Podcasts about Haganah

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, calling it Operation Al Aqsa. For journalist Yardena Schwartz, the massacre was a chilling echo of the 1929 Hebron Massacre—the brutal slaughter of nearly 70 Jews, incited by propaganda that Jews sought to seize the Al Aqsa Mosque. At the time, she was deep into writing her first book, Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict. In this episode, Yardena shares how history repeated itself, how the October 7 attack reshaped her book, and why understanding the past is essential to making sense of the present. ___ Read:  Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab Israeli Conflict Listen – AJC Podcasts: The Forgotten Exodus: Untold stories of Jews who left or were driven from Arab nations and Iran Social media influencer Hen Mazzig on leaving Tunisia Chef Einat Admony on leaving Iran Playwright Oren Safdie on leaving Syria Cartoonist Carol Isaacs on leaving Iraq Novelist Andre Aciman on leaving Egypt People of the Pod:  Latest Episode: Higher Education in Turmoil: Balancing Academic Freedom and the Fight Against Antisemitism Held Hostage in Gaza: A Mother's Fight for Freedom and Justice Yossi Klein Halevi on the Convergence of Politics and Religion at Jerusalem's Temple Mount Follow People of the Pod on your favorite podcast app, and learn more at AJC.org/PeopleofthePod You can reach us at: peopleofthepod@ajc.org If you've appreciated this episode, please be sure to tell your friends, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. __ Transcript of Interview with Yardena Schwartz: Manya Brachear Pashman: Hello, and welcome to People of the Pod, brought to you by American Jewish Committee. Each week, we take you beyond the headlines to help you understand what they all mean for America, Israel and the Jewish people. I'm your host Manya Brachear Pashman:. In October 2023 journalist Yardena Schwartz was in the middle of writing her first book exploring the rarely talked about 1929 Hebron massacre, in which nearly 70 Jews were murdered, dozens more injured by their Muslim neighbors during riots incited by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spread lies that Jews wanted to take over the Al Aqsa Mosque. When she heard reports of the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas dubbed Operation Al Aqsa, she realized just how relevant and prescient her book would be, and began drafting some new chapters. Yardena is with us now to discuss that book titled Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine that ignited the Arab Israeli conflict. Yardena, welcome to People of the Pod.  Yardena Schwartz: Great to be here, Manya. Manya Brachear Pashman: So full disclosure to you and our audience. You attended Columbia Journalism School 10 years after I did, and you took Professor Ari Goldman's class on covering religions 10 years after I did that, class had always traveled to Israel, and I had hoped it would be my ticket to go to Israel for the first time, but the Second Intifada prevented that, and we went to Russia and Ukraine. Instead, your class did go to Israel, and that was your first visit to Hebron, correct?  Yardena Schwartz: So it was in 2011 and we went to Hebron for one day out of our 10 day trip to Israel, and it was my first time there. I was the only Jewish student in our class. It was about 15 of us, and I was the only one who had been to Israel. I had been all over Israel, but I had never been to Chevron. And our tour was with Breaking the Silence, an organization of former Israeli soldiers who had served in Hebron or in other parts of the West Bank and wanted Israelis to know what was happening in Hebron and how Palestinians were living there, and the various restrictions that were put in place as a result of terrorist attacks. But nevertheless, you know, those restrictions were extremely disturbing, and that brief visit in 2011 made me really never want to go back to Hebron. And when I moved to Israel two years later to become a freelance journalist there, and, you know, to move to Israel because I loved Israel, and still obviously love Israel, I didn't really go back to Chevron because I, you know, was really troubled by what I saw there. But this book took me, of course, back to Chevron hundreds of times, spending hundreds of hours there. And it came to be, you know, my expertise in this conflict, in my reporting. And you know, of course, Heron is kind of the main character in this book, Manya Brachear Pashman: Tell us how you came to find out about this massacre. Was it mentioned during that class visit in 2011 or was it later that you learned about it? Yardena Schwartz: So that was one of the most interesting things about my early adventure into writing this book, was that I had of course been to have Ron, and yet, during that day that we spent there learning so much about the history of this place, this deeply holy place to so many people, there was no mention of the massacre of 1929, so, you know, I knew that Chevron is, you know, the second holiest city in Judaism, the burial place of Abraham And the matrix and patriarchs of the Jewish people. And you know the first place where King David established his kingdom before Jerusalem. So it was holy before Jerusalem. And yet I had no idea that this ancient Jewish community in Hebron had been decimated in 1929 in one of the worst pogroms ever perpetrated. We all know about the kishineff pogrom of 1904 and yet the pogrom in 1929 in Hebron, perpetrated by the Muslim residents of Hebron, against their Jewish neighbors, was more deadly and more gruesome than the kishineff pogrom, and it effectively ended 1000s of years of Jewish presence in this holy city. And so when I was told by my mentor, Yossi Klein Halevi, the amazing writer, that there was a family in Memphis, Tennessee that had discovered a box of letters in their attic written by a young American man from. Memphis, who had traveled to Chevron in 1928 to study at the Hebron yeshiva, which was at the time, the most prestigious yeshiva in the land of Israel in what was then, of course, British Mandate Palestine. And that this young man had been killed in that massacre. Yet his letters, you know, painted this vivid portrait of what Chevron was before the massacre that took his life. I was immediately fascinated. And I, you know, wanted to meet this family, read these letters and see how I could bring the story to life. And I was introduced to them by, yes, in 2019 so that's when I began working on my book. And you know, as you mentioned, I was still writing the book in 2023 on October 7, and this book I had been writing about this massacre nearly a century ago immediately became more relevant than I ever hoped it would be.  Manya Brachear Pashman: The young American man from Memphis. His name was David Schoenberg. Give our listeners a history lesson. Tell us about this 1929 massacre. So Yardena Schwartz: On August 24 1929 also a Shabbat morning in crevorone, every Jewish family had locked their doors and windows. They were cowering in fear as 1000s of Muslim men rioted outside their homes, throwing rocks at their windows, breaking down their doors and essentially hunting down Jews, much like they did on October 7, families were slaughtered. Women and teenage girls were raped by their neighbors in front of their family members. Infants were murdered in their mother's arms. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors, rabbis, yeshiva students were castrated and Arabic speaking Jews, you know, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Jews, who composed about half of the Jewish population in Hebron at the time, and were very friendly with their Arab neighbors. You know, they went to each other's weddings and holidays, went to each other's shops, and these people were also slaughtered. It wasn't just the yeshiva students who had come from Europe or from America to study there, or, you know, the Ashkenazi Jewish families. It was, you know, Arabic speaking Jews whose families had been there for generations and had lived side by side in peace with their Muslim neighbors for centuries. They too were slaughtered. Manya Brachear Pashman: Why did their Muslim neighbors turn on them so suddenly and violently? The Yardena Schwartz: rioters that day were shouting Allahu Akbar. They claimed to be defending Islam and Al Aqsa from this supposed Jewish plot to destroy Al Aqsa in order to rebuild the Third Temple. This is what they had been told by their leaders and by Imams and their mosques and in Hebron, that Lai had also extended to the tomb of the patriarchs and matriarchs, which is known in Arabic as the Ibrahimi mosque. Imams there had told Muslims in Hebron that the Jews of Hebron were planning to conquer Ibrahimi mosque in order to turn it into a synagogue. So this incitement and this disinformation that continues to drive the conflict today. Really began in 1929 the rumors about this supposed Jewish plot to destroy Al Aqsa that began in 1928 around the same time that David Schoenberg arrived in Palestine to study at the yeshiva. Manya Brachear Pashman: So in addition to the letters that David Schoenberg wrote to his family back in Tennessee. How else did you piece together this history? How did you go about reporting and researching it? Who kept records?  Yardena Schwartz: So it's really interesting, because I was so surprised by the lack of literature on this really dramatic moment in history, in the history of Israel, the history of this conflict. And yet, despite the fact there are really no books in English, at least, about the massacre and about these riots and what led to them, there were mountains of, you know, testimony from victims and survivors. The British carried out this commission after the riots that produced this 400 page report filled with testimony of British officials, Arab officials, Jewish officials, survivors. So there was just so much material to work with. Also, survivors ended up writing books about their experiences in Hebron, very similar to David's letters, in a way, because they wrote not only about the riots and the massacre itself, but also what they experienced in Hebron before they too, wrote about, you know, the relatively peaceful relations between the city's Jewish minority and the Arab majority. And I also relied on archival newspaper reports so the. Riots really occupied the front pages of American newspapers for about a week, because it took about a week for the British to quell the riots, and they did so with an air, land and sea campaign. They sent warships and war planes from across the British Empire and sent troops from other parts of the British Empire. Because one of the reasons the riots were so effective, in a way, you know, were so deadly, especially in kharag, was because there was just no military force in Palestine. At the time, the British did not have a Palestine military force, and it was only after the 1929 riots that they did have troops in Palestine. Until then, they had the Palestine police force, and that police force was mostly Arabs. In Hebron, for example, there were about 40 policemen under the stewardship of one British police chief, and all but one of those policemen were Arabs, and many of them participated in the massacre or stood by outside of Jewish homes and allowed the mobs to enter the homes and carry out their slaughter. And Manya Brachear Pashman: I'm curious. There was a lot of newspaper coverage, but what about the international community's response beyond the British Empire? Yardena Schwartz: So there were actually protests around the world against the massacre in New York. 35,000 people marched through the streets of Manhattan to protest the British failure to protect their Jewish subjects from these riots. Most of the marchers were Jewish, but nevertheless, I mean 35,000 people. We didn't see anything like that after October 7. Of course, we saw the opposite people marching through the streets of New York and cities around the world supporting the mass of October 7. You know, I mentioned this March in New York, but similar protests were held around the world, mostly in Jewish communities. So in Poland, Warsaw and in England, there were protests against the British failure to protect Jews in Palestine from these riots. And the American government was livid with the British and they sent statements put out, statements to the press, criticizing the British inaction, the British failure to protect the Jewish subjects and the American citizens who were in Palestine at the time, there were eight Americans killed in Hebron on August 24 1929. Out of the 67 Jewish men, women and children who were killed, and all of them were unarmed. The Haganah at the time, you know, the underground Jewish Defense Force that would later become the nucleus of the IDF, the Haganah was active then, mostly in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, there were no Haganah members in Hebron. The Hebron Jewish community was very traditional, very religious, and when Haganah came to Hebron two days before the riots erupted, they because they knew that these riots were going to happen. There had been calls from Arab officials to riot, to attack Jewish communities across Palestine. And so the Haganah came to Hebron to warn Jewish leaders of Hebron that they could either come there to protect them or evacuate them to Jerusalem to safety until the riots subsided and the Jewish leaders of Hebron were unanimous in their opposition. They said, No, you know, we're friends with our Arab neighbors. They'll never hurt us. We trust them. If anything happens elsewhere, it won't happen here. And they believed that because, not only because they had such a good relationship with their Arab neighbors and friends, but also because in previous outbursts of violence in other years, like in 1920 1921 when they were much smaller riots and much less deadly riots. When those riots reached other parts of Palestine, they didn't reach Hebron because of those relations and because they weren't fueled by incitement and disinformation, which was what led the riots of 1929 to be so massive and so deadly, and what led them to be embraced by previously peaceful neighbors. Manya Brachear Pashman: How did that disinformation travel in 1929 How did it reach those neighbors in Hebron? Yardena Schwartz: When we talk about disinformation and misinformation today, we think of it as this, you know, modern plague of, you know, the social media era, or, you know our fractured media landscape. But back in 1929 disinformation was rampant, and it also traveled through Arabic newspapers. They were publishing these statements by Arab officials, mostly the Grand Mufti Hajime Husseini, who was the leader of Palestinian Muslims under British rule, he began this rumor that the Jews of Palestine were plotting to conquer Al Aqsa mosque to rebuild their ancient temple. Of course, Al Aqsa is built upon the ruins of the ancient temples. Temple Mount is the holiest place for Jews in the world. And in 1929, Jews were forbidden from accessing the Temple Mount because it was considered, you know, a solely holy Muslim site. But the closest place they could pray was the Western Wall, the Kotel. And Jews who were demanding British protection to pray in peace at the Western Wall without being attacked by Muslims as a result of this disinformation campaign were then painted by the Arabic press as working to conquer the Western Wall, turn it into a synagogue, and then from there, take Al Aqsa Mosque.  So this disinformation traveled from the very highest of Muslim officials. So the imams in mosques across Palestine, specifically in Al Aqsa and in Hebron, were repeating these rumors, these lies about this supposed Jewish plot. Those lies were then being published in flyers that were put in city squares. Jewish officials were warning the British and telling, you know, they should have known and they should have done more to end this campaign of disinformation, not only to achieve peace in this land that they were ruling over, but also because they were responsible for installing hajamina Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, into his position they had chosen him for that position, that all powerful position. And so they were responsible, in a way, for all of these lies that he was spreading. And yet they took no responsibility.  And even in the commission that they sent to Palestine from London to investigate the causes of the riots, despite the fact that, you know, if you read these, you know, 400 pages, I don't recommend it. It's a tough reading. But, you know, I did that for this book. And it's so clear from all of these hearings that this disinformation campaign was very obvious, very clear and very clearly to blame for the riots. And yet, because saying so would have made the British responsible for so much death, their conclusions in this commission was that it was Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish land purchases at the time that had sparked the riots, and that it was this Jewish demonstration, peaceful demonstration at the Western Wall on to Shabaab in August of 1929 that had sparked these riots.  So there's just, you know, this absolute lack of accountability, not only for the Mufti, who retained his position and became even more powerful and more popular as a leader after these riots, but also for the British and instead, you know, the Jewish victims were blamed for their suffering. At the time, Jews were just 20% of the Palestinian population, which was just 1 million people. Of course, today, Israel is home to more than 10 million people. So you know, clearly there was room for everyone. And the Jews at the time were very peaceful. The Haganah was a very, you know, weak, decentralized force, and after these riots, it became much stronger, and Sephardi Jews and Mizrahi Jews, more traditional Jews who had not joined the Haganah before 1929 had not really embraced Zionism before 1929 now agreed that if Jews were going to be safe in our homeland, then we would need our own army. Manya Brachear Pashman: Can we talk a little bit about the turn toward radicalization and extremism during this time, and what role that has played in the years since? Yardena Schwartz: you know, the Zionist leadership was very adamant that Jews in Palestine should not be carrying out attacks against Arabs in Palestine. You know, it should be really about defending Jews, preventing attacks, but not carrying out retaliatory attacks. But as we've seen throughout the century, of this conflict. You know, extremism begets extremism. And you know, when violence is being used by one side, it is going to be used by the other side as well. And so the rise of a more militant form of Zionism was a direct result of 1929 and this feeling of just helplessness and this feeling of relying on this foreign power, the British, to protect them, and realizing that no foreign power was going to protect the Jews of Palestine and that Jews would have to protect themselves, and the radicalism and the extremism within the Muslim population, particularly the Muslim leadership of Palestine, really just accelerated after the massacre, because they saw that it succeeded. I mean, the British punished the Jewish population of Palestine for the riots by vastly limiting Jewish immigration, vastly limiting Jewish land purchases. Notice, I use the word land purchases because, contrary to a lot of the disinformation we hear. Much today, none of this land was being stolen. It was being purchased by Jews from Muslim land owners. Many of them were absentee landowners. Many of them were from the wealthiest families in Palestine. And many of them were members of, you know, this anti Zionist, pro Mufti circle, who were then telling their own people that Jews are stealing your land and evicting you from your land, when, in fact, it was these wealthy Arab landowners who were selling their land to Jews at exorbitant prices. Manya Brachear Pashman: Did you establish a motive for the Mufti and what were his intentions spreading this disinformation? Yardena Schwartz: Great question. So it was very clear. I mean, he never admitted this, but it was very clear what his motives were, and that was to counter the criticism and accusations of corruption that had dogged him for years, until he began this campaign of propaganda which led much of that criticism and much of those stories of his corruption within the Arabic press and among his Arab rivals to essentially disappear, because now they had a much more threatening enemy, and that enemy was the Jewish community of Palestine, who was plotting to destroy Al Aqsa, conquer Al Aqsa, rebuild their temple, take over Palestine and his campaign worked. You know, after that propaganda campaign became so successful, there were very few people willing to stand up to him and to criticize him, because after 1929 when he became so much more powerful, he began a campaign of assassinations and intimidation and violence used against not only his political rivals and dissidents, but also just Anyone who favored cooperation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. So there were various mayors of Arab cities who wanted to work together with the Jewish community of those cities or with other Jewish leaders to bring about various economic initiatives, for instance. And some of those mayors were assassinated by the muftis henchmen, or they were just intimidated into silence and into kind of embracing his platform, which was that Palestine is and has always been and should always be, a purely Muslim land, and that there is no place for any kind of Jewish sovereignty or Jewish power in that land.  So, you know, the Mufti, in 1936 he ended up leading a violent rebellion against the British. And the British at that point, had gotten tired of ruling Palestine. They realized it was much more work than they were interested in doing, and they were interested in leaving Palestine, handing over governance to the local population to the Jews and Arabs of Palestine, and they had been interested in figuring out what could be done. Could there be a binational state with equal representation, or representative governance? If Jews are 40% of the population and Arabs are 60% then there could be some kind of governance on those ratios, all of those solutions, including a two state solution, which was presented in 1937 all of those solutions were rejected by the grand mufti, and his platform was embraced by the other Arab officials within Palestine, because if it wasn't, they could face death or violence. And he even rejected the idea of Jews remaining in Palestine under Arab rule. You know when the British said to him, okay, so what will be done with the 400,000 Jews who are in Palestine right now? He said they can't stay. So he didn't only reject the two state solution. He rejected, you know, this bi national, equal utopian society that we hear proposed by so many in pro Palestine movement today. You know, all of these solutions have been on the table for a century and always. They have been rejected by Palestinian leaders, whether it was the Grand Mufti or his apprentice, his young cousin, yas Arafat. Manya Brachear Pashman: Ah, okay, so what happened to Grand Mufti Husseini? Did he stick around? So The Mufti was eventually, finally wanted for arrest by the British after his rebellion claimed the life of a British official. Until then, it had only claimed the lives of Jews and Arabs, but once a British official was killed, then the British had decided that they'd had enough of the Mufti, and they ordered his arrest. He fled Palestine. He ended up in Iraq, where he was involved in riots there the far hood in which many Jews were massacred, perhaps hundreds, if not over 1000 Jews were slaughtered in Baghdad, which was at the time home to about. 100,000 Jews. He then fled Iraq and ended up in Berlin, where he lived from 1941 to 1945 in a Nazi financed mansion, and he led the Arab branch of Joseph Goebbels Ministry of Propaganda. He was the Nazi's leading voice in the Arab world, he spread Nazi propaganda throughout the Muslim world and recruited 10s of 1000s of Muslims to fight for the Nazis, including in the Waffen SS and when the war ended, when world war two ended, and the UN wanted him for Nazi war crimes, he was wanted for Nazi war crimes, placed on the UN's list of Nazi war criminals. Once again, he fled, first to France, then to Cairo, eventually settling in Beirut, where he continued to lead his people's jihad against the Jews of Palestine. So when, in 1947, when the UN voted to partition British Mandate Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state so that the British could finally leave Palestine. He declared jihad, and he rejected the Partition Plan, along with every other Arab state which also rejected it. Of course, the Jews of Palestine embraced it, celebrated it, and the very next day after the UN vote, riots erupted throughout Palestine, and he helped. He was kind of pulling the strings of that Jihad taking place in Palestine. And in fact, 1000 Muslim men who he had recruited for the Waffen. SS joined that holy war in Palestine. The Mufti helped create the army of the holy war. Yasser Arafat, who was also in Beirut at the time, also assisted the army of the holy war. He actually fought in the war that began in 1947 alongside the Muslim Brotherhood. So, you know the legacy that the Mufti had? You know, it doesn't end there. It continued to his dying day in 1974 and Arafat took over his mantle as the leader of the Palestinian people. And you know, we see how the disinformation and incitement and rejection of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the ancient land of Israel has continued to be a prominent force in Palestinian politics no matter who was in charge. You know, the Fatah, Mahmoud, Abbas and Hamas, of course, perpetuate the same lies about Al Aqsa. They perpetuate the same denial of a Jewish right to live in peace in our homeland, deny the history of Jewish presence in Israel. So, you know, it's really astounding to me how little is known about the Grand Mufti and how little is known about his impact on this conflict, and particularly in the very beginnings, the ground zero of this conflict in 1929 Manya Brachear Pashman: It's so interesting. We talk so much about Hitler, right? And his antisemitism, but we don't talk about Husseini. Yardena Schwartz: Yeah, and they were good friends. I mean, they met in 1941 shortly after the Mufti arrived, he had a private chauffeur. He was lavishly paid by the Nazis, and he was good friends with Himmler. He toured concentration camps. He knew very well about the final solution. Hitler himself considered the Mufti an honorary Aryan. I mean, the Mufti had blue eyes, fair skin, light hair. Hitler believed that Husseini had Roman blood, and he saw him as someone who could lead the Nazi forces once they arrived in the Middle East. He saw him as, you know, a great ally of the Nazis. He didn't just participate in the Nazis quest to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe and eventually arrive in Palestine, but he also the Mufti worked to convince various European leaders not to allow Jewish refugees from fleeing Europe and not allowing them to come to Palestine. He told them, send them to Poland, and he knew very well what was happening in Poland. Manya Brachear Pashman: So I want to go back to this family in Tennessee, the genesis of this story, and I'm curious. David Schoenberg's niece said that at one point in the book, she said they're Southern, so they sweep ugly under the rug in the south. And so they just didn't talk about that. And when I read that, I thought, actually, that's kind of a Jewish approach, not a southern approach, except we wouldn't say we sweep things under the rug. We move on, right? We treasure our resilience, and we move on from that pain and we build anew. But is moving on really in the Jewish community's best interest? Is that how we end up forgetting and letting this history and this very important history fade?. Yardena Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it is possible to do both. It is possible to take great pride in our resilience and in our strength and our ability to experience so much devastation and suffering, and yet every time emerge stronger.  I mean, think about the Holocaust. First of all, for many years, we did sweep that under the rug. Survivors were discouraged from speaking about what they went through. They were seen as, you know, especially in Israel, they were seen as, you know, people who went like sheep to the slaughter. It wasn't something to talk about. It was something to move on from. And yet now we are able to hold both in both hands. You know. We're able to honor and commemorate the memory and speak about the atrocities that millions of Jews suffered during the Holocaust, while also celebrating where we went after the Holocaust. I mean, three years after the Holocaust, Israel was born. You know, that's just, on its own, you know, a remarkable symbol of our resilience and our strength as a people. But I think the way we commemorate the Holocaust is a really great example of how we do both how we honor the memory and use that as a lesson so that it never happens again.  And yet, I think that when it comes to the conflict and the various forces that have led us to where we are today, there is this tendency to kind of try to move on and not really speak about how we got here. And it's really a shame, because I think that this is the only way we'll ever find a way out of this tragic cycle of violence, is if we learn how we got here, the forces that continue to drive this conflict after a century, and you know, the people who brought us here. Not only the Grand Mufti, but also, you know, the leaders today who are very much capitalizing on fear and religion, exploiting religion for their own, their own interests, and utilizing disinformation to remain in power. And I think that, you know, we can't afford not to speak about these things and not to know about our own history. It's really telling that, you know, even in Jewish communities, where people know so much about Israel and about this conflict, there is just a complete lack of knowledge of, you know, the very bedrock of this conflict. And I think without that knowledge, we'll never get out of this mess. Manya Brachear Pashman: Yardena, thank you so much. This is such a wonderful book, and congratulations on writing it.  Yardena Schwartz: Thank you so much.  Manya Brachear Pashman: If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in for my conversation with Dr Laura Shaw Frank, Director of AJC Center for Education Advocacy. We discussed the delicate balance between combating antisemitism, safeguarding free speech, and ensuring campuses remain safe for all students.  Thank you for listening. This episode is brought to you by AJC. Our producer is Atara Lakritz. Our sound engineer is TK Broderick. You can subscribe to People of the Pod on Apple podcasts, Spotify or Google podcasts, or learn more at ajc.org/PeopleofthePod. The views and opinions of our guests don't necessarily reflect the positions of AJC. We'd love to hear your views and opinions or your questions. You can reach us at PeopleofthePod@ajc.org. If you've enjoyed this episode, please be sure to tell your friends. 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Many of you know that a B'nai B'rith organization gave birth to the ADL while defending its Atlanta chapter president Leo Frank. Frank raped and murdered a 13 year old girl who he was also employing along with many other teens, against child labor laws. Leo Frank ran a pencil factory sweatshop and often flirted with his illegal underage employees. The ADL was formed to defend him when he murdered and raped Mary Phagan. The details were disgusting. Her underwear was ripped and bloody and she was strangled to death with a wire. Her head had also been pummeled with a pipe. She went to get her paycheck of a meager $1.20 and never returned home. She was raped and murdered and then her body was dragged to the basement. Police found strands of her hair and blood on the floor above right across from Frank's office. Frank nervously revealed the victims name in front of police before they had given him any such details. The ADL was going to get him released based purely on the fact that He was Jewish and a high profile crime made Jews look bad. Arguably a Jewish organization trying to get a child murderer off the hook, makes Jews look worse. They would like one to believe that he was innocent with fake news history and will tell you so on Wikipedia which has Israelis paid to edit it. Leo admitted on the witness stand to the jury that he was “unconsciously” at the scene of the crime when the murder occurred. What we don't know, is if he raped her before or after killing her. The grand jury voted 21 – 0 for indicting him. Four of those jurors were Jewish. That shouldn't matter, but it does because later the ADL would try to argue that the jury wrongly convicted him because of antisemitism rather than because all the evidence showed that he did it in everyone's eyes. He was convicted. After the Judge, Leonard Roan, rejected all the appeals, he ordered Leo to be hanged on his birthday April 17, 1913. However Frank who was unanimously elected president of the B'nai Brith Chapter again even after being convicted of rape and murder had one last method to weasel out. He with Jewish pressure groups, appealed to the Governor. The lame-duck governor, John M. Slaton, in a very Clinton-esk move, commuted Leo's sentence his last week in office. He changed it from the death penalty to life in prison.Frank was knifed in prison by an inmate who took justice into their own hands. William Creen used a butcher knife and cut Leo's throat severely injuring him. On August 16th a mob broke into the prison captured Leo Frank and took him 2 miles away and hanged him. Although they took photographs no one in town would identify them. Of course the ADL twisted the story to say that these men were motivated by antisemitism and not that they hated him for raping and murdering a child. To see Southern Justice click hereThe ADL would fight to have him given a posthumous pardon which he got in 1986. Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald said in response to the pardon, “A salve for one of the South's most hateful, festering memories, was finally applied” showing his own prejudice towards the South rather than admitting a well known exploiter of child labor, who raped and killed a young girl and was unanimously convicted for the crime and sentenced to death was killed even after weaseling a pardon by an outgoing governor. Fred Grimm is constantly chasing down and doing stories about “Neo-Confederates” and “Neo-Nazis” as if either one are some huge bane and influence in modern society. Ironically it is groups like Antifa who act like ISIS tearing down American Statues and assaulting people. Despite having entire cities burned civilian homes and all by Lincoln's terrorists, not once in 150 years has a Southerner attacked a Union monument. Yelling racism at everything is fun though because it exercises safe moral indignation. That the US recently invaded Libya and have caused a country to be run by Al Qaeda terrorists who have revived the institution of slavery, selling humans for $400 in the market, doesn't seem to bother these same people so much as statues of Confederate generals. Apparently the Union military generals like Custer who rode west and committed genocide on Native Americans immediately following the Civil War, or enslaving the Chinese to build railroads, doesn't count as racism either.The ADL itself was created with Jewish mafia money. With connections to Meyer Lansky, Moe Dalitz, Bugsy Siegal, and illegal arms trafficker Hank Greenspun. The ADL gave Jewish gangster Moe Dalitz the Torch of Liberty Award. Dalitz was partnered with Galvastan's Sam Marceo and his brother Rosario of international narcotic trafficking fame. Dalitz and Sam began with a bootlegging gig. And it was the Maceo brothers who with Dalitz financed the Desert Inn Casio (where Frank Sinatra got his first Vegas gig). Interesting note, Sam's sister Olivia married Joseph Fertitta. You probably know the famous former owners of the UFC Frank III and Lorenzo Fertitta. They're all “family”. Maceo died only a year after purchasing the casino and it quickly went into the Fertitta side of the family. Dalitz not only did business with Maceo, he ran with the Mayfield Road gang in Ohio who had a branch dubbed the Collinwood Crew nicknamed the Young Turks. This is a very fitting name considering that the ADL denies the Armenian genocide. They even fired a New England Director Andrew H. Tarsy because he broke rank and called it a genocide. See killing 1,500,000 people isn't genocide because nothing is allowed to compete with the Holocaust victimhood.Moe Dalitz at Desert InnDalitz was an early business partner with Abe Berstien of the murderous Purple Gang. They used to murder motorists for sport. That didn't bother the ADL. In 1985 they gave Moe an award. Moe would become the Mob Boss of Cleveland, even tough most of his operations would move and center on Vegas. His businesses however were all over the United States. Dalitz was not only a close confidant of Meyer Lansky, the two co-owned the Frolic Club in Miami. (p.6)The Desert Inn casino also took investments from convicted illegal arms smuggler Hank Greenspun, who was not only invested but became the publicist as well. He owned the Las Vegas Sun and pulled a money laundering scheme with advertising that was similar to what Boris Berezovsky repeated in Russia. Prior to that, he had been the publicist for another Mafia Casino, the Flamingo, which was run by Lanksy's childhood friend and murderer Bugsy Siegal. Greenspun's wife was given top honors by the ADL. Her husband attempted to smuggle 42 Pratt and Whitney R2800 LOW airplane engines to Palestine when the Haganah terrorist group was creating the state of Israel through ethnic cleansing.After jury tampering, with the sole Jewish Juror meeting with the defense, Greenspun and two of his cohorts William Sosnow, and Samuel Lewis were acquitted, but his other partners Adolph Schwimmer, Leon Gardner, Renoyld Selk, and Abraham Levin, were convicted.But Greenspun would be found guilty of smuggling the machine guns that would go with the planes as well as artillery and ammo. He stole 30 and 50 cal machine guns from Hawaii and shipped them to the Haganah in Palestine through Mexico. When he was indicted Greenspun tried to bribe his way out. He offered $25,000 to Seth Solomon Pope “or anyone else designated by Pope” to “quash” a second Neutrality Act indictment against him. Solomon worked in Hawaii at the War Assets Administration, in charge of decommissioning and selling off WWII surplus. He was most likely the original contact for the smuggling. The man was investigated three time for fraudulent sales. They also stole over 500 machine gun barrels. Reportedly Hank took an addition 10% Kickback from arms sales he made. A Grand Jury in Los Angeles indicted Hank and six other of violating the Neutrality Act and Export Control Law, Title 50 United States Code section 701 and Title 22 United Stated Code, section 452. However he got only a 10k fine and no jail time. Greenspun was paid through the SSE. The SSE was a front for the AJDC's Lishka which financed communist and Bricha illegal immigration. The Jewish Agency which was the government in waiting that organized the terrorist groups that formed Israel, facilitated the cash flow to gun runners like Hank. In “Concealed in the Open: Recipients of International Clandestine Jewish Aid in Early 1950s Hungary” Zachary Paul Levine, of Yeshiva University Museum writes.“The JDC-Israeli collaboration that formed around clandestine emigration to Israel and welfare to migrants filled the vacuum with the creation of two institutions. The first was created in 1952 by the Israeli government's Liaison Bureau of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or Lishka by its Hebrew acronym, which collected information and administered individual aid. The second was created in Switzerland in 1953. Known as the Society for Mutual Aid (SSE by its French acronym), this organization directed AJDC funds to the Lishka and represented Jewish aid providers' interests to communist governments” …”However, as an American organization at the height of the McCarthy “Red Scare,” AJDC administrators could hardly justify the appearance of sending cash or material into a state with which the U.S. was technically engaged in “economic warfare.” In March 1953, the AJDC and Lishka together established the SSE, a “paper organization” that “covered” the AJDC-Israeli partnership, and provided a means for regularized AJDC funding for Lishka from the Joint's Relief-in-Transit budget that funded activities that might have contravened U.S. law (Beizer 2009: 117). The SSE's Swiss chairman, Erwin Haymann, had years of experience channeling money from the U.S. for Bricha and other clandestine activities. Funds traveled through the SSE and on to Lishka agents who received U.S. dollars or another western currency and exchanged them into Hungarian forints on the black market in Vienna. Subsequently, these forints traveled via diplomatic pouch or in the suitcase of an apparent traveler to the legation in Budapest, whose staff distributed the cash around the country.”We learned from declassified FBI documents that Erwin Haymann, the same man aiding communist on behalf of the JA is who made three transfers of 1.3 million dollars to Greenspun. Greenspun would later become the Western Director of bonds for Israel. Haymann sent the payments to Banco del Ahorro, Mexico by cable.Interesting, because 1.3 million is exactly how much Moe Dalitz sank into the Desert Inn Casino, which Greenspun was a publicist for and invested in, what a coincidence. If you are into Kennedy Research here is a cookie for you. Hungarian Jew Tibor Rosenbaum is the bridge between Meyer Lansky, Erwin Haymann, and heavy Florida-Cuba crime syndicate. …But I will leave that tangent alone. Greespun was known for having blackmail on political candidates, Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy even plotted to raid on the Vegas Sun vault in order to gain access to blackmail that Hank had on Howard Hughes. Hughes by the way bought Mafia properties like the Desert Inn Casino using millions in cash. They credit him with cleaning Vegas up from the mob, it was more like the mob took him to the cleaners. Dalitz ironically started out with a cash only dry cleaning business.Kennedy whose father was involved with the Outfit and the East Coast mob and who had a love affair with his friend Frank Sinatra's ex-girlfriend Judith Exner while she was also involved with Chicago mob boss Sam Giacanna. Sinatra introduced her to JFK. Kennedy gave Greenspun a pardon his first year in office. I wonder why. LBJ likewise was sleeping with Mathilde Krim who was also part of the Swiss connection who help Irgun terrorist. Johnson did all this while she was married to his campaign advisor Athur Krim, a willing cuck. It makes you rethink Monica Lewinsky doesn't it. Well Clinton did give Jewish Billionaire Marc Rich a pardon, after Rich donated $100,000 to the ADL. Rich was yet another crook in the Swiss connection.These are the founders and reward recipients of the ADL. The ADL was given defacto powers of an intelligence agency in the United State and it gathers intel on who it pleases. It is anything but an Anti-Defamation League. They defame people themselves. The ADL under the cover of fighting Anti-Semitism, simply uses this cry as a club to chase down and censor anyone critical of Zionism or the Israeli state. If you point out that Israeli snipers are shooting children in Palestine from across the border, then the ADL can get you removed. Vimeo stole $5,000 in profits from me and erased six years worth of my work because of my criticism of Israel. When the ADL partnered with YouTube December of 2008, my channel was gone the first day, and over a thousand videos were erased. No justification was needed, simply the accusation of antisemitism. When I made a complaint in my appeal I learned that the ADL would oversee the case. Of course I never had my channel restored nor was I even given an explanation from YouTube. Another wing of the ADL is the SPLC and they too have been granted censorship powers across social media. The ADL used the SPLC as both an attack dog and a buffer to separate itself from ramifications of its constant chicken little censorship. In the rare case of actual antisemitic groups online or otherwise the ADL has been busted reacting to its own creations as the “Nazis” they screech about turn out to be their own provocateurs.Birthed to defend a murdering child rapist, financed by mass murdering terrorists and organized crime, narcotic peddling, gun running, psychopaths formed the pro Zionist organizational bully called the ADL. They have been caught spying through American police departments, spying on American citizens, and even coaching American police on what they should be on the look out for and how Hate Crime means anything Israel doesn't like. And this is their great online weapon. The Zog Media already refuses to report on what Israel is doing to Palestine, the Israeli role in orchestrating the Iraq War, and the Proxy War on Syria. People have been giving the information online. Naturally the ADL has been censoring such journalist all while screaming antisemitism. AIPAC bribes congress and the ADL censors the media. It is a one two punch to protect criminal Zionists interest. And now you know its criminal origins. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ryandawson.org/subscribe

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. Diplomatic reporter Lazar Berman joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan on today's show. In today's special longer Friday episode, Berman charts the evolving essential purpose of the IDF, starting with its origins. He speaks of the push-pull of a fledgling organization as both a defensive and offensive body. We learn how the fight for Israel's independence crystallized the need for an easily maneuverable fighting machine that would not hinder the Jewish state's need for a stable economy. Berman explains how first prime minister David Ben-Gurion's solutions worked well -- until with the shifting tides of warfare, they really didn't. In this podcast, the first installment of a two-part conversation, we hear how after a series of wars and political decisions, the stage was set for the IDF's catastrophic failure on October 7. For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog. Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. IMAGE: A detachment of Haganah soldiers overlooking Acre relaxes on May 21, 1948, after the three-day fight for the city, which surrendered on May 18. 1948. (AP Photo/FN)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before the formation of the Israeli Defence Forces in 1948, there were three underground Zionist militias - The Haganah, the Irgun and the Lehi.They differed in tactics and beliefs, and at times fought with each other - but together they terrorised Palestinian villages and executed bombings and assassinations against the British to force them to give up control of the land.They blew up hotels in Jerusalem, embassies in Europe and assassinated a UN mediator.After Israel was officiated as a state - the three militias would create the IDF - and their leaders would go on to form Israel's government, become politicians, ambassadors and Prime Ministers.And their dark history would be forgotten. This week on The Big Picture, we unpack that history.We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, and any guests you'd like us to have on our show. Reach us by email at mh@middleeasteye.org or find us on instagram @BigPictureMee.You can also watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMyaP73Ho1ySj3cO0OSOHZAOgD1WTDixG

L'armée israélienne est communément appelée Tsahal, un acronyme de l'hébreu "Tzva HaHagana LeYisrael" (צבא ההגנה לישראל), qui signifie littéralement "Armée de défense d'Israël". Créée en 1948, lors de la fondation de l'État d'Israël, cette force armée est le fruit de la fusion des principales organisations paramilitaires juives de l'époque, telles que la Haganah, l'Irgoun, et le Lehi. Le terme "Haganah," qui signifie "défense" en hébreu, reflète la philosophie première de l'armée israélienne : la protection de l'État d'Israël et de ses citoyens. Cette orientation défensive est ancrée dans l'histoire et les valeurs de l'État d'Israël, qui a dû faire face à des menaces existentielles depuis sa création. En intégrant le mot "défense" dans son nom, l'armée marque son engagement à ne prendre les armes que dans des circonstances où la sécurité de la nation est en jeu. Tsahal est structurée pour être une armée de conscription universelle, ce qui signifie que la majorité des citoyens israéliens, hommes et femmes, sont obligés de servir dans les forces armées à partir de l'âge de 18 ans, bien qu'il existe certaines exceptions. La conscription fait partie intégrante de la culture israélienne, renforçant l'idée que la défense de l'État est une responsabilité partagée par tous ses citoyens. L'acronyme Tsahal est devenu un terme courant, et au-delà de sa fonction militaire, l'armée joue un rôle social et éducatif important en Israël. L'armée de défense d'Israël se distingue par sa capacité à innover et à s'adapter rapidement aux défis modernes. Cela est en partie dû à l'obligation pour de nombreux citoyens de servir, ce qui amène de nouvelles idées, une énergie jeune, et une approche moderne à son fonctionnement. De plus, les valeurs de camaraderie, de discipline et de sens du devoir sont profondément ancrées dans la formation militaire. A propos de Tsahal, saviez-vous qu'elle possède une unité militaire spécialisée entièrement composée de soldats autistes, appelée "Roim Rachok" (qui signifie "Voir Loin" en hébreu). Créée en 2013, cette unité unique fait appel aux compétences spécifiques des personnes autistes pour des tâches de renseignement visuel et de cybersécurité. Les soldats autistes, souvent dotés d'une capacité remarquable à percevoir des détails et des schémas invisibles aux autres, sont particulièrement efficaces dans l'analyse d'images satellite, la reconnaissance de motifs et la surveillance. Les membres de l'unité Roim Rachok utilisent leurs capacités de concentration, de détection des détails et de mémoire visuelle exceptionnelle pour analyser des images provenant de drones et de satellites, souvent à la recherche d'infrastructures militaires, de mouvements de troupes, ou d'autres éléments stratégiques. Grâce à leurs compétences, ces soldats contribuent de manière significative aux opérations de renseignement de Tsahal. En intégrant des personnes autistes, Tsahal a non seulement innové dans l'utilisation des capacités neurodiverses, mais a également encouragé l'inclusion de cette communauté dans la société israélienne. Roim Rachok est devenu un modèle international, illustrant comment les forces armées peuvent exploiter des talents uniques et offrir des opportunités professionnelles à des personnes qui, autrement, pourraient rencontrer des difficultés à accéder à un emploi conventionnel. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

SUB TO THE PATREON TO ACCESS THE EXPLOSIVE ENTIRETY OF DOSSIER 6.A & HELP KEEP PPM'S LIGHTS ON: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping SLANK's joined me in the booth, once again, for what is the SEVENTH installment (counting 4.A & 4.B) in this sweeping boom bap expose of the Diddler trafficking nexus and its Zion-ist and US intel interlocks. Make sure to check out SLANK's music and assiduous research, which you can all find via his Twitter (@DabSquad_Slank) This episode especially pertains to:   The Diddler trafficking nexus tells in the 2010s Apatow-produced comedy "Get Him to the Greek" Diddy's debauched buddy-buddy (lover-lover?) relationship with Born Again Christian grifter, alleged rapist, Tucker Carlson homie, & post-left comedian-in-recovery aka Brit brat Russell Brand Their Vegas trip aboard the Diddler's LoveAir Gulfstream A joint Diddy & Justin Bieber interview on Jimmy Kimmel, the implications of which are grim The DHS's quite consolatory apprehension of the Diddler a day in advance at his hospital, despite the fact he'd agreed to surrender via his intermediaries (giving that one hand on shoulder meme) The Grand Jury Indictment (US Attorney Damian Williams & 300 GJ subpoenas and allegations of Diddy trying to victim tamper) The Tony Busbee lawsuits The Mayor Adams corruption, bribery, & graft scandal and questions of foreign relations between Turkey & the US (not to mention Israel) being a motivating factor in his downfall... Not to mention the wonderment of whether there could be any connection to the Diddler's crashing house of cards A spate of political corruption cases and musings on what this reflects re intra-elite factional reconfiguration, careers being made, or even collapse Marc Agnifilo's protest against the premature seizure of the Diddler (plus more on his sex criminal clients like DSK, Keith Raniere, Weinstein, etc... And ties to the Bronfmans) Bieber joins the resistance? Diddy's Georgetown spook school graduated, cybersecurity startup employed baby mama Dana Tran ( C y l a n c e , C y v a t a r , and her bosses past sale of his company to McAfee) Which brings us on to the John McAfee saga and his seeming suiciding Diddy's boosting of Israeli fashion house Ovadia & Sons (founded by Israeli sons of an IOF serviceman) and his electro collabs w/ Israeli DJ Guy Gerber Mayor Adams's Israel trips, hustle bracelet at the Wailing Wall, & the NYPD's Israel Branch The Diddler being gifted the Key to the City by the "Bad Boy" Mayor Bibi Netanyahu's propensity for bugging & taping his allies/foes alike, which led to Mossadists recording Bill Clinton & Monica "Moss*ad" Lewinsky having sex at the Wye River summit and how this may connect to Jonathan Pollard, 9/11, and the eventual Iraq War Yasser Arafat & the PLO's assertion that Lewisnky is a spy  Zion-ist militias & paramilitaries like the Haganah, Palmach, Stern Gang, etc and their sundry false flags and terroristic violence including the King David Hotel bombing Ties to Nicaragua in the '40s And finally, Eugene Deal recently claiming that the Diddler sent Usher to the hospital when he was 10 years old (meaning he violently raped him) At least 25 minor complainants in the Busbee suits And a return to James Rosemond / Jimmy Henchman—you'll remember that we mentioned the feds had asked him whether he knew about Puff sleeping w/ kids during a proffer session—and making the necessary connections to show his evident involvement in contracting out the Quad City shooting of Tupac that the rapper managed to survive before his ultimate assassination The art for this series, the Diddler nexus parapower map, was expertly rendered by noided pod design mastermind & friend of the show Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__ on Twitter). Bring him your design needs & say Klonny sent you! Tracks & Clips: | Get Him to the Greek - Sergio / Diddy Scenes (including Mindfucking & Vegas Party) | | Diddler & Bieber Interview on Jimmy Kimmel | | Russell Brand & Diddy's Guys Date to Vegas | | McAfee Interview |

On this episode of WYP we look back at the life of a legend, Dr. Ruth.  Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928, in Wiesbaden, Germany, lived a life full of fascinating twists. As a Jewish child fleeing Nazi Germany, she was sent to a Swiss orphanage during WWII. Post-war, she moved to Israel and became a sniper for the Haganah—talk about a dramatic start! In the 1950s, Dr. Ruth moved to the U.S. and took a unique path into sexual health. Her radio show “Sexually Speaking” in the 1980s made her a household name with her no-nonsense, yet warm and funny approach to sex and relationships. She also made big waves at Planned Parenthood, where she championed sexual health education. Even in her 90s, she kept sharing her wisdom through numerous books and television appearances until her passing on June 26, 2023. She is one of our major inspirations and we hope you love her too! “The more we learn about our bodies, the more we understand that sex is a natural part of who we are.” 

“Train like a fighter, think like a soldier, fight like a warrior.  I believe confidence has to be done with inoculation.  In martial arts we have stress and aggression drills that inoculate us to pain, it's like they give us a little bit of poison, and the next night a little more poison, then a year and a half later, when we are in the arena with real fighting, we can perform.  In sparring you have to give students inoculations, it's got to be done in a logical progression, because if you don't do it in a logical progression, those students will break.  So first they need to learn defensive maneuvers, then they got to learn how to block and get hit, it's got to be done in a systematic progression with sparring drills that lead the way.  This is how you build confidence.”—Mike Lee KanarekMy guest this episode is Mike Lee Kanarek, who is a multi discipline martial arts master.  He is the founder of Haganah, a 6'th degree Black Belt in Joe Lewis Fighting Systems, a 4th Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, a 1'st Degree black belt in Krav Maga, a Brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Former Special Forces.  He was inducted into the Black Belt Magazine Hall of Fame and was Instructor of the year in 2007.  He is a teacher of teachers and has instructed Special Units in every branch of the US Military.This episode is all about progressively developing the warrior spirit and trusting yourself in combat.  My key takeaway is that constant growth and evolution is essential to building trust and performing under pressure.  In life and death situations, those who have prepared themselves by testing themselves under pressure, will have the confidence to execute in chaos.  A principles based modular approach that addresses the physical, mental, tactical, and spiritual aspects of an individual is essential for growth and development in combat and in life.  We discuss the importance of integrating fighting training from sports combat with self-defense training to develop a complete martial artist.  Mr. Kanarek is truly a Machine, he has a unique sense of his purpose, and is driven to make the world a safer place by creating warriors on and off the battlefield.  Join me for an amazing episode with a one of a kind martial arts personality.

Yasmine is first generation Israeli-American wife and mother, who has used her passion for Jewish history and representation to create and foster a community using her online work and advocacy, since 2016.Yasmines paternal Saba fled Aleppo at age 13, where he and his family had lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, as antisemitism became increasingly violent. Her Saba was rescued by the first Youth Aliyah group along with other children from Lebanon in 1943. He had to leave behind his mother as she was blind and unable to make the trip safely. He served in the Haganah, fighting both in the War of Independence and the 6 day war. He later served as a policeman who guarded the home of the first Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion. These stories, that are sadly not uncommon, but are lesser known within the community, sparked Yasmine's passion for Jewish storytelling and Jewish pride.

This is an excellent question and a full-fledged mystery that will not be fully answered in this episode. Teller From Jerusalem continues to explore the various steps that occurred in the evolution of the Soviet support for nascent Israel. It was beneficial to Israel that the Soviets arrested the work of Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish aristocrat that was appointed by the United Nations Secretary General to hammer out a temporary truce between Israel and her neighbors.  Bernadotte sought to achieve far more than just a temporary truce. He foisted terms upon Israel, when she was already winning the war, which would have deprived her of much of what she had achieved at the very greatest sacrifice. This was going to cost him his life at the hands of Israel's underground and embroil Israel in international censure resulting in Ben Gurion declaring war upon any defense force that was not part of the Haganah. Learn more at TellerFromJerusalem.com Don't forget to subscribe, like and share! Let all your friends know that that they too can have a new favorite podcast. © 2024 Media Education Trust llc

SUB TO THE PPM PATREON TO ACCESS "NOID-MAXXING (#2)" IN ITS CRYPTO-BABYLON MAPPING ENTIRETY: patreon.com/ParaPowerMapping In which we cont eulogizing Max A z z a r e l l o, the parapol Icarus who flew too close to the noided sun & self-immolated in front of the Trump trial—celebrating his life & constructively critiquing his blog, for which Casolaro, McGowan, Ghost Stories, TrueAnon, etc were points of reference We discuss: The capitalist class's collective buy-in on crypto; Larry David—Bankman-Fried fam friend—hawking FTX; SBF's indictment & arrest in the Bahamas; Max excelling when covering crypto (other times not so much); SBF's tax code scholar daddy; Dem Party mixers @ Bankman household; parapolitical truisms; SBF as sacrificial scapegoat for the true crypto profiteers; SBF funneling defrauded customer fiat currency into Dem & GOP campaign coffers darkly to consolidate support for the imminent Zio genocide; the litany of SBF Congressional beneficiaries (Gillibrand, Booker, Murkowski, etc), Protect Our Future superpac, & Pres B i d e n (who got a cool $5.2 mil) The anemic quality of Max's parapol oeuvre when it comes to contending w/ Zio infiltration of American politics by way of sex + financial blackmail & HUMINT; Epstein network's lineage of M o s s a d honeypot ops (conducted in concert w/ the C I A? ); Robert & Ghislaine Maxwell; Clinton Global Initiative pushing crypto (formed w/ Epstein's aid, per Dersh's testimony); Agent Mega; SBF hobnobbing w/ Mayor Adams (Diddy), Gov Hochul (Larry Silverstein & other Zio donors like Blavatnik), & Bill Clinton in the months prior to his arrest; May 25, '22: SBF makes a $250k donation to Dem Majority for Israel, which, w/ AIPAC & Reid Hoffman, injected a huge infusion of funds to candidates opposing the nascent mini-faction of lukewarmly pro-Palestine, DSA-adjacent aspiring & incumbent electeds; SBF $s cratering relatively outspoken Nina Turner's polling via contributions to her opponent Shontel Brown in OH; the massive war chest AIPAC's collected since Oct 7, including from Fully-Automated Kompromat Kingpin Leonid Radvinsky (OnlyFans) & Epstein mentor Les Wexner (who started a Wall St Zio social club called Mega Group w/ Charles Bronfman of the sus Seagram's fam); speaking of which, Sam Bronfman running guns on behalf of Haganah & the I O F & Bronfman heiress Clare's recruitment for sex cult NXIVM, merging the 2 concerns of sex blackmail & sus Zio dealings; following his arrest, the possibility SBF's comments referring to his effective altruism & "woke" politics as a cover & use of the phrase "shibboleth" were an argot (to use one of Max's fav phrases) akin to Kevin Spacey's "Let Me Be Frank" vid in which he threatens the Royal Fam & other Epstein clients; SBF's investment in Silicon Wadi crypto Co StarkWare & Solidus; Thiel, Epstein, & Ehud Barak funded geolocation emergency services startup Carbyne (PROMIS, any one?), which features an absurd litany of US & Israeli military & intel figures among its board or stakeholders: Erik Prince (ex Blackwater), Gen Petraeus, Trae Stephens (Palantir), Lital Leshem (ex Black Cube), Amir Elichai (I O F intel corps, etc)...and which Robert Kraft also invested in, solidifying interlocks b/w the pervy oldster / Diddler Freak-Off attendee and Epstein... Material, structural, & economic dynamics b/w the US & Israel—hegemon & satellite metropole... Jessica Seinfeld & Epstein client Bill A c k man funding Zio counterprotests, frat chud shock troops, & atrocity porn big screen; the Zio injected lab rat attack @ UCLA encampment... Finally, having given the noided self-immolator some cred, we take him to task for his wretched piece of unconscious hasbara entitled "The Fake Israel-Hamas War Outrage Sweeping College Campuses" & his mishandling of Epstein's Israeli connections. Songs (some culled from Max's farewell Spotify playlist): | Takeoff, Rich the Kid - "Crypto" | | REM - "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" |

Welcome back for part two of our comprehensive exploration of Zionism on Jerusalem Unplugged. In our previous episode, Arie Dubnov provided invaluable insights tracing the diverse ideological currents and forces that shaped the Zionist movement from its origins through the tumultuous events surrounding Israeli statehood in 1948.Today, we continue this illuminating discussion as Professor Dubnov analyzes the roles played by the pre-state paramilitary organizations like the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. Their histories and divergent ideological leanings foreshadowed the fissures that emerged within the Zionist movement after 1948. From there, Professor Dubnov will guide us through the critical periods of the late 1940s following independence and the transformative 1967 Six-Day War. His nuanced perspectives shed light on how Zionist thought and praxis continuously evolved in response to changing regional realities.Finally, we'll bring the conversation into the present as Professor Dubnov examines the multifaceted manifestations and ongoing debates surrounding Zionism's place in contemporary Israeli society and the world at large.Drawing from his extensive scholarship, including his current work on the interwar ties between Zionist and British imperial thinkers, this second part promises to be a masterclass on the rich histories and reverberations of one of modern history's most influential nationalist ideologies.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/jerusalemunplugged. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/israel-studies

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yaacov Nir's Establishment and History of the Cyprus Detention Camps for Jewish Refugees (1946-1949) (Cambridge Scholars, 2024) explores the nature of the severe conflict over immigration to Palestine during the post-Second World War period, and the British policy of deportation to Detention Camps in Cyprus (1946-1949). It considers the perspective of actors such as the British Foreign Office, dominated by stubborn Ernest Bevin, and the Colonial Office, the Palestinian Jewish community and its underground Haganah and Palmach forces, the Palestinian Arabs, and the Colonial Cyprus authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Wir diskutieren die Rolle der Frauen im Militärdienst in verschiedenen Ländern und die Unterschiede in der Wehrpflicht. Wir werfen einen Blick auf die historische Entwicklung und die Beteiligung von Frauen in der Verteidigung, speziell in der zionistischen Bewegung und der Haganah. Die aktuelle politische und militärische Lage in Israel wird ebenfalls ein großes Thema sein. […]

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It has occurred to me that there is great interest in the background to the current conflict.  Here is a discussion of the Palestinian Refugees of 1948. This is an extremely important topic surrounded by false narratives and inflammatory rhetoric.  I have put off preparing a podcast for some time, but not because it is sensitive.  I deal with quite a few sensitive topics.  It goes with the territory.  But in this case, a reason for my hesitation is that I have a written briefing document that is the basis of this podcast.  It is very thorough and is fully available to anyone through Deep Blue.  (See the separate podcast on how to access Deep Blue).  It has the same title as this podcast.  But I have thought for some time that transferring that written document to a podcast would be a good thing.  My hesitation is that I will be reading and improvising from a printed text into the spoken word.  I am worried about jumps and stops and stumbles along the way.  I hope those who listen to this will find it useful. It will certainly introduce some information that is new to most of you. And if you also want to download the document from Deep Blue that is good given that it has additional information in it.   https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/110670Note that there are previous podcasts on The Palestine War of 1948, and The Palestinians After 1948. Some People in order of being mentioned:  Menachem Begin, Simha Flappan, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Joseph Weitz, Herbert Hoover, David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Samuel Katz, Meir Pa-el, Mordechai Ra'anan, Yigael Allon, Yitzhak Rabin, Gold Meir, Abu Iyad, Aharon Cizling, Moshe Sharrett, Nahum Goldman, Walid Khalidi. Some terms, places, organizations  in order of being mentioned: The Partition Plan of 1947 (181), Haganah, Irgun, Stern Gang, Plan D/Plan Dalet, Peel Commission of 1937, Deir Yassin, Haifa/Jaffa, Absentee property and the Present Absentees law, “transfer.” 

On today's show, Nirit Sommerfeld delves into the latest developments in the Israel-Gaza conflict. It all began three weeks ago with an attack by Hamas on Israel, leading to an escalation in military operations and an increasingly assertive stance from the Israeli government. The burning question is whether this conflict has the potential to ignite further tensions in the Middle East. Additionally, we explore how global players like Russia and China might respond to this situation. Furthermore, there is growing concern about whether the handling of this crisis might have a lasting impact on the credibility of Western nations within the global community. GUEST OVERVIEW: Nirit Sommerfeld is a German Israeli actor and singer who lived in both countries. She is a Jewish peace activist with good contacts into the Palestinian community in Israel. Among many other things she organized trips to Israel and the West Bank and Gaza to inform interested Europeans about the stories behind the story. Most members of the family of her father were murdered by the Nazis. After emigrating to Israel, he became a member of the Haganah. Her mother was a Moroccan Jew and her heritage thus taught her many facets of the conflict in the Middle East.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wethefifth.substack.com* An idiot…He wrote this* Condolences to a friend * What is a war crime?* History wars and war crimes* The worst congresswoman went to the worst law school * In defense of Harvard. Sort of. * Defending Panthers and the exhilaration of murderous anti-Semitism* Why no air raid shelters?* Meir Kahane Krunch* Objecting to a guest. We disagree* Karine Jean-Pierre will answer what…

On today's show, Nirit Sommerfeld discusses the question; Is there any hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians? Why was and is this conflict only escalating? What are the reasons, interests and geopolitical basics of this conflict? GUEST OVERVIEW: Nirit Sommerfeld is a German Israeli actor and singer who lived in both countries. She is a Jewish peace activist with good contacts into the Palestinian community in Israel. Among many other things she organized trips to Israel and the Westbank and Gaza to inform interested Europeans about the stories behind the story. Most members of the family of her father were murdered by the Nazis. After emigrating to Palestine, he became a member of the Haganah. Even her family heritage, her mother was a Moroccan Jew, taught her many facets of the conflict in the Middle East. Nirit Sommerfeld is a voice for peace and reason. Currently it is difficult for her to be heard, but that is a mistake on the side of those who refuse to listen. Those who pull the strings in the current events have nothing to offer but war, death and sorrow.

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.

Today, the Etzion bloc is home to more than 20,000 Jews. But back in 1948, roughly 500 Jews lived in the tiny parcel of land nestled between Hebron and Jerusalem. The four isolated, vulnerable kibbutzim of the bloc were an easy target for Arab attacks. But the Jews of Etzion weren't going down without a fight. And the Palmach – the Haganah's elite strike force – would do anything to keep these tiny communities strong and well-supplied. Like sending a convoy of 35 fighters weighed down with supplies through miles of hostile territory.  But war is hell. And the story of Gush Etzion, and the brave convoy that supplied it, is both a tragedy – and a story of brotherhood, heroism, and resilience in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. ~~~~   Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1REJt_UGndGrngPsww3Ra4PLBcKJB67xBM6Sd3TVG_nE/edit?usp=sharing ~~~~  This Israel@75 mini-series is generously sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel - North American Council, and Ari and Jody Storch.

Joining Lowkey on this special episode of “The Watchdog”  is the creator of the Netflix film, “Farha”, a movie the Israeli government has gone to great lengths to prevent from reaching the masses. Darin J. Sallam begins the episode with a breakdown of her award-winning film…It's the story of a 14-year-old Palestinian girl whose dream is to get an education in the city…the dream changes from getting an education in the city to surviving in a room that she was locked up in by her father to protect her life when the Haganah soldiers invaded her village.”The Haganah, a Zionist military organization, was heavily involved in the Nakba, a systematic campaign between 1947 and 1949 to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous peoples. During this period, at least 750,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled by such militia forces. Over 70 massacres were committed, more than 15,000 Palestinians were killed, and 520 villages were destroyed.  Lowkey draws a comparison between his music and the film, both of which have been smeared by Israeli lobbyists as inciting violence. He asks Sallam how she responds to the Israeli government figures claiming the film is a form of incitement.She responds that,It is based on true events and this killing scene that they're very upset about is just a drop in the ocean…it's nothing compared to what happened…they have a problem watching the truth…They can't silence our voices and they [Israel lobby] try to just stop the film of streaming on Netflix…we will not accept this, and we will keep speaking our side of the narrative and make our voices reach everywhere.”Sallam also describes how she was able to get her creation on Netflix.After the film screening in Toronto, the film started touring festivals around Europe. It's literally like everywhere now. In Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, everywhere, and then after a year and a half, we met with Netflix, and they acquired the film to stream it worldwide. I think this is one of the things that made them [Israeli officials] very angry…” Darin Sallam is a Jordanian writer and director. holds an MFA from the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts (RSICA) and has published a number of award-winning films, including “Still Alive”, “The Dark Outside” and “The Parrot”. Watch the whole interview here, exclusively at MintPress News. Support the showThe MintPress podcast, “The Watchdog,” hosted by British-Iraqi hip hop artist Lowkey, closely examines organizations about which it is in the public interest to know – including intelligence, lobby and special interest groups influencing policies that infringe on free speech and target dissent. The Watchdog goes against the grain by casting a light on stories largely ignored by the mainstream, corporate media.

This week on the OETA Movie Club Podcast we discuss Exodus! Based on Leon Uris' novel, this historical epic provides a backstory to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 after World War II. Ari Ben Canaan (Paul Newman), a passionate member of the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah, attempts to take 600 Jewish refugees on a dangerous voyage from Cyprus to Palestine on a ship named the Exodus. Support the show

COTE JARDIN, présenté par Jacques BENHAMOU.  Il reçoit Arnaud Ardoin, journaliste et écrivain, à propos de son livre « Et si le parrain était une femme » paru aux éditions du Seuil et Pierre Lurçat, avocat et écrivain israélien à propos de son livre sur Vladimir Jabontinsky « le mur de fer » aux éditions l'Éléphant. À propos du livre : « Et si le parrain était une femme » paru aux éditions Seuil Juillet 1945. Hélène Martini a 20 ans lorsque, rescapée des camps, elle arrive en France. C'est la misère, la faim, les nuits à la belle étoile. Alors, pour gagner sa vie, elle devient mannequin nu aux Folies Bergère. C'est le début de son ascension. D'elle on ne sait rien ou si peu. Pourtant, celle qu'on appelait " l'impératrice de Pigalle ", est devenue une véritable légende. Partie de rien, elle a fini par régner sur un empire tentaculaire composé de théâtres et de cabarets à strip-tease. Jamais elle n'a accepté que l'on raconte son parcours extraordinaire... Pour la première fois Arnaud Ardoin remonte la piste de son destin hors du commun. Il raconte ses relations avec la pègre de Pigalle, son mariage avec Nachat Martini, réfugié syrien, homme d'affaire sulfureux, ses liens avec l'OAS, ses amitiés avec le show-business, sa mystérieuse soeur Alice, dont personne ne sait qui elle était vraiment pour elle, l'acquisition des Folies Bergère, comme une revanche sur la vie. La vie d'Hélène Martini dessine une époque entre ombre et lumière. Elle témoigne de tout un pan de la Ve République, où vedettes du cinéma et de la chanson, hommes politiques et voyous se côtoyaient. Une vie comme un roman, où la réalité dépasse la fiction. À propos du livre : « le mur de fer » paru aux éditions l'Éléphant En 1923, Jabotinsky publiait un article au titre devenu célèbre : le “Mur de Fer”. Il y exposait sa conception du conflit israélo-arabe, élaborée au lendemain des émeutes de 1921 à Jérusalem, auxquelles il avait pris part en tant que témoin actif, ayant organisé l'autodéfense juive au sein de la Haganah. Cent ans plus tard, ses idées sur le sujet demeurent d'une étonnante actualité. Les articles réunis ici exposent une vision du conflit qui reste en effet très pertinente, tant à propos des racines du conflit israélo-arabe que des solutions que préconise Jabotinsky. Celui-ci a en effet été un des premiers à reconnaître que le conflit entre Israël et les Arabes était de nature nationale et que la nation arabe n'allait pas renoncer à ses droits sur la terre d'Israël en échange des « avantages économiques » apportés par l'implantation sioniste. Mais ce constat lucide ne l'a pas conduit à préconiser un partage de la terre ou un Etat binational, contrairement aux pacifistes de son temps. L'originalité de l'analyse de Jabotinsky réside ainsi tant dans le respect qu'il porte à la nation arabe, que dans son refus de transiger sur les droits du peuple Juif. Né à Odessa en 1880 et mort dans l'État de New-York en 1940, Vladimir Zeev Jabotinsky est une des figures les plus marquantes du sionisme russe. Écrivain, journaliste et militant infatigable, créateur du mouvement sioniste révisionniste et du Bétar, il a conquis sa place parmi les fondateurs de l'État d'Israël, entre la génération de Théodor Herzl et celle de David Ben Gourion. Théoricien politique extrêmement lucide, il avait compris la vertu cardinale pour les Juifs de se défendre eux-mêmes, et dès la Première Guerre mondiale, il obtint leur participation militaire sous un drapeau juif à l'effort de guerre des Alliés.

It's finally here! In this episode of The Oddcast we dive once again face first into the all, but forbidden history of the modern State of, ______ and some very specific events that led up to it. We take a look at Revisionist leader Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and his fascination with Fascism. We cover The Irgun, and Stern terrorist gangs, and some of the horrible things they did, and mention how some of them went on to lead the government. We even dive into a related plot to kill President Truman, and so much more. So, you know what time it is? It's time to go deep down the sandy rabbit holes of the Middle East, far beyond the mainstream!   Cheers, and Blessings     The Odd Man Out      Support My Work Odd Man Out Patreon https://www.patreon.com/theoddmanout   Follow John Brisson's Work, Like, Share, and Subscribe https://twitter.com/weve_read   https://linktr.ee/weveread   Show Notes   The Israeli faction The Irgun were a radical terrorist group spawned directly out of Jewish icon Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Zionist Revisionism ideology.   The Irgun (short for Irgun Tsvai Leumi, Hebrew for "National Military Organization" ארגוןצבאי לאומי‎) had its roots initially in the Betar youth movement in Poland, which Jabotinsky founded. By the 1940s, they had transplanted many of its members from Europe and the United States to Palestine. Acting often in conflict (but at times, also in coordination) with rival clandestine militias such as the Haganah and the Lehi (or Stern terrorist Group), the Irgun's efforts would feature prominently in the armed struggles against British and Arab forces alike in the 1930s and 1940s. Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by The New York Times, the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, prominent world figures such as Winston Churchill and Jewish figures such as Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, and many others.   The Betar Naval Academy was a Jewish naval training school established in Civitavecchia, Italy in 1934 by the Revisionist Zionist movement under the direction of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, with the agreement of Benito Mussolini. During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against the Mandatory Palestine, the militant Zionist group Irgun carried out 60 attacks against Palestinian people and the British Army https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2016-04-17/ty-article/.premium/zeev-jabotinsky-and-the-ethics-of-zionism/0000017f-ef79-da6f-a77f-ff7f6cfb0000   See List of Attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_operations   Israeli's exhume Jabotinsky's body, & move it from NY, to Mt. Herzl In Yizzy https://www.jta.org/archive/remains-of-jabotinsky-to-be-exhumed-today-for-reburial-in-israel   Jabotinsky Day is commemorated on the Hebrew date of Jabotinsky's death. The day was enshrined into Israeli law on March 23, 2005, when the Knesset enacted the Jabotinsky Law “to instill for generations the vision, legacy and work of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, to mark his memory and to bring about the education of future generations and to shape the State of Israel, its institutions, its objectives and its character in accordance with its Zionist vision.” A state memorial service is held every year at the Ze'ev Jabotinsky Tomb on Mount Herzl. The Knesset also holds a special hearing to commemorate the day and IDF bases throughout the country also hold lectures and services to mark the occasion.
 https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/who-is-zeev-jabotinsky-597238   UK Opens Secret Files About Jewish Terrorists https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-opens-secret-files-about-jewish-terrorists-in-1940s/   The Story Of Lehi, The Jewish Terrorist Organization That Tried To Form An Alliance With The Nazis https://allthatsinteresting.com/lehi Irgun Leader Menachem Begin became the sixth Israeli Prime Minister, and was also the founder of the Likud party which is now led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and crew. Stern (Lehi) Leader Yitzhak Shamir became Israeli Prime Minister    Lenni Brenner Interview https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/24/zionism-in-the-age-of-the-dictators/   The Stern (Lehi) Gang https://archive.org/details/sterngangideolog0000hell   Israel's Stern (Lehi) Gang Mailed Letter Bomb to White House, and President Truman Yitzhak Shamir, Natan Yelin-Mor and Avraham Stern were three of the main members https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2016/10/11/israels-stern-gang-mailed-letter-bomb-white-house-president-truman/   When Jews Praised Mussolini... https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-jews-praised-mussolini-and-supported-nazis-meet-israel-s-first-fascists-1.7538589   TERRORISM AND THE 
ESTABLISHMENT OF ISRAEL. -1968 https://archive.org/stream/jewishzionistter00peek/jewishzionistter00peek_djvu.txt   King David Hotel Bombing https://www.timesofisrael.com/watch-the-king-david-hotel-bombing-1946/   Attack on Acre Prison, 4th May 1947 Disguised as British troops and with apparently the correct documents such as movement orders and identity papers, the Irgun blasted their way in. Jewish inmates obviously knew ahead of time as they then collaborated in the attack and escape. To add to the confusion and panic, grenades were lobbed into the part of the prison which held those mentally unfit. A number of imprisoned Irgun terrorists and more than 100 Arabs escaped but there were troops in the vicinity and fighting resulted. Most of the escapees got away but 8 Jews were killed and 13 captured, many of them wounded. One of the attackers was Eitan Livni, a Pole, the father of Tzipi Livni an Israeli politician. http://www.britishforcesinpalestine.org/attacks/acreprison.html   Terrorist attack on the British Goldsmith Officers' Club

Saturday, 1st March 1947   Fun Facts Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin, & Theodor Herzl were all Journalists.   Ze'ev Jabotinsky-Was a Member of the Order of the British Empire-OBE 
     Benjamin Netanyahu's father, changed the family last name from, Mileikowsky to Netanyahu after moving to Israel from Poland.   “Benzion Netanyahu, (Benzion Mileikowsky), Polish-born Israeli historian and Zionist activist (born March 25, 1910, Warsaw, Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died April 30, 2012, Jerusalem), was the father of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a longtime advocate (and one-time secretary) of Vladimir Jabotinsky, whose uncompromising Zionist Revisionist movement was pivotal in the fight for the state of Israel.    "There is no justice, no law, and no God in heaven, only a single law which decides and supersedes all—[Jewish] settlement [of the land]."—Jabotinsky [Righteous Victims, p. 108]   Support the show by subscribing, liking, sharing, & donating!   Please check out my Podcasting Family over at Alternate Current Radio. You will find a plethora of fantastic talk, and music shows includin the flagship Boiler Room, as well as The Daily Ruckus. https://alternatecurrentradio.com/   Fringe Radio Network- Radio on the Fringe!  http://fringeradionetwork.com/   Patreon-Welcome to The Society Of Cryptic Savants  https://www.bitchute.com/video/C4PQuq0udPvJ       Social Media: _theoddmanout on Twitter, and Instagram       Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theoddcastfttheoddmanout         "A special Thank You to my Patrons who contributed to this episode. You are very much appreciated.   Thank You Guys For Your Continued Support!   Their Order Is Not Our Order!

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow #Classic"Indiana"Hoenlein: Sharks in the Holy Land: "Indiana" Hoenlein and the Lost Shark Tooth of the City of David (Originally posted August 23, 2021) https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309457 Monday 22 July 1946: Seventieth anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel.  Haganah and Irgun. Turning point in the British occupation.  Britons deliberately ignored the advance warning.   Ancient collection of sharks' teeth: some from extinct sharks.   Somebody had collected mineralized sharks' teeth from the times of the dinosaurs. 

Claudette Habesh berättar: ”Vårt hem låg i Talpiot i Jerusalem, nära den brittiska arméns huvudkvarter. Vi hade en judisk student som hyresgäst. Haganah snappade upp att vår hyresgäst jobbade för Irgun, en konkurrent till Haganah. Haganah väckte britternas uppmärksamhet genom att spränga en bomb i vår trädgård. Britterna kom och undersökte saken och upptäckte att vår hyresgäst i själva verket var medlem i terrororganisationen Irgun. Det här var i slutet av 1947.” Ockupationsdatum: 1 maj 1948 (under brittiskt styre) Palestinska invånare före 1948: 40 000 Efter 1948: färre än 5 000. Judiska invånare före 1948: 60 000 Efter 1948: 100 000

El Palmach, un grupo élite de defensa militar, fue anexado por los sionistas laboristas en 1941 como parte del Haganah, la organización principal de defensa de la comunidad judía pre-estado en el Mandato de Palestina. Durante la era pre-estado y en los primeros tiempos de la Guerra de 1948, luego de la independencia de Israel, había numerosos grupos militares judíos tanto autónomos como semiautónomos, respondiendo con frecuencia a líderes diferentes como el Irgun y Stern Gang. Durante varios meses en esta guerra, el Primer Ministro Ben-Gurión trabajó para integrar a estos grupos separados en una sola fuerza, bajo las recientemente formadas Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel (FDI). Ben-Gurión convocó a docenas de comandantes del Palmach a una conferencia en la cual anunció la disolución de la unidad élite y su integración a las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel. La misma política de integración fue aplicada a otros grupos más pequeños.

On this edition of Parallax Views, the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy's Grant F. Smith returns to discuss his new podcast documentary series How Israel Made AIPAC. Grant takes through the history of AIPAC, often simply referred to as the Israel lobby, from its earliest days vis-a-vis the figure of lobbyist Isaiah L. Kenen. Grant gives an overview about the origins of AIPAC and issues related to Israel in the 20th century including the Transfer Agreement and the Third Reich, Haganah arms smuggling, NUMEC and how Israel acquired nuclear weapons, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),  the U.S. State Department, Ze'ev "Vladimir" Jabotinsky and the Likud Party, and more. We'll also discuss the importance of this documentary series to current events and U.S. foreign policy today as well as the ways in which previous Presidents like the Pendergast Machine-affiliated Harry Truman could be compromised by private or foreign interests. Then, in a brief bonus segment, Dave DeCamp of Antiwar.Com joins us to discuss how a recent CBS documentary on U.S./NATO arming of Ukraine was pulled after Volodymyr Zelensky's government complained about it. One of the issues raised by the documentary was the question of how many of the arms being sent to Ukraine are actually making it into the hands of the military. Ukraine's foreign defense minister has called for CBS to launch an internal investigation to see who "enabled" the documentary.

Netiva Ben Yehuda, miembro de Palmach, reconocida feminista israelí, aclamada escritora y personalidad de los medios de comunicación, nació en Tel Aviv decendiente de padre Lituano y de madre de Ucraniana. En 1947, Ben Yehuda se unió a la élite Palmach de Haganah, que defendió a los judíos en Yishuv en contra del contrabando de miles de inmigrantes de Europa producto de la ley británica. Luchó en la guerra de la independencia y se convirtió en un oficial en las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel. Sin embargo, gran parte de su lucha pública ocurrió sobre el idioma hebreo. Como editora independiente, abogó por el uso escrito del lenguaje hablado y la jerga divertida e inventiva de sus días en el Palmach. Ella y su compañero veterano de Palmach, Dahn, Ben Amotz, publicaron el irreverente "The World Dictionary of Hebrew Slang" en 1972. Ben Yehuda regresó a sus experiencias militares entre 1981 y 1991 publicando su trilogía Palmach: "1948 entre los calendarios"; "A través de las cuerdas de unión"; y "cuando estalló la guerra". Presentó una historia que describió la narrativa heroica de la fundación y expuso el sexismo del Palmach. Se desempeñó como editora de la Enciclopedia Hebraica y como portavoz del Ministerio de Trabajo. En 1996 comenzó a organizar un show semanal de charla de la noche.

Miembros de una organización de defensa judía, el Irgun bombardearon la sede administrativa británica en Palestina, con sede en el Hotel King David en Jerusalén. Murieron noventa y una personas; entre ellos había veintiocho británicos, cuarenta y un árabes y diecisiete judíos. El objetivo del Irgun era expulsar a los británicos de Palestina. Los británicos decidieron retirarse seis meses después, cuando entregaron Palestina a las Naciones Unidas. El Irgun fue fundado en 1931 por Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, quien creía firmemente que la Haganah (organización de defensa oficial del Yishuv) no era lo suficientemente agresiva con los británicos. Menahem Begin, primer ministro de Israel de 1977 a 1982, fue uno de los primeros líderes del Irgun. Como comandante del Irgun en 1943, se cree que Begin fue responsable de planificar y ejecutar el ataque al hotel King David. El ataque fue condenado por David Ben-Gurion, quien se desempeñaba como jefe de la Agencia Judía en ese momento expresando a un periódico francés que el Irgun era enemigo del pueblo judío. En junio de 1948, el Irgun se disolvió y se convirtió en parte del ejército israelí que defendía a Israel en la Guerra de la Independencia.

Retour sur les premières années du combattant emblématique de la Haganah, puis de Tsahal : à l'époque où Moshe Dayan mettait toute son énergie dans la balance. Mention légales : Vos données de connexion, dont votre adresse IP, sont traités par Radio Classique, responsable de traitement, sur la base de son intérêt légitime, par l'intermédiaire de son sous-traitant Ausha, à des fins de réalisation de statistiques agréées et de lutte contre la fraude. Ces données sont supprimées en temps réel pour la finalité statistique et sous cinq mois à compter de la collecte à des fins de lutte contre la fraude. Pour plus d'informations sur les traitements réalisés par Radio Classique et exercer vos droits, consultez notre Politique de confidentialité.

TFJ: The Birth of Israel Series 2 Episode 9 There was no secure area in the section of the land allocated to the Jews where the Israelis had a geographic and demographic advantage.  The embargo of weapons to Palestine made it difficult for the Haganah to arm its troops while the Arab armies had resources in Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Because of the fragility of the situation, and fear that the United States and other countries would not recognize the new Jewish state, Ben Gurion made a gutsy decision. It was time for the Jews to go on the offensive and start capturing Arab towns, and mixed neighborhoods. This would be the first time that the Haganah operated not in a non-defensive capacity.  The Arabs managed to cut off Jerusalem from other Jewish areas leaving the city's 100,000 Jewish residents stranded in a chokehold. It was time to risk everything to liberate the city and at that crucial moment arms arrived for the Jewish fighters.  Edited and Produced by Alex Drucker  Learn more at TellerFromJerusalem.com  Don't forget to subscribe, like and share! Let all your friends know they too can have a new favorite podcast.  © 2022 Media Education Trust llc

This week Lara and Michael discuss how several Palestinian youth were murdered, execution-style, by the Apartheid State's Yamam Brigade responsible for dressing up as and infiltrating Palestinian circles. Michael reminds us that zionists do not just murder people for armed resistance, but they also assassinate thinkers, people who can sway public opinion, foreign generals, and most recently scientists. Michael also throws back to the very first anti-zionist Jew murdered by the Haganah in 1924, Jacob De Haan. Lara provides a BDS update that includes Texas lawsuits, Harvard students boycotting Sabra, and Death on the Nile. Michael covers how Lebanon broke up an Israeli spy ring and the Palestine Pod discusses the latest in US and Israeli reactions to Amnesty International's report finding Israel guilty of running an Apartheid regime.

TFJ: Special Episode! The Haganah launched a floating underground railroad to bring immigrants into Israel after the conclusion of WW II. The British enforced their White Paper which forbade Jewish immigration to Palestine, so Holocaust survivors who were caught trying to run the blockade were incarcerated under cruel conditions in Cyprus. In a daring move, the Haganah retrofitted an old steam liner packing it with over 5000 Jews that were languishing in DP camps and sailed to Israel in the summer of 1947. His Majesty's Navy attacked the boat, renamed the Exodus, killing and wounding passengers. The survivors were not sent to nearby Cyprus, but to the belly of the beast they had just barely escaped, Germany. The harshness and the heartlessness of the British was a media headline causing sympathy for the Zionist cause and would ultimately be an inspiration to Soviet Jewry. Edited and Produced by Alex Drucker  Learn more at TellerFromJerusalem.com  Don't forget to subscribe, like and share! Let all your friends know they too can have a new favorite podcast.  © 2022 Media Education Trust llc

TFJ Series 1 Episode 37 - The Birth of Israel  When the British refused to allow 10,000 Jewish children to escape Europe and come to Palestine, it could not be that that they did not understand that barring their entry meant subjecting them to their annihilation. Images from Kristallnacht had been broadcast across worldwide media. And still Britain issued the White Paper agreeing to all of the Arab demands meaning that there would be no haven in Palestine for Jews fleeing for their lives and that the home for the Jews promised in the Balfour Declaration could not be realized.  TFJ examines the plight of three doomed ships from this period which vividly highlight that Jews had nowhere in the world to escape to and the establishment of a Jewish state was a matter of life and death. As the British were unconcerned about this reality, Palestinian Jewry, most notably the Haganah, the precursor of the Israel Defence Forces, worked to smuggle in what the British deemed illegal immigrants. If they were caught, the British, ironically, like the Nazis, placed them in camps behind barbed wire.    Audio Credit: The Doomed Voyage of the St Louis Documentary, History Channel    Learn more at TellerFromJerusalem.com  Don't forget to subscribe, like and share! Let all your friends know they too can have a new favorite podcast.  © 2021 Media Education Trust llc

Retour sur les premières années du combattant emblématique de la Haganah, puis de Tsahal : à l'époque où Moshe Dayan mettait toute son énergie dans la balance. Mention légales : Vos données de connexion, dont votre adresse IP, sont traités par Radio Classique, responsable de traitement, sur la base de son intérêt légitime, par l'intermédiaire de son sous-traitant Ausha, à des fins de réalisation de statistiques agréées et de lutte contre la fraude. Ces données sont supprimées en temps réel pour la finalité statistique et sous cinq mois à compter de la collecte à des fins de lutte contre la fraude. Pour plus d'informations sur les traitements réalisés par Radio Classique et exercer vos droits, consultez notre Politique de confidentialité.

The Palestinian Refugees of 1948This is an extremely important topic surrounded by false narratives and inflammatory rhetoric.  I have put off preparing a podcast for some time, but not because it is sensitive.  I deal with quite a few sensitive topics.  It goes with the territory.  But in this case, a reason for my hesitation is that I have a written briefing document that is the basis of this podcast.  It is very thorough and is fully available to anyone through Deep Blue.  (See the separate podcast on how to access Deep Blue).  It has the same title as this podcast.  But I have thought for some time that transferring that written document to a podcast would be a good thing.  My hesitation is that I will be reading and improvising from a printed text into the spoken word.  I am worried about jumps and stops and stumbles along the way.  I hope those who listen to this will find it useful. It will certainly introduce some information that is new to most of you. And if you also want to download the document from Deep Blue that is good given that it has additional information in it.  As of 1 September 2021 it has 13,000+ downloads worldwide. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/110670Note that there are previous podcasts on The Palestine War of 1948, and The Palestinians After 1948.  Some People in order of being mentioned:  Menachem Begin, Simha Flappan, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Joseph Weitz, Herbert Hoover, David Ben-Gurion, Abba Eban, Samuel Katz, Meir Pa-el, Mordechai Ra'anan, Yigael Allon, Yitzhak Rabin, Gold Meir, Abu Iyad, Aharon Cizling, Moshe Sharrett, Nahum Goldman, Walid Khalidi. Some terms, places, organizations  in order of being mentioned: The Partition Plan of 1947 (181), Haganah, Irgun, Stern Gang, Plan D/Plan Dalet, Peel Commission of 1937, Deir Yassin, Haifa/Jaffa, Absentee property and the Present Absentees law, “transfer.” 

Photo:  Fossilized shark teeth Malcolm Hoenlein @Conf_of_pres @mhoenlein1 ; @ThadMcCotter @theamgreatness 2. Indiana Hoenlein and the Lost Shark Tooth of the City of David https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309457 Monday 22 July 1946: Seventieth anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel.  Haganah and Irgun. Turning point in the British occupation.  Britons deliberately ignored the advance warning.   Ancient collection of sharks' teeth: some from extinct sharks.   Somebody had collected mineralized sharks' teeth from the times of the dinosaurs. 

In the decade before the establishment of Israel, three paramilitary groups emerged that played a critical role in the state's establishment. These groups were each run by a man who ultimately becomes one of Israel's prime ministers: (1) the Haganah, run indirectly by David Ben Gurion; (2) the Irgun (Etzel), run by Menachen Begin; and … Continue reading Gordis 6 – The Military Might Leading to Statehood →

This year, June 10 marks is the 54th anniversary of the end of Israel's Six Day War, which claimed the lives of nearly 800 Israeli soldiers. It was hardly the only war that led to sacrifices by Israeli men and women. According to official estimates, about 25,000 Israelis have died for their country, spanning from the years before, during and in the aftermath of the establishment of the State of Israel. However, not all of the deceased have had their stories properly told. As many as 861 Israelis gave their lives and remain unknown. That's where Giving a Face to the Fallen comes in. It's a non-profit, volunteer-run Israeli group that memorializes those who have fallen in military operations around the time of Israel's independence in 1948. Today, Ellin speaks with Toronto-born Stephen Glazer, a social worker and the only Canadian currently volunteering with Giving a Face to the Fallen. Glazer is working to track down the identities of these unknown soldiers and seek out any living relatives. What we talked about: Learn more about Giving a Face to the Fallen at their website, latetpanim.org.il/en Watch an Israel news broadcast about Bella Papierowicz, 21, who was a member of the Haganah, and Lechi, who was killed in 1947 in Jerusalem, at YouTube Browse the official list of known fallen Israeli soldiers at izkor.gov.il/en The CJN Daily is written and hosted by Ellin Bessner (@ebessner on Twitter). Victoria Redden is the producer. Michael Fraiman is the executive producer. Our theme music is by Dov Beck-Levine. Our title sponsor is Metropia. Find more great Jewish podcasts at thecjn.ca.

Peter Bergamin presents some findings and conclusions from his recent research on the British Mandate for Palestine, focusin on the phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration and anti-British terrorism, and their role in Britain’s eventual abandonment of the Abstract: In this seminar Dr Bergamin presents some findings and conclusions from his recent research on the British Mandate for Palestine. The project examines Britain’s administration of the Mandate, and – using almost exclusively British archival documents - suggests reasons for its eventual referral of the Mandate to the United Nations in April 1947, and premature departure in May 1948, having not fulfilled the conditions of its Mandate. The seminar focuses on the phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration and anti-British terrorism, and their role in Britain’s eventual abandonment of the Palestine Mandate. A comparison of the Jewish anti-British terror campaign, from 1944-1948 – alongside the concurrent campaign of Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine – with the IRA terror campaign in London, between 1973 and 1998 shows that, in only three and a half years, acts of Jewish anti-British terror far surpassed those of the IRA in London – in scope, intensity, and indeed, casualties – which occurred over a period of more than twenty-five years. Thus, the seminar will conclude by stating outright what other studies of the period often whitewash or downplay: that the combined phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine, and the campaign of anti-British terror waged by Jewish underground paramilitary groups Irgun, Stern Gang, and, at times, also by the Haganah (with the support of the Jewish political leadership in Palestine), were the key factors in Britain’s decision to withdraw from the Mandate. Indeed, what Britain had originally hoped would be one its most successful imperial undertakings turned out, in retrospect, to be perhaps its greatest failure. Bio: Peter Bergamin is Lecturer in Oriental Studies at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, after having gained his DPhil in Oriental Studies in 2016, under the supervision of Derek Penslar. His research focuses on the period of the British Mandate for Palestine, with a particular interest in Maximalist-Revisionist Zionism. His first monograph, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (I.B. Tauris, 2020), focused on the ideological and political genesis of one of the major leaders of pro-Fascist, Far-Right Zionism, in the 1920s and 30s. His current research examines British archival sources, in order to suggest reasons for Britain’s premature withdrawal from its Palestine Mandate.

Peter Bergamin presents some findings and conclusions from his recent research on the British Mandate for Palestine, focusin on the phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration and anti-British terrorism, and their role in Britain’s eventual abandonment of the Abstract: In this seminar Dr Bergamin presents some findings and conclusions from his recent research on the British Mandate for Palestine. The project examines Britain’s administration of the Mandate, and – using almost exclusively British archival documents - suggests reasons for its eventual referral of the Mandate to the United Nations in April 1947, and premature departure in May 1948, having not fulfilled the conditions of its Mandate. The seminar focuses on the phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration and anti-British terrorism, and their role in Britain’s eventual abandonment of the Palestine Mandate. A comparison of the Jewish anti-British terror campaign, from 1944-1948 – alongside the concurrent campaign of Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine – with the IRA terror campaign in London, between 1973 and 1998 shows that, in only three and a half years, acts of Jewish anti-British terror far surpassed those of the IRA in London – in scope, intensity, and indeed, casualties – which occurred over a period of more than twenty-five years. Thus, the seminar will conclude by stating outright what other studies of the period often whitewash or downplay: that the combined phenomena of Jewish illegal immigration to Palestine, and the campaign of anti-British terror waged by Jewish underground paramilitary groups Irgun, Stern Gang, and, at times, also by the Haganah (with the support of the Jewish political leadership in Palestine), were the key factors in Britain’s decision to withdraw from the Mandate. Indeed, what Britain had originally hoped would be one its most successful imperial undertakings turned out, in retrospect, to be perhaps its greatest failure. Bio: Peter Bergamin is Lecturer in Oriental Studies at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, after having gained his DPhil in Oriental Studies in 2016, under the supervision of Derek Penslar. His research focuses on the period of the British Mandate for Palestine, with a particular interest in Maximalist-Revisionist Zionism. His first monograph, The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology (I.B. Tauris, 2020), focused on the ideological and political genesis of one of the major leaders of pro-Fascist, Far-Right Zionism, in the 1920s and 30s. His current research examines British archival sources, in order to suggest reasons for Britain’s premature withdrawal from its Palestine Mandate.

Class 38: Rambam's Introduction; the life of Baruch Ben Neriyah; the personal scribe of Yirmiyahu; a story about the Rabbi's father and two types of Biblical archeologists; the struggle of being worthy of prophecy but not being granted prophecy; the political assignation of Gedalya Ben Achikam; the ever-lasting damage of Jewish civil war; the perpetuation of in-fighting in the Jewish community; the story of the Irgun, the Haganah, and the Altalena ship carrying weapons to the shores of Israel; a message from HaKadosh Baruch Hu to Baruch Ben Neriyah through Yirmiyahu; a tangent in the Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim to discuss three understandings of prophecy; the rise of charlatans as Babbas and Kabbalists; the tragic neglect of the Jewish classics, such as Moreh Nevuchim, Sefer HaIkarim, Kuzari, Chovot HaLevavot, among others; the politcs which lead to the founding of the Karaite movement; the deterioration of leadership as the cuase of all disaster; and more! (11/23/2020) — Shiviti Night Kollel Rambam's Mishneh Torah - Edition and Commentary of Rabbi Yosef Kapach (Qafih) — Rabbi Yonatan Halevy's official YouTube channel! Subscribe for the newest audio and video coming out of Shiviti/Kehillat Shaar HaShamayim!

Rabbi Kivelevitz leads the Shiur in reading a few of Rav Shlomo Goren's Tshuvos that highlight his novel approach to the Halachic weight that must be accorded to the conquering and control of Eretz Yisroel,and break new ground in Hilchos Shabbas.The Warrior RabbiByAryeh TepperPraise of military virtue, prominent in the Bible, is almost non-existent in the Talmud, which, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews by the Romans, either ignores wartime feats or re-interprets them as allegories of intellectual or spiritual prowess. The Talmud's relative silence on the subject would prove enduring. Until the second half of the 20th century, with few exceptions, military virtue was consistently depreciated in traditional Jewish thought.The traditionalist who reversed that trend was Shlomo Goren (1917-1994), the first chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later the third chief rabbi of the state of Israel.Goren issued several innovativehalakhicrulings dealing with military life and composed the first code of Jewish military law since Maimonides. In so doing, he brought the Jewish conception of war into the modern era.Shlomo Goren moved with his family from Zambrów, Poland, to mandatory Palestine in 1925. At the age of twelve, he was the youngest student ever to be accepted into the prestigious Hebron yeshiva.At the age of seventeen, he published his first book: a legal commentary on an abstruse topic connected to Temple sacrifices.His interests leading him beyond the four cubits of traditional Jewish law, he enrolled in the Hebrew University to study mathematics, classics, and philosophy.The young Goren was not only a wide-ranging thinker but a bold doer. In 1936, he participated in the defense of his community against Arab rioters; shortly before the outbreak of Israel's war of independence, he joined the Haganah, where he quickly established himself as an expert sniper. At war's end, the scholar-warrior who had repeatedly risked his life under fire was prevailed upon by the state's chief rabbis to answer David Ben-Gurion's call for someone to assume responsibility for religious services in the army. The rabbis might have envisioned the position as one of catering to religious soldiers exclusively, but Goren's first move was to establish himself as rabbi of the entire military. All of the IDF's kitchens were made kosher, and Jewish religious festivals were observed across the board..Goren's biggest stroke as a thinker was yet to come. It was, he argued, only the loss of political sovereignty in 70 C.E. that had compelled the rabbis of the Talmud to recast ideas of military power in spiritual terms—for instance, by emphasizing the miracle of the oil on Hanukkah and neglecting to mention the Maccabees' battlefield victory over the Greeks. But, he contended, the rabbis never meant to replace the military with the spiritual; for them, rather, military virtue was a means, not an end in itself.In composing his code of Jewish military law, Goren surmounted the difficulty presented by the lack of rabbinic legal material by expanding the boundaries of the canon and utilizing ancient historical and apocryphal sources like the works of Josephus Flavius and the Book of Maccabees. What emerged was nothing less than a new religious-national template for an era in which political sovereignty had been regained: a vision of the ideal Jew as, at once, spirited and spiritual. By means of such insights he hoped, especially after becoming Israel's chief rabbi in 1973, to influence the national consensus of the Jewish state.Goren's drive to expand the traditional canon was not limited to the laws of war. In a series of lectures on Jewish thought, he extolled the virtues of ancient Jewish and non-Jewish theologians unknown in Orthodox society, some of whose texts Goren read in the original Greek. In the field of talmudic scholarship, similarly, he championed the historically neglectedJerusalem Talmudas an important primary source. For these intellectual efforts he was awarded the Israel Prize, the state's highest honor.By the end of his career, Goren found himself cut off from the corridors of power, without a public following, and, in the last year of his life, left to rage from the sidelines against the Oslo accords.While his name is still respected in religious-Zionist circles, very few today engage with his writings and teachings. As the unacknowledged rabbinic legislator of the modern Jewish army, he lent the weight of his brio, his genius, and his immense erudition to a task ofreconciliation that few others could have performed. Of no less permanent value is his activist and indeed audacious conception of what a rabbi should and could be, and of which texts, and which human undertakings, may be embraced and endorsed by the Jewish tradition. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. This podcast is powered by JewishPodcasts.org. Start your own podcast today and share your content with the world. Click jewishpodcasts.fm/signup to get started.

Rabbi Kivelevitz leads the Shiur in reading a few of Rav Shlomo Goren's Tshuvos that highlight his novel approach to the Halachic weight that must be accorded to the conquering and control of Eretz Yisroel,and break new ground in Hilchos Shabbas.The Warrior RabbiBy Aryeh TepperPraise of military virtue, prominent in the Bible, is almost non-existent in the Talmud, which, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jews by the Romans, either ignores wartime feats or re-interprets them as allegories of intellectual or spiritual prowess. The Talmud's relative silence on the subject would prove enduring. Until the second half of the 20th century, with few exceptions, military virtue was consistently depreciated in traditional Jewish thought.The traditionalist who reversed that trend was Shlomo Goren (1917-1994), the first chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces and later the third chief rabbi of the state of Israel.Goren issued several innovative halakhic rulings dealing with military life and composed the first code of Jewish military law since Maimonides. In so doing, he brought the Jewish conception of war into the modern era. Shlomo Goren moved with his family from Zambrów, Poland, to mandatory Palestine in 1925. At the age of twelve, he was the youngest student ever to be accepted into the prestigious Hebron yeshiva. At the age of seventeen, he published his first book: a legal commentary on an abstruse topic connected to Temple sacrifices. His interests leading him beyond the four cubits of traditional Jewish law, he enrolled in the Hebrew University to study mathematics, classics, and philosophy.The young Goren was not only a wide-ranging thinker but a bold doer. In 1936, he participated in the defense of his community against Arab rioters; shortly before the outbreak of Israel's war of independence, he joined the Haganah, where he quickly established himself as an expert sniper. At war's end, the scholar-warrior who had repeatedly risked his life under fire was prevailed upon by the state's chief rabbis to answer David Ben-Gurion's call for someone to assume responsibility for religious services in the army. The rabbis might have envisioned the position as one of catering to religious soldiers exclusively, but Goren's first move was to establish himself as rabbi of the entire military. All of the IDF's kitchens were made kosher, and Jewish religious festivals were observed across the board..Goren's biggest stroke as a thinker was yet to come. It was, he argued, only the loss of political sovereignty in 70 C.E. that had compelled the rabbis of the Talmud to recast ideas of military power in spiritual terms—for instance, by emphasizing the miracle of the oil on Hanukkah and neglecting to mention the Maccabees' battlefield victory over the Greeks. But, he contended, the rabbis never meant to replace the military with the spiritual; for them, rather, military virtue was a means, not an end in itself.In composing his code of Jewish military law, Goren surmounted the difficulty presented by the lack of rabbinic legal material by expanding the boundaries of the canon and utilizing ancient historical and apocryphal sources like the works of Josephus Flavius and the Book of Maccabees. What emerged was nothing less than a new religious-national template for an era in which political sovereignty had been regained: a vision of the ideal Jew as, at once, spirited and spiritual. By means of such insights he hoped, especially after becoming Israel's chief rabbi in 1973, to influence the national consensus of the Jewish state. Goren's drive to expand the traditional canon was not limited to the laws of war. In a series of lectures on Jewish thought, he extolled the virtues of ancient Jewish and non-Jewish theologians unknown in Orthodox society, some of whose texts Goren read in the original Greek. In the field of talmudic scholarship, similarly, he championed the historically neglected Jerusalem Talmud as an important primary source. For these intellectual efforts he was awarded the Israel Prize, the state's highest honor.By the end of his career, Goren found himself cut off from the corridors of power, without a public following, and, in the last year of his life, left to rage from the sidelines against the Oslo accords. While his name is still respected in religious-Zionist circles, very few today engage with his writings and teachings. As the unacknowledged rabbinic legislator of the modern Jewish army, he lent the weight of his brio, his genius, and his immense erudition to a task of reconciliation that few others could have performed. Of no less permanent value is his activist and indeed audacious conception of what a rabbi should and could be, and of which texts, and which human undertakings, may be embraced and endorsed by the Jewish tradition. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. --“The Revolt of Diaspora Jews”?-- Are we seeing a “revolt” of Jews in England, America and elsewhere in the diaspora against Netanyahu’s planned annexation of territory in the West Bank? --Rest in Peace?-- It’s like a koan: Is a cemetery that stopped being a cemetery more than a hundred years ago still a cemetery? (Answer: When your backhoe turns up 19th century graves, it is.) --Defending the Haganah-- For 28 years, the “Haganah” fought underground to protect Jews in Palestine and to end British rule, and ever since, the organization and its fighters have been lionized in Israel as heroes. Has the time come to focus on the darkest of their deeds? --Let’s Talk About Nazis-- For our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra-special, special extra segment, we pick up the gauntlet-upon-guantlet laid down first by Tablet Magazine when it interviewed proudly racist and anti-semitic scholar Kevin MacDonald, and then by Haaretz opinion editor Esther Solomon, when she responded that “it is not courage, it is self-abasement, for any jewish publication to call up an anti-Semitic white supremacist and be grateful for their time”. Like most Jews, talking about Nazis is our comfort zone, and that’s what we do. All that and the enchanting music of Dandan!

While Yom Yerushalayim is a day that primarily focuses on the Six Day War and the capture of Yerushalayim, it leads one to wonder how it was lost in the first place. For that we must return to the battle of Jerusalem in the spring of 1948. With the British preparing to leave, the Haganah and the Arab Legion were preparing to fight for the city. It's a match between David Shaltiel, the German born Haganah commander, against his adversary Abdullah Tal. With Yerushalayim under siege, civilians had wait on line for water, and the food shortage led to starvation. The hope for Jewish sovereignty in the Holy City was soon dashed, as the last residents of the Jewish Quarter into Jordanian captivity. An ugly divide of barbed wire, would divide the ancient city for the 19 years to come. Subscribe To Our Podcast on: Apple: tinyurl.com/yy8gaody Google Play: tinyurl.com/yxwv8tpc Spotify: tinyurl.com/y54wemxs Stitcher: bit.ly/2GxiKTJ Follow us on Twitter or Instagram at @Jsoundbites You can email Yehuda at yehuda@yehudageberer.com

Mordecai Chertoff came to Palestine in 1947 as a twenty-five-year-old, determined to make his contribution to the emerging Jewish State. Between 1947 and 1949 he was variously, local news editor, foreign news editor and war correspondent for the Palestine Post, soldier in the Haganah and resident of Jerusalem. In a series of vivid and often moving letters to his family back in the United States, Mordecai described the news of the UN vote for partition, the ongoing battles along the dangerous Jerusalem–Tel-Aviv highway and the attempts to break the siege of Jerusalem, the bombing of the Palestine Post, the declaration of the State of Israel, and, inevitably, the loss of friends. These letters have been annotated and contextualized in the book, Palestine Posts: An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel, written by Modecai’s son, Daniel Chertoff. Daniel worked in the investment industry and as a senior executive in a large Israeli high tech company. Before discovering his father’s letters, he was an adviser to the World Jewish Congress and happily writing his doctoral dissertation in English literature at the Hebrew University. Daniel is an Associate Editor of Partial Answers and he joins us today on the podcast to talk about his new book, about his father and about the founding of the state of Israel.

Today on TruNews we discuss how the man President Trump pardoned instead of Roger Stone, New YorkCity police commissioner during 9/11, Bernard Kerik, traveled to Israel two weeks before the terror attack, and in 2003 received a $250,000 interest-free loan from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer, whose family made their fortune through the defense industry and a served in Jewish terror group Haganah. We also address the reports of Coronavirus super-spreaders infecting churches in South Korea and Singapore, and how the epidemic has turned the seat of communist power in China into a ghost city.

Today on TruNews we discuss how the man President Trump pardoned instead of Roger Stone, New YorkCity police commissioner during 9/11, Bernard Kerik, traveled to Israel two weeks before the terror attack, and in 2003 received a $250,000 interest-free loan from Israeli billionaire Eitan Wertheimer, whose family made their fortune through the defense industry and a served in Jewish terror group Haganah. We also address the reports of Coronavirus super-spreaders infecting churches in South Korea and Singapore, and how the epidemic has turned the seat of communist power in China into a ghost city.

In the early 1920s, violence between Muslims and the Jews continued to escalate. Because they didn't trust the British to defend their interests, the newly formed (and illegal) Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, was formed.  Churchill came to visit Palestine - and made things worse.  Without a doubt, the British military continued to favor the Arabs. General Sir Walter Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, said in October 1921: “In the case of Palestine [the sympathies of the Army] are rather obviously with the Arabs,… the victim[s] of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government.”

In the early 1920s, violence between Muslims and the Jews continued to escalate. Because they didn't trust the British to defend their interests, the newly formed (and illegal) Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, was formed.  Churchill came to visit Palestine - and made things worse.  Without a doubt, the British military continued to favor the Arabs. General Sir Walter Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, said in October 1921: “In the case of Palestine [the sympathies of the Army] are rather obviously with the Arabs,… the victim[s] of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government.”

In the early 1920s, violence between Muslims and the Jews continued to escalate. Because they didn't trust the British to defend their interests, the newly formed (and illegal) Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, was formed.  Churchill came to visit Palestine - and made things worse.  Without a doubt, the British military continued to favor the Arabs. General Sir Walter Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, said in October 1921: “In the case of Palestine [the sympathies of the Army] are rather obviously with the Arabs,… the victim[s] of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government.”

Holocaust survivor and war veteran Michael Taylor, with his son Shannon, shares his remarkable story of escaping concentration camps, rescuing fellow Jews, sailing to Palestine and fighting in the Haganah in Israel's War of Independence in 1948.

Moshe Dayan, the iconic eye-patch wearing soldier, is considered by many to be one of Israel’s greatest generals. But his life was not free from controversy.  intro He was the second child born on the very first Kibbutz, or collective farm—in Israel, situated below the Sea of Galilee, right next to Yardenit on the Jordan, where millions of pilgrims come to be immersed in water. He was named Moshe after the first member of the Kibbutz that was killed by Arabs, as he was seeking medication for Moshe’s father. At the time, Degania was part of the Ottoman Empire. This was before the first world war, after which Great Britain would take control of what would become Israel, a few decades later. At the young age of 14 he joined the Haganah, the main forerunner to the Israeli Defense Forces, along with a few other militias. He later was accepted into an elite force led and trained under famed British Commander Orde Wingate. There Dayan would learn guerilla warfare—the only way for the outnumbered Israelis to survive. Wingate was known for his unconventional fighting tactics. He was Christian and a devout Zionist. He felt it his Biblical duty to serve the Jewish people in establishing their own state.  Wingate, who personally selected Dayan, organized the Special Night Squads or the SNS. The SNS, amongst, other responsibilities, would stealthily attack known Arab terrorists with small, but well-trained, squads in the middle of the night. They were highly successful and today, one of our nations universities bears his name—my wife Elana studied there. Dayan continued to serve with the British and is most famous for the eyepatch that covered his left eye. On June 7th, 1941, in the midst of a firefight with the Syrians, he was looking through the scope of his rifle, when he was shot in the eye. In most cases such a wound be fatal. But Dayan recovered and his eye patch became legendary.  In 1967, he was appointed defense minister, and oversaw the miraculous victory of the Six-Day-War. Dayan was the one who boldly decided to confront the belligerent Syrians who were bombing Israeli villages from the Golan Heights. Furthermore, it was Dayan who imposed a news blackout for the first day of the war.  The effect of this blackout was remarkable. On the one hand, Israelis and Jews all over the world, were left to believe the false reports coming out of Egypt of an Arab stampede. On the other hand, this enabled Israel to achieve all her objectives without the UN interfering. No one at the UN was concerned about an Israeli loss—but an Israeli rout of her overconfident neighbors would lead to calls for an immediate ceasefire.  When the results came in, the world was shocked: Nearly 500 Arab planes destroyed, the Israelis were advancing with little resistance throughout the Sinai, all the way to the Suez Canal, 600 Egyptian tanks were taken out and 10,000 Egyptians killed or wounded, and another 5,000 plus were taken as POWs. Moshe Dayan was celebrated around the world as one of the great military minds of our day. But his story doesn’t end there. Join me for part 2.

Hello dear Friends, the March of Life Conference last weekend was really special and unique again! We had special guests - their personal stories were the highlight of the conference: Dr. Arie Itamar (Holocaust survivor and passenger of the Exodus 1947), Izac Rozman (son of one of the Haganah leaders on board and Chairman of the Exodus Commemoration Comittee), Shaya Ben Yehuda ( Director of International Relations at Yad Vashem) and Josh Reinstein (Director of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus) were among those present. The topic is still relevant today, as these newspaper articles prove - antisemitism is on the rise again, and we as churches and congregations have to take a stand against it now more than ever! How exactly we can do this, I'll tell you at the next Weekly Update. See you next time!

Hallo liebe Freunde, die Marsch des Lebens Konferenz vergangenes Wochenende war wirklich wieder besonders und einzigartig! Wir hatten spezielle Gäste - ihre persönlichen Geschichten waren das Highlight der Konferenz: Dr. Arie Itamar (Holocaustüberlebender und Passagier des Exodusschiffes 1947), Itzak Rozman (Sohn eines der leitenden Personen der Haganah und Vorsitzender der Gemeinschaft zur Erinnerung an die Exodus 1947), Shaya Ben Yehuda (Direktor für Internationale Beziehungen von Yad Vashem) sowie Josh Reinstein (Direktor des Knesset Christian Allies Caucus) waren unter anderem dabei. Das Thema ist so aktuell, wie diese Zeitungsartikel hier belegen - der Antisemitismus bricht gerade neu aus, wir als Kirchen und Gemeinden müssen mehr denn je dagegen aufstehen! Wie wir das genau machen können, erzähle ich beim nächsten Weekly Update. Bis zum nächsten Mal!

Jewish resistance, not by killing people, but by rescuing them. The Haganah's difficult Aliyah Bet operation to bring Holocaust refugees to Palestine gets a huge PR boost.

Haim Gouri, the last poet of Israeli’s founding generation, died one week ago today. He wrote of the terrible sacrifice of war, and of memory and camaraderie. Born in Tel Aviv in 1923, Gouri was a poet, novelist, documentary film maker, journalist, and the author of a book on the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann. During World War II, Gouri joined the elite strike force of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force operating during Mandate Palestine, called the 'Palmach.' He was sent to Hungary to help holocaust survivors come to Palestine. Gouri's first book of poetry, published in 1949, was heavily influenced by his experience in the Palmach during the war of 1948. His later books become more abstract. Today's episode features poems from the volume Words in My Lovesick Blood, translated by Stanley Chyet. This is an excerpt from the poem "Account": And again, as always in the Land of Israel, the stones boil, earth gives no cover. And again my brothers call out from the depths. Texts: Haim Gouri, Words in My Lovesick Blood, translated, Stanley Chyet, Wayne State University, 1996. Poems translated by Linda Zisquit and T Carmi: Poetry International Rotterdam Previous podcast: 

Sulaiman Khatib is a co-founder and the current Managing Director of Combatants for Peace,  a joint Israeli-Palestinian nonviolent movement to end the occupation of the West Bank. In this interview, Souli explains how he began to see Israelis as potential partners, rather than the enemy. He talks about the value of ex-combatants in the struggle to end the occupation, and addresses some of the the criticism that his organization has received from other activist groups. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Asaf Calderon. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York on August 6, 2017, and edited for length and clarity by Asaf Calderon and Yoshi Fields.  Sulaiman Khatib is a leading nonviolence activist in Israel and Palestine. He was born in the West Bank and was imprisoned at the age of 14 for stabbing two Israeli soldiers. It was during his time in prison that he learned about nonviolent resistance and first encountered Jewish Israeli perspectives. In 2006, he and other Israeli and Palestinian ex-militants founded Combatants for Peace: a grassroots nonviolent movement with the goal of ending the occupation. As part of his work, he tours in the US, giving talks with other ex-combatants on nonviolent resistance to the occupation. TRANSCRIPT SOULI:  I believe that if our people given like a good leadership with a vision that carry nonviolence and hope, I do believe that many Palestinians are happy to join. This takes time and energy. But I believe the majority of our people don’t want to live in bloody situation, of course. And if the Israelis given the opportunity to show their goodness of solidarity with the Palestinians to struggle together, I really believe also I have faith of the majority of the Israelis in this case also, they will behave differently.   _ ASAF: Welcome to_ Unsettled_, a podcast about Israel-Palestine and the Jewish diaspora. We are here to provide a space for difficult conversations and diverse viewpoints that are all too rare in American Jewish communities._ My name is Asaf Calderon. I'm one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today's episode. Sulaiman Khatib, today's guest, grew up with his family in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation. At the age of 14, while trying to steal weapons, he stabbed two Israeli soldiers. Both soldiers survived, and Souli was sentenced by the military court to 15 years in prison. Fast forward 30 years -- today, Souli is a co-founder and Managing Director of Combatants for Peace, an organization founded by ex-combatants from the Israeli military and the Palestinian armed resistance. They are dedicated to ending the occupation, using only nonviolent means. How did Souli transform from a fighter who saw Israelis as the enemy, to a nonviolent activist committed to working in partnership with them? Why create an organization specifically with ex-militants? And how does he respond to the criticism he gets even from other anti-occupation activists? With these questions in mind, I interviewed Souli while he was visiting the United States to work on his upcoming book. We met in his rented room in Brooklyn, on a Sunday -- so of course, you’re going to hear some background music. Sorry about that. Another thing you may notice, is that we both have pretty strong accents. What you are about to hear is an Israeli interviewing a Palestinian, in English, which of course isn’t either of our first languages. So if you're having trouble understanding, please check out the transcript of this episode on our website, unsettledpod.com.   ASAF: So Souli, let’s start by you introducing yourself.   SOULI: My name is Sulaiman Khatib, so, people call me Souli -- some people -- and I was born in a village near Jerusalem, 10 minutes from Jerusalem, called Hizma. I grew up there, half of the time, and then I was in jail for a long time. I was one of the people that thought that the only way for freedom was joining the armed struggle. That was my mind when I was 14.   _ **ASAF: ** Like other Palestinian prisoners, Souli faced particularly difficult conditions in prison. In his bio for Combatants for Peace, he explains: The use of torture was routine: beating prisoners, spraying tear gas into prison cells, and violently stripping prisoners were daily occurrences._ But, it was in these difficult conditions that Souli learned how nonviolent struggle can make a difference. With no civil rights and with their most basic human rights severely limited, Souli and the other prisoners resorted to hunger strikes.   SOULI:  The prisoners were very organized, very smart, and represent all the factions in jail through committees that were elected, so we asked, for example, our demands were around having like water -- like in Hebron jail, we used to have a problem of water, especially like to clean ourselves, you know for showers -- to have access to books, education, and newspapers to bring them, and visiting our families -- it used to be half an hour, we demanded like 45 minutes.   _ **ASAF: ** The striking prisoners also had support from activists outside the prison walls._   SOULI:  In the first few days, we used to communicate with the youth organizations, and universities, and so we were sure that people support us outside, so we don’t reach the point where we die or something, because this was not our goal. We had the hunger strike to live a little better conditions while we were in jail. And that’s how I learned there is another path. There is another way. I did read about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela that was in jail at that time, and I was inspired by, you know, like all these people. We do study about Che Guevara and the Vietnam War, and the guerrilla wars. So, it’s not: you go to jail, you come out as a new Palestinian Gandhi. It’s not that way, the truth. So I don’t really represent the mainstream prisoners.   _ **ASAF: ** Not only did Souli learn about other nonviolent movements, but he also began to explore Jewish narratives which he had never before heard. He recalled watching the Holocaust film_ Schindler’s List_ one day while he was in prison._   **SOULI: ** During the film, we turned the light off, and then we watched the film --through the film, you can see that everybody is really moved. This was really the effect on our hearts, if you wish, because everyone was crying. And after the film, it's really a complex feeling, because we have to ask hot water to make tea from the Israeli police that his maybe ancestors were there, that we feel sympathy with them, and he’s putting us in jail. Through the time I also read the history of the conflict from both eyes. I studied Hebrew also in jail and that made me realize there’s no either us or them. So I became beyond the typical narrative, and I became open for meeting Israelis after jail, and looking for partners on both sides to create a new narrative and new story for our peoples.   _ **ASAF: ** In 2003, during the second Palestinian Intifada -- or uprising -- a group of Israeli reserve soldiers, from elite combat units, decided to refuse serving in the occupied territories, so as to not contribute to the occupation. Soon after going public, the Israeli group was contacted by a Palestinian group of ex-prisoners. Souli, who was recently released from prison, was one of them. They started a series of internal talks, that eventually led to the creation of Combatants for Peace in 2006. The details of the formation of Combatants for Peace are presented in a documentary about them that came out last year,_ Disturbing the Peace_._   **SOULI: ** Everything in Combatants For Peace is based on certain principles, that’s very important to say: that’s joint and nonviolent and bi-national work, and opposing the occupation and slash violence. We are a grassroots organization that have nine local groups and working “twins” -- for example, Tel Aviv-Ramallah, Hebron-Be’er Sheva, Jerusalem-Jericho, Jerusalem-Beit Lechem and so on. And there’s above all also two bi-national groups, which is the woman group of Combatants for Peace that established last year, and the Theater of the Oppressed. Some of the activities are under the local groups -- from dialogue to personal story sharing to nonviolence demonstrations as well. And there is activities on the movement level, like the Palestinian-Israeli Memorial Day -- this is the highest activity every year -- the freedom marches, and we were also part of the initiative of the Freedom Sumud Camp.   ASAF: In Israel, we often hear the term “prisoners with blood on their hands.” Israelis are much less willing to work with and cooperate with people that have done what we call “terrorist activity.” Whatever it was, against soldiers or against citizens, this term “blood on their hands” is something that rings very powerfully in Israeli discourse. What do you think about it, as somebody that, you know, does have blood on your hands? Do you think that... why do you think that Israelis should be working with you?   **SOULI: ** Firstly, all the terminologies, the language... it really exists more or less the same on both sides, that’s one thing, and it really depends where you came from and how you look at things, eh… I attacked two Israelis when I was 14, believing, "This is our enemy, I want to protect my homeland." So these kind of people, like myself, used to be like our good guys, that sacrifice for the homeland. It reminds me for Israeli discourse, when Israelis used violence before 48, for example, or the pre-Israeli organizations -- Etzel, Haganah, and all that -- were heroes.   _ ASAF: The Etzel and the Haganah were Jewish paramilitary organizations that worked before 1948 for the establishment of the Jewish state. Both used terrorism to promote their goals; for example, the King David Hotel bombing in which 91 people were killed, mostly civilians. But of course Souli is right: in Israel, most people consider them to be heroes.   _   **SOULI: ** If we go ahead in the list of around the world, same thing in the Irish conflict and Mandela party, and everywhere else. It’s like two sides of the coin: the one called terrorist by Israelis mainly called hero by Palestinians, generally speaking. I’m generalizing now because there are many opinions. There's no one Israeli opinion or one Palestinian opinion. It’s a question of narratives, and how we see things. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. You know, like you can always find like more soft stories to work with, in both sides, people that never been in jail or the army or any involvement, but I think this community is very crucial, important, and we know that from Mandela story, he was in jail. And from North Ireland -- we work with Irish organizations that both sides were also involved in violence and were in jail, and they worked together and we work with them to learn from their experience and this is very exceptional role for  ex-fighters to play.   **ASAF: ** And on the other side, how do you feel about working with people that have Palestinian blood on their hands, and why do you think it’s important to work with them?   SOULI: Yeah, it’s basically really the same question. First, I admit this is heavy and hard for people on both sides and I understand that, and if I remember the first few meetings of Combatants for Peace, we did meet people that have Palestinian blood on their hands -- much more than us, because they used to be in the Israeli Air Force, like pilots, and F16. Obviously, the Israelis never went to the court, or any legal thing. In the Palestinian case you got your punishment, or like over-punishing, because you are living under military rule. So let’s say my case: what I did, if it was Israeli person did the same, would go to rehabilitation center. I was 14. But I am not citizen of anywhere, so I go to military court. So basically, not to legitimize any violence of course, but to say we do have to see the human behind these terms, and in the case of Israelis I... this is heavy but somehow we reach the point to see the human behind the uniform. This take long time, it’s a very deep hard process to see, to look in the eyes of these people and meet somewhere on some level.   ASAF: Many people in the Palestinian struggle and also in solidarity movements in the United States see the kind of work that you do as the term "normalization" with Israel, and they see that as wrong. What do you have to answer to that?   SOULI:  Firstly, we got a lot of criticism in both sides. And I am really fine with that, I have to say. I understand why many people worry and criticize the joint work. But I believe in my experience -- in our experience from Combatants for Peace and other organizations -- the meetings of the other, what's so-called the other, is essential. I don't know also any Israeli that born and, you know, came directly from Tel Aviv to Bil’in. Firstly, they meet Palestinians and to trust and to build relations, and then they became like more activist. That's the one I know the majority of the Israelis that really show solidarity with the Palestinians. And -- we are not normalizing the occupation. We do a lot of activities to fight the status quo, and we are not happy with the status quo. Of course, it's controversial, always, to work with what's so-called the enemy. I personally don't think there is one way to end the conflict, or the occupation, whatever you want to say. But we are not part of the BDS movement, we have a neutral position about the BDS. This is a nonviolence legitimate tool, but we are not there. We are a bi-national organization, and I am not going to boycott my partner Chen Alon, that is teaching in Tel Aviv. He is very active to our cause together, and his daughter was just left the jail recently. And I am struggling for her, as for my sister. So I can't think in the principle of boycotting them.   _ **ASAF: ** Chen Alon is one of the Israeli founders of Combatants for Peace. Tamar Alon, his daughter, was one of a handful of Israeli youth who publicly refused to serve in the military for ideological reasons. While many Israeli members of Combatants for Peace don’t serve anymore, the organization doesn’t call for complete refusal._   **ASAF: ** In the movie, I remember that one of the Israeli Combatants for Peace activists, she says she's serving, she's still serving in the army in reserves, but she is not serving in the West Bank. But, I mean obviously the role that she does outside of the West Bank is affecting the army as a whole. So, how… how can you accept that?   SOULI:  I’m talking like as like formally Combatants For Peace. In general, when we started Combatants for Peace, was a clear condition that Israelis don’t serve beyond the 1967 borders. And on the Palestinian side you don’t, you can’t join Combatants for Peace if you support violence, for example. So there is a refusing in both sides to the mainstream. We work in Israel-Palestine: means we are also pragmatic, means we do thousands of lectures -- last year we met around 4,000 people at lectures. It’s all joint, always there are two speakers -- one Israeli, one Palestinian -- we share our personal stories of the narrative and the transformation and this always inspire people. We find this tool as very deep impact, and we don’t tell the people what to do, especially talking to youngsters, Israeli pre-army mechinot.     _ **ASAF: ** A mechina, or mechinot in plural, is a program that some Israelis go to before the army, where you study and volunteer in the community._   **SOULI: ** So in order to, to play in this space we need to be also careful with the language we use, or to tell them what to do exactly, but I believe that this model stay in the head of many of the youngsters as the only meeting maybe they ever meet a Palestinian before the army, before they go to the army.   **ASAF: ** Another thing that I noticed in the film is that you use a language of equivalency. A few times you mention dual responsibility. You’re saying, "We are both victims and we are both perpetrators." But as an Israeli, it’s difficult for me to accept the idea that you know, we are both equal in this. I feel like I am the perpetrator and you are the victim.   **SOULI: ** In Combatants for Peace, actually, after years of discussion, we recognized the imbalance in power. Of course, the Israelis are in charge. Of course. We know that. But in order to make change, we did decide to take our destiny in our hands, together as activists from both sides. And the... the truth is, usually the Palestinian come with this idea: we are the victims, Israelis they are in charge and they are criminal and... But we don’t want to stuck there. We want our peoples together to take responsibility of our life, our present, and to create a new future. A new story together. I don’t want to see more of feeding of the Palestinian victimhood, which exists deeply. Of course, the Jewish slash Israelis have the same unfortunately story of victimhood, and this is really like a very deep negative energy that will not take us anywhere. No, we can change our lives, and I believe Palestinians, as a Palestinian, if we are united, if we had a vision, if we have the right conditions, we do have responsibility, and we do can make change, together with our neighbors basically, because it will never be good to do it alone, either side. We basically in a non-divorce marriage, we have to manage. That’s what I believe.   **ASAF: ** This I can totally understand, that you’re saying that you know, just because you’re victims doesn’t mean you don’t have agency, and doesn’t mean you can’t change your own lives. But like you said, in Israel, for Israelis we also have this victimhood complex, and I think in a way, it makes it very easy for Israelis to feel connected to, or, it resonates with us, because we...we get to still be a victim.   **SOULI: ** Just to make myself clear, we do talk all the time about the imbalance in power, that’s clear, it’s the reality, nobody denying the reality as it is, first of all. And, but recognizing that, it doesn’t feed the Palestinian victimhood. So I can talk about it until tomorrow because it’s a list of suffering. You know, in October, my mom, to go to the olive harvest next to my village, for my family land, she needs Israeli permit -- which is five minutes away from our home, because there is the wall. You know, when I drive to see my mom, 20 minutes, I have a checkpoint, of course. I’m a little privileged Palestinian compared to other people, but still: when I travel, I have complexes that my Israeli partner doesn’t. You know even with Americans, with the international community, with visa, with the logistics. It's complicated, of course, to live under the military regime. And when I talk to Palestinians I don’t deny the suffering of this person or our people. But I don’t really believe in this competition that exists always in dialogue groups, that the Palestinian comes with full desire to share their suffering and story, which is legitimate, but to recognize the suffering of the other side, or the pain, it doesn’t take away our suffering. To recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian connection to the land, or the jewish connection to the land, it doesn’t take the other connection to the land. That’s where I am now. I know this is complex for even my family when I say these things. I got criticism. Hard arguments. It’s not easy. Because you know what we learn in nonviolence communication, you meet people where they are. I believe we can play a model that cross all these cliches about our conflict. And I understand the Palestinian anger, of course, but we want this energy of anger, to use it instead of going into violence and like really hopeless action like the stabbing, to come join our nonviolence action. And I see this happens, actually. Some people come, youngsters come through Facebook, we don’t know them, not from our circles. So I believe that if our people given like a good leadership with a vision that carry nonviolence and hope, I do believe that many Palestinians are happy to join. This takes time and energy. But I believe the majority of our people don’t want to live in bloody situation, of course. And if the Israelis given the opportunity to show their goodness of solidarity with the Palestinians to struggle together, I really believe also, I have faith of the majority of the Israelis in this case also, they will behave differently.   **ASAF: ** You’ve been, Combatants For Peace have existed for about what 15 years now?   **SOULI: ** 11 years.   **ASAF: ** 11 years. In these 11 years, what do you think has changed in Israeli-Palestinian politics and how did you adapt to those changes?   SOULI: First of all, we… Combatants for Peace is not just a community of ex-fighters, these are the founders, so Combatants for Peace through the years became open to everybody. We started Combatants for Peace -- the meetings, before we call it Combatants For Peace -- started in 2005 secretly, illegally around Beit Lechem [Bethlehem] area. It was the Second Intifada and the political environment, of course, and the social economical situation changed a lot since then. One of the changes, the truth: at that time, the idea of two-state was the only solution people talk about. It's not anymore; it's one of the options. And the second: like, there are many changes, good and bad. I don't see things just black-white, the truth. Last year we did "Ten Years of Combatants for Peace" and we screened our film, Disturbing the Peace -- the film about us, Disturbing the Peace -- at the wall of of Beit Jala. We got a few hundred Palestinians, Israelis to watch it together, under full moon it was beautiful. And we did the Freedom March with 800 Palestinians, Israelis -- this was last year during the, what you call the Knife Intifada -- like really among violent situation. And we got the two Irish ex-prisoners to speak to us there. It was a beautiful feeling of successful, I have to say. And Avner, one of our wise founders, is my close friend, and he speak Arabic fluently, I speak Hebrew, and we are really close after years we are... and Avner told me -- because that time I brought my mom to see the film, and he brought his mom, and they met for the first time -- and his mom told him, “This is exceptional work that you do, the history will write you, and…” Avner was really, for the first time I see him super emotional and we hugged and he said, “Remember, ten years ago when we start?” It was hard to talk about the principle of nonviolence. And ten years later, we are talking not just about nonviolence, we are talking about joint nonviolence, and it’s accepted to a certain level.   ASAF: So just one more question, and that’s something I want to ask everybody that we will be interviewing here. How do you think that we, as Jews that live in the United States, can and should help the struggle from a place here in the United States?   **SOULI: ** Yeah. As we talked before, the American Jewish community have a very important role to play to help our peoples out. And when I talk about our peoples, I mean Palestinians slash Israelis. I don’t see a way for one of the two sides to be happy with this cake, piece of land, that we all love and belong to, without the other side. Is really like a marriage. So the American Jewish part of it is really highly important for us, and from the perspective of media awareness, among the Americans generally and American Jews specifically. So, also we call all the American Jews that come to visit Israel also to visit the Palestinian territory, and meet with our people and see the reality in their eyes and not to believe really the mainstream media. The American Jewish involvement is like deep, historical exist there, in all directions. You know, most, I would say Jewish community in the U.S. of course for a reason or another they care about Israel, that's the truth. And if I look at the extreme settlers, they’re basically American Jewish. They are not even Israelis.   _ **ASAF: ** Well, not all of the settlers. But according to an Oxford University research from two years ago, while Americans make only about 2% of all Israeli citizens, they make up about 15% of the settlers._   **SOULI: ** The American involvement there is so deep. So, instead of being part of the problem, I wish to see more Jewish slash Palestinians that are working together -- with all the imbalance in power and the rights the Jewish have that our diaspora don’t have to go back and all that -- but still to work together in order to change the story and to see, to create a new reality, a new story.   _ **ASAF: ** To learn more about Souli and Combatants for Peace, visit their website cfpeace.org. You can find the documentary_ Disturbing the Peace on Netflix. Unsettled is produced by Yoshi Fields, Max Freedman, Emily Bell, Ilana Levinson, and me. Yoshi and I edited this episode. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Special thanks to Mark Winston Griffith and Brooklyn Deep. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for show information. You can now support Unsettled by becoming a monthly sustainer through Patreon. Like us on Facebook, find us on Twitter and Instagram, and most importantly, subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled_._

Sulaiman Khatib is a co-founder and the current Managing Director of Combatants for Peace,  a joint Israeli-Palestinian nonviolent movement to end the occupation of the West Bank. In this interview, Souli explains how he began to see Israelis as potential partners, rather than the enemy. He talks about the value of ex-combatants in the struggle to end the occupation, and addresses some of the the criticism that his organization has received from other activist groups. This episode of Unsettled is hosted by Asaf Calderon. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York on August 6, 2017, and edited for length and clarity by Asaf Calderon and Yoshi Fields.  Sulaiman Khatib is a leading nonviolence activist in Israel and Palestine. He was born in the West Bank and was imprisoned at the age of 14 for stabbing two Israeli soldiers. It was during his time in prison that he learned about nonviolent resistance and first encountered Jewish Israeli perspectives. In 2006, he and other Israeli and Palestinian ex-militants founded Combatants for Peace: a grassroots nonviolent movement with the goal of ending the occupation. As part of his work, he tours in the US, giving talks with other ex-combatants on nonviolent resistance to the occupation. TRANSCRIPT SOULI:  I believe that if our people given like a good leadership with a vision that carry nonviolence and hope, I do believe that many Palestinians are happy to join. This takes time and energy. But I believe the majority of our people don’t want to live in bloody situation, of course. And if the Israelis given the opportunity to show their goodness of solidarity with the Palestinians to struggle together, I really believe also I have faith of the majority of the Israelis in this case also, they will behave differently.   _ ASAF: Welcome to_ Unsettled_, a podcast about Israel-Palestine and the Jewish diaspora. We are here to provide a space for difficult conversations and diverse viewpoints that are all too rare in American Jewish communities._ My name is Asaf Calderon. I'm one of the producers of Unsettled and your host for today's episode. Sulaiman Khatib, today's guest, grew up with his family in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation. At the age of 14, while trying to steal weapons, he stabbed two Israeli soldiers. Both soldiers survived, and Souli was sentenced by the military court to 15 years in prison. Fast forward 30 years -- today, Souli is a co-founder and Managing Director of Combatants for Peace, an organization founded by ex-combatants from the Israeli military and the Palestinian armed resistance. They are dedicated to ending the occupation, using only nonviolent means. How did Souli transform from a fighter who saw Israelis as the enemy, to a nonviolent activist committed to working in partnership with them? Why create an organization specifically with ex-militants? And how does he respond to the criticism he gets even from other anti-occupation activists? With these questions in mind, I interviewed Souli while he was visiting the United States to work on his upcoming book. We met in his rented room in Brooklyn, on a Sunday -- so of course, you’re going to hear some background music. Sorry about that. Another thing you may notice, is that we both have pretty strong accents. What you are about to hear is an Israeli interviewing a Palestinian, in English, which of course isn’t either of our first languages. So if you're having trouble understanding, please check out the transcript of this episode on our website, unsettledpod.com.   ASAF: So Souli, let’s start by you introducing yourself.   SOULI: My name is Sulaiman Khatib, so, people call me Souli -- some people -- and I was born in a village near Jerusalem, 10 minutes from Jerusalem, called Hizma. I grew up there, half of the time, and then I was in jail for a long time. I was one of the people that thought that the only way for freedom was joining the armed struggle. That was my mind when I was 14.   _ **ASAF: ** Like other Palestinian prisoners, Souli faced particularly difficult conditions in prison. In his bio for Combatants for Peace, he explains: The use of torture was routine: beating prisoners, spraying tear gas into prison cells, and violently stripping prisoners were daily occurrences._ But, it was in these difficult conditions that Souli learned how nonviolent struggle can make a difference. With no civil rights and with their most basic human rights severely limited, Souli and the other prisoners resorted to hunger strikes.   SOULI:  The prisoners were very organized, very smart, and represent all the factions in jail through committees that were elected, so we asked, for example, our demands were around having like water -- like in Hebron jail, we used to have a problem of water, especially like to clean ourselves, you know for showers -- to have access to books, education, and newspapers to bring them, and visiting our families -- it used to be half an hour, we demanded like 45 minutes.   _ **ASAF: ** The striking prisoners also had support from activists outside the prison walls._   SOULI:  In the first few days, we used to communicate with the youth organizations, and universities, and so we were sure that people support us outside, so we don’t reach the point where we die or something, because this was not our goal. We had the hunger strike to live a little better conditions while we were in jail. And that’s how I learned there is another path. There is another way. I did read about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela that was in jail at that time, and I was inspired by, you know, like all these people. We do study about Che Guevara and the Vietnam War, and the guerrilla wars. So, it’s not: you go to jail, you come out as a new Palestinian Gandhi. It’s not that way, the truth. So I don’t really represent the mainstream prisoners.   _ **ASAF: ** Not only did Souli learn about other nonviolent movements, but he also began to explore Jewish narratives which he had never before heard. He recalled watching the Holocaust film_ Schindler’s List_ one day while he was in prison._   **SOULI: ** During the film, we turned the light off, and then we watched the film --through the film, you can see that everybody is really moved. This was really the effect on our hearts, if you wish, because everyone was crying. And after the film, it's really a complex feeling, because we have to ask hot water to make tea from the Israeli police that his maybe ancestors were there, that we feel sympathy with them, and he’s putting us in jail. Through the time I also read the history of the conflict from both eyes. I studied Hebrew also in jail and that made me realize there’s no either us or them. So I became beyond the typical narrative, and I became open for meeting Israelis after jail, and looking for partners on both sides to create a new narrative and new story for our peoples.   _ **ASAF: ** In 2003, during the second Palestinian Intifada -- or uprising -- a group of Israeli reserve soldiers, from elite combat units, decided to refuse serving in the occupied territories, so as to not contribute to the occupation. Soon after going public, the Israeli group was contacted by a Palestinian group of ex-prisoners. Souli, who was recently released from prison, was one of them. They started a series of internal talks, that eventually led to the creation of Combatants for Peace in 2006. The details of the formation of Combatants for Peace are presented in a documentary about them that came out last year,_ Disturbing the Peace_._   **SOULI: ** Everything in Combatants For Peace is based on certain principles, that’s very important to say: that’s joint and nonviolent and bi-national work, and opposing the occupation and slash violence. We are a grassroots organization that have nine local groups and working “twins” -- for example, Tel Aviv-Ramallah, Hebron-Be’er Sheva, Jerusalem-Jericho, Jerusalem-Beit Lechem and so on. And there’s above all also two bi-national groups, which is the woman group of Combatants for Peace that established last year, and the Theater of the Oppressed. Some of the activities are under the local groups -- from dialogue to personal story sharing to nonviolence demonstrations as well. And there is activities on the movement level, like the Palestinian-Israeli Memorial Day -- this is the highest activity every year -- the freedom marches, and we were also part of the initiative of the Freedom Sumud Camp.   ASAF: In Israel, we often hear the term “prisoners with blood on their hands.” Israelis are much less willing to work with and cooperate with people that have done what we call “terrorist activity.” Whatever it was, against soldiers or against citizens, this term “blood on their hands” is something that rings very powerfully in Israeli discourse. What do you think about it, as somebody that, you know, does have blood on your hands? Do you think that... why do you think that Israelis should be working with you?   **SOULI: ** Firstly, all the terminologies, the language... it really exists more or less the same on both sides, that’s one thing, and it really depends where you came from and how you look at things, eh… I attacked two Israelis when I was 14, believing, "This is our enemy, I want to protect my homeland." So these kind of people, like myself, used to be like our good guys, that sacrifice for the homeland. It reminds me for Israeli discourse, when Israelis used violence before 48, for example, or the pre-Israeli organizations -- Etzel, Haganah, and all that -- were heroes.   _ ASAF: The Etzel and the Haganah were Jewish paramilitary organizations that worked before 1948 for the establishment of the Jewish state. Both used terrorism to promote their goals; for example, the King David Hotel bombing in which 91 people were killed, mostly civilians. But of course Souli is right: in Israel, most people consider them to be heroes.   _   **SOULI: ** If we go ahead in the list of around the world, same thing in the Irish conflict and Mandela party, and everywhere else. It’s like two sides of the coin: the one called terrorist by Israelis mainly called hero by Palestinians, generally speaking. I’m generalizing now because there are many opinions. There's no one Israeli opinion or one Palestinian opinion. It’s a question of narratives, and how we see things. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. You know, like you can always find like more soft stories to work with, in both sides, people that never been in jail or the army or any involvement, but I think this community is very crucial, important, and we know that from Mandela story, he was in jail. And from North Ireland -- we work with Irish organizations that both sides were also involved in violence and were in jail, and they worked together and we work with them to learn from their experience and this is very exceptional role for  ex-fighters to play.   **ASAF: ** And on the other side, how do you feel about working with people that have Palestinian blood on their hands, and why do you think it’s important to work with them?   SOULI: Yeah, it’s basically really the same question. First, I admit this is heavy and hard for people on both sides and I understand that, and if I remember the first few meetings of Combatants for Peace, we did meet people that have Palestinian blood on their hands -- much more than us, because they used to be in the Israeli Air Force, like pilots, and F16. Obviously, the Israelis never went to the court, or any legal thing. In the Palestinian case you got your punishment, or like over-punishing, because you are living under military rule. So let’s say my case: what I did, if it was Israeli person did the same, would go to rehabilitation center. I was 14. But I am not citizen of anywhere, so I go to military court. So basically, not to legitimize any violence of course, but to say we do have to see the human behind these terms, and in the case of Israelis I... this is heavy but somehow we reach the point to see the human behind the uniform. This take long time, it’s a very deep hard process to see, to look in the eyes of these people and meet somewhere on some level.   ASAF: Many people in the Palestinian struggle and also in solidarity movements in the United States see the kind of work that you do as the term "normalization" with Israel, and they see that as wrong. What do you have to answer to that?   SOULI:  Firstly, we got a lot of criticism in both sides. And I am really fine with that, I have to say. I understand why many people worry and criticize the joint work. But I believe in my experience -- in our experience from Combatants for Peace and other organizations -- the meetings of the other, what's so-called the other, is essential. I don't know also any Israeli that born and, you know, came directly from Tel Aviv to Bil’in. Firstly, they meet Palestinians and to trust and to build relations, and then they became like more activist. That's the one I know the majority of the Israelis that really show solidarity with the Palestinians. And -- we are not normalizing the occupation. We do a lot of activities to fight the status quo, and we are not happy with the status quo. Of course, it's controversial, always, to work with what's so-called the enemy. I personally don't think there is one way to end the conflict, or the occupation, whatever you want to say. But we are not part of the BDS movement, we have a neutral position about the BDS. This is a nonviolence legitimate tool, but we are not there. We are a bi-national organization, and I am not going to boycott my partner Chen Alon, that is teaching in Tel Aviv. He is very active to our cause together, and his daughter was just left the jail recently. And I am struggling for her, as for my sister. So I can't think in the principle of boycotting them.   _ **ASAF: ** Chen Alon is one of the Israeli founders of Combatants for Peace. Tamar Alon, his daughter, was one of a handful of Israeli youth who publicly refused to serve in the military for ideological reasons. While many Israeli members of Combatants for Peace don’t serve anymore, the organization doesn’t call for complete refusal._   **ASAF: ** In the movie, I remember that one of the Israeli Combatants for Peace activists, she says she's serving, she's still serving in the army in reserves, but she is not serving in the West Bank. But, I mean obviously the role that she does outside of the West Bank is affecting the army as a whole. So, how… how can you accept that?   SOULI:  I’m talking like as like formally Combatants For Peace. In general, when we started Combatants for Peace, was a clear condition that Israelis don’t serve beyond the 1967 borders. And on the Palestinian side you don’t, you can’t join Combatants for Peace if you support violence, for example. So there is a refusing in both sides to the mainstream. We work in Israel-Palestine: means we are also pragmatic, means we do thousands of lectures -- last year we met around 4,000 people at lectures. It’s all joint, always there are two speakers -- one Israeli, one Palestinian -- we share our personal stories of the narrative and the transformation and this always inspire people. We find this tool as very deep impact, and we don’t tell the people what to do, especially talking to youngsters, Israeli pre-army mechinot.     _ **ASAF: ** A mechina, or mechinot in plural, is a program that some Israelis go to before the army, where you study and volunteer in the community._   **SOULI: ** So in order to, to play in this space we need to be also careful with the language we use, or to tell them what to do exactly, but I believe that this model stay in the head of many of the youngsters as the only meeting maybe they ever meet a Palestinian before the army, before they go to the army.   **ASAF: ** Another thing that I noticed in the film is that you use a language of equivalency. A few times you mention dual responsibility. You’re saying, "We are both victims and we are both perpetrators." But as an Israeli, it’s difficult for me to accept the idea that you know, we are both equal in this. I feel like I am the perpetrator and you are the victim.   **SOULI: ** In Combatants for Peace, actually, after years of discussion, we recognized the imbalance in power. Of course, the Israelis are in charge. Of course. We know that. But in order to make change, we did decide to take our destiny in our hands, together as activists from both sides. And the... the truth is, usually the Palestinian come with this idea: we are the victims, Israelis they are in charge and they are criminal and... But we don’t want to stuck there. We want our peoples together to take responsibility of our life, our present, and to create a new future. A new story together. I don’t want to see more of feeding of the Palestinian victimhood, which exists deeply. Of course, the Jewish slash Israelis have the same unfortunately story of victimhood, and this is really like a very deep negative energy that will not take us anywhere. No, we can change our lives, and I believe Palestinians, as a Palestinian, if we are united, if we had a vision, if we have the right conditions, we do have responsibility, and we do can make change, together with our neighbors basically, because it will never be good to do it alone, either side. We basically in a non-divorce marriage, we have to manage. That’s what I believe.   **ASAF: ** This I can totally understand, that you’re saying that you know, just because you’re victims doesn’t mean you don’t have agency, and doesn’t mean you can’t change your own lives. But like you said, in Israel, for Israelis we also have this victimhood complex, and I think in a way, it makes it very easy for Israelis to feel connected to, or, it resonates with us, because we...we get to still be a victim.   **SOULI: ** Just to make myself clear, we do talk all the time about the imbalance in power, that’s clear, it’s the reality, nobody denying the reality as it is, first of all. And, but recognizing that, it doesn’t feed the Palestinian victimhood. So I can talk about it until tomorrow because it’s a list of suffering. You know, in October, my mom, to go to the olive harvest next to my village, for my family land, she needs Israeli permit -- which is five minutes away from our home, because there is the wall. You know, when I drive to see my mom, 20 minutes, I have a checkpoint, of course. I’m a little privileged Palestinian compared to other people, but still: when I travel, I have complexes that my Israeli partner doesn’t. You know even with Americans, with the international community, with visa, with the logistics. It's complicated, of course, to live under the military regime. And when I talk to Palestinians I don’t deny the suffering of this person or our people. But I don’t really believe in this competition that exists always in dialogue groups, that the Palestinian comes with full desire to share their suffering and story, which is legitimate, but to recognize the suffering of the other side, or the pain, it doesn’t take away our suffering. To recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinian connection to the land, or the jewish connection to the land, it doesn’t take the other connection to the land. That’s where I am now. I know this is complex for even my family when I say these things. I got criticism. Hard arguments. It’s not easy. Because you know what we learn in nonviolence communication, you meet people where they are. I believe we can play a model that cross all these cliches about our conflict. And I understand the Palestinian anger, of course, but we want this energy of anger, to use it instead of going into violence and like really hopeless action like the stabbing, to come join our nonviolence action. And I see this happens, actually. Some people come, youngsters come through Facebook, we don’t know them, not from our circles. So I believe that if our people given like a good leadership with a vision that carry nonviolence and hope, I do believe that many Palestinians are happy to join. This takes time and energy. But I believe the majority of our people don’t want to live in bloody situation, of course. And if the Israelis given the opportunity to show their goodness of solidarity with the Palestinians to struggle together, I really believe also, I have faith of the majority of the Israelis in this case also, they will behave differently.   **ASAF: ** You’ve been, Combatants For Peace have existed for about what 15 years now?   **SOULI: ** 11 years.   **ASAF: ** 11 years. In these 11 years, what do you think has changed in Israeli-Palestinian politics and how did you adapt to those changes?   SOULI: First of all, we… Combatants for Peace is not just a community of ex-fighters, these are the founders, so Combatants for Peace through the years became open to everybody. We started Combatants for Peace -- the meetings, before we call it Combatants For Peace -- started in 2005 secretly, illegally around Beit Lechem [Bethlehem] area. It was the Second Intifada and the political environment, of course, and the social economical situation changed a lot since then. One of the changes, the truth: at that time, the idea of two-state was the only solution people talk about. It's not anymore; it's one of the options. And the second: like, there are many changes, good and bad. I don't see things just black-white, the truth. Last year we did "Ten Years of Combatants for Peace" and we screened our film, Disturbing the Peace -- the film about us, Disturbing the Peace -- at the wall of of Beit Jala. We got a few hundred Palestinians, Israelis to watch it together, under full moon it was beautiful. And we did the Freedom March with 800 Palestinians, Israelis -- this was last year during the, what you call the Knife Intifada -- like really among violent situation. And we got the two Irish ex-prisoners to speak to us there. It was a beautiful feeling of successful, I have to say. And Avner, one of our wise founders, is my close friend, and he speak Arabic fluently, I speak Hebrew, and we are really close after years we are... and Avner told me -- because that time I brought my mom to see the film, and he brought his mom, and they met for the first time -- and his mom told him, “This is exceptional work that you do, the history will write you, and…” Avner was really, for the first time I see him super emotional and we hugged and he said, “Remember, ten years ago when we start?” It was hard to talk about the principle of nonviolence. And ten years later, we are talking not just about nonviolence, we are talking about joint nonviolence, and it’s accepted to a certain level.   ASAF: So just one more question, and that’s something I want to ask everybody that we will be interviewing here. How do you think that we, as Jews that live in the United States, can and should help the struggle from a place here in the United States?   **SOULI: ** Yeah. As we talked before, the American Jewish community have a very important role to play to help our peoples out. And when I talk about our peoples, I mean Palestinians slash Israelis. I don’t see a way for one of the two sides to be happy with this cake, piece of land, that we all love and belong to, without the other side. Is really like a marriage. So the American Jewish part of it is really highly important for us, and from the perspective of media awareness, among the Americans generally and American Jews specifically. So, also we call all the American Jews that come to visit Israel also to visit the Palestinian territory, and meet with our people and see the reality in their eyes and not to believe really the mainstream media. The American Jewish involvement is like deep, historical exist there, in all directions. You know, most, I would say Jewish community in the U.S. of course for a reason or another they care about Israel, that's the truth. And if I look at the extreme settlers, they’re basically American Jewish. They are not even Israelis.   _ **ASAF: ** Well, not all of the settlers. But according to an Oxford University research from two years ago, while Americans make only about 2% of all Israeli citizens, they make up about 15% of the settlers._   **SOULI: ** The American involvement there is so deep. So, instead of being part of the problem, I wish to see more Jewish slash Palestinians that are working together -- with all the imbalance in power and the rights the Jewish have that our diaspora don’t have to go back and all that -- but still to work together in order to change the story and to see, to create a new reality, a new story.   _ **ASAF: ** To learn more about Souli and Combatants for Peace, visit their website cfpeace.org. You can find the documentary_ Disturbing the Peace on Netflix. Unsettled is produced by Yoshi Fields, Max Freedman, Emily Bell, Ilana Levinson, and me. Yoshi and I edited this episode. Original music by Nat Rosenzweig. Special thanks to Mark Winston Griffith and Brooklyn Deep. Go to our website, unsettledpod.com, for show information. You can now support Unsettled by becoming a monthly sustainer through Patreon. Like us on Facebook, find us on Twitter and Instagram, and most importantly, subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, to make sure you never miss an episode of Unsettled_._

Palestine is erupting and the British struggle to maintain control. While the Jewish economy rapidly develops, the fellahin move to the cities as wage laborers in greater numbers. Working class Palestinians and Middle Eastern Jews co-habitate in mixed cities, but the political struggle between the Zionist settlers and the Palestinian masses is becoming increasingly vicious. The efforts to mediate between European Jews and the non-Jewish Palestinians are failing, as Palestinian capital looks to Europe for an ally against the British and Jews. Suddenly, the Palestinian masses rise up and rapidly build a sustained, long-term rebellion. The Haganah align themselves with the British to put down an indigenous uprising as the Yishuv begins making preparations for a mass “transfer” of Palestinians out of Palestine. The Movements is a leftist history and politics podcast. Support the show at paypal.me/movementspodcast. Find us on facebook and twitter @movementspod. E-mail movementspod@gamil.com. Transcript may be provided for accessibility purposes.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/movementspod)

I sit at the entrance of the labyrinth in which my country has vanished. I don’t know why my country is lost or what I should do to reclaim it and the sunlight, the good breeze, the songbirds in groves of oleander and acacia... Moshe Dor was born in 1932 in Tel Aviv. He served in the Haganah and then became a correspondent for the Israel Army magazine. One of the founders of the literary journal Likrat, Dor has served as literary editor and member of the editorial board of Maariv newspaper since 1958. His work has been published abroad in some 30 languages. Host Marcela Sulak reads poems from the collection Scorched by the Sun, translated by Barbara Goldberg and Moshe Dor, as we listen to his words sung by various artists.   Text: Scorched by the Sun, by Moshe Dor. Translated by Barbara Goldberg and Moshe Dor. The Word Works, 2012.   Music: Chabad Choirs - Erev Shel Shoshanim (lyrics by Moshe Dor)Traditional - Tapuach Chinani (lyrics by Moshe Dor)Hagesher - Night Of Roses (lyrics by Moshe Dor)  

Born in Tel Aviv in 1923, Haim Gouri is a poet, novelist, documentary film maker, journalist, and the author of a book on the Jerusalem trial of Adolf Eichmann. During World War II, Gouri joined the elite strike force of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary force operating during Mandate Palestine, called the 'Palmach.' He was sent to Hungary to help holocaust survivors come to Palestine. This experience inspired Gouri’s documentary film The 81st Blow, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1974. Gouri's first book of poetry, published in 1949, is heavily influenced by his experience in the Palmach during the war of 1948. His later books become more abstract. Today Marcela Sulak reads from his poems 'Current Account' and 'Piyyut for Rosh Hashanah,' which both deal with themes of justice and repentance at Jewish new year. Here are the final lines from 'Current Account': "And again, as always in the Land of Israel, / the stones remember. / The earth does not cover. / Justice cuts through the mountains." Text: Modern Hebrew Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology. Ed. and trans. Ruth Finer Mintz. University of California Press, 1966. The Stones Remember: Native Israeli Poetry. Eds. Moshe Dror, Barbara Goldberg & Giora Leshem. The Word Works, 1991. Music: Palmach Songs Song for Tishrei - sung by Chava Alberstein, words by Rachel Shapiro, and music by Danny Amihud

One of the original founders of the Amateur Radio Service in Israel, Amnon Bar Giora, 4X1DF, joins Eric, 4Z1UG, in a conversation about his early beginnings as a radio operator for the pre-Israel Haganah, his training of Yugoslav partisans in the use of radio behind the Nazi lines, his pursuit of the Nazi doctor of Auschwitz across South America, and his co-founding of the Amateur Radio Service in Israel. At 91 years of age, Amnon has a rich history of radio, service to his country and people, and entrepreneurship.