
Speaker 2: authorities aren't going to take their complaints seriously, not that
Speaker 2: they take a lot of complaint. The Ottoman Empire not
Speaker 2: great at addressing the complaints of its people, right, They
Speaker 2: certainly don't care about these these like Zionist immigrants, right,
Speaker 2: they're the Ottomans in eighteen eighty. Yeah, So from these
Speaker 2: initial concerns over security arose the first organized Jewish defense
Speaker 2: group in Palestine, which is called bar Giora and Bargiora initial. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it becomes the hashimor or it's
Speaker 2: more accurate to say the Hashimer is kind of a
Speaker 2: spin off of bar Giora, and then the Hashimer obviously
Speaker 2: gives way to the Haganah. The Haganah becomes the IDF.
Speaker 2: You know, it's you see kind of how things go there.
Speaker 2: But initially bar Giora and the Hashimer they are like
Speaker 2: left wing organizations because the primary organizing kind of impetus
Speaker 2: behind them are these Jewish labor foot federations, and a
Speaker 2: lot of these had started with people kind of organizing
Speaker 2: their communities back in the old countries and sometimes organizing
Speaker 2: like self defense in those communities from the Bagram back
Speaker 2: in the Old country. And so some of those people
Speaker 2: who make it over to Palestine, and these are generally
Speaker 2: like leftists, initially start forming these like self defense groups
Speaker 2: right this very first one. And it's not gonna there's
Speaker 2: going to be like a right wing, a major right
Speaker 2: wing swing that comes in after this. And some of
Speaker 2: it is a reaction to the fact that a lot
Speaker 2: of people, a lot of Zionists who are right wing,
Speaker 2: are really fed up with a lot of these very
Speaker 2: left wing like Zionist organizations, and there are conflicts between
Speaker 2: them too. There's a left and a right wing. Zionism
Speaker 2: is not like a single thing in terms of what
Speaker 2: people mean when they say it in this period of time,
Speaker 2: certainly not right to look at it that way. People
Speaker 2: will mean a number of different things. That said, the
Speaker 2: kind of major organizing center is pretty well represented by
Speaker 2: Theodore Herzel, right, who is like the big Zionist theoretician
Speaker 2: thinker of his day. Have heard of him quoted in
Speaker 2: The Big Lebowski. In eighteen ninety seven, Herzel announced the
Speaker 2: first Zionist Congress in Basil, which brought a bunch of
Speaker 2: these smaller European Zionist groups together for the first time.
Speaker 2: In his biography of Monocham, Begin Daniel Gordis makes it
Speaker 2: clear that Zionism developed alongside and was influenced by other
Speaker 2: nationalist movements, it was not separated from them. One of
Speaker 2: the things he does, and obviously Gordis really likes Monocha
Speaker 2: and Begin who is a very does I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a guy among other things, there's a lot of terrorism
Speaker 2: in life. But one thing he does point out that
Speaker 2: I think is valuable is he has includes some quotes
Speaker 2: from Monocham and he compares them two different like and
Speaker 2: this is monoca like quotes that Monocham has come up
Speaker 2: with that are like about Zionism, and he compares them
Speaker 2: to different slogans and songs of like Polish nationalist groups
Speaker 2: in the area Monocham would have been growing up as
Speaker 2: a kid, and points out the similarities. And he's doing
Speaker 2: this to point out that Zionism cannot be extricated from
Speaker 2: Polish nationalism or German nationalism or any other kind of nationalism.
Speaker 2: They are all yeah, exactly exactly, and they're they're influencing
Speaker 2: each other right like at the same time, even though
Speaker 2: a lot of these European you know, Polish and German
Speaker 2: nationalists are also often very anti Semitic, that also influences
Speaker 2: the development of Zionism, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like to point out that, like we're
Speaker 4: talking about a time period, like you said, where like
Speaker 4: there are these empires and there nobody is a citizen.
Speaker 3: Like it's not a democracy here.
Speaker 4: Everyone is a subject in an empire, and self determination
Speaker 4: like nationalism fills a need you know, to like protect yourself,
Speaker 4: especially as like the international system starts to develop.
Speaker 3: It's like we have to declare ourselves a nation.
Speaker 4: And like argue for our people's rights otherwise we won't
Speaker 4: be you know, kind of legible on the international stage.
Speaker 4: We've got to you know, move in this direction. Obviously
Speaker 4: there are lots of ills that come from that, but
Speaker 4: we'll get to that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we will. And it's you know, it's also
Speaker 2: it's hard to not to understand how if you are
Speaker 2: a Jew in a place like Russia and you're constantly
Speaker 2: being told you're not Russian, you're not you're part of
Speaker 2: a different thing, you don't belong here. I can see
Speaker 2: how some people are like, well, maybe that thing's you know, Zionism, right,
Speaker 2: maybe that's what I should be doing of I'm not
Speaker 2: a Russian. If I can't be here, like what else
Speaker 2: is there? And obviously that's not the choice most people make.
Speaker 2: Most people choose to go somewhere else for different reasons.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, like you have to. You can't separate
Speaker 2: this from all of the other movements at the time.
Speaker 2: And this is something Gordois makes a really good point
Speaker 2: of making of writing about in his biography Up Again.
Speaker 2: Quote the Jews, like the Poles, wanted their land back.
Speaker 2: The Polish anthem declared, Poland is not yet lost. While
Speaker 2: we live, we will fight with swords for all that
Speaker 2: our enemies had taken from us. Well, the Hatikvah, the
Speaker 2: Zionist's anthem, ended with the words our hope is not
Speaker 2: yet lost, the hope of too millennia to be a
Speaker 2: free people in our land. And you can see the
Speaker 2: similarities there. And of course one of the big differences
Speaker 2: would be the Polish people were singing were actively in
Speaker 2: Poland right, and the European Zionists singing the Haktiva were
Speaker 2: mostly foreign is, singing about land that other people already inhabited.
Speaker 2: Foreigners to the land they intended to go to, right,
Speaker 2: who had not been born and raised there. And that
Speaker 2: is a meaningful difference, right. But you can also see
Speaker 2: how these things are influencing each other as they evolve.
Speaker 2: In nineteen oh four, the Kishinev Pogrom occurred in modern
Speaker 2: day Moldova, which is of course then part of the
Speaker 2: Russian Empire. And I think the cause of this is
Speaker 2: the most popular paper in Kishinev publishes a series of
Speaker 2: articles with titles like death to the Jews and Crusade
Speaker 2: against the Hated Race. I probably don't need to read
Speaker 2: you the text of any of those articles for you
Speaker 2: to get the idea of like the tenor of them, right,
Speaker 2: And this raises tensions to a fever pitch. And then
Speaker 2: there's two murders of children. One is a young boy
Speaker 2: and one is a young well, one is a young
Speaker 2: girl who commits suicide. Right, And neither of these have
Speaker 2: anything to do with the Jewish community. But there are
Speaker 2: these long standing myths and rumors that like rabbis are
Speaker 2: sacrificing Christian children to get their blood to do this
Speaker 2: kind of ritual. Right, This is a huge part of it.
Speaker 2: That's a blood life ter right, Yep, yep, massive part
Speaker 2: of anti Semitism history, right. And so when these these
Speaker 2: two young people up dead kind of in the same
Speaker 2: area at the same time, there's just like an immediate
Speaker 2: disinformation campaign to be like it's the Jews, right, And
Speaker 2: then you get a pagram. Right, There's a massacre that
Speaker 2: starts on Easter Sunday. I think forty to forty nine
Speaker 2: Jewish people are murdered, hundreds more are injured, more than
Speaker 2: fifteen hundred homes are damaged, and the pagram itself influences
Speaker 2: a lot more people to flee than were directly impacted
Speaker 2: by the violence. And one of the folks who was
Speaker 2: very influenced by the kitshen of Pagram is Theodore Hertzel,
Speaker 2: and this happens right before he dies. He doesn't live
Speaker 2: a lot like much after this pagram, but one of
Speaker 2: his last acts, and he had again, not a few
Speaker 2: years before this, he had held that first Zionist Congress.
Speaker 2: He's a major Zionist figure. But one of the things
Speaker 2: that's interesting is he gets so scared after this Pagram
Speaker 2: that he starts pitching something called the Uganda scheme. And
Speaker 2: the Uganda scheme was a proposal that existed at this time,
Speaker 2: that had been created by certain British imperial strategists who
Speaker 2: thought it would be useful to kind of some of
Speaker 2: the great game politics they were playing in Africa if
Speaker 2: they could create like a semi independent Jewish community, not
Speaker 2: quite a state, but more independent than a colony in
Speaker 2: East Africa, Right, that could be useful to them as
Speaker 2: like a But there were a number of reasons they
Speaker 2: thought it would be useful, right, none of which had
Speaker 2: to do with the welfare of anybody in Africa or
Speaker 2: any of these Jewish people.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This is purely British power politics, right. And obviously Herzel
Speaker 2: and a number of other people are like, well, I
Speaker 2: guess you know, maybe this is better than nothing, right,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't go anywhere. And a lot of Zionists
Speaker 2: get really angry at Herzel because they are very focused
Speaker 2: on the primacy of Palestine within Zionism, and Herzel's obviously
Speaker 2: somewhat more flexible where he's like, look, I mean if
Speaker 2: they're offering Uganda. And this highlights a really important reality,
Speaker 2: which is like this whole ideology that is being developed, right,
Speaker 2: and all of these European Jews that are being influenced
Speaker 2: to move are under this constant paul of doom that
Speaker 2: you know, these are the early warning signs of the Holocaust,
Speaker 2: and so there's a lot of among other things, it
Speaker 2: wasn't definite that the Zionist movement would land on Palestine
Speaker 2: at this point in time. You can see that by
Speaker 2: the fact that Herzel does embrace the Uganda Plan. And
Speaker 2: it also shows just how chaotic things are, how scared
Speaker 2: people are, and how little knowledge there is about like
Speaker 2: where is a good idea to go and like what
Speaker 2: should be done? Right, it's hard to see in this
Speaker 2: period of time when these pagrams kind of rise up
Speaker 2: like this natural it's not surprising that so many Jews
Speaker 2: leave for like the United States in this period of time.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really easy to see anyone who's paying
Speaker 2: attention being like, well, I gotta go, Like I don't
Speaker 2: know where I need to go, but like Eastern Europe
Speaker 2: is not the place to be right the fuck now,
Speaker 2: Like I'm getting on a bus to anywhere that's not
Speaker 2: this place, right, And again, most people go to the
Speaker 2: Americas or elsewhere in Europe. But it's not hard to
Speaker 2: see why they're leaving so fucking fast. The first and
Speaker 2: second waves of migration to Palestine during the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 2: are known as the first and second Aliyah. Between nineteen
Speaker 2: oh three and nineteen fourteen, thirty five thousand to forty
Speaker 2: thousand Russian Jews moved to Palestine. And it's during this
Speaker 2: time that Jewish immigrants near living near Jafa create the
Speaker 2: neighborhoods that are going to form the nucleus of tel Aviv,
Speaker 2: which eventually becomes the first like Hebrew city right in Palestine.
Speaker 2: And that's what people will call it. It doesn't start,
Speaker 2: and there's a huge like effort to deny that like
Speaker 2: Jaffa really was a city kind of now, because the
Speaker 2: idea that like tel Aviv was could not have come
Speaker 2: into existence without Jaffa and without Jaffa forming a place
Speaker 2: for a lot of these Jewish communities to start. And
Speaker 2: I mean until nineteen thirty, tel Aviv's downtown was downtown
Speaker 2: Jaffa basically because tel Aviv like didn't have one really like.
Speaker 4: They needed that economic opportunity that this very thriving city represented.
Speaker 4: And actually that's like the basis of a lot of
Speaker 4: the tensions between them and the Palestinians.
Speaker 3: Is the is.
Speaker 4: I mean you already mentioned kind of the labor aspect
Speaker 4: of it. Is like they were extremely exclusionary and they
Speaker 4: were trying to use these economics, you know, opportunities in
Speaker 4: a very kind of directed way. So they were, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, rubbing up against a lot of issues.
Speaker 2: It's very what you said about the being exclusionary is
Speaker 2: very accurate. A lot of these communities. Number one, they
Speaker 2: only want to speak europe at whatever European language they
Speaker 2: came in. They're very and they're not exclusionary just to
Speaker 2: the Muslims. They're exclusionary to the Arab Jews and the
Speaker 2: Sephardic Jews who had lived There's a lot of complaints,
Speaker 2: a lot of quotes from Sephardics in Lives in Common
Speaker 2: that are like, well, these new immigrants don't even speak Arabic,
Speaker 2: Like I can't even talk to them. Right, So there's
Speaker 2: the conflict is not like a Muslim Jewish conflict. It
Speaker 2: is a native immigrant conflict, right, Like, that's what's happening here.
Speaker 2: So Jews also came to outnumber of Muslims in Alcuds
Speaker 2: or Jerusalem or the Holy City during this period. I
Speaker 2: think coulds just means holy, right, yes, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I mean the Holy City, yeah yeah, the Holy Yeah.
Speaker 2: During this period, right, and we're talking I think Jerusalem
Speaker 2: is about thirty thousand people when that balance tips, right,
Speaker 2: So we're not talking about a massive city, but that
Speaker 2: change is significant and it shows kind of how these
Speaker 2: how meaningful, these kind of numbers of people that are
Speaker 2: coming in from Europe really have started to be Most
Speaker 2: of the buildings in Jerusalem at this point in time,
Speaker 2: when Jews start to outnumber Muslims there are still owned
Speaker 2: by Arab Muslims, right, And overall immigration to Palestine remains
Speaker 2: pretty small relative to the total population. In nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 2: there are about eighty thousand Jews in Palestine, and obviously
Speaker 2: that includes Sephardic and Arab, that includes, you know, all
Speaker 2: of the other categories, not just you know, Jews who
Speaker 2: had come in from Europe. And that means that the
Speaker 2: Jewish population is about a tenth of the total population
Speaker 2: of Palestine. Kind of Roughly, Jewish immigration to Palestine is
Speaker 2: not even all that significant during this period in terms
Speaker 2: of overall immigration, right, Like, other people are coming in
Speaker 2: and Jews are a big chunk of that, but they're
Speaker 2: not yet it's not yet what it's going to be, right,
Speaker 2: And as more people of foreign origin start showing up
Speaker 2: and buying property and come to dominate some neighborhoods, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of native Palestinian people who start worrying.
Speaker 2: Now many of these and these foreign Jews are often
Speaker 2: called Ashkenazam, right, that's one of the terms for them.
Speaker 2: They adopt. Some of them do adopt like an Arab
Speaker 2: Jewish identity, and they do blend into these especially earlier refugues,
Speaker 2: blend into these earlier communities and become very integrated into
Speaker 2: these cities that are extremely multicultural in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: But not everyone's always willing to do that, and also
Speaker 2: not everyone's willing to let them. Right, there are some
Speaker 2: real differences between and what people are willing to accept
Speaker 2: from what they see as our Jews and what they're
Speaker 2: willing to accept from these foreigners. And I want to
Speaker 2: quote now from Lives in Common Again, we knew they
Speaker 2: were different from our Jews, I mean Arab Jews. We
Speaker 2: thought of them as foreigners from Europe rather than Jews
Speaker 2: as such, wrote Gata Karme, a Palestinian physician and writer
Speaker 2: who grew up in West Jerusalem. And I think that's
Speaker 2: a really important thing to keep in mind, is that, Like, again,
Speaker 2: I know I'm harping on this, but these issues are
Speaker 2: not religious in nature. There are issues of like a
Speaker 2: bunch of European showing up in a place that's not European,
Speaker 2: and like that causes conflict, you know, And there's a.
Speaker 4: Difference between immigrants and settler Like, yeah, exactly at Palestine
Speaker 4: has often you know, historically obviously, like look at where
Speaker 4: it's placed. It's often you know, absorbed different communities, right,
Speaker 4: Like you said, there's like the types that like blend in,
Speaker 4: and then there's the ones that refuse and want to replace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that is a really good point, because I
Speaker 2: I don't and maybe I'll certainly yield to you if
Speaker 2: because I'm sure you've considered this more than I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't feel super like someone who just like is
Speaker 2: fleeing a pagram and winds up moving to like Hebron
Speaker 2: or Jerusalem or you know, Jaffa and like becomes a
Speaker 2: member of the community that's less of a settler thing
Speaker 2: than someone who like starts a farm and like it
Speaker 2: starts a separate community that it doesn't want to let
Speaker 2: it right, those are two different kinds of things, right absolutely.
Speaker 4: And the fact that they were like especially the ones
Speaker 4: in Java for example, like they were disempowering the Palestinian laborer,
Speaker 4: you know, like that is the issue. It's not the
Speaker 4: issue that there are new people necessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it quite frankly, it's the issue that happens whenever
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of immigration from a separate place to
Speaker 2: a new place. There's always variance of these conflicts. Right now,
Speaker 2: this is not entirely the same thing because usually when
Speaker 2: that happens, like in the US, you don't have a
Speaker 2: bunch of foreign organizations with a bunch of money propped
Speaker 2: up by some very wealthy people who are funding a
Speaker 2: lot of the immigration. And a lot of these Zionist
Speaker 2: groups are funded by very wealthy people who are paying
Speaker 2: for these these people to go over there and sometimes
Speaker 2: paying for them to basically live. And so one of
Speaker 2: the complaints again that a lot of like Arab and
Speaker 2: Sephardic Jews have is that like these new immigrants, they're
Speaker 2: often just being paid to live by someone else. And
Speaker 2: that's also frustrating to me because like I'm a Jew
Speaker 2: and I've been here forever. Why don't they have to work?
Speaker 2: You know, not that none of them are, not that
Speaker 2: that's like most people. But these are the conflicts that
Speaker 2: are occurring. Right. That is an attitude a lot of
Speaker 2: people have, and it's accurate to some of this influx community. Right,
Speaker 2: And these are you can see these conflicts starting to breed. Right.
Speaker 2: Even Yakov Yehoshua, who is later the father of a
Speaker 2: celebrated Israeli novelist, claimed that Ashkenasm tended to prefer their
Speaker 2: own courtyards where they did not mix with Muslims or
Speaker 2: Arab Jews. Quote, Muslim women descended to us from the
Speaker 2: roofs to while away the evening talking to our mothers.
Speaker 2: Our children played with their children, and when other children
Speaker 2: came into the neighborhood to hurt us, our Muslim friends
Speaker 2: who lived in the courtyard came to defend us. We
Speaker 2: were their allies. And that is that is the you know,
Speaker 2: the recollection of this kay Yakov, who is a native
Speaker 2: and to Palistin and Jewish, right, is that these immigrant
Speaker 2: communities do not have the same relationship that we do. Right.
Speaker 2: And that quote is lovely, but it does imply something unlovely,
Speaker 2: which is that there is still some internescing violence here, right,
Speaker 2: Like the fact that in this neighborhood, these Muslim their
Speaker 2: Muslim friends are like defending these these Jewish kids when
Speaker 2: they get bullied, it means that there also is some bullying, right.
Speaker 2: And I've run into quotes like that Monochamkleient's book, and
Speaker 2: that's not again, it's going to happen anywhere you have
Speaker 2: like a multi Think about the United States, right, Think
Speaker 2: about whatever city you live in, Like, there's sizeable it's
Speaker 2: the United States sizeable non white, sizable immigrant populations. And
Speaker 2: if you listen to this show, I hope that you
Speaker 2: consider those people your neighbors and aren't a piece of
Speaker 2: shit and a racist. But you know, whatever city you
Speaker 2: live in has a not insignificant number of people who
Speaker 2: are pieces of shit and racists right against like folks
Speaker 2: who are just different. That occurs everywhere. There's different kinds
Speaker 2: of people, right, yeah, right, right, And so the fact
Speaker 2: that there's some violence like that, I think says less
Speaker 2: than the fact that most of these accounts are about
Speaker 2: people being like, yeah, and our Muslim friends like protected
Speaker 2: us from those folks who are like, you know, assholes
Speaker 2: or whatever, right, like that's I think a better picture
Speaker 2: of life, which is accurate. It's going to sound familiar
Speaker 2: to anyone who lives in the United States, right And
Speaker 2: that is also Klein's conclusion right in Lives in Common,
Speaker 2: which is that despite the fact that there are structural
Speaker 2: inequalities that chews face under the Ottoman system, in this
Speaker 2: period of time, in daily life, Jews and Muslims and
Speaker 2: Christians in Palestine got along and lived together much more
Speaker 2: often than they were in conflict. Right now, that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean like things were always ideal. When are they ever?
Speaker 2: And there's a relevant quote from the book there between
Speaker 2: young Jews and they're Christian and Muslim fellows sometimes grew strained.
Speaker 2: Shchulimit Laskov lived in Baka in the early nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: in an apartment that the Karakoreans and Armenian family rented
Speaker 2: to her parents into English tenants. She played with the
Speaker 2: Kiakorean children and when she ate at their home, she
Speaker 2: would occasionally participate in Christian prayers with them, but when
Speaker 2: they fought her erstwhile friends would sneer Jewish at her. Right.
Speaker 2: And this is a Christian family and they normally have
Speaker 2: good relations but it's this is just like people, you know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that it's just human beings. You're always going
Speaker 2: to encounter pieces like this, right, and I don't think
Speaker 2: that should overwhelm the more important story of like this,
Speaker 2: this really significant degree of social solidarity that exists in
Speaker 2: this period of time, right, you know, the fact that
Speaker 2: there's bigotry that crops up an integrated community shouldn't take
Speaker 2: away from that, But it's more important.
Speaker 3: Like you said, oh, so sorry to interrupt them, No, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: I was just saying, like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: like you said, like it's like their inferior status legally,
Speaker 4: which applied also to Christian minorities, like as an Ottoman issue,
Speaker 4: not their neighbors issue.
Speaker 3: Right. I'm sorry, I'm smiling, but my family's from ba.
Speaker 4: Ah, so I didn't expect you to come up with
Speaker 4: a quote from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think. What's one of the things that's also
Speaker 2: important to remember here is that while Arab Jews and
Speaker 2: Sephardic Jews and Christians who were born in Palestine and
Speaker 2: natives to there were second class citizens, immigrant Zionist Jews
Speaker 2: weren't always treated that way, especially in the latter the
Speaker 2: very near the very end of the Ottomans, they might
Speaker 2: have endured more protection than Jews were native born, because
Speaker 2: they're seen as European and because the Ottomans are really
Speaker 2: scared of pissing off the Europeans, right, not for any
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, because they're necessarily more connected,
Speaker 2: just because they're they're white, right, Like the Ottomans don't
Speaker 2: want that smoke. You know that that is a factor here, right.
Speaker 2: So as more and more of these foreign born Jewish
Speaker 2: immigrants moved to Palestine in the pre World War one years,
Speaker 2: they start buying up property, not just real property but
Speaker 2: in the cities as individuals, oftentimes just because you know,
Speaker 2: you want a house, but also a lot of these
Speaker 2: property and probably the bulk in terms of number are
Speaker 2: being bought on behalf of and buy these large organizations
Speaker 2: that are often doing it kind of strategically because they
Speaker 2: want to be able to kind of, Oh, we would
Speaker 2: like this to be a majority Jewish neighborhood, possibly because
Speaker 2: it's near in Jerusalem, this happens a lot. Oh, we
Speaker 2: want to kind of buy up as many of these
Speaker 2: communities near the whaling Wall as we can, right, or
Speaker 2: we want to buy up as many of these communities
Speaker 2: near this other area that we're both of religious significance,
Speaker 2: and that there is some conflict over and we want
Speaker 2: to move these people that we're immigrating into. That's some
Speaker 2: of these large organizations are very strategically thinking about the
Speaker 2: property that they're buying that way. And we have to
Speaker 2: deal with a couple of things when we talk about
Speaker 2: the purchase of property in Palestine by these immigrants. Right,
Speaker 2: if you read a lot of Israeli centered histories of Palestine,
Speaker 2: you will come across the claim this is very common
Speaker 2: up to the present day, that nearly all of the
Speaker 2: territory that became the state of Israel was uninhabited when
Speaker 2: these these these Zionists to start showing up. Right. This
Speaker 2: attitude is represented well from an article I found in
Speaker 2: the Jewish Virtual Library titled the Arabs and Palestine Quote.
Speaker 2: For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated,
Speaker 2: and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and
Speaker 2: malarial marshes. Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: described it as a desolate country whose soil is rich enough,
Speaker 2: but is given over holy to weeds, a silent, mournful expanse,
Speaker 2: a desolation here that not even imagination can grace with
Speaker 2: the pomp of life and action. We never saw a
Speaker 2: human being on the whole route. There was hardly a
Speaker 2: tree or shrub anywhere, even the olive in the cactus tree,
Speaker 2: those last friends of the worthless soil and almost deserted
Speaker 2: the country. And I'm not used to being kind of
Speaker 2: pissed at Mark Twain, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where's off? Where was he walking?
Speaker 2: Where was he walking? And like he can't have seen
Speaker 2: all that much in terms of the actual expanse of
Speaker 2: the country. But also I could drive through fucking Oklahoma
Speaker 2: where I grew up and be like, wow, a desolate expanse.
Speaker 2: I didn't see a whole person for for hours. It's like, yeah, man,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean people don't aren't living there and using
Speaker 2: the land. It was hot as hell. Maybe they weren't
Speaker 2: out that the time, man, Like yes, ces Man. Lewis French,
Speaker 2: the British Director of Development, wrote this of Palestine, we
Speaker 2: found it inhabited by Felaheen, who lived in Felaheen are
Speaker 2: like Arab peasants. Right, we'll talk more about them later,
Speaker 2: who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the
Speaker 2: prevalent malaria. Large areas were uncultivated. The Felaheen, if not themselves,
Speaker 2: cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals.
Speaker 2: The individual plots changed hands annually. There was little public security,
Speaker 2: and the Felahines lot was an alteration of pillage and
Speaker 2: blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin and Jess I want
Speaker 2: to note both how divorced from that is from real history.
Speaker 2: In the history I've read you so far, I've read
Speaker 2: you a bunch of counts of accounts, and these are
Speaker 2: all from like the eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties, the same
Speaker 2: basic period of time. Those two quotes I read about
Speaker 2: no one being in Palestine, and these are quotes in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases from people who become Israelis who
Speaker 2: are like no, there was like a vibrant community that
Speaker 2: I was a part of, Like a vibrant, settled community
Speaker 2: that I was a part of. It was mostly non Jewish. Right.
Speaker 2: We have plenty of accounts like that. This is obviously
Speaker 2: not true, right, And even that Jewish Virtual Library article
Speaker 2: cannot go long without technically admitting to the fact that
Speaker 2: what they've said previously is not really accurate. The very
Speaker 2: next sentence after the stuff I just read reads the
Speaker 2: Arab population at the time was approximately six hundred thousand
Speaker 2: compared to ninety four thousand Jews. Well that's not nobody.
Speaker 2: That seems like a good number of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things that goes on that kind
Speaker 2: of obscures this, this errant and deliberately errant view of reality,
Speaker 2: is that there's just a lot less people in the world.
Speaker 2: There's a massive boom in the human population that occurs
Speaker 2: kind of during this the end of the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds. A lot of it has to do
Speaker 2: with like the haber Bosch process, with the fact that
Speaker 2: we figure out how to create a lot of nitrogen
Speaker 2: for fur. There's but human being, Like, there's way more
Speaker 2: people in twenty to thirty years from now the period
Speaker 2: we're talking about, and there are going to be later
Speaker 2: and so you can see that as like, oh, these
Speaker 2: Jewish immigrants, the Zionist immigrants brought civilists to Palestine. It's like, no,
Speaker 2: there's more people everywhere. Man, It's just what happened, like
Speaker 2: we figured out how to make fertilizer. I don't know
Speaker 2: what to tell you.
Speaker 4: And they just didn't understand like how these like felahin
Speaker 4: likes organized their land.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, they didn't have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they didn't have like the property rights system that
Speaker 4: they were accustomed to. And there was a big since
Speaker 4: the landlords. And it's a whole thing that they didn't understand.
Speaker 2: And they didn't care to write.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: That article quoted Lewis French, a British agent who lived
Speaker 2: in Palestine after the Ottoman Empire fell in the west
Speaker 2: took over governance, and he talked about the fellahin these
Speaker 2: traditional Arab desert peasants as if they lived in primitive
Speaker 2: filth and we're basically just bandits. And I want to
Speaker 2: read you a different description of these guys from a
Speaker 2: Sephardic Jewish man named Joseph Meuhas. And Yoseph Meuas is
Speaker 2: a Zionist, although not not the kind you're used to
Speaker 2: hearing about. We're going to talk about what he believed
Speaker 2: because it's really interesting and he grows up in he's
Speaker 2: a local, right, and he later wrote that when he
Speaker 2: was a kid, which is kind of around this. I
Speaker 2: think it's a little later than this, but it's before
Speaker 2: things really start to get terrible. He writes that for
Speaker 2: a ten year period where he's a young man, he's
Speaker 2: going to school, he's training, he was quote a constant
Speaker 2: guest in the homes of the Fellas in the evening
Speaker 2: when I returned from the Hater, or during vacations and holidays,
Speaker 2: I would always visit Mohammad and Fatma, as well as
Speaker 2: Ali and Khadijah, my favorite neighbors. They fed me of
Speaker 2: their bread, I drank of their water, and sometimes they
Speaker 2: honored me with their conversations and stories as dessert. Until
Speaker 2: late at night. I would sleep in their homes, and
Speaker 2: in this manner, all their manners, values, way of life, speech,
Speaker 2: and the stories I loved served as my childhood education. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a very different picture, I think, and Mayo has
Speaker 2: felt the need to write down his recollections of life
Speaker 2: and of the Fela Heen because during the twenties and
Speaker 2: thirties things started to get a lot uglier, and he
Speaker 2: started to hear a lot of these very racist claims
Speaker 2: about these people that he'd grown up with and knew
Speaker 2: was not true, and he starts to witness Jewish and
Speaker 2: Muslim communities closing off from each other and becoming more hostile,
Speaker 2: and this frightens and saddens him. Mayuhas is a teacher
Speaker 2: of a Ruin Arabic as well as French at the
Speaker 2: Evelina de Rothschild School for girls. The Rothchilds fund a
Speaker 2: lot of the Zionist immigration in this period of time.
Speaker 2: That's not I know, people, when you people bring up
Speaker 2: the roth Childs, it's nearly always conspiracy stuff. This is
Speaker 2: a thing like the roth Childs do right, Like they're
Speaker 2: funding a lot of this because they believe in this.
Speaker 2: And Mayuhus thinks it's his duty because of the kind
Speaker 2: of Zionist he is. He thinks it is his duty
Speaker 2: to encourage his co religionists to admire, learn from, and
Speaker 2: blend in with the Felahen because they've lived there much longer.
Speaker 2: Right from the book Lives in common Quote, Mayuhas viewed
Speaker 2: the philus as the original Arabs, as opposed to the
Speaker 2: desert nomads and the merchants of the cities. The phil
Speaker 2: us he wrote, were the descendants of the Canaanites, who
Speaker 2: are considered the most ancient inhabitants of Palestine. They fully
Speaker 2: preserved all the ancient customs, more and more race that
Speaker 2: the Jews have forgotten because of their exile. In other words,
Speaker 2: his view is, we don't need, we don't need to
Speaker 2: be separate from these people. We need to learn from
Speaker 2: them and become part of their community and let them
Speaker 2: teach us, because they are living a more authentic version
Speaker 2: of ancient Jewish life than us, and we should learn
Speaker 2: more from them to honor them. Right. That's his attitude
Speaker 2: as a Zionist, right, because to him it means something
Speaker 2: very different than it does to guys like Herzel. Foreign
Speaker 2: Born immigrants were likelier to see Zionism as a struggle
Speaker 2: of conquest. In fact, that was probably certainly the dominant
Speaker 2: after a certain period of time attitude, whereas meyu Hus
Speaker 2: is a local right and he believes that Arabs and
Speaker 2: Jews are spiritual brothers and cousins. Right, If European immigrants
Speaker 2: wanted to thrive in Palestine, he reasoned, they need to
Speaker 2: have a close and respectful relationship with Arabs in others
Speaker 2: in order to be successful. How do you know how
Speaker 2: to live here if you're not gonna learn from these people?
Speaker 2: Who have lived here.
Speaker 1: Forever, right and here by the way, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, shit, I don't know. Yeah, here's an ad We're back. Sorry.
Speaker 2: I just I found that this guy really interesting because
Speaker 2: you don't hear about stories like all that often or
Speaker 2: attitudes like this, and it's interesting the counterpoint he provides
Speaker 2: these attitudes that like these people really meant nothing and
Speaker 2: had no impact on the development of society and civilization
Speaker 2: in Palestine. I think it's really important to look at
Speaker 2: someone who's not creating propaganda post taste, right. This is
Speaker 2: somebody who lives in this area and lives in this
Speaker 2: life and is horrified by what he sees happening in
Speaker 2: the twenties and thirties. We'll talk about Mayuhas a little
Speaker 2: more later. So as for modern Israeli claims of a
Speaker 2: barren and empty Palestine, the reality is that prior to
Speaker 2: the mid twentieth century, the area is a lot less populated.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the eighteenth early nineteenth century
Speaker 2: there's a population and it's not even World War One
Speaker 2: takes a real bite at a population growth in the region,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, but it does start to happen
Speaker 2: after this period of time. This is also something that
Speaker 2: modern Israeli scholarship likes to credit Jewish immigration for. But
Speaker 2: the reality is this is happening in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways for the same reasons it's happening in many other places.
Speaker 2: Near the end of the eighteen hundred's new rail lines
Speaker 2: open up and connect Palestine to the world, and it
Speaker 2: brings trade and also brings tourists. Right, A lot of
Speaker 2: European tourists want to come and see the Holy Land,
Speaker 2: you know. And those tourists would have seen Jerusalem if
Speaker 2: they came in like nineteen hundred as an incredibly cosmopolitan city.
Speaker 2: The Al Wad neighborhood, to give one example, hosted three churches,
Speaker 2: three synagogues, and seven mosques. The many Jewish and Muslim
Speaker 2: holidays were celebrated by members of all faiths in particularly
Speaker 2: diverse neighborhoods. In the summer two thousand issue of Jerusalem Quarterly,
Speaker 2: Salim Tamari writes about an Ottoman era Muslim named Wassif
Speaker 2: Jowaria quote. It was a pre nationalist era in which
Speaker 2: religious identity embraced the other in its festivals and rituals.
Speaker 2: Jowarian narrates that the Feast of Easter slash Pessa as
Speaker 2: an occasion from Muslim, Christian Jewish celebrations. He details the
Speaker 2: Muslim processions of Palm Sunday, which proceeded from the Abrahamic
Speaker 2: Mosque and Hebron towards Jerusalem. The festival of al Nabi
Speaker 2: Musa is recalled here as a Muslim popular celebration that
Speaker 2: merges with the Christian Orthodox Easter. The Fantasia of Sabt
Speaker 2: al Nur Fire Saturday, commemorating the Resurrection of Christ, is
Speaker 2: seen as the greatest popular Christian celebration in Palestine, closely
Speaker 2: coordinated with Muslim folk festivals. Purim was celebrated by Christian
Speaker 2: and Muslim youth and Jewish neighborhoods. Wassif describes in detail
Speaker 2: the costumes they wore on this occasion. Twice a year,
Speaker 2: Muslim and Christian families, including the Jawaria family, joined the
Speaker 2: Jewish celebrations at the shrine of Simon the justin Sheik
Speaker 2: Jarra at the event known as Shathat al Yahudia, where
Speaker 2: Heim the oud player and Zaki the tambourine player would
Speaker 2: sing the accompaniment of Andalusian melodies. Yeah not a vision.
Speaker 2: A lot of people want you to have of Palestine
Speaker 2: in nineteen hundred.
Speaker 4: I have to tell you, like the Palestine that I
Speaker 4: was born and grew up in, Like, even in my
Speaker 4: lifetime I'm thirty five, Like I've seen the progression of
Speaker 4: like that lessening even more. I remember celebrating Christian holidays
Speaker 4: and like there was a lot of integration. Obviously, the
Speaker 4: Jewish holidays have been kind of you know, they've given
Speaker 4: them they have kind of a different you know, salience
Speaker 4: at this point.
Speaker 3: But even now, like in the last.
Speaker 4: Thirty five years, we've seen a huge decline in that,
Speaker 4: like and the city has changed so much, so you
Speaker 4: can imagine how much more it used to be integrated
Speaker 4: back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really sad to think about. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: now again, obviously, as I've noted, people are not you.
Speaker 2: Jews and Christians are not equal citizens of the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2: They have to pay an extra tax and they don't
Speaker 2: enjoy all of the same rights. But they're also protected
Speaker 2: by the state and allowed to worship as long as
Speaker 2: they accept their faith as subordinate right. And that's alone
Speaker 2: doesn't really do a fair job of explaining the complex
Speaker 2: social and religious status quot that would have existed during
Speaker 2: the last days of Ottoman rule. As Daniel Schrockter, a
Speaker 2: historian at the University of Minnesota, told Canadian Jewish News
Speaker 2: reporter Jody Shopach, quote, the idea that Jews lived as
Speaker 2: second class citizens makes little sense in this context because
Speaker 2: the idea of citizenship didn't apply in the pre modern
Speaker 2: Islamic world, Truth said, adding Islam did see Jews and
Speaker 2: Christians as inferior, but that didn't prevent peaceful interactions between
Speaker 2: Jews and Muslims on a quidtitian level. Right, It's also
Speaker 2: important to keep in mind, right that, like, you can't
Speaker 2: really think about equality and citizenship in nearly the same
Speaker 2: way that you can't.
Speaker 4: Exactly right, nobody was no nobody had any rights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and when we say.
Speaker 4: Inferior, it's like it's because Muslims believe in their faith
Speaker 4: and they see these people who don't believe.
Speaker 3: It's the same as Christians.
Speaker 4: They're like, these non believers, they're less than us, Like
Speaker 4: it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and it's not when people are using it again,
Speaker 2: it's like when they're talking about people, how long someone's
Speaker 2: been here, that doesn't mean they don't think you're like
Speaker 2: a person who has like worth their value. It means that, well,
Speaker 2: your family hasn't been here quite as long, right, right,
Speaker 2: in the case of like, if you're speaking like a
Speaker 2: Spanish derived tongue in Palestine, you have it right Like yeah,
Speaker 2: not that you know that matters in terms Again, it
Speaker 2: doesn't generally matter in terms of how people treat each
Speaker 2: other in this period of time. That said, the fact
Speaker 2: that like things are you've got all of these among
Speaker 2: the things, A lot of wealthier Europeans are coming in, right.
Speaker 2: A lot of these these these Zionist immigrants are poor
Speaker 2: and they're being supported by money by wealthier people. But
Speaker 2: there's also wealthier immigrants coming in, and especially since they're
Speaker 2: white and European, they enjoyed better treatment, right. And they're
Speaker 2: also buying up a lot of property, as we've talked about,
Speaker 2: for future Jewish residents, and that causes conflict, not just
Speaker 2: with Muslim residents. In the first decades of Zionist migration,
Speaker 2: many Arab Jews and Sephardic Jews were extremely prejudiced against
Speaker 2: these new immigrants, in part because they didn't speak the
Speaker 2: language very well, and in part because they kept to
Speaker 2: themselves and often were kind of mean. To some of
Speaker 2: the Sophardic communities. There's a lot of conflict between the
Speaker 2: different Jewish communities in this period of time. Adding to
Speaker 2: the irritation that many Sephardic residents felt was the fact
Speaker 2: that a sizeable number of these new immigrants lived off
Speaker 2: money donated by wealthier Zionists. In eighteen ninety one, that's
Speaker 2: the very first time that prominent Arab citizens of Jerusalem
Speaker 2: petitioned the government to stop Zionist immigration to Palestine by
Speaker 2: banning the sale of land to foreign Jews. They're starting
Speaker 2: to see this as a cultural invasion by Europeans, and
Speaker 2: they argue that it represents a threat to their culture.
Speaker 2: And as always is the case with complaints like this,
Speaker 2: the people who made them most loudly are also the
Speaker 2: people who profited from the exact immigration. They declined, cried,
Speaker 2: and that's a big part of this right. As Monochamkleiin writes,
Speaker 2: the leaders of the Husseini family, who lobbied the court
Speaker 2: to place restrictions on the Zionists also sold them landem
Speaker 2: Jerusalem's mayor tahire Al Hussini approved the sale of land
Speaker 2: to the Zionists and engaged in such transactions himself. In
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety nine, Rabat al Husseini sold the colonial lands
Speaker 2: west of Jerusalem to the Zionists, where the latter built
Speaker 2: the farming village of Muza. He also helped Jewish land
Speaker 2: buyers get around the Ottoman land law stipulation that land
Speaker 2: which had not been farmed for three years automatically became
Speaker 2: state property. Ibrahim Sayid al Husseini worked for Baron Edmund
Speaker 2: de Rothschild's land company JCA. He later resigned and signed
Speaker 2: protests against the Zionists. Salim al Hussini made a fortune
Speaker 2: in real estate ventures with the Jewish community and partnered
Speaker 2: in a hotel with Yitzak Rokok, a Nashka Nazi resident
Speaker 2: of Jerusalem. And we'll hear about Yitzak Rocock and the
Speaker 2: Rocock family a little bit later, well, actually right now,
Speaker 2: because Rocock is interesting. His son Shiman moves to Jaffa
Speaker 2: and creates a series of Jewish community organizations. Right, and
Speaker 2: he buys up a bunch of land. And while his
Speaker 2: father had worked with the Husseini family to buy up
Speaker 2: this land and to be happy to do that, Rocoq
Speaker 2: refuses to deal at all with Arabs, right, like, once
Speaker 2: he's got property, and once he owns property, he stops
Speaker 2: wanting to have any kind of dealings with the Arab
Speaker 2: community at all, with Muslims at all. Quote, he wanted
Speaker 2: to keep his distance from them. Becoming one of the
Speaker 2: initiators of the construction of Neved Sedek, the Jewish neighborhood
Speaker 2: outside Jaffa's walls that became the nucleus of Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2: Shimon's son Israel, was elected mayor of the new city.
Speaker 2: And this is something that Israel said after being elected
Speaker 2: mayor of Tel Aviv. Jaffa played no role in world
Speaker 2: history nor in Israeli history, and one cannot find there
Speaker 2: any relic of ancient culture from any period at all,
Speaker 2: Mayor Rocoq said, and again we've just heard that, like, well,
Speaker 2: the only reason the Rocock family had the land that
Speaker 2: allowed him to do all this in the first place
Speaker 2: is because of like very close business relationships with Arab mumas, right, like,
Speaker 2: and Jaffa Tel Aviv starts out of job. It's just
Speaker 2: it's just, I don't know, I know we're getting a
Speaker 2: little bit off the topic here, but it really it's
Speaker 2: really frustrating.
Speaker 4: If people are interested in this element especially, I would
Speaker 4: recommend Elon Pope's book on al Jossens because it's really
Speaker 4: I always remember this anecdote that like one of the
Speaker 4: al Hassenis also sold the land that later Hebrew University
Speaker 4: was built on. So it's like a very interesting kind
Speaker 4: of dynamic, Like I think you're you're right that, like
Speaker 4: they've benefited a lot. I think also they didn't recognize
Speaker 4: what was right, right, what was happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's part of this too. It's like there's this
Speaker 2: this is you can see a lot of this initially
Speaker 2: as like relative goodwill of like well why didn't I
Speaker 2: sell a house to them? And then it comes like
Speaker 2: twenty or fifty or one hundred, like well wait a second,
Speaker 2: something's something going on here, right, right, right, Except and
Speaker 2: obviously that doesn't mean there also are people who are
Speaker 2: pretty aware of what's going on and like, but I
Speaker 2: want to get money right and get my bag. That's
Speaker 2: always a factor too. But a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not immediately clear what's happening too, And I think
Speaker 2: some of this is just a sign that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: people weren't really all that shitty, you know, to their neighbors.
Speaker 2: They were like, well, yeah, these guys want to buy
Speaker 2: up some buildings, why not, right.
Speaker 3: And there's a class difference too.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, you're a wealthy landowner, the that lives
Speaker 4: on your land is gonna get screwed.
Speaker 3: You don't really care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I do suspect a lot of these Usanis
Speaker 2: would have seen these other wealthier like Jewish immigrants as
Speaker 2: more of like their type of people than like certainly
Speaker 2: the Palahi. Right. Yeah. Anyway, one of the things I
Speaker 2: didn't want to note about Rocock's statement there, where he's
Speaker 2: like Jaffa played no role in world history, right, nor
Speaker 2: Israeli history. One of the things he's doing there, he's
Speaker 2: not just erasing like Palestinians from local history. He's a
Speaker 2: racing Arab Jews as well as like Muslim Arabs here
Speaker 2: because men like Rocock had to in order to make
Speaker 2: their view of history work. The reality is that they're
Speaker 2: in their community started out nestled in cities and towns
Speaker 2: filled with people who had been there for generations and
Speaker 2: were only able to get off the ground because of
Speaker 2: a lot of support from those people, including like the
Speaker 2: Muslim population. It took a purposeful effort to block these
Speaker 2: new immigrant Jewish communities off from their neighbors. That was
Speaker 2: not a natural state of affairs. It was a state
Speaker 2: of affairs that members people within these communities and people
Speaker 2: leading them had to want to make because they had
Speaker 2: to stop integration from happening. Right. That is also a
Speaker 2: thing that's happening consciously and being done consciously. Now. Some
Speaker 2: of the effort and some of the conflict here comes
Speaker 2: from a lot of these new immigrants see themselves they
Speaker 2: are Europeans, and they want to build new European style cities.
Speaker 2: They don't like Arabic cities. They see them as barbaric
Speaker 2: and backwards. You'll hear that a lot, and that's a
Speaker 2: major motivation behind many of the settlements that become tel Aviv.
Speaker 2: It's created as a European style city for European Jewish
Speaker 2: immigrants who did not want to immigrate and didn't want
Speaker 2: to stop speaking European languages. Right, that's like a big
Speaker 2: motivation for them in this period of time. Now, alongside this,
Speaker 2: nineteen oh nine sees the establishment of the Hashomar by
Speaker 2: Jitsak benz Vi and David Bengurian. This was a paramilitary
Speaker 2: organization to guard Jewish settlements, and it's again the precursor
Speaker 2: to the Haganah, and it's often described as and certainly
Speaker 2: describes itself as a purely defensive organ like militia in
Speaker 2: this period of time. Right although if you look at
Speaker 2: the haganahs slogan at its establishment, it doesn't sound purely defensive,
Speaker 2: because the slogan is Judea was lost by blood and
Speaker 2: fire and will rise again by blood and fire, which
Speaker 2: is like super friendly. Like I'm gonna be honest, if
Speaker 2: some guys moved into my neighborhood and started walking around
Speaker 2: with guns and that was their their motto, I'd be like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, that doesn't sound all that defensive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very alarming. I don't know, I'm supected to a
Speaker 3: blood and fire.
Speaker 2: Sure, we don't have a lot of blood and fire
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood right now, and I'm not really sure
Speaker 2: we need any. It's important to document the prevalence of
Speaker 2: that attitude even then without acting like it's the only one.
Speaker 2: Many Jews and Palestine preferred to work within the system.
Speaker 2: In the latter days of Ottoman rule, the growing Jewish
Speaker 2: community in Jerusalem especially was able to exercise great power
Speaker 2: by voting together. The Arab Elite were fractured, and Jewish
Speaker 2: leaders offered support to families like the Husseinies who could
Speaker 2: wield power directly in exchange for quid pro quo benefits.
Speaker 2: One such benefit was an early attempt to take possession
Speaker 2: of the Western Wall, a particularly holy site. The Housseini
Speaker 2: family owned most of the houses on the other side
Speaker 2: of this alley, and opposite there's like an a line
Speaker 2: of homes that are owned by the Jewish community, and
Speaker 2: a lina homes on the other side that are they're
Speaker 2: owned primarily by Muslims, right by the Husseini family and
Speaker 2: occupied by Muslims. And if the Husseinis sell these homes,
Speaker 2: they can be bulldozed and the alley broadened, right, and
Speaker 2: it made kind of an entirely Jewish community, right. Mustafa
Speaker 2: al Husseini actually sells a number of these properties to
Speaker 2: Baron Rothschild in eighteen eighty seven, but fears among rabbis
Speaker 2: of a backlash, and it's rabbies who are like, wait
Speaker 2: a second, if we let this go through, it's going
Speaker 2: to like make people really paranoid and racist. This is
Speaker 2: probably a bad idea. And the deal does sputter out.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety seven, the Husseinis nearly sold the whole
Speaker 2: alley to Rothschild, again from the Alwak Religious Trust, until
Speaker 2: protests from Arab families forces him to stop. Right, So
Speaker 2: they are trying to do this, and they are protests
Speaker 2: from both the Jewish community and from the Muslim community
Speaker 2: that stopped this from happening, and that also is really
Speaker 2: worth acknowledging. Right. In nineteen fourteen, at the outbreak of
Speaker 2: World War One, things come to a head when David
Speaker 2: Yellen of the Association to Maintain Historical Sites in the
Speaker 2: Land of Israel, writes to the US ambassador to the
Speaker 2: Ottoman Court and he asks him to push the Sultan
Speaker 2: to sell the Western Wall to the Association. Per the
Speaker 2: book Lives in Common. Yellen did not have the money
Speaker 2: to do so. He estimated the price would be at
Speaker 2: least one million French frocs, including a ten percent bribe
Speaker 2: for the relevant municipal officials, but he presumed he could
Speaker 2: obtain it from Jewish millionaires as soon as the Ottomans
Speaker 2: agreed to the sale and principle. But this never happens
Speaker 2: either because Yellen had greatly overestimated how much money there
Speaker 2: was for the cause right now. Attempts like this and
Speaker 2: continued immigration spark unrest and occasionally even violence from the
Speaker 2: Arab community. In a late attempt to slow this kind
Speaker 2: of migration, the Ottomans make it law that only someone
Speaker 2: with a thousand pounds or more in assets can apply
Speaker 2: for an immigration certificate. And this doesn't really stop anything.
Speaker 2: It basically creates another opportunity to bry a Bottoman officials.
Speaker 2: And one thing that like some rich people who want
Speaker 2: to bring more folks in, they'll like put it add
Speaker 2: the name of a poor immigrant on their door to
Speaker 2: make it look like they're part of the family for
Speaker 2: long enough for the officials to check to see like, okay,
Speaker 2: is there someone financially supporting them. There's ways around all
Speaker 2: this stuff. Right up through the start of World War One, then,
Speaker 2: most Arab residents in Palestine had little reason to fear
Speaker 2: Zionism or believe that Jewish immigration would have a huge
Speaker 2: impact on their lives. There are people getting frustrated by it,
Speaker 2: there are conflicts over it, but it's not like the
Speaker 2: dominant thing happening right. One of the relatively few people
Speaker 2: to see into the future accurately was Najib Azuri, a
Speaker 2: Lebanese Maronite Christian who worked for the Ottoman government during
Speaker 2: its last days in Jerusalem. He declared in nineteen oh
Speaker 2: five that Zionism and Arab nationalism were quote doomed to
Speaker 2: constant struggle until one overwhelms the other. And that is
Speaker 2: again Arab nationalism is really building this time again. We talked,
Speaker 2: We've done our whole series of episodes on Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 2: The Great Arab Revolt occurs during World War One. That's
Speaker 2: happening in this period. That's happening because people are pissed
Speaker 2: at the fucking Ottomans, right, and so as much as
Speaker 2: some of these conflicts are going on in these cities,
Speaker 2: the much broader conflict is these The much broader conflict
Speaker 2: Arab nationalists are interested in is dealing with these fucking Ottomans, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's self determination, right right, yes, and obtaining I was
Speaker 2: putting it crudely, but yes, obtaining self determination. Yeah, both things,
Speaker 2: both things are true, right right? And yeah, Also Arab
Speaker 2: Christians are also part of this. A lot of Arab
Speaker 2: Christians are Arab nationalists because they're not being treated very
Speaker 2: well by the Ottomans, right.
Speaker 3: They're kind of the godfathers of it actually, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Basically, like the answer to Arab nationalism is sectarianism, right,
Speaker 4: Arab Christians want to be included in the community. So
Speaker 4: like a lot of the big names of Arab nationalism,
Speaker 4: like Constantinas Reek and like other people like that, they're Christians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really important point. So the people
Speaker 2: who are most invested in a multicultural Palestine then sometimes
Speaker 2: find themselves in this period supporting the ailing Automan Empire.
Speaker 2: And this is very weird. Like Mayosha is one of
Speaker 2: a number of Zionists who want the Automan Empire to
Speaker 2: last because they see that it's kind of keeping a
Speaker 2: lot of conflict from happening within the community, right within Palestine. Right,
Speaker 2: the fact that there's these Turks who are like, you know,
Speaker 2: in charge of everything kind of stops a lot of
Speaker 2: conflict that might otherwise brew up. And Mayusha believes that
Speaker 2: Zionism is doomed a disaster if the Ottomans fall. He
Speaker 2: believes that everything, not just Zionism will fail, but Zionism
Speaker 2: will like there will be horrible violence in this place
Speaker 2: that he loves, between these communities that he loves if
Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire falls, and he is right about that. Really,
Speaker 2: up until the end of World War One, though most
Speaker 2: people would have been hard pressed to believe that something
Speaker 2: like that would really happen. It would be crazy to
Speaker 2: predict in like nineteen ten, as someone living in Palestine,
Speaker 2: as a normal person, that like, oh, the Ottomans are
Speaker 2: on their last legs, they don't have a full decade
Speaker 2: left of life. You most people would have made that
Speaker 2: guess because the Ottoman Empire had been around for hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of years, and so as a result, a
Speaker 2: lot of Muslim political leaders in this period of time
Speaker 2: treat Zionism as like a special interest to be courted. Right.
Speaker 2: Salim al Husseini served as mayor of Jerusalem for much
Speaker 2: of the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, and he was
Speaker 2: elected thanks to Jewish voters. In a speech, he argued
Speaker 2: that Zionism quote is not a political movement, but a
Speaker 2: settlement one. And I am certain that no intelligent and
Speaker 2: rational Zionist will consider the establishment of a Jewish government
Speaker 2: in Palestine. Famous I mean not last words, but not
Speaker 2: right correct ones.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, he maybe didn't know enough about the zion
Speaker 4: maybe enough.
Speaker 2: Right attention, and unfortunately, one of the people who is
Speaker 2: very much seeing correctly where things are going is a
Speaker 2: major right wing Zionist leader named Vladimir Yabatinsky. Right he
Speaker 2: had been born in Odessa in modern day Ukraine in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty to an assimilated Jewish family, and Yebatinsky had
Speaker 2: become a Zionist prior to the Kishnev pagrat and he
Speaker 2: had become a popular speaker and influential organizer, and he
Speaker 2: responded to that program by initially in Russia advocating and
Speaker 2: helping to organize the construction of Jewish self defense groups.
Speaker 2: He was extremely controversial, as was his slogan Jewish youth
Speaker 2: learned to shoot, And obviously when he's in Russia being like,
Speaker 2: I think we might need some guns. Hard to argue
Speaker 2: with the man, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean Zienus and non Zionis said the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's not going to stay there law right,
Speaker 2: Like that's that's just kind of the fact. And we'll
Speaker 2: talk a lot more about him about what happens to Zionism,
Speaker 2: what happens to Palestine after and during World War One
Speaker 2: in Part two. But you know, this is the end
Speaker 2: of part one, how are we feeling?
Speaker 3: Wow? They covered so much.
Speaker 2: We did it a lot. People should like read the books,
Speaker 2: you know, and stuff that we're talking about obviously to
Speaker 2: get much more comprehensive. But yeah, I'm we got to
Speaker 2: fly through what's sixty years about? Yeah?
Speaker 3: World events?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look at none of what you're new to you,
Speaker 2: but yeah, all right, anything you want to plug at
Speaker 2: the end here before we roll out in the part two, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Check out the Handbook on Authoritarianism in the Air World.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, clip's very politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome, all right, everybody, We'll be back Thursday.
Speaker 4: Whoop.
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