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

In part two, Margaret concludes a talk 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, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that people fight against the
bad things sometimes. I'm your host, murder Kiljoy. Am, I
guess this week is Matt Leeb.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'mt leb Hi. I'm sorry. I'm just finishing a quick snack.
I had some Trader Joe's hummus, and uh, you know,
in celebration of US talking about Palestine, I had some
traditional Trader Joe's Mediterranean style hummus.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
I am, you're not a tomato joke or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, you know, Israel invented the cherry tomato and Trader
Joe's Mediterranean style hummus.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, Trader Joe's invented hummus.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, that's right. They were the first ones to do it. Yes,
very delicious. People talk a lot of shit on Trader Joe's.
You know, well, I guess I don't know if people
talk shit about Trader Joe's. I feel like someone would.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's the cheap food that still tastes good.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, it's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, ignore all those recalls, Yeah, exactly, it's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
The recalls are just you know what that is, that's
just haters hating.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
See I used to get excited about the recalls because
I lived off of dumpster food, and so whenever there
was a recall, I was like. I'd always be like,
why are there so why is there so much lettuce
in the trash this week? And you're like, oh, because
there's a recall because there's abreak kill whatever put that
had irregular lettuce in my mouth. Yeah, That's what I
did and I survived. So therefore it is a good

(01:41):
and healthy idea to eat only trash for you out
the trash. Yeah, Well to do the rest of the
introductions that I didn't do last time. Our producer is
Sophie Lichtermann Hy Sophie. Our editor is Daniel Hi Daniel
dan All. Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman.

(02:04):
This is part two and a two parter about early
Palestinian resistance, Palestinian resistance to pre Israel, Palestinian resistance to
the Ottoman Empire, which we talked about last time, and
did the British Mandate and the Zionist Project, which is
what we were talking about this time. Hell yeah, and
where we last left. The Palestinian resistance had a pretty

(02:25):
lackluster nineteen twenties. The powers that be within Palestine were like, oh,
what if we asked the British nicely, that works for people, right,
And everyone was like, I don't think it works, but
we're also really worn down and poor, so we don't
have any better ideas until nineteen twenty nine when you

(02:45):
run into the single event. I have had the hardest
time finding what feels like objective sources about Oh. Ever,
in my research for this show, yeah you heard the
Eid Albarock uprising.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
You know, I feel like I probably heard it in
an audio book once, fair enough, but I don't know.
I don't think I know much about it.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
So by some sources you could say some mean old
Muslims were mad that Jews were praying, so they tried
to program them and then the Jews fought back with
the help of the British.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah, and that sounds like the correct source. Go on.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, So there's this holy place in Jerusalem called Albarock,
which is with the Jews called the Western Wall, and
it was traditionally is the Muslim holy place that Jews
were specifically allowed to pray at. Like historically, there's a
long standing tradition Jews are allowed to come prey here,
but it is a Muslim thing set up into this

(03:53):
like Muslim infrastructure, so you can't set up any furniture here,
can't make this place your place. So the Zionist Jews
started setting up furniture and this is outside and they're
setting it up and maybe it's temporary, and a lot
of the Muslims are like, I think you're trying to

(04:15):
occupy the place, and so they were like, could you
please take it down? And they went to the British
and they were like, hey, help us sort this out.
And the British took ten months to rule on this,
and finally they were like, yeah, sorry Zionists, we hate
saying anything bad about you, but this really is a
Muslim place of prayer. You probably shouldn't set up permanent

(04:36):
thing or like, you know, put your stuff here. You
got to take your stuff down. But the British didn't
enforce their own ruling. Zionist Jews held a big protest
about it. Muslim folks did two and then things got
really violent and it wasn't really about the specific prayer wall,

(04:57):
not for either side. As best as I can tell,
this was an explosion of anger at the Zionist project
that was displacing Arabs across the country, and it was
a reflection of the growing awareness that the Zionist plan
was to conquer the entire country, and it was that
was the Zionist plan. It's still the Zionist plan.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
What. Yeah, I don't know where you're getting your information,
but I was from the Zionists. Yeah, I was told specifically.
I don't know what Zionists you're reading, but the all
Desionists I know say that the whole point of the
Zionist's plan is peace. So oh, okay, sounds so yeah,
sounds like you're wrong and lying.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
However, I understand why you can perceive what happened as
a program because there was a lot of violence directed
at the Zionist settlers and killed a fuck ton of people.
And so for the Zionist Jews, this uprising was a
little bit less about the prayer and more about self
defense because many of them are being killed. It's about
a week long. About one hundred and thirty three Jews

(05:59):
were killed during the uprising, while one hundred and sixteen
Arabs were killed. The Jews were mostly killed by Arab
groups and the latter were mostly killed by British security
forces or depending on what I'm reading, a lot of
the Arabs were killed by Jewish settlers, and sometimes I
think the sources that claim that are actually the Zionis sources,
because I think it's about trying to be like, hey,

(06:20):
we fought back successfully, right, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. It
depends who you're reading, it depends who the intended audience is.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
And yeah, after a week long uprising, the British arrested
and punished mostly Palestinians. Everything I've read about this feels biased,
is fuck in one direction to the other. And I
have not personally found a source about this particular thing
that feels trustworthy, which is not to say the historians
kind of biases. I absolutely biases right, and still write

(06:51):
well about a subject. But this particular event wasn't covered
in detail by either of the Palestinian storians I read
in depth. So I just read a fuck ton of
different essays because all of the books were like because
actually what's interesting for Palestinian resistance point of view is
actually what comes in the wake of this, or people
didn't want to talk about that part because it sounds

(07:11):
bad when you run around and kill a bunch of
armed civilians. Yes, fucking no.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
The aftermath I have a better handle on because I
found better writing on it. The uprising really set the
Palestinians to the task of figuring out how the fuck
to get free, and a lot of people developed a
lot of different ideas about how to do that, and
they started doing it and working towards it. Not the

(07:39):
most important, but I'm going to start with it because
they have the coolest names, and they're weird and violent
and I don't know whatever the minority position and how
to do this, but an important one was a violence
that was a way in which people tried to figure
out how to get free. You call violent direct action
or terrorism. Yeah, And first you have the Green Hand gang.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Cool name is a.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Fucking good name for a gang.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
And they basically just ambushed there's like, I think maybe
twenty or thirty of them or something, and they just
ambushed settlers and cops and killed them starting in nineteen
twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Damn, that's great. It did not.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, they were just like, all right, we're just doing it.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, I canna just kill some people.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, And it's interesting because it's like I don't want
to too hard go into the morality of this, but
there is a difference between that guy just stole my house.
I can see him. That is my house. I was
living there two weeks ago. Like, I mean, there is
like interesting questions around, like at what point is it like, well,

(08:44):
now I grew up in this house, and my grandfather
grew up in this house, but my grandfather stole from
your grandfather. You know, those those are interesting questions that
I am not in a position to answer since I
am a white person living in North America, and if
you back, I am absolutely culpable as a settler.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yes, and I don't know. I don't fucking know. Yeah,
it's it is, you know, it's it's hard to know
whether or not. I mean, I don't know. On the
one hand, yes, of course, you know, there's the idea
of just because time passes does not mean that, you know, you're.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
The land should go back to the indigenous people in
North America. No part of me thinks otherwise for that
kind of right, Yeah, whether or not like kill me
to take.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Right exactly, whether or not the violent resistance of the
you know, ancestors of ancestors of ancestors of people, you know,
And to me, this is, you know, one of those
like indigenous struggles that I see as like, there's no
reason to not look at it from a perspective of

(09:48):
just being an indigenous struggle and not this like theoretical,
you know, dissertation on what exactly makes someone indigenous. And
it's like, I don't know if I if I can
trace with my own eyes the settler colonial nature of
this particular thing. And someone is literally holding the key

(10:09):
to the house that they no longer live in, It's like, well,
that's clear, at very least it's clear. I'm not totally
you know, you know, advocating or supporting the you know,
violence that necessarily, you know, will befall people when there
is an uprising, But I am saying that I don't

(10:31):
know how you could look at it as any other
thing than that totally.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
And so by nineteen thirty, the Green Hand gang goes down,
they're all dead or in jail. But what do you
do when the green Hand gang goes down? Well, I'm
glad you asked you start the black hand.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
All right. We're doing a new hand, all right.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, just new hand, new Color. Yeah, New Day.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, do you like this?

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Even cooler name but less original? Since a Serbian nationalist
group of the same names. You know, I was gonna
started World War One. I was going to say, I'm
pretty sure I heard of the Black Hand. I also
think I know the Black Hand from Godfather too, Okay,
And that was the that was the guy who used
to run Vito.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Corleoni's neighborhood before he uh, before Vito Corleoni killed him
in that hallway with that gun. It was like, who's that?
And it's like, that's, you know, the Dawn the Black Hand.
So there's a lot of different black Hands out there,
but yeah, you know this one's cool. If you're the
Black Hand, you probably kill people. I mean what else?
I mean it's a cool ass name for a gang.

(11:39):
Is that you know there's a black Hand? Here's my
app fuck off?

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, I run a library.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
I mean that's cool. Yeah. Better Yeah, killing people library,
library of weapons you used to do murder?

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, exactly, that should be available.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
So yeah, we got to find one of those.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
And so this black Hand is it isn't a different
language and whatever. You can't own a name as cool
as a black Hand.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
I had trouble finding detailed sources on either of the
Colored Hand crews in English, and so I might return
to these folks more as I learned more about them.
But I know a little bit more about the Black Hand. Basically,
there was this guy named iz al Din al kasm
and he'd cut his teeth supporting Libyan resistance to the Italians,
then fought the French occupation in Syria, and then he
went over to Palestine to help fight the British.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Okay, so he's just the coolest motherfucker who ever existed.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
Go on, Yeah, and he's a tinerant preacher, and he's
just going around the country as a muzzllem my tinerant preacher,
and he's saying, we should probably use violence to resist
our entire country being stolen from under our feet. Yeah, hell, yeah,
started a bunch of groups with which to do that.
The most famous, or at least the one that people
had the coolest names got into the books I was

(12:52):
reading was the Black Hand, which was formed in nineteen
thirty or nineteen thirty five, who fucking knows.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
I read them nineteen thirty three.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Have yeah, April nineteen thirty three.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
And they had some internal divisions right away within the
Black Hand or within these larger collections of groups that
are trying to do this violent resistance. Some folks are like,
all right, well, let's just immediately attack settlers, like kind
of a green Hand kind of attitude, you know, and
others are like, no, we should get ready first and
have a coordinated action and the settlement of Palestine.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Here we go. Meetings.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
I know, there's the pro meeting and the pro immediate
murder plans. Yeah, valid points. Yeah, both obviously have their
pros and cons. But yeah, meetings, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
I think I'd rather just get just go straight to
the murder than have another processing session. Kil I'm kidding.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
By nineteen thirty five, which is either their fifth year
or their very beginning, who knows, they had between two
hundred and eight hundred fighters, and they were offering military
trainings for peasants as they went around, and they would
just raid Zionus settlements and kill people.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
In bombshit Oh shit crazy.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Alcasm himself died in a gun battle with British police
after being surrounded in a cave in nineteen thirty five. Yeah,
His funeral was attended by five thousand people, and so
the British soldiers shot into the crowd at the funeral.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Oh this is al Cassom. This is oh shit, Oh.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Okay, okay, you know more about this guy?

Speaker 2 (14:35):
No, I know that this is a huge figure within
the Palestinian resistance, like legend and narrative. Yeah, like this
is you know, like, yeah, this is the fucking the
patron saint of Palestinian resistance.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, there's got to be a book in English about him,
and I just haven't found it yet.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I mean the book in English about it is Wikipedia,
as far as I know.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Yeah, I got the like through the like. I've read
like maybe like six articles about him, but it's that
thing where one of the articles will have slightly more information,
but then five of the other articles have different information.
And yeah, but anyway, his death is going to help
spark the uprising of nineteen thirty six, and yeah, a
lot of people basically are specifically following in his footsteps

(15:24):
as a specific thing. Yeah, you absolutely live on as
a martyr, but we're not yet. It's nineteen thirty six.
I want to talk about some of the other ways
that Palestinians resisted. It seems like there was three prongs
of it then and probably still And I mean these
are kind of just the three ways he resists shit.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
There was armed resistance largely by secretive groups. There was
popular struggle organized from the bottom up that used a
comparatively nonviolent strategy but was not pacifist. And that's the
kind of thing that you see reflected a lot and like,
especially like the First Antifada and stuff like that. Right,
And then they're legalistic approaches that relied on pressuring both

(16:02):
the power structures like the British government, as well as
raising popular awareness around the world. It probably takes all
three of these to get anything done. And my personal
bias tends to be towards the popular struggle to kind
of thing. But the lines between these approaches are often blurred,
which is good. People should do it as ethical and
strategic in any given situation, rather than assuming that one

(16:24):
is the right one always.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
In November nineteen twenty nine, there was an Arab village
conference in Jaffa offering ideas about how to avoid the
bankruptcy of farmers through agricultural credit unions and shit like that.
Student groups met and started organizing. A national fund was
set up to help farmers who lost their land to settlements.
But there's like this heartbreaking thing. I read a lot
of ins and outs about this national fund and how

(16:47):
hard they work, traveling across the country'd raise all this money,
and by the end they raised like, you know, almost
a million dollars after like a year hard work or whatever.
And then it's like and then some South African heiress
gave the Jewish Zionist Fund four million dollars. Yeah, the
day that they announced that they had gotten a million
dollars at the right one.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yes, every every time, and there's god fucking damn it,
all right, let's have another bake sale. Yeah, but no
matter how many bake sales you do. And they were,
you know, in terms of they were doing impressive fundraising
for what they could get. But yeah, not not nearly
as good as the one South African heiress who were

(17:29):
random British patron who's just like going to give them
five times the amount of money.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Totally. But like fucking like the resistance during this period,
and I mean during all of everything, but during this
period it was just so stark what they were fighting
against like that we're going to fight the British Empire,
you know, as this like starving barely existent, like because

(17:58):
we just got free from the Ottoman's place, you know.
And yeah, that they're able to do all of this
level of organizing is amazing. Like everything I read is like,
oh and this thing we could have done better, we
could have done this better or whatever. But like they
did amazing shit with what they had. In this period
past nineteen twenty nine, women started stepping up in a
major way. Take the story of Mattiomogenum, who was a

(18:20):
Palestinian Christian woman who was born in Lebanon in eighteen
ninety nine. Her family moved to New York City when
she was a kid, and then her and her husband
moved back to Palestine in the nineteen twenties, and so
she does a lot of the English language work that
is going to happen during this time period to try
and get the word out and things like that. She
worked with another woman, a Muslim Palestinian woman named Terab

(18:41):
Abd al Hadi, to form the first Palestinian Arab Women's
Congress in nineteen twenty nine. And this group splints off
into like just a ton of different women's organizings groups,
and I would actually have to go back and do
like a two parter or just on them, which I
might eat because they're really interesting in order to get
into all the ins and outs of all the groups
they form. But they're related to each other, almost all

(19:02):
the women's organizing that's happening at this time. And they two,
the two of these women would do things like have
They'd be like, oh, a Christian woman should present to
the Muslim group, and a Muslim woman present to the
Christian group, and it ruled. They kept doing this like
this was still a part of all of the organizing.
Soon more than two hundred Palestinian women were part of
the Palestinian Arab Women's Congress, supporting the Palestinian National Congress

(19:26):
and its demands to end the Balfour Declaration and Jewish
immigration and create an actually democratic government and things like that.
And they did all kinds of organizing. They brought grievances
to the British government. They organized letter writing campaigns, but
they organized letter writing campaigns to foreign press, which like
actually does something. Sometimes letter writing campaigns work, but like,

(19:48):
let's be real, usually not right.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I mean, if you know, in my dad's head, nothing
works better than writing a letter. My dad has written
so many letters or just anything, not just like you know,
serious stuff like you know, getting you know, the prescription
drug medication lower you know, in price, but like trying

(20:13):
to get a show uncanceled on television. He's a big
believer in the you know, write a letter.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't it?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Did it? Oh? I didn't know that? Good for Buffy.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I have this, I have this vague memory from the
nineties of Buffy pe canceled after.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
One campaign to get Buffy.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Back, something like that. I don't know. If you're a
big Buffy fan and I'm wrong, don't tell me. Yeah,
can we tell in this world in which that happened,
I would have that exactly. And so they kind of
create the first Foreign Press Office for Palestine because Palestine
was distinctly lacking in state apparatus, because the Paris state

(20:53):
that existed from the British was controlled by the Zionists
already at this point. The women also organized a demonstrations,
like at one point, one hundred and twenty cars of
women drove around Jerusalem, stopping at all the foreign consulates
to hand out leaflets despite being told in no uncertain
terms that they were not allowed to do this, and

(21:13):
they were like, yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do it
anyway though, We're.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Still gonna do it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Mattel was basically in charge of the English language work
of the Women's Congress, writing telegrams to the Queen of
England and shit like that. The Women's Congress also developed
silent protests as a tactic, one that carries on to
this day to the group Women in Black. There's not
necessarily a direct lineage here, but it's like coming from
the well around the same issues, just with sixty years break.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
They also started a school, They formed prisoner support groups,
raising funds so that the families of incarcerated activists wouldn't starve,
and they got at least three political prisoners freed from
the British authorities through public pressure campaigns that might have
been letter writing.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, possibly.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
They were cool as shit. They were all so actively feminist.
I spent a while in this rabbit hole this week, right,
and there was you know, someone like social media posts
about some of the more interesting radical women fighting in
Palestine during this time, and then you'll have this like
pro patriarchal, like Muslim man being like, stop calling these

(22:18):
women feminists. You're just bringing your Western values, and then
all these like Muslim women or like shut the fuck
up what he was talking about, you know, dude. And
so I like, I went into this research being like, oh,
I should be real careful about this. They a lot
of their splinter groups had names like feminist group and

(22:40):
things like that.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
So there we go.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
And I don't know whether the Women's Congress itself or
at least some of these splinter groups, including a lot
of these founders that I'm talking about, protested the mandatory
wearing of veils. And it's worth pointing out because they're
often flattened as like women's auxiliary of a men's movement
and as if are not concerned with the rights of
women in their society, and that is not the case.

(23:06):
Mattel wrote books about women's liberation in Palestine, saying that
a local Palestinian government would be essential for justice for women.
She herself survived the Knakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's
gonna happen in nineteen forty eight. Her story drops away
after that mostly, but we know she lived a fairly
long time. She moved to the US in nineteen eighty
and she died in Virginia in nineteen ninety two. One

(23:30):
of the other groups that seemed to grow out of
the Women's Congress has a name that's usually translated to
the Chrysanthemum Flowers. And this is the like, this is
what the Instagram post was about.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
This is the like.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Instagram post worthy group. They rule, don't get me wrong,
And I want to find a book about them in English.
I found so many contradictory sources about this. Nothing ever
more contradictory than these things. Rat all o'khawan is the
Chrysanthemum Flowers. They were formed in nineteen thirty three or

(24:06):
nineteen thirty six or nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Oh man, okay, all right, no, seven thirty three. I
can't do that math, so let's call it.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
I think. I think it was nineteen thirties, or maybe
in nineteen thirty six. That felt like the most legit source.
I think nineteen forty seven they became an armed group,
because at some point they become an armed group. And
this is why people like them. As if you find
pictures of women with guns and a revolution. People get
really excited about that, including my secture.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's dope ass picture. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
This group Chrysanthemum Flowers was formed by two sisters, one
of whom people tend to agree was named Moheba Kurshid.
The other might have been named Naraman Khurshid or Arabia Kurshid.
Lots of sources say each Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
I mean when it comes to names, this is where
you know, you know Al Cassam, I you know know
Al Casam, but it's the full name where I think
it was just the first two names. I was like,
I don't know this, and you know they.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
It's my pronunciations.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's the pronunciation, and it's also the nicknames. They all
have cool nicknames too that are sometimes in there. Sometimes
it says also where they're from, long Home.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's a good point.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
What can you do?

Speaker 1 (25:24):
And there's transliteration happening like it's actually I'm not sure,
aw woe is me about this? It's it's literally just
a problem of the format of the show where I
have a week to research everything because I'm like, well,
it makes it hard to to google them, right, because
they have a million different spellings of the transliterations and
things like this. But you know, when language barrier is

(25:45):
a major issue. One of the stories I read was
basically like understandably being like, yeah, if you read historians
who don't speak Arabic, they won't get this right because
all of the sources are in Arabic. And I'm like, yes,
to be clear, I'm not a historian. I am a
pop historian who yes, tells stories. I am a storyteller, yes,

(26:07):
And I am a guest on podcasts. Yeah, so you
are expected to know all of it.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Never listen to me. Yeah, except if I'm on my podcast.
Listen to me then, But you.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Know, what is my job? I also failed at was
doing an ad break earlier. So now you're going to
get it now. Oh all right, just ad break right now.

(26:40):
And Rebecca so Mohiba was a school teacher in Jaffa,
a city to the south of Tel Aviv that is
now considered part of tel Aviv. And I suspect that
that's not a great thing that is considered part of
tel Aviv, because Jaffa seemed to be the kind of
cultural center of a lot of the Palestinian world. She
advocates for women's rights in education. She was part of

(27:02):
the Arab Women's Association. Her and her sister formed the
Chrysanthemum Flowers, a word that I have spelled differently every
single time I've written into this script, even though it
is an English language word. And at some point they
formed this and it started as a mutual aid organization.
It did allow the work of what we've been talking
about earlier. It provided relief to families who were displaced
by settlement. It also provided funds for women to go

(27:24):
to school and get education, which is fucking cool. Yeah,
they worked very actively for religious unity, as basically did
everyone during this time period, during this chunk of time,
that's what they're doing with this organization mutual aid. Later
they're going to move into arms struggle. They're going to
be the first all women military unit in the region.

(27:46):
They become an armed organization after Mohibo watched a young
boy assassinated in his mother's arms by a Zionist sniper.
That was probably the nineteen forty seventh thing. It might
have been nineteen forty eight when that happened. This unit
fought in the defense of Jaffa during the Nakba in
nineteen forty eight, and they're sick photos of them with
like I think, old timy submachine guns. And I'm not

(28:11):
covering the Nakba, but just to follow Moheba's story, like
nearly all of one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants of Jaffa,
she was ethnically cleansed. Every account I've seen says that
they were literally driven into the sea. You can find
photos of this. They had to flee on boats and
scores of people drowned.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, you know that whole, Like every single thing that
the Zionists claim that Palestinians want to do to the Jews,
you just slowly find them having done.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Having done them during the Nakba and or recently. Yeah,
the whole. Every accusation is a confession thing. Yeah, that
bears out to be true so often that I'm like, guys,
just stop accusing, because I'm just going to research it.
I'm just gonna google it, and it's gonna be a

(29:03):
thing you did. Just stop accusing.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Where'd you get that idea driving into the sea? He
would do such a thing?

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, you wouldn't want Yeah, oh, here they are driving
people into the sea and not even It's funny because
like that that phrase. I've always I don't know, I've
always been like that's a hyperbole or it's metaphor you
know exactly. I didn't literally think you could drive people

(29:32):
into the sea. Yeah, that is a thing that happened, apparently.
I like all of the like really.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Quick versions of the chrysanthemum flower and then like are
like and then she was driven into the sea. But
then it is like literally and they always put that
in there, and so I'm like, so then I spent
a while researching about that, even tho. I again, this
isn't a knock episode or so about the fall of
Jaffa and scores of people drowned and they had to
flee on boats to other countries. And I think only

(29:59):
a few thousand people were able to stay in Jaffa
during this ethnic cleansing. Yea, And now it's part of
Tel Aviv fun.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Let's all go dancing.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
But the chrysanthemum flowers are at as hell. I can't
wait to one day tell you out more about them.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Back to the early nineteen thirties, there were also a
whole bunch of various political parties cropping up which promoted
not cooperating with the British system, resistance desionism, and creating
a pan Arab alliance. So it's basically it's like the
thing that happened in the wake of this nineteen twenty
nine uprising is that Palestinian started really organizing and trying

(30:37):
all of the different strategies legal popular revolt and I
don't know what if a grenade solves my problems. Yeah,
And in nineteen thirty three, two separate assemblies of over
five hundred people started developing plans for nonviolent, non cooperation
models for an independence movement. Nonviolent marchers were getting shot

(30:57):
dead by cops in the streets. Twelve people killed one
of these demonstrations on October thirteenth, nineteen thirty three, and
twenty four killed or sixteen killed and two hundred and
four people were injured. On October twenty seventh. Some of
the protests against land sales were working, but only the
protests that happened when they were aimed at Arabs who

(31:18):
were going to sell the land, not already sold land.
The Zionists were not fucking back and down. Yeah, there
is some reason to hope during this period the intentional
demographic takeover of Palestine by Zionists, it starts stalling out
because I don't know if you knew this, most Jews

(31:40):
not Zionists.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Yeah. Yeah, as it was like a you know, it
was a thing you could be into if you had
a particularly adventurous spirit and you were like, hey, you
know what would be fun to uproots intentionally you moved

(32:02):
to a place in which we don't know the language
or the culture, and you know, it hates me and
everyone hates me. It's you know, and if you're a
European Jew around this time, you're like, you know what,
that actually doesn't seem like that bad of an idea
We'll go to based on how things are going here. Yeah.

(32:24):
But yeah, this idea of you know, again, of all
Jews being inherently Zionist is a complete falsehood.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
By nineteen twenty six, after years of these policies, seventeen
percent of the Palestinian population was Jewish. By nineteen thirty two,
it had raised all the way to eighteen point five percent.
So it got that one point five bump. Yeah, until
boy Who's going to stomp onto the world stage and

(32:57):
fuck everything up for everyone? In nineteen thirty three, something happened.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
You know his name, Charlie Chaplin. That's right, he's gonna
waddle into the room with his bendel and his Joe
mustache and his mustache, and he's gonna fuck every ye.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Good politics and bad feminism.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
In nineteen thirty three, something happened that History podcast never
talk about the rise of Nazi Germany since the UK
and the US and all these other places were like,
well we don't want you something an awful lot of
Jewish people, for very understandable reasons, We're like, well, maybe
Zionism isn't so bad after all.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Yeah, yeah, kind of the only option at the point
at which people were moving there in droves.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Absolutely, the Nazis at this point were quite happy to
see the Jews go. At first they were like, well,
you can go, but you can't bring your stuff. We
want all your stuff. The Jews had been organizing a
massive boycott of Nazi goods since nineteen thirty three, and
so Zionists were like, hey, well we'll lift the boycott

(34:10):
if you let people leave Germany with their stuff. And
Nazi Germany was like, all right, y'all can leave Germany
and bring your money with you. I guess this agreement
was called the Transfer Agreement, and it was not uncontroversial
among Jews. Internationally, non and anti Zionist Jews were entirely
against it. Pretty uniformly. Most Zionists, or at least the

(34:33):
political entities, supported it because it supported the Zionist project
and because it helped get Jews safely to Palestine. Yea,
many Zionists were firmly against any cooperation with Nazi Germany.
I'm sure that the Jews in Germany were like, that's
easy for you to say over there in Palestine, a
US get the fuck out police. Yes, the agreement did

(34:53):
save about sixty thousand Jewish people from the Holocaust. Yeah,
but they did not go to an empty country, and
nor did they show up to assimilate into Palestinian culture.
They were showing up into a project that was designed
to take over, as they've been clear about so. In cities,
Palestinians led huge revolts against the destruction of the society

(35:16):
at the hands of Zionists. In the countryside, they turned
to friend of the pod things that other people will
call you a bandit for doing, Like hey, guy, you
can't have all this land sorry, I will shoot you
if you keep trying to take.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
It from me. Yeah. Nice stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Yeah, it just comes up a lot on this show. Yeah,
this show, we are pro banned.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah, we're depending on how cool your hat is.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
I know, exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
In nineteen thirty five, Britain offered everyone a deal. It's like,
I think kind of the first I don't know, I
think it's called this, but it's like the first one
state solution attempt. They offer a legislative council of twenty
five members that would include five Brits, eight Muslims, seven Jews,
three Christians, and two people representing commercial interests.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Fun. I love those commercial interest guys, just being like, uh,
I also sell I sell the most oranges.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
So I got to see I've run across this in
early twentieth century stuff where they were more mask off
all over the world about that, where they were like, well,
of course someone in the government has to just represent
the rich people.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need someone here to represent you know,
this group of people, this group of people, and this
guy's right to use slave labor to get sugar.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah exactly. That is describing the early federal systems of
many countries.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, it's always like, oh, okay, but who has the
most power here? Oh I think you know, I think
you know.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, And now, of course, you know, you just have
lobbyists that represent all these commercial interests instead of more
power than the electorate.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
That's right, but.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Actually I think they still even have whatever. I'm not
a big government understander. And so they offer this solution.
The Arab High Council, which kind of represents a lot
of the you know, the elites or whatever it gets called,
was like, yeah, well we'll take it. It's not perfect,
but whatever, we'll take it. It seems better and what's
going on? And the Zionists were like, well, I know

(37:31):
that that would let us wield power that's vastly disproportioned
to our actual demographic numbers, but that doesn't give us
a majority or total control. So no, yeah, it is
a object fell through.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
It is a crazy it is. Yeah, it's just it's
an absolutely nuts thing. When you're so confident in your
eventual demographic majority that's going to be pulled off through
some way, we'll see that. You're just like nope, we
are running this place or nothing. Yep.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, it's just like imagine how different because you know,
eventually the British proably would have still left. And like,
I mean, I don't know, I just like it's sad
when I think about like all of the different times
people tried to be like what if it's just not
an ethno state.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Right, yeah? Yeah, And like I think of that, it
speaks to, I mean the time period in which all
this was taking place, the time period in which you know,
modern in which Zionism was you know, created, and it
speaks to kind of like just culturally, you know, in

(38:43):
terms of Western culture, it being not at all a
weird thing to just be like, no, our ideology says
that we're going to make this a racial thing, and
it's weird of you to think it would be anything
other than that.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, why wouldn't we do that? Yeah totally.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, which, like listen, I'm willing to look at in
terms of like in its correct historical context, not to villainize,
but to understand. I just hate the revisionism that people
do when they talk about this time because all you
ever really hear about is the Arabs rejecting every peace

(39:23):
proposal and every you know Congress of Zionists, you know,
within the British Mandate Palestine, being like we just want hey,
we'll share. Well, of course we'll share. And it's like,
this is not the case. This is not the case,
no matter how many times you pretend it is the case. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
This same year, everyone finally knew what was happening because
kind of a Looney Tunes way on October sixteenth, nineteen
thirty five, some people were unloading a ship and there's
a barrel labeled cement and they dropped the barrel and
it broke. The men didn't come out, no, no, it

(40:06):
was it was guns and ammo locks and shit. And
someone said, hey, that's not cement. Yeah, that one barrel
is probably the only barrel that somehow accidentally it must
have come from America. They were like, it's just a cement. Guy,
I got it mixed up with.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
His a you know, they got the mafia there. Just
the bag of a truck fell off. What can you
do anyways, look away.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
And so people were like, oh, underground terrorists, I as
militias are getting armed and now we know it seems bad.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
It kind of became do or die for folks, and
it all came to a head in nineteen thirty six
and gets called well then not particularly evocative title is
the nineteen thirty six to nineteen thirty nine Arab Revolt
of Palestine or a vocative the Great Revolt? I know
which one I would rather be part of, the one

(41:05):
that implies you might win, not the one that's like,
but what happens in nineteen thirty nine?

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like anything that starts with great. Yeah.
You know, whether it's like wars or gatsbies.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, or deals like these deals.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Nothing that was good, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Planned that one by Sophie reminded me to an ad.
Here's the ad break and we're back the Great Revolt.

(41:46):
Like a lot of really fucking cool movements, the Great
Revolt wasn't started by this or that group, not any
of the congresses or the different patriarchal families, or the
political parties, not even the communist parties or the Black.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Hands or the Green Hands.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, although I guess it kind of was a little
bit started by some of the revolt could be labeled
as starting from the black hand guy getting killed a
Cassam and then also some terrorist actions. It led to
some things that where some settlers got killed, and then
some Arab kids got killed.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
But the point is it's organic.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Yeah, But overall, I mean it was a lot of
different Like a lot of these things, a lot of
different things are called the start point of it. But
the first thing that happened out of it was a
six month long Friend of the Pod general strike, probably
the longest one we've talked about on this show, besides
the general strike of enslaved people in the US South

(42:50):
during the Civil War. As for why it had to
start from the grassroots, I want to quote from the
book The One Hundred Years War on Palestine. In the
two decades after nineteen seventeen, the Palestinians had been unable
to develop an overarching framework for their national movement, such
as the WAFT in Egypt, or the Congress Party in
India or Shinfeane in Ireland, nor did they maintain an

(43:12):
apparently solid national front, as some others peoples fighting colonialism
had managed to do. Their efforts were undermined by the hierarchical, conservative,
and divided nature of Palestinian society and politics, characteristic of
many in the region, and further sapped by a sophisticated
policy of divide and rule adopted by the mandatory authorities.

(43:33):
But by nineteen thirty six this divide and conquer wasn't
working because that only affected the political class, not the grassroots.
A British civil servant who'd quit over how Palestine was
being treated. Because there are some decent people from wherever
you're born, He described the cause of the revolt like
this quote. The rebellion today is, to a greater extent

(43:56):
than ever before, a revolt of villagers, and its immediate
cause is the proposed scheme of partition. The moving spirits
in the revolt are not the nationalist leaders, most of
whom are now in exile, but men of the working
in agricultural classes who are risking their lives and what
they believe to be the only way left to them
of saving their homes and their villages. I just I

(44:20):
really like how clear that is.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yeah, that's like a British.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Guy writing at the time. One of the first groups
to throw down in this general strike was the Arab
Car Owners and Drivers Committee, and a lot of this
was actually tax strikes. After months of strikes, the Arab
High Arab High Committee signed on agreeing to non cooperation
and civil resistance all the stuff that people have been
advocating the whole time. They basically the leaders got drag

(44:45):
kicking and screaming into supporting what the people were already doing,
which is a tiles oldest time. Their demands were basically,
we want a democratic government and to stop Zionists from
colonizing our country. Resistance was a huge part of it,
literally under the classic slogan no taxation without representation.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
Well, that sounds like some straight communism to me.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
I know, absolutely, the reds must be there.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
Mm hmm, that's no taxation without Stalin was like.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Yeah, actually, oh, I'm going to get the details of
the slightly wrong. So this partition is being planned, and
at first the communist parties were against the partition because
they lived there, and they were like, we don't want
the partition. But then I think, I think I just
read this like right before, but didn't put in the
script because I didn't want to talk too much on Stalin. Randomly,
Stalin was like, no, we support the partition. So then

(45:37):
all of the fucking Palaestinian communists had to be like,
we support the partition. Yeah, partition great, yeah, yeah, anyway,
the actual cool people doing shit support committees spread all
over the country doing mutual aid work like taking care
of the sick and supporting families. Nonviolent marches were met
with bullets as always, organizers were jailed, martial law was enacted,

(46:01):
and this is all for the nonviolent stage of the revolt.
Prisoners are getting gunned down for non violently refusing orders
in jail and like one guy's quote is shouting, martyrdom
is better than jail as he refuses orders in jail
and gets killed. The Arab High Committee tried to co
opt the general strike in classic form. They called an

(46:23):
end to the general strike, being like, oh, don't worry.
The British have totally promised they'll take our concerns seriously.
Now we've totally totally shown them. This didn't happen. The
end of the general strike did happen. The British were like, well,
we've given a lot of thought and here on our
gloomy island we've decided what's best for you.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
Over there, we'll give you know what they always know
what's best. I'm very excited for what this deal is
going to be. It's funny, better than a lot of
the shit now, but it still sucks. Yeah, we will
give seventeen percent of your country to the Jews, the
most productive seventeen percent, and do a little ethnic cleansing
in those areas quick, and you can have the rest
of the country. Only when I say you can have
the rest of the country, you'll still be under our

(47:04):
colonial administration. Are anti colonials? Sorry, this is mandated. Yeah,
this was the first partition of Palestine. So part two
of the uprising wasn't as polite as the General strike
of nineteen thirty six. In October nineteen thirty seven, they're like,
all right, well that didn't work. Armed revolt time. Yeah,

(47:25):
that's kind of how it goes, especially you know, you
get that first antifada and you're just like, you know
what that was. That was pretty good. It was a
very peaceful except for all the you know, murder, idf
doing the murder. And then you get that second intifada
and you're like, oh, yeah, now this is the one
that everyone's going to bring up.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
I know, I know.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
And there's like the intro quote to the chapter in
one of these books was the whole those who make
a nonviolent revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. Yeah, it's
like that is just true.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
That's just true. That's just exactly. I mean, it just
bears out in history every single time.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Yeah, and you know, yeah, and they people will go
back and forth with some of the tactical stuff with this.
It seems like they almost pulled this off. It took
one hundred thousand British soldiers to bring this to heal.
This is one soldier for every four adult Palestinian men.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Now as they crushed it, it went real bad. There's
like the Brits are bringing in, you know, bombers and shit.
I've read ten percent. I've read seventeen percent of Palestinian men.
Adult men were either killed, injured, arrested, or driven out
of the country during this time period. For demographic comparison,
that would be like if around twenty million adult American

(48:49):
men were rounded up and killed or driven out of
the country or oh shit whatever. One of the leaders
of the revolt was an experienced guerrilla fighter, and I'm
just bringing them up. This part of the story is cool.
And when I say experienced, I mean he was in
his mid seventies or his early eighties. Hell yeah, depending
on which source he read. His name is Farhan al Sadi,

(49:10):
who'd spent a bunch of time in prison and then
he joined I think the Black Hand when he got out.
I don't know love about him as a person to
like say one way or the other. But eventually he
was convicted of he I think he was the guy
who fired the shot that started the the pre part
of the revolt where I said, some where some settlers

(49:30):
got killed. I think he had like pulled them off
a bus and killed one of them or something. Oh yeah, yeah,
But he wasn't convicted of that. He was convicted of
the possession of a single round of ammunition and that
was the death penalty. They knew who he was, but
they couldn't prove anything else. As the best I can tell, Yeah,

(49:51):
he died at either age seventy five or eighty one,
so I guess by that we have to say seventy eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
in the of a gorilla struggle. And I think that
this is a heartwarming It is never too late to
follow your dreams. Inspiring news story, just like actors who
don't get their start until their fifties.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
Yeah, it's the same thing. You never know when you're
going to be you know, the spark of a revolution
or be a revolutionary Shahid. You know, it's never too
late to give up on your dreams, folks.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Now, meanwhile, the British go full fucking mad Max on
the rebels, and I wish I did not mean this literally.
They had developed this trick I had never heard of
over in Ireland or what you do? You take a
prisoner and you tie them to the front of your

(50:46):
car or train so the other rebels can't attack your
convoy because there's a living person tied to it that
is your prisoner.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
So so first of all, that is just straight up
mad Max, insane. And second of all, you're telling me
the British were using human shields. Yes, absolutely, And there
was photos of this. The one I've seen isn't a
guy like tied to the grill. It's two guys tied

(51:17):
up to a little trailer being pushed by the front
of the vehicle. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
So they tied to the grill is like a little
bit more brutal. They had to develop the thing to
push in the front of this fucking car. They went
to a fucking auto shop fabricator and we're like, we
need a mad Max a guy and the guy was like,
I'm from the future. I know totally what you mean.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah. Yeah, Like that's crazy because I just took a
time machine to watch that movie and now I'm back
here and I chose this time randomly because I'm evil,
because I'm evil, and I just like, you know, making
weird shit for the British. Yeah. So yeah, let's do it. Bro,
Let's let's make this mad Max fucking torture human shield machine. Yeah,

(52:00):
every every accusation, every single goddamn time.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Yeah, if you are suspected of being a rebel, the
British would blow up your house or kill your family,
just doing the like we're sad we can't do this
in Ireland anymore, so we'll do it here.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
They would demolish random homes and villages. This is against
international law, the whole collective punishment thing that has never
stopped an empire, especially not in this part of the
country or a world. Thousands were arrested without trial. In
nineteen thirty eight, the British destroyed this village, Baca Algarabia,
burning down almost every wooden building and leveling seventy stone houses.

(52:41):
Then they arrested all the men in town and there's
this pattern that I've seen a bunch of times. Your
big shitty colonial state is trying to repress an anti
colonial or anti authoritarian revolution. So like, ah, we locked
up all the men, were like good now, and then
the women take things even harder.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah, it's most because they're just like women. They can't
do anything. I know.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Somehow they picked up rocks with their weak womenly arms.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Yeah, the women of the village brought their kids and
a bunch of rocks and went to the military barracks
at night and were like, give us our fucking men
back and started throwing rocks.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Fuck yes, and it worked. Wow.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
They got all of the men released from prison by
storming the prison with rocks.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
That is badass. Yeah, and so those are really really
nice wives. You know, I would like would do that
for me, but I don't think she would. Just tw
you know that these were decent husbands, you know. Yeah, yeah,
clearly these are decent husbands. You know. With me, Francesca
would be like, you know, you need you need a

(53:47):
few weeks in there.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
You know, prisoner. You know, we'll just put your name
on all the things draw to the cause.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, exactly. She'll be like, you know what, I got
kind of a busy schedule this week. Can I throw
some rocks? Get a prison next week? I'm just getting
I love my wad former guest of the pod. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
You know, other prisoners were liberated by more traditional methods
rebels with guns, storm jails and let Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Classic, classic, classic way to do it. There's multiple methods,
always good. Yeah, I always say go with the classic,
but I like, you know, the gangs of women with rocks. Yeah,
that's all you have is rocks. Exactly, go with the rocks.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Like when you buy name Brad Dreno, even though you
know that there's other brands that work just as good better.

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
You never go wrong storming to prison with rifles exactly.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
I mean, for the most part, you could never go wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
No, it totally doesn't end well badly for anyone any
talking about rebels took out an acting district commissioner, an
Australian guy who'd been really excited about the partition of
the country, and so four masked men did him a
shooting in September nineteen thirty seven, on his forty first birthday,
while he was on his way to his Protestant Church.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Oh shit, happy birthday. I know.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Yeah, here's a couple presents bonus holes and the speed
holes makes him go faster.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, exactly helps them blow out more candles. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
The British lost their fucking British minds over this. Yeah,
they rounded up people and started torturing and raping people
to get information.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Fuck.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
The funny thing about like being the boring reformist organization
like the Arab High Committee that like Higher Committee that
was like ended the strike and trying to play nice
with the British. It never works. You're not safer after
you know this Australian dude gets killed. The Arab High
Committee was declared illegal and basically all the Nationalists leadership

(55:53):
was deported or went into exile. But classically, a bottom
of rebellion doesn't stopped by deporting its self at leaders
and people went even harder. British lost. The British lost
control over a lot of the country, especially the rural areas,
and also a bunch of the cities. It was also
this revolt that the Kafia, that black and white scarf

(56:13):
became the symbol of rebellion and Palestinian pride.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Oh all right, that I did not know that. Yeah,
I mean I did know that. I've always known that totally.
If we're wrong, I got it from a history book. Yeah. Also,
if we're wrong, I didn't know that for a reason.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I did get because wrong.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, it's like I mean things like that. I'm always like,
there's probably multiple times or places, but that whatever sounds right,
I'll go with it. The Palestinians almost pulled this off.
One British general set in nineteen thirty eight. The situation
was such that civil administration of the country was, to
all practical purposes non existent, and that practically every village

(56:53):
in the country harbors and supports the rebels and will
assist in concealing their identity from the government forces. And
so yeah, they got the fucking world. How different it
would be if they'd pulled this off. Yeah, the two things.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
I imagine you say that sentence a lot on this podcast.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
I absolutely do. That is kind of the I'll be
like the we we almost we almost did it is
the other name of the show.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
If I almost did it, by Jim.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
We almost pulled it off, by every revolutionary everywhere. Yeah,
the two things that brought down this rebellion. Were two
things we see bring down an awful lot of rebellions. First,
and I think this is the most important thing to
point it to, overwhelming military force of the British and
their complete lack of like interest in following any semblance

(57:47):
of law as they do it. You know, you're talking
about shooting and prisoning or exiling almost one man and
five in the country. That is twice a decimation for
anyone keeping track.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Oh, I forget that decimation is like a unit of measurement.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Yeah, how to kill guys.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Yeah, yeah, I just always saw it as just like
a word meaning a thing, but it's like a specific
amount of dead, right.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
It was funny. This actually came up in one of
our most recent episodes. I think of it as related
to a Tolstoy story about happening in the Russian military,
and then Sophie pointed out that it was a Roman thing.
Thinks about the Roman army, Roman military once a week. Yeah,
that's how it goes.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
But yeah, hey, it.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Didn't correct me. Must be right, that's okay. So they
had one hundred thousand soldiers and they you know, fucked
up everyone. They found the other thing that happened was
a successful divide and conquer ended up kind of coming in.
In the end, Palestinian started splitting between those that wanted

(58:53):
to compromise and those that didn't, or, as another source
put it, basically, it was like different strong men were
vying for control, which would have been avoided by grassroots
and democratic institutions. That's probably the bias of that author,
but I probably share that bias. This split went badly.
Hundreds of assassinations were the result of the split. One

(59:15):
rebel wrote that it had started off as a war
against the English and the Jews, but quote transformed into
a civil war where methods of terrorism, pillage, theft, fire,
and murder became common, which Jesus Christ no wonder. Ireland
and Palestine are such tight friends. I'm just doing an
ad libs from the same script talking about what the
British did in Ireland.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Yea splits and.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
You know violence, Irish and Irish violence and Palestinian on
Palestinian violence.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
The British are really good at that. They Americans taken conquer,
but they can't cook a fucking meal. Weird, Now, well,
they have to conquer places that know how to Yeah,
they have to conquer places that know how to eat good. Yeah,
so the only way, no wonder, there're so mad. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
By the summer of nineteen thirty nine, the rebellion was
crushed and Palestine was way way weaker. After the revolt,
the newly armed and trained Zionist settlers came out on
top because they were kind of like, I mean, like
the British mostly did this right, but then the Zionists
are like getting some military training, They're getting all these weapons.

(01:00:24):
Even the General Strike wound up playing well for the
Zionists because as different Arab industries shut down, Hebrew labor
stepped up. If the Arab revolt had only been against
the Zionists and the British had stayed out of it,
the world would have been a completely different place today.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Yeah. Well that's kind of the truth of anything the
British touch.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
I know, if the British had stayed out of it,
a tale of utopia is al. If the British had
stayed out of it, then all the people fleeting programs
could have gone to the UK.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just uh, it's and it's
it's interesting too because I always find the mirroring of
the two, the you know, the British colonial mindset and
the Zionist mindset being so similar that it's when you
see a British Israeli official talking where you go like, oh, okay, okay,

(01:01:30):
the same same, same, same thing. It's like, you know,
whenever I would see like what's his name, Alon Levy,
who was like the former the former government spokesman for
Israel wh would go on all the TV shows before
he was fired because somehow he lied too much even
for Israel.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
And like you know, you you hear his you know,
his British accent, and you you hear what he's saying
in the way saying. You're just like, yeah, this is
this is like a British this is a very British
euro centric type of you know, viewpoint. And also you know,

(01:02:12):
just the whole affectation of it is very British And
it kind of puts Zionism in this context that you
didn't initially put it in because they've done so much
reht conning in order to make it not seem like
this Western settler colonial movement and rather some sort of
indigenous rights movement created by the those you know who

(01:02:33):
were kicked out of the schtettle in the pale of settlement,
and it's like, no, nope, nope, not my full story here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
I mean, I've been aware of a lot of the
modern stuff about Israel Palestine for a very long time,
but this time period, a lot of the like quick
history type stuff I had read had really basically been like, well,
just too many Jews were coming, and it was okay
when there's three Jews, but people got really mad if
lots of Jews came, as compared to specifically being like no,

(01:03:06):
this was a specific and conscious setting up of settlements
that were outside the rest of society, and like just
a completely fundamentally different thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Really? That was the like I knew a lot of
the broad strokes of a lot of this, but that
was the stuff about the really early stuff that I
was like, oh okay, now I yeah again it I.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Think it's like, it's context that is important to understand
for anyone who's like, who's you know, recently coming to
this conflict and wanting to learn about it, and and
it's it's you know, this context is also hard I
think for some people on you know, for not just

(01:03:51):
for like Zionists, but also for people who are anti
Zionists trying to understand the conflict or learning about it
and knowing that there was like you can't say, oh,
the Palestinians were only ever victims. They were never you know, victimizing.

(01:04:11):
It's because no, there was violent revolts going on against
what they were seeing coming on the horizon. Was there
eventual ethnic cleansing and they were right about it? Yeah,
And you know it's like you can't say, oh, well,
we only ethnically cleansed because they started revolting because they

(01:04:32):
were worried about us ethnically cleansing, when it was so
clear from the writings of early Zionists like Hertzeul, like Jobatinsky,
you know, like fucking just like the entire early Zionist
cohort was saying demographic majority is everything, and ethnic cleansing

(01:04:53):
is the only way to go about it. You know.
So they're not wrong. And it's not to say that
I'm like, yeah, you know, I love killing people or whatever,
but it's to say that this history that we have,
this one sided narrative of just like oh, the Arabs,

(01:05:14):
you know, didn't want there to be Jews or thought
there were too many Jews or whatnot. Yeah, is just
is just completely completely missing the point.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah, well, if you support the protests that are happening
whenever you are listening to this as we're recording it
right now, there's really amazing and inspiring protests at universities
across the US that the police.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Are violently putting down.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Yeah, violently putting down because people are camping on a
place they pay forty thousand dollars a year to go.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
Yeah, that the mainstream media and government officials are calling
anti semitic, even though there's a large and disproportionately Jewish
population of people who are there supporting the protests for
you know, divestment on these college campuses from Israel. Yeah,
and you know all that all that fun stuff, all

(01:06:14):
the you know, fun authoritarian bullshit that we doesn't affect us.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
Yeah, So support those things or whatever is happening by
the time you read this. Because until Palestine is free people, yeah,
I mean yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yeah, I mean straight up, that is the That is
a hard fast truth of it. And if you want
to support them through uh laughing, Ah, I've got a plug.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
For you, Okay, what is it? I will support them
by laughing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
It's called Bad Hasbar the World's most moral podcasts. A
podcast that I do about Israeli propaganda. It is mostly
just you know, me and some friends sitting around talking
about just some crazy propaganda that we saw, you know, recently,

(01:07:16):
and making fun of it. It's a lot of fun.
It's cathartic. I don't think it will help anything in
the world, So obviously, give your time and energy to
something you know, more direct, Yes, more direct.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
But direct stuff matters. But direct stuff matters too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Yeah, if you but if you want to, you know,
like to have an emotional break from it, and you
want to you feel like no one else is is
giving you permission to, you know, be mad. Come, come,
come laugh with us. It's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Wholly endorse this podcast. I wrote. My plug is that
I have a substack Marto Kildroy dot substack whatever, and
recently by whenever you hear this, but maybe not super recently,
by whenever you hear this, I wrote a piece called
Casting Fire, which came out of a conversation I had.
I was giving a presentation to students at the New

(01:08:14):
School unrelated to the occupation. A class had read one
of my books and I was zooming in to talk
to them about that, but then the occupation had taken off,
so instead we talked about what I have learned through
my experience and through my reading about the stages of
protests and how to avoid recuperation, and how we inoculate

(01:08:38):
ourselves against various types of splintering, the things that destroy movements,
how to avoid it. It's called casting Fire. It's very short,
but it's free. It's an essay. That's what I got, Sophie.
Anything you want to plug?

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yeah, we have a new podcast. It's a weekly podcast
hosted by Jimmie loftis called sixteenth Minute of Fame. And
if it is after April thirtieth, the trailer is out.
If it's after May seventh episode or more.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
And that's the weekly rewatch podcast of sixteen Candles where
every week Jamie watches sixteen Candles its top in a
different way, the subject just over and over again forever.
It's the Groundhog Day of podcasts about a different movie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
My gosh, pod yourself a sixteenth candle.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Yeah, and we will be back next week with more stuff. Actually,
I think we'll be back next week with Jamie loftus
probably unless schedules change, in which case we won't. Bye everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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