Part Two: What the Netanyahu Family Did To Palestine

Robert is joined by Dana El Kurd to continue to discuss the Netanyahu Family.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M in introduction. That's how we're starting this episode, the
word introduction. Thanks, thanks Sophie, thank you for keeping my
confidence level high. Also keeping my confidence level high. For
part two of our episode on the Net Yahoo Family

(00:23):
is Dana Elker. Dana, welcome back, everything, everything, everything going
all right. Ten minutes later, uh yeah, yeah, the thing
has changed drastically in my life. So it's all good.
I mean, yeah, these are a day apart, so so
things could have changed drastically in the world at the
time they dropped. But yeah, really all we did was

(00:45):
hopefully not let's all fingers crossed, let's not Yeah, let's
not so Dana. When we left off, we were talking
about the Net and Yahoo Boys BB and Yoni. Um.
They're kind of pingponging back between the new State of
Israel and the United States. You don't really like it

(01:06):
in the US. They think it's shallow, and you know,
they want to be back in Israel. And they're also
frustrated at their dad because he didn't he didn't kill anybody. Um. So,
in July of nineteen sixty four, newly adult Yoni went
back home. He's an adult in nineteen sixty four, and
he joins the I d F. Now he's three years
older than BB so Baby is still back in the

(01:26):
US doing high school ship UH. Yoni became a paratrooper,
which at the time was pretty much the most elite
unit in the new military UH. He subsequently went on
to train as an officer UH and in general seems
to have been a pretty good at being a soldier.
Now Yoni's absence was devastating to his younger brother, Bebie
would spend almost every one of his summers in Israel,

(01:47):
usually alone, because his brother was in the military. He
worked part time back in the US on the evenings
and weekends so he could afford the air fair to
spend every possible moment of his time that he wasn't
in school in the US. Back in Israel, he was
a good student, but was noted as being very detached
from other teenagers. That said, his years in the US
did rub off on him, and his friends in Israel

(02:08):
noticed that he had adopted an American swagger over the years.
While US fashion and pop culture definitely rubbed off on Bab,
the politics of his second home did not. So Benjamin
spent his teen years in the US during the explosion
of the American civil rights movement, you know, Martin Luther
King and all that that's all happening in the US,
like while he is an adolescent, and the struggle of

(02:30):
different groups within the United States to attain equal treatment
under the law seems to have completely passed him by.
Like his father, Baby disliked most American Jews who were
liberal intended to vote Democrat. In fact, the only thing
about the United States that he preferred to Israel was capitalism.
So which is interesting because Israel in this point is
is a quasi socialist state under Mapai right like businesses

(02:54):
and whatnot are heavily centralized run by the government. Um,
it is not very much like the United States in
this period. Um and BB likes all of the things
that are militant and austere and and kind of aggressive
and and and ethno nationalist about the Israeli state. He
hates the socialism. Um, he hates the kibbutz is, which

(03:15):
is like kind of one of the things that Americans
know broadly Israel has these And it's this aspect of
a lot of the Marxists and socialists who were part
of the left wroom of the Zionist movement. These these
communal farms and like communities and whatnot, where everything is
is shared by everybody, I think is the basic idea.
This disgusts bb net and Yahoo. From an early age,
he fell in love with the writing of Iron Brand,

(03:36):
particularly the Fountainhead, which is I know that's the face. Yeah,
um bab identified strongly with Howard Rourke, the heroic architect
uberman ship the story, and as a result, he decided
to get his degree in architecture. I mean, there's so
much toxic masculinity, just like for me. And it was

(03:58):
entire from pouring off of yeah man. And it's He
doesn't talk about iron Rand a lot today because number one,
Iron Rand and her philosophy is very anti religious. Um
and he a big part of his coalition is religious,
so he can't. But like he goes to he goes
to M I. T. To get degrees and multiple degrees
in architecture because he wants to be Howard Rourke like this.

(04:21):
This book has a big influence on the guy. Um yeah,
I know, you have your informative years during the civil
rights era and up pick up Iron Ran. Yeah, it's
and it's it's weird because like Martin Luther King was
a big backer of the Israeli state, so it's not
like he would have been pushed away from that because

(04:42):
the politics of the civil rights movement where anti Israel. Um.
He just really likes iron Rand and does not care
for social justice. UM. So from nineteen sixty four to
nineteen sixty six, violence between Israel and her Arab neighbors
accelerated at a steady pace. A joint Arab military command
was established, as was the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Israel launched

(05:05):
a series of air strikes at Syria. There was this
was over dispute over water, like there was Israel was
diverting water and Scarria want to divert the water back.
I don't I. I don't know a tremendous detail about it.
It kind of when you I watched a documentary from
Al Jazeera which made it, uh, seemed like the Israelis
were sucking around with the water before Syria sucked around

(05:26):
with the water. When I heard about this as a kid,
it was cereal. Was Syria was trying to stop Israel
from having water, and so they had to launch an attack. UM.
I'm not an expert on the history UM, but Israel
launches a bunch of air strikes into Syria. Palestinian guerrillas
launched raids from Syria and Jordan's UM. Israeli paratroopers including Yoni,

(05:47):
carried out a brutal raid themselves in late nineteen sixty
six called Operation Shredder, where they basically blew up a
whole town in Jordan's UH. They justified the attack by
saying that the town was being used by Palestinian fighters
as a base. This raid brought international condemnation, and at
the time, the US is not the big military backer
of Israel. At this time, it's France. France is giving

(06:08):
Israel all of its advanced weapons systems, they're selling it
most of its guns UM and France gets angry at
Israel over this attack, but they don't stop selling Israel weapons. Now.
The United States and the mid sixties kind of started
dipping its toes into selling guns to Israel, like not guns,
but like aircraft, mainly like modern jet aircraft UM. And

(06:28):
it starts under JFK and it escalates under l DJ
and it is limited to start with. For one thing,
these military aircraft we sell them have certain offensive capabilities
removed most of what we sell Israel or anti aircraft missiles,
like the the ideas that will sell them defensive equipment,
not things that they can attack with. That's not always
how it works out in practice. That's the idea that's

(06:49):
at least how it's sold to the American people at
the start. UM and this series of tip for tap
border raids lad in nineteen sixty seven to another war
between Israel and all of its neighbors. And this starts
with a massive Israeli air attack that wipes out the
Syrian UH and Egyptian air forces. UM. And again you
can you know, I think the Israeli justification is, well,

(07:10):
they were going to attack us, and we had to
attack them first. It's a preemptive struct that's a big
part of Israeli military doctrine is it's okay for us
to attack you first. Um, which again is completely ethically
consistent to everything happening now. UM us not at all
worth analyzing anyway. So bb Uh lands about a week

(07:34):
before the Six Day War in nine seven starts because
he wants to see his brother before Yoni goes off
to war. Because everybody knows that they're about to start
a war. Uh and Yoni spent the Six Day War fighting,
while BB spent it in an air raid shelter in Jerusalem.
The Six Day War ins and disaster for the Arabs
and a shocked victory for israel Um. Jerusalem was now
completely under Israeli control, as was a chunk of Syria

(07:56):
and a bunch more Palestine, and at the end of
the First War, in hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian Arabs
had lived within the boundaries of the Israeli state. After
the Six Day War, more than one point five million
stateless Arabs now lived in under Israeli rule, mostly in
East Jerusalem. The best went West Bank and the Gaza
strip Um. Now, many Israelis thought that the end of

(08:18):
the war would finally bring widespread Arab recognition of their state.
There was an assumption among many of the more moderate
Zionists that they would have to get up, you know,
a sizeable chunk of Palestine for a peace steal, but
that this would definitely push for a peace deal. But
hardline right wing Zionists, the revisionist guys like Ben Zion
thought that not only should they keep all of the
Lamb that they'd taken, but they should take more. Babe

(08:40):
and Yoni were not super political at this stage, UM,
and they both assumed rightly that the end of the
Sixth Day War would only set the stage for another conflict.
So Beabie had graduated high school right before the Sixth
Day War and he joined the I d F immediately after.
He was marked out pretty much immediately for his athleticism.
He was in great shape and his intelligence to serve
in a new special operations unit, the Syrette MTCAL. And

(09:04):
I'm not going to spend a lot of time in
this episode going over military ship um, because that's not
why people listen to this podcast. Most Americans. When you
learn about Israeli, you learn about it through all these
special forces units and these daring air raids and stuff.
Which is part of like the inherent sympathy that a
lot of Americans have is we just love guns. And
if you focus on just the weaponry, it's really easy

(09:26):
to just nerd out over different military tactics. And I'm
not going to do that, UM, But to give you
an idea of what the Siret Mut called the kind
of operations these guys were picked for, I want to
read one passage from Anchil Feiffer's b b Um, which
is about the the nineteen seventy three Arab Israeli war,
about a contingency mission that the Siret matt Call were

(09:49):
marked out for. Quote. A mott Call team was to
be flown deep into Sinai, where it would lay an
object at the top of a remote mountain. The object,
a small nuclear device, would be detonated as a running
to the Egyptians in the event that they use chemical
or biological weapons, bombard at Israeli cities, or simply seemed
to be winning the war. So that's the kind of
that's the kind of special opsunite. These are the guys

(10:10):
who if we start losing a war, they're going to
set off a nuke in Egypt. Like, that's the kind
of unit that bb Net and Yahoo joins. Yeah, and
again the whole question of like, I don't even think
we absolutely know when the Israelis got their nuclear weapons.
Their policy is one of like nuclear opacity, So they
still don't like fully admit to having them, although everyone

(10:32):
knows that they do. Um, it's this very like murky anyway,
The whole story is a big murky mess that's beyond
the confines of this episode. Obviously that mission was never
carried out, but the fact that the not called were
the guys who would have been called upon to do
this shows you the kind of jobs that they did.
These are like black ops, wet work guys. And net Yah,
who was by all accounts a good soldier. He was

(10:53):
noted for a near fanatical level of physical fitness, which
made him a natural pick to be the platoons machine gunner.
In the years following the Six Day War, Israeli forces
continued to battle intermittently in Lebanon and Jordan's In night,
they attacked the Beirut airport and retaliation for attacks on
Israeli passenger planes, paratroopers were landed in Beirut and fourteen

(11:13):
Lebanese airliners were blown up with explosives. The operation was
actually much more destructive than the Israeli Prime Minister had
approved of, and it infuriated the international community. An emergency
session of the UN was called. Now, back in those days,
pissing off the UN meant a little bit more than
it does now, because it means absolutely nothing now, and
France actually stopped selling israel weapons systems after the raid.

(11:36):
French President Charles de gaul was enraged that Israel had
attacked a foreign airport using French helicopters, and so you
don't think too positive. Leave to gall he was mostly
angry because the airline that those planes belonged to was
largely owned by French investors. Um, and he declared, he's
not being a nice guy, but he declares a permanent

(11:56):
arms embargo against Israel as a result of this attack. Now,
the United States was, however, by this point, waiting on
the wings to sell Israel weapons. And again I'm not
going to go into tremendous detail here because we all
know the end result. Since nineteen sixty two, the United
States has given Israel more than a hundred billion dollars
in military aid UM, which is a lot of dollars

(12:17):
in military aid. And Joe Biden's current budget, we're giving
them almost three times as much in military aid as
Joe Biden is dedicated to spending on climate change. Um, yeah,
it seems like our priority. But really, yeah, seems so
so cool and good. Bede participated in a bunch of

(12:38):
different raids and battles in He's like he does. He's
not one of these guys, these politicians who like joins
the military and a show dot job. He fights, he
does a lot of like sketchy shit, and he was
a good enough soldier that he was able to convince
his bosses to hire his brother Yoni, to join the
sire at Maktal Matt call Sorry. One I d F
psychologist who watched the two brothers work together later noted quote,

(12:59):
I still remember the look of complete and utter admiration
on Babe's face watching Yoni going in. It wasn't the
kind of look you see on an adult. It was
completely astonishing. And again that's really consistent. He seems to
have basically worshiped his older brother. So in nineteen sixty nine,
Golden my Year becomes the Prime Minister of Israel. Now,
she was pretty old when she became prime minister. She

(13:21):
was kind of one of the last members of the
generation of politicians that had been responsible for the founding
of Israel. She was suspicious of any attempts at making peace,
and she listened too much to her generals. The Israeli
military was extremely bullish about continuing to funk with Egypt
and to hold on to the territory they'd taken from Egypt.
During the previous conflicts, the international community, led by President Nixon,

(13:44):
supported a peace plan that would have made Israel return
to its pre war borders. My Ear attacked this plan and,
under the advice of her generals, escalated what was known
as the War of Attrition, which was a series of
different kind of insurgent strikes between Israel and her neighbors,
and part this issue launches a bunch of air strikes
deep into Egyptian territory. Egypt responds by moving anti aircraft

(14:06):
missiles close to Israel, and this period of brinksmanship continues
until a ceasefire is signed in August of nineteen seventy,
and the ceasefire is basically immediately ignored. Um. Nobody really
takes this seriously. Now. During this time, a lot of
Baby's fellow not call Special Forces operators were actually optimistic
that there might be some hope of peace because the
international community was increasingly giving behind this idea. And one

(14:30):
of the interesting things is that Babe now makes a
lot of the fact that he was in the special
Forces unit. A ton of the dudes he served with
hated him because they're like left wing socialist Zionists. Their
kibbutz types. A lot of these special forces guys um,
this generation of them, and they were exhausted by years
of constant fighting. They wanted some sort of an into
the violence. Um. Now that is not the normal opinion

(14:53):
within the military establishment. Um all. There are some heads
who kind of within the Israeli military warned the things
aren't actually looking as good for them as they think.
They may have actually not been winning the war of attrition.
Baby doesn't believe this. He thinks that he's a you know,
a muscular Judaism guy. Um. And he recognized kind of

(15:14):
in a fairly savvy manner that the fact that the
Soviet Union was now funding uh and and providing arms
to Egypt, to Lebanon, um would had the chance to
turn the conflict into a Cold war proxy fight, and
that if Israel kind of stayed the course, the United
States would support them because they weren't being backed by
the Soviet Union. And we can turn this. One of

(15:35):
the ways in which we can increase our situation here
is if we make this into a cold war thing,
because then the US will support us out of course,
and we'll get all of their fancy as weapons systems
which is not a dumb tactic to play um so
Angel Fepper writes, quote the Net and Yah, who's had
no sympathy for the Palestinians, And one of his letters
he only described them as a rabble of cave dwellers

(15:57):
fighting for liberty and progress, et cetera. In in another
he wrote, my national identity is much stronger than theirs.
So these guys are. While a lot of the dudes
they served with are more nuanced in their opinions about
the conflict and even wanted to come to an end.
The Net and Yahoo brothers are let's keep fighting forever
kind of guys, or at least let's keep fighting until

(16:17):
we have it all. In nineteen seventy two, Babie was
wounded during an operation to take back a plane from
Palestinian hijackers UM and the way in which he was
wounded is interesting. He had grabbed the hair of a
female hijacker and her wig had come off in his hand.
He grabbed her again and one of his comrades started
pistol whipping her face, and this guy's gun went off

(16:38):
and shot BB through the arm. So he was shot
by what he was shot in combat, but by one
of his own dudes, um, who was pistol whipping a
lady um, which is I don't know, maybe not as
sounds real special forces kind of. This is a very
special sophisticated Yeah, yeah, real sophisticated operation when you shoot

(16:58):
your buddy to buddy um. So later that year he's
discharged from the army. He goes back to the US
and he attends M I T to finish his education,
and again because of iron Rand, he's working on a
degree in architecture. He was studying hard when war broke
out again in nineteen seventy three, and the Yom Kipper
War was named for the fact that the Egyptian and

(17:19):
Syrian forces chose the Jewish High holiday to launch a
surprise invasion. UM. In Egypt's case, they motored across the
Suez Canal and successfully assaulted and took several Israeli forts.
Israel counter attacked with a crack armored division, which was
almost completely wiped out because the Soviets that sold Egypt
these man portable anti tank rockets, which are kind of

(17:39):
the predecessors to the modern wire guided missiles, which is
a big factor in the modern Syrian conflict. These back
in earlier war is the fact that Egypt had a
good armored division had made them kind of unstoppable in
open battle. These man portable anti taque missiles really changed
the game in a big, fat actor. And the Kipper
War is interesting because when I heard about the again

(18:00):
as a kid, in US textbooks and in Western documentaries,
history channelship, it's depicted as yet another Arab is really
war where everybody invades poor Israel and they win because
of their superior fighting spirit. That's not the case. This
war is not a victory for Israel. Now, Syria definitely
lost because a bunch of their dudes got killed and
they won nothing. But Egypt, sorry, yeah, go go ahead,

(18:23):
go ahead. Sorry. Egypt considers this a win, and kind
of rightfully, so they retake some land that they had
lost to Israel in prior wars and they fight the
Israelis to more or less a draw, which does a
lot to restore national pride, because like, there was this
idea of Israeli invincibility that gets punctured in a big
way during the nineteen seventy three war. So I think,

(18:43):
what's what's um important to note about that? You know,
the Young War the October War, as as the Arabs
call it, um is that Sadat only wanted to bring
them to the negotiating table. Yeah, yeah, he so he
you know, he's actually quite he's quite heavily criticized after

(19:05):
UM and and kind of like the history that's written
about this period um because people say, like he held back,
he could have taken the entire Sini, but he really
just wanted a step towards being able to like you know,
quote unquote make peace with the Israelis at this point, Um,
even though you know, public opinion has been you know,

(19:29):
has become so upset with Israel because of some of
the events during the War of Attrition where they like
you know, bomb schools and like like the La massacre
in Undergold my ear, and like so so public opinion
wants said that to take the entire Sini, and they
don't want peace with Israel. They just wanted through, you know,

(19:51):
through you know, taking back the land and and and
just leaving at that said, Dad has a different opinion.
He wants a step towards Arab air Israeli normalization essentially,
and that is so not how it was portrayed. I mean,
there's a movie. UM. I think it's was The Sum
of All Fears, which is the movie is not super
about Israel, but it's about like an Israeli nuke gets

(20:11):
in the hands of these terrorists and they set it
off in the United States, and the way the nuke
gets into their hands is during this desperate nineteen seventy
three war, Israel puts a nuke into the air because
they think they're about to be overrun and wiped out.
And that was never really on the table because, as
you said, so Dot didn't want to destroy Israel. He
wanted to get them to the negotiating table. And I
think there was also an element of like wanting to

(20:32):
kind of restore national pride in a sense that like
we're not like we don't have to lose to them.
Um I A big for me just kind of coming
to understand this from I think a more accurate perspective
was there's a really good Al Jazeera documentary called The
October War um that is I think very fair, and
it talks too soldiers. It talks to Israeli and Syrian

(20:52):
and Egyptian soldiers. You get a lot of like on
the ground perspectives of what has happened. Um, I think it.
It really kind of expanded my understanding of what actually
happened beyond you know, what American movies had taught me
about that conflict, um, which was nothing effectively nothing. Yeah. Yeah,
you can't rely on Hollywood or political education on this one. No, No,

(21:14):
you really cannot. Um. So yeah, um, and we'll we'll
have a link to that Al Jazeera documentary. It's not
super long, but it really is a pretty good historical
grounding in it. Um. Now, Yoni is in the thick
of fighting in nineteen seventy three from the beginning, and
BB abandons his coursework in New York and flies back
home to pick up a gun and take part in
the defense. And kind of the way the Israeli military

(21:36):
works in this period is, you know, you do your
term of service, you leave, but when the fighting starts,
you fly back home and you get handed a gun,
like you sign one out, you pick up a uniform
and you go fight. Um. And this is the deteen
seventy three war is a lot bloodier for for Israel
than prior engagements had been. About twenty two hundred Israelis
died fighting, which is a not insignificant percentage of the

(21:57):
entire population at this point, and it was seen as
a disaster from inside the military. Their intelligence network had
failed to see the attack coming. There's been a bunch
of horrible communications issues, like they had not performed up
to the level that they kind of expected. And a
lot of it was because they arrogantly assumed they couldn't
be attacked and if they were, that they would repulse
them at these forts. Um like immediately, Gold of My

(22:20):
Year actually resigned at the end of the nineteen seventy
three war. Yoni, however, ended the war a national hero
due to you know soldier ship Now. Ben Zion wanted
both boys to get college degrees. He saw their military
exploits as a distraction. UM and BB you know again
is the guy who's going to do what his father wants.
He leaves again after the war. He gets back to
going to M I. T. Yoni, though, seemed to be

(22:42):
increasingly unable to do anything but soldier. He quits the
military on at least once um and tries to go
to school, but he can't really focus. He has trouble
holding romantic relationships together. He can't really focus on anything
that isn't fighting UM now. He rose to be one
of the leaders of the elite sire at Mortcall unit,
but over the next couple of years he becomes increasingly

(23:02):
unpopular with his subordinates. He has trouble focusing in meetings.
There's actually a movement within the unit to fire him,
and it seems again kind of from the outside that
he's dealing with severe PTSD and it's kind of breaking
him as a person. He can't exist as a civilian,
but he's also increasingly unable to exist as a soldier.
After the nineteen seventy three war, Babe never really returns

(23:23):
to the military after this point. He gets a degree
in architecture. He gets another degree in architecture, but he's
no good at it, so he gets a business degree
next UM and largely he seems to find his focus
as being a campus activist for Israel, fighting to support
to build US support for Zionism. UM. He's one of
a small number of Israeli students who are all trying

(23:43):
to do the same thing, and he stands out. You know, Nathan,
his dad does that, you know, way earlier, or his
grandpa and his dad both do that earlier. They don't
stand out. Guys like Ben Gurion are much more effective.
Baby stands out as a propagandist for Israel. Like he's
everyone knows he's a great public speaker. He's good at this. Now.
For most of Israel's history, leading up to this point,

(24:04):
the quasi socialist Mapai party had dominated Israeli politics, and
before there was a political into de called Israel, they
had dominated Zionist politics. This changed in the nineteen seventies
when the nach And beg him that begin that i
c L leader. We talked about an episode one started
to weld together. Weld together a coalition of secular right wingers,

(24:25):
disaffected liberals like neoliberals who didn't like Mapai, and right
wing religious extremists into an opposing electoral block. And as
is always the case when you tie the centrist right
to the far right, politics are more dominated by the
far right than anything else. Of course, the far right
doesn't see it that way. They think that we're compromising,
but everyone else winds up compromising with the far right.

(24:46):
It's the way it always especially because in the Israeli's
system is like it's a parliamentary system system that they
become kind of like, you know, I'm not I'm not
an expert on politics, but you know I've been told
that become kind of like kingmakers in this kind of system. Yes,
and this is when that really starts, because they've been

(25:06):
very like on the fringes of things up to this point.
In September of nineteen seventy three, right after the war,
that the Coud party was born. Now, the Likud party
is the party that not that is net Yahoo's party today,
it's the right wing coalition in Israel. UM. While all
this was going on, is reelly u s relations were
hitting a low point. Gerald Ford tried his hand bringing

(25:29):
peace to the Middle East. But if you know anything
about gerald Ford, nothing he did ever worked. UM. Israel
was not willing to make concessions during this peace process,
and so he froze arms sales to Israel. A compromise
was eventually reached, which involved Israel pulling soldiers back from
Egypt and exchange from more guns from the United States.
And the fact that the US had been willing to

(25:50):
stop selling weapons to Israel terrified Israeli's and it sparked
an understanding that they were going to have to make.
They were going to have to carry out a more
active PR operation in the United States to make the
idea of a U. S President stopping arms sales to
Israel unthinkable. Right, they get and you can say Ford's

(26:10):
not really playing hardball here. He folds almost immediately when
they make a minor concession. But to Israeli's it's this
idea like, oh, he even he was willing to threaten
to stop selling this guns. We have to make sure
this can't happen again. Now, doing that was going to
require an unprecedented PR blitz, and baby Net and Yahoo
wound up on the ground floor of it. In nineteen

(26:31):
seventy five, he was sent by the Israeli Console to
do a series of speaking engagements on local TV stations.
He was a natural, but it was going to take
something else to make him into a star. The death
of his brother Yoni July four, nineteen seventy six, is
really Commandos and Kenyan soldiers carried out a raid on
the Entebbe airport in Uganda, where another Israeli passenger plane

(26:53):
had been hijacked. Yoni was the only Israeli to die
in this rate. Now why is heavily debated today there's
evidence that Yoni acted against orders and opened fire too
early and he was shot down as a result of it.
People will literally fight over this because after his death,
Yoni becomes a heroic cult figure in Israel, and so
the idea again critiquing him in any way becomes like

(27:17):
verbot into a sizeable chunk of Israel now. The net
and yah Who family obviously has a huge fested interest
in the hero cult that forms around Yoni, to the
point where they argue that he was shot dead by
the German commander of the hijackers and not by a
Ugandan soldier, which is much more likely, and Angel Feffer
writes that this suggests to some that quote the family

(27:37):
felt that being felled by an inferior African soldier was
somehow a lesser way to die, So like, that's that's
literally the thought that entered my mind. I was like, Wow,
they can't even be killed by a black personally, and
I can't even be killed by a black person. No
um now and Yoni's letters and also this in Tebbi raid,
like there's horrific consequences, including the fact that Idi Amine,

(27:59):
who's the press into Uganda, massacres a bunch of Kenyans
because of the fact that they helped participate in this raid.
After the raid goes on, it's a whole, whole, ugly mess.
Yoni's letters after his death are published as a book,
um and there are books written about his fateful last battle.
There have been movies made again. This guy is like
a national hero. And as soon as he dies, ben

(28:19):
Zion and Benjamin do double duty becoming evangelists for Yoni's memory.
His dad, who had not approved of his military career
and had like really been kind of disappointed in Yoni,
becomes his biggest cheerleader after his death and and tries
not just to make him to a war hero, but
like a philosopher, hero warrior guy um. And to this day,

(28:40):
Israeli politicians and lobbyists who want FaceTime with Beebe will
make a point of visiting Yoni's grave. It's understood if
you do that, Bebe will sit down with you in person.
You know, or at least it improves your odds. You
know who won't sit down in person with Benjamin Netanya?
Who that's boy boy, oh boy, Jesus Christ um not

(29:07):
Jesus Christ. Oh yeah, that's that's probably true. Um, he
was definitely more of a turn the other cheek kind
of guy. And you know who else turns the other cheek,
Sophie to really hope is that Dick Bill's ad I
hope so too, because that would be really funny. Let's
keep our fingers crossed for Dick Bills, folks. All right,

(29:33):
we're back. Um. So the reality of the situation again,
this hero colt around Yoni forms that he's like this
great warrior, great philosopher. He dies valiantly fighting in this
incredible raid. The reality of the situation is that he
was a pretty broken man by the time he got killed,
and he probably there's a good chance he got killed
because of he'd been increasingly erratic in his behavior. That's

(29:55):
why a lot of his his subordinates were like, we
need to get this guy out of the unit because
we can't rely on him and he screws up on
the battlefield. The last letter he writes to his girlfriend
before his death revealed deep depression in trauma. It ended
with the words stop the world, I want to get
off like he is in a bat. He probably shouldn't
have been taking part in military actions. Um at the

(30:18):
time at which he died Um, and again there's something
to be said about kind of the the fact that
trauma and stuff was not being properly addressed here. Max Hastings,
a British journalist, was contracted by the net Yahoo family
to write a book about Yoni, and the Israeli state
gave him unprecedented access to the military, to people who
served with Yoni to write this book. Hastings does intense

(30:40):
research on this, and he walks away very critical of
the net Yahoo family. While ben Zion tried to convince
him that Yoni had been a soldier and an intellectual titan,
Hastings concluded that Yoni had been quote a troubled young
man of moderate intelligence, striving to come to terms with
intellectual concepts behind his grasp, who had been attively disliked

(31:00):
by more than a few of his men. The book
itself was a disaster. Hastings um writes a book. They
hate it. They have to massively edit it in order
to publish it. Hastings fights them on this, but in
the end he lets them do it because he's not
going to get paid otherwise, and he winds up very
angry about this whole situation. He never visits It's Real again.
Years later, he writes memoirs where he talks about the

(31:23):
process of writing this shitty book, and it includes some
scathing indictments of ben Zion and Bbe. He describes Benjamin
as a slick, humorless marketing man and includes this quote
from one of their conversations. In the next war, if
we do it right, we'll have a chance to get
all the Arabs out, he said. We can clear the
West Bank, sort out Jerusalem. He joked about the Golani Brigade,

(31:47):
the Israeli infantry force, in which so many men were
North African or Yemenite Jews. They're okay as long as
they're led by white officers, he grinned. So heys, thanks, hey, yeah, yeah,
scans now. When Babe returned to the US, he took
a job with the Boston Consulting Group, which is a

(32:08):
stuper prestigious They send in you know, they're one of
those your business isn't doing as well as you want,
you send in guys from the Boston Consultant Group. They
make your business more profitable. It's one of those things.
His coworker is Mit Romney. Like he and Romney are
employed with the same company at the same time. Now,
the difference is they is just like, yeah, I mean,

(32:31):
Romney plays this up a lot later because obviously US
Conservatives always need to be super pro Israel. The truth
is they barely knew each other. Romney was really good
at this job. Bbie was not like, he wasn't bad,
but he just like didn't stand out in the company.
And Romney is kind of like a star employee. Um.
And basically bb does not like working for Boston Consulting

(32:51):
because he's a small fish and a mitt Romney sized pond. Uh.
And he finds himself increasingly drawn to the work that
he was doing lecturing about his dead brother two different
groups of wealthy American Jews. When he was doing that,
he was special, he was the center of attention. When
he's at Boston Consulting, he's just kind of a mid
level employee. Bb drifted more and more towards politics, while

(33:12):
over in Israel, the right wing descendants of the Revisionist
Zionists finally won an election. Manachan Beggin's Liquid Party finally
broke the Labor Party, but as a conciliatory gesture, begin
keeps a lot of the old Mapai people in power,
which infuriates BB. The right wingers big and did see
fit to bestow political gifts on we're again old iz

(33:32):
L veterans. So he does not give anything to the
net and Yahoo's, even though they're more prominent by this point. Um.
And of course, part of why BBI doesn't get any
kind of position in this administration is he never spent
any time as an adult citizen of Israel. He had
fought in the military, but every time he wasn't serving,
he'd gone back to the United States. And that's one
of the things about BB. There's no period of time
that significant where he's like a civilian adult living in

(33:55):
Israel and not either an elected leader or a soldier.
You know. Um, he spends up most of his civilian
adult years in the United States. He gets married in
the United States, although the Union broke apart in the
late seventies because he cheated on his wife le she
was pregnant, she dumped him. He's a big sad guy
for a while. Uh. He spends his time flitting between

(34:16):
Boston and Jerusalem, mostly miserable his own soul. Only soulis
were the moments of prominence that he gained as one
of US TVs go to Israelis. In June of nine,
he participated in a panel about self determination for Palestinians.
He said that they shouldn't have any arguing that any
Palestinian state would be a PLO state. And he's by

(34:37):
by that he means, you know, a terrorist state. That's
what he means by it. Now. During this period, there
were a couple of different wings of the Palestinian resistance
in Israel. Uh. The PLO was broadly secularist. The FATA
party are leftist, and then of course there's the Islamists,
and there's a couple of different Islamist groups. The biggest
one comes to be Hamas And everyone listening knows how

(34:58):
moss you hear about them whenever we talk about like
fighting in in in Palestine hem us, you know, in
the rockets and stuff. So man I just interject, yes,
please please, for the love of God. Yeah, So the
the Palestine the Rational Organization is an umbrella organization and
incorporates a couple of different groups. You mentioned that there's
like the Palestine uh uh from from sorry, the Popular

(35:22):
Front for the Liberation of Palestine. So like a couple
of different groups, some left this, some centrist whatever the is,
the isn't this groups are not part of the PILO.
They emerge uh much later um as like militant groups um,
particularly during the first in the fol though, so we're
talking like in late nineteen eighties, um, and they do

(35:44):
not join the pillow. There's there's still not a part
of the plow. There's been some discussion, but there. Yeah,
it's kind of separate. Yeah, I should have been clear.
I wasn't trying to say they were part of the PELO.
I was just trying to like, that's like the Palestinian resistance.
There's different kind of like chunks, right, yeah. And and
but it's interesting he called them like a Plo nation
or whatever it was, the Palo state because in his

(36:06):
in his older age as Prime Minister um he would
refer to you know, some future Palestinian state as a
Hamastan since the POLO now is which you know, since
the Polo now is like a more legitimate, yeah, you know,
organization that's accepted as the representative of the Palestinian people.
Now it's that's the boogyman. They're already become hamas Stan.

(36:29):
I'm very grateful to you, because this is again one
of the when I talked about like the complexity that
like makes people like me kind of scared to cover this.
It's that stuff. It's like, oh God, like how it's
going to take so long to get to to gain
like a more competent understanding. Um. So it's kind of
like the left of Brian, you know, like you have
like so so it's fine that you know, so it's

(36:52):
fine that you don't know the little inns and ut. Yeah, God,
that is a that is a good way to compare it.
I think that was yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean yeah,
I think you're probably right. Um. Now, one of the
things that's interesting to me because again net Yah, who
demonizes Hamas, which is not to say that like I
think Hamas is an organization that doesn't do funked up shit, um,

(37:17):
but they get sort of, especially in the US media,
they're these like rocket wielding terrorist boogeyman. And I think
it's interesting to note that in the late nineteen seventies,
a big part of why Hamas gains power is that
they are being funded by the Israeli government as a
way to split the Palestinian opposition. And I'm gonna quote
from a write up in the Intercept by Mattia Hassan.
Brigadier General Yitzak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor

(37:40):
in Gaza in the early nineteen eighties. Uh seg Of
told later told a New York Times reporter that he
had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a counterweight
to the secularists and leftists of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
and the FATA party led by Yasser Arafat, who himself
referred to Hamas as a creature of Israel. The Israeli
government gave me a budget, the retired brigadier general confessed,

(38:01):
and the military government gives it to the mosques. Hamas,
to my great regret, is Israel's creation. Avner Cohen, a
former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for
more than two decades, told The Wall Street Journal in
two thousand nine. Back in the mid nineteen eighties, Cohen
even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them
not to play divide and rule in the occupied territories

(38:21):
by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. I suggest focusing
our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster
before this reality jumps in our faces. He wrote, Yeah, yeah,
I mean, like of course, like the way that they
will view their own history and their own impact is
that there, you know, they might outsize their role. In

(38:44):
this particular case, there was the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine
that what you know, was supported and not repressed necessarily
by the Israeli state because it did not advocate for
any kind of existance. They're like, well, just religious, like
you know, we're just gonna have to work on our
own selves and like fix our souls. And you know

(39:07):
what I mean. Like they were kind of like a
demobilizing force. Yeah, and they kind of like help you know,
didn't didn't repress them, help them along. A little bit
later on, um, there he mess split off from like
the you know, proper Muslim brotherhood because they wanted to resist.
They wanted to resist because they were like, we're losing

(39:29):
the public here, Like people don't take us seriously. There's
like all this like repression and violent repression you know,
from the Israeli side onto Palestinians, and we're just sitting
here talking about our religious souls and religious you know
what I mean, So we should probably just something about that.
But but yeah, I just wanted to interject their Yeah no,
I mean that's yeah, thank you. Um. And it's like

(39:49):
it is, it is this thing you don't want to
like obviously providing funds as a part to split the
movement to say that, like I don't want to like
say that, like, oh, it was just all this Israeli
scheme and that's where we get hamas because that's not
at all accurate and fucked up and it denies people
of agency. I think what's more interesting is that you
can you can draw a direct line between what Great
Britain is doing with the Haganah um in the in

(40:12):
the thirties and what Israel tries to do in this period.
It's this it's this colonialism thing where okay, we have
this opposition. If they're united, that's a problem for us.
Let's split divisions and we'll pick one side and back
them against the others. And like that is it's this
thing that colonial powers always do. Um, because it works
pretty well. Um, although there's you know, always unforeseen consequences

(40:35):
to it as well. Um. Anyway, Yeah, in nineteen seventy
nine BB and ben zion Net and Yah who created
the Jonathan Institute named after Yoni Yoni Yonatan Jonathan Like
it's spelled Yonatan, he's Jonathan, He's called Yoni. That's the
you know, it's just like Benjamin. Like I think they
actually spelled like the anglicit causation is usually spelled bin

(40:56):
humin um when it's not being like anyway, it's beside
the win um. So the Jonathan Institute, which is you know,
led by Baby and his dad, hold a big international
symposium on terrorism in nineteen nine, which was attended by
multiple Israeli presidents and prime ministers, as well as former
CIA Director George W. Bush H. W. Bush. The you know,

(41:19):
the groping one um and the war cry, but they're
both the war crying one. That doesn't really separate them
in any way. Um, not the cocaine one. Not the
cocaine Bush the other Bush. So basically everyone who attended
this big symposium is a right winger. There are no
non white voices really, um, there are no voices who

(41:39):
are liberal or leftist. There's certainly no Muslim voices. And
this represents one of the first concerted efforts by the
Israelis to spin their struggles with Palestinians as part of
an international battle against terror that the West is also
a part of the big message of the conference is
that insurgents fighting political powers are terrorists, not freedom fighters.

(42:02):
Their causes are fundamentally legitate, illegitimate and can't be debated.
Since this is the Cold War, Palestinian groups and other
so called terrorists where all the fault of the U.
S s are And at that point, they're trying to
fold in Israel's fight with Palestine into the global Cold War.
And this conference is often kind of over emphasized and
it's importance. But what's important is we see this as

(42:23):
the start of a conserted strategy, that being who is
at the center of to tie in UM the Israeli
fight against Palestinians into and to find a way to
tie that into whatever the US is struggling against at
the moment. And I seen seventy nine, it's communism. Post
two thousand one, it will be terrorism, you know, but

(42:43):
it's it's it's the same basic strategy UM that will
be the blueprint for the next forty years of Israeli diplomacy.
As as regards the West. And it's an it's an
effective strategy. It's an effective way of framing what is
really an ethnic cleansing as a battle against terrorism because
you can rope in all of these other powers on
your side. Um, and it it works. It's a it's

(43:05):
an effective strategy. UH. In nineteen eighty, the Knnesset passed
the and that's like the Israeli Congress basically parliament like whatever,
UM passed the Jerusalem Law, which claimed that the entire city,
which again Israel is occupying all of Jerusalem, that's in
violation of international law and that they're they've been doing
this for decades. At this point, UM, the Jerusalem Law,

(43:28):
they claim the whole city is part united under Israeli
sovereignty and direct again direct um opposition to international law begins.
Right wing government made peace with Egypt a little earlier,
but after that, UM, and and so it begins, government
like makes kind of peace with Israel. That's this big
kind of moment of hope. UM. And then immediately after

(43:48):
that they make this hard right turn because they've kind
of you know, Okay, we've made peace with one of
our enemies. Now we can swing hard to the right
and start pleasing the far right. That's why they passed
the Jerusalem Law. Um. Begin bombs Iraq after this, which
is in violation of international law to take out a
nuclear power plant. Um. And this kind of marks the
establishment of the Begin Doctrine uh in, which basically is

(44:11):
Israel declaring that Arabs are never allowed to have atomic weapons. Um.
That's that's the the the big foreign policy thing that
Begin establishes in this period in the early nineteen eighties. Well,
this is going on. Net and Yah who gets a
job with the Israeli Embassy working as a pr man
for the country in an official capacity, and he's very
effective in this role. He charms New York's media elite,

(44:32):
he charms DC politicians. Uh. He gives quotes to every
major news organization on every development in Palestine. Since he
speaks flawless English and is charming, he becomes a fixture
on daytime television. When Hezbla blew up a US marine
barracks and by route by was able to shove himself
into close contact with George Schultz, who's the Secretary of
State at this point, is also a former investor in

(44:54):
theomus um and uh yeah, he's he's and again one
of the reasons why Israeli foreign policy takes the role
it is and is so successful in getting the US
to back whatever it does is they've got BB who
is very effective, who is basically an American in a
lot of ways, and it's very effective at talking to
Americans and getting them on his side. And there's no

(45:16):
equivalent of that for the Palestinians. UM certainly not that
has the kind of media um attention that BB is
successful in getting. I don't want to overstate his role,
but it's significant in this period. Um Manak and Began
retired in nineteen eighty three, leaving no obvious successor to
the head of the revisionist cause. Begin had welded together
a powerful right wing electorate, contemptuous of any compromise with Arabs,

(45:39):
and dead certain that Jerusalem was There's forever. For a
while he was followed by a formal I l fighter,
Jetsak Schmir. But yet Zac was not a great politician,
and he wound up stalemateing with Labor in nineteen eighty four,
and so both parties share power. They split prime ministership
over the next four years. For BB, the main benefit
of the schmir years is that he was ambassador, and

(46:01):
he got to spend the next couple of years constantly
taking the podium at the UN to attack different Arab leaders.
He spent the late eighties building his power within Israeli politics,
within international politics, and inside the media. He becomes a
regular guest on Larry King Live. He and Larry King
are good buddies. Larry King famously says that as a
guest he's an eight and if he had a sense

(46:21):
of humor, he'd be aten um, which kind of a
back ended government. But okay, Larry is not the person
to talk about. No, he's sure. He's sure as ship
Isn't you know who is funnier than Larry King. Yeah,
they're there. I mean Larry probably needs them. Um, he's dead,

(46:45):
Robert all the more recent, Well, baby's still alive. That's
not ideal. We're back, okay, so uh bb gets made

(47:07):
an ambassador, he's on TV, he's doing Larry King. And
in nineteen eighties seven, while Bebe is hob nobbing and
forcing his second wife Fleur to convert formally to Judaism
so he could become a prime minister, and she was Jewish,
she was but she was half Jewish and Orthodox Jews
didn't consider her Jewish enough, so she had to do
this big public conversion process. Um and Like one of
the stories that she'll tell is that like she would

(47:29):
often have to like stop Bebi from like eating bacon
and stuff because he's not super religious, right, But he's
got to because of the people he wants to play too.
He's got to play to that crowd, so he makes
her convert in anyway. Well, all this is going on
because he's getting ready to try to become prime minister,
the first into Fata begins. This is not something we're
gonna give as much to tail as it deserves. Um.

(47:49):
The thing usually given as the cause of the into
fata was the killing of four Palestinian civilians by an
Israeli jeep on the Gaza Strip at a checkpoint. This
brings out protesters. Uh an Israeli officer fires into a
crowd of protesters. He's kills a seventeen year old. Um
and it starts this massive resistance movement. UM and I
found a good source on the website American Muslims for

(48:12):
Palestine that argues that the real cause of the Indifatah
is decades of building oppression and discontent. Quote, A whole
generation of Palestinians had never known anything other than occupation.
That occupation had made them economically dependent on Israel. Not
only did they have to put up with being treated
like inferiors and prisoners in their own homeland, but they
were also grossly exploited for their labor. They were paid

(48:33):
half the wages of Israeli workers, they were taxed higher,
they had few benefits, and they were without job security
because official Israeli policy denied them any rights within Israel.
Many Palestinians were employed without the required work permits, which
put them in an even more tenuous situation. They, like
any other people, wanted to be free from Israel's tyranny.
Like any other people, they wanted to resist the force
being used against them, but without an organized resistance movement,

(48:56):
they were powerless to challenge the occupation itself. The more
dependent they were, the more the occupation became entrenched, and
the more Israel profited. Beneath the surface, though their discontent
was seething, Palestinians were also seeing their confiscated land being
illegally settled by Jewish foreigners who were allowed to carry
machine guns and were protected by the Israeli army when
they used them to terrorist terrorize Palestinian families. These families

(49:18):
were constantly under threat, not only for continuing to live
on their own land and properties, but also for any
outward expression of their cultural identity or nationalist feelings. Anything
that was deemed pro Palestinian was forbidden or destroyed. The
word Palestine was expunged from textbooks, and any products marked
as Palestinian where relabeled as Israeli. Literature, art, music, and
other activities that encouraged a national consciousness were subject to attack.

(49:40):
In universities were often closed for long periods because they
were seen as fomenting nationalist fervor. And yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean the first of the father definitely like you know,
erupted because of years of oppression. Um. And because at
the time there wasn't the the segregation walls. They were

(50:02):
used as kind of cheap labor much more commonly than
they are today. Um even then that still continues today.
But really the Palestinians have a history of mass mobilization
like they you know did um, like with the Balfour
decoration when when Balfour came to visit the Holy Land.
They did a strike that was like, um, they do

(50:24):
these marches, they do these protests even under you know,
Israeli occupation after nineteen sixty seven in the West Bank
and Gaza, there were like kind of cycles of like protests.
None of them reached the level of a mass at
the FOLDO, but like it had it had always been
kind of the case because as you mentioned, like it's
not like they you know, obviously the PLO has weapons

(50:45):
and things like that, but that's kind of outside the territories.
It's not fully you know, um present in the territories
at this point, and um that this is how they
can kind of challenge the Israeli state. And then with
the INTFOD that there was this spark of like popular
outrage and so the Palestinian kind of like intelligence here
are like the you know, political leadership that they might

(51:08):
have been like in medical associations, professional associations, not necessarily
political groups, but they arose the occasion. They created an
unifiational leadership of the uprising um and then they started
to kind of coordinate the mass mobilizations and say like
on this day we will do a strike. Yeah, on
this day, we will do, uh, you know, a boycott whatever. Um.
So yeah, yeah, and that's a big part. There's there's boycotts,

(51:30):
there's like mass refusal to pay taxes, and there's like
the kind of attendant these mobile clinics and mutual aid
projects to support these activists to the thing that I
think foreigners, if they've heard of the into FATA, like Americans,
the image is like shirtless Palestinian boys with rocks and
slings going up against tanks, right, Like those are like this,
and that's like a a part of it. Like that's
the image that certainly goes viral. And one of the things, um,

(51:54):
that is kind of one of the things that happens
internationally here is that these images of of kids with
rocks going up against tanks kind of helps to start
puncture the international image Israel had very carefully cultivated as
an underdog constantly beset by powerful foes because you know,
and again this is my education on this is Israel. Oh,

(52:15):
everyone keeps invading them, all of these countries at once,
and they fight them off and then suddenly you're seeing, well, no,
they're driving tanks against seventeen year olds with rocks like
that doesn't that they don't seem to be the underdog here. Um. Now,
of course that is again I think kind of internationally
has a big impact. One of the arguments I all
hear is that the thing that actually scared the Israeli

(52:36):
government was what you were talking about, the mass social disobedience,
the boycott's, the refusal to pay taxes, which obviously has
a lot more effect than anything else. Um. And from
that right up I quoted earlier quote. To quell it,
Israel report resorted to punishing the Palestinian population and moss.
Ordinary citizens found themselves without power to pursue even the
most routine daily activities. Curfews were ordered for weeks on end,

(53:00):
thousands of Palestinians were arrested. With the closure of schools
and universities, education effectively became illegal, and teachers and students
had to resort to underground classes. Homes were demolished without warning,
Alive trees and agricultural crops were destroyed. Vital water supplies
were redirected to Israel, and then waters usage restricted so
severely people had to queue with containers for hours to

(53:20):
buy back their own water. I was born during the Intifada,
actually uh, and my parents have like memories of um,
you know, because of the curfew, they're not able to
go out, and I needed formula, and like you know,
massed Um activists would try to drop it off, you know, regularly,

(53:40):
so that like I wouldn't starve essentially, And that was
the case for you know, most of Palestinian society. That
never ending curfews, the the severe repression, the break the
bones policy. Meet zak Rabine was the Defense minister at
the time, and he basically gave they go to, you know,

(54:00):
the green light for the Israeli soldiers too if they
saw m Pastinia processors or like Palestinian voice throwing rocks
or something to like make them pay for it by
literally like holding them down and using rocks to smash
their bones, um, like their elbows and things like that.
And it was kind on camera because you know, at

(54:21):
that time, we're you know, we've got cameras to show
these things. Yeah, so um, yeah, it was pretty brutal. Yeah,
just I mean outrageously so. And I think one of
the things I've read recently that was really starring it's
just on the subject of water um Palestine, like in
Gaza and the West Bank has some of the worst
water quality in the world. Um like very like like

(54:43):
very like poisonously bad water in terms of like the
water that Palestinians have access to. But it gets more
rain the West Bank, and it gets more rain than like, um,
some parts of the Pacific Northwest, and a lot of
that water goes directly to Israel. Like that that's like
not yeah, there's there's a huge like it's a concerted

(55:03):
effort to kind of like you know, create a fifth
false drout. Yes, a false drout. That's a good way
of putting it. And yeah, you brought up the breaking
of bones, which happens under rabine. Um. And this this,
the fact that footage of this gets out is a
real pickle for a PR guy like bb net and
Yahoo um, because his his whole job is to get

(55:26):
on TV and say that like, we're just defending ourselves.
The Palestinians are trying to destroy all of Israel. And
then you see I d F guys breaking teenagers bones
with rocks, and um, that doesn't look like an existential
struggle for Israel. It just looks like thuggery because that's
what it is. Um and bb leaves his job at
this point because he's like, I can't. I'm not I'm

(55:49):
not getting on board. I'm not. I'm not gonna like
screw my career over by trying to defend this um.
And before he heads back to Israel, because he's he
decides he's going to start his iCal Career's gonna stop
being a pr guy because the Intifat has made that
a rough task. Um, He's going to go back home
and get into politics. And before he goes back to Israel,
he has a series of meetings with Republican Party political

(56:11):
strategist where he gets advice on how to run for office.
And he goes back to Israel and he starts his
campaigning as a politician. Now, he initially denied that he
had any desire to become a prime minister because his
party was already in power, so that would have meant
saying like I want to take over for you know,
um shamir um. But he runs for and he wins
a seat in the Knesset Um and he's too much
of a new man for the party leadership to give

(56:33):
him a good position, so he had to make a
position for himself. And the way he does this is
that in the Intifada goes on for almost six years, right,
it's like five years, nine months something like that. Yeah,
So what he does during the Intifada when he's new
to the Knesset every time in Israeli because you know,
there are reprisal attacks on Israeli Jewish citizens during this period.
Every time that happens, he goes to the hospital, he

(56:56):
meets with the victim or the family of the victim,
and he demands that the international media give equal coverage
to Jewish victims. Now, this is a problem because during
the course of the into Fata six years, almost two
hundred and seventy seven Israelis, a hundred and seventy five
of them civilians are killed. That's not good, but more
than three hundred Palestinians were killed during the first year

(57:18):
of the into Fata. More than sixteen hundred were killed
by Israelis by the time the violence of side in
the early nineteen hundreds and one. Swedish NGO estimates that
between twenty three thousand, six hundred and twenty nine thousand,
nine hundred Palestinian children required medical treatment for beating injuries
during the first two years of the Intifada. One third
of these children were under the age of ten, which

(57:41):
again is the problem with the whole equal coverage thing.
Um is, it makes it and BB is smart by
doing this, it makes it into this. Oh well, we
have victims too. There's violence on both sides, which is
the continual story of the Israeli Palestinian conflicts. Like, well,
but look at how lopsided the violence is. Look at
how lopsided the death toll is twenty nine thousand palaces.

(58:02):
Israeli kids aren't being hospitalized for beatings during this period. Um, Yeah,
I mean both size is um is like yeah, like no,
no recognition of like power and balance, yes, exactly. Or
the fact that you know, the attacks on Israeli civilians
are largely in desperation for attacks these Reeli state is
carrying out on Palestinian civilians. Um. And the fact that like,

(58:27):
one of the things people will say is that like, well, okay,
nothing being done to the Palestine has justifies terrorism against Israelis.
It's like, okay, but the Israeli government has embarked in
a consistent policy of collective punishment of all Palestinians for
the actions of any individuals to carry out attacks. So
why isn't the same thing justified on the other side. Oh,
it's because we give money to one side. Um yeah,

(58:48):
or like one is what like it's it's a state
and the others are less of an entity. They don't have,
you know, self determination that they can They're not seen
as fully like a fully functioning part of a human civilization.
Actually exactly yeah. Um. So in nineteen two, is the

(59:09):
into Fata war on It's Sacrabine was elected Prime Minister
in Israel and he ran on a platform of trying
to find a peaceful political solution to the conflict. Rabin
worked with President Clinton, with Pol oak chairman Yasir Arafat too.
I mean he would frame it is trying to end
the violence. He expressed a willingness to hand back territory
that Israel had taken. Um. And this really pisss off

(59:31):
net and Yahoo and the far right because they thought,
we're never giving this ship off. Now. Rabine is the
arm breaking guy. He is not at all a dove. Um.
I think he's bad person. He had spent his entire
life fighting brutal and often criminal wars against Arab states
and the Palestinian people. Um. But if you believe the
standard line that is said about being He gets kind

(59:53):
of worn down by the violence during the anti Fatah
and he starts to see Palestinian resistance not as just
a military re threat, but as a political grievance that
can be solved politically. In September of nineteen three, Rabine
shakes hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn
and delivers a famous line, we say to you today
and allowed in a clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough.

(01:00:15):
But bb net and Yahoo and the Likud party had
not had enough. They saw Rabine's willingness to give up
land as a heresy. Again, remember what we're talking about
about what can justify political violence from Jewish people against
other Jewish people. Bb This is a secular heresy, it's
the sin against guys like his brother who had died
fighting to take that land. But for hardcore religious right

(01:00:37):
wing Zionists it's literal heresy. God had told them this
land was theirs. Rabine has no right to give it up,
and the Palestinians have no right to it now. Bibe
is not a hugely religious guy, no matter what he says,
But by the early nineteen nineties, he was actively running
for Prime minister, and he had become the center of
a right wing backlash against Rabine in the early nineteen

(01:00:57):
ninety four at an anti Oslo The Oslo peace process
is kind of the name for this attempt that Ravine
and and and Clinton and um uh Ara Fat get into.
He becomes like so in nineteen ninety four there's a
big protest against Oslo and beating net and Yah, who
leads a procession bearing a coffin with the inscription Rabine

(01:01:18):
kills Zionism. Now, since it was widely understood that an
e PM who stands against Zionism is a traitor, many
Liquid members took this as a message which would seem
to justify violence against Rabine. Net And Yah, who compared
Rabine to Neville Chamberlain, who is the Prime Minister of
England who did appeasement with the Nazis in a column
for the New York Times, because again he's got all

(01:01:40):
these US media connections. When twenty one Israelis were killed
in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in late nineteen
nine four, net and Yah, who claimed Prime Minister Rabine
chose to favor Ara Fat and the well being of
the people of Gaza over the security of Israeli citizens.
At rallies, net and Yah, Who's followers started carrying posters
with photoshops of Rabine dressed as Asser Arafat or just

(01:02:01):
wearing a straight up Nazi uniform. From a write up
in The Guardian, quote Benjamin Netanyah, who was the star
speaker at two now infamous demonstrations, with the crowd slogans
included death to Rabine. In July nineteen nine, Netanyah, who
walked at the head of a mock veneral procession featuring
a fact yet wanted that Israel's head of internal security,
asked net Yahoo to dial down the rhetoric, warning that

(01:02:23):
the Prime Minister's life was in danger. Net and Yah,
who declined perhaps he, like Rabine, didn't imagine and Israeli
jew could ever kill one of their own. Any threat
surely came from elsewhere now. It was around this time
that Yigal Amir, a Jewish religious extremist terrorist, decided to
kill the Etzak Rabine. He later insisted that extremist rabbis

(01:02:43):
and the rhetoric around Rabine had not swayed his decision. Instead,
he claimed he decided all on his own that Rabine
had rindered himself essentially non Jewish by offering to give
back land that the Bible said belonged to Israel. A
lot of people blame net and Yahoo for creating the
rhetorical environment that radicalizes a guy named like a mere
Um and a mere shoots unkills Rabine at a big

(01:03:05):
pro peace rally that was, in retrospect, probably the height
of the Israeli peace movement. UM. Now, the fact that
Rabine gets killed at a moment when peace is kind
of at its most popular with the a Israeli electorate
should have meant that it would have been possible to
work things out right. You can see how this could
lead to increased support for the OSLO, but that is

(01:03:25):
not what happened. Um. From the Guardian quote. Rabine's immediate
successor was his decades long rival, Shimone Perez. Perez was
like urged by one of his advisers to call a
snap election. The right was weak, shamed by its association
with the incitement that had led to murder. The wave
of public grief embodied by the candlelit visuals of young
people would surely lead to a landslide victory in an

(01:03:46):
immediate mandate to complete Rabine's peacemaking work, but Perez said no,
after years inter being shadow, he wanted to wait until
the scheduled election the following summer rather than rely on
a sympathy vote. He wanted to be elected by himself.
It was just his egos as somebody who knew him
at the time. And Perez loses in X. They wait
too long, UM, and the winner is Benjamin Netan Yahoo,

(01:04:09):
who gets elected to be Prime minister. Now he doesn't
last long. He gets replaced initially UM, but he finds
his way back into power. And more importantly, the right
wing and the center right are in power basically the
entirety of the time after Rabine's death. For all but
twenty months of the last twenty five years, the right
and center right have controlled the government in Israel. At

(01:04:31):
the last election, the once dominant Israeli Labor Party, if
it's Acrabine, got less than six percent of the vote
and just seven seats in parliament. For twenty five years,
Labor has failed to find a leader who could do
what Rabine did, which is get people on board with
any kind of peace process. UM. And at this point
there's really no Israeli peace movement, not not in any
meaningful sense. I think the left is about eight percent

(01:04:53):
of the electorate. Um Israeli young Israelis are like way
more conservative than young people basically anywhere in the world.
And there's a lot to be said about why that is.
But net and Yahoo was a core factor in that,
um and a core factor in why you know, the
Oslo process doesn't work out and why there's there's no

(01:05:14):
real peace movement today. UM. I mean it's ironic because
I think Rabine, you know, I didn't want the Israeli
state to be de legitimized the way that it is today.
Um bye, Like because he realized, like you know, this
longstanding occupation was going to end up with the kind

(01:05:36):
of discussions that are happening now right like apartheid and
things like that. Then should we have a by national state,
should we have a one state? That These are the
kinds of discussions that are happening now because they didn't
resolve the problem. The Also Accords wasn't intended to necessarily
give the Palestinians a full state, but it was intended
to like give them some semblance of self governance, get

(01:05:59):
the interne actual community off their back, and very very
cleverly contain them. And it worked. It worked. That's what's
that's what's funny about all of this is like the
also process worked in achieving that. Um. If they had,
you know, taken it a little bit seriously, they would
have resolved, like they would have fully demobilized Palestinians. Um.

(01:06:22):
But um, you know, it's it's kind of like a
like a a political like like you said, political heresy
to say, like we can give them a little bit
of self governance. Uh. Instead it's like, no, we must,
we must ennex all of the aspect, we must take
all of this land. Yeah, any kind of compromises, I mean,

(01:06:43):
for one thing, you're compromising with terrorists. That's a big
part of what net yahoo wants is trying to do
since the seventies. There's no legitimacy to any of these causes.
They're all just terrorists and as terrorists, you can't negotiate
with them. Um and yeah, um BB is there's a
lot of critiques about BB as a as an actual
politician who people who will argue that he's incompetent in

(01:07:06):
a lot of ways, there's a lot of and I
don't want to get into the weeds on any of that.
What he's good at, unindebatably in my opinion, is holding
onto power. Because he does. Um. He gets re elected
in two thousand nine. Um, and he's been in power
ever since. He's the longest serving prime minister in Israel history.

(01:07:26):
Um And yeah he Now it's interesting when he runs
for re election in two thousand nine he publicly announces
his support for a Palestinian state. In a decade later
he would rescind any sort of support. Like again, he
never really meant it, like he was saying what he
thought was kind of because yeah, I mean, he has
this speech at Boylan University where he says like, Okay,

(01:07:49):
I'm fine with the Palestinian state. We don't we We
can quabble about the terminology later. And you want to
call it a state, you can call it a state.
But it's so it's a state that cannot import missiles
into their territory, field and army close their airspace, make
PACs with the likes of Iran completely demotorized, otherwise they
will become another hemas Sistan. Terminology is not important it's

(01:08:10):
basically a state without sovereignty. Yeah, like that doesn't you know,
we like what kind of conceptual stretching is that, Like
this is not a state, right, the state that does
not have yeah, like control over its own boundaries, controverton
territories and not a state. You know, I'm not a
big fan of states in general, but like one of
the basic definitions of a state is it has a

(01:08:31):
monopoly on the legitimate use of power. And what Yahoo
is suggesting is a state where Israel has a monopoly
of the legitimate use of power, which the people are
he was not a state. Um, now they're not. Yeah yeah, sorry, sorry,
I was just gonna say it. Literally says like they
cannot forge any pacts, like they cannot have any over anything.

(01:08:54):
Yeah that's yeah, um so yeah. And it's obviously in
two thousand nineteen he even goes back on that and
and like, is like that even that kind of milk
to support for not even really autonomy doesn't last. Um,
And shortly after he comes to office in two thousand
and twelve, he orders a major offensive in response to

(01:09:15):
rocket fire into Israel. This happens to two thousand twelve.
It happens again in a big way in two thousand
and fourteen. This leads to a fifty day war that
kills Palestinians mostly civilians uh and sixty seven Israeli soldiers,
including in six civilians um. And there's there's other you know,
salies and attacks and whatnot. There's a pretty much kind
of continuous level of violence. And it helps BB because

(01:09:37):
he makes a lot of different domestic blunders. But every
time something goes wrong for him, there's another conflict with
Hamas Um and even like right now that's kind of
going on, like BB, we'll talk about that in a
little bit. I don't want to get out of myself. Um.
But as time has gone on, Bbe has yielded more
and more to the far right, who often don't like
him because they see him as too much of a moderate,

(01:10:00):
but he gives them what he wants, which is more
and more settlements in Palestinian land. The settlement strategy has
been part of a very cunning again, a strategy aimed
at making a Palestinian state impossible by blocking Palestinian population
centers off from one another, with Palestins with the Israeli towns.
In two thousand and fifteen when US State Department official

(01:10:21):
Frank Loewenstein like started looking at maps of settlements in
Israel and realized what was happening. And he talked to
a reporter with the New Yorker, and I want a
reader quote from that article in the New Yorker, because
I think it's it's it's telling. Typically, those maps made
Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas
where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing
book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that

(01:10:42):
were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space
between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Loewenstein
told me he saw the forest for the trees. Not
only were Palestinian population centers being cut off from one another,
but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable
Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Loewinstein's team did
the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outpost, and

(01:11:04):
the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated,
they covered almost six of the West Bank. And again,
these are illegal settlements under international law. The Obama administration complains.
Everybody complains, nobody stopped selling weapons days reel um. Anybody
even wants to boycott settlement No, no, nobody even wants

(01:11:24):
to boycott goods made just in the settlement areas. Um.
And in fact, people will say that that's anti Semitic um,
which is frustrating. I mean, there's laws being pushed in
the United States to stop even that kind of again
very milk toast resistance. UM. And Yeah, while this is
all happening, while settlements are expanding, settler culture grows paramilitary.

(01:11:47):
There's a lot of I think a lot of interplay
culturally with what's happening to the US militia movement at
the same time. One thing I've seen embodying that recently
is there's been photos of Israeli I think they're plain
closed cops, but they're airing tactical gear, assaulting Palestinians and
wearing patches that have an Israeli flag and a punisher

(01:12:08):
skull on them. So there's this there's part of this
kind of like growing global right wing paramilitary culture that
the Israeli several quote settler culture feeds into and is
fed by. That's probably a bigger subject than we could
get into today UM. But for kind of a an
overview of the violence carried out by these settlers, I
want to read a write up by the United Nations

(01:12:30):
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UM and is it
called Selim the human rights seem the human rights a
bet Selim's Field researchers documented two hundred and forty incidents
of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including
eight six bodily assaults in which seventy five Palestinians were injured,

(01:12:53):
cases of stone throwing at homes, seventeen attacks on moving vehicles,
a hundred and forty seven attacks were aimed at Palestinian
farmers or their property, including eighty cases of damage to
trees and crops owned by Palestinians, resulting in more than
three thousand trees vandalized. In thirty nine cases, the violent
acts took place during the olive harvest season. Of these incidents,

(01:13:14):
seventy two took place in the presence of soldiers, police
officers or d c O personnel who did not intervene
to stop the assault on the Palestinians or their property.
In twenty eight cases, soldiers dispersed the Palestinian residents by
firing tear gas, dung grenades, and rubber coated metal bullets,
and in at least five cases, even live fire. Israeli
authorities arrested at least twelve Palestinians during these alter occasions. Yeah,

(01:13:36):
I mean they they kind of some of the lynch
mobs that we're saying now like it has a precedent
in this UM. It's like they will you know, try
to burned down mosques, burned down like churches. There was
like the Duma arson attack in Um where they like

(01:13:58):
burned a family, a lot of uh, they like run
over kids, like they like you said, they've burned down
these olive trees. Um. They're just really really like quite
violent and it's kind of a UM. It's like a
level of impunity because they walk around with guns and
like that's nobody's nobody's nobody does anything like the cops

(01:14:23):
are now you know, they're not actually cops. There is
there is really um their army UM and and they
like they do not intervene whatsoever. And through all of
this net and Yaho has held onto power. Part of
it is he's he's tough on terrorism. You know, security
is kind of the whole thing that he You're a
big part of why what he runs on. UM. He's

(01:14:45):
the economy has broadly speaking done well under Baby UM,
or at least during large parts of it, which is
a big part of his popularity. UM. The Israeli left
today is almost non existence, about eight percent of the
voting population. Most of the country is center right, and
that means the far right gets to dictate policy. UM.
This has maintained even though BB has committed a lot

(01:15:07):
of scandals. UM. He is currently the state's longest serving
leader and also it's first to face criminal prosecution while
in office. Corruption investigation started in two thousands sixteen led
to him being charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of
trust in three separate cases. He's alleged to have accepted
gifts from wealthy businessmen and given out favors in exchange
for positive press. UM. There's like, I I don't want

(01:15:29):
to get into the current politics, but like he's basically
the caretaker prime minister. Now there's been like a bunch
of but it kind of looked like the opposition. There
was a period a little while where it looked like
he might get forced out as Prime minister. That doesn't
seem likely to happen, at least in the immediate future here. Um,
I don't know. I'm not gonna like again, I'm not
an expert on Israeli politics, but it does seem like
everything that's happening, he knows how to make use of it.

(01:15:52):
Um to stay in power. Um. I kind of want
to end by noting something I found in an article
from March nineteen. Benjamin Netan Yahoo, in comments on Instagram,
said that all citizens in Israel, including Arabs, had equal rights,
but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed that

(01:16:12):
year which declared Israel the nation state of the Jewish people, saying, quote,
Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According
to the basic Nationality law we passed, Israel is a
nation state of the Jewish people and only it. As
you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab citizens
of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us,
and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab
sector than any other government. But you know that's you're

(01:16:38):
saying that they're not really part of the state, like
it's it's it's ethno nationalism without wanting to tell the
Guardian that your ethno nationalist. Um. Yeah, it's like like
he always just says this, says the thing and says
it's opposite. And and it's you know, if we're if
we're talking about Postinian citizens of Israel, there one in five.

(01:17:00):
Well that's not an insignificant number. Um. But they're being
told that the right to exercise natural self determination is
only unique to Jewish people. Um. And then they don't
have their language recognized as an official language. Um. And
then Jewish settlement is basically enshrined in this law. And
then that you know, that's just how senny citizens of Israel. Um.

(01:17:22):
Let alone all these stateless people who live in the
Gaza strip in West Bank and Ease Jerusalem, who don't
even have like the right to call themselves a citizen,
albeit apparently not a full one. They're just there. They've
got no political will to speak of. It's not a
great not a great situation, not a great situation. Um.

(01:17:46):
But that is the end of my podcast script. D Uh.
I mean there's no way not to end on a
bad note. Oh yeah, there's no good note to end on,
because what's happening is bad. Um, I don't know anything
else you think we should get into anything else you

(01:18:06):
want to talk about before we settle out. Um, I
did remember that I actually made a mistake. It's seventy
three years since the next but I don't know. I
don't know that matters. Yeah, I mean it does. Yeah,
so I just go I was off by two years
because I'm stuck that before the pandemic essentially. Um, I

(01:18:26):
don't know. Let me just see here in my notes.
I mean, do you want to talk about what's happening
today or yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean that's it's the
kind of thing. Um, you know, it's it's it's started it.
It seems like coming when I'm wrong. Here you've got
shaik shaha. Um no Jafa right, yeah, you were right.

(01:18:48):
The neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Um, right, that's the houses
are being people are being eviction. Is the term these
really state uses, um, which you know it's not really
I think an accurate way to characterize it. It's another
active ethnic cleansing. Um. There were protests as a result
of that, and there was a right wing nationalist, religious

(01:19:10):
extremist march on Aloxa, and that all kind of like
combined together to a bunch of protests. Police violence. Police
shooting grenades was met by you know, rock throwing and
uh then violence from paramilitary groups and now you know,
we're we've escalated to Gaza Is being carpet bombed and

(01:19:33):
there's constant rocket fire and uh, it's just it's just
it looks like a nightmare. All of the footage from inside, Yeah,
Lynch mobs, people being beaten in the street, Palestinian businesses
being attacked. Um, just horrible, horrible, horrible shit. Gaza looks. Yeah,

(01:19:55):
it's apocalyptic. I mean, I don't even Yeah, Gaza Is
is like beyond beyond comprehension. But where in Nadine who
kind of fits into all this aside from the fact
that he's the Prime Minister um and he obviously like
foments this kind of bus all the time. UM. He
brought into power, UM people who are like Kahonists, who

(01:20:20):
are like um, they take like their ideology like their
rare right wing religious Zionists who take their ideology from
a band movement UM of like extremists. UM. And he
he you know, did his best to bring them into power,
into the kinesset and it's amount of been veer. I

(01:20:42):
don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but um, he
was one of these people who now finds himself in
you know, mainstream politics, and he he is always in ship,
like he's always antagonizing, he's always bringing settlers causing um,
you know, like trying to agitate like he's he's doing

(01:21:02):
it on purpose, um and like agitating people to commit
acts of violence against the Palestinians outside. So, like, you know,
it's good that we're talking about Nathania because like the
man is like very deeply implicated aside from you know,
aside from the fact that he is actually like you know,

(01:21:23):
the political authority here. He's he's like fomented this. Yep.
I mean, of course, not to say, like, you know,
Natania has to blame for a structural condition of like
settler colonial state that like does not treat everybody properly. Obviously,
like there is this structural reason that people are upset,

(01:21:46):
but this particular instigation we can trace it to his,
um political decision making and his and his willingness to
uh you know, um put his weight behind extremists. Yep. Yeah, Um, yeah,

(01:22:10):
that's it's it's a real bummer. And I don't um,
I don't know. Like the hopeful thing I guess is that, um,
people seem to be pretty piste off. But I can't
tell to what extent that will matter, because people have
been piste off about a lot of terrible things that
didn't get better. Um, So I don't know. Yeah, I

(01:22:35):
mean I try not to think about it that way
because I feel, um yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not productive. Yeah.
So if we can't, we don't have any control or
the situation. We might as well keep this stuff because
I think apathy is apathy is worse. Like you should care,

(01:22:56):
You should at least bear witness to what's happening exactly. Yeah,
And what I mean that like like uh, particularly those
of us, because you can't help but bear witness. But
like people like me, people here in the United States,
people who um you know, have grew up hearing one
thing about what was happening in Palestine and have come

(01:23:17):
to understand a different thing. Um. Anyway, Uh danna you
want to you want to plug those um um um
places people can can donate to help. Yeah, the there's
medical age for Palestinians. Um, there's uh town and Palestine.

(01:23:39):
That's t A A w O N. And there's UM
Draftroots puts A l q U d s UM. There
are all three organizations that either help on the medical,
political or economic front. UM to help Palestinians across the
territories and inside Jerusalem to to live with dignity. Well awesome,

(01:24:02):
UM help out, Keep reading UM will include a lot
of sources and stuff here. That documentary on the October
War from Al Jazeera all worth checking out. And I
don't know, keep keep bearing witness, I guess uh And yep,

(01:24:23):
that's the super upbeat and I'm line, I'm gonna end on. Yeah,
thank you, Danna