Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, your weekly podcast about how there's lots of bad stuff, but sometimes there's good stuff that usually exists in relation to the bad stuff. One of the good things that exists in relation to this bad world is my guest Matt Leeb.
Hey, I'm one of the good things.
That's it's not going to feel extra awkward once we talk about what the subject of this.
Now I'm excited, very excited.
Yes, you are the host of the most moral podcast in the world, Bad Hasbro. Is that correct?
That is correct? That is my new podcast, newish. I've started it, I think in late December. Yes, it is the world's most moral podcast. Badhaess Bara and you can check that out. We talked about Israeli propaganda. It's a lot of I would say it's a lot of fun, but you know, fun is one of those, you know, nebulous terms.
One man's take a ton of things that are bad sometimes otherwise there's not really a lot available to us in this world.
Otherwise it's just crying. And it's like, you know, sometimes you've got to have a different outlet for your emotions other than crying. Sometimes you gotta laugh, and that's what we try to do. It's a comedy podcast about Israel. What a time. You know. What's also actually interesting. I think I talked about this wanting to do this podcast the last time I was on this show.
I think so too, because it was around It was just last December, I think you were last on.
Yes, and I was just like, you know, I think I said something along the lines of, you know, oh, man, I just I wish I could do a podcast about this, and I've wanted to do it for years. And then one day, in the middle of the night in December, I was just like, market, I'm gonna just put an episode out.
I get my idea is it's always in the middle of the night. Yeah, And I'm like, oh my god, odd why I must do immediately.
Yes, that's that's that's how I roll. I just like I get a spark of inspiration, and usually that sparks.
And says, do you want to you know, live a decent life and inf case you have to make this show?
That's right. Yeah. And most of my AD's in middle of night are like eat cinnamonto, scrunch or you know, but this time it was make a podcast, which is kind of like masturbating, but.
Mine is usually I'm clearly dying if it's the middle of the night. I've actually learned to not take my body's messages to me seriously smalllywhere between about two am and eight am.
That's that's honestly the best way to go about living. All of the messages your body gives you at that time of night are lies.
Which there's like a non zero chance that I will die at some point of some horrible fever and I'll be like, no, I'm just anxious.
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, no, it's not a heart attack. I'm just just yeah, exactly, I had a really spicy and then you die, Yeah, exactly.
My chest is always numbah yeah, yeah.
The left side of my face is always droopy. You're going crazy, Matt.
That's extra fun because the reason I feel terrible in the mill of the night right now is I'm recovering from oral surgery and one of the things is that like my face is a little bit numb, and like has been for a couple of weeks, and like, oh boy, we'll be hopefully for a little while longer and not like the rest of my life but it's like, I certainly signed a form that said your face might be numb for the rest of your life.
I signed a form that says it is what it is. Yeah, but you know that or not? Yeah, but speaking.
Not at all of I'm sure there's a way painful extract whatever. Today we're talking about Israel Palestine. We're actually not talking about Israel today because Israel does not exist at any point during what were talking about today.
Wow, that is, first of all, so offensive, How dare you? Israel has always existed right in the hearts and thel's hearts.
Yes, yeah, yes, for the names of the people who were there who called the Palestine, but yeah, including the Zionists who called it Palestine at the time.
Yeah yeah, including all of the reading material that was out there, the pamphlets and you know, the agit prop, all that stuff, but you know, in the hearts, it was there.
We're going back to, like the Ottoman Empire.
We are I'm going to talk about the Ottoman Empire today. I I mean, most of what we talk about not the Ottoman Empire. But I haven't had much of a chance to lock about the Ottoman Empire anymore before, so I'm excited listeners. Magpie is smirking very excited for Ottomans. I love the atom very interesting. We are headed back to the land where Monotheism was born, the land of Palestine.
We're gonna talk about it's prehistory during the Ottoman Empire and all the resistance of settler colonialism that folks there managed, running up into the main topic of today, the Great Revolt of Night teen thirty six, nineteen thirty nine. Oh wow, When I say the main topic of today, I mean part of Wednesday, because really I'm just talking about all of roughly eighteen fifty to eighteen forty two.
Right, we'll get there. Yeah.
Originally I actually planned this whole thing as a resistance to the Knakba episode, which is later, you know, nineteen forty eight or so, But there's so much to talk
about before that that that's a different episode one day. Yeah, we are going to talk about how Palestine was not an empty land, and how from the very start Palestinian folks, Muslim and Christian alike and together fought against the settler colonial project that was displacing and killing people everywhere it went, which means we're gonna talk about Zionism ooh.
Subject, I've heard about this. I think you know, I've heard a thinger two, yeah, got some Thoughtsanism.
In the grand scheme of things is a relatively new ideology. It shows up in the late nineteenth century, around the time that just a fuck ton of modern ideologies were being developed. And so sometimes when we're like, oh, zionism is brand new, it is worth understanding that, like everything
is brand new in the nineteenth century. Yes, yes, the idea of like, let's be a nation is sort of a nineteenth century concept, which doesn't It's kind of hard to understand, You're like, well, clearly had states and governments before that, but nationalism is a new project of the nineteenth century. Zionism is of course a form of nationalism. Everyone is going to use the word nationalism differently. It had a fairly distinct meaning in the nineteenth century when
the first wave of nationalism swept across Europe. In general. We have this flattened view of Europe as being the sort of colonial center, and that's fair, but in the eighteen hundreds it was more clearly itself also an internally colonized space. Various ethnic groups were part of countries that they or empires that they didn't want to be part of. They wanted self determination, which means in some ways they wanted nationalism. This was a common left wing position to have.
It seemed like a very natural way to fight imperialism. I feel like there's like so many of these words that, like, I mean, like literally, once the Nazis happened, like all words change meaning for very yes.
Yes, or more so like solidify in the public consciousness as a distinct thing that totally may or may not have been the initial definition of the word totally.
Yeah. So you have, like, for example, kind of on the leftish I mean, that's right when people involved this too. You have Italian nationalism, you have Slavic nationalism, you have Irish nationalism, you have Siberian nationalism.
Those are the.
Examples I use because i've like specifically read about them doing research at various points for this show. All kinds of nationalisms associated at least as much with the left. But the left soon developed an ideological position that I would argue is a easier to support one. It's called internationalism.
Whoa, I know, that's a crazy one. I know, what if nationalism before everybody.
Basically yeah, yeah, let's still destroy empires, but unite people based on their class position rather than their nationality ethnicity, without erasing national differences or like ethnic differences. That's why it's internationalism, not single.
Anti anti nation. Yeah. Yeah.
From this point of view, you can view nationalism as a politics of class collaboration. It's basically it's like, hey, you poor Irish, you have the same interest as the rich Irish and they are different than the English right right, And from this point of view, the poor are used by useful idiots, by the local rich to get one over against the foreign rich. And I am not going to rabbit hole this as hard as I want to, yeah, because it doesn't totally relate with what we're going to
talk about today a little bit. But so you have a split between international which developed kind of out of left wing nationalism, and in regular old nationalism. And a lot of this nationalism is very morally defensible. It is natural for an oppressed group to want to find national unity and drive out their foreign rulers.
And it's natural for a group, especially minority ethnic group in a geographic space, to want to govern themselves and have the right to self determination. It's not an inherently reactionary position to.
Have right exactly. And that's like one of the things that easily gets lost. And one of these nationalisms is called Zionism. This one is messy right from the start because the Jews who were developing this were largely a diasporic people. They're not the majority anywhere that they're living. A bunch of anti and non Zionist Jews were like, that's chill. Wherever we are is home, right, We've talked about that a bunch of times. But meanwhile, the Palestinians
are also experimenting with nationalism. Naturally enough, they're living undern empire. Throughout the mid eighteen hundreds, you've got what's called proto Zionism, which is before anyone actually was using the word Zionism, but it mirrors the project that's going to come later. This founded the first colonies of Jews and Palestine. To be clear, this was not the first Jews in Palestine. It's the first distinct colony as like a separate thing
that is outside the Arabic society. Yes, because there were tens of thousands of Jews living in Palestine already.
Yes, they were called Palestinians. Yeah, exactly. That is an important thing to remember whenever someone claims Jewish personhood as being distinctly Israeli in the region. No Palestinians included all sorts of different ethnic groups, as Americans do, as the French do. Know, you know how we all used to be normal and remember these things.
I know at Palestine's specifically we're gonn talk about a little bit later, But Palestine specifically it's national identity was very like, hey, what are the place that refugees show up to? Yeah, like you want to be Palestinian. That's cool. We have like some cultural things right about being Arabic and you know, but like, yeah, anyway, well we'll talk
about it. Yeah, and in order to talk about it, we get to talk about the thing I want to talk about since I started the show because I didn't know enough about it, but I wanted to know more the Ottoman Empire. Oh yes, you like my vaguely Christian white American education. I did not know about the Ottoman Empire, like as an adult.
No, completely, I had heard of it. I knew I knew of it. I think I at some point learned just enough to associate it with the the hat the fez. Yeah, I know. I was like, I know, a fez is part of it. I know, we're just talking about Turkey. Yeah, but that's that was pretty much all I knew about it for a long time until I probably like late college.
Yeah, yeah, honestly, until I started doing more research into history and for this show, I kept being like, why whenever I'm trying to read about cool vampire related things, why are they all fighting the Ottomans?
Who are the Ottomans? Why do they keep bringing up this sold an empire that was just people putting their feet up on Ottomans? What does it mean? Yeah, there's an easy joke we all knew I was going to do eventually, because I can't help myself, I'm sorry.
So I knew about the Ottomans as the place that Eastern Europeans kept fighting and or being part of. Yeah, and I also knew about it because I kept running across it as the place that queer Europeans fled to for sanctuary, because yeah, I didn't know that Ottoman Empire way the fuck more like gay and trans inclusive.
Yeah, Automan Empire more like Hotterman and.
Exactly exactly, or it's actually Automan it mean never mind, Yes.
I got it, I got it.
Ye finish, No, it's embarrassing. Okay, So the Ottoman Empire is this big fucking empire that was around for roughly six hundred years. That is more than twice a USA for people keeping track.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a long long time been around. I think the only I'm trying to think of an empire rival in terms of length of time maybe Holy Roman they were around for a while, yeah, different, you know, they ended what like it's after Napoleon or something like that, and started like charging.
Again, confused honestly by the like difference between the Holy Roman and the original Roman.
And then yeah, me too. No, yeah, for a long time, I was like, that's all the same thing, right, And then someone laughed at me and I said, no, I'm just kidding. I already knew. And then I read it Wikipedia, and.
So I actually feel like this entire episode a little bit all of the stuff that I and I think a lot of other people had been like just kidding.
I already knew.
About like, oh yeah, we all knew about early Zionism, like totally, we all understand the way that And so I just was like, fuck this, I'm gonna like I'm going to be the idiot in the room and just like really try and learn all this shit. Yeah, and the Ottoman Empire is not the good guys, but they're not the bad guys compared to any other empire going around at the time. They did a bunch of genocides, which is famously not a good thing to do.
Yeast that. Yeah, Yeah, the.
Ottoman Empire was ruled from Turkey, and Turkey is not an Arab country, so you've also have Arab nationalism coming up at this time. That's like, hey, I speak Arabic and I'm not ashamed of.
It, right right. Yeah.
Meanwhile, over in England you have a reasonably active enforcement of the death penalty for dudes loving dudes. I know most about this in England, but I've also read about other people, Like there's like stories of like a frendship German people like going to you know, going to the Ottoman Empire in order to not be killed.
Wow.
In the Ottoman Empire an incredible amount of gender and sexual diversity being tolerated, and it wasn't until the westernizing influence of the nineteenth century that poets stopped openly talking about how great it is when ladies love ladies and
dudes loved dudes. We covered, for example, the Russian Swiss adventuring Muslim cross dresser Isabel Aberhart, who traveled freely as a non passing man in North Africa in the nineteenth century in a different episode, And the first time I'd heard that story, I was like, how did she get away with it? And the answer is that, like gender and sex were understood differently at the time in that place.
Damn, it's wild. I mean, you know, if only only we had had the CIA back then, then we could have overthrown the government. And so a little bit of homophobia, I know, get that started sooner. Let's get it started. Yeah, you know, bush here just wasn't born early enough. I always say.
That's completely true, and everyone who lives in that region just also thinks that.
If all think that, yeah, every famously think that.
Es.
Besides man and woman, there are gender expressions common in Muslim society and Automan society at this time. Sexual and gender permissiveness were part of these. Like Oreo and like Europe knew this. The Orientalist tropes were like, oh, they're all gay over there.
Right, the most European phrase of all the time. Oh, it is everyone needs guy. Yeah, it was just blog seven six with blogs I don't know, and I totally am against it. So much does it cost to get there? Eh, I'm just going to take a quick vacation.
Yeah, there are five different non binary gender identities and I did not have the time to get into them all, but if you want to, you should read gender and sexual Minorities in the Ottoman Empire on Wikipedia. Wow, sexuality was still illegal in the Ottoman Empire, but it wasn't enforced socially or criminally. And we are talking about a huge empire and six hundred years, so this is like
roughly I'm going to go with roughly when I described this. Yeah, there was another group of people that came from Europe seeking refuge in the Ottoman Empire, away from the violence and hatred of the backwards, closed minded Christian zealotry of Western Europe.
Scientologists closes not scientologists, ok no, No, it's Jews. Oh okay, oh that makes sense.
Yeah, not just the Jewish people born in the region, but Jews fleeing persecution from Europe. The Ottomans explicitly welcome Jewish immigration. Ashkenazi Jews came in large number in fourteen seventy after being kicked out of Bavaria, which is part of now Germany when the Alambra Decree in Spain in fourteen ninety two. The other bad thing that came out of Spain in fourteen ninety two, Yeah, which forbade practicing Judy and told folks either convert to Catholicism or get
the fuck out. Yeah, a lot of people get picked get the fuck out.
It's crazy that it's the same year as Columbus sailing the Ocean Blue. Like Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue and the Spain kicked out the ocean jew You know.
That is the rest of the rhyme that people.
People forget about that.
Yeah, it's a rasure. Forty to one hundred thousand Sephardic Jews picked get the fuck out and headed over to the Ottoman controlled area, and then more non Zionist Ashkenazi Jews came over fleeing Pograms in Russia in the nineteenth century as well. Yeah, when they assimilated into the Ottoman Empire, they didn't have to give up their religion or culture. The Ottoman Empire was not a perfect liberal paradise. Religious minorities were given a great deal more freedom and autonomy
than they had in most places in Europe. For example, they could have whatever job they wanted, which is a big thing that Jews couldn't do in most places in Europe at most times. But like a lot of like all non Muslims, Jews had to pay some kind of like weird taxes and have dress codes and only live in certain areas. Although people like to argue about how enforced this all was, I don't know if you knew this. There's a lot of propaganda.
Around this period and how a thing or two about this, and propaganda and ret conning around Jews living in the Arab world for you know, a thousand years, and the amount of ret conning about how bad it was is is a subject that I'm very interested in, as it is usually brought up to justify some sort of you know, in vengeance thing going on. Yeah.
Yeah, And so it's like I read people being like, well, the Jews were can only live in certain areas, but they weren't. They weren't like the bad areas like the Pale was in Russia right now.
Yeah, when people talk about, you know, Jewish life in the Arab world during this period before and after, at least up into the establishment of Zionism, you hear among at least a lot of propagandas the word deemi a lot and I don't know, And it's basically their description of the second class citizenship status of Jews in the Arab world. And it's always brought up in this way to kind of justify a kind of generalized anti Arab sentiment amongst Jews, either in the region or just in America.
They'll be like, you should hate Arabs because of that. And I just like to remind people Europe much worse. Yeah, so incredibly worse that bringing up Demiism or bringing up you know, just the way Jews were treated in the Arab world is just so clearly what about ism that I can't believe anyone takes it seriously.
Yeah, but you know what people should take seriously.
Ah, is it products?
They should they should seriously consider whether or not they need a new car or whatever the.
Hell a new car.
I need a new car otherwise these ads second class citizen here.
Yeah, it's the newest car.
I made Sophie make a face. I think. I think, I well, here's ads and we are back. And so in Palestine in general or in particular, this national identity that's starting to develop in the nineteenth century specifically focused on it being a place that refugees and persecuted people could come and be Palestinian, and a lot of it from the very beginning is like, we are religiously tolerant.
That's our whole thing, and which is in comparison to the Ottomane were anyone who is not Muslim, and the Ottoman empires to pay all the taxes and have the same restrictions that Jews have. And there's a you know, huge Christian population in this area as well, but the national identity in the area was fairly limited. And this is the kind of thing that it's like it's easy to be like, oh, everyone always saw themselves totally as Palestinian, because that would be a very convenient way to write
about a history. No one had nationalism until the mid nineteenth century. Palestine got it at the same time as everyone else. So when I say they got it recently, I mean so did everyone?
Yes, yes, And that's an important thing to point out, especially again if we're talking about ret conning. One of the things that Zionus propagandists like to do is to just talk about the non existence of Palestinians as a people, and they're like, the Palestinians as a people only became a thing, you know, like you know, recently, And it's like, yeah, that's the same thing with all forms of this modern
nationalism that you're talking talking about. I mean, you know, you can't claim Zionism existed at the beginning of time, just because it feeds your narrative.
Yeah, Zionism about as old as nationalism, yes, exactly, a little bit newer than nationalism. Yes, a Palestinian would be more likely to identify with their family, their religion, and their immediate town or city far more than as a nation like kind of in that order, But again, so would everyone, you know, right, the Ottomans who controlled Palestine during the start of Zionism, they ruled it in classic
imperial form. They weren't always super great to everyone, but by the mid nineteenth century, starting in eighteen forty five ish, as relates to land ownership, the Ottoman Empire is losing a lot of its power Britain started toying with the idea of Jewish colonies in Palestine. In eighteen forty nine, after pressure from some British Jews, the Ottomans relaxed the law against foreign Jews purchasing land, and the first settlement
started in the eighteen fifties and eighteen seventies. So if you see the Jews are allowed to buy land now, it's like no foreign.
People buy land now. Yes, there is a distinction.
Yeah, And this is the proto Zionism. The people didn't identify Zionis because that didn't exist yet. Some of them were still assimilating and learning Turkish and Arabic and all of that. But this is the start of the we're going to have separate and like we're going to be separate and autonomous within our colonies thing is starting to
happen at this point. By eighteen fifty eight, the Ottomans started doing again the thing that everyone was doing in a bad way, transferring ownership of land out of communal hands and into private land available for sale. So people don't like talking about the enclosure of the commons as part of all this, but it's part of it. Suddenly a village didn't communally own its land, but individuals did.
And this model has been used colonially all across the world to disenfranchise indigenous populations of land and then sell it off. I've or at least I've personally read about it hapening in Mexico and Ireland and the sort of internal colonization of England even.
Yeah, you can kind of extrapolate from just you know, reading a little bit of history, you can extrapolate that to the rest of history as well, especially during this era, especially you know, during the golden age of capitalism and private property.
Yeah, exactly, Like what if we take everything out of because it's like I grew up kind of thinking like, well everything is owned by someone, right, yeah, same yeah, idea.
Yeah, very new and and it is it is interesting that you kind of take for granted, like a lot of the kind of the I would say, like the capitalistic culture that we live in now, we just kind of assume is how it always was. This is why whenever someone you know talks about like, oh, you want to you want to live under socialism? Oh, I guess you don't. I guess you can't sell shirts. And it's like, do you think commerce didn't exist until capitalism.
Exists, exactly.
You know, commerce has been a thing, right, that's a whole different guy, bro.
Yeah, I know. The idea of owning stuff, meaning that you don't have to work but instead can make money off of owning stuff. That is what capitalism is, yes, exactly, it is a different model.
Yeah model.
I recommend everyone read the book Debt by David Graeber for the history of money and anyway.
Yeah.
And so suddenly a lot of farmers in Palestine are finding themselves tenants, and a lot of landowners are like, oh, fuck it, I've got all this land, I'll just sell it to the Zionists, right, And a lot of places were suddenly bankrupt, which means that the Ottoman state could confiscate their land and sell it Zionists. Well, once they started calling themselves Zionists, right, which they started doing in
eighteen ninety. And it was in response on to the ethnic and religious hatred and violence faced by Jews and Christian dominated Europe. The idea is everyone else gets an ethno state, where's our ethno state? Right, the modern version being no one gets an ethno state. But you know, yeah, it was Zionism was immediately controversial within the Diaspric Jewish community,
and people want to hear more about it. Listen to our episodes about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Jewish Resistance de Zionism episode with me and Matt Leeb.
That's right, it's a great one.
Plenty of folks were in Desionism. They had a bunch of conferences, the first two in Switzerland in eighteen ninety seven and eighteen ninety eight. The ideological founder of this movement, not the coiner of the term, but the kind of patron of it, this guy named Theodore Herzel. He's a Hungarian Jew who in eighteen ninety six published a pamphlet called Der Hudenstadt the Jewish State. That's right, and he had already been thinking the shit over. We know what
he wanted to do. In eighteen ninety five he wrote it in his diary, which is like, you go, how your like evil villain thoughts, don't put it in your fucking diary, Yeah, dear diary. Or one hundred and forty years later, someone's gonna.
Yeah, dear diary. So I read about this new thing it's called colonialism. Seems pretty nifty, thinking about doing that. Well, that's all for now, yeah bye.
He wrote, quote, we must appropriate gently the private property of the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly,
which is like just so clear from you know. And it's it's funny that no matter how many times like Hurtzel's own writings get brought up by people who are refuting some person online saying just you know, like it's how can it be settler colonialism if we're indigenous. It's like, can you read his writing and he goes like, we need to take the indigenous population and throw them into
the sea and or into transit countries. And it's just like it's it's there in black and white, and it's this we're talking about the founder of modern Zionism saying the words, and you're just like, just like a different time, he didn't know how to take Yeah, no, he didn't yet know that in order to get you know, the narrative to play in a modern sensibility that he would later have to just change it to actually, we're indigenous and they're the colonizers because reasons.
Yeah, why not?
Yeah, but he did it in public. I mean he's also saying right when he says, oh, the removal of the poor must be discreet, right, Yes, you're like, this is my evil villain thought. I hope no one notices, right, And so Jerusalem's on and off again. Mayor Use of Dia writes a letter to Herzel, and he's like, hey, buddy, I hear you trying to create Ethna state over here, but like, we.
Kind of have our own thing.
We're part of the Ottoman Empire's a bunch of people who live here.
Sorry.
Yeah, And despite what Herzel had written in his diary in eighteen ninety five, you'd be shocked to know that we were back to Dia. He spoke about it differently, saying no, no, no, you don't understand. We'll make the country better and we totally won't kick anyone out. Or to quote him directly, you see another difficulty, excellency in the existence of the non Jewish population in Palestine. But who would think of sending them away? Not me?
Certainly someone bad would not me though not me. Don't don't worry about it, Yeah, don't worry.
A lot has been written about how early Zion has seemed to be incapable of referring to the indigenous populations of Palestine as Palestinians or even as Arabs, always just as non Jewish people, because the whole thing is that they're claiming that Palestine doesn't exist. Palestinians don't exist. They're just some non Jewish basically like squatters in what should be their territory, you know, oh, the Ottoman Empire, like put some people there, I guess, you.
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
This continues today. Nu Ginrich said that Palestinians were a recent invention, that they were quote in fact, Arabs. Mike Huckabee said, quote there's really no such thing as Palestinians.
Yeah, no, And it's just it's a constant refrain from anyone who is trying to deny not only you know, the rights of people to the land that they currently inhabit and or inhabited before they were ruthlessly ethnically cleansed. Yeah, but it's a way to also dehumanize them in a way where you go like, because you have no rightful claim, uh, you know, because I'm going to deny you personhood. You know,
therefore your anger must come from another place. It's not because you want your home back and you literally have the key. It's because you hate Jews and and and it's also just incredibly racist in a way that should seem obvious to anybody, but like the kind of the idea that you can just take a group of people, you know, and steal their homes and go like, why don't you just move to places with all the other people like you, you know, like all the other Browns.
As if like an Arab is just this heterogeneous whatever is it homogenous or religen homogeneous group of people. I never said I was smart, you know, as if they're they're all the same no matter where you go. And
it's just like so incredibly right. And you see this and the again, and you know, I hate to keep bringing up propaganda and hasbara, but like you see this all the time and just kind of like the you know, even in their like political cartoons, you'll see you know, a Jewish person sitting on a chair that says Israel, and you know there's all these other chairs that say all the other Arab states, and a Palestinian will say, hey, you're sitting in my chair, and the implication of that
cartoon being you can move to any of these other places, and it's like you're sitting. It is actually you took him out of a chair and he made that chair. You can't just be like, no, it's okay if you're a refugee, if there's someplace else, I think you look like you should live. That's just racist, bro right, And.
I wonder, like how much because they're also even kind of doing that And now I'm completely just conjecturing, but like they're kind of doing that to themselves as Jews by being like, oh all Jews, Yes, all Jews belong here, one is all the same.
Yes, that is And that is you know, part of the kind of like backdoor anti Semitism of Zionism, where you you know, you look at it as you know, oh, well, isn't it isn't it's got to be pro Jewish. It seems to be about a project of Jewish control and domination of the land of Palestine and you go like, yeah, but it also is completely race against every Jew who's not there, Yeah, and the Jews who are there too as being kind of like just all the same and yeah.
Yeah, And I I said about my reading this week excited, just like I was like, Oh, all these books about resistance can be blow by blow revolutionary action, right, and there is going to be some of that. But I had to read more than one Palestinian author making the case. I understood why they had to make this case that in fact they were Palestinian, like they the author, right, and that's a thing they can be, and they can trace their lineage back centuries in fucking Palestine like they
had to. I've never had to read a history book by someone who has to first prove that they're allowed to exist.
Right, to justify to justify their own history, like not just not just like justify it, but like prove that it's real. Because of the amount of propaganda surrounding the idea of Palestine as a figment of the imagination of these wily Arabs who just hate Jews.
Yeah, and the the global implications of Israel was also intentional and clear from the start. The framing of the modern situation. Herzel wrote that the Jewish state would quote form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism.
Yep. And these are words that to this day that are repeated by people, you know, both Israeli officials and people you know in the West talking about Israel as
this outpost for quote civilization, quote Western civilization specifically. It's like that nothing has changed there except for like, it depends now who you're talking to as to whether or not you want to tell them that this is an outpost for the West, or if you want to tell them this is a gay haven for all right, you know, as long as they don't want to get married, right, as long as they don't want to get married there, anything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the same shit, yep.
And of course, famously, the Zionist Project wasn't even sure if they wanted Palestine. They floated at Argentina and some other places that they could colonize instead, but they did. Yeah, Uganda, they thought about you as well.
Yeah, anywhere that had intentionous populations that they could right.
Yeah, that's the trouble with you know, colonization is like part of the deal is they're going to be people there.
Yeah, you know, weird, No, Tara Knollys, is that what you're saying.
That's what I'm saying. You know, it's not this whole idea of land without a people for people, that a land not a thing.
Huh. Well, if they had known that, they probably would have behaved very differently, because they certainly actedly it was without a land.
No, they very much knew. And that's the most exactly intense part about the whole thing. Yeah, they very much knew.
So before the BRIT's takeover. Well to Palestine at the dawn of the twentieth century under Ottoman rule was an agrarian society that was rapidly modernizing. New schools were opening all over the place. Ottoman state schools were opening, as well as religious schools started by both Christians and Jews. The overwhelming majority of Jews at this point are Palestinian Jews. I've read both that they were three percent of the population. I've also read like up to seven percent of the population,
depending on which book I'm reading. I have never studied a subject for this that I've run across. More conflicting everything.
Yeah, it is, it is. I always just kind of take the average between the two.
I know, so somewhere between three and seven percent of the population, yeah, which is a higher percentage than the percentage of the people in the US who are Jewish, which is two point four percent.
Yeah, something like that. And then you know, in terms of the world's point two percent like.
That, which kind of goes to say that you can have a culture and influence in your society with only three percent of the population.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah for sure. And it also is you know, I think there's an internationalist argument to be made too, for the idea of you know, eight people self doing self determination without stealing someone else's land, you know, not to say that, you know, obviously white American Jews don't benefit from like white supremacy. I mean, you know, of course that is also the case, but yeah, you know, it is.
Yeah, And the Palestinian Jews living in Palestine were largely ultra Orthodox and non Zionist. By eighteen ninety seven, these early Zionists and the Proto ones before them, they only had started nineteen settlements with a few thousands Zionist Jews, as compared to like. For example, Jerusalem in eighteen ninety seven had twenty eight thousand Jews. Electricity and roads and
railways are starting to creep into Palestine. With modernization came greater centralization of power into the hands of a few rich, elite Palestinian families. This does not make the place exceptional, It makes it typical, especially for an Ottoman region. Yes, Meanwhile, popular struggle against Zionism is already happening on the ground. In nineteen oh eight, folks from the village Kafur Kama tried to get their land back and a bunch of
anti Zionist newspapers got started in Palestine. And a lot of this resistance is essentially nationalist. It is also opposed to Ottoman rule. And you start having nationalist political parties.
Right, and it's I don't know, and maybe you can tell me. But around this time is the kind of the birth Arab nationalism or is this proto Arab national It seems to be the beginning of Palestinian and Arab nationalism seem to be very intertwined, is the best as I understand, So I believe that these national parties are also you have Arab nationalism trying to get out from under Ottoman rule, right and like, and the resistance against Zionis those happening wasn't a we don't like foreigners or
we don't like the Jews thing. It was a I was living here, but then the Ottoman centralized landownership, and so suddenly some rich assholes sold my land to foreign rich asshole, and now the Zionists are living in my house. Yeah, here and there. Sales to foreign Jews had started to be blocked, but Britain basically kept being like, no, you better let it keep happening, putting pressure on the Ottomans about it. But eventually the Ottoman Empire stopped all land
transfer to feign Jews nearly twentieth century. Nineteen oh two or nineteen oh five, I don't know, I've read both. We'll say nineteen oh three and a half.
Yeah, April nineteen oh three. Yeah, the Ottoman Empire was falling apart and fast. The Balkans and Libya fell out of its control in the nineteen tens, and then, of course famously the whole thing collapsed the.
End of World War One.
That's right, World War One hits the Ottoman Empire really hard, half a million people in the Empire starved. Between nineteen fifteen and nineteen eighteen, three million people die violently, mostly civilians, mostly Armenians, Assyrians and other Christians, facing genocide at the hands of the Ottomans. World War One reached Palisine itself in nineteen seventeen, with the British on one side and the Ottomans backed by the Germans and the Austrians on
the other. The Ottomans cracked down hard on nationalism during the war. They started hanging nationalist leaders in the street because Arab nationalists were siding with Britain out of their mutual enemy, the Ottomans and the Ottomans were conscripting Palestinians to fight the war. The Allies, slowly, through shelling from coast and trench warfare, invaded Palestine and they conquered it. Much like you can be the conqueror of these ads.
Whatever they're selling. If you buy it, you have conquered it.
Yes, that's what money does. It conquers. I'm going to go conquer myself some double cheeseburgers at some point. I'm hungry.
Yeah, I know, me too, probably need a snack during break between recording and they didna yet. But here's the ADS.
And we're back.
So did you know that if the British Empire tells you a thing that you can't always trust that they'll do what they say they'll do.
I refuse to believe that the British have never lied. They've only accidentally told a falsehood.
They sometimes tell the truth when they say we're going to do a really bad thing.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's most of the time.
So in nineteen sixteen they said they told a lie, which is that they made promises to the Arab nationalist leaders across the Arab world, basically being like, hey, we've got your back, don't worry, help us against the Ottomans, will totally give you independence.
Yep.
But then on November two, nineteen seventeen, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a man known to history as Arthur James Balfour Balfall, made what was known as the Balfour Declaration. Now, I wish I could do a British accent, I can't. I reclaire basically on the name of my good family, His Majesty's government. I literally, if I had a gun to my head and had to speak British, I'd be like, oh, and then hope.
For the best.
Is a message from the Queen. Let's figures at the social scene. As long as this is a crass song, I can do it.
That's great.
Thanks. Anyway, His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palistine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. Yeah, a lot of take.
On those words. Those words very important, very very important.
One you can don't be afraid of, I believe you call them full stops over there. Don't be afraid of ending a sentence and starting a new one.
Yeah, no, just go for it.
I was going to say that they were right about the ballfour decoration, but actually no, that's all lies too. They don't nothing shall be done to prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine. That is not what's going to happen.
Yeah. Yeah. Well they also nothing will be done to not prejudice the civil rights. Yeah, it works both ways. The point is nothing will be done and eventually we'll leave and then yeah.
Yeah, notice that there's no mention of Palestinians or Arabs once again. Yeah, non Jewish communities. Yeah, yeah, that is. And I think it's also important to point out there too that like the lobbying done on behalf of the you know, early Zionists in you know, uh, Britain was substantial, at least the very much in comparison to the completely non existent Arab lobby of trying to lobby the British to you know, to not do that. Yeah, and uh.
And it's also important to like, if you look at early Zionism from not from the perspective of like today's like modern Israeli, but from the perspective of a a rich European guy going, oh, I'm gonna call me up some land there, then it all kind of makes a
lot a lot more sense. And I think it's like you can put it in a perspective that you completely understand, as opposed to kind of this like I don't know the view of the Proto or the early Zonus is kind of being we kind of put like a modern spin on it as like they were all necessarily, you know, doing it for these reasons of leftist self determination. And this is not the full story. No, that's a good point.
A lot of these, a lot of the initial like hey, even like the proto Zionis stuff is like a specific millionaire will be like, hey, Autumnus, can I please buy some stuff?
You know? Right? Yeah, yeah, we're doing a thing. Let me buy some air.
Yeah. And so people have said that the UK did this because they loved Jews and wanted a homeland for them, or that they hated Jews and wanted them out. I think that the iron wall to keep out the barbarians is the motivation here. That seems to be the the one that makes the most sense to me.
Yeah, And I you know, I think there's a lot of like there's a lot of reasons why Zionism was appealing to like the non Jewish European population, and I think it includes all these things, you know, And but you have to remember that like as much as the British were and you know, probably still are kind of anti Semitic, you have to remember that they were also you know, coming at this from a point of view of like, you know, they were also incredibly Orientalists and
the amount of you know, you know, the devil you know versus the devil you don't know, I suppose, And so they weren't looking at you know, the arab As like a better option than the Jew totally they were.
Yeah, and with one sentence, that guy fucked over the entire region, if not world, and doomed it to conflict for at least the next century.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was uh, you know he cut his teeth where Oxford.
He had been named Bloody Balfour after his five years of ruling England's first colony, Ireland.
Oh there we go, well, well, well.
And it was his government that had written the Act in nineteen oh five that kept Jews from Russia fleeing Pograms from settling in the uk Ah.
This is a fun guy. Yeah, you can tell, you know, Bloody Balfour. I think I was right when I said the British or a little anti Semitic a was right.
And the comparisons I I already knew why, like Ireland and Palestine like get along and throw down together. But after researching this period in particular, I'm like, oh, I really got it. Yeah, it's like pretty immediately they're like, all right, well, we're we just kind of lost Ireland. Let's move all of this literal same people over, the black and tans, over to Palestine and start sucking up people there too.
Yeah. Yeah, and then you see, you know a lot of Hey, that black and Tan idea seems pretty smart. Yeah, you know, and kind of like once the state of Israel is established.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Britain held Palestine after the war, before nineteen twenty two. This is an informal occupation, but right away they started working directly to help the Zionists, and right away the Palestinians started getting together to try and resist. And the main form of resistance in this very early stage of British rule were these Muslim Christian brotherhoods. Folks were like, it is unite or fail, so they work together. They
used a cross within a crescent as their symbol. It gets so fucking heartwarming, like they would have religious tolerance and multi faith acceptance was has been a part of
that Palestinian national identity since the very beginning. And there's all of these accounts, both from back then and now about like Christians reciting the Muslim call to prayer, Muslims presenting at Christian events, and along the way, at least in the beginning of all of this, they worked to make sure that the hatred of Zionist Jews did not
spill over into Palestinian Jews. The First Palestinian Congress of February nineteen nineteen included in its anti Zionist manifesto a welcome to those Jews quote among us who have been Arabicized, who have been living in our province since before the war. They are as we are, and their loyalties are our own.
I think the solidarity gets real messy throughout the twentieth century, and I've read at least that since the creation of the Israel nineteen forty eight, that the solidarity was broken and that the Palestinian.
Jewish identity gets rare or non existent. Oh, I mean, yeah, essentially non existent. And it's like, you know, it's one of the sad things about the whole thing is because you know, you you see the pull of you know, Zionism, and just like the Jewish nationalism is being I mean
it's not. It's it's hard to resist. Yeah, you know, especially once the conflict starts becoming this constantly increasing cycle of violence, and as it becomes more and more clear among the you know, Palestinian population that you know, this is what they're going to do, that the Zionists are going to take over, and and yeah, so it is it's very sad. You maybe you found something, but I've I've yet to find a heartwarming story of Jewish resistance to Zionism within Palestine.
I mean, there's only the like individual stories like what we talked about last Deceummer. There's actually one story that I for this part, but it got caught because I did not get to the Nakba for this week's episode. There's a story about one of the the the niece of one of these like main militia leaders of who later became a very important I forget his name, but
one of the big Zionist assholes behind the Knackba. When they're planning to invade Yafa, which is one of the big and most important fights in the Nakba, his niece escapes and goes into Palestine to go tell one of the women leaders of one of the like all women's militias, the chrysanthemum flowers to be like, hey, they're coming. And along the way she like rips her leg open really bad on barbed wire and has spent like three days living with this woman like recovering before she can before
she can go home. But that's like, that's all I got for heartwarming stories during that time.
I don't know. Yeah, it's such a bummer. Yeah, but if you're looking for, you know a lot of those heartwarming stories, you really have to look towards like internationalists, Jews and totally you know, Europe and Russia and whatnot.
I'll still take Christian Muslim solidarity too, you know.
I like it. It's great. I just you know that there's there's a part of me that's just like, why is nationalism so appealing them? It's just power now, yeah, you mean we will be the privileged class. Yeah, all right. Yeah, And.
These cross religious alliances set about to systematically prevent the foreign occupiers from claiming it was a religious issue. Specifically, when the British put a Zionist in charge of the region, Palestinians resigned from government positions from the British government, you know, the local thing in protests in protest of that, and
they also went on strike. There was petitions, protests spread and most of these protests started off nonviolent and symbolic, and they were met with bullets by the British, and a lot of ways you can kind of say that the cycle of violence of actually starts with the British killing nonviolent Araba protesters. But students and peasants and tribal leaders and Christians and Muslims and are all protesting alongside one another. Sometimes they're being gunned down at funeral celebrations
by the British. They're not entirely nonviolent. Of course, armed resistance to the settlements is ongoing, as is the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes that are sold out from underneath them. Tens of thousands of people are homeless in this period. They are like forced out of their homes
in this period. Meanwhile, the Zionists are forming defense organizations and changing all the land ownership laws and shit like that, like basically just putting themselves into all the local government positions in order to make everything work out for them. And as you pointed out, at this point, people still don't know, Oh, they're trying to take over completely. You
know that's going to come in the mid thirties. Then in nineteen twenty two, Britain gets handed the country more formally by this brand new thing, the League of Nations, which is later it becomes the UN, and the region becomes known as Mandatory Palestine. This is a perfect example of the stuff that I would always like not and be like, oh, I totally knew it. Mandatory Palestine means yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. It's like like they ha, yeah, yeah, stuck.
This Palestine is mandatory. Yeah, it will be on the test. If you do not do this Palestine, you will be fired or something like that. I don't know.
After World War One, this new League of Nations created a mandate system that was supposed to kind of be an anti colony in which colonial forces were supposed to act as stewards of local administration. I'm going to use a lot of supposed to here. Non annexation of the territory and developing the territory for the benefit of its native people's were core to the ostensible purpose of these mandates.
It didn't work that way anywhere, not just in Palestine, it was by and large the usual colonial administration, just dressed up a bit to be like, oh, we're like the anti colonial administration that still tells me what to do and shoots too.
Yeah.
But in Palestine it's extra funny because the people it from the gate was supposed to represent and care for was the Zionist project, not the Palestinians. These Class A mandates, which included Palestine, I think this is all of the Arab the former Ottoman areas are supposed to be under a mandated occupation until they were ready to stand alone
as their own nation. Which is funny because everyone kept saying that Palestine doesn't exist as a nation, even though like it was mandated to become one.
Yeah. And also, you know, like on the passport of many of Palestine's first prime ministers, Yeah, it'll show their face and their name. Where are they from Palestine? Yeah.
The mandate for Palestine included the ball four Declaration verbatim. It went on to erase the connect of the non Jewish people from the land entirely. So as much as I hate the British, it was the League of Nations that really handed Palestine to the Zionists. Formally, yeah, yeah, that goddamn League of Nations. They didn't do shit anyway. Now they're the reason Hitler.
Or something probably.
Have a mostly I can slightly more than not okay, what I do instead of totally just nodding along when people talk about things that I don't know all about is I'll know like one thing about that thing, so I'll be like, yeah, oh yeah, And the League of Nations was totally responsible. Now I can't think ofbout anything off the top of that, but yeah, they like didn't stop Italy from colonizing somewhere.
Also, I also nod along, and I just and I just go uh huh. I also knew that.
Yeah, it's always yeah. I was born knowing that absolutely, and most of the Ottoman Empire was carved up to mandates of France and the UK. Saudi Arabia and Yemen were independent, and at least Saudi Arabia, I just like literally don't have the research about Yemen. A least Saudi Arabia was given this independence by Britain and was therefore pretty beholden to the UK. So the other Arab countries weren't really in the best position to immediately support any
resistance to the British mandate. The Arab people of these other nations supported it, but the institutions of power felt like their hands were tied. Immediately in Palestine, general strikes breakout. Most of the rebellion was what you would call popular struggle, like mass direct action, rather than armed struggle. Even the
British knew it. To quote author Mason B. Kimsea from the book Popular Resistance in Palestine, the British admitted in private correspondence that the Arab leadership was pushing for popular resistance and resisting calls for armed rebellion. But by nineteen twenty two, this early resistance fell apart. After the failure of the nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty two revolt, the
Palestinian resistance took on a more muted character. Instead of demanding independence, folks were like, well, how about some representation and change to some of the laws that currently say that Zionists get everything. This didn't work. And I read two different Palestinian historians talking about this next period in the nineteen twenties, and they wholly disagreed about what happened.
Like fundamental like ones anyway, I think because popular struggle isn't noticed as much by history because it's not attached to a political party, ideological position, or like a set of ruling families. But both of these historians, who disagreed
about what was happening, agreed on one point. During the crucial period of nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty five, resistance was hampered by the fact that Palestine, left over from its rule by the Ottomans, was set up very hierarchically and patriarchically, so that institutions of power that they built were centralized and non democratic. This left it vulnerable to a split between the elites and the general public, and
between one set of elites and another. Top down institutions like this, according to these Palestinian historians, very vulnerable to divide and conquer of an empire. Yeah, the Zionists started to build a specific Jewish controlled sector of society, like an economic sector of society, under the slogan a Vota evrett or Hebrew labor. A lot of the early Zionists were leftists or called themselves such I hate gatekeeping, but I might keep them on this.
This is this is one of those things where you can't help yourself, but gatekeep a little bit just because you're just like, I don't know how you can you know, do the I am a socialist thing while at the same time, you know, knowingly taking part in acts that include well, ethnic cleansing.
Here is where I am not about to call them Nazis. Sure they were national socialists. They were nationalists and socialists they were not. When they go together, it means something different in different content testes. Yes, yes, But once they'd come to Palestine to join the Zionist project, they dropped solidarity along class lines instead of national lines, which was the overall internationalist and leftist project to set up labor unions that advocated for Hebrew labor and for having its
own working class, not even work alongside Arab workers. So it wasn't even just like the only represent the Jewish workers and specifically the Zionist ones, not the Arab ones or whatever. It's like an entire which is of course class collaboration because they're working with the bosses to make sure that no Arab people are hired. Right anyway, So I'm going to gate keep them on their socialism a little bit, yeah, is what I'm saying.
For being that racist, yeah, and it's yeah, it's hard not to do. And I also, you know, like this is the thing about also at the time, the general popularity of the idea of socialism and the way it can so easily turn into like just your regular average Western chauvinism.
Yeah, you know, yeah, totally. And so a ton of capital came in from abroad to support this separate Jewish economic sphere. This was like basically how they colonized. I mean, they were buying land and setting up colonies right in settler colonialism, but by creating this entirely separate economic sphere,
they're buying up land everywhere they can. By the mid nineteen thirties, the separate sphere is more economically powerful than the Palestinian economy, despite Jews being a very small minority population. Still and this we don't interact with the Arabs thing. This absolute non integration policy is what so clearly distinguishes the Zionists as a settler colonial project, rather than people fleeing religious persecution who are, like right, hoping to keep
their religion and culture some autonomy wherever they land. One group did try to do actual leftism for a couple decades the Palestinian Communist Party sick. It started off primarily Jewish and anti Zionist, it allowed both Palestinians and Zionists in and it was actively recruiting Arabs. By nineteen forty three, the sort of internal contradictions within it were just too much, and it split into pro Zionist and anti Zionist factions,
which honestly makes sense. I could imagine just being like, we tried a certain type of political pluralism.
But y'all are Zionists. It's not working. It's a hard thing about a big tent. You know. It's like, you know, I kind of some clowns out. Yeah, exactly what democratic party doesn't work either, you know, the big tent. We want, you know, people who like abortion and people who want women all to you know, be second classes.
Yeah, big ten. Yeah exactly. There's like there's certain lines that are too far, you know. There is like even if the ten is open sides, there's still people who are on the opposite hill.
Yes, exactly. Yes.
During the nineteen twenties, it was still in vogue to talk positively about colonialism, so the Zionist and Palestine were really blunt about it being a colonial project. Yep, this revision of zionist guy zeb Zabatinsky was really mask off about it to the point I think where like other people were like a little bit like, hey, you keep keeping could you put your mask back up?
You know?
He wrote basically is like, well, of course they're going to fight back. They're colonized people. Like he honestly looked at the situation and was like, Oh, all the following bad things are going to happen, but we're the good guys, and I don't care.
Yeah, I'm sorry, it's Jabatinsky. Okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah.
Yeah, that's why, as he said, quote Zionist colonization can pursue and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population, behind an iron wall which the native population cannot breach.
I mean, it's just there.
I know, one hundred years later, they're just describing, Hey, this is what we're gonna do, you know, like starting to that diary entry in eighteen ninety five where he's like, Oh, we're gonna kick out all the pores, and and.
There's just there's just so much revisionism when it comes to the you know, the founders of Israel and the founders of Zionism, where you just like people act as if Zionism was the movement to uh make a gay haven in Tel Aviv.
Yeah, and it's just like it it's not what that is.
It's like this, it's just so it's it's just it's so insane to believe the amount of people who have just bought into this stuff. And you just especially when you read Jobatinsky, because this guy was just a open
races and like kind of hated Jews. Like if you read some of the quotes from this guy, just so you can feel the resentment of Jews, like you feel him not believing, like not being radical in that for what, No, that Jews need to be remade as a people, that Jews are a weak people, that Jews are essentially just built wrong and they need to be rebuilt into this you know, militant desert people.
Okay, So is this the guy behind the like because there was the attitude of like, yeah, Jews being like small and weak, and so then there's this like masculinization of Jews where like, no, we are big and strong and patriarchal and totally don't listen to our mothers anymore.
Yeah, yeah, yes, and is also the like ideological founder of like the La Coute party and uh, you know which is like the right wing party that you know net and Yahoo is a part of in Israel. Like you know, this is this is this is their guy. And you just like just the way that people kind of ret coon early Zionism to be nothing. But like, you know, just it's all these Jewish refugees. We're just
like we're just trying to live here. Don't hurt us Arabs. Yeah, and you just read the writings of Jabutinsky or you know, you you read anyone from this period who was taking a leadership role in the colonization of Palestine, and they are saying, let's go colonize Palestine. And even you know, you talked about the letter to Yusuf Dia or like Yusuf DA's letter to Hertzel and his you know Hertzel's letter back. He's using all the same tropes that any colonists has said about why we it is good for
us to colonize an indigenous people's land. It's like no, we're gonna bring We're gonna bring culture, yeah to these savage Yes, we're they're you know, this is this will be good for them, this will you know this, this will trickle down economics.
Them essentially, which is like, ugh, so interesting about because he's saying that to them while he's privately being like, I don't care about them. They're gonna get nothing, right, yeah, And which is even then, you know the rich are saying when they say that things are going to trickle down to us, they know it's not. They just don't care.
Yes, yeah, they just you know, if it'll it'll if it'll buy them some time, yeah, then they'll do it.
And so throughout the nineteen twenties, Zionists are moving to Palestine, they're buying up land, they're displacing people everywhere, and they're talking about openly as a colonial project. And for most of the time, the Palestinian elite are busy asking the British really nicely for things to improve, which was and this will shock you entirely ineffectual. When I say the Palestinian elite, I don't mean like, ah, he's like rich.
I mean on some level, I'm saying, like the rich people in this society, but it's like they're not the powerful people in the society. At this point, Zionis are already the powerful people in society. The historians are writing about it this way to distinguish between sort of the
working class and the popular revolt that is happening. And all of this sets us up for the next large revolt, the al Barock Uprising, which we will talk about as well as the Great Revolt of nineteen thirty six on Wednesday.
Oh all right, stick around for the exciting conclusion of Palestine. I know, sorry, they're in satisfying.
There is so much beautiful resistance that happens during all of this time, and it's like, and it's so interesting to me how different researching this has been from a lot of what I researched wards a lot of the exact same stuff, like trade union's doing a general strike, and like, all of these things are happening. Because of the dense cloud of propaganda that people have to work through. It's harder to just come in with the beautiful adventure story,
you know. Yeah, it's harder to come in and just be like hell yeah, and this guy took to the hills and got grenades and blew up. People were trying to kill him, you know, which is going to happen in the next story, but there's not.
Oh hell yeah, I'm stoked on that. But you know, yeah, it is and it's interesting too. You know, I'm obviously not a historian, and I all of my history book reading is via audiobook, but you know it is. I do find it fascinating the amount of kind of like conflicting information that you find and kind of retelling this story. And I feel like that is one of the things about this particular story is you've got to fight through
a lot of revisionism and misinformation. And that's why people like jab Atinski for me, is just an interesting fella because of his kind of revision to scionism and whatnot.
You can go to the direct sources, you can read the primary sources. It's all recent enough at least for that at least for them someone they believe.
You know, yeah, yeah, but it's got to be on audiobook for me to read.
I am no. I actually do all my fiction reading now on audiobook form because I have to do so much. I have to do so much reading for these podcasts that I can't use audio for it, and it's like hard Like actual books, you've got a high I have to be the person to translate these things into other things. I'm like, this is the best job anyone's ever had. My job rules, Yeah, it's pretty sick. I hang out
with my dog and I read history books. But if people like getting information in an audio format and are concerned about the dense fog of propaganda around this issue, do you have any them?
I have one suggestion. Listen to Bad Hasbara, the World's most moral podcast. It is a weekly sometimes twice weekly podcast where it's a comedy podcast where me and my sometimes co host Daniel Matte and our huge array of guests go through some Israeli propaganda and make fun of it because oh my god, do they think we're that stupid?
And it's a lot of fun. It's a very cathartic podcast. Then, you know, the more people I get to listen to it, the more I can live like a life like yours in which I could just stay at home reading history books. And you know, I don't have to have you know, ten jobs the way I have now, So please listen to it.
I'll tell you that.
Please.
The secret to live in the high life off of podcasting. Yeah, it's living in West Virginia mortgage is less than you're like anyone I know's rent.
But I.
Mean it's wonderful here. Everything, everything's great, Okay, but yeah, and I've been I've been listening to your podcast while building out my van. Actually it's been a good h and So it's a personal seal of approval and we will buy it back on Wednesday, talking about this again.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.