What’s disturbing about this conflict is you can hear either side’s story and feel convinced they are unequivocally the good guys protecting their people from an aggressor... until you hear the other side’s story. But most people stop at just hearing one side. Even “smart” people talk as if they are completely unaware of the other side’s perspective.. which they likely are.
Thanks for keeping us informed of both sides, Darryl.
Why it is so tiring and saddening to be on social media:) Education creates empathy, why I am so grateful for Daryl's work to get inside "the other's" motivations and perspectives.
One clever way of lying to you is to let you the truth (facts) without context in a bad faith and manipulative way. I love that he spends hours making sure we understand the whole story.
Yo Darryl. A dude that I’m in a stock trading discord with is Jewish, and had a great grandfather that was born in Hebron around 1900-1905. Dude was hidden by Arab friends during revolt/uprising in 1929. He was one of the first people to join the Irgun. Knew Jabotinsky. Fucking wild. Like no one else in our discord had any idea what we were talking about, including active duty service people.
It is balm for my soul to hear about the human kindness aspects of stories. It would be great for this dude's story to be told in its entirety, ditto Ben Dunkeleman, the Canadian major who became commander of the 7th Brigade in the 1948 war, who refused to obey an Israeli superior's order to evacuate the (mostly Christian) Arab civilians of Nazareth.
Nov 11, 2023·edited Nov 11, 2023Liked by Darryl Cooper
Just starting this. Thanks for putting it together Darryl.
I was raised Jewish. My best friend and second family are Palestinian-American. This is tough. My heart always goes out to them first. But they need to be realistic. They need remember that the vast majority on both sides just want peace. Unfortunately, we live in a world where media and politicians allow the extremist super-minority to speak for the masses. That’s not changing anytime soon. Peace and humanity can still be a leading principle.
I love listening to this, and reading on the subject. Written many papers on the conflict from grade school through college. But it’s so hard…because there seems no end. Darryl said on The Unraveling, and I’m paraphrasing…that if this happened pre-WW1 or during 19th century, this conflict wouldn’t exist because zionists would have “completed the job” by eradicating whoever was in their way. Geneva Convention, League of Nations, UN, etc is what prevented a full cleansing of the levant. Here we are….
I’m not sure those organizations have much to do with the lack of complete cleansing. I say this mostly because there have been multiple successful cleansing campaigns throughout the world since then. Even now there’s ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan that said organizations cannot be bothered to stop. How many times have the major member states violated the Geneva Convention? When was the last time the UN successfully averted a genocide of any kind? It might be the US and Britain that have prevented it as without them Israel would be in big trouble. It might be that most Israelis are not and were not zionists and that so fresh from their own Holocaust there wasn’t an appetite for it among the average Israeli population. I just have a hard time believing Israel is constrained by the UN and Rwanda and Azerbaijan and the Congo and China are not.
All good points. I think Israel wanting a seat at the proverbial table has something to do with it. I think Israel has been guided with the understanding that what they did in 1948, was going to be unforgivable. What happened in Rwanda is unadulterated mass psychotic slaughter, for example.
Israel has shown some level of restraint, that probably would not have existed if everything (Zionists moving in) started 25+ years before it. I guess the discussion could go to what has influenced that varying restraint. No UN did not stop them, but world pressure and politics surely had some role to play. Also, whether those pressures were external or internal in origin.
If I recall, Darryl's point was less that cleansing would have been completed, and more that the surrounding Arab nations would have absorbed the refugees without much controversy, but because of the changes in worldviews and political alignments, with the Palestinians adopting a "National Identity," there was no turning back the clock...
Thanks Darryl! I loved this series and I look forward to listening to this updated episode. You are one of the few reasonable voices on this topic. God bless.
4:03 Sabra Shatila is an area that I need to understand better. My understanding is that the massacre is used by Israel Zionist Jew haters to bang over our head. I want to study more sides of this massacre.
It is used that way, but this one happens to be true. America haters use slavery against us, but slavery still happened, ya know? There are lots of Israeli sources, including others who were in government w/Sharon, who call him a straight up terrorist and war criminal, esp because of how he essentially went rogue at IDF North and was running ops behind the back of Begin’s government.
I’m defensive and on edge right now: Kids Jewish school evacuated bomb threats, Kosher pizza restaurant block away vandalized, non Jewish kids shooting firearms in the air next to JCC. Yes happening in Texas. There is no way I’m letting my kids attend any pro Israel rallies local or in DC. Hope that gives context.
I feel less safe due to physical attacks on Jewish businesses, schools, institutions, buildings and people. Your comment is way off point from what I said .
IDF, under Sharon’s control violated a ceasefire in Lebanon in 1982. Then IDF surrounded Palestinian camp, blocking routes of escape, while Lebanese forces went medieval. IDF officially reported atrocities as they were happening and did nothing to stop it. Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister over all of it. It was bad. PM Begin was not trying to do shit this way. And he’s former Betar. Dude was a savage freedom fighter as a youngster. Yet even he wanted to sue for peace.
There have been some great Israeli leaders. There have been absolute psychos. Sharon is one of the psychos. There’s really no argument against it left anymore.
Fantastic as always. A couple of questions if you have the time.
I've never quite understood the driving logic behind secular Pan-Arabism. The appeal of a caliphate seems obvious, but what is the "theological" element in Pan-Arabism? Did these people believe in a "racial" identity over a tribal one? Was it mostly cynical like Japanese anti-colonialism? I'm sure there were a variety of motivations, but what was the glue that kept these mostly secular regimes aligned?
There’s no theological element to pan-Arabism. Mostly it was a Cold War-era movement by leaders in the Middle East who wanted to be able to act on the world stage without being beholden to NATO or Warsaw Pact. Alone, none of the countries was strong enough, but united, maybe they could’ve been.
US, UK, and Israeli policy in the region has often been geared toward promoting Islamism to counter pan-Arab nationalism. The British did it back during the mandatory period, even, to help separate the Palestinian Christians (who were more urban and literate as a whole, and provided a lot of the resistance leadership) from the Muslims. During the Cold War, we promoted political Islam not only in the Mid East, but in south and Central Asia, hoping that organized Islam would be a bulwark against atheist communism, and that it might be a lever we could pull to cause problems in the USSR. Robert Dreyfus has a great book about this called Devil’s Game.
The success at undermining the pan-Arabists left those countries w/a leadership vacuum, and left the people of that region looking for other ways to politically organize, and when Arab nationalism failed they fell back on religion.
Hindsight is 20/20 but communism was a legitimate threat in the second half of the 20th century, whereas Islamic extremism didn’t really come into its own until the 70s/80s.
For sure. I also kind of said two things in my statement.
Trying to back door Russia, no matter their political ideology, always gets us burned. One way or another. Because fighting Russia, even indirectly, is just a bad idea.
By "theological" I mean a minimum viable religion. What was the glue that they hoped would hold them together as a people. If the answer is power, I'm less surprised the project failed.
Nice. Pretty deep question. It was Nasser vying for power. They wanted a seat at the big table. Lots of Marxist ideas were cherry picked and used. Lots of inclusion and leveling of the playing field. But Nasser and others (eg. Ba’athists) just wanted a piece of the pie. The fact that they tried to unite means it was just A method. But Assad and later Sadaam Hussein proved that they were just as fine with an iron fist method. Later, Iran and Saudi’s proved that theological oppression was merely another.
A newly fashioned sense of ethnic identity was the not so sticky glue. Ethnic nationalism was early 20th century European import, gobbled up especially by regional intellectuals. Religion and tribe were the historic core identities and ways of political organization.
This is a great podcast. It has left me wondering about the parallels between the situation Israel finds itself in now and the situation France found itself in Algeria. Hamas using FLN tactics to brutally terrorise then cash in on public opinion when the inevitable overreaction falls on them. Where France retaliated their way out of worldwide support leaving them with two options- go hardcore hard or go home. The French flinched at the destruction they would have to inflict and eventually had to concede and leave Algeria. Are Israel at that same point now? Has Israel decided a political accommodation with the Palestinians will never succeed no matter what, ruling out all other options to replace going hard? Has Israel studied the France in Algeria and taken the alternative route, not flinched, said fuck it let’s see where this takes us? If they are truly on the ‘going hard’ path, I fear this may be the end of Gaza as a Palestinian territory.
I think it was Ibrahim Al-wazir l, founding member of Fatah, who was very inspired and borrowed strategies from the Algerian War of independence, so you could be spot on. However, without knowing much about that war, the Algerians lost around one million people over several years; that doesn’t sound very “flinchy” of the French! Public opinion did turn against them though, and in this age of social media, that is happening much faster for the Israelis.
To expand on Darryl's point in the Unraveling, the French had a France to go back to. The Israeli's have no other place to retreat to. Of course, individual Israeli's may retreat to, say, New York (Darryl made that point somewhere...?), the nation as a whole can't just walk away. The various waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, at least until the mid-twentieth century, were all based on them fleeing oppression somewhere else, both pre and post Holocaust.
Quite a few Rich American Jews have taken up the remaining beautiful old houses in Western Jerusalem belonging to Palestinians, and many American Jews have houses in the illegal settlements of West Bank. They don’t have to leave Israel, they just have to leave the areas that are not recognised by international Law (East Jerusalem and the West Bank) and areas of the Negev closer to the Gaza Strip.
I had just relistened to Fear and Loathing and then saw you had updated the story to 1982, which I just finished. Thank-you for this--I learn so much from you about both(all) sides of the issue. You present the complicated history so incredibly well.
So timely! I just finished re-listening to the entire series and have recommended it to so many people who have been completely immersed in their own narrative and version of history, with next to no understanding of the other. There is so much ignorance about this conflict on social media. Folks should be required to listen to this series before they are allowed to comment or have an opinion. :)
I love how so many of us re-listen to Fear and Loathing! We need t-shirts or something...
I'm listening out for when Darryl quotes a book which describes what life was like before the early Zionists arrived, mainly because I am looking for sources to counter the oft-quoted Mark Twain 'the land was barren, we saw no-one at all' (paraphrase) in his book 'Innocents Abroad' (1869). I believe the author of the book Darryl mentions has a first name of Avram.
Just started listening. I think I’m fairly unique here in the US in that my great grandfather and his brothers built the house I grew up in. My grandmother and great uncle were born in that house. My parents and younger brother still live there. If one of the Indian nations that were here before we were suddenly came back and pushed us out, I’d burn it down on the way out, assuming my father didn’t do it first. If none of us managed it, well if I have to come back in the night and do it while a family is sleeping but waking them up to get them out increases my chances of getting shot or jailed, maybe they just have to take their chances.
The ancestor that came over with his wife and son in 1745 was scalped and murdered on the frontier in 1760 by the Cherokee. I know. It’s weird to think of South Carolina as the frontier but this part of it was at that time.
I've thought about this too. If a Huron family came back and tried to claim the land I live on, I think I'd let them set up a camper in my backyard. The indigenous are the one group I do feel some white guilt for.
I don’t feel white guilt about any race. It’s just something that happened a century or more before I was born. Whether it’s what went on with the Indians or the fact that some of my ancestors owned slaves.
I also don’t buy into collective ownership of large swaths of territory by groups. Especially if the land isn’t visibly being used by someone when someone else starts building a house. You could sure as hell make a case for sights where indigenous villages were located. That isn’t everywhere on the east coast.
This is how nomads end up raiding. If they're only on the land for a month out of the year, do they have a claim? What if the land is too deficient to support year round human habitation?
Have they improved the land in anyway? If not I could see both ways on a claim though I’d lean towards no. On a practical note, if they haven’t done anything to improve the land, how is someone moving into the area a month after they left going to know before he spends the next 10 months sinking resources and energy into the place until they get back?
If they do have a claim that’s cool as long as we carry that through. Does it mean those of us in the state I live in, which has increased its population half again what it was the year I was born during my life can put a stop to immigration from other states in the union even though over half the land in the state is unimproved?
The Cherokee migrated down here from the Great Lakes area anyway. The main tribe in my county at the time of settlement were the Saluda, an offshoot of the Pawnee which were a northeastern tribe. Whose to say they weren’t settling on another tribe’s unimproved hunting land when they migrated south.
An often-repeated hypothetical argument used by Israel and pro-Israel supporters (e.g. Sam Harris), is that if Hamas’ and Israel’s military capabilities were reversed, Hamas would not hesitate in wiping out the entire civilian population of Israel. Maybe? But the rhetoric used by all middle eastern leaders ( including Israel) has always been notoriously “over-the-top” and should be taken with a grain of salt.
The talking point “Israel could wipe-out the entire Palestinian population in an afternoon if it wanted to” implies that in choosing not to do so, Israel somehow possesses a moral superiority over its Palestinian rivals. However, although Israel’s military is very powerful it is not omnipotent. It does not have heavy bombers etc., if it did, it almost certainly would have used them in Gaza. Other than their nukes (which could not practically be used in their own back yard), Israel is currently at near full capacity in its industrial mass extermination project in Gaza. Phase II of this project will undoubtedly target the West Bank . People forget, genocide is hard work. Usually, a long and difficult process requiring significant time and resources. Perhaps they could distribute machetes to the entire population of Israel and set them loose in Gaza? This method was proven to be quite efficient and cost-effective in Rwanda.
I would say October 7 is a good indication that if Hamas had the ability they'd attempt an even larger mass extermination of Israeli civilians, not that October 7 was particularly small.
“Even larger mass extermination”. What Hamas did doesn’t even register as mass extermination. But sure, keep the pressure on Palestinians, and Hamas will find a way to strike harder. Give it 10-20 years though
I suppose by the standards of the region--Assad, Saddam, ISIS, Yemen, the Algerian Civil War, Iran-Iraq War, Lebanese Civil War, Black September, and probably some other events I'm missing--Hamas and various random Palestinians massacring 1200+ Israelis (probably around 900 civilians) in a day doesn't actually seem that significant. I still found it worth noticing.
Hamas' motivation to mass murder Israelis has been there since its founding, with suicide bombings of Israeli civilians going back thirty years. What's being taken away right now is their ability to do so. You have things completely backwards.
I don't know what the point of that link is. But adducing who the morally superior side in a conflict is based on casualty rates implies ISIS, Nazi Germany, and the Confederates were the good guys. I'm not trying to simplify those wars but I don't know how to interpret such an argument except to mean that no party should defend itself if it has certain advantages over an enemy.
“If roles were reversed” is an invalid premise. But if Palestinians gained the upper hand somehow, I believe they’d stop way short of genocide. Most don’t have the stomach for it. The vast majority of Palestinians would probably sue for peace, as would most of the Israelis if given a voice today. But neither has a voice. Extremists have the voice and the control. Special interests on both sides, have the voice. For example, don’t think for a minute that countries like Iran don’t act like a mini military industrial complex over there.
You may be right that there are elements in Israel that want to exterminate Palestinians. One of the few things I have faith in, is that it will stop way short of that. The western world would not stand for it. If Israel were to come remotely close to genociding the Palestinians, countries like Iran and every little terrorist organization would go total war. It would send Israel to a very unstable and unsafe place.
I hope you are right. The views coming out of Israel from both ordinary Israelis (turn Gaza into an amusement park) and extremist Rabbis are scary, though. Not sure Iran genuinely cares about ordinary Palestinians, they could just up their funding (and training support if they can get away with it) of what remains of HAMAS, whilst using the genocide in Gaza to score propaganda points. I need to study more....
My Iranian partner and his nephew are very pro-Israeli, most civilians who are not related to the Mullahs are -they disagree with whatever the Mullahs stance is and are sick of having simplistic anti-Israeli rhetoric and “support the Palestinians” shoved down their throat. Humans can be contrarian.
What’s disturbing about this conflict is you can hear either side’s story and feel convinced they are unequivocally the good guys protecting their people from an aggressor... until you hear the other side’s story. But most people stop at just hearing one side. Even “smart” people talk as if they are completely unaware of the other side’s perspective.. which they likely are.
Thanks for keeping us informed of both sides, Darryl.
Why it is so tiring and saddening to be on social media:) Education creates empathy, why I am so grateful for Daryl's work to get inside "the other's" motivations and perspectives.
One clever way of lying to you is to let you the truth (facts) without context in a bad faith and manipulative way. I love that he spends hours making sure we understand the whole story.
Yo Darryl. A dude that I’m in a stock trading discord with is Jewish, and had a great grandfather that was born in Hebron around 1900-1905. Dude was hidden by Arab friends during revolt/uprising in 1929. He was one of the first people to join the Irgun. Knew Jabotinsky. Fucking wild. Like no one else in our discord had any idea what we were talking about, including active duty service people.
That dude has some sto-ries.
Guaranteed
Shit, he would’ve been pretty crazy to talk to
My boy got to pick his brain while he was still alive
He should’ve wrote those stories down, I’d have loved to be a fly on that wall
I wonder if he did. Wonder if he could compile something for me.
It is balm for my soul to hear about the human kindness aspects of stories. It would be great for this dude's story to be told in its entirety, ditto Ben Dunkeleman, the Canadian major who became commander of the 7th Brigade in the 1948 war, who refused to obey an Israeli superior's order to evacuate the (mostly Christian) Arab civilians of Nazareth.
It would be a better balm if the guy hadn't joined Irgun...
Just starting this. Thanks for putting it together Darryl.
I was raised Jewish. My best friend and second family are Palestinian-American. This is tough. My heart always goes out to them first. But they need to be realistic. They need remember that the vast majority on both sides just want peace. Unfortunately, we live in a world where media and politicians allow the extremist super-minority to speak for the masses. That’s not changing anytime soon. Peace and humanity can still be a leading principle.
I love listening to this, and reading on the subject. Written many papers on the conflict from grade school through college. But it’s so hard…because there seems no end. Darryl said on The Unraveling, and I’m paraphrasing…that if this happened pre-WW1 or during 19th century, this conflict wouldn’t exist because zionists would have “completed the job” by eradicating whoever was in their way. Geneva Convention, League of Nations, UN, etc is what prevented a full cleansing of the levant. Here we are….
I’m not sure those organizations have much to do with the lack of complete cleansing. I say this mostly because there have been multiple successful cleansing campaigns throughout the world since then. Even now there’s ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan that said organizations cannot be bothered to stop. How many times have the major member states violated the Geneva Convention? When was the last time the UN successfully averted a genocide of any kind? It might be the US and Britain that have prevented it as without them Israel would be in big trouble. It might be that most Israelis are not and were not zionists and that so fresh from their own Holocaust there wasn’t an appetite for it among the average Israeli population. I just have a hard time believing Israel is constrained by the UN and Rwanda and Azerbaijan and the Congo and China are not.
All good points. I think Israel wanting a seat at the proverbial table has something to do with it. I think Israel has been guided with the understanding that what they did in 1948, was going to be unforgivable. What happened in Rwanda is unadulterated mass psychotic slaughter, for example.
Israel has shown some level of restraint, that probably would not have existed if everything (Zionists moving in) started 25+ years before it. I guess the discussion could go to what has influenced that varying restraint. No UN did not stop them, but world pressure and politics surely had some role to play. Also, whether those pressures were external or internal in origin.
If I recall, Darryl's point was less that cleansing would have been completed, and more that the surrounding Arab nations would have absorbed the refugees without much controversy, but because of the changes in worldviews and political alignments, with the Palestinians adopting a "National Identity," there was no turning back the clock...
That’s fair assessment. I heard what I wanted to hear lol
I just subscribed. I don’t exactly have expendable income. Worth every penny. Thank you for what you do.
Thanks 🙏
Just in time after re-listening to Fear and Loathing
Thanks Darryl! I loved this series and I look forward to listening to this updated episode. You are one of the few reasonable voices on this topic. God bless.
I hope we are all becoming reasonable voices in here.
May have. To wait to listen to this one. Went to Pantera and Metallica tonight. Great show.
I’ll stand aside for Pantera any time
All things can wait for Pantera
4:03 Sabra Shatila is an area that I need to understand better. My understanding is that the massacre is used by Israel Zionist Jew haters to bang over our head. I want to study more sides of this massacre.
It is used that way, but this one happens to be true. America haters use slavery against us, but slavery still happened, ya know? There are lots of Israeli sources, including others who were in government w/Sharon, who call him a straight up terrorist and war criminal, esp because of how he essentially went rogue at IDF North and was running ops behind the back of Begin’s government.
I’m defensive and on edge right now: Kids Jewish school evacuated bomb threats, Kosher pizza restaurant block away vandalized, non Jewish kids shooting firearms in the air next to JCC. Yes happening in Texas. There is no way I’m letting my kids attend any pro Israel rallies local or in DC. Hope that gives context.
I feel less safe due to physical attacks on Jewish businesses, schools, institutions, buildings and people. Your comment is way off point from what I said .
IDF, under Sharon’s control violated a ceasefire in Lebanon in 1982. Then IDF surrounded Palestinian camp, blocking routes of escape, while Lebanese forces went medieval. IDF officially reported atrocities as they were happening and did nothing to stop it. Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister over all of it. It was bad. PM Begin was not trying to do shit this way. And he’s former Betar. Dude was a savage freedom fighter as a youngster. Yet even he wanted to sue for peace.
There have been some great Israeli leaders. There have been absolute psychos. Sharon is one of the psychos. There’s really no argument against it left anymore.
Fantastic as always. A couple of questions if you have the time.
I've never quite understood the driving logic behind secular Pan-Arabism. The appeal of a caliphate seems obvious, but what is the "theological" element in Pan-Arabism? Did these people believe in a "racial" identity over a tribal one? Was it mostly cynical like Japanese anti-colonialism? I'm sure there were a variety of motivations, but what was the glue that kept these mostly secular regimes aligned?
There’s no theological element to pan-Arabism. Mostly it was a Cold War-era movement by leaders in the Middle East who wanted to be able to act on the world stage without being beholden to NATO or Warsaw Pact. Alone, none of the countries was strong enough, but united, maybe they could’ve been.
US, UK, and Israeli policy in the region has often been geared toward promoting Islamism to counter pan-Arab nationalism. The British did it back during the mandatory period, even, to help separate the Palestinian Christians (who were more urban and literate as a whole, and provided a lot of the resistance leadership) from the Muslims. During the Cold War, we promoted political Islam not only in the Mid East, but in south and Central Asia, hoping that organized Islam would be a bulwark against atheist communism, and that it might be a lever we could pull to cause problems in the USSR. Robert Dreyfus has a great book about this called Devil’s Game.
The success at undermining the pan-Arabists left those countries w/a leadership vacuum, and left the people of that region looking for other ways to politically organize, and when Arab nationalism failed they fell back on religion.
There’s we go, America so focused on communism that we are blind to everything else.
Again, another example of trying to back-door communism and having it backfire in our faces.
Maybe someday we will stop trying to control other countries’ ideologies and just let them be.
Isolationist that I may be, leaving Russia to it's own devices is how the Bolshevists won the civil war.
Also true
Hindsight is 20/20 but communism was a legitimate threat in the second half of the 20th century, whereas Islamic extremism didn’t really come into its own until the 70s/80s.
For sure. I also kind of said two things in my statement.
Trying to back door Russia, no matter their political ideology, always gets us burned. One way or another. Because fighting Russia, even indirectly, is just a bad idea.
By "theological" I mean a minimum viable religion. What was the glue that they hoped would hold them together as a people. If the answer is power, I'm less surprised the project failed.
Nice. Pretty deep question. It was Nasser vying for power. They wanted a seat at the big table. Lots of Marxist ideas were cherry picked and used. Lots of inclusion and leveling of the playing field. But Nasser and others (eg. Ba’athists) just wanted a piece of the pie. The fact that they tried to unite means it was just A method. But Assad and later Sadaam Hussein proved that they were just as fine with an iron fist method. Later, Iran and Saudi’s proved that theological oppression was merely another.
A newly fashioned sense of ethnic identity was the not so sticky glue. Ethnic nationalism was early 20th century European import, gobbled up especially by regional intellectuals. Religion and tribe were the historic core identities and ways of political organization.
This is a great podcast. It has left me wondering about the parallels between the situation Israel finds itself in now and the situation France found itself in Algeria. Hamas using FLN tactics to brutally terrorise then cash in on public opinion when the inevitable overreaction falls on them. Where France retaliated their way out of worldwide support leaving them with two options- go hardcore hard or go home. The French flinched at the destruction they would have to inflict and eventually had to concede and leave Algeria. Are Israel at that same point now? Has Israel decided a political accommodation with the Palestinians will never succeed no matter what, ruling out all other options to replace going hard? Has Israel studied the France in Algeria and taken the alternative route, not flinched, said fuck it let’s see where this takes us? If they are truly on the ‘going hard’ path, I fear this may be the end of Gaza as a Palestinian territory.
I think it was Ibrahim Al-wazir l, founding member of Fatah, who was very inspired and borrowed strategies from the Algerian War of independence, so you could be spot on. However, without knowing much about that war, the Algerians lost around one million people over several years; that doesn’t sound very “flinchy” of the French! Public opinion did turn against them though, and in this age of social media, that is happening much faster for the Israelis.
To expand on Darryl's point in the Unraveling, the French had a France to go back to. The Israeli's have no other place to retreat to. Of course, individual Israeli's may retreat to, say, New York (Darryl made that point somewhere...?), the nation as a whole can't just walk away. The various waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, at least until the mid-twentieth century, were all based on them fleeing oppression somewhere else, both pre and post Holocaust.
Quite a few Rich American Jews have taken up the remaining beautiful old houses in Western Jerusalem belonging to Palestinians, and many American Jews have houses in the illegal settlements of West Bank. They don’t have to leave Israel, they just have to leave the areas that are not recognised by international Law (East Jerusalem and the West Bank) and areas of the Negev closer to the Gaza Strip.
No they don’t have to leave.
Darryl,
I had just relistened to Fear and Loathing and then saw you had updated the story to 1982, which I just finished. Thank-you for this--I learn so much from you about both(all) sides of the issue. You present the complicated history so incredibly well.
So timely! I just finished re-listening to the entire series and have recommended it to so many people who have been completely immersed in their own narrative and version of history, with next to no understanding of the other. There is so much ignorance about this conflict on social media. Folks should be required to listen to this series before they are allowed to comment or have an opinion. :)
I love how so many of us re-listen to Fear and Loathing! We need t-shirts or something...
I'm listening out for when Darryl quotes a book which describes what life was like before the early Zionists arrived, mainly because I am looking for sources to counter the oft-quoted Mark Twain 'the land was barren, we saw no-one at all' (paraphrase) in his book 'Innocents Abroad' (1869). I believe the author of the book Darryl mentions has a first name of Avram.
I just re-started fear and loathing.
Just started listening. I think I’m fairly unique here in the US in that my great grandfather and his brothers built the house I grew up in. My grandmother and great uncle were born in that house. My parents and younger brother still live there. If one of the Indian nations that were here before we were suddenly came back and pushed us out, I’d burn it down on the way out, assuming my father didn’t do it first. If none of us managed it, well if I have to come back in the night and do it while a family is sleeping but waking them up to get them out increases my chances of getting shot or jailed, maybe they just have to take their chances.
The ancestor that came over with his wife and son in 1745 was scalped and murdered on the frontier in 1760 by the Cherokee. I know. It’s weird to think of South Carolina as the frontier but this part of it was at that time.
I've thought about this too. If a Huron family came back and tried to claim the land I live on, I think I'd let them set up a camper in my backyard. The indigenous are the one group I do feel some white guilt for.
I don’t feel white guilt about any race. It’s just something that happened a century or more before I was born. Whether it’s what went on with the Indians or the fact that some of my ancestors owned slaves.
I also don’t buy into collective ownership of large swaths of territory by groups. Especially if the land isn’t visibly being used by someone when someone else starts building a house. You could sure as hell make a case for sights where indigenous villages were located. That isn’t everywhere on the east coast.
This is how nomads end up raiding. If they're only on the land for a month out of the year, do they have a claim? What if the land is too deficient to support year round human habitation?
Have they improved the land in anyway? If not I could see both ways on a claim though I’d lean towards no. On a practical note, if they haven’t done anything to improve the land, how is someone moving into the area a month after they left going to know before he spends the next 10 months sinking resources and energy into the place until they get back?
If they do have a claim that’s cool as long as we carry that through. Does it mean those of us in the state I live in, which has increased its population half again what it was the year I was born during my life can put a stop to immigration from other states in the union even though over half the land in the state is unimproved?
The Cherokee migrated down here from the Great Lakes area anyway. The main tribe in my county at the time of settlement were the Saluda, an offshoot of the Pawnee which were a northeastern tribe. Whose to say they weren’t settling on another tribe’s unimproved hunting land when they migrated south.
An often-repeated hypothetical argument used by Israel and pro-Israel supporters (e.g. Sam Harris), is that if Hamas’ and Israel’s military capabilities were reversed, Hamas would not hesitate in wiping out the entire civilian population of Israel. Maybe? But the rhetoric used by all middle eastern leaders ( including Israel) has always been notoriously “over-the-top” and should be taken with a grain of salt.
The talking point “Israel could wipe-out the entire Palestinian population in an afternoon if it wanted to” implies that in choosing not to do so, Israel somehow possesses a moral superiority over its Palestinian rivals. However, although Israel’s military is very powerful it is not omnipotent. It does not have heavy bombers etc., if it did, it almost certainly would have used them in Gaza. Other than their nukes (which could not practically be used in their own back yard), Israel is currently at near full capacity in its industrial mass extermination project in Gaza. Phase II of this project will undoubtedly target the West Bank . People forget, genocide is hard work. Usually, a long and difficult process requiring significant time and resources. Perhaps they could distribute machetes to the entire population of Israel and set them loose in Gaza? This method was proven to be quite efficient and cost-effective in Rwanda.
The thing is, if the circumstances of the Israelis and Palestinians were reversed, there would be no Hamas.
But there would be a Stern and Igurn.
I would say October 7 is a good indication that if Hamas had the ability they'd attempt an even larger mass extermination of Israeli civilians, not that October 7 was particularly small.
“Even larger mass extermination”. What Hamas did doesn’t even register as mass extermination. But sure, keep the pressure on Palestinians, and Hamas will find a way to strike harder. Give it 10-20 years though
I suppose by the standards of the region--Assad, Saddam, ISIS, Yemen, the Algerian Civil War, Iran-Iraq War, Lebanese Civil War, Black September, and probably some other events I'm missing--Hamas and various random Palestinians massacring 1200+ Israelis (probably around 900 civilians) in a day doesn't actually seem that significant. I still found it worth noticing.
Hamas' motivation to mass murder Israelis has been there since its founding, with suicide bombings of Israeli civilians going back thirty years. What's being taken away right now is their ability to do so. You have things completely backwards.
https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5898581/chart-israel-palestine-conflict-deaths
I don't know what the point of that link is. But adducing who the morally superior side in a conflict is based on casualty rates implies ISIS, Nazi Germany, and the Confederates were the good guys. I'm not trying to simplify those wars but I don't know how to interpret such an argument except to mean that no party should defend itself if it has certain advantages over an enemy.
“If roles were reversed” is an invalid premise. But if Palestinians gained the upper hand somehow, I believe they’d stop way short of genocide. Most don’t have the stomach for it. The vast majority of Palestinians would probably sue for peace, as would most of the Israelis if given a voice today. But neither has a voice. Extremists have the voice and the control. Special interests on both sides, have the voice. For example, don’t think for a minute that countries like Iran don’t act like a mini military industrial complex over there.
You may be right that there are elements in Israel that want to exterminate Palestinians. One of the few things I have faith in, is that it will stop way short of that. The western world would not stand for it. If Israel were to come remotely close to genociding the Palestinians, countries like Iran and every little terrorist organization would go total war. It would send Israel to a very unstable and unsafe place.
Imo.
I hope you are right. The views coming out of Israel from both ordinary Israelis (turn Gaza into an amusement park) and extremist Rabbis are scary, though. Not sure Iran genuinely cares about ordinary Palestinians, they could just up their funding (and training support if they can get away with it) of what remains of HAMAS, whilst using the genocide in Gaza to score propaganda points. I need to study more....
I’m worried about extremists that have control of weapons.
Hamas only convenient for Iran if it gets them brownie points with anti-western powers
My Iranian partner and his nephew are very pro-Israeli, most civilians who are not related to the Mullahs are -they disagree with whatever the Mullahs stance is and are sick of having simplistic anti-Israeli rhetoric and “support the Palestinians” shoved down their throat. Humans can be contrarian.