Part One: The Great Revolt: Palestinian Resistance to Early Zionism

Margaret talks with Matt Lieb about multi-faith Palestinian resistance to early Zionist colonization.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hey, I'm one of the good things.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's it's not going to feel extra awkward once we
talk about what the subject of this.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Now I'm excited, very excited.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes, you are the host of the most moral podcast
in the world, Bad Hasbro. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
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,

(01:00):
nebulous terms.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
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

(01:31):
the last time I was on this show.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I think so too, because it was around It was
just last December, I think you were last on.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yes, that's that's that's how I roll. I just like
I get a spark of inspiration, and usually that sparks.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
And says, do you want to you know, live a
decent life and inf case you have to make this show?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
My chest is always numbah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
The left side of my face is always droopy. You're
going crazy, Matt.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
I signed a form that says it is what it is. Yeah,
but you know that or not? Yeah, but speaking.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Wow, that is, first of all, so offensive, How dare you?
Israel has always existed right in the hearts and thel's hearts.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
We're going back to, like the Ottoman Empire.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
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.

(04:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Right, we'll get there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
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,

(05:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Subject, I've heard about this. I think you know, I've
heard a thinger two, yeah, got some Thoughtsanism.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
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

(06:21):
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

(06:41):
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

(07:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
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.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Those are the.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Whoa, I know, that's a crazy one. I know, what
if nationalism before everybody.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Anti anti nation. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
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

(08:50):
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

(09:11):
unity and drive out their foreign rulers.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
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

(09:55):
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.

(10:16):
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.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
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

(10:59):
French do. Know, you know how we all used to
be normal and remember these things.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
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,

(11:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
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

(12:07):
it for a long time until I probably like late college.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
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?

Speaker 3 (12:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, Automan Empire more like Hotterman and.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Exactly exactly, or it's actually Automan it mean never mind, Yes.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I got it, I got it.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Again, confused honestly by the like difference between the Holy
Roman and the original Roman.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
I already knew.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
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

(14:28):
around at the time. They did a bunch of genocides,
which is famously not a good thing to do.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeast that. Yeah, Yeah, the.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
It, right right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
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

(15:30):
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.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
That's completely true, and everyone who lives in that region
just also thinks that.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
If all think that, yeah, every famously think that.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Es.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
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

(17:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Scientologists closes not scientologists, ok no, No, it's Jews. Oh okay,
oh that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
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

(17:55):
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.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
That is the rest of the rhyme that people.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
People forget about that.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
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.

(18:42):
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

(19:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
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

(19:34):
is usually brought up to justify some sort of you know,
in vengeance thing going on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
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

(20:16):
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,

(20:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, but you know what people should take seriously.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
Ah, is it products?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
They should they should seriously consider whether or not they
need a new car or whatever the.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Hell a new car.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
I need a new car otherwise these ads second class
citizen here.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yeah, it's the newest car.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
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

(21:41):
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

(22:03):
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

(22:25):
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?

Speaker 3 (22:32):
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,

(22:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
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

(23:32):
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

(23:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
People buy land now. Yes, there is a distinction.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
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

(24:30):
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.

(24:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
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.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
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

(25:55):
you don't. I guess you can't sell shirts. And it's like,
do you think commerce didn't exist until capitalism.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Exists, exactly.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
You know, commerce has been a thing, right, that's a
whole different guy, bro.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
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.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah model.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
I recommend everyone read the book Debt by David Graeber
for the history of money and anyway.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
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

(26:50):
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,

(27:13):
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.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
That's right, it's a great one.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
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

(27:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
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

(28:43):
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

(29:03):
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

(29:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
Yeah, why not?

Speaker 2 (29:46):
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,

(30:07):
I hear you trying to create Ethna state over here,
but like, we.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Kind of have our own thing.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
We're part of the Ottoman Empire's a bunch of people
who live here.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Sorry.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
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

(30:39):
who would think of sending them away? Not me?

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Certainly someone bad would not me though not me. Don't
don't worry about it, Yeah, don't worry.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
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

(31:18):
put some people there, I guess, you.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
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.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
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

(31:57):
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

(32:19):
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

(32:39):
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

(33:00):
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

(33:20):
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

(33:41):
a refugee, if there's someplace else, I think you look
like you should live. That's just racist, bro right, And.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
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,

(34:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
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,

(34:57):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
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

(36:10):
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

(36:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, anywhere that had intentionous populations that they could right.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
Yeah, that's the trouble with you know, colonization is like
part of the deal is they're going to be people there.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, you know, weird, No, Tara Knollys, is that what
you're saying.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Huh. Well, if they had known that, they probably would
have behaved very differently, because they certainly actedly it was
without a land.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
No, they very much knew. And that's the most exactly
intense part about the whole thing. Yeah, they very much knew.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
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.

(37:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, it is, it is. I always just kind of
take the average between the two.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, something like that. And then you know, in terms
of the world's point two percent like.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
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,

(38:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
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

(39:15):
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.

(39:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
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

(40:14):
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,

(40:34):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
End of World War One.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
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

(41:32):
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

(41:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yes, that's what money does. It conquers. I'm going to
go conquer myself some double cheeseburgers at some point. I'm hungry.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, I know, me too, probably need a snack during
break between recording and they didna yet. But here's the ADS.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
And we're back.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
I refuse to believe that the British have never lied.
They've only accidentally told a falsehood.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
They sometimes tell the truth when they say we're going
to do a really bad thing.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's most of the time.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
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

(43:37):
I had a gun to my head and had to
speak British, I'd be like, oh, and then hope.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
For the best.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
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,

(44:17):
a lot of take.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
On those words. Those words very important, very very important.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Yeah, no, just go for it.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
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.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
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

(45:20):
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.

(45:40):
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

(46:02):
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,

(46:24):
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?

Speaker 3 (46:45):
You know? Right? Yeah, yeah, we're doing a thing. Let
me buy some air.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
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

(47:30):
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

(47:51):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was uh, you know he cut
his teeth where Oxford.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
He had been named Bloody Balfour after his five years
of ruling England's first colony, Ireland.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Oh there we go, well, well, well.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
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.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
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.

(49:07):
Let's move all of this literal same people over, the
black and tans, over to Palestine and start sucking up
people there too.

Speaker 3 (49:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
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

(49:49):
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

(50:11):
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.

(50:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
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

(51:11):
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

(51:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
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

(52:13):
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

(52:33):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
I'll still take Christian Muslim solidarity too, you know.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
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

(53:51):
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

(54:12):
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

(54:32):
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

(54:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
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.

(55:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
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

(56:26):
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.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
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.

(57:14):
Now they're the reason Hitler.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Or something probably.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Also, I also nod along, and I just and I
just go uh huh. I also knew that.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
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

(58:05):
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

(58:27):
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

(58:48):
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

(59:09):
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

(59:32):
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

(59:53):
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

(01:00:14):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
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

(01:01:06):
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

(01:01:27):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
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

(01:02:04):
can so easily turn into like just your regular average
Western chauvinism.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
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

(01:02:33):
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

(01:02:54):
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

(01:03:15):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
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,

(01:03:53):
you know, people who like abortion and people who want
women all to you know, be second classes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Yes, exactly. Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
Yeah, I'm sorry, it's Jabatinsky. Okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
I mean, it's just there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Yeah, and it's just like it it's not what that is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
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

(01:06:09):
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

(01:06:33):
you know, militant desert people.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:06:53):
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

(01:07:15):
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

(01:07:36):
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

(01:07:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:08:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Yes, yeah, they just you know, if it'll it'll if
it'll buy them some time, yeah, then they'll do it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
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.

(01:09:04):
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,

(01:09:24):
the al Barock Uprising, which we will talk about as
well as the Great Revolt of nineteen thirty six on Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
Oh all right, stick around for the exciting conclusion of Palestine.
I know, sorry, they're in satisfying.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
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.

(01:10:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
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.

(01:10:44):
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

(01:11:06):
because of his kind of revision to scionism and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
You know, yeah, yeah, but it's got to be on
audiobook for me to read.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
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.

(01:11:43):
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?

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
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

(01:12:25):
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,

(01:12:47):
ten jobs the way I have now, So please listen
to it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
I'll tell you that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
Please.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
But I.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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