Geopolitical conflict in the Middle East and North Africa
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This week on the Global Research News Hour we mark both the 19th month of Israel's continued assaults on Gaza since October 7th, and we also mark the 77th anniversary of the NAKBA, the displacement and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians which started the Arab-Israeli War. We will first hear from Louay Alghoul, a Winnipeg lawyer with over a hundred relatives killed over the past year and a half and he will inform us regarding the situation as he encountered the fleeing and dying from his trips to Egypt in recent months. Later on we hear from radio station CFCR in Saskatoon regarding their guest Deirdre Nunan an orthopedic surgeon who talks about what she encountered through her practice of medicine in this unending Middle East war.
Dr. BI Naddy, Arab American, Doctor, Teacher, Philanthropist Dr. B.I. Naddy has lived a life of service. Born in Haifa when it was a port city in Palestine in 1933, He was one of 750,000 Arabs forced to leave during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, settling in Amman, Jordan. A brilliant student, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study Chemistry in the United States. Following a brief time as a scientist for the Jordanian Governement, Dr. Naddy returned to the United States permanently and became the first Ph.D. professor at Columbia State Community College (the first community college in Tennessee. He taught over 5000 students, many of whom went on to stellar careers in medicine. His strong spiritual foundation has led him to great philanthropic pursuits, and he has started a number of scholarships and endowments for education. Join hosts Tom Price and Father Chris Bowhay, as they learn about the life of Arab American, Dr. B.I. Naddy.
Send me a text!Israel's first war against its Arab neighbors and co-inhabitants.Different quotes Support the showwar102podcast@gmail.comhttps://www.reddit.com/r/War102Podcast/https://war102.buzzsprout.com
Send me a text!The lead up to the end of the British Mandate and the Establishment of PalestineDifferent quotes Support the showwar102podcast@gmail.comhttps://www.reddit.com/r/War102Podcast/https://war102.buzzsprout.com
The Jaffa orange, a fruit that once symbolized prosperity and collaboration, is now tied to a complex and painful history. Before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jaffa's citrus industry was world-renowned, celebrated for its sweet, vibrant fruit. This thriving sector, cultivated by both Jewish and Arab farmers, symbolized the region's agricultural success. However, with the eruption of conflict following the United Nations' proposed partition plan, Jaffa became a flashpoint of violence. Thousands of Palestinians were displaced, and the agricultural heart of the region was shattered. The flourishing groves that once exemplified collaboration were destroyed, leaving the Jaffa orange to embody not only agricultural achievement but also political turmoil.How did the Jaffa orange, a shared symbol of Jewish-Arab harmony, transform into a powerful political emblem after the 1948 Nakba? What role did it play in the founding of Israel, and how did it shape Palestinian identity and resistance? What became of the groves, and why does the Jaffa orange continue to resonate as a symbol of loss and struggle despite the disappearance of the land that nurtured it?In the final part of this series, John and Patrick delve into the tangled legacy of the Jaffa orange, uncovering its deep ties to the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the enduring significance of this storied fruit.-----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review -----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com
This week on The Learning Curve, co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Andrea Silbert interview Israeli historian, journalist, and author of A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, Tom Segev. Dr. Segev delves into the life and legacy of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father. He shares insights into Ben-Gurion's early years in Poland, his involvement in Zionist politics, and immigration to Palestine in 1906, which set the stage for his leadership during pivotal moments in history. Segev covers Ben-Gurion's rise to prominence, his role in forming the Zionist Labor Federation, and the strategies he employed during the 1936-39 Arab revolt. Additionally, Segev examines Ben-Gurion's historic leadership in declaring Israel's independence in 1948, the unification of Jewish militias into the Israeli Defense Forces, and the implications of the Arab-Israeli War. He also highlights Ben-Gurion's efforts to establish state institutions, absorb Jewish immigrants, and his vision for the nation, while acknowledging the complicated aspects of his political leadership. Dr. Segev positions Ben-Gurion among the most significant leaders of the twentieth century, with a legacy that continues to influence Israeli society and its international relations today.
Since October 7, 2023, many have feared that the conflict between Israel and Hamas would bloom into a wider war that would consume the Middle East. Today, we are dangerously close to that reality. In just the last month, Israel carried out several attacks against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Israel is widely believed to be behind the remote detonation of pagers and communications devices that were implanted with explosives, killing and injuring scores of Hezbollah members. Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and systematically killed much of its other leadership. It has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon—its first in nearly 20 years. It has bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria. Iran retaliated this week by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel. In the Middle East, no stranger to warfare, this may be the most treacherous moment for interstate conflict since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, is today's guest. We begin by visiting each theater of the Middle East conflict: Lebanon, Gaza, Iran. We talk about Israel's strategy, Gaza's humanitarian crisis, and Iran's next steps. We talk about the odds that today's conflict will tip over into a full-blown regional war—and what that war might look like. And we talk about the United States, what the Biden White House is trying to achieve through private and public channels, and what levers Biden has left to influence the Middle East in his final weeks in office. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at PlainEnglish@Spotify.com. Host: Derek Thompson Guest: Natan Sachs Producer: Devon Baroldi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Book- 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War This audio excerpt serves as an introduction to this fine book. Purchase the book on amazon or at your favorite book seller. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris (Author) Benny Morris demolishes misconceptions and provides a comprehensive history of the Israeli-Arab war of 1948 This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers—Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.
This week we talk about Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Hamas.We also discuss Egypt, the Rafah Crossing, and Netanyahu's motivations.Recommended Book: Going Zero by Anthony McCartenTranscriptIsrael, as a country, was founded as a consequence of, and in the midst of, a fair bit of conflict and turmoil.It was formally established in mid-1948 after years of settlement in the area by Jewish people fleeing persecution elsewhere around the world and years of effort to set up a Jewish-majority country somewhere on the planet, that persecution having haunted them for generations in many different parts of the world, and in the wake of widespread revelation about the Holocaust carried out by the Nazis in parts of Europe they conquered and controlled.Israel finally happened, then, in part because Jewish people had been treated so horribly for so long, and there was finally government-scale support for this effort following that conflict, and the realization of just how monstrous that treatment had become.The area that was carved out for this new nation, though, was also occupied and claimed by other groups of people.The British and French controlled it for a while in the decades leading up to the creation of Israel, but before that it was ruled by the Ottomans as part of their Syria administrative region and, like the rest of their Empire, it was formerly a Muslim state.Thus, what serves as a hallowed day worthy of celebration for Israelis, May 14th, Israel's national day, commemorating their declaration of independence, for other people living in the region, that day is referred to as the Nakba, which translates roughly to "the catastrophe," marking a period in which, beginning that year, 1948, about half of Palestine's population of Arabs, something like 700,000-750,000 people either fled of their own volition, or were forced to flee by Jewish paramilitary groups who moved in to clear the locals leading up to the emergence of Israel, at first, and then by the newfound Israeli military, after the formation of the country.Hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, people who didn't flee were massacred, and wells were poisoned to kill stragglers and keep people from returning.Ultimately, about 80% of the Arab Muslim population in what was formerly British-held Mandatory Palestine, and which was a Muslim region in a Muslim country before that were forced from their homes leading up to or just after Israel's Declaration of Independence.This, alongside the existing hatred toward Jewish people some regional leaders already had, mostly for religious reasons, sparked the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which was just one of several and frequent full-scale military conflicts between Israel and its neighbors in the early days of its existence, the Israelis mostly on the defensive, and frequently targeted by surprise attacks by many or all of their neighbors simultaneously, even in the earliest days of their national founding.Israel, in part because of support from international allies, and in part because of its militarized society—that militarization reinforced as a consequence of these conflicts, as well—fairly handedly won every single war against, again, often all, of their Muslim neighbors, simultaneously, though often at great cost, and those victories led to a sequence of expansions of Israel's borders, and humiliations for their neighbors, which further inflamed those existing prejudices and fears.Israel has controlled the non-Israel territories of the West Bank, of East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—all of them majority Muslim, and collectively referred to as the Palestinian Territories—since the aftermath of the Six Day war (which was one of those aforementioned, all of their neighbors attacking them all at once conflicts) in 1967.Israeli settlers have slowly established militarized toeholds in these areas, kicking out and in some cases killing the folks who live on the land they take, which is against international law, but generally allowed by the Israeli government.And though these areas were governed by the Palestinian Authority beginning in the mid-1990s, the PA lost control of Gaza in 2006, a more militant group called Hamas taking over practical control in the area at that time, ruling through violence and threats of violence, basically, despite the Palestinian Authority continuing to claim they run things there, too.On October 7, 2023, that more militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Hamas, launched a sneak attack against Israel, hitting multiple areas along the Israeli border with the Strip, killing at least 1,139 Israelis and taking 252 people captive.Hamas said this attack was in response to Israel's abuses of Palestinian people, historically and contemporarily, while Israelis generally see this as an unprovoked attack on mostly civilians by a terrorist organization.What I'd like to talk about today is the conflict that's erupted since that attack in early-October of last year, where it looks to be going next, and some of the repercussions of it, locally and internationally, thus far.—In the days following Hamas' attack on Israel, the Israeli military began bombarding targets throughout the Gaza Strip, focusing on Hamas targets—of which there were many—but because of how interwoven these targets were with civilian infrastructure, located in civilian buildings and in extensive tunnels underneath many major cities, that also meant bombarding a lot of areas packed with everyday, non-Hamas civilians.The Israeli military then started warning folks to leave leading up to a more formal ground invasion, supplies were cut off, and tens of thousands of people fled south, beyond the range of this impending invasion and the ongoing rocket and artillery barrage, though a lot of non-Hamas people were killed, and a lot of civilian infrastructure was demolished.Early on, Egypt warned Israel about forcing Palestinians across their shared border, even as aid trucks, which typically entered the country via the Rafah crossing along that border, were backed up for miles—the Israeli government disallowing their entry and the distribution of that aid, saying they didn't want it to support and sustain Hamas.In late-November, a weeklong ceasefire allowed around 100 Israeli hostages and 240 Palestinian prisoners held by Israelis to be freed, and some aid was allowed into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.In early December, Israeli forces had moved on from Gaza City to the southern city, Khan Younis, where Hamas soldiers and commanders were reportedly hunkering down and controlling events in the Strip.Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled south because of Israel's invasion of the north were forced to flee even further south, down to Rafah, which is the southernmost governing region in the Strip, where the city of Rafah, and the Rafah crossing, which connects Egypt to Gaza, are located.At this point, concerns held by Israel's allies, like the US, began to bubble up to the surface, ultimately voiced in public by the US Defense Secretary, who surreptitiously warned the Israeli military about killing civilians, couching that warning in advice about establishing a lasting, actual victory.The United Nations, which had already been warning about the civilian catastrophe that was unfolding in the Strip due to the nature of Israel's invasion and bombardment of the region, including all that civilian infrastructure, and all the civilian deaths that were piling up in Israel's pursuit of Hamas, also became more vocal around this time, warning about widespread slaughter and starvation, but also potential regional repercussions if Israel wasn't careful about how it treats Gazan civilians; the idea being that Israel was essentially slaughtering innocent people, even if it claimed it wasn't intending to, and that they were being used as human shields by Hamas, and that could stoke more animosity from its regional neighbors, which in turn could spark a broader conflict.As part of that campaign, the UN Secretary General invoked Article 99 for the first time since he took office, which led to a ceasefire vote in the Security Council, which failed because the US vetoed an otherwise near-unanimous vote—the UK's abstention the only other non-yes vote on the matter.By early February of this year, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu indicated that he planned to invade that southernmost border city, Rafah, where a huge number of people already lived, but also where something like a million Palestinian civilians had fled because their homes further north were bombarded, invaded, and in many cases left in ruins—no shelter, no electricity, no water. So around 1.5 million people were trying to survive in a city typically inhabited by maybe a third that number.Israel's neighbors and other entities throughout the region issued formal statements against a potential invasion of Rafah, citing concerns for the civilians who were now massed there, densely packed into this city, and thus at great risk of harm should bombs start dropping and bullets start flying, and US President Biden, shifting away from a seeming policy of having other folks in his administration condemn and criticize and warn about how the invasion was proceeding, as part of an apparent effort to maintain formal, top-of-the-hierarchy alignment with Israel, said that there shouldn't be any kind of military operation in Rafah until and unless there's a "credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support" for the citizens who were hunkered down there.But Netanyahu, despite those criticisms and warnings, doubled-down on his ambition to invade the city and take out what he claimed were the final remnants of Hamas' leadership in the Strip, whatever the consequences.Within days of that statement from Biden, Israel's military launched a raid into Rafah, which freed two Israeli hostages, but resulted in the killing of at least 70 people, dozens of whom were children, according to Gaza's health ministry.Around this time it was reported, by that same health ministry, that more than 30,000 Palestinians had been confirmed killed in the invasion so far, most of them women and children, though presumably a great many of them Hamas-aligned militants, as well.And it's generally understood that this is probably an undercount, as it doesn't include those who are tallied as missing but not confirmed killed, and it doesn't include the number of people who have died from non-explosion, non-bullet injuries and conditions, like those who have starved and those who have died for lack of medical treatment.By March, essentially everyone, except, seemingly, Netanyahu and his main supporters in the government, which at this point is primarily the further-right chunk of the country's parliament, have expressed concern about the consequences of an invasion of Rafah.And while discussion about this continued, and all sorts of entities, like the EU, encouraged Netanyahu to not attack the city, the Israeli military scaled-up from smaller-scale incursions and attacks, airstrikes on the city becoming a daily occurrence by the latter-half of March, many of those strikes targeting buildings where civilians were sheltering.Netanyahu announced in early April that there was a planned date for a full-scale invasion on Rafah, not divulging the day, but making this announcement shortly after the US said it wouldn't condone or support such an attack, to which Netanyahu replied that Israel would go it alone, if necessary.Israeli troops left Khan Younis around this same time, and thousands of Palestinians fled north from Rafah to seek shelter there, worried about an impending attack, but a significant portion of those people returned to Rafah soon after, as Khan Younis and other towns and cities further north, were reduced to rubble and several people died after stumbling upon unexploded bombs and other munitions, so these areas were generally just not safe or habitable.Egypt gave yet another warning to Israel not to force Palestinian civilians across their shared border in mid-April, saying, basically, the peace the two countries have enjoyed for 45 years was at risk, depending on what they did next. They also surreptitiously began constructing refugee facilities near their shared border around this time, though, just in case.Talks focused on a potential ceasefire, which were ongoing for months in Cairo, seemed to be on the verge of bearing fruit in early May, the newest version offering a weeks-long ceasefire, plus the release of more Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and an eventual end of the war.This looked very likely to happen for about a day, as the agreement was based on wording Israel's negotiators had favored, and the real question was whether Hamas's representatives would agree to it, which they did.But the wording, indicating that this would be a step toward an end for the war, seems to be what kept it from happening. Netanyahu said ending the war wasn't an option until they'd taken out the last of Hamas's leadership in the area, which would require, he said, invading Rafah.That same week, the first week of May, Israel ordered Palestinians in the southern portion of Rafah to evacuate via phone massages and leaflets, and Hamas, seemingly in response to that indication of an imminent attack, agreed to an edited ceasefire deal that seemed to give Israel everything it wanted, but Israel's war cabinet said it still wasn't enough.Airstrikes into Rafah have since picked up, and US officials have confirmed rumors than the US government paused a shipment of bombs meant for Israel, as they were concerned these bombs would be used in Rafah, and this type of bomb would be devastating in such a tight-packed, civilian-populated area.On May 7, Israeli tanks entered Rafah, took control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and sealed the border, preventing the import of all international aid into the Strip.Since that initial tank incursion, around 800,000 Palestinian civilians have fled Rafah, and are now considered to be internally displaced—still living in the Gaza Strip, but most without homes to return to, their cities and towns, in many cases, completely demolished or otherwise unsafe, living in tents, without shelter, and often without food, clean water, or other necessities of life and security.Right as some of these civilians have fled back toward more northern portions of the Strip, though, fighting has begun, anew, in several more northern cities, where Israeli's military officials say Hamas is resurgent, and Hamas's military wing continues to claim periodic, often asymmetric victories against the invading Israelis. So it's likely those Hamas forces are indeed attempting to reestablish themselves in these previously invaded, now mostly destroyed, areas, and that they're hiding amongst those who are internally displaced, which of course complicates matters for both the Israeli military, and for all the innocent people who are just trying to find a place that's not actively being bombed or shot-up in the Strip.As this conflicts wears on in the Strip itself, there have also been substantial consequences for Israel, internationally. Most prominently, perhaps, being the deterioration of its reputation and standing in the international community, and the damage that's been done to its relationships with its neighbors and allies.Most shocking, to some, has been the slow, careful, but increasingly overt pullback by the United States in its support for Israel.The US has traditionally been Israel's big, primary ally in the world, showing basically absolute support for anything Israel does. But the Biden administration, though they've been careful to support Israel in almost everything, even to the point that it's hurt the administration's reputation at home, has made statements and criticized Netanyahu's actions, and is slowly beginning to take practical action, as well, mostly in terms of arms shipments so far, but they've hinted they might vote differently in the UN and other bodies, as well, if this goes on for much longer, denying Israel some of the cover it's enjoyed, thus far, within entities like the UN Security Council.Egypt has made clear, time and time again, that they don't like what's happening and that things will go very sideways between them and Israel if Palestinians are forced to flee across their shared border, en masse, and that could mean worsening relations, but it could also mean some kind of military pushback, as has been the case between the two countries several times in the past.Israel has been on the verge of several big diplomatic breakthroughs with its neighbors in recent years, especially its wealthy, spendier neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, but also Morocco, Sudan, and the idea was to bring other Arab nations into the fold in the near-future, to basically normalize relationships, stepping back from a long-time war-footing to increase trade, and to send diplomats to each other's countries—normal relations between nations that have traditionally wanted each other dead.These relationships have become fraught, though, if not completely untenable, as a consequence of this invasion and how it's played out—in large part because of the solidarity these nations have, or at least are having to perform, outwardly, with the Palestinian people and their cause.In other words, this invasion doesn't just make things more complicated for Israel in the Muslim-majority territories they hold, it's also likely to make things more difficult for them, regionally, as those mutually enriching relationships disappear, and as some of those potential allies maybe become enemies, once more.Speaking of enemies, this whole situation has in some ways empowered perpetual Israel-antagonist, Iran, which was beginning to feel threatened and excluded by all those new friendships and relationships between Muslim nations and Israel, but which now enjoys more power than it has had in a long time, as the tone has shifted, Israel has shown what Iran can portray as their true, Muslim-hating colors, and the militant proxy groups Iran funds and arms, like Hamas, but also the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have all gained an influx of support, benefactors, and soldiers, because they seem to be fighting the good fight against a colonialist, imperialist, anti-Muslim entity that is stoking support for its own antagonists across the region.All of this, is shaping events elsewhere, as well.There's a chance aspects of the US presidential election in November will be shaped by perceptions of how President Biden handled this unwieldy situation, and we've seen sympathy protests and riots and attacks all over the place, with various groups and even whole demographics, especially young people, coming out in support of Palestinians in Gaza.This conflict has also increased the temperature on existing potential flashpoints, even leading to a direct exchange of missiles, rockets, and drones between Israel and Iran in mid-April. This renewed tension is heightening concerns that something could happen—something that would typically be shrugged off or negotiated away—that could cascade into a Middle East-wide conflict.As I record this, for instance, it's just been reported that Iran's President and Foreign Minister have died in a helicopter crash on the way back from a meeting with representatives from Azerbaijan.This crash seems to be the result of bad weather conditions in treacherous, mountainous territory, but any upset to norms, anything that could be perceived as a potential attack—or framed that way by people with something to gain from such chaos—could serve as a spark that ignites a Middle East-wide conflagration. All sorts of things that would generally not be seen through the lens of militarized geopolitics, then, are now being perceived in that way, and that has made the region even more volatile.There's a lot of pressure on Israel, internationally, to change what they're doing, at this point, but what happens next may be shaped by the country's internal politics.A centrist member of Israel's war cabinet recently said that Netanyahu had until June 8 to present a plan that would secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas, establish stable governance in the Gaza Strip, and normalize life in Israel and relations with regional neighbors, like Saudi Arabia.This ultimatum is being seen as an indication that there's widespread disagreement with how Netanyahu is running things from within his own government, and the country's defense minister recently said that the invasion is on "a dangerous course," worrying out loud that the government was attempting to establish military rule in Gaza, which the defense minister sees as untenable and undesirable; so both the governing and military establishments of Israel seem to be unhappy with the state of things and where they seem to be headed, which could put pressure on the government to change course, or to put someone in power who's willing to do so, if Netanyahu doesn't.By some assessments, Netanyahu is kind of locked into the path he's walking, as he's kept in office by the furthest-right portion of the electorate, which—some portions of it at least—want to push even further and faster to pacify the Palestinian Territories, and maybe even Israel's regional neighbors, than Netanyahu has managed, thus far.One theory as to why Israel, and perhaps Netanyahu more specifically, are taking this particular path, is that—a bit like the US in the wake of the attacks on 9/11/2001—he's maybe afraid that if Israel doesn't respond with overwhelming, even brutal force after being attacked so brazenly, the country's enemies, of which there have traditionally been many, will see them as weak and vulnerable to such attacks, and they must thus make it very clear that anyone who tries such a thing will be wiped out, no matter the consequences for Israel or anyone else.It's also been posited that Netanyahu might be attempting to retain his hold on power by keeping the country on a war-footing, or that he might be held hostage, basically, by that further-right portion of the government that holds outsized sway in the country, right now.Whatever the actual rationale—or whether maybe this is all just being planned in the moment, a series of seeming necessities adding up to a bunch of new problems for Israel, for Palestinians, and for the region—there's a chance that all the external pressure, plus the pressure from portions of his own government, will force Netanyahu's hand on this, nudging him toward finding an offramp from the invasion as it stands today, which will likely take the shape of some kind of negotiated ceasefire, an exchange of hostages and prisoners, and then a series of meetings and agreements that will establish new governance in Gaza.But it's also possible that this conflict will drag on as Hamas continues to harass Israeli forces, retreating and engaging in partisan warfare in formerly invaded parts of the Strip, resulting in something akin to what the US faced in Afghanistan for years and years, before finally pulling out, the initial arguable success of the post-9/11 invasion lost to the persistent frictions of sustained partisan warfare and a slow depletion of international support and reputation.Show Noteshttps://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/helicopter-carrying-irans-president-makes-difficult-landing-d51329d7https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-05-19-2024-d6ea9776d293130d52d308abd284556ehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_conflict_in_2023https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/07/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/israeli-palestinian-conflicthttps://www.npr.org/2024/05/08/1249657561/rafah-timeline-gaza-israel-hamas-warhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/18/un-says-800000-people-have-fled-rafah-as-israel-kills-dozens-in-gazahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Governoratehttps://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/19/world/iran-president-helicopter-crashhttps://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-netanyahu-gantz.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flighthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakbahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestinehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territorieshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamashttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organizationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe
Hello Interactors,The horrific acts of violence in Palestine have prompted acts of violence on university campuses around the world. This post is about one thing they have in common — maps. Maps legally define territory, the rights of those who occupy it, and the rights of those in power to silence them, displace them, or ‘invisible' them. A pattern we also see with America's unhoused.Let me try to map this out…CAMPUS CONFRONTATIONS ECHOCiting "clear and present danger," Columbia University recently called for the New York Police to intervene. On April 18th, students had set up tents on a small patch of grass on campus — a form of protest calling for the university to divest from Israel due to the violence in Palestine. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, the President of the school claimed their presence was menacing and that they were trespassing. Evidently, parts of campus are closed to students during certain hours. The incident resulted in the arrest of 108 students. But many returned and were joined by more upon their release.Nearly a week passed before House Speaker Mike Johnson called on the school's President to resign if she can't suppress the war protests at her school. He went on to threaten federal funding for colleges that he sees are creating unsafe environments for Jewish students. Many equate opposition to the state of Israel as opposition of Jewish people.Meanwhile, the Jewish Voice for Peace is claiming the university is making it unsafe for both Jewish and non-Jewish students in their actions. Of the 85 students suspended for protesting the actions of the Israeli state, 15 are Jewish. The Jewish Voice for Peace writes,“Yesterday's statement by the White House, like the administrators of Columbia University, dangerously and inaccurately presumes that all Jewish students support the Israeli government's genocide of Palestinians. This assumption is actively harming Palestinian and Jewish students.”Restrictions on student rights have also led to Jewish students being obstructed from observing their religious events and blocking access to their Jewish community.Columbia University, named after Christopher Columbus and echoing his legacy of exploration and exploitation, has experienced similar conflicts before. In 1968, protests erupted over the university's plan to build a segregated gym, viewed as oppressive by Harlem residents. There was also significant discontent with Columbia's involvement with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a center providing support to the U.S. Department of Defense during the Vietnam War.Columbia's recent protests spawned more across the country. The National Guard have been called to many campuses to sweep protesters away echoing the deadly protests at Kent State 54 years ago. Or Yale in 1986 when police extracted a student who had erected a replica structure found in South Africa's shantytowns protesting apartheid. One student protester said at the time, “We find the Administrations actions highly ironic in light of the continuing efforts of the South African Government to remove the squatter committees with which our shanties expressed solidarity.” In defense of the school, a spokesman said of the protesters, “No group is permitted to have a monopoly on the space.”No group except, perhaps, the administration.These university confrontations are part of a larger pattern of forceful takeovers and displacement evident in various forms, including the routine 'sweeps' of homeless encampments in cities across America. These sweeps often involve the removal of homeless individuals from public or private spaces, displacing them without providing long-term solutions to homelessness. Critics argue that such actions not only fail to address the underlying issues of poverty and housing insecurity but also perpetuate a cycle of displacement and marginalization.Similar critiques are leveled against these universities who in many cases have been pressured by powerful donors and alumni to silence voices speaking out against the ongoing violence in Palestine. A pattern consistent with conservative efforts to squelch diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and the teaching of alternative views of history and race. Such actions also serve to perpetuate, and propagate, cycles of protest against oppression.This practice highlights how power dynamics continue to affect those with less power. From students choosing to sleep outside in solidarity to the most vulnerable populations sleeping outside in poverty. It's a self-enforcing system where those without property and/or rights are subjected to repeated eviction from their makeshift homes. In the case of those unhoused, it only serves to further entrench the disparities and social stigmas associated with homelessness. In this broader context, both the struggle over property at a university or an urban park reflect the ongoing contention over who has the right to occupy and claim space within our communities.MAPPING AUTHORITARIAN DISPLACEMENTThese relatively small local campus disputes over territory and legality mirror the larger geopolitical conflicts over land, territory, and displacement they are protesting.In the Levant or Ash-Shaam (ٱلشَّام ) region of the Middle East, the 1948 establishment of the state of Israel led to the first Arab-Israeli War. In the period from 1948 to 1951, approximately 688,000 Jewish people immigrated to Israel. Many of these were survivors of the Holocaust and from refugee camps across Europe, as well as Jewish refugees from Arab countries.This period is known as the "mass immigration period" in Israeli telling of history. In Palestinian Arabic history this period is called "Nakba" meaning "catastrophe" or "disaster" referring to the mass displacement of Palestinian Arabs.Here's a short video from the Jewish Voice for Peace explaining how this early history has led to current events…including the role of maps.
On this edition of Parallax Views, the University of Maryland's Prof. Shay Hazkani, a former Israeli journalist turned historian, joins the show to discuss the major themes of his book Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War and documentary The Soldier's Opinion in light of the Gaza War, settler violence in the West Bank, and the October 7th Hamas attack. Prof. Hazkani provides a fresh, illuminating perspective on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that contributes a great deal to discussion of Israel/Palestine. Specifically, he takes the approach of looking at how non-elites, especially soldiers, viewed/perceived the war compared to elites on both the Israeli and Arab sides of the conflict. We'll delve deep into this as well as Prof. Hazkani's battles with the Israeli Supreme Court over the fight to declassify documents in Israel's archives; how Prof. Hazkani's work overlaps with that of the Israeli New Historians like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappe (as well as how it differs from those works); propaganda and the mythologies of war (and how said propaganda and myths are generated); some of the myths that Prof. Hazkoni specifically busts in the book; the damage books like Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial have caused to properly understanding Israel/Palestine; the Arab Liberation Army; how then-recent American Jewish immigrants perceived events unfolding at the time compared to Jews who had immigrated prior; and much, much more. And yes, we will discuss all of this within the context of the current Gaza War and violence in the West Bank. Prof. Hazkoni will delve into his fears about what is transpiring currently, especially with regards to messianic right-wing elements in Israeli society like the Religious Zionists, as well as how the parallels between 1948 and today. All that and more on this must-listen edition of Parallax Views!
This week the portraiture, mixed-media artist Diana Bittar whose large canvases convey bold, uninhibited figures reflecting the artist's new found confidence and expression. ‘I am constantly fascinated by faces, and how the personalities and thoughts of each individual inspire me to form delicate relationships with each canvas', she explains. Diana was born in London in 1974, the middle of three children—she has an older sister and younger brother. Her father Doraid is Syrian and her mother Helen, a Czech, who met while studying mechanical engineering in Prague. Diana was born during her parents' visit to London for her father who needed medical attention following the loss of a leg when the oil refinery at which he was working in Syria was targeted during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The family returned to Prague until 1980 when they moved to Syria. From the age of two, when her mother first gave her crayons, Diana has shown a natural talent for the fine details of her art. By the age of 17, despite being an introvert, she was receiving her first commissions. Meanwhile, following a chance encounter in the pool, Diana proved to be a natural swimmer and would go on to win national championships. But it was her passion for art that would eventually decide her career path. She chose to major in Visual Communications and Graphic Design at the Fine Art University in Damascus, graduating in 1995. Shortly after, she met her Syrian husband, Tarek, an orthopedic surgeon, and followed him back to California. Diana took a break from her art to raise her three sons. When she returned to her easel she changed her focus from landscapes to what she describes as Abstract Realism in Portraiture. She lives in Granada Hills, Los Angeles where she has held a number of shows in the area. Diana Bittar Website: https://www.dianabittar.art/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diana_bittar_art/Diana's playlist:The Weather ReportLettuceThe BlackyardsAlfa MistOtis McDonaldHerbie HancockMiles DavisRon CarterPat Metheny"I mainly listen to instrumental, like fusion Jazz or old traditional Arabic music. Also love old school rap and hip hop. At times my heart craves 80s music every now and then." - Diana Host: Chris StaffordProduced by Hollowell StudiosFollow @theaartpodcast on InstagramAART on FacebookEmail: hollowellstudios@gmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wisp--4769409/support.
This week the portraiture, mixed-media artist Diana Bittar whose large canvases convey bold, uninhibited figures reflecting the artist's new found confidence and expression. ‘I am constantly fascinated by faces, and how the personalities and thoughts of each individual inspire me to form delicate relationships with each canvas', she explains. Diana was born in London in 1974, the middle of three children—she has an older sister and younger brother. Her father Doraid is Syrian and her mother Helen, a Czech, who met while studying mechanical engineering in Prague. Diana was born during her parents' visit to London for her father who needed medical attention following the loss of a leg when the oil refinery at which he was working in Syria was targeted during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The family returned to Prague until 1980 when they moved to Syria. From the age of two, when her mother first gave her crayons, Diana has shown a natural talent for the fine details of her art. By the age of 17, despite being an introvert, she was receiving her first commissions. Meanwhile, following a chance encounter in the pool, Diana proved to be a natural swimmer and would go on to win national championships. But it was her passion for art that would eventually decide her career path. She chose to major in Visual Communications and Graphic Design at the Fine Art University in Damascus, graduating in 1995. Shortly after, she met her Syrian husband, Tarek, an orthopedic surgeon, and followed him back to California. Diana took a break from her art to raise her three sons. When she returned to her easel she changed her focus from landscapes to what she describes as Abstract Realism in Portraiture. She lives in Granada Hills, Los Angeles where she has held a number of shows in the area. Diana Bittar Website: https://www.dianabittar.art/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diana_bittar_art/Diana's playlist:The Weather ReportLettuceThe BlackyardsAlfa MistOtis McDonaldHerbie HancockMiles DavisRon CarterPat Metheny"I mainly listen to instrumental, like fusion Jazz or old traditional Arabic music. Also love old school rap and hip hop. At times my heart craves 80s music every now and then." - Diana Host: Chris StaffordProduced by Hollowell StudiosFollow @theaartpodcast on InstagramAART on FacebookEmail: hollowellstudios@gmail.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/aart--5814675/support.
Patreon: https://bit.ly/3v8OhY7 Benny Morris is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Middle East Studies at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is among the most respected and influential historians on Israel and Palestine. Benny is perhaps best known for his work on the 1947-1948 civil war in Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and for his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1948 (Cambridge, 1989). In this episode, Robinson and Benny discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict from a historical perspective, touching on the origin of the refugee crisis, the origin and justification of Israel, the legitimacy of Israeli military tactics, whether genocide is occurring in Palestine, whether Israel is an apartheid state, and more. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: https://a.co/d/9pN2W7v OUTLINE 00:00 Introduction 3:45 Muscular Judaism and the New Jew 8:53 The Nakba and the Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Crisis 16:18 How Many Palestinians Were Driven from Palestine? 22:32 Was Palestine Occupied Before the Establishment of Israel? 26:24 Did Zionists Invade Occupied Palestine 33:27 Was the Founding of Israel Justified? 39:49 Does Israel Have the Right to Exist? 43:56 Is Egypt Responsible for the Crisis in Gaza? 48:42 On Norman Finkelstein, Concentration Camps, and Hamas Rockets 51:48 Israel, Palestine, and Propaganda 54:09 On the Legitimacy of Palestinian and Arab Historians 58:08 Does Israel Warn Palestinians Before Bombings? 1:00:59 Is Israel Committing Genocide Against Palestinians? 1:03:18 Is Israel an Apartheid State? Robinson's Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/robinson-erhardt/support
Content warning for discussions of antisemitism and genocide. Also, note that from 19:10 until 20:05 you can hear an electric saw in the background. Nothing I can do about that. Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time Day 2 will dive deeply into the historic context of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the Gazan Genocide. Starting 3700 years ago this episode will hit the major beats of the story and attempt to make everything a little bit clearer, if not really easier to understand. Episode transcript follows: Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome to Day 2 of Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard. Thank you for everyone who tuned in for Day 1 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. Today we're going to be discussing the Gazan Genocide, what is often called, in mainstream, Western, media the Israel-Palestine Conflict. However, we're not going to be starting in 2023, we're not even going to be starting in 1948. To the best of my abilities we are going to drill into the historic context of this genocide and the ongoing historic and ethnic tensions that exist in the region. Before we start with that context I would like to state for the record that what is being done to the people of Gaza is, unequivocally, a genocide. Now, to find the beginning of this we are going to have to go back about 3700 years to the Levantine region. The regions known as the Levant is comprised of the modern nations of Cyprus, parts of Turkey southwest of the Euphrates, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and of course Israel and Palestine. Both historical record and genetic testing of modern Jewish and Palestinian people show them both being descended from ancient Canaanite cultures. While Biblical narratives show the Israelites entering the region from Egypt and conquering the region under the command of Moses' successor Joshua. Modern archeology and the historical view has, however, discounted this. The Bible is not and should not ever be used as a valid historical source. Indeed, modern archeology and historical research shows that the Jewish ethnicity emerged naturally as an offshoot of the Canaanites in much the same way that the Palestinian ethnicity did. It is also interesting to note that historically, Palestine appears to have been a name for a region and not a distinct nation or kingdom. Indeed, during the seventh century BC, no fewer than eight nations were settled in Palestine. These included the Arameans of the kingdom of Geshur; the Samaritans who replaced the Israelite kingdom in Samaria; the Phoenicians in the northern cities and parts of Galilee; the Philistines in the Philistine pentapolis; the three kingdoms of the Transjordan– Ammon, Moab and Edom; and the Judaeans of Kingdom of Judah. The first written record of the region being called Palestine, by the way, comes from 12th century BCE Egypt, which used the term Peleset for the area. Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, experienced a period of economic, as well as population growth. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. This marks the first historic diaspora of Jewish people from their indigenous homeland. Jewish people in the region enjoyed a brief period of political independence and national sovereignty following the Maccabean Revolt. This would only last for a few brief decades before the area would be conquered by the Romans. During the first Roman-Jewish War Jerusalem and the Second Temple, which has been built back in about 516 BCE were both destroyed. From that point on Roman rule would crack down even harder on Jewish people living in the empire. Many of these tensions were caused by the cultural and religions differences between the Romans and Jewish people. Their refusal to worship Roman gods and their refusal to venerate the emperor made them perpetual pariahs. Jewish communities would continue to resist Roman rule and oppression and this resistance would come to a violent head in events like the Kitos War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Bar Kokhba revolt, led by Simon Bar Kokhba was certainly influenced by the Romans building a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. The revolt, as with the First and Second Roman-Jewish Wars was a complete military defeat for the Jewish people. The Jewish Talmud relates that, when the fortress of Betar was besieged in 135 CE that the Romans went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood up to their nostrils. This revolt would result in Judea being literally wiped off the map. And I mean that quite literally, while the Jewish population was greatly reduced from the area, both by slaughter at the hands of the Romans and because many people were forced from the region, there was still and there has always been a Jewish population in the Levant. But any Roman map from after the Bar Kokhba Revolt would now show the region labeled as Syria Palestina. The Diaspora of Jewish people from Israel and Judea would result in Jewish populations congregating all around Eurasia. Jewish communities would settle near the Rhine, eventually collating into the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would settle on the Iberian Peninsula and in Northern Africa collating into the Sephardi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would also remain in the Middle East, in Syria Palestina (though they were forbidden by the Romans to live in Jerusalem) and collate into the Mizrahim Jewish ethnicity. There are also smaller Jewish ethnicities like the Bene Israel from India and the Beta Israel from Ethiopia. One of the conclusions that is important to take away at this point is that both Palestinians and Jewish people, Judaism being both a religion and an ethnicity, are indigenous to the lands of Israel and Palestine. I don't really care if you favor a one state or two state solution, but the fact of their mutual indigineousness is undeniable. Now, at this point we're going to take a huge jump forward in time to 1516 when Syria Palestina falls under Ottoman rule. As many ethnically Palestinian people had converted to Islam following the Islamic Conquests of the Middle East in the 7th century CE they were largely seen as good Ottoman citizens and interfered with very little. Jewish people, on the other hand, because they were not followers of Islam found themselves living under the dhimmi system. This was a common system under Muslim empires that allowed people to practice other religions, but with limited rights and at the cost of increased taxes. Some of the restrictions placed on Dhimmi were: In addition to other legal limitations, dhimmis were not considered equals to Muslims, despite being considered “people of the book” Their testimony against Muslims was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels, and their houses could not overlook those of Muslims. All that being said, the lives of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire were still demonstrably better than those of Jewish communities living in Europe and they were much more freely able to practice their religion. We're going to jump ahead again to the First Aliyah which took place between 1881 and 1903. Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning “ascent”. There have been five “official” Aliyah throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These Aliyah are periods of increased Jewish immigration to their ancestral homeland. This First Aliyah saw Jewish people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Yeman move to Ottoman Palestine because of an increased number of pogroms. Most of the Jewish people from Eastern Europe came from the Pale of Settlement and by 1903, saw about 25,000 Jewish people immigrate. This period also saw many thousands of Jewish people immigrate to the US in order to escape the ever increasing amounts of antisemitic violence around Europe. This First Aliyah also marks, more or less, the beginning of the Zionist movement. Political Zionism as a movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. He saw antisemitism and antisemitic violence as an indelible part of any society in which Jewish people lived as minorities. He also believed that the only way a Jewish State could be established would be with the help of European powers. He also described the Jewish State as an outpost of civilization against Barbarism and compared himself to Cecil Rhodes. So, safe to say that Herzl was not a man with good intentions for the people that would become his neighbors. Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures, including Herzl, supported a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as "Uganda" (actually parts of British East Africa today in Kenya), Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula.] Herzl, was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state. Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch. It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan, and he later reaffirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jewish people to that area. This, as it was always going to, brings us to the Balfour Declaration. As soon as World War I began the Great Powers of Europe began deciding how they were going to carve up the Ottoman Empire, the Sick Man of Europe, like a Thanksgiving turkey. The Balfour Declaration was part of this planning. The declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 stating their support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The entire Declaration reads as follows: His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours 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. They clearly failed in all regards of their declaration after the first statement. The end of World War I saw the League of Nations place Palestine under British colonial control, leading to the creation of Mandatory Palestine in 1920, with the League officially giving Britain a Class A mandate in 1922. Britain was originally supposed to guarantee Arab independence following the defeat of the Ottomans in exchange for the Great Arab Revolt that took place against Ottoman rule. The creation of Mandatory Palestine and the existence of the Balfour declaration was partially responsible for Jewish immigration over the next 30 years. As Jewish immigration increased, Palestinian peasants, known as fellahin (fellahin were often tenant farmers or other such peoples who didn't own the land they worked) were forced off the land they worked to survive. These tensions would result in small-scale conflicts between Jewish and Arab people living in Mandatory Palestine, though the first conflict of real historic note would be the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936. The revolt lasted until 1939. It was a popular uprising of Palestinian Arabs that demanded Arab independence and and end to open-ended Jewish immigration to Palestine. The revolt eventually ended with the issuance of the White Paper in 1939. The White Paper was going to attempt to create a national home for the Jewish people within an independent Palestine within 10 years. However this proposal was rejected by both the Arab and Zionist sides of the negotiation. Before the White Paper, and before the massive violence of the Great Revolt was an Arab General strike that lasted for 6 months in order to try and get their voices heard. This led to the creation of the Peel Commission, which recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. This plan was, like the White Paper that would come after it, rejected by both sides. Of force everything would change after World War 2. After the war the British Mandate for Palestine was dissolved and the Israeli Declaration of Independence was issued later that same day. This declaration came as part of the UN partition plan which was outlined in UN Resolution 181 (II). The Resolution set forth to create an Independent Jewish State, an Independent Arab State and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. This UN Resolution came during the context of the 1947 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine which began after the UN initially voted on the partition plan resolution. This war would have far reaching consequences for everyone in the region and would lead to events like the Nakba and the Israeli government initiating Plan Dalet. Nakba, an Arabic word meaning Catastrophe, refers to the initial ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes following the 1947 Civil War and the broader 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Some 750,000 Palestinian people were forced to flee their homes and their country after the First Arab Israeli War saw Israel in control of all of the land the UN had granted them in the partition plan as well as roughly 60% of the land that was to be Palestine. Causes of Arab flight from Palestine include: Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare and fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic; direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities; the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes; collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders. This period of time would also see many thousands of Jewish people expelled from the surrounding Muslim countries. As you might expect the majority of those people would move to Israel. While we can see that tensions in the region and Zionist abuses of Palestinian people existed before this point, if we HAD to point to a single moment that defined the entire conflict, ethnic cleansing, and genocide it would be this moment. Following the flight of the majority of the Palestinians from Palestine, Israel passed a number of laws, known as Israel land and property laws, disallowing the Palestinians their right to return to their homes in Palestine. Wars would continue over the decades, but the point at which things start to get particularly heinous comes at the end of the Six Day War, also known as the Arab Israeli War. Following this war, which Israel fought against Syria, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, Israel now had control of the Golan Heights, The West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula leaving very little land still under Palestinian sovereign control. Israel would eventually cede the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in 1978 as part of the Camp David Accords in exchange for peace and Egyptian recognition of the State of Israel. They retained control over the rest of the territories they had seized. The actions of Israel during this time put increasing strain on Palestinians as more and more of them were forced into refugee camps, and while Gaza is technically under the control of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas and the West Bank is under the partial control of the Palestinian National Authority both still find themselves heavily under the control of the Israeli government and military. Especially since October of 2023. Human Rights Watch, a non-government organization, considers Israel to still be an invading and occupying force in these two Palestinian regions. The two of which are separated from each other by the nation of Israel. “Even though Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlements from Gaza in 2005, it continues to have obligations as an occupying power in Gaza under the Fourth Geneva Convention because of its almost complete control over Gaza's borders, sea and air space, tax revenue, utilities, population registry, and the internal economy of Gaza. At a minimum, Israel continues to be responsible for the basic welfare of the Palestinian population in Gaza.” We actually have to backtrack a little bit here before we can finally catch up to the modern day. We need to pop back to 1987, the First Intifada, and the creation of Hamas. The First Intifada lasted from December 1987 until, basically the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, although some date the end in 1991 with the Madrid Conference. The Intifafa, or Uprising, was a sustained series of protests, strikes, and riots that began after an IDF truck hit another car carrying Palestinian workers, all four of whom died in the crash. Now, where does Hamas come into this, well in the long history of the Western world, they were created by the people they now fight against. Hamas, in the beginning of its existence, received funding from the Israeli government to act as a counterweight against the more moderate elements of the PLO. Israel would then turn around and try and destroy Hamas when they started to get too powerful. It was Hamas who was behind the October 7th Attacks on Israel. Hamas, by the way, has been the defacto ruling party of Gaza since 2007. Hamas said its attack was in response to the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, rising Israeli settler violence, and recent escalations. The attack on October 7th began with some 300 missiles being fired into Israeli territory along with coordinated attacks at locations and events like the Re'im Music Festival and various kibbutz's such as Kfar Aza and Be'eri. The attack lasted into the 8th of October and saw 1,143 people killed, 767 of whom were civilians and 36 of whom were children. Also roughly 250 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage with the intent of using them to try and secure the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It does bear mentioning that Israel has knowledge of such an attack a year in advance, according to the New York Times, but dismissed it as impossible. Since this attack by Hamas Israel has been increasing the violence and slaughter that it is committing against the Palestinian people. In the name of their alleged war with Hamas Israel has forced the people of Gaza to move farther and farther to the south as they bombed the northern part of the Strip to glass. Today most of the surviving population of Gaza, some 1.5 million people are forced to live in the city of Rafah, a city that they were told they'd be safe in. They is no longer the case as Israel is now bombing Rafah as well. Israel has also been blockading Gaza since 2007 and, effectively, has complete control over the food, water, electricity, and medicine that gets into Gaza. Part of this control comes from the fact that Israel keeps bombing hospitals, like they did with Al Shifa in November of 2023. Israel claims that Hamas was using the hospital as a staging ground, despite this being proven false by independent investigations. We know from our previous video that genocide isn't just the mass slaughter of a particular group of people. It is also inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part. By this definition, concentrating 1.5 million people into a small area without adequate food, water, or medicine, and then bombing that area demonstrates clear intent to destroy. An even more clear example of this intent was the Flour Massacre that occurred on February 29, 2024. On that day Israel let food aid into Gaza after over a month of not letting anything through their blockade. When people lined up to receive this aid, the Israeli military shot them. The Israeli military set a deliberate trap to lure in starving civilians and then shot and killed over 100 people. We also have massive amounts of intent demonstrated in the words of members of the Israeli government. Such as with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the people of Gaza Human Animals and said that they would allow no food or water to get in. Or when Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister said they'd turn Gaza into a deserted island. There can be no denying the genocide in Gaza. None whatsoever. The actions of the Israeli government are inexcusable and must be condemned with all possible haste. We are in the midst of a genocide, and so if you've ever wondered what you would have done during something like the Holocaust, now you know. Whatever you're doing now, is what you would have done then. Hopefully what we covered today will provide some needed context for everything that is going on right now. I don't know if it will make anything clearer, and I doubt it will provide you with any solutions, but just because you learn information doesn't mean you can necessarily apply it. Thank you for joining me for Day 2. This was a very heavy topic and next week will not get any lighter. Next week we will be diving into the history and context of the ongoing trans genocide that is currently ongoing in the United States. Last thing we're gonna do today before we do is the outro is read some reviews that came in on Apple Podcasts over the week. I say over the week, all three of these came in on the 21st. 2 of them came from Canada! And now my notes say “read the reviews* Oh… wait, that was something i was supposed to DO. Not an actual sentence i was supposed to read. I hope i remember to edit this out… Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. PLease remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day and Free Palestine.
"The current war is the longest, and the most complex in Israel's history since its establishment in 1948. The longest war that Israel was involved with was the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, which started on 30th of November 1947 until the 20th of July 1949". Professor Raffi Mann, reporting to SBS Hebrew, with news and current affairs from Israel (23.2.24)
A new MP3 sermon from Landmark Baptist Church Assembly is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Pt 2 The Soon Coming Arab/Israeli War Speaker: John Osburn Broadcaster: Landmark Baptist Church Assembly Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 2/18/2024 Bible: Psalm 83:1-5 Length: 30 min.
A new MP3 sermon from Landmark Baptist Church Assembly is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Pt 2 The Soon Coming Arab/Israeli War Speaker: John Osburn Broadcaster: Landmark Baptist Church Assembly Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 2/18/2024 Bible: Psalm 83:1-5 Length: 30 min.
The ongoing conflict in Gaza, with its devastating human cost, is brought into sharp focus, challenging listeners to confront the harsh realities of war and the urgent need for an absolute halt of Israel's actions. This exploration is not merely a recounting of events; it's an invitation to understand the deep-seated historical roots of the conflict. The speaker navigates through pivotal moments like the Balfour Declaration and the Arab-Israeli War, dissecting various UN resolutions. This comprehensive analysis goes beyond surface-level understanding, urging the audience to grasp the complex tapestry of history and politics that shapes today's crisis in Gaza. In a masterful explanation of global politics, the speaker delves into the intricate web of convoluted geopolitical dynamics involving major players like the UK, USA, Arab regimes, and Palestinian leadership. You will be well-informed about the roles and motives of these key figures in the Palestinian narrative. It's a call to action, not just to understand the past and present but to actively seek solutions rooted in Islamic principles. This is more than just an academic discussion; it's a fervent appeal for engagement and change. It's a journey into understanding the deeper truths of a longstanding conflict, urging the listener to consider if the two-state solution is truly the path to peace or a perpetuation of existing tensions. Are you prepared to embark on this journey of discovery and transformation? Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrNObOxzVQ (Video has detailed PowerPoint Slides)
The ongoing conflict in Gaza, with its devastating human cost, is brought into sharp focus, challenging listeners to confront the harsh realities of war and the urgent need for an absolute halt of Israel's actions. This exploration is not merely a recounting of events; it's an invitation to understand the deep-seated historical roots of the conflict. The speaker navigates through pivotal moments like the Balfour Declaration and the Arab-Israeli War, dissecting various UN resolutions. This comprehensive analysis goes beyond surface-level understanding, urging the audience to grasp the complex tapestry of history and politics that shapes today's crisis in Gaza. In a masterful explanation of global politics, the speaker delves into the intricate web of convoluted geopolitical dynamics involving major players like the UK, USA, Arab regimes, and Palestinian leadership. You will be well-informed about the roles and motives of these key figures in the Palestinian narrative. It's a call to action, not just to understand the past and present but to actively seek solutions rooted in Islamic principles. This is more than just an academic discussion; it's a fervent appeal for engagement and change. It's a journey into understanding the deeper truths of a longstanding conflict, urging the listener to consider if the two-state solution is truly the path to peace or a perpetuation of existing tensions. Are you prepared to embark on this journey of discovery and transformation? Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LrNObOxzVQ (Video has detailed PowerPoint Slides)
Dr. Jonathan Abel, joined by Dr. Bill Nance, talks with special guest LTC Nate Jennings, PhD, of the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations, about the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. They discuss the background of the conflict, particularly coming out of the 1967 Six-Day War. They detail why the 1973 War was such a surprise for Israel and how the Arab Coalition, particularly Egypt, achieved that. They explore how the Israelis and Egyptians responded to the initial combat in the Sinai and around the Suez. Finally, they opine on the importance and influence of the war. "History is only a confused heap of facts." - Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMH DMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill Nance Artwork: Daniel O. Neal Music: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Dr. Jonathan Abel, joined by Dr. Bill Nance, talks with special guest LTC Nate Jennings, PhD, of the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational Operations, about the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. They discuss the background of the conflict, particularly coming out of the 1967 Six-Day War. They detail why the 1973 War was such a surprise for Israel and how the Arab Coalition, particularly Egypt, achieved that. They explore how the Israelis and Egyptians responded to the initial combat in the Sinai and around the Suez. Finally, they opine on the importance and influence of the war. "History is only a confused heap of facts." - Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield Host: Dr. Jonathan Abel, CGSC DMH DMH Podcast Team: Drs. Jonathan Abel, Mark Gerges, and Bill Nance Artwork: Daniel O. Neal Music: SSG Noah Taylor, West Point Band
Today, we are discussing the current conditions of Jabalia Refugee Camp and the situation in Gaza. Script: Hi everyone, I'm Anusha and you're listening to Seeking Refuge News, a podcast sharing the human stories of refugees. Today, we are here to update you on the conditions of Jabalia (ji-bah-li-ya) Refugee Camp, located on the north end of the Gaza Strip, which is where the Israeli Army has carried out one of the deadliest bombings yet. (Al Jazeera) On Tuesday, October 31st, Israeli forces began the bombing of Jabalia refugee camp, killing over 50 and injuring hundreds, and was followed by five more air raids that all hit residential areas of the camp. These actions sparked backlash from many Arab Nations, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and the UAE. The air raid on Tuesday was followed by another bombing on Wednesday, the second blast destroying over 20 buildings, according to the Washington Post. These air raids came amid Israeli's bombing of the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed 10,022 people, including more than 4,104 children, since the fighting began on October 7th, according to Palestinian authorities. Over 70% of the deaths are reported to be women and children, says CNN. For context, Jabalia Refugee Camp is a densely populated area that was established after the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes that became a part of the newly established State of Israel and were later denied return. Now, the area is composed of crowded shops, apartments, and houses packed so close together that the streets in between them are barely wide enough for a car to pass, according to CNN. People living in close quarters like this makes missiles even more detrimental to the camp. There is now a massive crater in the center of the camp, and the injured are looking for a safe place to go. According to a statement by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the initial airstirke was “successful” in killing several members of Hamas, including Ibrahim Biari, whom Israel describes as one of the Hamas commanders responsible for the attacks on Israel on October 7th. Several sources report the Israeli military announcing that the attacks killed him, however, Hazzem Qassem, a spokesperson for Hamas, has denied the presence of any senior commander and deemed this claim “an Israeli excuse for killing civilians.” This back and forth has been very common in the weeks following the Israeli offensive in Gaza, with claims of Hamas commanders hiding in hospitals, ambulances, and residential areas, while Hamas claims this is not the case. It is becoming increasingly hard for the international community to discern what is the truth. However, one reaction from the international community is becoming more prevalent, and that is, even if there are senior Hamas commanders hiding among citizens, does that warrant airstrikes on the whole areas, killing and endangering more women and children? The answer would be no, according to international law. The United Nations Human Rights Office has weighed in, saying that these attacks on Jabalya, “could amount to war crimes” considering “the high number of civilian casualties and the scale of the destruction,” which was reported by CNN's social media. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres (goo-tersh), said in a statement that he was, “deeply alarmed by the intensification of the conflict.” International humanitarian law, he said, “is not an a la carte menu and cannot be applied selectively.” (Washington Post). The news is developing rapidly in Gaza, therefore many of the numbers and figures we've used could already be outdated, so we encourage our listeners to do their research and stay up to date on the current events in the region. We will do our best to continue to report on this news as the situation progresses. Again, I'm Anusha, and thank you for listening to Seeking Refuge News. Liked this episode? Let us know! Subscribe and leave us a review below! Connect With Us If you or someone you know would like to share their personal refugee story, send us an email at seekingrefugepodcast@gmail.com or connect with us on any of these social media platforms: https://twitter.com/refugepodcast https://www.instagram.com/seekingrefugepodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/seekingrefugepodcast Our Team: Claire Mattes (Scriptwriter) Shireen Kaur Anusha Ghosh (Host/Editor/Publisher) Thrisha Mote (Researcher) Rohit Swain Victoria Halsey Diana Clark Saanvi Somani Emily Jensen Shireen Kaur Yatin Nerella
It's Tuesday, November 7th, A.D. 2023. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Kevin Swanson 2023 Persecutors of the Year report just released International Christian Concern has published their 2023 Persecutors of the Year report. The worst nations are Nigeria, North Korea, India, Iran, China, Pakistan, Eritrea, Algeria, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan. Jeff King, the ICC president, noted that he is especially concerned about India. He said that, “Mass violence in Chhattisgarh and Manipur in late 2022 and 2023 supply chilling examples of what the future could hold for India's Christian population if radical Hindu nationalism is not checked.” Mr. King further noted that, “there are an estimated 200 to 300 million Christians who suffer persecution worldwide. I've served this targeted group for more than two decades and still wonder why there is no widespread outcry or outrage on their behalf." Nepal's earthquakes killed 200 people Nepal was hit by two earthquakes, both registering 5.6 on the Richter scale, reports the Associated Press. About 4,000 homes were damaged, and over 200 people were killed, according to our contacts in Nepal. The earthquakes centered around Jajarkot, about 250 miles Northeast of Kathmandu. Israel-Hamas War has led to death toll of 11,400 people The death toll in the Israel-Hamas War initiated by Hamas, the Muslim terrorist group, on October 7th has reached 11,400—of which 10,000 have been Palestinians. That's about five times the number killed in the 2014 conflict. And it's about the same number of people killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as well as the same number who died in the The Yom Kippur War of 1973. The Yom Kippur War involved the Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and Iraq against Israel. The two-week conflict ended with Israel returning the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Trump skips third GOP presidential debate Wednesday, Nov. 8 The next debate in the contest for the 2024 Presidential Republican nomination is scheduled for tomorrow night in Miami, Florida, reports ABC News. The candidates scheduled to appear include New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Former President Donald Trump is skipping out on this third debate. Trump still holds a commanding lead in most polls. Rasmussen has him ahead of DeSantis by 38 points, and ahead of Haley by 41 points. The Harris/X poll has the former president ahead of DeSantis by 50 points. Iowa Governor endorsed Ron DeSantis for President This just in, as of yesterday. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican presidential nomination, reports the Des Moines Register. It's a key boost for the DeSantis campaign as the Iowa primaries approach this January. Reynolds, who had been a Trump ally when he held the White House, said she appreciates the former president's accomplishments, but believes it's time to move on. She said, “I don't think he can win.” DeSantis has also recently suggested Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds as a possible vice presidential pick. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine: Vote “No!” on pro-abortion Issue 1 Concerning the Ohio initiative, Issue 1, which would enable a constitutional amendment to institutionalize the “right to abortion” in the state—Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine and his wife, Fran, have taken to social media to oppose the measure in this upcoming election today. MIKE: “Everywhere we go, voters tell us they're confused about issue one. So, Fran and I have carefully studied it.” FRAN: “Issue 1 would allow an abortion at any time during a pregnancy and it would deny parents the right to be involved when their daughter is making the most important decision of her life.” MIKE: “I know Ohioans are divided on the issue of abortion, but whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, Issue 1 is just not right for Ohio.” FRAN: “Issue 1 just goes too far.” Michael W. Smith: Ohioans should vote “No!” on pro-abortion Issue 1 And Contemporary Christian Music artist Michael W. Smith tweeted on X, urging a “No!” vote on the referendum. SMITH: "If this passes, it would not be good. It would change what is now the Heartbeat rule [protecting unborn babies after 6 weeks] and allow up to full-term abortion as the new rule of law. This is serious, everybody, and we all know this is a spiritual battle. But I know by prayer and by casting your vote, you can do your part in the battle for your state and for your people." This critical referendum vote in Ohio takes place today. Ohioans will also vote on the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana, reports The Columbus Dispatch. The prophet Jeremiah speaks to Ohio and Americans today in Jeremiah 18:11-12. “Thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now, every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.' And they said, ‘That is hopeless! So, we will walk according to our own plans, and we will, every one, obey the dictates of his evil heart.'” Conservative talk host released part of Nashville shooter's manifesto A media source released the manifesto of the Nashville murderer who killed six people at Covenant Presbyterian School on March 27th of this year. Louder with Crowder has released some of the Manifesto. Stephen Crowder identifies a woke-form of racial hatred as the motive for the crime. The murderer, Audrey Hale, a woman pretending to be a man, was especially incensed by what she called “white privilege” and “white people in general” in her ramblings. Crowder blames public schools for encouraging students “to believe white people are inherently evil.” But Jesus said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, and murders.” (Mark 7:20) Job sectors where jobs are down and up And finally, want to know the sectors where employment has slipped in the United States? According to The Wolf Street report, the information technology sector lost 130,000 jobs this year. Manufacturing has lost 30,000 jobs. By contrast, the arts, entertainment, and recreation sector has gained 150,000 jobs. Jobs in the federal government increased by 80,000. And state governments and public schools added 200,000 jobs. Close And that's The Worldview in 5 Minutes on this Election Day, Tuesday, November 7th in the year of our Lord 2023. Subscribe by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Or get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
Also known as the October War and the Ramadan War, this conflict was initiated by Egypt and Syria on October 6, 1973, as a surprise attack on Israel during the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur and the Muslim month of Ramadan. It was motivated by a desire among Arab states to regain territory taken by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967, particularly the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The initial stages of the war caught Israel off guard, but they were able to regroup and mount a strong defence. The war ended with a ceasefire brokered by the United States and the Soviet Union. Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and in exchange Egypt recognised Israel as a legitimate state - the first Arab country to do so.It had a profound impact on the region and the seismic waves were felt across the world. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, it's been described as a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union with Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposing an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military. This became a key contributor to the energy crisis of 1973, felt particularly in Britain.Commentators have made comparisons between the surprise attack by Hamas on the 7th of October 2023, with that first surprise attack made by the Arabic coalition in the Yom Kippur War. Today, Dan is joined by Dr Alexander Burns- Assistant Professor at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Historian of the eighteenth-century Atlantic World, American Continental Army, and Military Europe to look at those comparisons and run through a play-by-play of the 1973 conflict and its impact on the region and global order. Produced by Dan Snow, Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreDiscover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world-renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW. Download the app or sign up here.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.You can take part in our listener survey here.
Show Notes Lemuel: I am Lemuel Gonzalez, repentant sinner, and along with Amity Armstrong, your heavenly host, I invite you to find a place in the pew for today's painless Sunday School lesson. Without Works. This week, we are going to discuss the events occurring in the Gaza strip, the history of the region, and the evangelical view of the situation. This is being recorded on October 28, 2023 and we are doing our best to give the latest information. Amity: I have tried to keep this as straightforward and clear as possible. I am extremely emotional about this topic and have spent much of the past twenty days watching the news coming directly out of Palestine, sharing Palestinian voices and calling my representatives to demand a ceasefire and humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. First things first - we have to state unequivocally the following: Zionism is not Judaism, and a person can be anti-Zionist and not anti-semetic, as many, many American jews are. We will come back to this in a few minutes. The attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 is abhorrent and terrible and we grieve with the survivors and families of those who were killed. May their memories be a blessing. Events leading up to October 7 Let's start with some history, which I have put together from several sources. This is a very broad, very simplified overview of the history. In the show notes, we have included an extensive reading list to get a rounder view of the subject. Israel and Palestine: In the late 19th century, the Zionist movement called for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people to escape persecution in Europe. Immigration and the purchase of land in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, was encouraged. The land known as Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century encompasses a 25,000 square mile piece of land bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the East by what is now Syria and Jordan on the south by Egypt and on the north by Lebanon. After the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Britain was granted a mandate to govern the region of Palestine and Jewish immigration increased as Nazism took hold in central Europe. This brought tensions in the area with the Arab population, and after the Second World War a new plan was drawn up and agreed by the United Nations to create two separate Arab and Jewish states with Jerusalem remaining international. The Arab state would include Gaza, an area near the border with Egypt, a zone near the border with Lebanon, a central region which includes the West Bank, and a tiny enclave at the city of Jaffa.But this was never implemented after Arab opposition. At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired and the State of Israel came into being. The Palestine Government formally ceased to exist, the status of British forces still in the process of withdrawal from Haifa changed to occupiers of foreign territory, the Palestine Police Force formally stood down and was disbanded, with the remaining personnel evacuated alongside British military forces, the British blockade of Palestine was lifted, and all those who had been Palestinian citizens ceased to be British protected persons, with Mandatory Palestine passports no longer giving British protection. Over the next few days, approximately 700 Lebanese, 1,876 Syrian, 4,000 Iraqi, and 2,800 Egyptian troops crossed over the borders into Palestine, starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The war, which was to last until 1949, would see Israel expand to encompass about 78% of the territory of the former British Mandate, with Transjordan seizing and subsequently annexing the West Bank and the Kingdom of Egypt seizing the Gaza Strip. The 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, known to Palestineans as the Nakba took place both before and after the end of the Mandate. The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1948 Palestine war, as that 78% of Mandatory Palestine was declared as Israel, leading to the expulsion and flight of 700,000 Palestinians, the related depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages by Zionist militias and later the Israeli army and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, the creation of permanent Palestinian refugees, and the "shattering of Palestinian society" Now, back to what I brought up at the opening of this episode, the difference between Zionism and Judaism. Zionism v Judaism: Judaism is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Zionism is a nineteenth-century political ideology that emerged in a moment where Jews were defined as irrevocably outside of a Christian Europe. European antisemitism threatened and ended millions of Jewish lives — in pogroms, in exile, and in the Holocaust. Many Jews today are anti-Zionist, believing that Zionism was a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of their ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe. While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others. Our own history teaches us how dangerous this can be. So what is a settler colony? Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers. Settler colonialism is a form of exogenous domination typically organized or supported by an imperial authority. Settler colonialism contrasts with exploitation colonialism, which entails an economic policy of conquering territory to exploit its population as cheap or free labor and its natural resources as raw material. In this way, settler colonialism lasts indefinitely, except in the rare event of complete evacuation or settler decolonization. Writing in the 1990s, Patrick Wolfe theorized settler colonialism as a structure (rather than an event) premised on the elimination rather than exploitation of the native population, thus distinguishing it from classical colonialism. He also argued that settler colonialism was centered on the control of land and that it continued after the closing of the frontier. His approach was defining for the field, but has been challenged by other scholars on the basis that many situations involve a combination of elimination and exploitation. Settler colonial studies has often focused on former British colonies in North America, Australia and New Zealand, which are close to the complete, prototypical form of settler colonialism, but is also applied to many other conflicts throughout the world. Today in Gaza, over 2 million Palestinians live within roughly 140 square miles, it is “one of the world's most densely populated territories,” according to Gisha, an Israeli nongovernmental organization. Half of Palestinians living in Gaza are under age 19, but they have few to no prospects for socioeconomic growth and limited access to the outside world. Israel has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007 that has had a devastating effect on Palestinian civilians. Israel has built an apartheid blockade, which gives it control of Gaza's borders and is also enforced by Egypt. The International Committee of the Red Cross considers the blockade illegal and says it violates the Geneva Convention, a charge Israeli officials deny. The U.N., various human rights groups and legal scholars, citing the blockade, consider Gaza to still be under military occupation by Israel. Human Rights Watch likened the conditions in Gaza to “an open air prison,” referring to the restriction of movement Israel enforces on Palestinians there. Israel prohibits Palestinians from entering or leaving the area “except in extremely rare cases, which include urgent, life-threatening medical conditions and a very short list of merchants,” according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group. Israelis, Jewish settlers and foreigners are not subject to those restrictions and are free to travel in and out of Gaza. Over the years, Israel has gradually closed land-border crossings from Gaza into Israel except for one — which is open only to Palestinians with Israeli-approved permits. Egypt sporadically closes its land-border crossing for months on end, which is often the only way people in Gaza can gain access to the rest of the world. Further, the roads within Gaza are segregated and Palestinians and Isralis are issued different colored license plates to allow for easy identification. By limiting imports and nearly all exports, Israel's 16-year blockade has driven Gaza's economy to near-collapse, with unemployment rates above 40%, according to the World Bank. More than 65% of the population live under the poverty line, according to the U.N., with 63% of people in Gaza deemed “food insecure” by the World Food Program. Little psychological support exists for a generation of children who are “living with the long-term psychological effects of constant exposure to violence,” according to a U.N. report, which described an uptick of mental health issues, including depression, among young people living in the Gaza Strip. Israel controls food, water, electricity, internet, medicine and movement of the Palestinian people and have been annexing more and more of Gaza since 1948. Hamas, a Sunni Islamist political and military organization committed to armed resistance against Israel and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in Israel's place has been the de facto governing body in the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it ousted the Palestinian Authority from power. Several nations and governing bodies have labeled Hamas a terrorist organization which encompasses between 20,000 and 25,000 members. Events of October 7 On October 7, Palestinian militant groups led by Hamas launched over 3,500 rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel and executed a surprise invasion by land, sea and air, breaking through the Gaza-Israel barrier to attack at least 22 locations in Israel's Southern District. Civilians were targeted in those locations, which included a music festival. Thousands of Israeli citizens were injured and at least 1400 were killed. In addition, over 200 people were taken hostage. Events since October 7 Israel began bombing and airstrikes on Gaza on the 7th of October. These continue through today, October 28th. On October 13th, Israel gave the 1 million residents of northern Gaza an order to evacuate to the south and if they did not, anyone left in the north would be considered a combatant. Israelis allowed one road for the evacuation, but during that time, they bombed the roads, targeting civilians and ambulances. On October 17th, Al-Alhi hospital was bombed, killing over 500 Palestinian refugees. The Israeli defense ministry claimed responsibility for the attack, but shortly after, they rescinded that statement and blamed a misfired Hamas rocket. Israel has ceased all water, food, electricity and medicine from entering Gaza. They have also blocked the only exit available to Gazans at the Egyptian border. Over 1,000,000 Palestinians have lost their homes to bombings. 22 hospitals have been shuttered. Surgeries, including amputations required by injuries from explosions are being performed without anesthesia or fresh water often by the lights of cell phones. As of October 27th, Israel has begun a ground offensive and shutdown the satellite access, silencing any Palestinian journalists and citizens from getting information out of Gaza. They have also warned that they believe Hamas has a stronghold underneath the largest hospital in Gaza, where 15,000 Palestinians are currently seeking refuge. One report states that between October 7 and 26, 7,028 Palestinians were killed, including 2,913 children. This figure is likely significantly less than the actual death toll as this is based on bodies recovered. There are hundreds of buildings that have been reduced to rubble and contain the remains of people that haven't yet been found. I could speak on this for hours, but we are trying to keep it as straightforward as possible, so I want to just end with some clarity on definitions. Western media is using the phrase “Israel-Hamas War” in most of their coverage. A war indicates an armed conflict between states or nations. A war requires two armies. Israel has the 10th largest army in the world and is backed by most if not all Western nations. Gaza, or Palestine, is comprised of 2.2 million people, half of which are children. A segment of Hamas is located within Gaza but they are not an army, they use largely improvised weapons as Israel dictates what comes in and out of Gaza. This is not a war. This is not defense. This is a calculated ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Gaza is often described as an open air prison - I used the term earlier - but this is also a euphemism. A prison indicates that the population are criminals, prosecuted and found guilty of a crime. A prison also requires that it's inhabitants are provided adequate food, water, and medical care. None of these requisites are true of Gaza. The population of Gaza have been convicted of no crimes, and the settler colony of Israel has control over it's water, food, electricity, communications, and medicine - that is a textbook definition of a concentration camp. Finally, the word genocide and ethnic cleansing are both being used, and both are accurate but they are not the same thing. Ethnic cleansing comprises the actions that can be used in the goal to remove members of an ethnic or religious group from an area. Genocide is the murder of an entire population. All genocide can be considered ethnic cleansing, but not all ethnic cleansing is genocide. It is clear that Israel has been guilty of humanitarian atrocities for decades. These have ramped up exponentially in the past month with unyielding aerial attacks, the use of white phosphorus, the targeting of hospitals, schools, and mosques, the silencing of Palestinians communication with the outside world and the denial of basic human needs to the 2.2 million civilians in Gaza, including over 1 million children. It is becoming more clear everyday that Israel seeks to finalize their purging of Palestinians from the land they have colonized by means of genocide. And many Palestinians are making the devastating decision to stay in their homes as long as possible, afraid they will leave and lose what little they have left the way their ancestors did in 1948. They are standing their ground believing that it's better to die in their homes as many of them have nothing left to lose. Evangelical POV: Genesis 12: 7 informs us: And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him. The previous verse tells us this: And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land. This tells us that the promised land was always occupied by other peoples, other groups that had to be driven out so that Abraham and his descendants could settle there. When the Hebrew people, having escaped famine, settled in the borders outside of Egypt they multiplied and became a threat to the Egyptians who became concerned that in the event of a conflict, or threat to their empire, the Hebrews could be persuaded to side with the invaders attack Egypt. They were taken in to slavery for hundreds of years. Returning, they were told: And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Again, the land was inhabited, and these people were, under the holy wars initiated by Moses' successor, Joshua, these people were driven off, or in some cases, assimilated. Individual people, living among the Hebrews were made welcome, and given rights. “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Leviticus 19:34. This story, the struggle of the Hebrew people to overcome obstacles and keep the land of their promise is central to Zionism. Evangelical Protestant Chrisitians, who largely follow a literal interpretation of scripture, have cited this set of scriptures, and endorsed and supported the idea of a Jewish homeland. The new evangelicalism, endorsed Israel for more sinister reasons. Dispensationalist writer, Hal Lindsey, began an elaborate and exact timeline for the return of Christ that started with Israel becoming a nation. From there he listed current events that must be fulfilled to anticipate this return, followed by years of tribulation, and a literal battle of Armageddon taking place on a ruin in Northern Israel. This belief has been endorsed by evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. It has been made a part of modern Christian mythology with it's inclusion in the popular, “Left Behind,” series of books and films. Follow Amity on TikTok @sassyscribbler Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/withoutworks Email @ [withoutworkspod@gmail.com ](mailto:withoutworkspod@gmail.com)Our Internet home: [www.withoutworkspodcast.com ](http://www.withoutworkspodcast.com)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promised_Land https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVuHgaTdysY https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bsxdg https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/zionism/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_colonialism https://www.nbcnews.com/news/gaza-strip-controls-s-know-rcna119405 https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-long-history-israeli-palestinian-conflict/story?id=103875134 https://afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/Palestinian%20Nonviolent%20Resistance%20to%20occupaltion%20since%201967.pdf https://www.usip.org/palestinian-politics-timeline-2006-election https://www.dni.gov/nctc/ftos/hamas_fto.html https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-surprise-rocket-attack-hamas-israel/story?id=103816006 https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-report-intl/index.html Reading List: My Father Was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story by Ramzy Baroud Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh In the Presence of Absence by Richard Widerkehr On Zionist Literature by Ghassan Kanafani Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimir Power Born of Dreams: My Story Is Palestine by Mohammad Sabaaneh Stories Under Occupation: And Other Plays from Palestine by Samer Al-Saber Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited: Capital and State Building in the West Bank by Kareem Rabie Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd Of Noble Origins: A Palestinian Novel by Sahar Khalifeh My First and Only Love by Sahar Khalifeh Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Call your congress representatives Uscpr.org Contact the White House - the White House .gov White House phone # - 202 456 1111 Operation Times 11 AM to 3 PM EST 10AM to 2PM CST 8AM to 12PM PST www.contactmypolitician.com/inbox/write-message-toolbar www.Jewishvoiceforpeace.org/take-action/ https://actionnetwork.org/ Donation organizations Baitulmaal - baitulmaal.org Medical Aid for Palestinians - map.org.uk Islamic Relief USA - irusa.org Palestine Childrens Relief Fund - perfect.net Middle East Childrens Alliance - mecaforpeace.org U.N.R.W.A - unrwa.org IG's to Follow btsabolitionmemes wali_khann Eid_yara wissamgaza byplestia Wizard_bisan1 aymanalgedi12 wael_eldahdouh hamdwneldahdouh Yasser.pix84 m_abu.samra ahmed_d.o.p Belalkh Ismail.jood Jewishvoiceforpeace Ifnotnoworg Free.Palestine.1948 Live from Gaza Motaz_Azaiza ByPlestia Ahmedhijazee Aborjelaa Salma_shurrab Joegaza93 Content Hubs Eye.on.Palestine Cravingpalestine Qudsnen Theimeu Mondoweiss Analysis Mohammedelkurd Gazangirl Anat.international Adnan_barq Jenanmatari TikTok Accounts to Follow Anees Iamsbeih Btnewsroom Books and Articles The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi Palestine: A Socialist Introduction The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by John Pilger Orientalist by Edward W Said Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundation of a Movement by Angela Davis Academic article on the 1967 War - https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-1967-six-day-war#:~:text=In%20those%20six%20days%2C%20Israel,an%20occupier%20and%20regional%20powerhouse. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War (and American milestones from 1969-1976 in the table of context) - https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/arab-israeli-war-1973 Yom Kippur War - https://www.britannica.com/event/Yom-Kippur-War https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/yom-kippur-war For the kids to start learning about world conflict - Avatar the Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra for kids 12+ Visual media https://www.palestinefilminstitute.org/en/unprovoked-narratives YouTube - https://youtu.be/rGVgjS98OsU?si=qNVsN-2W69c78dpd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN4mnVLP0rU&t=45s
Fifty years ago today, on October 17, 1973, a group of Arab oil ministers announced an embargo on oil exports to the United States and other countries in retaliation for America's support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli War. What followed is seared into the American psyche: Fuel shortages across the country left drivers waiting for hours at the gas pump. Even the White House's Christmas tree remained unlit as a sign of austerity. The Arab Oil Embargo has defined energy policy in Washington ever since. In the decades following, markets evolved and governments developed new tools to deal with fuel shortages. But underlying risks remain. What is the legacy of the Arab Oil Embargo? How do today's energy security risks compare to those from 1973? And how does the climate crisis complicate efforts to address them? This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Dr. Daniel Yergin about the legacy of the Arab Oil Embargo, the current crisis in the Middle East, and the outlook for energy security. Dan is the vice chairman of S&P Global, a major financial information and analytics company. He is the author of several books on the history of energy, including his newest, The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations and his Pulitzer Prize winner, The Prize. He is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost experts on energy, economics, and geopolitics. Dan spoke at the Center on Global Energy Policy on October 11, 2023 for an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Arab Oil Embargo. His keynote remarks can be found here.
The Freedom Revival with Bruce Robertson – Diving deep into the millennia-long battle for the Land of Israel, we now witness its climax with the devastating attack by Hamas. Recalling the tremors of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, I, Bruce Robertson, unravel the conflict's roots on "The Freedom Revival". Discover the hidden sources funding global terrorism and the risks asymmetrical warfare poses, especially under the current administration's policies.
In this compelling episode of 'Adams Archive' with Austin Adams, we dive deep into the recent eruption of conflict between Hamas and Israel, ignited by a shocking attack at a music festival. However, this isn't just a retelling of events; it's an attempt to comprehend the emotional and historical weight of the Israeli-Palestinian territorial disputes. Austin steps back from the rapid-fire conclusions and reactions of the media to present a well-researched understanding of the situation, from its deep-rooted religious aspects to the modern-day power struggles. Questioning the prevalent narratives, Austin refuses to merely echo popular sentiment. Instead, he encourages listeners to think critically, challenge widely accepted stances, and arrive at informed opinions. Join us in this essential exploration as we seek truth amidst the chaos. Join the conversation and think beyond the headlines with 'The Adams Archive'. All the links: https://linktr.ee/theaustinjadams Substack: https://austinadams.substack.com ----more---- Full Transcription Hello, you beautiful people and welcome to the Adams archive. My name is Austin Adams, and thank you so much for listening today. On today's episode, we are going to be discussing the war that has just broken out between Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. and Israel. Now, this has been something that I've been sitting on for a few days. I believe the original attack, which happened at a music festival happened a little over about five or so days ago now. And I sat and didn't say a word. And the reason that I did that was because so many people were so quick to call for war. So many people were so quick to give a Pretty strong position for something that they likely didn't have historical context on and I didn't want to be one of those people I was somewhat familiar with this particular situation in Palestine and the difficulty that was going on there for a while due to the Um, Israel basically, um, you know, we'll get into the context of it, but, but to me, it was, it was a hard topic to discuss because so many people were so emotionally charged and anytime that you see. emotions extremely high after a singular event with very little information coming out, and the media calls for war, you have to stop and think, do we, or can we trust the organizations that are giving us this information? Um, can we trust that the people of influence who are calling for war have our best, best interest in mind, or are they being potentially paid? So when all of that comes up to me, I wasn't educated enough to speak out initially. So I paused, I went dark on social media, since this happened until today, and didn't give my opinion that much because it was very heated. But today I will. Today, we'll dive into the historical context of the. Israeli Palestinian Dispute of Territory. We will dive into the religious context of the land that they occupy. We will dive into the current events and the terrorist attacks and the retaliations that are happening between Hamas and influencers. And we'll question the narrative, as you always should. So, today will be a little bit more serious episode, but I appreciate you being here. Uh, I value you more than you ever know, and I hope you realize that I'm not just gonna come on here and say whatever, whatever I think I should say based on where some people may or may not think I fall within the political spectrum. So, you got the wrong guy. Alright? Alright, so today. Alright, so today. We're going to jump into the Palestine and Israel. Let's jump into it. The Adams Archive. So if we realized, if we realized one thing over the last four years, it's that when Everybody on social media, everybody on mainstream media, all of the celebrities, all of the political organizations, all of the, uh, Historically corrupt politicians, all of the the same people that were pushing the same things that we knew have been going on for the last four years that were not in our best interest when all of these people are pushing the same narrative, the same talking points. The same, something should be going on in your head, right? When everybody out there is saying the same thing, ringing the same bell over one to two specific talking points at a singular time, it's time to stop. It's time to question the narrative and it's time to do your due diligence. And that's what I did. Okay, now where I'm going to start this podcast off is by giving you the historical context and not from myself. I'm actually going to pass the microphone to Lex Friedman, who just dropped a podcast today, where he discussed some of the historical context. Um, I want to do this justice. Um, he did a, a podcast that was three hours with Jared Kushner and they got together and this was the opening that they had that I thought was pretty concise surrounding what is the actual issues that we are discussing here. All right. So let's go ahead and listen to that. And then we'll walk through some of these articles that I'm seeing or that I pulled up for us here. So here we go. And now, dear friends, here's Jared. Krishna did a lot of this conversation before the Hamas attack on Israel, and we decided to sit down again and finish the discussion to address the current situation, which is still developing. If I may allow me to summarize the situation as it stands today, it's morning. Monday, October 9th, on Saturday, October 7th at 630 AM Israel time, Hamas fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel. The rocket attack served as cover for a multi pronged infiltration of Israel territory by over 1, 000 Hamas militants. This is shortly after at 740 AM. The Hamas militants went door to door in border towns, killing civilians and taking captives, including women and children. In response to this, Israeli Air Force began carrying out strikes in Gaza, also fighting on the ground in Israel to clear out Hamas militants from Israel territory and preparing to mobilize Israeli troops for potential ground attack on Hamas in Gaza. Now, of course, this is what it appears to be right now. And this Along with other things might change because the, the situation is still developing. The IDF is ordering civilian residents of Gaza to evacuate their homes for their safety. Benjamin Netanyahu declared war in several statements and warned Israelis to brace themselves for a long and difficult war. Just today, Israeli ministers ordered a quote, complete siege of. Gaza interrupting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel from Israel to Gaza. As of now, October 9th, the death toll is over 1200 people and over 130 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. So As I said, the events are rapidly unfolding, so these numbers will sadly increase, but hopefully our words here can at least in part speak to the, the timeless underlying currents of the history and, uh, as you write about the power dynamics of the region. So for people who don't know, Gaza is a 25 miles long, six miles wide strip of territory along the Mediterranean sea. It borders Israel on the east and north and Egypt on the southwest. It's densely populated about 2. 3 million people. And there's been a blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt since. 2007 when Hamas took power. I can just summarize that Hamas is a Palestinian militant group which rules the Gaza Strip. It originated in 1988 and it came to power in Gaza in 2006. As part of its charter, it's sworn to the destruction of Israel and it is designated by the United States, European Union, UK, and of course Israel as a terrorist group. So given that context, what are your feelings as a human being? Uh, and what is your analysis as the former senior advisor to the president under the Trump administration of the current situation in Israel and Gaza? So I think you did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the the context but Watching what's unfolded over the last 48 hours has been truly heartbreaking to see We're still in the early stages of what's developing but seeing the images uh on x of um You know, militants, uh, terrorists going door to door with machine guns, gunning down innocent civilians, uh, seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers, seeing, uh, young, 20 year olds at a rave, uh, dance party to celebrate peace, uh, with, uh, militants flying in and then you know, shooting machine guns to, to kill people indiscriminately, uh, seeing, uh, young children, uh, captive and, and held prisoner, seeing 80 year old grandmothers, a Holocaust survivor also being taken captive. Uh, these are just images. and actions that we have not seen in this world since, uh, 9 11. This is a terror attack on the scale of which, uh, we have not seen, and it's been incredibly hard for a lot of people to comprehend. Um, my heart goes out, obviously, to, uh, all of the, the families of the victims, uh, to... So what I'm gonna look for here is there's a couple spots within this episode that I believe might be of a bit more value to you. Um, before we get, uh, into listening to everybody else's opinions, I just want the facts, right? Um, so let's go and jump to 10 minutes and 28 seconds in and see what they have to say about the families of those who are helping. And power will make the right decisions to paradigm you about the journey towards this historic progress towards peace with Abraham, of course, but first on this situation to step back and some of the history, uh, is there things about the history of Hamas and Gaza that's important to understand what is happening now? Just your comments, your thoughts, your understanding of Hamas. I think you did an excellent job, Lex, of really giving the summary. Just a couple things maybe I'll add to it is that Hamas was originally founded from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is a group that's caused a lot of issues in the region. Um, they've, uh, they've attacked Israel many times in the past. There's a lot of discussion about how Israel, uh, is an occupying power. Well, in Gaza in 2005, they withdrew from all the land and then they say Israel's an apartheid state. Well, Israel then gave governance of the region to the Palestinians. And then what's happened is, is the Palestinian people's lives have now gone down, not up since then. Uh, I will say that under, uh, Hamas's leadership, uh, in, in Gaza. The people have suffered the most are the Palestinian people and I see I've I've watched cries throughout my time in government from people saying, we want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. I agree with those people. I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza are essentially hostages in. Uh, in Gaza, you have basically 2. 2 million people that are being held hostage by 30, 000 Hamas, uh, terrorists, and that's really the problem. And I would just encourage people to, uh, to push their attention and energy in this moment and their anger towards Hamas. Those are the people who are killing innocent civilians, who are, uh, murdering indiscriminately. And those are the people So you can hear him almost everything that he's speaking to his emotion, he's not kind of the again, this is Jared Kushner's not not speaking to the history where he was asked the history. He's not speaking to it. So let's jump over here. And let's see how this is summarized where it says The region known as Palestine has been inhabited by various people over millennia. By the 1800s and early 1900s, nationalism grew among both Arab, Palestinians, and Jews. Jews faced persecution in Europe and sought a homeland, leading to the Zionist movement. Many Jews began migrating to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and later a British mandate after World War I. The Balfour Declaration, which is very important when we're discussing this, issued by Britain in 1917 expressed support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. This raised concerns among Arab Palestinians about their rights and future in the land. After World War II and the Holocaust, there was increased sympathy for Jewish survivors and greater support for the Jewish state. In 1947, the United Nations approved a partition plan, which proposed dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem under international administration. However, tensions escalated, and in 1948, the State of Israel was declared, and Arab states intervened, and the 1948 Arab Israeli War ensued. So, Israel expanded its territory beyond the UN partition plan, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled their homes. So Israel expanded its territory beyond the UN partition plan, and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. That's where it starts to get complicated. Right. Since then, there have been several wars and uprisings. Key events include the 1967 Six Day War, where Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Sinai Peninsula in Golan Heights. The 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab states launched an attack on Israel. The 1987 and 19, er, and 2000 Antifa Dadas. Palestinian uprisings against Israeli occupation. And then in 1993, the Oslo Accords, which was an attempt at peace, establishing Palestinian self governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. So the main issues of the conflict include borders and territory. The status of Jerusalem considered holy by Jews, Muslims, and Christians, the rights of Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements within the West Bank, and security concerns from both sides. So that's a really fundamental. breakdown. It says attempts at peace have been made, but lasting solutions remain elusive. Both sides have experienced sufferings and losses and narratives vary based on perspectives. It's a deeply sensitive and multifaceted issue and we've just scratched the surface. Interesting. So if we start to break that down, what do you think the comparison, right? And this is what, what my position at this very point is, is. Specifically to kind of my position is to educate myself, right? Everything that we just talked about there is not something that I remember deeply studying, right? It's something that is very, what people use the word nuanced, which is kind of pissing off the people who are just pro Israel all the way. Um, but it is nuanced, right? It is a complex issue and there are. Valid points to both sides, essentially what that explained to you is that the, um, within Palestine, their land was taken over and, and declared as Jewish territory by Britain. Then when Israel became into power in 1947, when they approved the partition plan. Right. Dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, Israel started to push that border closer and closer to Palestine and started to continue pushing out Palestinians. And so that's caused a lot of tension, including the four or five things that we just discussed. Now, when we look at both sides of the argument, the Israeli perspective is historical and religious connections. So Jews have an ancient historical and religious connection to the land, dating back thousands of years to biblical times. The Jewish Diaspora maintained this connection during their long history of persecution. Now, the next part of that is modern Zionism and right to self determination, this says. Given centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, many Jews believe in the necessity of a Jewish homeland for their safety and self determination. Which, sure, that's a Maybe understandable, but maybe not at the demise of a completely settled culture, potentially, right? It says legal mandate supporters point to the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent League of Nations mandate as international recognition of the Jewish right to establish a homeland in Palestine And then security concerns. Due to hostile neighbors and multiple wars, Israel emphasizes its right to security. This includes control over certain territories deemed strategic for defense. And then terrorism. Israelis are concerned about attacks on civilians, rightfully, by Palestinian militant groups, underscoring the need for stringent security measures and military responses, right? That's where we've started to hear the words, open air prisons consistently regarding Palestine, basically saying that. Palestine or the Gaza Strip has walls built around it, not allowing anybody from the Palestinians to exit those walls. They can't leave their, their 140 mile strip of land without. Approval from the Israelis, or if they try to, apparently there's been many, many responses that were lethal leading to hundreds, if not thousands of deaths over this time period. So these people feel as if they're imprisoned. They feel as if their land is being encroached upon, that they're being forced out of their homes. And that is why you have these radicalized terrorist groups enacting terrorism. So, when everybody's pushing to say we're pro Israel or we're pro Palestine, there's a common denominator that everybody, I believe, agrees on, which is that nobody is pro Hamas with any sense to them. All of the actions that have happened have been completely and utterly horrible. Now what we get into, and what we will get into a little bit later, is that it really breaks down to Two main events, some of which I have questions around, but we'll get to that in a little bit Let's look at the Palestinian perspective It says historical and continuous presence Palestinians emphasize their continuous presence in the regions for centuries and the majority Status in modern times prior to the large scale Jewish immigration of the 20th century, right? They lived there They say they've been there their families their grandparents their great great great grandparents all lived in Palestine and now The Jews were given a piece of paper that says you can go take over their land and they didn't like that. It says displacement and Nakba, N A K B A. The 1948 war led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians known as the Nakba or catastrophe. Many Palestinians demand the right to return to their homes or compensation. The next point it makes is occupation and human rights. Palestinians oppose Israeli occupation on the West Bank and the blockades of Gaza, viewing them as violations of their rights. They demand statehood. Based on pre 1967 borders, East Jerusalem, Palestinians see East Jerusalem captured by Israel in 1967 as the capital of a future Palestinian state and highlighted significance to Muslims and Christians. Now, when people think of Palestine, it's a lot of people are just so specifically associating it with Muslims because of Hamas. But that's not the case. There's, I believe, 20 percent of the people that live in Gaza are Christians, right? So we have to make that distinction. This is not specifically and only related to religious backgrounds. It also has to do with, mostly, according to the Palestinians, territory disputes, right? And the fact that they believe that they've lived there, they've always been there, and you shouldn't just be able to hand a piece of paper to somebody and say, Hey, you can go take over their land. It says both narratives have deep emotional, historical, and political Elements. Many on both sides seek peace, but the question remains how to reconcile their respective narratives and aspirations. Thank you. Chat GPT. So based on that, now we have some of the historical background when we're talking about Israel and Palestine, right? Which is really what this conversation is about, but maybe it shouldn't be. Right. Maybe we're, we're harping too much on those historical backgrounds. And maybe Hamas who's enacting these horrible atrocious acts should just be obliterated off of the face of the earth. Maybe now what I think is a better perspective is understanding that again, once you realize that when the mainstream media, I'll say it again, the mainstream media, celebrities, Western governments, historically corrupt, consistently war calling politicians. Are all saying the same exact thing at the same exact time, all calling for extreme violence from saying there's a good guy and a bad guy, and here's who the bad guy is, and you should absolutely believe this is who the good guy is. Maybe. You should question the narratives. Maybe you should sit back before deciding to throw on a frickin football jersey and throwing a Ukraine flag on your head, or throwing a Palestinian flag on your head, or throwing an Israeli flag on your head. As you guys know by now, I am anti war. I enacts... Or, or intends to enact violence against you or somebody that you love. But when we're talking about the military industrial complex, it's generally not about the surface level conflict. And that's why when we get into some of the other things that we're going to discuss here, like the very first attack during the assault of Gaza, right. During that. Rave the the music festival, whatever was happening when we look at that and we say there was 230 or so people I believe was the final number of people who died from that event horrific terrible and Hamas was the one who enacted it But the question that I have is, how many times have we gone into a war under false pretenses? How many times have we seen the news articles saying weapons of mass destruction, right? Even when everybody's comparing this to 9 11. What percentage of the American public looks at 9 11 and puts a big question mark around who enacted that and why, right? We go back to the picture of George Bush throwing the airplane at the Jenga towers. A lot of people have some questions about 9 11 and a lot of people believe that it may have been an inside job, a false flag conducted on Americans by America or by three letter agencies or by our government or by the military industrial complex in order to convince Americans to send their children to die in a war. So when we look at this singular event, the one that set it all off, the one that we've seen videos of over and over again, 230 people died. But that does not mean that we don't question the narrative. That does not mean that we don't put a question mark around it and maybe sit and wait and ask some questions. Like, who is set to gain from this? Who is responsible for this? And should we immediately... Now, again, this is not sympathizing with Hamas. If you kill innocent civilians, you should die a horrid, long death, especially if they're women and children. So, unequivocally, very clearly, I do not support any of the actions that have happened here. But what I will say is, That we should, that doesn't mean that we blindly have faith in the mainstream media that has deceived us over and over and over again over the last 100 years. That doesn't mean that we have blind faith in whatever it is that they're telling us just specifically because they pissed us off because America is built off of patriotism and love, right, at least at the civilian level. In understanding that there is good and there is evil in this world and when there is evil that it should be destroyed and I don't disagree with that, but I am going to say that historically. When we go to war, which we very well may very soon, one of my biggest concerns about what's going on in Israel and in Palestine right now is that the U. S. intervention may or may not lead to a act within the United States, either enacted by the terrorist organizations that is enacting them in Palestine and in Israel right now, or potentially potentially. By the same people who enacted 9 11 in order to get us to go to war, and I'm not talking about the alleged pilots, I'm talking about the shadowy individuals who potentially crafted those actions behind the scenes in order to convince you and I to go to war. So my concern is for sure. We very well may have terrorists who crossed our borders while Joe Biden was bumbling and eating ice cream and sniffing young children's hair that are terrorists that are here today, that are in our communities, that are, that are calling for acts of war against Americans who are sitting, waiting, ready to make their move. The second they're called upon to do so. One very valid concern. My second concern. Is that Even if that is not the case, it is so easy to enact one act of terrorism under false pretenses as a false flag to convince you and convince I and convince everyone else in the United States that it is in our best interest to immediately engage in this war. And it doesn't just stop there. The second we step in. Iran will step in, right? Guess who was just having a meeting and exchanging handshakes with China just months ago? Palestine, right? You look at everything that's culminating here, right? You look at the same narrative playing again, that now we very well may be leading ourselves blindly shouting, asking for a world war, calling for it from the top of our lungs on social media over two events. One being what happened at the music festival and two under the fog of war. We have had articles that have come out saying, well, and let's, let's go back. Let's go back to one, one being what happened at the music festival. Now the times of Israel said that in Egypt, spy chief warned Netanyahu of the Gaza assault and was ignored. Now, the Prime Minister is actively denying that, but it says Abbas Kamel, the powerful head of Egyptian intelligence, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 10 days before the attack. In that report, Kamel, or Kamel, K A M E L, warned Israel that something unusual, a terrible operation was about to take place around Gaza. Kamel said reportedly aghast at Netanyahu's passivity. Upon hearing the report and there was a second article that came out that says Egypt Egypt intelligence official says Israel ignored Repeated warnings of something big Cairo official says is real Israel focused on West Bank instead of Gaza Egypt spy chief Said to warn prime minister of terrible operation. So there's your first one now. There's questions about that, right? We question the false flag narrative now. I threw out some some Polls today on Instagram and I'll kind of walk you through what those results were. My phone's dead So I let's see if I can pull it up here actually What I asked people was whether or not, yeah, it's gone. Um, what, what I asked people first was, do you have a strong opinion? Do you have a strong opinion in this war about one side or the other? Right. What I'm trying to gauge there is, is how many people are, are pro this or pro that, right? How many people have a horse in the game? How many people are wearing a jersey? I believe it was a little bit over 50%. So they had a strong opinion one way or the other about the war. The next question I asked was, are you pro Israel? Are you pro Palestine? Or, if you answer no to the above two, are you simply anti Hamas, and then are you something else, none of the above? The overwhelming majority, well, it was about 38 percent said they were pro Israel. Only about 4 percent of people said they were pro Palestine. 32 percent of people said they were anti Hamas, and did not identify as pro Israel. And then another 30%, or whatever the math is there, identified as. None of the above, which I found to be interesting, right? Because that's my position. I am not pro Israel I believe that there is certain specific aspects of this that should be addressed I don't think the right way to address those things is by killing innocent civilians Like Hamas is doing but that doesn't mean that I'm pro the the I'm not taking a side in in the overall underarching issue here. I will absolutely condemn people committing acts of terrorism, but I fall into that category. I'm not pro Israel. Again, I'll say that. I am not pro Israel. I am not. Pro Palestine. What I am is anti terrorism. What I am is pro questioning narratives. What I am is pro shutting up, being quiet, and letting things play out so that we can get out of the fog of war. Because as we know from Ukraine and Russia, how many articles, how many claims, how many videos ended up being video game footage? It's like how much propaganda will the war machine push out in order to convince you to beat the war drum and call your children to war, to enable them to enact a false flag on our own soil, to convince you that it's in our best interest to either spend our tax money or spend our children's blood to go to war with a country 7, 000 miles away from us over a territory dispute. That we have nothing to do with. They are playing all of our emotions. That is my position. And I won't allow it. I will, however, say that the acts if true, and if not conducted under false pretenses or under a false flag or under propaganda, are true. In the way that they are saying, then yeah, absolutely obliterate a terrorist organization all for it, but I'm not going to say in this territory dispute that I'm pro Israel. I'm not going to say in this territory dispute that I'm pro Palestine and a good way that I've heard this, uh, a good correlation to this, not a correlation, but a good analogy was when it comes to the Native Americans and the English settlers, right? It's like. If England shows up on your shores and decides to take over all of your land and you're a Native American and shove you into these small little settlements with people with machine guns standing around it saying you can't leave, and also we control your gas, electricity, and water consumption. And then those Indians, being somewhat savage, go and start scalping people as a response. It's like, yeah, maybe don't scalp people, but also maybe don't overthrow people from the land that they've lived on forever and expect no response. It's like there's no good position within the like, yeah, don't behead people. Don't commit acts of terrorism. Don't kill civilians and rape women. Also, don't displace massive populations via force and imprison them in small locations and expect them not to respond. And that's just such a controversial position to hold right now. And again, I'm open to being wrong. I've been wrong before. You guys know it. And I'll tell you when I'm wrong. But right now, I just in this territory dispute in this religious dispute, whether you're on the Jewish side, and you say it's a religious biblical conversation, or dispute, and you're on the Palestinian side and saying, Hey, dude, I've just I've fucking lived here for 400 years, a thousand years. Maybe don't throw me out of my house. It's like, it's all bad. None of it is good. Now it's really not good to commit acts of terrorism. But again, then you have to go back to questioning the narrative because why now, why now is everybody deciding that today is the day that we just accept wholeheartedly. Everything that is coming out of the mainstream media. Well, CNN said it, so it must be true. Fox News said it, so it must be true. It's like, why now? Why are we deciding today that everything that they say is true, when just three weeks ago, two weeks ago, everything they said was believed to be bullshit? Why are we not questioning narratives when we're being literally emotionally manipulated at the most fundamental and primal level, trying to say that, you know, they're doing this to children and this to women and this to, you know. It's like, yeah, if they are doing that, I agree. Blow them off the face of the earth. As long as you're not also killing women and children in the process. But... If we know anything, it's that the media lies. Influencers try to influence, and nobody knows what the fuck they're talking about, usually. Right, so that gets me to the next story. The next story being the, what came out a day or two ago. There was a journalist who said that When she was leaving an area, and I'll get you the name of her, um, cause I had her pulled up here, um, her name is, let's see, hmm, her name, Nicole Zedek, Z E D E K, for I 24 News. Now what she reported, is that there was 40, 40 babies had been found. In Kahar Aza, and some had been beheaded. It's not a war. It's not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mother, the father in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them. It's a massacre. So the I D F major general Atia rou, who told the outlet at the time, the bodies were discovered. Now, Nicole Zdech claims that they chopped the heads off of children and women. And that comes from somebody who said, sorry, that was David Ben Zion. She allegedly, Nicole, overheard somebody, a soldier saying that that's what happened. Now, it doesn't sound like she saw it for herself and she's been constantly questioned about this. Now, the reason, and you're like, Oh my gosh, how could you question this horrific act? It's like. Again, this isn't a new playbook, right? You go all the way back to George Bush and, and getting us into the Gulf War, I believe it was, right? The incubator babies, right? Here's a clip that I found on that, if you don't recall that. Here it is from 15 years ago. August 2nd, 1990. Iraq attacks Kuwait, claiming the Kuwaitis are slant drilling into Iraq's oil fields. U. S. President George Herbert Walker Bush pushes for a land war against Iraq. But, polls show the U. S. public is split 50 50 on that idea. Then comes this eyewitness testimony before a congressional committee from a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl. The claim is she cannot be identified for fear of reprisals. While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers coming to the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. The U. S. public is outraged. The result? Support for land war zooms. It's a turning point. Desert Storm is launched. 135, 000 Iraqis are killed. An estimated 1 million Iraqis, many of them children and old people, then die as a result of 10 years of sanctions. One small problem. There never were any incubator baby deaths. Not one. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's investigative flagship program, The Fifth Estate, reveals the girl to be the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter, given her lines and coached in acting by the giant American PR firm, Hill and Knowlton. It's one phase in a 10 million joint U. S. Kuwaiti campaign of deception. This man is lying. I, myself, buried 14 newborn babies. That had been taken from their incubators. This man is lying. They had kids in incubators, and they were thrown out of the incubators so that Kuwait could be systematically dismantled. There were a lot of people who participated in a conspiracy. Yes, an out and out conspiracy of fake organizations, false documents, fraud, and disinformation. So, if a new man named Bush is in the White House and helps engineer a brazen deception in order to achieve global geopolitical goals as well as domestic and personal ones, It wouldn't be a first, would it? Great question. It wouldn't be a first, would it? So when you understand that that was all built off of a lie, it starts to make the narratives that we're seeing look a lot like a playbook. Of what went on to get us into previous wars with similar types of organizations So when i'm saying question everything i'm not saying that these things aren't true I'm, not saying there's no possibility because there's horrible people who do horrible things and we've talked about them before right, they usually just wear suits and not, uh, you know garbs, but However the point in this is that Don't just run blindly and call for war from the United States, right? There was the one of the polls that I did was do you believe that the United States will go to war to help? Israel there was between fit. I put it as 0 25 percent 50 percent and then 100 percent likelihood 64 percent of people said 100 percent 27 or something like that said 50 percent it was like 12 percent said 0% So more than 80 percent of people think that we're going to get pulled into this war. Now with the second question I asked on the back of that one was, do you think the United States should go to war? 90 percent of people answered, absolutely not. 80 percent of people believe that we will go to war. 90 percent of people believe that we shouldn't. And you have to realize the power of storytelling right when when they weaponize these types of stories these outrage stories against you and against I and build these narratives and have these in excitable enticing politicians telling these stories. You have to still, even under the emotions, even under the frustration, even under every bit of me that would love to just rip apart whoever would do that to a child. Every fiber of my being, I would love nothing more than to be locked in a room with somebody who did that to a baby and see what I could do to them. Every part of me. But again, that doesn't mean that we don't have to have a level of skepticism and level headedness. We're really starting to see shifting or sifting through the the influencers and narratives who is blindly going to follow the machine and who's going to At least continue their skepticism when it's ours, the, the, you know, I say our side, you shouldn't have a side when it's not the extreme liberal left pushing the narratives when it's the conservative right, when it's the, the libertarian party, when it's the, you know, when it's the people right of center who are starting to bang this war drum, it's amazing to me how many conservatives were anti war for the last seven, eight years. It's amazing to me And all of a sudden are calling for women and children to, to, or are calling for the men and the women of our country to go to war on behalf of Israel immediately without any confirmation of the atrocious acts that are being peddled as these stories, right? So quick to call for war. So quick to say that we should be backing Israel. So quick to say that yes, send our military operators over there to do what they do best. There is a profitable machine, a highly profitable machine behind war. And allegedly some of the congressmen were investing in war stocks just prior to this breaking out. That's interesting. So here is the woman on Buck, Clay and Buck show discussing this. Skepticism around the babies. Now, another layer of my skepticism around this baby decapitation situation is the fact that Netanyahu came out and said that they were beheading soldiers today. If it was completely confirmed 100 percent with validated evidence that this happened, why would he not also say that about the children, the babies, the toddlers that they're talking about here? Because all it does is add to his agenda. So if that is not true, or at the very least, it has not been completely confirmed with evidence outside of these one to two. Decently far left reporters, um, why, why would he not say that? So to me, that just adds another layer of skepticism around this story. Now, again, I, I can't tell you, I, I'm not just going to, I'm not going to continue backpelling. You already know my position. It's horrible. It's terrible. If it's true, but ask questions. That's my whole position on this entire thing. Right? And again, if these terrorists are doing these things, yeah. Destroy them. But that doesn't mean that Israel is right in this land dispute. And it doesn't mean that Palestine is right. It's, it's just too complicated. And I'm not the guy to solve that for you. Right, and honestly, I'm not the guy to give you the full history on all of this. There's other podcasts that you can listen to that are much more suited to that than I am. But, um, what I will tell you from a normal guy's perspective who likes to maybe take a... level headed approach to crazy issues like this is that always have a level of skepticism when it comes to calling for war. Because there's so much money and it's usually not from one of the sides that's fighting it. These are banker's wars. And there's actually a great breakdown of the banker's wars. Um, let's see if we can find any of these. It says all are all wars bankers wars. I believe there's a long long discussion About this from a let's see if I can find it. Hmm. There was a good Instagram called truth Truth behold or something like that that posted all the parts of it But I'll, I'll find it and I'll, I'll post it somewhere for you guys. Uh, but it's called Banker's Wars and, uh, I believe it's some sort of documentary for you. So hopefully that helps. Um, but all wars are Banker's Wars is essentially the idea. All wars. When we talk about the, the, the elite banking families of the world, the people that own the Raytheons, the BlackRocks, the Vanguards, they own all of it. These elite bankers, you know, their names by now, if you're listening to this now, there was even a, a. More interesting, uh, post on Instagram that I saw somebody post, which related, uh, Palestine, or I'm sorry, Israel, to the Rothschilds family, which said, let's see here if I can get it, here it is, it said, Baron Edmund de Rothschilds, the scion of the Rothschilds family, is the biggest individual stockholder in the Israel corporation. Which has invested roughly half of his 10 million overall in the state. After Edmund's death, his son's James de Rothschild's instructed PICA to transfer most of its land in Israel to the Jewish national fund. And on December 31st, 1958, PICA agreed to vest its rights to landholdings in Syria and Lebanon to the state of Israel. After Baron de Hirsch died in 1896, the Hirsch founded Jewish. Colonization Association, ICA started supporting the settlement of Palestine and Baron Rothschild's took an active role in the organization and transferred his Palestinian land holdings as well as 15 million francs to it. In 1970, Bank Kalal A Rothschild's family business in Israel increased its business volume by 80 percent to the amount of 137 million Aira, however you pronounce their finances. Um, so very interesting. Uh, another report that comes from finbold. com says that members of Congress purchased war stocks ahead of the Hamas attack in Israel. Another post that I found interesting, this was by ThatPatriotMom. On Instagram, stated problem, reaction, solution, round and round like a hamster wheel. This is the oldest trick in the book into manipulating the masses. There is a reason we are funding both sides of this conflict and I'll continue with that post in a second because she did a great job. We funded this. We gave Iran 6 billion. Right. You want to talk about problems that we should be solving. The problems that we should be solving are not 7, 000 miles away from here. The problems that we should be solving are at our borders, maintaining border security so that terrorists don't come here and do the things that these news companies are saying they're doing there. The problems that we should be solving here is the fact that Joe Biden gave 6 billion to Iran, which essentially funded this terrorist campaign in a prisoner swap, which they gave us. No money and an equal amount of prisoners. Right? I'm pretty sure I played that clip here. The problems that we should be solving is the fact that we funded and basically essentially created Hamas. Just like we did ISIS. Just like we did basically all of the other terrorist organizations to go against the larger enemies that we have. In fact, there was a, let me pull this article up for you guys, an ex CIA analyst. And this comes from RT. com an ex CIA analyst said 100 percent he is sure that Hamas is using US supplied weapons. Again, one more time for you, ex CIA analyst is 100 percent sure that Hamas is using U. S. supplied weapons. It says, Washington is expected to prioritize aid to Israel and put conditions on continued funding in Ukraine. Now I saw a meme that had rockets shooting up from one side and rockets shooting up from the other side. And it said, U. S. taxpayers and U. S. taxpayers, right? We are literally funding both sides of this war, and there's certain organizations and corporations who put our politicians in the power who are profiting off of it. So when you look at a casualty rate of 230 people, 230 people dying for a corporation to make tens if not Hundreds of billions of dollars of your tax dollars or the silent tax dollars, which is inflation over time because the federal, the Fed prints money in order to fund these things because we owe money. We don't have any money, right? So it says Hamas is using U. S. supplied weapons. To attack Israel, even, and I'll pull this up for you, Um, Hamas is using US supplied weapons to attack Israel, even as Washington prepares to step up military aid to West Jerusalem, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson told RT on Monday. He said, It's probably 100 percent sure that the weapons were supplied by the United States, Johnson opined. Opined? Opined? O P I N E D? Interesting. Is that the act of having an opinion? Huh, new word every day. And you guys are along for the ride to see how much of an indeed I am. Explaining that the only question was whether the Palestinian government's or militant groups weapons had come from U. S. supplies diverted from Ukraine, Afghanistan, or the Palestinian Authority. In the West Bank, noting there were no effective controls on the billions of dollars of arms and military financing funneled from the U. S. to Ukraine in the last two years. Johnson observed that even weapons supplied by Israel to Ukraine might have made it back to Hamas via the black market, suggesting the war unfolding in Gaza will tell us how extensive some of these weapons supplies have been. Huh. It says the conflict will also force a reevaluation of Washington's blank check to Ukraine. The ex analyst predicted Congress is going to insist that Israel gets put at the front of the line and that Ukraine's going to go to the back of the line. It's also going to embolden and make happen inspections and accounting in order to deliver to allow Ukraine to have any more weapons. Now that's interesting, right? It's like as soon as the money tree starts to dwindle for Ukraine, all of the sudden this massive war breaks out overseas. And just a fun fact for you, just one fun fact for you is that since World War II, we have funded Israel more than any other country in the world to the amount of 158 billion total. Fun fact for you. All right, let's see what else that we got here in some of these files I pulled up. Let's let's finish her, her, her comment there. It says this letter written in. On 8 15 of 1871, from high ranking Freemason Albert Pike outlined three world wars that would usher in the New World Order. It is debated whether or not this letter actually existed, but considering how accurate it seems to be, I will just put it out there for you to read and use your own discernment. The First World War must be brought about in order to permit the Illuminati to overthrow the power of the Tsars in Russia, and of making that country a fortress. Of aesthetic communism, the divergences caused by the agent tour or the agents of the Illuminati between the British and Germanic empires will be used to foment this war at the end of the war. Communism will be built and used in order to destroy the other governments and in order to weaken. The second world war must be fermented by talking about taking advantage of the differences between the fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be brought enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel and Palestine. During the Second World War, which is exactly what happened, by the way, during the Second World War, international communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christ, Christendom, which would then be restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it to be the final social cataclysm. The third world war is the plan to bring Satanism into the mainstream and is detailed in my slides. Let's find that full letter. It says 815 1871 Albert Pike. I bet you we can find it. 815 1871 Albert. All right. Here we go. Here is the letter and it's coming from Lightshipministries. org And so it says it seems to the new world order Starts when people lose confidence in governments it is the feet of iron and clay as in the book of Daniel and Revelation 7 18 and Unfold or 7 into 18 unfolding before our eyes Interesting. For a short time, this letter was on display in the British Museum Library in London, and it was copied by William Guy Carr, former intelligence officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. And it reads what we just read about the First World War, right, was that it was, um, to permit the Illuminati to overthrow the power of the Tsars in Russia and making that country a fortress of aesthetic communism. Check. Um, the divergences cause the agent tour of the Illuminati between the British and Germanic empires will be used to foment the war. Check. At the end of the war, communism will be built and used in order to destroy the other governments in order to weaken the religions. So students of history recognize the political alliances of England, on one side, and Germany on the other, forged between 1871 and 1898 by Otto von Bismarck, co conspirator of Albert, Albert Pike, were instrumental in bringing the First World War. Okay, we talked about the Second World War, which says that after the Second World War, communism was made strong enough to begin taking over weaker governments. In 1945, at the Potsdam Conference between Truman, Churchill, and Stalin, a large portion of Europe was simply handed over to Russia. And on the other side of the world, the aftermath of the war with Japan helped to sweep the tide of communism into China. Now here's where it says, the Third World War. The Third World War, according to this Illuminati... Nostradamus, in 1871, says the Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the Agentur of the Illuminati between the political Zionists and the leaders of the Islamic world. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam and political Zionism Right? Islam being the modern Muslim Arabic world and Zionism being the state of Israel mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile, the other nations, once more divided on this issue, will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual, and economical exhaustion. We shall unleash the nihilists. And the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm, which in all its honor will show clearly to the nations that the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery, and of the most bloody turmoil, then everywhere the citizens obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitude disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits Will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine. of Lucifer brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement, which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time. Interesting. So since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, world events in the Middle East show a growing unrest and instability between Jews and Arabs. This is completely in line with the call for a third world war to be fought between the two and their allies on both sides. This third world war is still to come and recent events show us that this is not off. I wonder when this article was written. Well, it was before 2018. This was written in 2006. This article talking about this. Wow. Hmm. Very interesting. I want to see if we can get a copy of this full writing because that would be interesting. Hmm. So one website that this is pointing to is three world wars. com. And it says three world wars, tracking the progress of the planned three world Wars, I wonder when this was last updated because it looks pretty damn old and it looks like some shitty Website that you probably should question However, that doesn't take away from the validity that this person is essentially Figuring out exactly what they were going to do almost ten years ago now, right seven years ago Hmm an introduction or an introduction to conspiratorial history Albert Pike's plan for World War three Yeah, this website's not good at all. Um, let's look and see if we have, if maybe if at least has the documents. Now this looks better over here a little bit, um, 3worldwars. com slash Albert Pike 2. Um, and this says, continue from, uh, uh, Part 1, who was Albert Pike? So he should just be Albert Pike slash Albert Pike. It says, very few outsiders know about the intimate plans of Albert Pike and the architects of the New World Order. In the 19th century, Albert Pike established a framework for bringing in the New World Order based on a vision revealed to him. Albert Pike wrote a blueprint of events that would play themselves out in the 20th century with even more of these events yet to come. It is the blueprint for which we believe unseen leaders are following today, knowing early or not to engineer the planned third and final. World War, Albert Pike was born on December 29th, 1809 in Boston and was the oldest of six children born to Benjamin and Sarah Andrews Pike. See how long this is. Okay, I won't make you guys read it yourself. That's not too long. Um, let's see. Is there anything of value in here? Uh, he studied at Harvard and later served as a Brigadier General of the Confederate Army after the Civil War. Pike was found guilty of treason and jailed, only to be pardoned by fellow Freemason President Andrew Jackson. Interesting. So there's evidence. April 22nd 1866, who met with him the day the next day at the White House. On June 20th, 1867, Scottish Rite officials conferred upon Johnson the Freemasonry degrees, and he later went to Boston to dedicate a Masonic temple. Pike was said to be a genius, able to write, read, and write in 16 different languages, although I cannot find a record anywhere of what those languages were. In addition, he is widely accused of plagiarism, so to take a pinch. So take that with a pinch of salt At various stages of his life. He was a poet, philosopher, frontiersman, soldier, humanitarian, and philanthropist, a 33 degree Mason. He was one of the founding fathers and head of the ancient accepted Scottish Rite of free masonry. Being the grand commander of North American Free Masonry from 1859 and retains that position until his death in 1891. In 1869, he was a top leader in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Wow. Now what you have to know about this is all of it can be like, they have all of these logs from all the Freemasons, um, that kind of like outlines who did what, when. So there is ways to corroborate this evidence. Incidentally, Freemason. RE itself was a fascinating subject and I could devote an entire website to that. Right. Okay. Thank you. Pike was said to be a Satanist who indulged in the occult, and he apparently possessed a bracelet, which he used in CO to summon Lucifer with whom he had a constant communication. He was the grand master of a Luciferian group, known as the Order of the Palladium or Sovereign Counsel of Wisdom, which had been founded in Paris in 1737. Uh, Pauladism, P A L L A D I S M, Pauladism has been brought to Greece from Egypt by Pythagoras in the 5th century. Interesting. And it was the cult of Satan that was introduced to the inner circle of the Masonic lodges. It was aligned with the Palladium of the Templars. In 1801, Isaac Long, a Jew, brought a statue of Baphomet, or Satan, to Charleston, South Carolina, where he helped to establish the ancient and accepted Scottish Right. Long apparently chose Charleston because it was geographically located on the 33rd parallel of latitude. Incidentally, so is Baghdad. And this council is considered to be the mother supreme council of all Masonic lodges in the world. Interesting. There's a monument. A confederate brigadier general as a lawyer, writer, see if there's a monument somewhere for him. The statue stands on a pedestal near the foot of Capitol Hill between the Department of Labor building and the Municipal building. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. Lots more to be read there. However, so there's the third world war letter that breaks down exactly saying that it's going to be caused in this exact manner. That's pretty wild. I haven't read up on that at all.
In this episode, we hear acclaimed Israeli-British historian Avi Shlaim, about his unique memoir from the lost world of Arab-Jews. He was just five years old when antisemitic violence following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War forced his family to flee their beloved Iraq to live in a newly-created Israel.
Hadassa Kingstone's parents escaped Hitler's Europe, snuck through the British blockade of Mandatory Palestine and settled in pre-State Haifa, where she was born in 1936. Her memories include hiding Haganah weapons in her father's factory while their apartment was used as a clandestine radio station in the lead up to the 1948 War of Independence. But after serving in the first Arab-Israeli War at the Suez Canal in 1956, Kingstone left to see the world. She made it to Montreal, where she fell in love, married and remained for three decades. Along the way she encountered some of Israel's iconic founding leaders, including Golda Meir and Menachem Begin. But the pull of her native land saw her move back to Israel in 1990, after her children had grown up. Kingstone has spent the last 30 years with a front-row seat to Israel's more recent history, from Intifadas to Start-Up Nation to the current pro-democracy protests engulfing her homeland. On Israel's 75th birthday, she joins The CJN Daily from Tel Aviv to share her personal journey, which closely mirrors the story of the Jewish State. What we talked about: Read how other Canadians remember their first trips to Israel in The CJN Hadassa Kingstone's niece, Heidi Kingstone, writes her memoirs about covering the war in Afghanistan, in The CJN, from 2015 Credits The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Zachary Kauffman is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. We're a member of The CJN Podcast Network. To subscribe to this podcast, please watch this video. Donate to The CJN and receive a charitable tax receipt by clicking here.
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. — Romans 12:18 The United Nations peacekeeping effort first began in 1948. Since then, UN peacekeepers have participated in 72 missions worldwide, a dozen of which continue today. As Christians, we are called to be peacekeepers as well. This calling comes in the context of biblical advice on exercising love in action. In Christ we are called to be both genuine and practical in our love. That is done through devotion, humility, generosity, spiritual enthusiasm, empathy, and hospitality. As the apostle Paul discusses these things, he urges us to “live at peace with everyone.” And he qualifies this by saying, “If it is possible” and “as far as it depends on you.” We need to be realistic about the effects of sin on our relations with others. The UN peacekeepers' first mission operation was to maintain the ceasefire during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Forty years later the UN peacekeeping force received the Nobel Peace Prize, and their mission in the Middle East is still operating today. Realistically, living at peace with everyone at all times may not be possible for us. But we must strive for peace in our relations with others. It's a lifelong calling that at times may be tough and unglamorous. Yet in our peacekeeping we have a prize to look forward to: God's peace and favor. Lord, may we love others as you have loved us—with compassion and care. Give us wisdom to be peacekeepers in our daily relations with others. Amen.
Katie interviews Miko Peled about Israel, Palestine, and his book! This interview is recorded live at The People's Forum! Miko Peled (https://twitter.com/mikopeled) is a speaker, writer, human rights activist, Karate instructor and a sixth-degree black belt. His maternal grandfather was one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence. Miko's father was Mattityahu Peled, a decorated general who fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and served as a general in the Six-Day War of 1967. Mattityahu became a critic of Israel and a participant in dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Miko himself started out as a proud Zionist and is now an anti-Zionist. He is the author of The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. You can find his blog and podcast at https://mikopeled.com/. ***Please support The Katie Halper Show *** On Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpershow Follow Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kthalps
Palestinian-American Noura Erakat and Israeli-American Miko Peled discuss Israel's occupation and Palestinian resistance. They also debunk some common talking points used to argue that Israel isn't imposing apartheid. Noura Erakat (https://twitter.com/4noura) is a human rights attorney and an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick in the Department of Africana Studies and the Program in Criminal Justice. She is an editorial committee member of the Journal for Palestine Studies and a co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya, an electronic magazine on the Middle East that combines scholarly expertise and local knowledge. She is the author of Justice for Some: Law and in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). Noura served as Legal Counsel for the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives from 2007-2009. Noura worked as the Legal Advocacy Coordinator for the Badil Center for Refugee and Residency Rights from 2010-2013. Miko Peled (https://twitter.com/mikopeled) is a speaker, writer, human rights activist, Karate instructor and a sixth-degree black belt. His maternal grandfather was one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence. Miko's father was Mattityahu Peled, a decorated general who fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and served as a general in the Six-Day War of 1967. Mattityahu became a critic of Israel and a participant in dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Miko himself started out as a proud Zionist and is now an anti-Zionist. He is the author of The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five. You can find his blog and podcast at https://mikopeled.com/. ***Please support The Katie Halper Show *** For bonus content, to support independent media and to help make this program possible, please join us on Patreon at - https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpershow Follow Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kthalps
A long dark, cold winter looms with soaring energy prices. Some of the advice we've heard recently includes buying a new kettle or taking a flannel bath...echoing previous advice given during the brutal fuel crisis of 1973. The Arab–Israeli War sent oil sky high and Britain saw a wave of crises from rolling strikes to energy shortages but the 1970s saw a fuel shortage and what we're facing now is fuel at inflated prices. Any sense of communal struggle and national unity is absent this time. Making sense of what we're facing today, historian Alwyn Turner joins Dan on the podcast to look at similarities in how people coped, how the government responded and also the big differences.This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In May 1948, at the onset of the Arab-Israeli War, Egyptian soldiers crossed into Palestine at Rafah as military leaders promised a swift victory. Yet despite their defeat by the year's end, this war would give way to military rule less than four years later. “A military loss was not what Egyptians expected,” historian Chloe Bordewich tells New Lines' Lydia Wilson in The Lede. Egyptian media carried images and footage of successful operations, helping to reinforce pronouncements of imminent victory. But victory never materialized. In the face of official obfuscation, alternative explanations for why the war had been lost began to circulate among the public and in the press. One rumor in particular began to take on a life of its own — “that Egypt had lost the war in Palestine because political leaders had procured, profited from and knowingly supplied their own troops with dysfunctional weapons.” The rumor tapped into something that resonated deeply with the Egyptian public. As time went on, it migrated from page to screen and into popular memory. The government's reputation never recovered, and in 1952, a group of mid-ranking officers overthrew the king. Produced by Christin El-Kholy
One of the top Jewish podcasts in the U.S., American Jewish Committee's (AJC) The Forgotten Exodus, is the first-ever narrative podcast to focus exclusively on Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. In this week's episode, we feature Jews from Egypt. In the first half of the 20th century, Egypt went through profound social and political upheavals culminating in the rise of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his campaign of Arabization, creating an oppressive atmosphere for the country's Jews, and leading almost all to flee or be kicked out of the country. Hear the personal story of award-winning author André Aciman as he recounts the heart-wrenching details of the pervasive antisemitism during his childhood in Alexandria and his family's expulsion in 1965, which he wrote about in his memoir Out of Egypt, and also inspired his novel Call Me by Your Name. Joining Aciman is Deborah Starr, a professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Cornell University, who chronicles the history of Egypt's Jewish community that dates back millennia, and the events that led to their erasure from Egypt's collective memory. Aciman's modern-day Jewish exodus story is one that touches on identity, belonging, and nationality: Where is your home when you become a refugee at age 14? Be sure to follow The Forgotten Exodus before the next episode drops on August 22. ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits: Rampi Rampi, Aksaray'in Taslari, Bir Demet Yasemen by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “Middle Eastern Arabic Oud”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989 ___ Episode Transcript: ANDRÉ ACIMAN: I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. It had become oppressive to be Jewish. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: leaving Egypt. Author André Aciman can't stand Passover Seders. They are long and tedious. Everyone gets hungry long before it's time to eat. It's also an unwelcome reminder of when André was 14 and his family was forced to leave Egypt – the only home he had ever known. On their last night there, he recounts his family gathered for one last Seder in his birthplace. ANDRÉ: By the time I was saying goodbye, the country, Egypt, had essentially become sort of Judenrein. MANYA: Judenrein is the term of Nazi origin meaning “free of Jews”. Most, if not all of the Jews, had already left. ANDRÉ: By the time we were kicked out, we were kicked out literally from Egypt, my parents had already had a life in Egypt. My mother was born in Egypt, she had been wealthy. My father became wealthy. And of course, they had a way of living life that they knew they were abandoning. They had no idea what was awaiting them. They knew it was going to be different, but they had no sense. I, for one, being younger, I just couldn't wait to leave. Because it had become oppressive to be Jewish. As far as I was concerned, it was goodbye. Thank you very much. I'm going. MANYA: André Aciman is best known as the author whose novel inspired the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name – which is as much a tale of coming to terms with being Jewish and a minority, as it is an exquisite coming of age love story set in a villa on the Italian Riviera. What readers and moviegoers didn't know is that the Italian villa is just a stand-in. The story's setting– its distant surf, serpentine architecture, and lush gardens where Elio and Oliver's romance blooms and Elio's spiritual awakening unfolds – is an ode to André's lost home, the coastal Egyptian city of Alexandria. There, three generations of his Sephardic family had rebuilt the lives they left behind elsewhere as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, two world wars unfolded, a Jewish homeland was born, and nationalistic fervor swept across the Arab world and North Africa. There, in Alexandria, his family had enjoyed a cosmopolitan city and vibrant Jewish home. Until they couldn't and had to leave. ANDRÉ: I would be lying if I said that I didn't project many things lost into my novels. In other words, to be able to re-experience the beach, I created a beach house. And that beach house has become, as you know, quite famous around the world. But it was really a portrait of the beach house that we had lost in Egypt. And many things like that, I pilfer from my imagined past and dump into my books. And people always tell me, ‘God, you captured Italy so well.' Actually, that was not Italy, I hate to tell you. It was my reimagined or reinvented Egypt transposed into Italy and made to come alive again. MANYA: Before he penned Call Me By Your Name, André wrote his first book, Out of Egypt, a touching memoir about his family's picturesque life in Alexandria, the underlying anxiety that it could always vanish and how, under the nationalization effort led by Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nassar, it did vanish. The memoir ends with the events surrounding the family's last Passover Seder before they say farewell. ANDRÉ: This was part of the program of President Nasser, which was to take, particularly Alexandria, and turn it into an Egyptian city, sort of, purified of all European influences. And it worked. As, by the way, and this is the biggest tragedy that happens to, particularly to Jews, is when a culture decides to expunge its Jews or to remove them in one way or another, it succeeds. It does succeed. You have a sense that it is possible for a culture to remove an entire population. And this is part of the Jewish experience to accept that this happens. MANYA: Egypt did not just expunge its Jewish community. It managed to erase Jews from the nation's collective memory. Only recently have people begun to rediscover the centuries of rich Jewish history in Egypt, including native Egyptian Jews dating back millennia. In addition, Egypt became a destination for Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th Century. And after the Suez Canal opened in 1869, a wave of more Jews came from the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and Greece. And at the end of the 19th Century, Ashkenazi Jews arrived, fleeing from European pogroms. DEBORAH STARR: The Jewish community in Egypt was very diverse. The longest standing community in Egypt would have been Arabic speaking Jews, we would say now Mizrahi Jews. MANYA: That's Deborah Starr, Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film at Cornell University. Her studies of cosmopolitan Egypt through a lens of literature and cinema have given her a unique window into how Jews arrived and left Egypt and how that history has been portrayed. She says Jews had a long history in Egypt through the Islamic period and a small population remained in the 19th century. Then a wave of immigration came. DEBORAH: We have an economic boom in Egypt. Jews start coming from around the Ottoman Empire, from around the Mediterranean, emigrating to Egypt from across North Africa. And so, from around 5,000 Jews in the middle of the 19th century, by the middle of the 20th century, at its peak, the Egyptian Jews numbered somewhere between 75 and 80,000. So, it was a significant increase, and you know, much more so than just the birth rate would explain. MANYA: André's family was part of that wave, having endured a series of exiles from Spain, Italy, and Turkey, before reaching Egypt. DEBORAH: Egypt has its independence movement, the 1919 revolution, which is characterized by this discourse of coexistence, that ‘we're all in this together.' There are images of Muslims and Christians marching together. Jews were also supportive of this movement. There's this real sense of a plurality, of a pluralist society in Egypt, that's really evident in the ways that this movement is characterized. The interwar period is really this very vibrant time in Egyptian culture, but also this time of significant transition in its relationship to the British in the various movements, political movements that emerge in this period, and movements that will have a huge impact on the fate of the Jews of Egypt in the coming decades. MANYA: One of those movements was Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in the biblical homeland of the Jews. In 1917, during the First World War, the British government occupying Egypt at the time, issued a public statement of support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, still an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. That statement became known as the Balfour Declaration. DEBORAH: There was certainly evidence of a certain excitement about the Balfour Declaration of 1917. A certain amount of general support for the idea that Jews are going to live there, but not a whole lot of movement themselves. But we also have these really interesting examples of people who were on the record as supporting, of seeing themselves as Egyptians, as part of the anti-colonial Egyptian nationalism, who also gave financial support to the Jewish project in Palestine. And so, so there wasn't this sense of—you can't be one or the other. There wasn't this radical split. MANYA: Another movement unfolding simultaneously was the impulse to reclaim Egypt's independence, not just in legal terms – Egypt had technically gained independence from the British in 1922 – but suddenly what it meant to be Egyptian was defined against this foreign colonial power that had imposed its will on Egypt for years and still maintained a significant presence. DEBORAH: We also see moves within Egypt, toward the ‘Egyptianization' of companies or laws that start saying, we want to, we want to give priority to our citizens, because the economy had been so dominated by either foreigners or people who were local but had foreign nationality. And this begins to disproportionately affect the Jews. Because so many of the Jews, you know, had been immigrants a generation or two earlier, some of them had either achieved protected status or, you know, arrived with papers from, from one or another of these European powers. MANYA: In 1929, Egypt adopted its first law giving citizenship to its residents. But it was not universally applied. By this time, the conflict in Palestine and the rise of Zionism had shifted how the Egyptian establishment viewed Jews. DEBORAH: Particularly the Jews who had lived there for a really long time, some of whom were among the lower classes, who didn't travel to Europe every summer and didn't need papers to prove their citizenship, by the time they started seeing that it was worthwhile for them to get citizenship, it was harder for Jews to be approved. So, by the end, we do have a pretty substantial number of Jews who end up stateless. MANYA: Stateless. But not for long. In 1948, the Jewish state declared independence. In response, King Farouk of Egypt joined four other Arab nations in declaring war on the newly formed nation. And they lost. The Arab nations' stunning defeat in that first Arab-Israeli War sparked a clandestine movement to overthrow the Egyptian monarchy, which was still seen as being in the pocket of the British. One of the orchestrators of that plot, known as the Free Officers Movement, was Col. Gamel Abdel Nassar. In 1952, a coup sent King Farouk on his way to Italy and Nassar eventually emerged as president. The official position of the Nassar regime was one of tolerance for the Jews. But that didn't always seem to be the case. DEBORAH: Between 1948 and ‘52, you do have a notable number of Jews who leave Egypt at this point who see the writing on the wall. Maybe they don't have very deep roots in Egypt, they've only been there for one or two generations, they have another nationality, they have someplace to go. About a third of the Jews who leave Egypt in the middle of the 20th century go to Europe, France, particularly. To a certain extent Italy. About a third go to the Americas, and about a third go to Israel. And among those who go to Israel, it's largely those who end up stateless. They have no place else to go because of those nationality laws that I mentioned earlier, have no choice but to go to Israel. MANYA: Those who stayed became especially vulnerable to the Nassar regime's sequestration of businesses. Then in 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, a 120-mile-long waterway that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea – that same waterway that created opportunities for migration in the region a century earlier. DEBORAH: The real watershed moment is the 1956 Suez conflict. Israel, in collaboration with France, and Great Britain attacks Egypt, the conflict breaks out, you know, the French and the British come into the war on the side of the Israelis. And each of the powers has their own reasons for wanting, I mean, Nasser's threatening Israeli shipping, and, threatening the security of Israel, the French and the British, again, have their own reasons for trying to either take back the canal, or, just at least bring Nassar down a peg. MANYA: At war with France and Britain, Egypt targeted and expelled anyone with French and British nationality, including many Jews, but not exclusively. DEBORAH: But this is also the moment where I think there's a big pivot in how Jews feel about being in Egypt. And so, we start seeing larger waves of emigration, after 1956. So, this is really sort of the peak of the wave of emigration. MANYA: André's family stayed. They already had endured a series of exiles. His father, an aspiring writer who copied passages by Marcel Proust into his diary, had set that dream aside to open a textile factory, rebuild from nothing what the family had lost elsewhere, and prepare young André to eventually take over the family business. He wasn't about to walk away from the family fortune – again. DEBORAH: André Aciman's story is quite, as I said, the majority of the Jewish community leaves in the aftermath of 1956. And his family stays a lot longer. So, he has incredible insights into what happens over that period, where the community has already significantly diminished. MANYA: Indeed, over the next nine years, the situation worsened. The Egyptian government took his father's factory, monitored their every move, frequently called the house with harassing questions about their whereabouts, or knocked on the door to issue warrants for his father's arrest, only to bring him in for more interrogation. As much as André's father clung to life in Egypt, it was becoming a less viable option with each passing day. ANDRÉ: He knew that the way Egypt was going, there was no room for him, really. And I remember during the last two years, in our last two years in Egypt, there wAs constantly references to the fact that we were going to go, this was not lasting, you know, what are we going to do? Where do we think we should go? And so on and so forth. So, this was a constant sort of conversation we were having. MANYA: Meanwhile, young André encountered a level of antisemitism that scarred him deeply and shaped his perception of how the world perceives Jews. ANDRÉ: It was oppressive in good part because people started throwing stones in the streets. So, there was a sense of ‘Get out of here. We don't want you here.' MANYA: It was in the streets and in the schools, which were undergoing an Arabization after the end of British rule, making Arabic the new lingua franca and antisemitism the norm. ANDRÉ: There's no question that antisemitism was now rooted in place. In my school, where I went, I went to a British school, but it had become Egyptian, although they taught English, predominantly English, but we had to take Arabic classes, in sort of social sciences, in history, and in Arabic as well. And in the Arabic class, which I took for many years, I had to study poems that were fundamentally anti-Jewish. Not just anti-Israeli, which is a big distinction that people like to make, it doesn't stick. I was reading and reciting poems that were against me. And the typical cartoon for a Jew was a man with a beard, big tummy, hook nose, and I knew ‘This is really me, isn't it? OK.' And so you look at yourself with a saber, right, running through it with an Egyptian flag. And I'll never forget this. This was, basically I was told that this is something I had to learn and accept and side with – by the teachers, and by the books themselves. And the irony of the whole thing is that one of the best tutors we had, was actually the headmaster of the Jewish school. He was Jewish in very sort of—very Orthodox himself. And he was teaching me how to recite those poems that were anti-Jewish. And of course, he had to do it with a straight face. MANYA: One by one, Jewish neighbors lost their livelihoods and unable to overcome the stigma, packed their bags and left. In his memoir, André recalls how prior to each family's departure, the smell of leather lingered in their homes from the dozens of suitcases they had begun to pack. By 1965, the smell of leather began to waft through André's home. ANDRÉ: Eventually, one morning, or one afternoon, I came back from school. And my father said to me, ‘You know, they don't want us here anymore.' Those were exactly the words he used. ‘They don't want us here.' I said, ‘What do you mean?' ‘Well, they've expelled us.' And I was expelled with my mother and my brother, sooner than my father was. So, we had to leave the country. We realized we were being expelled, maybe in spring, and we left in May. And so, for about a month or so, the house was a mess because there were suitcases everywhere, and people. My mother was packing constantly, constantly. But we knew we were going to go to Italy, we knew we had an uncle in Italy who was going to host us, or at least make life livable for us when we arrived. We had obtained Italian papers, obtained through various means. I mean, whatever. They're not exactly legitimate ways of getting a citizenship, but it was given to my father, and he took it. And we changed our last name from Ajiman, which is how it was pronounced, to Aciman because the Italians saw the C and assumed it was that. My father had some money in Europe already. So that was going to help us survive. But we knew my mother and I and my brother, that we were now sort of functionally poor. MANYA: In hindsight, André now knows the family's expulsion at that time was the best thing that could have happened. Two years later, Israel trounced Egypt in the Six-Day War, nearly destroying the Egyptian Air Force, taking control of the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula, as well as territory from Egypt's allies in the conflict, Syria and Jordan. The few remaining Jews in Egypt were sent to internment camps, including the chief rabbis of Cairo and Alexandria and the family of one of André's schoolmates whose father was badly beaten. After three years in Italy, André's family joined his mother's sister in America, confirming once and for all that their life in Egypt was gone. ANDRÉ: I think there was a kind of declaration of their condition. In other words, they never overcame the fact that they had lost a way of life. And of course, the means to sustain that life was totally taken away, because they were nationalized, and had their property sequestered, everything was taken away from them. So, they were tossed into the wild sea. My mother basically knew how to shut the book on Egypt, she stopped thinking about Egypt, she was an American now. She was very happy to have become a citizen of the United States. Whereas my father, who basically was the one who had lost more than she had, because he had built his own fortune himself, never overcame it. And so, he led a life of the exile who continues to go to places and to restaurants that are costly, but that he can still manage to afford if he watches himself. So, he never took cabs, he always took the bus. Then he lived a pauper's life, but with good clothing, because he still had all his clothing from his tailor in Egypt. But it was a bit of a production, a performance for him. MANYA: André's father missed the life he had in Egypt. André longs for the life he could've had there. ANDRÉ: I was going to study in England, I was going to come back to Egypt, I was going to own the factory. This was kind of inscribed in my genes at that point. And of course, you give up that, as I like to say, and I've written about this many times, is that whatever you lose, or whatever never happened, continues to sort of sub-exist somewhere in your mind. In other words, it's something that has been taken away from you, even though it never existed. MANYA: But like his mother, André moved on. In fact, he says moving on is part of the Jewish experience. Married with sons of his own, he now is a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, teaching the history of literary theory. He is also one of the foremost experts on Marcel Proust, that French novelist whose passages his father once transcribed in his diaries. André's own novels and anthologies have won awards and inspired Academy Award-winning screenplays. Like Israel opened its doors and welcomed all of those stateless Egyptian Jews, America opened doors for André. Going to college in the Bronx after growing up in Egypt and Italy? That introduced him to being openly Jewish. ANDRÉ: I went to Lehman College, as an undergraduate, I came to the States in September. I came too late to go to college, but I went to an event at that college in October or November, and already people were telling me they were Jewish. You know, ‘I'm Jewish, and this and that,' and, and so I felt ‘Oh, God, it's like, you mean people can be natural about their Judaism? And so, I began saying to people, ‘I'm Jewish, too,' or I would no longer feel this sense of hiding my Jewishness, which came when I came to America. Not before. Not in Italy. Not in Egypt certainly. But the experience of being in a place that was fundamentally all Jewish, like being in the Bronx in 1968, was mind opening for me, it was: I can let everything down, I can be Jewish like everybody else. It's no longer a secret. I don't have to pretend that I was a Protestant when I didn't even know what kind of Protestant I was. As a person growing up in an antisemitic environment. You have many guards, guardrails in place, so you know how not to let it out this way, or that way or this other way. You don't speak about matzah. You don't speak about charoset. You don't speak about anything, so as to prevent yourself from giving out that you're Jewish. MANYA: Though the doors had been flung open and it felt much safer to be openly Jewish, André to this day cannot forget the antisemitism that poisoned his formative years. ANDRÉ: I assume that everybody's antisemitic at some point. It is very difficult to meet someone who is not Jewish, who, after they've had many drinks, will not turn out to be slightly more antisemitic than you expected. It is there. It's culturally dominant. And so, you have to live with this. As my grandmother used to say, I'm just giving this person time until I discover how antisemitic they are. It was always a question of time. MANYA: His family's various displacements and scattered roots in Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and now America, have led him to question his identity and what he calls home. ANDRÉ: I live with this sense of: I don't know where I belong. I don't know who I am. I don't know any of those things. What's my flag? I have no idea. Where's my home? I don't know. I live in New York. I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. MANYA: André knew when he was leaving Egypt that he would one day write a book about the experience. He knew he should take notes, but never did. And like his father, he started a diary, but it was lost. He started another in 1969. After completing his dissertation, he began to write book reviews for Commentary, a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism and politics founded and published, at the time, by American Jewish Committee. The editor suggested André write something personal, and that was the beginning of Out of Egypt. In fact, three chapters of his memoir, including The Last Seder, appeared in Commentary before it was published as a book in 1994. André returned to Egypt shortly after its release. But he has not been back since, even though his sons want to accompany him on a trip. ANDRÉ: They want to go back, because they want to go back with me. Question is, I don't want to put them in danger. You never know. You never know how people will react to . . . I mean, I'll go back as a writer who wrote about Egypt and was Jewish. And who knows what awaits me? Whether it will be friendly, will it be icy and chilly. Or will it be hostile? I don't know. And I don't want to put myself there. In other words, the view of the Jews has changed. It went to friendly, to enemy, to friendly, enemy, enemy, friendly, and so on, so forth. In other words, it is a fundamentally unreliable situation. MANYA: He also doesn't see the point. It's impossible to recapture the past. The pictures he sees don't look familiar and the people he used to know with affection have died. But he doesn't want the past to be forgotten. None of it. He wants the world to remember the vibrant Jewish life that existed in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as the vile hatred that drove all but a handful of Jews out of Egypt. Cornell Professor Deborah Starr says for the first time in many years, young Egyptians are asking tough questions about the Arabization of Egyptian society and how that affected Egyptian Jews. Perhaps, Israel and Zionism did not siphon Jewish communities from the Arab world as the story often goes. Perhaps instead, Israel offered a critical refuge for a persecuted community. DEBORAH: I think it's really important to tell the stories of Mizrahi Jews. I think that, particularly here we are speaking in English to an American audience, where the majority of Jews in North America are Ashkenazi, we have our own identity, we have our own stories. But there are also other stories that are really interesting to tell, and are part of the history of Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries. They're part of the Jewish experience. And so that's some of what has always motivated me in my research, and looking at the stories of coexistence among Jews and their neighbors in Egypt. MANYA: Professor Starr says the rise of Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood has led Egyptians to harken back toward this period of tolerance and coexistence, evoking a sense of nostalgia. DEBORAH: The people are no longer living together. But it's worth remembering that past, it's worth reflecting on it in an honest way, and not, to look at the nostalgia and say: oh, look, these people are nostalgic about it, what is it that they're nostalgic for? What are some of the motivations for that nostalgia? How are they characterizing this experience? But also to look kind of critically on the past and understand, where things were working where things weren't and, and to tell the story in an honest way. MANYA: Though the communities are gone, there has been an effort to restore the evidence of Jewish life. Under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Egypt's president since 2014, there have been initiatives to restore and protect synagogues and cemeteries, including Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria, Maimonides' original yeshiva in old Cairo, and Cairo's vast Jewish cemetery at Bassatine. But André is unmoved by this gesture. ANDRÉ: In fact, I got a call from the Egyptian ambassador to my house here, saying, ‘We're fixing the temples and the synagogues, and we want you back.' ‘Oh, that's very nice. First of all,' I told him, ‘fixing the synagogues doesn't do anything for me because I'm not a religious Jew. And second of all, I would be more than willing to come back to Egypt, when you give me my money back.' He never called me again. MANYA: Anytime the conversation about reparations comes up, it is overshadowed by the demand for reparations for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel, even though their leaders have rejected all offers for a Palestinian state. André wishes the Arab countries that have attacked Israel time and again would invest that money in the welfare of Palestinian refugees, help them start new lives, and to thrive instead of using them as pawns in a futile battle. He will always be grateful to HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, for helping his family escape, resettle, and rebuild their lives. ANDRÉ: We've made new lives for ourselves. We've moved on, and I think this is what Jews do all the time, all the time. They arrive or they're displaced, kicked out, they refashion themselves. Anytime I can help a Jew I will. Because they've helped me, because it's the right thing to do for a Jew. If a Jew does not help another Jew, what kind of a Jew are you? I mean, you could be a nonreligious Jew as I am, but I am still Jewish. And I realize that we are a people that has historically suffered a great deal, because we were oppressed forever, and we might be oppressed again. Who knows, ok? But we help each other, and I don't want to break that chain. MANYA: Egyptian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to André for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir Out of Egypt and eventually in the sequel which he's working on now about his family's life in Italy after they left Egypt and before they came to America. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they had never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories. Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions alive and memories alive as well. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.
In the first half of the 20th century, Egypt went through profound social and political upheavals culminating in the rise of President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his campaign of Arabization, creating an oppressive atmosphere for the country's Jews, and leading almost all to flee or be kicked out of the country. Hear the personal story of award-winning author André Aciman as he recounts the heart-wrenching details of the pervasive antisemitism during his childhood in Alexandria and his family's expulsion in 1965, which he wrote about in his memoir Out of Egypt, and also inspired his novel Call Me by Your Name. Joining Aciman is Deborah Starr, a professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Cornell University, who chronicles the history of Egypt's Jewish community that dates back millennia, and the events that led to their erasure from Egypt's collective memory. Aciman's modern-day Jewish exodus story is one that touches on identity, belonging, and nationality: Where is your home when you become a refugee at age 14? ___ Show notes: Sign up to receive podcast updates here. Learn more about the series here. Song credits: Rampi Rampi, Aksaray'in Taslari, Bir Demet Yasemen by Turku, Nomads of the Silk Road Pond5: “Desert Caravans”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Tiemur Zarobov (BMI), IPI#1098108837 “Sentimental Oud Middle Eastern”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI), Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989. “Frontiers”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Pete Checkley (BMI), IPI#380407375 “Adventures in the East”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI) Composer: Petar Milinkovic (BMI), IPI#00738313833. “Middle Eastern Arabic Oud”: Publisher: Pond5 Publishing Beta (BMI); Composer: Sotirios Bakas (BMI), IPI#797324989 ___ Episode Transcript: ANDRÉ ACIMAN: I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. It had become oppressive to be Jewish. MANYA BRACHEAR PASHMAN: The world has overlooked an important episode in modern history: the 800,000 Jews who left or were driven from their homes in Arab nations and Iran in the mid-20th century. This series, brought to you by American Jewish Committee, explores that pivotal moment in Jewish history and the rich Jewish heritage of Iran and Arab nations as some begin to build relations with Israel. I'm your host, Manya Brachear Pashman. Join us as we explore family histories and personal stories of courage, perseverance, and resilience. This is The Forgotten Exodus. Today's episode: leaving Egypt. Author André Aciman can't stand Passover Seders. They are long and tedious. Everyone gets hungry long before it's time to eat. It's also an unwelcome reminder of when André was 14 and his family was forced to leave Egypt – the only home he had ever known. On their last night there, he recounts his family gathered for one last Seder in his birthplace. ANDRÉ: By the time I was saying goodbye, the country, Egypt, had essentially become sort of Judenrein. MANYA: Judenrein is the term of Nazi origin meaning “free of Jews”. Most, if not all of the Jews, had already left. ANDRÉ: By the time we were kicked out, we were kicked out literally from Egypt, my parents had already had a life in Egypt. My mother was born in Egypt, she had been wealthy. My father became wealthy. And of course, they had a way of living life that they knew they were abandoning. They had no idea what was awaiting them. They knew it was going to be different, but they had no sense. I, for one, being younger, I just couldn't wait to leave. Because it had become oppressive to be Jewish. As far as I was concerned, it was goodbye. Thank you very much. I'm going. MANYA: André Aciman is best known as the author whose novel inspired the Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name – which is as much a tale of coming to terms with being Jewish and a minority, as it is an exquisite coming of age love story set in a villa on the Italian Riviera. What readers and moviegoers didn't know is that the Italian villa is just a stand-in. The story's setting– its distant surf, serpentine architecture, and lush gardens where Elio and Oliver's romance blooms and Elio's spiritual awakening unfolds – is an ode to André's lost home, the coastal Egyptian city of Alexandria. There, three generations of his Sephardic family had rebuilt the lives they left behind elsewhere as the Ottoman Empire crumbled, two world wars unfolded, a Jewish homeland was born, and nationalistic fervor swept across the Arab world and North Africa. There, in Alexandria, his family had enjoyed a cosmopolitan city and vibrant Jewish home. Until they couldn't and had to leave. ANDRÉ: I would be lying if I said that I didn't project many things lost into my novels. In other words, to be able to re-experience the beach, I created a beach house. And that beach house has become, as you know, quite famous around the world. But it was really a portrait of the beach house that we had lost in Egypt. And many things like that, I pilfer from my imagined past and dump into my books. And people always tell me, ‘God, you captured Italy so well.' Actually, that was not Italy, I hate to tell you. It was my reimagined or reinvented Egypt transposed into Italy and made to come alive again. MANYA: Before he penned Call Me By Your Name, André wrote his first book, Out of Egypt, a touching memoir about his family's picturesque life in Alexandria, the underlying anxiety that it could always vanish and how, under the nationalization effort led by Egypt's President Gamel Abdel Nassar, it did vanish. The memoir ends with the events surrounding the family's last Passover Seder before they say farewell. ANDRÉ: This was part of the program of President Nasser, which was to take, particularly Alexandria, and turn it into an Egyptian city, sort of, purified of all European influences. And it worked. As, by the way, and this is the biggest tragedy that happens to, particularly to Jews, is when a culture decides to expunge its Jews or to remove them in one way or another, it succeeds. It does succeed. You have a sense that it is possible for a culture to remove an entire population. And this is part of the Jewish experience to accept that this happens. MANYA: Egypt did not just expunge its Jewish community. It managed to erase Jews from the nation's collective memory. Only recently have people begun to rediscover the centuries of rich Jewish history in Egypt, including native Egyptian Jews dating back millennia. In addition, Egypt became a destination for Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th Century. And after the Suez Canal opened in 1869, a wave of more Jews came from the Ottoman Empire, Italy, and Greece. And at the end of the 19th Century, Ashkenazi Jews arrived, fleeing from European pogroms. DEBORAH STARR: The Jewish community in Egypt was very diverse. The longest standing community in Egypt would have been Arabic speaking Jews, we would say now Mizrahi Jews. MANYA: That's Deborah Starr, Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film at Cornell University. Her studies of cosmopolitan Egypt through a lens of literature and cinema have given her a unique window into how Jews arrived and left Egypt and how that history has been portrayed. She says Jews had a long history in Egypt through the Islamic period and a small population remained in the 19th century. Then a wave of immigration came. DEBORAH: We have an economic boom in Egypt. Jews start coming from around the Ottoman Empire, from around the Mediterranean, emigrating to Egypt from across North Africa. And so, from around 5,000 Jews in the middle of the 19th century, by the middle of the 20th century, at its peak, the Egyptian Jews numbered somewhere between 75 and 80,000. So, it was a significant increase, and you know, much more so than just the birth rate would explain. MANYA: André's family was part of that wave, having endured a series of exiles from Spain, Italy, and Turkey, before reaching Egypt. DEBORAH: Egypt has its independence movement, the 1919 revolution, which is characterized by this discourse of coexistence, that ‘we're all in this together.' There are images of Muslims and Christians marching together. Jews were also supportive of this movement. There's this real sense of a plurality, of a pluralist society in Egypt, that's really evident in the ways that this movement is characterized. The interwar period is really this very vibrant time in Egyptian culture, but also this time of significant transition in its relationship to the British in the various movements, political movements that emerge in this period, and movements that will have a huge impact on the fate of the Jews of Egypt in the coming decades. MANYA: One of those movements was Zionism, the movement to establish a Jewish state in the biblical homeland of the Jews. In 1917, during the First World War, the British government occupying Egypt at the time, issued a public statement of support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, still an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. That statement became known as the Balfour Declaration. DEBORAH: There was certainly evidence of a certain excitement about the Balfour Declaration of 1917. A certain amount of general support for the idea that Jews are going to live there, but not a whole lot of movement themselves. But we also have these really interesting examples of people who were on the record as supporting, of seeing themselves as Egyptians, as part of the anti-colonial Egyptian nationalism, who also gave financial support to the Jewish project in Palestine. And so, so there wasn't this sense of—you can't be one or the other. There wasn't this radical split. MANYA: Another movement unfolding simultaneously was the impulse to reclaim Egypt's independence, not just in legal terms – Egypt had technically gained independence from the British in 1922 – but suddenly what it meant to be Egyptian was defined against this foreign colonial power that had imposed its will on Egypt for years and still maintained a significant presence. DEBORAH: We also see moves within Egypt, toward the ‘Egyptianization' of companies or laws that start saying, we want to, we want to give priority to our citizens, because the economy had been so dominated by either foreigners or people who were local but had foreign nationality. And this begins to disproportionately affect the Jews. Because so many of the Jews, you know, had been immigrants a generation or two earlier, some of them had either achieved protected status or, you know, arrived with papers from, from one or another of these European powers. MANYA: In 1929, Egypt adopted its first law giving citizenship to its residents. But it was not universally applied. By this time, the conflict in Palestine and the rise of Zionism had shifted how the Egyptian establishment viewed Jews. DEBORAH: Particularly the Jews who had lived there for a really long time, some of whom were among the lower classes, who didn't travel to Europe every summer and didn't need papers to prove their citizenship, by the time they started seeing that it was worthwhile for them to get citizenship, it was harder for Jews to be approved. So, by the end, we do have a pretty substantial number of Jews who end up stateless. MANYA: Stateless. But not for long. In 1948, the Jewish state declared independence. In response, King Farouk of Egypt joined four other Arab nations in declaring war on the newly formed nation. And they lost. The Arab nations' stunning defeat in that first Arab-Israeli War sparked a clandestine movement to overthrow the Egyptian monarchy, which was still seen as being in the pocket of the British. One of the orchestrators of that plot, known as the Free Officers Movement, was Col. Gamel Abdel Nassar. In 1952, a coup sent King Farouk on his way to Italy and Nassar eventually emerged as president. The official position of the Nassar regime was one of tolerance for the Jews. But that didn't always seem to be the case. DEBORAH: Between 1948 and ‘52, you do have a notable number of Jews who leave Egypt at this point who see the writing on the wall. Maybe they don't have very deep roots in Egypt, they've only been there for one or two generations, they have another nationality, they have someplace to go. About a third of the Jews who leave Egypt in the middle of the 20th century go to Europe, France, particularly. To a certain extent Italy. About a third go to the Americas, and about a third go to Israel. And among those who go to Israel, it's largely those who end up stateless. They have no place else to go because of those nationality laws that I mentioned earlier, have no choice but to go to Israel. MANYA: Those who stayed became especially vulnerable to the Nassar regime's sequestration of businesses. Then in 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, a 120-mile-long waterway that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean by way of the Red Sea – that same waterway that created opportunities for migration in the region a century earlier. DEBORAH: The real watershed moment is the 1956 Suez conflict. Israel, in collaboration with France, and Great Britain attacks Egypt, the conflict breaks out, you know, the French and the British come into the war on the side of the Israelis. And each of the powers has their own reasons for wanting, I mean, Nasser's threatening Israeli shipping, and, threatening the security of Israel, the French and the British, again, have their own reasons for trying to either take back the canal, or, just at least bring Nassar down a peg. MANYA: At war with France and Britain, Egypt targeted and expelled anyone with French and British nationality, including many Jews, but not exclusively. DEBORAH: But this is also the moment where I think there's a big pivot in how Jews feel about being in Egypt. And so, we start seeing larger waves of emigration, after 1956. So, this is really sort of the peak of the wave of emigration. MANYA: André's family stayed. They already had endured a series of exiles. His father, an aspiring writer who copied passages by Marcel Proust into his diary, had set that dream aside to open a textile factory, rebuild from nothing what the family had lost elsewhere, and prepare young André to eventually take over the family business. He wasn't about to walk away from the family fortune – again. DEBORAH: André Aciman's story is quite, as I said, the majority of the Jewish community leaves in the aftermath of 1956. And his family stays a lot longer. So, he has incredible insights into what happens over that period, where the community has already significantly diminished. MANYA: Indeed, over the next nine years, the situation worsened. The Egyptian government took his father's factory, monitored their every move, frequently called the house with harassing questions about their whereabouts, or knocked on the door to issue warrants for his father's arrest, only to bring him in for more interrogation. As much as André's father clung to life in Egypt, it was becoming a less viable option with each passing day. ANDRÉ: He knew that the way Egypt was going, there was no room for him, really. And I remember during the last two years, in our last two years in Egypt, there wAs constantly references to the fact that we were going to go, this was not lasting, you know, what are we going to do? Where do we think we should go? And so on and so forth. So, this was a constant sort of conversation we were having. MANYA: Meanwhile, young André encountered a level of antisemitism that scarred him deeply and shaped his perception of how the world perceives Jews. ANDRÉ: It was oppressive in good part because people started throwing stones in the streets. So, there was a sense of ‘Get out of here. We don't want you here.' MANYA: It was in the streets and in the schools, which were undergoing an Arabization after the end of British rule, making Arabic the new lingua franca and antisemitism the norm. ANDRÉ: There's no question that antisemitism was now rooted in place. In my school, where I went, I went to a British school, but it had become Egyptian, although they taught English, predominantly English, but we had to take Arabic classes, in sort of social sciences, in history, and in Arabic as well. And in the Arabic class, which I took for many years, I had to study poems that were fundamentally anti-Jewish. Not just anti-Israeli, which is a big distinction that people like to make, it doesn't stick. I was reading and reciting poems that were against me. And the typical cartoon for a Jew was a man with a beard, big tummy, hook nose, and I knew ‘This is really me, isn't it? OK.' And so you look at yourself with a saber, right, running through it with an Egyptian flag. And I'll never forget this. This was, basically I was told that this is something I had to learn and accept and side with – by the teachers, and by the books themselves. And the irony of the whole thing is that one of the best tutors we had, was actually the headmaster of the Jewish school. He was Jewish in very sort of—very Orthodox himself. And he was teaching me how to recite those poems that were anti-Jewish. And of course, he had to do it with a straight face. MANYA: One by one, Jewish neighbors lost their livelihoods and unable to overcome the stigma, packed their bags and left. In his memoir, André recalls how prior to each family's departure, the smell of leather lingered in their homes from the dozens of suitcases they had begun to pack. By 1965, the smell of leather began to waft through André's home. ANDRÉ: Eventually, one morning, or one afternoon, I came back from school. And my father said to me, ‘You know, they don't want us here anymore.' Those were exactly the words he used. ‘They don't want us here.' I said, ‘What do you mean?' ‘Well, they've expelled us.' And I was expelled with my mother and my brother, sooner than my father was. So, we had to leave the country. We realized we were being expelled, maybe in spring, and we left in May. And so, for about a month or so, the house was a mess because there were suitcases everywhere, and people. My mother was packing constantly, constantly. But we knew we were going to go to Italy, we knew we had an uncle in Italy who was going to host us, or at least make life livable for us when we arrived. We had obtained Italian papers, obtained through various means. I mean, whatever. They're not exactly legitimate ways of getting a citizenship, but it was given to my father, and he took it. And we changed our last name from Ajiman, which is how it was pronounced, to Aciman because the Italians saw the C and assumed it was that. My father had some money in Europe already. So that was going to help us survive. But we knew my mother and I and my brother, that we were now sort of functionally poor. MANYA: In hindsight, André now knows the family's expulsion at that time was the best thing that could have happened. Two years later, Israel trounced Egypt in the Six-Day War, nearly destroying the Egyptian Air Force, taking control of the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula, as well as territory from Egypt's allies in the conflict, Syria and Jordan. The few remaining Jews in Egypt were sent to internment camps, including the chief rabbis of Cairo and Alexandria and the family of one of André's schoolmates whose father was badly beaten. After three years in Italy, André's family joined his mother's sister in America, confirming once and for all that their life in Egypt was gone. ANDRÉ: I think there was a kind of declaration of their condition. In other words, they never overcame the fact that they had lost a way of life. And of course, the means to sustain that life was totally taken away, because they were nationalized, and had their property sequestered, everything was taken away from them. So, they were tossed into the wild sea. My mother basically knew how to shut the book on Egypt, she stopped thinking about Egypt, she was an American now. She was very happy to have become a citizen of the United States. Whereas my father, who basically was the one who had lost more than she had, because he had built his own fortune himself, never overcame it. And so, he led a life of the exile who continues to go to places and to restaurants that are costly, but that he can still manage to afford if he watches himself. So, he never took cabs, he always took the bus. Then he lived a pauper's life, but with good clothing, because he still had all his clothing from his tailor in Egypt. But it was a bit of a production, a performance for him. MANYA: André's father missed the life he had in Egypt. André longs for the life he could've had there. ANDRÉ: I was going to study in England, I was going to come back to Egypt, I was going to own the factory. This was kind of inscribed in my genes at that point. And of course, you give up that, as I like to say, and I've written about this many times, is that whatever you lose, or whatever never happened, continues to sort of sub-exist somewhere in your mind. In other words, it's something that has been taken away from you, even though it never existed. MANYA: But like his mother, André moved on. In fact, he says moving on is part of the Jewish experience. Married with sons of his own, he now is a distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, teaching the history of literary theory. He is also one of the foremost experts on Marcel Proust, that French novelist whose passages his father once transcribed in his diaries. André's own novels and anthologies have won awards and inspired Academy Award-winning screenplays. Like Israel opened its doors and welcomed all of those stateless Egyptian Jews, America opened doors for André. Going to college in the Bronx after growing up in Egypt and Italy? That introduced him to being openly Jewish. ANDRÉ: I went to Lehman College, as an undergraduate, I came to the States in September. I came too late to go to college, but I went to an event at that college in October or November, and already people were telling me they were Jewish. You know, ‘I'm Jewish, and this and that,' and, and so I felt ‘Oh, God, it's like, you mean people can be natural about their Judaism? And so, I began saying to people, ‘I'm Jewish, too,' or I would no longer feel this sense of hiding my Jewishness, which came when I came to America. Not before. Not in Italy. Not in Egypt certainly. But the experience of being in a place that was fundamentally all Jewish, like being in the Bronx in 1968, was mind opening for me, it was: I can let everything down, I can be Jewish like everybody else. It's no longer a secret. I don't have to pretend that I was a Protestant when I didn't even know what kind of Protestant I was. As a person growing up in an antisemitic environment. You have many guards, guardrails in place, so you know how not to let it out this way, or that way or this other way. You don't speak about matzah. You don't speak about charoset. You don't speak about anything, so as to prevent yourself from giving out that you're Jewish. MANYA: Though the doors had been flung open and it felt much safer to be openly Jewish, André to this day cannot forget the antisemitism that poisoned his formative years. ANDRÉ: I assume that everybody's antisemitic at some point. It is very difficult to meet someone who is not Jewish, who, after they've had many drinks, will not turn out to be slightly more antisemitic than you expected. It is there. It's culturally dominant. And so, you have to live with this. As my grandmother used to say, I'm just giving this person time until I discover how antisemitic they are. It was always a question of time. MANYA: His family's various displacements and scattered roots in Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, and now America, have led him to question his identity and what he calls home. ANDRÉ: I live with this sense of: I don't know where I belong. I don't know who I am. I don't know any of those things. What's my flag? I have no idea. Where's my home? I don't know. I live in New York. I've lived in New York for 50 years. Is it my home? Not really. But Egypt was never going to be my home. MANYA: André knew when he was leaving Egypt that he would one day write a book about the experience. He knew he should take notes, but never did. And like his father, he started a diary, but it was lost. He started another in 1969. After completing his dissertation, he began to write book reviews for Commentary, a monthly American magazine on religion, Judaism and politics founded and published, at the time, by American Jewish Committee. The editor suggested André write something personal, and that was the beginning of Out of Egypt. In fact, three chapters of his memoir, including The Last Seder, appeared in Commentary before it was published as a book in 1994. André returned to Egypt shortly after its release. But he has not been back since, even though his sons want to accompany him on a trip. ANDRÉ: They want to go back, because they want to go back with me. Question is, I don't want to put them in danger. You never know. You never know how people will react to . . . I mean, I'll go back as a writer who wrote about Egypt and was Jewish. And who knows what awaits me? Whether it will be friendly, will it be icy and chilly. Or will it be hostile? I don't know. And I don't want to put myself there. In other words, the view of the Jews has changed. It went to friendly, to enemy, to friendly, enemy, enemy, friendly, and so on, so forth. In other words, it is a fundamentally unreliable situation. MANYA: He also doesn't see the point. It's impossible to recapture the past. The pictures he sees don't look familiar and the people he used to know with affection have died. But he doesn't want the past to be forgotten. None of it. He wants the world to remember the vibrant Jewish life that existed in Cairo and Alexandria, as well as the vile hatred that drove all but a handful of Jews out of Egypt. Cornell Professor Deborah Starr says for the first time in many years, young Egyptians are asking tough questions about the Arabization of Egyptian society and how that affected Egyptian Jews. Perhaps, Israel and Zionism did not siphon Jewish communities from the Arab world as the story often goes. Perhaps instead, Israel offered a critical refuge for a persecuted community. DEBORAH: I think it's really important to tell the stories of Mizrahi Jews. I think that, particularly here we are speaking in English to an American audience, where the majority of Jews in North America are Ashkenazi, we have our own identity, we have our own stories. But there are also other stories that are really interesting to tell, and are part of the history of Jews in the 20th and 21st centuries. They're part of the Jewish experience. And so that's some of what has always motivated me in my research, and looking at the stories of coexistence among Jews and their neighbors in Egypt. MANYA: Professor Starr says the rise of Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood has led Egyptians to harken back toward this period of tolerance and coexistence, evoking a sense of nostalgia. DEBORAH: The people are no longer living together. But it's worth remembering that past, it's worth reflecting on it in an honest way, and not, to look at the nostalgia and say: oh, look, these people are nostalgic about it, what is it that they're nostalgic for? What are some of the motivations for that nostalgia? How are they characterizing this experience? But also to look kind of critically on the past and understand, where things were working where things weren't and, and to tell the story in an honest way. MANYA: Though the communities are gone, there has been an effort to restore the evidence of Jewish life. Under Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Egypt's president since 2014, there have been initiatives to restore and protect synagogues and cemeteries, including Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria, Maimonides' original yeshiva in old Cairo, and Cairo's vast Jewish cemetery at Bassatine. But André is unmoved by this gesture. ANDRÉ: In fact, I got a call from the Egyptian ambassador to my house here, saying, ‘We're fixing the temples and the synagogues, and we want you back.' ‘Oh, that's very nice. First of all,' I told him, ‘fixing the synagogues doesn't do anything for me because I'm not a religious Jew. And second of all, I would be more than willing to come back to Egypt, when you give me my money back.' He never called me again. MANYA: Anytime the conversation about reparations comes up, it is overshadowed by the demand for reparations for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel, even though their leaders have rejected all offers for a Palestinian state. André wishes the Arab countries that have attacked Israel time and again would invest that money in the welfare of Palestinian refugees, help them start new lives, and to thrive instead of using them as pawns in a futile battle. He will always be grateful to HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, for helping his family escape, resettle, and rebuild their lives. ANDRÉ: We've made new lives for ourselves. We've moved on, and I think this is what Jews do all the time, all the time. They arrive or they're displaced, kicked out, they refashion themselves. Anytime I can help a Jew I will. Because they've helped me, because it's the right thing to do for a Jew. If a Jew does not help another Jew, what kind of a Jew are you? I mean, you could be a nonreligious Jew as I am, but I am still Jewish. And I realize that we are a people that has historically suffered a great deal, because we were oppressed forever, and we might be oppressed again. Who knows, ok? But we help each other, and I don't want to break that chain. MANYA: Egyptian Jews are just one of the many Jewish communities who in the last century left Arab countries to forge new lives for themselves and future generations. Join us next week as we share another untold story of The Forgotten Exodus. Many thanks to André for sharing his story. You can read more in his memoir Out of Egypt and eventually in the sequel which he's working on now about his family's life in Italy after they left Egypt and before they came to America. Does your family have roots in North Africa or the Middle East? One of the goals of this series is to make sure we gather these stories before they are lost. Too many times during my reporting, I encountered children and grandchildren who didn't have the answers to my questions because they had never asked. That's why one of the goals of this project is to encourage you to find more of these stories. Call The Forgotten Exodus hotline. Tell us where your family is from and something you'd like for our listeners to know such as how you've tried to keep the traditions alive and memories alive as well. Call 212.891-1336 and leave a message of 2 minutes or less. Be sure to leave your name and where you live now. You can also send an email to theforgottenexodus@ajc.org and we'll be in touch. Atara Lakritz is our producer, CucHuong Do is our production manager. T.K. Broderick is our sound engineer. Special thanks to Jon Schweitzer, Sean Savage, Ian Kaplan, and so many of our colleagues, too many to name really, for making this series possible. And extra special thanks to David Harris, who has been a constant champion for making sure these stories do not remain untold. You can follow The Forgotten Exodus on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can sign up to receive updates at AJC.org/forgottenexodussignup. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. You can reach us at theforgottenexodus@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to spread the word, and hop onto Apple Podcasts to rate us and write a review to help more listeners find us.
Part 1 of 3: Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father".thefacthunter.comNever stop searching for the truth
Danny and Derek welcome back Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, to discuss his book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. In this third episode, they examine how the Zionist movement was affected by World War II; the postwar conflicts in the region; the development of a Palestinian national identity; and more leading up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Grab a copy of Professor Khalidi's book here: https://bit.ly/3LNDLJV This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.americanprestigepod.com/subscribe
Danny and Derek welcome back Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, to discuss his book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. In this third episode, they examine how the Zionist movement was affected by World War II; the postwar conflicts in the region; the development of a Palestinian national identity; and more leading up to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Grab a copy of Professor Khalidi's book here: https://bit.ly/3LNDLJV Become a patron today! www.patreon.com/americanprestige
Kota sits down with a Palestinian-Japanese journalist Shigenobu May to talk about Palestine. May is the daughter of Shigenobu Fusako, a former member of the Japanese Red Army and a political prisoner in Japan. She is currently based in Lebanon, and since Lebanon is a country underdeveloped by imperialism, the availability of electricity and internet connectivity are very limited. As a result, I interviewed her on two separate occasions and combined them into one episode. In the first segment of this interview recorded in June 24, we begin our conversation by discussing how her experience growing up in the Palestinian refugee camps shaped her views of Israel, US imperialism, and Palestinian human rights, including the right to resist. We critically examine the myths that Israel is a peace-loving country and that it is the “only democracy in the Middle East” despite the increasing international recognition to the contrary that it is a highly militarized settler colonial apartheid state that has violently murdered, displaced, and segregated the indigenous Palestinian people since its creation in 1948 remembered by Palestinians as al-Nakba (the Catastrophe). In the second segment of this interview recorded in July 21, we focus on the history of Japan-Israel relations, beginning in the 1930s when some officials within the Japanese state influenced by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (an anti-Semitic text that associates Jewish people with money and other conspiracy theories) sought to settle Jewish refugees fleeing Europe in the territories occupied by Japan in a belief that they will bring financial support to Japanese imperialism. After World War II, Japan was one of the first countries to recognize Israel and maintain friendly relations with it until the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 and the Arab states' oil embargo led to an economic crisis in Japan. This led Japan to take a more cautious approach as a “neutral” party and maintain diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Arab states, as well as Iran. However, Japan moved toward rapprochement with Israel in 2014 and this led to increased economic, technological, and military cooperation between the two states, making Japan's claim to neutrality in the so called “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” increasingly dubious. We then discuss the history of solidarity between the Japanese left and the Palestinian struggle starting in the 1970s when Fusako traveled to Lebanon to cooperate with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. However, after the Lod Airport Massacre in which three members of the Japanese Red Army allegedly opened fire and killed twenty six civilians, the subsequent repression forced the Shigenobu family and other members of the JRA underground. We discuss the misconceptions surrounding this incident and the change in the orientation of Japanese solidarity with Palestine towards a more legal and humanitarian direction led by NGOs, as well as the present day social movements such as the BDS movement. We also discuss the international dimension of the Palestinian struggle, the accusation of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian activists, the media representation of Palestine, and the role of social media in pro-Palestinian activism. Intro song: Cielo by Huma-Huma Interlude song: Palestine [Freestyle] by MC Abdul Outro song: Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/againstjapanism)
The Six-Day War 1967, also known as the June War, the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or the Third Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from 5 to 10 June 1967 between Israel and an Arab coalition primarily comprising Jordan, Syria and UAR Egypt. അറബ് ഇസ്രായേലി യുദ്ധം,ആറ് ദിന യുദ്ധം,ഇസ്രായേൽ vs പാലസ്തീൻ സീരീസ്. ഇസ്രായേൽ പ്രതിരോധ സേന. IDF. A Malayalam Podcast.
Bro History Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict Israel/Palestine 101 – On todays episode we discuss early Zionism, Jewish immigration to Palestine, and the lead up to the 1948 Arab Israeli War. Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/brohistory #195 Origins of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict szamotah
Photo: Listening to election results in Israel. From the booklet "President Nixon and the Role of Intelligence in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War." For more information, visit cia.gov/library/publications/historicalThe New John Batchelor ShowCBS Audio Network@BatchelorshowThe Israeli election process moves away from Netanyahu. Malcolm Hoenlein @Conf_of_pres @mhoenlein1https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-politics-idUSKBN2CN1T9
After the British mandate ends, Israel declares its independence. The Arab League declares war and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War is underway.
1948. The First Arab Israeli War. Part 1. From our ACU Archive.
1948. The First Arab Israeli War. Part 1. From our ACU Archive.
The Biographies Uncorked duo wraps up their uncorking of Lyndon B. Johnson by way of Joseph A. Califano Jr's book, The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. In this episode they kick things off by sharing their insights about the new Showtime Docuseries The Reagans, Kasha provides some COVID vaccine updates, news about the Negro Baseball League and a listing of movie premiere dates (7:05), Kasha introduces their wine of choice for the podcast (12:00), they discuss the Arab-Israeli War, Vietnam and the Newark Rioting, (24:26), The King assassination (37:57), The Bobby Kennedy assassination (48:00) and the end of the LBJ era (56:54) and much more!!!
The peace talks between Israel and the Arab states which ended the war. The plight of refugees from Palestine. The expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews. from the Arab states. Why the good relations between the Soviet Union and Israel grew worse. The overthrow of Egyptian King Fakour and his biography.
John Reagan McCrary Jr. was born on October 13th, 1910 in Calvert, Texas. He graduated in 1932 from Yale and began working for The New York Daily Mirror. In 1940 he was sent to interview actress Eugenia Lincoln Falkenburg, who was nine years his junior. She was the daughter of Eugene, a Westinghouse engineer, and Marguerite, a Brazilian tennis champion. By 1937 Jinx was modeling and acting, becoming one of America’s leading cover girls. When interviewed for the musical comedy Hold On to Your Hats, she was struck by the charming southern gentleman who had a way of getting her to open up. They were to be engaged when Pearl Harbor was attacked, and both spent the duration of the war performing various duties overseas. They were finally married on June 15th, 1945. The following year, on April 22nd, the duo debuted their morning talk show on NBC’s New York affiliate as Hi Jinx. It was unique to other breakfast talk shows in that Tex refused to sidestep controversial issues. There were discussions on the atomic bomb, the UN, and this interview with Hungarian photographer Robert Capa, considered one of the best adventure and combat shooters in history. Capa fled political repression in Hungary when he was a teenager, moving to Berlin, where he enrolled in college. He witnessed the rise of Hitler, which led him to move to Paris, where he formed a partnership with Gerda Taro. He covered The Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War Two’s European front, and in 1948, the Arab–Israeli War. During his career he risked his life numerous times, most dramatically as the only civilian photographer landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck and director John Huston. In 1948, the Cold War was in full effect and Capa was one of the only men able to get into the USSR.
The Israeli Army wins control of the Western Negev. The Israeli Army then invades the Sinai, the British Government threatens war if the Israelis did not withdrew from the Sinai, so David Ben Gurion agrees to do so.. In January 1949 the Israeli Army cuts off the Egyptian Army in Gaza. The Egyptian Government is forced to begin peace talks.
The third ad final phase of the war begins in October 1948, with the Israeli Army concentrating its forces in the south against the Egyptian Army. The Israeli Army encircle the Egyptian Fourth Brigade. The Israeli Army relives Jewish settlements and conquers the Negev. A biography of General Allon who led the Israeli Army in this offensive.
The story of the second United Nations Cease Fire between July and October 1948, the life and murder of UN peace maker Count Bernadotte. The end of the Arab enclave of the Little Triangle, south of Haifa. The start of the third phase of the war and the campaign in Northern Israel.
The first UN backed cease fire breaks down and it takes ten days to arrange a second cease fire. In the ten days of fighting the Israeli Army captures Nazareth, Ramla and Southern Judea but attempts to take Latrun and the Old City Jewish quarter in Jerusalem are repulsed by the Arab Legion. A biography of Egyptian Army commander in Palestine Major General Al - Mwawi.
A brief history of the zombie in folklore and popular culture. Followed by a discussion of World War Z (the book, not the mediocre movie). Ending with plan for the zombie apocalypse. Notes:0:53 - Discussing the roots of the zombie in Haitian folklore. 2:13 - Amy Wilentz has written about this topic. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/opinion/a-zombie-is-a-slave-forever.html 4:00 - Early portrayals of the zombie in Western media. 6:17 - I Am Legend is a novel by Richard Matheson, published in 1954 about a man who survives what could be called a zombie apocalypse but with vampires instead of zombies. It has been adapted into multiple movies including The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston and I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. 10:25 - Zombies and Thomas Hobbes 15:38 - Discussing World War Z, my favorite zombie book. 21:16 - Issue framing is a concept often studied by scholars interested in the role of the media in politics as well as scholars of social movements. 22:12 - Also known as the October War, the Ramadan War, and 1973 Arab-Israeli War. This war saw Egypt and Syria (with the support of several other states) attacking Israel during Yom Kippur. While Israel ultimately repelled the attack (and even gained some territory), the Arab states performed far better than during the Six-Day War of 1967 and shook Israeli confidence in its military superiority. 26:40 - Multiple characters make reference to the United States fighting "brushfire wars" in the 2000s. No one explicitly says it but it seems fairly clear that this is meant as a reference to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 28:42 - Side Rant! Surviving the zombie apocalypse. 31:18 - Massachusetts is starting point so Florida seems like the best destination. Insert Florida-man joke here about how Florida won't look any different after the apocalypse. Intro and outro music: "Swim below as Leviathans" by Fireproof_Babies (featuring Ben Shewmaker) is licensed under CC BY.
The Israeli Army suffered a series of defeats in the West Bank, an attempt to take the town of Jenin is beaten by the Iraqi Army. Jordan's Arab Legion beat off Israeli attacks on Latrum and Radar Hill. The Arab Legion captured the Jewish Old City. Yet the Israelis build a new road to supply the Jewish areas of Jerusalem breaking the siege. A biography of Mickey Marcus the first Israeli General and commander in the Jerusalem sector.
The Syrian Army invades North Eastern Israel but they are firmly repulsed. The commander of the Israeli forces is Mosha Daylan a biography of him. The Egyptian Army advances along the coast towards Tel Avia but they are halted. The reason for the Soviet support for the creation of the state of Israel. The importance of the Communist arms sales to Israel.
On this episode of In-Dialogue, host Jamil Khoury continues his conversation with friend, colleague, and collaborator Dr. Michael Malek Najjar, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at The University of Oregon.This is the third of nine conversations with Malek exploring the Arab American and Middle Eastern American theatre movements. In this episode, they examine the period following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. This conversation was recorded on August 21, 2019.
In the led up to the end of the British mandate, the level of violence between the Jewish and Arab community grows in scale. The both sides prepare for war. Jewish forces captured Arab cities such as Haifa, Jaffa and Acre, Arab refugees flee. Five thousand Arab fighters from the rest of the middle east arrive in Palestine to help the Arabs. Fighting starts well before the end of the British mandate. A profile of the King of Jordan.
The history of the British mandate in Palestine from 1917 to 1947. Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939. After the Second World War growing violence in Palestine which a hundred thousand British soldiers in Palestine can not control. British decides to withdraw from Palestine and leaves the United Nations to decide upon the future of Palestine.
On this episode of In-Dialogue, host Jamil Khoury continues his conversation with his dear friend, colleague, and collaborator Dr. Michael Malek Najjar, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at The University of Oregon. This is the second of nine conversations with Malek exploring the Arab American and Middle Eastern American theatre movements. This episode examines the period from roughly 1880 to the 1967 six-day Arab-Israeli war. This conversation was recorded on August 21, 2019.
100,000 British soldiers – a massive army in the annals of human history; that’s how many soldiers The United Kingdom sent to Palestine in order to quell the budding revolt of the Israeli nation. It didn’t work. Thousands died. Tens of thousands of Arab and Israeli soldiers clashed. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything… Continue reading A Military History of Modern Israel: The First Arab-Israeli War /// 44
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return." In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to settle in the state of Israel. Their belief in a "right of return" is one of the largest obstacles to successful diplomacy and lasting peace in the region. In The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (All Point Books, 2020), Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf―both liberal Israelis supportive of a two-state solution―reveal the origins of the idea of a right of return, and explain how UNRWA – an agency created for the Palestinians and not for the millions of other refugees - the very agency charged with finding a solution for the refugees – colluded with Palestinian, Arab and international political pressure to create a permanent “refugee” problem. Schwartz and Wilf make a compelling and well-documented argument that this Palestinian demand for a “right of return” has no legal, moral or historical basis and make an impassioned plea for the US, the UN, and the EU to recognize this fact, for the good of Israelis and Palestinians alike. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, Middle East television commentator, and host of the Van Leer Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel ttps://newbooksnetwork.com/category/van-leer-institute/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Palestinian-Jordanian band 47Soul are making waves around the world in a cultish way with their completely unique take on traditional Palestinian street music infused with electronic, hip hop, dancehall, and dabke that they call Shamstep. This trailblazing new genre is named after the province Bilad Al-Sham, with their lyrics focusing on themes of displacement and community. Troy Nelson takes you through a brief history of life in the Middle East before and after the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, which led to the forced displacement of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from what became known as Israel, stripping them of their freedom and ease of movement. Egyptian feminist activist Nawal el Saadawi once said “If you are creative, you must be dissident." Here is one such story, of the artist straining against authority. Recorded 09/23/2019. Machina Gamar Marked Safe Intro to Shamstep Watch the full Live on KEXP session on YouTube Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donate
Today we’re talking to Neil Gussman who trained on the M60A1 tank in the 1970s. This was the standard main battle tank of the US Army from the 1960s through to the 1980s.If you are enjoying the podcasts you can get exclusive extras including previews of future episodes, as well as content that didn’t make the final cut. Available for as little as a monthly donation of a euro, a dollar or a quid (larger amounts and other currencies are accepted too).Just head over to coldwarconversations.com and click on the “Support the podcast” menu option. Thank you very much to those listeners who are already supporting us.Back to today’s episode , Neil shares with us some great anecdotes about his training and the gunnery competitions as well as the change in US tank tactics as a result of the 1973 Arab Israeli War.We welcome Neil Gussman.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod)
Please find some interesting factoids regarding the history of Israel & the Occupation of Palestine & a link on PNAC (Project of the New American Century) Jews were forced to leave Israel during the Roman occupation of ancient Judaea (70 CE). Surviving Jewish communities flourishing throughout the Mediterranean and within Europe. Modern Israel was founded on the back of the NAZI Holocaust 1942-45. Between 1945-47, an Exodus of surviving European Jewry to the British Mandate of Palestine, then a predominantly Arab land, linked up with existing local Jewish communities and began displacing local Palestinian Arabs which was capped off by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War – founding the state of Israel. Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel fled to neighbouring Arab states. This Palestinian diaspora was called the Nakba. Arab & Muslim states became implacable enemies of Israel which they considered an illegitimate entity. The Israeli victory over an Arab military coalition during 1967 War, Israel absorbed the predominantly Palestinian Jordanian territory of the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem as well as the predominantly Palestinian Gaza Strip from Egypt – becoming the Occupied Territories. It also absorbed the Golan Heights from Syria. Major Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives include the 1993 Oslo Accord and the 2003 Roadmap for Peace – both of which supported a two-state solution with Occupied East Jerusalem forming the capital of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Jewish settlements in the West Bank started in 1968-77, expanding greatly from 1991 onwards complicating the idea of potential Palestinian territorial sovereignty under a two-state solution. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish people. Information on the Project for the New American Century can be found following this link - https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Project_for_the_New_American_Century In this episode STRATEGIKON host, Dr. John Bruni discusses the implications of President Donald J. Trump's decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising Jerusalem as Israel's undivided capital with Dr. Imad Harb, Director of Research & Analysis at the Arab Center, Washington D.C. & SAGE International Australia's resident existential philosopher, David Olney Subscribe, rate and review STRATEGIKON on all good podcasting apps, including SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Tunein & YouTube. o RSS feed: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:141166782/sounds.rss o Email: enquiries@sageinternational.org.au o STRATEGIKON can also be found on the SAGE International Australia website: www.sageinternational.org.au For more information from SAGE International Australia (SIA), follow SAGE International Australia on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn. If you're enjoying our podcast, please help us out by sharing and telling your friends. Many thanks! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Please find some interesting factoids regarding the history of Israel & the Occupation of Palestine & a link on PNAC (Project of the New American Century) Jews were forced to leave Israel during the Roman occupation of ancient Judaea (70 CE). Surviving Jewish communities flourishing throughout the Mediterranean and within Europe. Modern Israel was founded on the back of the NAZI Holocaust 1942-45. Between 1945-47, an Exodus of surviving European Jewry to the British Mandate of Palestine, then a predominantly Arab land, linked up with existing local Jewish communities and began displacing local Palestinian Arabs which was capped off by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War – founding the state of Israel. Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel fled to neighbouring Arab states. This Palestinian diaspora was called the Nakba. Arab & Muslim states became implacable enemies of Israel which they considered an illegitimate entity. The Israeli victory over an Arab military coalition during 1967 War, Israel absorbed the predominantly Palestinian Jordanian territory of the West Bank, Arab East Jerusalem as well as the predominantly Palestinian Gaza Strip from Egypt – becoming the Occupied Territories. It also absorbed the Golan Heights from Syria. Major Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives include the 1993 Oslo Accord and the 2003 Roadmap for Peace – both of which supported a two-state solution with Occupied East Jerusalem forming the capital of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005. Jewish settlements in the West Bank started in 1968-77, expanding greatly from 1991 onwards complicating the idea of potential Palestinian territorial sovereignty under a two-state solution. In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish people. Information on the Project for the New American Century can be found following this link - https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Project_for_the_New_American_Century In this episode STRATEGIKON host, Dr. John Bruni discusses the implications of President Donald J. Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital with Dr. Imad Harb, Director of Research & Analysis at the Arab Center, Washington D.C. & SAGE International Australia’s resident existential philosopher, David Olney Subscribe, rate and review STRATEGIKON on all good podcasting apps, including SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Tunein & YouTube. o RSS feed: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:141166782/sounds.rss o Email: enquiries@sageinternational.org.au o STRATEGIKON can also be found on the SAGE International Australia website: www.sageinternational.org.au For more information from SAGE International Australia (SIA), follow SAGE International Australia on Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn. If you’re enjoying our podcast, please help us out by sharing and telling your friends. Many thanks! Support the show.
In this episode we examine the First Arab-Israeli war in the context of the Cold War. How did an Israel so outnumbered achieve victory? What was the Soviet Union's role in the war? How did the war effect the Cold War?
Between June 5 and June 10, 1967, Israel and an Arab coalition of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan fought a war that Israelis call the Six Day War, and that Arabs generally call the June War. By war’s end, Israel had captured territories on all three fronts: the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt; the Golan Heights from Syria; and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. And with those territories hundreds of thousands of people, primarily Palestinians (today numbering millions), came under Israeli control. In this episode, five Brookings scholars share their insights and expertise on a range of current policy issues that have roots in the conflict. These include how the war changed both Israel and its Arab neighbors; the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the rise of political Islam as an alternative to Arab secular nationalism, particularly in Egypt; regional repercussions and peace deals; and the role of US diplomacy. On the 50th anniversary of the 1967 War, our experts look back as they look forward to grapple with these issues and how the conflict’s legacies continue to resonate today. This episode is part of a larger effort by the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings to offer perspectives on the war’s anniversary, to ask what can be learned from it, and how these lessons inform our understanding about the current turmoil in the region.
Jacob Shapiro and Kamran Bokhari discuss the geopolitical importance of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and whether the realities it created will define the future. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here: hubs.ly/H06mXwR0 TRANSCRIPT: JS: Hello everyone and welcome to another Geopolitical Futures podcast. My name is Jacob Shapiro, I am the director of analysis for Geopolitical Futures and I am joined again this week by Kamran Bokhari, who is our senior analyst, welcome Kamran. KB: Thanks for having me, Jacob. JS: I just want to apologize to our listeners, I know that we didn't manage to get a podcast out last week, so we're going to try and get two out this week. In general, we are going to try to stick to one a week, so we appreciate you guys bearing with us as we go along. Last time we talked, Kamran, we talked about the Islamic State and we talked about the Islamic State's origins and its futures. And one of the things I think is interesting right now is that the Middle East is really in a state of flux. The balance of power in the Middle East is changing. We can see it changing all the time. One of the things we are chronicling in our writing is how the balance of power in the Middle East is changing all the time. You brought up to us when we were thinking about what to talk about today, that we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and also Lebanon and Iraq had some token forces in there, but really it was between Israel and Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The 50th anniversary is coming up in June. How about you lay out for our readers why you think this is such an important anniversary to note? KB: I think 50 years is a good point in time to go back and review and measure just how things have unfolded in the region. And 1967 is particularly important because it really shaped the way the region has unfolded. It was a pivotal moment. Israel, as a result of that war, its massive victory over three Arab states, really established it as a military power in the region. And it was only 19 years old, Israel was only 19 years old when that war happened. And at the time, no one could've foreseen that Israel would be able to defend itself against three major Arab powers, at least they were perceived as major Arab powers. And the whole perception of Arab strength was essentially laid bare. The image of the Arabs was tarnished. I mean the fact that in the collective Arab memory, June 5, 1967, is seen as Yawm al-Naksa, which is loosely defined or translated as the day of setback, although ‘naksa' in Arabic is far more, if you will, stronger than just the word ‘setback' as we know it in English, but nonetheless, it left a deep imprint on the Arab world and established that the Arab world was very much hollow and it could not impose a military solution on Israel. JS: Kamran, I think this was one of the things you brought up last week that was interesting, which was when we were talking about the Islamic State and we were talking about the rise of radical jihadist Islam as a major ideology in the region, you pointed towards this moment as the moment at which the political ideology of the time, which was secular nationalism, Arab nationalism – in 1967 Egypt was still known as the United Arab Republic technically, right, which is an ode to the short-lived entity that existed when Egypt and Syria were part of the same republic from 1958 to 1961. So you sort of pointed out last week just how important this moment was in history and how it really defined how the Arab world was going to move forward. It amounted to the failure of Nasserism and in some ways, it was the moment that Egypt abdicated leadership in the Arab world, wouldn't you say? KB: Absolutely, and I think that it was forced to do that. I think that nobody could argue and nobody could sustain the image of this leadership role that Egypt had projected, that it was the leader of Arab nationalism, the Arab soul, the Arab world. When the Egyptian Air Force was destroyed in a matter of hours on the fifth of June, you couldn't make that argument anymore. And it was essentially the beginning of the end of the Nasser regime, at least Nasserite Egypt – though some would argue that we are still living in the legacy of Nasserite Egypt – but Nasser himself didn't live too long after that. He died in 1970, and that really closed that chapter of Arab nationalism, but it also demonstrated that the Arab states, and here we are talking about Egypt, I mean Egypt is the heart of the Arab world given it is the largest Arab state by population, any type of cultural renaissance, new ideologies that take shape in Egypt, in Cairo particularly, and then disseminate to the rest of the Arab world. So that was the status of Egypt. That war really, really demonstrated the impotence of the Egyptian military in the face of Israel, which was seen as a weak state at that point, and it really established many of the boundaries that we are currently dealing with and the relationships that Israel has with many of its Arab neighbors. So we know that in 1978, Israel and Egypt made peace and in many ways the outcome of 1967, really laid the foundation for that eventual rapprochement and the diplomatic relationship, the uneasy diplomatic relationship that has existed since then. Likewise, the relationship with Jordan, even though the formal peace treaty between Jordan and Israel did not emerge until 1994, but it is well known that Israelis and Jordanians have had a very close security relationship, especially as it pertains to the Palestinians and those living in the West Bank. The Israeli-Syrian relationship was also established. The hostilities that exist till this day, the state of war as many would refer to it, was established in 1967 when Israel conquered the Golan Heights and was able to seize that territory from the Syrians and the Syrians have not been able to take that back. So the entire geopolitical landscape that we now know as sort of the defining borders and the boundaries that established the Arab-Israeli dynamic were set in the aftermath of the 1967 war with a little bit of modification within the case of the Sinai, which Egypt was able to take back in the form of the peace treaty. JS: Well you are right to an extent, I will say that you are overlooking a little bit just how important 1973 was. So Israel and Egypt again fight another war in '73, and as much as 1967 was a success for the Israeli Defense Forces and for the strategy of preemptive attack, I mean Israel was in a weak position in some sense and it was forced to attack Egypt preemptively if it was going to be able to achieve its objectives. This led to a certain amount of arrogance on the part of the Israelis and in '73, there was a massive intelligence failure where they dismissed Egyptian mobilization in the Sinai. Israel ended up winning that war with U.S. support and then that sort of is what led to the peace treaty in the end. But I think you are right in the sense that a lot of the geopolitical realities that have defined this part of the world, which is the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, the sort of frozen state of conflict between Syria and Israel as I would call it, Israel obviously went into Lebanon a couple more times after that. But another thing that I think we need to point out here is that before '67, there really wasn't a very strong relationship between the United States and Israel, at least not the way that people think about that relationship now. Israel's success in the '67 war was really the moment the United States realized two things, first of all that most of the Arab states were in the Soviet Union's camp and that there was no getting them back, and second of all, that Israel could be a meaningful partner in balancing power against the Soviet Union in the Middle East. And I bring this up because I think it raises an interesting point, because you're right that a lot of the seeds of how things developed after '67 were laid in the results of that war. But at the same time, if we look 50 years later, a lot of those things are beginning to fall apart, right? The Soviet Union has collapsed, people are making a lot of Russia's involvement in the Middle East, but it's very miniscule compared to the chest pumping that everybody talks about. You know the Russians are not funding or massively arming states that are thinking about attacking Israel or other U.S. allies in the region. Egypt is an economic basket case, it just went through a pretty massive political transition, which began you know with the Arab Spring around 2010-2011, and they have issues of their own. Jordan is sort of the miracle of the region, how Jordan hasn't been affected by the stuff that's going on in the region is pretty incredible. Syria, I mean Syria is basically half a state right now. The Assad regime has been able to consolidate itself, but Syria, which really was one of the biggest vulnerabilities Israel faced from a military point of view, Syria is completely involved with its own fight against its own anti-regime rebels, and the Islamic State is there and they are having to rely on Hezbollah and all this other stuff. So when Israel looks out at its current strategic landscape, it doesn't see Egypt and Syria and Jordan as these major problems anymore. In '67 the major concern was, well what if Israel gets attacked by three entities at the same time. Those three entities aren't there. When you think about Israel's strategic position right now, the sort of first, most immediate thing that comes to mind is Hezbollah. We had those reports recently of Israel just a couple days ago striking a weapons convoy, an alleged weapons convoy of Hezbollah in Palmyra, which is pretty far in for the Israelis to go into Syria. So that's sort of the first thing. But Hezbollah is also completely distracted by the Syrian civil war. But then you take a step back and the challenges for Israel really aren't set by 1967, they are set by different things. So the first thing I would say is that, you know, what is going to happen with the Islamic State? Maybe the Islamic State is going to get defeated and maybe it's going to collapse but the real concern for Israel is the state of disrepair that is in the Arab world won't reign forever. Is there any potential for some kind of radical Sunni entity to rise in the Arab world and unite the factions and once again treat Israel as a common enemy? Taking a further step back, you look at Iran which was dealt a setback with the Syrian civil war and with the degradation of the Assad regime, but still maintains a lot of influence in Iraq and is still aggressively trying to push its influence in the region. And then farther back is Turkey. Turkey is rising, one of George Friedman's most identifiable forecasts and one of the things we write about a lot and that we get a lot of attention for, is our position that Turkey is going to rise and it's going to be the major power in the Middle East. Right now, there are decent relations between Israel and Turkey, but I think Israel's long-term thinking is about what a strategic landscape looks like, it has to think about Turkey as this major power reasserting itself in the region. So I agree with you in the sense that it's important, and '67 really did set the chain for a lot of different events, but in some ways, it's become obsolete. Would you agree with that characterization or do you want to argue with any of that? KB: No, I think you are right. I think we are still dealing with the post-1967 architecture but with the caveat that that architecture is in a meltdown mode. Defeating three of its neighbors at the same time established Israel's superiority in a military sense and really consolidated the state of Israel, and since that time, what's become clear, even though we had the 1973 war, it became clear to Egypt that there was no military solution. This almost romantic view of being able to establish Arab hegemony over all of historic Palestine through military means was shattered. That perception was completely shattered. And even though 1973 happened and was a surprise and intelligence failure for Israel, nonetheless the Egyptians I would argue did not think when they launched that war that they would be able to militarily defeat Israel. There's always the possibility you could do that, but deep down you know and if you have been dealt a blow like 1967, that really weighs heavily on your national psyche and your military strategy moving forward. And if you look at the way the negotiations panned out after that, with the moderation or the intercession of the United States, it becomes clear that really 1973 from the Egyptian point of view was enhancing your bargaining power. Improving your position to achieve some sort of, if you will, win-win scenario in which the Egyptians can come back and say yes, we were able to retake the Sinai from Israel and we restored national dignity. But 1967 really showed that the military option was no longer there for the Arabs. And moving forward from the Israeli point of view, those very states that were threatening them in 1967, Israel really relied on their behavior to not wage war against Israel as part of its natural security doctrine. Keep in mind that these are autocratic regimes that may view Israel in a certain way because they believe in it or maybe because it's pragmatic and because they are in power and have to balance pressures from all sides. But the sentiment in many of these countries until this day is one of hostility towards Israel. Israel relied on these capitols: Damascus, Cairo and Amman, to make sure that that national sentiment did not alter the national behavior of those countries, and Israel would not be threatened again. Now if you fast forward to the Arab Spring, that whole strategy seems to be falling apart, because if these countries, if these regimes cannot maintain order within their own country, then that is a problem. And if you have a power vacuum, we just recently published a couple of articles on how Jordan is weakening, and the implications particularly for Israel are massive, if the regime were to weaken much and God forbid fall, that could create a vacuum in which Israel faces a new kind of threat, an uncertainty. Clearly this is not a threat from a state, but non-state actors create a new dynamic. If we look at what is happening in Syria and how the Israelis have been trying to balance between the hostile forces on the Sunni side of the conflict, which includes ISIS, which includes al-Qaida and all those whom we call the moderate Sunni Arab rebel forces. They're not friends of Israel. Given a chance, they would wage war against Israel. On the other side is Syria, Iran and Hezbollah – again enemies of Israel. And Israel has to do this careful balancing act. At the moment, the Sunni side is not in a position to threaten Israel and therefore Israel is trying to make sure that Hezbollah does not gain more power than it already has and pose a bigger threat than it already does to Israel. Should those circumstances be replicated in Jordan and Egypt, then that's a tough balancing act for Israel to maintain. Because we're talking three different countries on the entire periphery of the Jewish state. JS: Well let's dig into that a little bit then. We know that Syria is in a state of civil war, the Assad regime seems to have been able to consolidate control there. For the most part that situation is actually ok with Israel because it's weakened an enemy, but not so much that there is just chaos reigning everywhere. But you've brought up Jordan and you've brought up Egypt. You said that Jordan is weakening. How about we dig a little more into that? What do you mean when you said Jordan is weakening? KB: Well if you look at Jordan geographically, it is sitting at the crossroads of major areas of conflict. It borders both the countries in which ISIS is operating i.e. Syria and Iraq. It has the second largest refugee population coming from Syria after Turkey. We're talking somewhere around 680,000 people. That's a huge strain on an already poor country. The economy really historically hasn't done well, it's gotten by with assistance from both the West, the United States and the U.K., and of course assistance from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. But with the price of oil declining, and we know that Saudi Arabia is in trouble on the home front, it has less and less financial bandwidth to come to the aid of Jordan. We also see the situation in the West Bank evolving towards a crisis where President Mahmoud Abbas is at an advanced age. He's not ill or anything, at least apparently. But when you reach, go beyond 80, you are operating on borrowed time. So what will happen to the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, especially in the wake of Israeli policies that are now aggressively pushing more settlements? That creates a large pressure on the Jordanians whose population is somewhere a little above 50 percent of Palestinian origin. Many of those people came in the aftermath of the 1948 war, a lot of them came after the 1967 one. But there's already an existing Palestinian population, which has been to one degree or another, if you will, assimilated into Jordanian mainstream political life. We recently had protests because of the cutting of subsidies by the government. There are no shortage of Islamist forces, from the Muslim Brotherhood, it has at least two major factions. You have a large Salafi population. You have al-Qaida there. The founder of ISIS, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is from Jordan and the town of Zarqa. And you have Hizb ut-Tahrir. And then you have the spillover effect from Syria. So these are circumstances, to expect Jordan that it will continue to behave the way it has since the '67 war or over the decades, I think that would be a mistake. I don't think that the Israelis are looking at it that way. Recall the recent report in which the Jordanian ambassador to Amman told the IDF chief that he is worried about stability and security in the Jordanian kingdom. We've not had these kind of statements coming from Israel. So if the Israelis are worried, I would say that is a good barometer of how the situation is deteriorating in Jordan. JS: Yeah although, I would challenge you to go a little bit deeper, which is to say that you've just laid out a pretty scary laundry list of challenges for any country let alone one like Jordan that really doesn't have a lot of natural resources of its own, which like you say, has an incredibly diverse population. There's a lot of Palestinians in Jordan. Really Jordanians are Hashemites right, there are actually very small numbers of people who can actually claim to be Jordanian, so many of them are Bedouins and Circassians and this, that and the other thing. How do you explain the fact that Jordan hasn't succumbed to all this stuff? Because unlike Syria or unlike Egypt or unlike even Lebanon it has for the most part avoided a lot of the domestic political instability and a lot of the violence that a lot of the Arab states around it haven't avoided and with much fewer resources. KB: So I would say that there are three aspects to that in terms of how the Jordanian regime has maintained stability and security. So the first and foremost is that the Jordanian security establishment has been very competent. Particularly the General Intelligence Department, its main intelligence agency, it has a very good handle in pre-empting and not being on the reactive side that things happen and then the Jordanians act. They've been ahead of the curve in terms of making sure that any radical elements, be they ISIS or others, that they are kept under lock and key and so that's one aspect. The other aspect I mentioned earlier is that there has been this historic relationship between Israel and Jordan, a quiet one that is not really talked about much and understandably so from the Jordanian point of view, and that has helped quite a bit. Then it is a very close ally of the West, the United States and prior to that, the U.K., and the U.K. continues to be an ally of the Hashemite monarchy. They also have had assistance from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to the extent that they have been able to do that. So I think a mix of forces has allowed Jordan to continue to maintain stability even though we're six years out from the Arab Spring. But I think that the pressures are building and this is not a sustainable situation. Should there be a, we talk about the southern provinces of Syria where the government and different rebel factions and ISIS is in the mix as well. There's sort of this lack of clarity over who has the upper hand, its sort of a balance of weakness in southern Syria when it comes to the civil war, it has not been a major theater compared to Aleppo or Palmyra or ISIS-land up near Raqqa or Damascus. These are the things that have maintained order and these are the factors that enabled the regime. But to assume that this will continue, especially at a time when the established states, I mean Saudi Arabia is the largest state in that region and it also shares a large border with Jordan, although historically a quiet one. But nonetheless, if Saudi Arabia is having less and less financial bandwidth to assist countries around its periphery, then we are looking at a situation that is not something that the Jordanians will be able to handle on their own. There's a lot of hope that goes into this idea that Jordan will continue to manage its domestic politics and of course the wider geopolitics, it's a balancing act. But I think we need to get out of this assumption that things will continue and nothing will go wrong and there's a need for out-of-the-box thinking. JS: Although I just want to drive home for our listeners that a lot of people when they think about geopolitics, they think about geographical determinism, and what I mean by that is they think that it's as easy as looking at a map. And a map is going to be able to tell you exactly what's wrong with a country and what is going to happen to a particular country. Jordan is a really good example of where just the basics of a map or just the basics of geography or a layout of resources isn't enough to tell you everything. I think there is a conservative element in Jordanian society and an element that has always had to fight an uphill battle against a real lack of resources. I mean Jordan, its borders were not drawn in any logical way when you are thinking in terms of nationality or economic production or just about anything. So I agree with you that Jordan faces many challenges, but one of the things about Jordan is this intangible thing that has kept the kingdom together so far, and I think will serve it in good stead. But leaving Jordan aside for now, it's a relatively small country. One of the things that people brought up from the last podcast and I think it fits in exactly with this conversation, because we started by talking about 1967 and as you mentioned, in a lot of ways 1967 was one of the moments where Israel and the United States realized that they had interests in common. Those interests really were about blocking the Soviet Union and about Israel becoming a U.S. ally in a region that was becoming dominated by Arab states that were allied with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union obviously is no longer there, and the strategic basis of the relationship between Israel and the United States is not as strong as it once was. I know that there was a lot of talk about how special the relationship is and how close it is. But that strategic reason for the relationship has gone away and I think you've seen the United States and Israel pull away from each other a little bit. That's both because Israel has a lot more freedom of action than it did before and also because from a U.S. perspective the interests don't line up quite as well as they used to. But the question that I am circling around here is, so we've talked about how we're in this 50 years since 1967, but we're also in a Middle East that is changing rapidly, how does the U.S. respond to the things were talking about here, how does the U.S. respond to the hollowing out of the Arab world, how does the U.S. respond to Jordan and the serious challenges that Jordan is facing and what is the U.S.-Israel relationship going to look like going forward? I know that a lot of people were thinking that Donald Trump was going to make that relationship much different than the relationship with Obama, but as with so many things with President Trump, he said one thing before getting into office and continues to say things all the time, but the things that he's actually doing don't always line up with what he says. He has not moved the embassy to Jerusalem, he has criticized the Netanyahu administration for settlements at some level, all things that Trump said he was going to do, but when we look in practice, it looks remarkably similar to before and it also seems like Trump is willing to throw his hat in the ring and to be yet another U.S. president who wants to try and solve the eternal conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, so I just threw some things at you but I think the main thing is so what does the U.S. do, how does the U.S. deal with all these dynamics we've brought up? KB: We've written about how the United States is pursuing a balance of power strategy. A balance of power strategy doesn't mean that there is a nice balance, that you can essentially create this system that's going to work for a while. It's a constant act of balancing, it doesn't end at one point, it doesn't begin at one point. You just have to continue to play with it, tweak it, to make sure that it is working and the U.S. balance of power strategy relies on working with the major powers of the region, we've identified them as Turkey, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Now if you go into each one of them, we've talked about the historic relationship with Israel, and there is this disconnect between Israeli and American interests, but I still think that despite that divergence in interests, the United States and Israel aren't really that far apart if you look at it from a strategic point of view. Yes, tactically there can be many differences, you know, we can say that the United States does not want Israel to build new settlements but I think that that's sort of a minor issue in the larger regional geopolitical scheme of things. I don't think that the United States does not want Israel to assume a posture or an aggressive interventionist posture in its neighborhood and I don't think that the Israelis want to do that either. So if you look at the airstrikes in Syria, they do not demonstrate any desire on the part of the Israelis to intervene in the way they did in Lebanon, and that's great from an American perspective, because the United States is already dealing with a whole lot. The United States under the Obama administration was able to end that hostility that erupted between Turkey and Israel over the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in 2010, and there was the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations and a sort of normalization. So I think that there again is another example of the United States trying to balance. The United States needs Turkey to manage Syria, and it has made it very clear to the Israelis that we need your cooperation. If the Israelis and the Turks are going after each other, then that undermines the United States' interests. You flip over to Iran's nuclear program and the way the nuclear agreement was forged, yes there was a lot of huffing and puffing on the part of the Israelis, there was a lot of bellicose rhetoric and unhappiness, and the media was all about how Netanyahu's personality clashes with that of Obama, but at the end of the day, Israel didn't do anything substantive to block that agreement from taking place. Israel maintains that it has very little faith in that agreement to produce the desired outcome, but that's a different story than saying we will go and actively work against American interests. JS: I am going to jump in and disagree with you a little bit in the sense that I think you are understating just how much the Netanyahu administration opposed the Iran deal. Israel didn't do anything in terms of Iran's nuclear program and won't do anything in terms of Iran's nuclear program, at least anything overt, because it doesn't have the capability. It simply does not have the military capability to go in and knock out the Iranian nuclear program. If it did, I would submit that it probably already would have done it. It did that with Iraq, it did that with Syria. If it felt like it had the capability, I think it would have gone and done it already. And I don't think it was a small thing what Netanyahu did when he came and addressed the U.S. Senate and gave that very flowery speech about how it was a bad deal and how the Obama administration had committed a catastrophic mistake. I don't think that Israel had much of a choice in the end though. At the end of the day, Israel knows where its bread is buttered and knows that it needs the United States as a key strategic ally. If this was the path that the United States would go down and this was the path that the United States thought was most in U.S. interests, Israel wasn't going to be able to thwart that. But I think that Israel in general is very intimidated by Iran, especially by Iran's rhetoric, and they would've preferred a much stronger U.S. reaction to Iran. I think that's one of the areas where you see that there's not going to be a break in relations between the United States and Israel but I think there you see a very, very different set of priorities. Israel is still a small country in a very hostile neighborhood that looks at things one way and the United States is the most powerful country in the world with a lot of different challenges in a lot of different regions. You've got everything going on with Russia, you've got everything going on with China, you've got allies all over the place, you've got a NATO alliance that isn't working the way the United States wants it to, the United States does not have time to get involved in every little thing inside the Middle East. The United States really can use Iran, not necessarily as an ally, I am not saying the United States and Iran are going to become best friends or anything, but the United States needs an Iran it can work with on a pragmatic basis, because there are bigger fish to fry. You've got ISIS sitting there right smack dab in the Middle East, you've got whatever is going to come after ISIS, you've got this huge jostling and competition for what's going to come after the hulking carcasses of Syria and Iraq going on there, so I think that's actually one of the areas where you see a little bit of the divergence and where you see that the challenges of '67 and the challenges that have really defined relations in the region since '67 are beginning to change. KB: Yes they are changing, but what I was pointing towards or trying to make the case for is that there is the divergence, and yes it is a function of capability that Israel did not opt for a military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue and went along with the U.S. diplomatic option, but at the end of the day, this is that difficult balancing act we've been talking about. The difficulty in maintaining a balance of power strategy whether it's between Turkey and Israel or Israel and Iran, I mean even between Turkey and Iran, although this is one of those relations that has yet to really emerge in terms of where it's going at this point. Even though they are at odds with one another over the outcome of Syria, Tehran and Ankara are not going to be seeing eye-to-eye, but for now they have both decided that it's not in their interests to go head-to-head with one another. I mean similarly if you look at how the U.S. is sort of caught. On one hand, there is an Iran that can be useful in the fight against ISIS in making sure that Iraq functions in some kind of semi-coherent way. But at the same time, the more that the Americans appear to be working with the Iranians – that deeply upsets the Saudis and the other Arab states, and therefore yet again you have a balancing act. We saw a lot of this balancing, it's not as if the United States can just say okay, Saudi Arabia has very little to offer and Iran has a little more to offer, therefore we're going to sort of swing that pendulum in the direction of Tehran. I don't think that would sort of undermine the entire thesis of a balance of power strategy, but once you immerse yourself into that, you put yourself in the shoes of Washington, it's a difficult balancing act. How do you make sure that the enmity between the Iranians and the Saudis does not upset your interests in the region. On one hand, the United States does not like the Saudis sponsoring militias in Syria that are not very different honestly from al-Qaida and ISIS. But at the same time, the United States needs the Saudis to make sure that the Iranians don't jump out of their box and become disproportionately powerful. So I guess, I am talking about a very complex balance of power strategy that will continue to twist and turn whether it involves the U.S.-Israeli relationship, the U.S.-Iranian tensions, the tensions that currently exist between Turkey, which we have identified as being the key to the American strategy for the long haul in Syria and in the wider region. We see great tensions, at least in the short term, there's a divergence of interests especially over the Kurds and the extent to which Turkey wants to commit forces in the fight against ISIS. But nonetheless the two sides have to work with each other, so Washington has been caught in between these four powers. JS: It's funny as you were talking, it's really striking to me when you think in terms of, you know, if you think about the 1960s and '70s, it was punctuated by these very intense wars. We call them wars in the full sense of the term. But overall it was a much more stable situation in the Middle East. You know, there were the people that were in the U.S. camp, there were the states that were in the Soviet camp and the states themselves were fairly stable. Egypt was a fairly stable state, Syria you know, there was the coup d'etat in ‘61 that brought the Baath party to power, but once the Assads eventually came to power, Syria also was very stable, the Hashemite kingdom has also been there since the 1940s. Right now, it's not so simple. The Arab world, as you said, really has been hollowed out. And there's a great deal of instability and there's a great deal of uncertainty about what is going to emerge out of it. I would suggest that if we are looking forward another 50 years, if we are talking about 100 years from 1967, I think that what we might see is we might see the pendulum swing back to the stability that we saw in '67. I just think the actors are going to be very different. I don't think that Egypt and Syria and war between Arabs and the Israelis is going to be the thing animating the region. I think the thing to really focus on is the rise of Turkey, how Iran is going to respond to that, how the Arab world is going to deal both with its own problems with radical Islam and then how Israel is going to try to navigate through all this and who the U.S. is going to use and how. I want to close, I just want to hit one more topic while we're here Kamran. It's one we've sort of danced around and it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it feels like the eternal conflict. And in some ways, it's strange to go to this issue after talking about such large weighty things, because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in strategic terms really does not matter that much. And I wonder how you are going to answer this question, because it's something that I ask people all the time. Why do you think there is such a degree of fascination and attention with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East? The attention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it gets, really I don't think lines up with the strategic importance that it has overall, and I think it's appropriate to talk about it in this conversation, because as you said 1967 is when Israel takes over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and it hasn't relinquished them since. And the Palestinians, which used to be – the West Bank was a Jordanian problem and the Gaza Strip was an Egyptian problem. Since '67 it became an Israeli problem. So why do you think that there is such a level of focus such that even the Trump administration is sending out envoys talking about solution to this conflict that has eluded every single president. KB: I think there are two reasons for that. I think the first reason has to do with the fact that the Palestinian issue remains unresolved. In many ways there is, as time has gone by and as we move forward, the situation becomes more and more complex and resolution appears more and more elusive. But the fact is that the question of Palestine, the Palestinian issue, has not been resolved in some shape or form to where we can move beyond this idea of an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though successive American administrations have failed to really tackle this issue. I think the closest that we ever came was in the Clinton administration when there were final status talks between Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the late '90s. But we've drifted far from that and we've come to a point where the entire Palestinian landscape has become so incoherent that even before we talk about an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, there has to be some form of intra-Palestinian settlement and nothing tells me when I look at the Gaza Strip, when I look at the West Bank, when I look at Hamas, and when I look at Fatah and I look at the other Palestinian factions and the disunity and the incoherence, I look at it and I say we are moving even further away from anything called a Palestinian national entity. And therefore it becomes even less and less possible for a serious Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. But I think that there is another assumption built into the way we in the West look at this problem. Which is that if we were to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict then somehow the Middle East becomes far more manageable. I don't believe that. But that is the way I think that many within the various governments in the West, whether it's the British government or the French or the German or the American. And in many ways, this narrative has been peddled by the Arab regimes and the wider Muslim world, you know Turkey has been pushing this as well on its end, that you need to solve this problem, if you solve this problem then we won't have radicalism. Radicalism and al-Qaida, ISIS exist largely because of what has happened to the Palestinians and the wider fallout of that. I think there's the failure to recognize that it's not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab Muslim world faces a deep malaise. We talked about this in our first podcast a couple of weeks ago. And that is at the heart of this issue, but I think that there is this obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as being central to the wider problems of the Middle East. I will argue that even assuming somehow we can miraculously solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and we have this quote-unquote two-state solution before us, the problems of Syria, Egypt and Iraq and the rest of that region are not going to go away. But nonetheless because it's a historic continuing unfinished business, there is this tendency to sort of organically link it to the other problems, and if you look at every administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration and even now the Trump administration, there's always this effort, this new effort to say let's get the Israelis and the Palestinians to start talking in a serious way. But at the end, we haven't seen any breakthrough, because the fundamentals have not changed, they've actually become worse. You have two Palestines, effectively there are two Palestinian Territories, not just geographically separated, they are ideologically separated, they are politically separated. Right now, the Israelis don't occupy Gaza, that is a Palestinian sort of self-ruled territory spinning on its own axis controlled by Hamas. That will continue, I don't think the Israelis are going to go in anytime soon or in the foreseeable future and reoccupy Gaza. So what can happen in the form of some negotiation is that there may be another Palestinian territory that emerges as a semi-quasi-sovereign in the West Bank. You will effectively have two Palestines. Does that solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I would argue no, it just makes it much, much more complex. JS: And I think just the way I always talk about the Middle East when people ask me about it is my favorite metaphor to describe it basically as a chess board, that really for over a century now the Middle East has been a chess board for major powers outside the region to try and make moves against each other. And for the most part since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, it's been mostly pawns on the chess board with mostly people moving back less valuable pieces as they challenge each other. And I think the most important thing to think about going forward when we think about the next 50 years and where we are going to be 50 years from now is to watch the powers in the Middle East itself that are beginning to come up. I think really that means keeping a very close eye on Turkey, keeping a very close eye on Iran, keeping a very close eye on Saudi Arabia and whether and how it's able to tackle many of the issues facing it. I know that here at GPF, we're fairly bearish on Saudi Arabia's ability to do that, they are just facing too much. And then Israel, as it always has been, you know smaller country in a very messy neighborhood trying to figure out its right place in it all and trying to build the right level of strategic relationships that allow it to exist with a maximum amount of independence. All right, thanks Kamran. Thank you for joining me. Thank you everybody for listening. If you want to send us questions or comments, you can comment on our website or on SoundCloud. You can also send comments to comments@geopoliticalfutures.com. Again, I am Jacob Shapiro, I'm the Director of Analysis for GPF and this is Kamran Bokhari, and we will see you next time.
Kamran Bokhari and Jacob L. Shapiro discuss where IS came from, the history and politics of radical Islam, and what happens if IS is defeated in Raqqa. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here: hubs.ly/H06mXwR0 TRANSCRIPT: JS: Hello, my name is Jacob Shapiro, I'm broadcasting today from Avignon, in the south of France. I'm joined by Kamran Bokhari, who I believe is in Washington, D.C. Is that right Kamran? KB: Yes I am. JS: I'm joined by Kamran Bokhari who is our senior analyst and who focuses on the Middle East, and we're going to be talking a little bit about ISIS. Thanks for joining us Kamran. KB: Pleasure to be here. JS: So, Kamran, I thought instead of talking about every single battle and every single report that seems to indicate ISIS is imminently falling, we might take a broader look at the subject for our listeners. So, how about we just start with a rather broad question – tell me about how ISIS started. How did ISIS come to be in the middle of Syria and Iraq? KB: Well if you recall, Jacob, this happened in the wake of regime change, or regime collapse, in Iraq, when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled the Saddam government and has since been unable to form a viable state. And it was not just the lack of a state, but it also brought to the fore forces that were until then very much contained under the autocratic leadership of the Baathist regime. And so what we had was the disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, the rise of the Shiites and of course the rise of the Kurds, in the form of regional autonomy. ISIS did not exist, in fact, there were hardly any Islamist groups of any shade in Iraq, but in war, especially when you have the sectarian problem in the Middle East where the Sunnis and the Shia are struggling with one another – yes, the Sunni government came down, but it's not like the Shiites were able to establish their own government. There was a window of opportunity in which the founders of ISIS, particularly Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded what used to be called al-Qaida in Iraq, laid the foundation for ISIS. And as the years rolled on, ISIS continued to gain strength from the conflict that was brewing. It was a complex conflict. There were Shiites fighting Shiites, Shiites fighting Sunnis, Sunnis fighting Kurds and Sunnis fighting the United States. So in that complex warlike scenario, that's where we find the birth of ISIS. JS: Yes, well, as usual in the Middle East, everybody is fighting everybody and it's all complicated. But so there's a lot there to unpack. So how about we start with this: You mentioned that the original name of ISIS was al-Qaida in Iraq and you also said that ISIS began, or really, its generation point came in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. How about we go back a little step further, and can you talk about the relationship between al-Qaida and between ISIS and what the relationship was and how it's developed? KB: If we go back to the aftermath of 9/11 and after the United States invaded Afghanistan and destroyed the infrastructure of al-Qaida, disrupted its operations, forcing al-Qaida, the original organization, to disperse and relocate largely in northwestern Pakistan. Al-Qaida had basically very little power projection capability at that point. I'm talking between 2001 and 2003. And at that point in time, it seemed like al-Qaida's purpose for staging the 9/11 attacks, which was to bait the United States into militarily acting in a very large way in the Middle East, in the heart of the Muslim world, that didn't succeed. The United States sent in a small force, largely special operations forces and intelligence operatives and later NATO forces came in, but originally it was Afghan forces on the ground who toppled the Taliban regime. That didn't produce the kind of effect that al-Qaida was hoping for. But then when the United States invaded Iraq, that was an opportunity. But al-Qaida didn't have any horses in this race. Al-Qaida could not reach Iraq. But Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who ran his own jihadist training camp in Afghanistan pre-9/11, was able to make his way from Afghanistan between 2001, and by the time the United States invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, he had set up his shop in the Sunni areas in northern Iraq. And he was able to take advantage of that vacuum that was created with the fall of the Saddam regime and he began an insurgency. But at that point in time his group used to be called something like Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad and it wasn't even called al-Qaida. But this individual and this outfit were on the ground, al-Qaida was at a distance. Both needed each other. Zarqawi's outfit was not getting the kind of coverage or the kind of support, financially or otherwise, because it was an unknown quantity. Al-Qaida was a brand at the time and therefore it was a marriage of convenience. Bin Laden and Zawahiri and al-Qaida, the original organization, or what was left of it, did not have the ability to act in Iraq. These guys were acting, so they formed an alliance and Zarqawi became the leader of what became the al-Qaida branch in Iraq. And that's sort of where these guys started to work together. Operationally, Zarqawi was his own guy, he didn't have to report on a daily basis, he did what he thought was right and he was essentially following strategic guidance from Bin Laden and the top leadership, to the extent that he cared to do that. But it was an arrangement that worked for a while. But effectively, Zarqawi became more and more powerful and at one point, he didn't really need to report back. He never rebelled, in his lifetime, he was killed in 2006, and by that time his group was institutionalized to the point where his successors were able to take the group to the next level. And as the years rolled on, until the United States in 2007-2008 were able to get the Sunnis to turn against Zarqawi and his al-Qaida in Iraq, these guys had put down quite a bit of roots inside the country. And therefore, I think that's where the foundation was laid. Now, everything that's happened since is sort of building upon this foundation. JS: Well if I can – I'll stop you there and I'll just say, one of the interesting things that you're saying is that Zarqawi wasn't in Iraq. But you also said that one of al-Qaida's original goals was to draw the United States into the Middle East. Another of al-Qaida's goals was to try and demonstrate to much of the Islamic world, especially the Arab world, that all of these secular dictatorships, or dictatorships that had been propped up by the West, had no legitimacy. They thought if they could bring the United States in and if they could show the people of the Middle East that their regimes had no legitimacy that there would be some kind of popular revolt. So they didn't – they weren't able to bring the United States into the Middle East right away, but the fact that Zarqawi was able to get himself to Iraq and found there a very fertile ground for recruits indicates that perhaps Bin Laden, and al-Qaida in general, had a much better assessment of the level of discontent in that part of the world than anybody else. Would you agree with that characterization? KB: I would, but I would also say that this wasn't sort of – this was one of those things that they, al-Qaida, the original organization led by Bin Laden, intended to do, but had it not been for Zarqawi and his efforts and his ability to implant himself in Iraq at a time when the United States was going to war in that country, I don't think we would've come this far. So there's a bit of luck if you think from al-Qaida's point of view. Now obviously, ever since, al-Qaida has taken sort of the backseat, and now ISIS as we know it, or the Islamic State, it's essentially a different organization. It has its roots in al-Qaida, in many ways it took al-Qaida's original view and ideas and really operationalized them in a way that al-Qaida could not because of the lack of capability and the fact that Bin Laden and his top associates traded away day-to-day operational control for physical security of the leadership of the movement, they thought if the leadership was killed then al-Qaida would collapse, and therefore, the price was that you allow these groups to operate on their own. Now they didn't think that al-Qaida in Iraq would become not just an independent organization but one that would eclipse al-Qaida itself. JS: That's true, too, but you made another interesting point that I want to take you back to, which is that you mentioned that Zarqawi was the right man in the right place at the right time. That's an important point because when we're dealing with geopolitics and especially when we're dealing with state actors, the role of the individual, generally speaking, is not that important. We put less emphasis on the individual. Maybe with a sub-state actor it has a little bit of difference. But I guess the question I would pose to you then, is, was it really Zarqawi that was that special or was there going to be a Zarqawi anyway? And was the situation going to mushroom into that anyway, or did it really require someone who had that connection to al-Qaida, who had that experience, who had that training, who had that world view, who knew how to operationalize it, who knew how to put it together, to go to Iraq and to take advantage of the situation? Or would it have been, when the United States went in and when things started going wrong in Iraq, that this kind of movement would've sort of organically sprouted up anyway? KB: I think that this was bound to happen. If it was not Zarqawi it could've been someone else, because in reality, Zarqawi the personality could only do so much unless the ground realities allowed for it, and there were enabling factors, the disenfranchisement of the Sunnis, created a lot of leaders. Back in the day, I'm talking 2003 to 2005-6 I remember that Zarqawi was just one of many militia leaders, one of many factions. At the time, the group had yet to distinguish itself. So there were no shortage of outfits and organizations. I think probably what did make a bit of a difference was the fact that this individual had experience in running training camps, in running an organization going back to the late '90s and I think that experience came in handy. But it's not that Zarqawi was so important to all of this. Now, the insurgency may have taken a different route, but the fact that there is a Shiite-Sunni struggle going on at the time, that didn't require Zarqawi. That was going on independent of any personality per se. And so I think that the ground was fertile. It required an individual and an outfit that had the experience. If you fast-forward just a little bit to 2012, and when the Syrian uprising morphed into a full-scale civil war, again it was Zarqawi's outfit – because of its experience – that was able to take advantage of the vacuum that was created in eastern Syria and was able to take over places like Raqqa and Deir el-Zour and the oil fields. And it became the biggest militia and really eclipsed the rebels who started the war. So I think there's something to be said about institutionalization. I'm not a big fan of personalities, I think that there were many others, and the fact that Zarqawi only lived for three years as the leader and we are now in year 14 of this entity, says a lot. I mean, there are a lot of leaders who had come by and taken over the same group and really moved on, so you know, there's institutionalization and there are ground realities that sustain these type of entities. JS: I want to talk about the sectarian part of all this and I also want to fast forward to the present day, but before we do that I want to ask you one more question that goes back a little bit and sets the stage, which is that, so we have now identified that there was a fertile ground there for recruitment for Zarqawi and for these other heads of militias to recruit for al-Qaida, to recruit for the general mission and this may be an impossible question for you to answer, but we specialize in impossible questions, so when do you think this moment in the Muslim world started happening? When did the discontent get to such an extent that people were so upset that they would be open to this kind of ideology? When did it start to move away from secular nationalism or any of the other things that were peoples' identifying political ideology, particularly Arab nationalism too – when did it go from that to Islam being one of the major things, and this radical version of Islam being something that could be used as a tool to create these organizations? KB: I think if I had to put my finger on a date, I would say right after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, in which Egypt, Syria and Jordan suffered a major defeat at the hands of Israel. And I think that was sort of the turning point. But having said that, I will also point out that these are not, sort of, on-and-off switches. Things are taking shape in parallel. So a new movement is operating parallel to an older movement and at some point the new movement overtakes the pre-existing movement, in terms of its popular appeal. I think that the crisis essentially allowed, the devastating defeat of the Arab states really allowed for the Islamists to come out and say, what have the secularists given to this region, to the people of this region, to the Arabs, to the Muslims? And they were able to really craft a narrative, or take an existing narrative to the next level and say, it is because we have left the ideas that made us great in the past. We have abandoned that, that has led us to this kind of lull, and if we were to go back to Islam, then this region can regain its lost glory. I think that's the really turning point, but groups, if you were to measure Islamism in the form of groups, I would say that by the mid-'70s, these groups had started to come out, and I think by the end of the 1970s, Islamism had exploded onto the scene. We had the revolution in Iran, albeit a Shiite Islamist regime took over from the monarchy of the shah, but nonetheless, it had a real impact, a psychological impact on the majority Sunni Islamists. There was also the taking over of the Kaaba in 1979 in November by radical Salafis trying to overthrow the Saudi regime, and then I think that really the incubator that really took Islamism to the next level, was the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan that allowed for different Islamists from different parts of the Arab Muslim world to come together and have a shared experience for a decade and really become battle hardened and not just ideologically advance themselves, but acquire capabilities that make political change a bit more, if you will, realizable. JS: Would you say that though – I mean, yes, so Afghanistan was that ground where they all met, but I'm struck by the fact that most of the examples you use are Arab. Would you describe radical Islam and this particular strain of jihadism as an Arab phenomenon or a Muslim phenomenon? KB: I would say it's an Arab phenomenon. One of the things to note is that Egypt is the cradle of all ideologies that have spread across the Arab Muslim world. Secularism in the Arab world began in Egypt. Islamism, in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, began in Egypt. Jihadism, what later was made transnational by al-Qaida and more recently by ISIS, has its roots in Egypt. So definitely it is – and then of course the Salafism of Saudi Arabia and its input into the making of this broader phenomenon. So yes, there is no doubt that it is an Arab ideology at its core, at its root. That doesn't mean that it doesn't take other shapes, though the Chechens have Islamism in a different direction and have emerged as leaders, for lack of a better term, in the Caucasus region. We have Central Asian jihadists, Southeast Asia has their own jihadists. But really, jihadism and the entire Islamist project is very much Arab at its core. JS: It also seems to be very Sunni. So you brought up Iran a little earlier, but I guess we could talk about Hezbollah and I guess we could talk about some of these groups, but how do you account for the fact that the majority of these groups are Sunni? Is there something within Sunni Islam or within their particular interpretation of Sunni Islam that leads to this kind of ideology? Is it really just that the political and geographic circumstances in countries that were Sunni and were Arab were bad enough and were the right mix of things that it really wasn't anything embedded within Sunni Islam itself? It was just that there was a situation in those countries and Sunni Islam was the religion that they practiced and therefore that was how it got manifested? So how do you – and I know we're going to talk about sectarianism a little more because it's so important, especially for the rise of ISIS, particularly in Iraq, but how do you account for the fact that most of these groups when we talk about them are all Sunni? KB: So I think that the easy way to understand this is simply that Sunnis have always been the majority sect in Islam. And the overwhelming majority. Even today, there aren't real good, if you will, we don't have a reliable census that we can say – OK, you know what, this is how many percentage of Shiites and Sunnis per country. But it's fair to say, I would say, that a good 80 percent of the Arab Muslim world is Sunni. Therefore, you know, the ideology of jihadism or any other ideology that came before, has always been dominated by the Sunnis. And so it's demography, it's sectarian demography, but it's also geography. If you look at the history of the expansion of Islam, and how over time, it gets factionalized and geography imposes its limits, and creates problems and leads to the rise of new regimes and new ideas, it becomes very clear that it's not something inherent in Sunni Islam, necessarily. Yes, there is this crisis of what does it mean to be a Muslim in the here and now in a collective sense. And the Muslim world has not seen, has not really come far beyond the old imperial age, that for the rest of the world, is now a good – you know it's in its second century, that was 200 years ago that the rest of the world, or the Western world in particular, really left the imperial form of governance for a modern nation-state based on a secular order and a commitment to self-determination and democracy. I think that evolution has not occurred in the Muslim world and therefore there is this crisis. But I don't think it's necessarily something in Sunni Islam. If Shiites had been the majority, in a counterfactual reality, I think we'd be facing the same problems. JS: I think I agree with you, but I'll play devil's advocate for a second, which is to say that I think you're right generally and this is not so much a Muslim issue especially in the Middle East, but it goes beyond the Middle East. But Iran is the Islamic Republic, right? You talked about the Iranian Revolution and Iran is really the center of Shiite Islam in the world. And we could say that there is a much more mature political, or at least a much more mature idea, about what the relationship is supposed to be between politics and between religion in Iran. It's not necessarily all settled. There are obviously large disagreements within Iran itself, but we might say that Turkey is another example that is fighting through this right now. It's not stable, but there's a much, much more mature sense of what that relationship is between politics and religion. So how do you account for a country like Iran, which went through its own turmoil and it has its own pressure, or a country like Turkey, which is currently doing it right now, how do you account for those countries developing the way they're developing versus the Arab world, which is essentially cannibalizing itself right now? KB: So there are a number of factors with it. The first one is that Sunni Islam has been preoccupied for, you know, over a millennia with orthodoxy. Orthodoxy has been its obsession. What are the boundaries of justifiable behavior and thought? That's what Sunni Islam – and I think that there is a certain logic here, that if you are the majority, you're not worried about existential issues. You're worried about the, you know, legitimacy, authenticity in terms of religious ideas. And so I think that is something that the Sunnis have been preoccupied for a very long time. And, therefore, they were not open to experimentation, for a lack of a better term, or to, you know, what the noted Iranian philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush will call “extra-religious ideas,” in other words moving beyond the religious text and borrowing from other civilizations. Not to say that that did not happen, but I think that by and large, that kind of borrowing or attempt to borrow from other civilizations and advance your social and political discourse, that's something that the Shiites were much more open to from the very beginning. I mean, for them, it wasn't the orthodoxy. It was much more about the sect itself. Being a minority, you know, issues of survival, that force you to innovate and force you to look beyond, if you will, your own belief. And so I think that the Shiites have had a head start in social, political and economic development. And keep in mind, it's not just Shiites. It's the idea that, we have to keep in mind that there is Iran. Persian nationalism is also at play here. So it's the interplay between the Persian ethno-linguistic civilization that flourished for a very long time, predating Islam. So, I think that when we look at Iran, its Islamism – the Islamic Republic – is a blend of a lot of ideas that are not necessarily Islamic in origin. So I think that's why you have Iran looking very different and far more healthy than the Arab world. And jumping over to Turkey, I think Turkey – although a Sunni power – does not come from the orthodox core, i.e. Arab core of Islam. I mean, the Turks came from Central Asia. And they went from Central Asia to Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and they set up shop over there. And before they did that, I'd like to add, they were in Europe (in Eastern Europe) and they were a European power well before they became a Middle Eastern power. And the Islam that is practiced over in Turkey is very different, or at least was very different. There has been a lot of blending and spillover of Salafism and these jihadi ideas and Islamic ideas, even in Turkey. But by and large, Turkey has had a different trajectory. And then, of course, secularism. And here I don't mean just Atatürk – Mustafa Kemal – the founder of the modern Republic. He didn't come out of nowhere. What he instituted, the Westernization of Turkey, the Europeanization of the Ottoman Empire and the building of the Turkish Republic along European lines, that didn't happen all of a sudden. It was built on the reforms that Sultan Mahmud II, (the Ottoman Emperor in the early 19th century), something he began and borrowed from Europe. So, you have very different trajectories here. And, of course, the geography of this region – I mean anybody who controls the Anatolian plateau, and anybody who is headquartered in Persia, is very secure. It's a strategic location from which you can build civilizations. The Arab world, if you go back to history, the Arabs really lost power and leadership of Islam, I would say, by the late 800s, mid-800s. They had lost the leadership of Islam because Turkic and Persianate dominions began to emerge and challenge the Arabs for leadership over Islam. And I'm not talking Shiite Islam, I'm talking Sunni Islam. JS: This is all interesting, and we're going a little bit over time, but I think it's worth it because this is an interesting conversation. I'd also just like to point out to our listeners that we didn't exactly plan this little divergence in the conversation. You can already see one of the reasons we appreciate Kamran, because he's a veritable encyclopedia for everything that has happened in the Muslim world ever. But one thing I want to ask you that is based on that, I want to take it a little away from what we were talking about before and then come back to ISIS to finish it of, is that I'm currently in southern France for some meetings, and for some conferences and for some other things, and obviously one of the main issues here and throughout most of Europe is the migration issue. You have, I wouldn't say a large number, it's a large enough number that the European Union is not able to organize itself to bring them in, in absolute terms it's not a huge number. But there are Muslim immigrants to Europe who are looking to find a place to live and to start a new life. And one of the concerns, especially here, especially in other places in Europe, is that they won't be able to assimilate, that they'll want to have their own culture, their own sense of law, and what is right and wrong, and that this presents a major challenge for the nation-states of Europe. Because how do they integrate them in? They don't want to just turn them away, but they don't want to lose the basic facts of their national identity. So you're talking about especially Sunni Islam and about the concern with orthodoxy and all these other things. I know that for instance in Jewish religion there is a rule in the religious text that is the law of the land is the law. It's supposed to supersede religious law. So, I've thrown a bunch of different issues at you off the cuff when I bring all those things up, what do you think about the migration crisis in general, and what do the things that we've talked about relating to Islam here say about the ability of Muslims who are coming to Europe or who are coming to the United States to assimilate? Do you think that Islam presents a major optical for them, or do you view those Muslims as any other group that has emigrated from one place to another and has to go through certain growing pains but will eventually assimilate? KB: I think it's a bit of the latter. But there are concerns, and I do have concerns that there are issues. And it's not because of Islam. Islam is what you make of it, if we are to borrow from Reza Aslan, the prominent author of the book on Jesus recently, and he now has a show on CNN. But really, I do think that Islam inherently is not something that prevents assimilation. I mean, we've seen this before, and I've just talked about how Persians and Turkic peoples and others, Chechens, took Islam in their own direction. I think that that's very much possible. But the question is, what is the geopolitics that we're dealing with when we talk about migration from the Middle East, particularly Syria, to Europe? In places like France, particularly, where there is sort of this if you will pre-existing strong, secular tendency and this desire by French people to have those who come to their country embrace that secularism with the same fervor. I think that's going to create some problems, and then of course, economic issues. So, there will be a lot of Syrian refugees for whom these issues are not really important. Because for them the first thing is, how do I get my family to safety? How can I escape war, get to a place where we're not going to be killed, and then of course, we have opportunities of livelihood. But I think that while they do that, a good chunk of them are still concerned about losing their religion in the process. And when that happens, and then you have this overarching, if you will, dynamic of ISIS and political Islam that these people can't ignore, then you're looking at a real recipe for conflict in these countries. And therefore, I think that the European states are justified in their fear. I don't buy the idea that this has something to do with religion, but I think that it's the geopolitical expression of religion that is the problem, and how immigrants are going to be welcomed or not, and how they see secularism. We say that there has to be moderation on the part of those who come from these areas, there has to be Islamist moderation. But I think at the same time that that's only possible if the European states also have a role to play in this. If they expect that these people will just say, oh you know what, I'm French now, and that's the way to go, I don't think that's going to happen. So there has to be a bit of give and take on both sides. And that give and take in the current geopolitical climate is really not possible where you're having terrorist attacks, there's the ISIS threat that's not going away, and economies are not doing well, there's not enough money to go around, and people are worried about losing their jobs to immigrants. And so in this atmosphere I think we're looking more at conflict rather than the ability to assimilate. JS: I'm afraid I agree with all of that. But to get us out of here, the question, and I'll take us back, we started all of this by talking about ISIS, and we sort of wandered around the Islamic world, even stepped our foot a little bit into Europe. I think one of the points we wanted to make in this podcast was that there's a lot of talk about the Islamic State is about to collapse. People have been saying the Islamic State is about to collapse for well over a year, a year and a half now. It's true that the Islamic State is facing a lot of pressure, a lot more pressure than it has previously on a lot of its borders. But I think the issue that you're really driving at here is that this isn't about one group, and it isn't just about a group in a particular state. It's really about a broader phenomenon, and it's a game of Whack-a-Mole. Sure, you might be able to hit the Islamic State and you might even be able to dislodge them out of Raqqa. It'll take a lot of casualties, but maybe you'll be able to get rid of the caliphate in that way. But the general ground, the fertile ground that Zarqawi came to after 2001 and was able to build this group into what it is today, I think what you're saying is that the ground is still fertile. The basic problems that we're talking about have not been resolved and perhaps have even been exacerbated because there's even less opportunity than there was before. Is that an accurate characterization of what you think? KB: Absolutely. I totally agree with you Jacob. I think that what we have to keep in mind is that we've been here before. So the predecessor organizations of ISIS, or IS, they were defeated at one point in time. But then they came back. And I'll give you a very clear example. In 2008, a large segment of Iraqi Sunnis had turned their guns away from fighting U.S. soldiers to fighting al-Qaida in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS. And that group had been weakened. It wasn't completely uprooted, but it had been sufficiently weakened, and we saw respite. If you go back to between 2008 and 2011, the frequency of bombings had dropped, and things were looking better. But this group came out of the woodwork in 2011 when the United States left Iraq and the Shiite-dominated government basically double-crossed the Sunnis. They did not want to share power with the Sunnis fearing that the Sunnis had decades of experience, and if we let our guard down, it'll only be a matter of time before this Shiite-dominated republic falls, even before it's taking root. And so, that allowed for ISIS to come out. And then, on top of that, you had the Syrian civil war emerge and that created far more time and space for ISIS. And so, I think moving forward, if ISIS at the time, the predecessor of ISIS, which was muck weaker, much smaller, was able to revive itself in very difficult circumstances, I think that now they have far more opportunity to revive themselves, because that war that was confined to Iraq is now expanded. It's in Yemen, it's spilling over into Turkey, we see it playing out in Egypt and North Africa, and Syria is a mess. So, I think that maybe ISIS will be decimated as we know it today. Maybe the remnants of ISIS will form a new group that will eclipse ISIS of today, some other organization. We mustn't forget that al-Qaida is still there in Syria. And it's changed a few names, it used to be Jabhat al-Nusra, then Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, and now they have a new coalition in Idlib. There are plenty of forces to take this caliphate project and take it to the next level, because the underlying political problems are still there, Shiite-Sunni conflict is still there, both in Syria and Iraq and the wider region, Iran and Saudi Arabia are at each other's throats, and there is no viable political-economic model that we're seeing in the Arab world. So, this hollowing out of the Arab world that you've written about, I mean that is not going away. And I suspect that the problem that we're dealing with, which we today call ISIS, will be with us, but with a different name in the years to come. JS: Well, thanks Kamran, and thanks for staying overtime a little bit with us to talk about this issue. I know it's a complicated one, and it's a really important one. So, I'm glad we were able to talk about it in some depth. Once again, I'm Jacob Shapiro, I'm the director of analysis for Geopolitical Futures. I was just talking with Kamran Bokhari, he is a senior analyst at Geopolitical Futures. We'll be doing another podcast next week. Please feel free to send us feedback on these podcasts by emailing us at comments@geopoliticalfutures.com, and for analysis on how ISIS is going to develop, and how all the things we have talked about are going to develop over time, you can check out our analysis in GeopoliticalFutures.com. Thanks.
Six Days in June - Israel's 1967 Victory. The Six-Day War (Hebrew: מלחמת ששת הימים, Milhemet Sheshet Ha Yamim; Arabic: النكسة, an-Naksah, "The Setback" or حرب ۱۹٦۷, Ḥarb 1967, "War of 1967"), also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt (known at the time as the United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria. Relations between Israel and its neighbours had never fully normalised following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In the period leading up to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. In reaction to the mobilisation of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula, Israel launched a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields. The Egyptians were caught by surprise, and nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air superiority. Simultaneously, the Israelis launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai. Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, and conquered the Sinai. Nasser induced Syria and Jordan to begin attacks on Israel by using the initially confused situation to claim that Egypt had defeated the Israeli air strike. Israeli counterattacks resulted in the seizure of East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank from the Jordanians, while Israel's retaliation against Syria resulted in its occupation of the Golan Heights. On June 11, a ceasefire was signed. Arab casualties were far heavier than those of Israel: fewer than a thousand Israelis had been killed compared to over 20,000 from the Arab forces. Israel's military success was attributed to the element of surprise, an innovative and well-executed battle plan, and the poor quality and leadership of the Arab forces. Israel seized control of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israeli morale and international prestige was greatly increased by the outcome of the war and the area under Israeli control tripled. However, the speed and ease of Israel's victory would lead to a dangerous overconfidence within the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), contributing to initial Arab successes in the subsequent 1973 Yom Kippur War. The displacement of civilian populations resulting from the war would have long-term consequences, as 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and about 100,000 Syrians left the Golan to become refugees. Across the Arab world, Jewish minority communities were expelled, with refugees going to Israel or Europe. Source link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8jLKyHZTFM Information link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
Beyond Boston Prophecy - Christian Based Prophetic/Talk Podcast
12-02-15 - What Happens to Israel Effects the Whole World -- it's true! The State of Israel was declared May 14, 1948 after the end of the civil war was raging for 6 months in Palestine after the vote by the United Nation to partition Palestine between Palestinian Jews and Arabs. Declaration of independence and international recognition: May 14 – The Israeli Declaration of Independence is made in Tel Aviv, a few hours before the British Mandate is due to expire. At midnight the British Mandate of Palestine is officially terminated and the State of Israel comes into being. May 15 – The United States grants de facto recognition to the State of Israel, eleven minutes after it comes into existence,[1] becoming the first country to recognize the Jewish state.[2] May 17 – The Soviet Union grants de jure recognition to the State of Israel, becoming the first country to do so.[3] May 17 – Chaim Weizmann becomes President (or Chairman) of the Provisional State Council and Israel's de facto Head of State. May 18 – Poland and Czechoslovakia grant recognition to the State of Israel.[4] May 19 – Guatemala and Uruguay grant recognition to the State of Israel.[4] May 24 – South Africa grants recognition to the State of Israel.[4] 1948 Arab–Israeli War: Main article: 1948 Arab–Israeli War May 15 – Four of the seven countries of the Arab League at that time, namely Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria, backed by Arab volunteers invade[5] the territory of the former British Mandate of Palestine and clash with Jewish forces. The resulting 1948 Arab–Israeli War lasts for 13 months. May 14–18 – 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine: Operation Kilshon – Capture by Jewish forces of buildings abandoned by British troops to strengthen the Jewish military position in Jerusalem. May 18 - An Egyptian air raid on the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station kills 42 people and injures 100.[6] May 20 – The Syrian Army is blocked at kibbutz Degania Alef in the north, where local Jewish militia reinforced by elements of the Carmeli Brigade halted Syrian armored forces. May 20 – Operation Balak begins with the objective of transferring arms from Czechoslovakia to Israel. May 26 – The Provisional government of Israel decides on the establishment of the Israel Defense Forces (the IDF) and David Ben-Gurion signs the order for its establishment. May 29 – The Egyptian Army is blocked in the Ad Halom bridge. June 1 – The Irgun and the Provisional government of Israel sign an agreement for the dissolution of the Irgun and integratation of its fighters into the IDF. June 2 – The IDF's Operation Pleshet starts. June 7 – Kibbutz Nitzanim surrenders to the Egyptian Army in the Battle of Nitzanim. June 10 – The Syrian Army destroys the Jewish settlement Mishmar HaYarden in the Upper Galilee. June 11 – The Irgun's cargo ship Altalena which carries weapons, medical equipment and 930 Jewish immigrants, sets sail from France towards Israel. June 20 – Altalena reaches the coast of Israel. The Provisional government of Israel demands that all the weapons on board be handed over to it unconditionally, in accordance with the agreement regarding the integration of the Irgun into the IDF. The Irgun refuses to comply. June 22 – A violent confrontation between the IDF and members of the Irgun occurs over the Altalena and David Ben-Gurion eventually orders the IDF to shell the Altalena, and it burns off the shore of Tel Aviv. Sixteen Irgun fighters and three IDF soldiers die in the fighting. July 9 – The beginning of the IDF's Operation Dekel, which lasts until the July 18. July 10 – Operation Danny: IDF Soldiers capture the strategically important airport at Lydda. (Territory later annexed by Israel) September 17 – The Lehi assassinates the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, who was appointed by the UN to mediate between the Arab nations and Israel. September 22 - The Provisional State Council of Israel passes the Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordnance, 5708-1948, annexing all territory that Israel had captured since the war began, and declaring that from then on, any part of Palestine captured and secured by the IDF would automatically be annexed to Israel.[7] September 24–27 – 1948 Arab–Israeli War: Transport of Supermarine Spitfires acquired by Israel through Czechoslovakia. October 15 – The beginning of the IDF's Operation Yoav, aimed at conquering the whole Negev desert. October 21 – Battle of Beersheba: The IDF's Negev Brigade occupies Beersheba. October 29 – The beginning of the IDF's Operation Hiram, aimed at conquering the Upper Galilee. November 11 – Population Census is held in Israel, six months after its creation, to establish the population registry.[8] December 27 – The IDF starts Operation Horev, a wide scale attack against the Egyptian army in the Western Negev. beyondbostonprophecy.com beyondbostonradio@gmail.com #bbostonprophecy Host - Larry Barnett
After a gap of a couple of months, the Le Monde diplomatique podcast is back. This month I talk to Gilbert Achcar, a Lebanese academic who is professor of development studies and international relations at SOAS in London and author most recently of The Arabs and the Holocaust: the Arab-Israeli War of Narratives, published this month. His subject in the article – and in this podcast – is Israel’s propaganda war with the Palestinians and the Arab world in general, and the intensification it has undergone in recent years. In the interview we talk about the propaganda use to which the “abject” wartime behaviour of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem has been put by Israel and how Holocaust denial in the Arab world differs from that in the West. To listen to the podcast, click here.
Chris Gondek speaks with Jonathan Zittrain about The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It, and with Benny Morris about the founding of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War.
Chris Gondek speaks with Jonathan Zittrain about The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, and with Benny Morris about the founding of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War.