Part One: The Origins of Terror in Palestine

(upbeat music) - Cool, sir, media. - Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. A podcast about the very worst, or everything you don't know, about the worst people in all history. It's kind of the initial point, but we also go back to our name when looking at kind of the remit of this show. And one of the things we try to do is get like behind the bastards, including like the very worst people in the world today. And we've already done an episode on Benjamin Netanyahu, prior to October 7th, and kind of this most recent escalation into genocide in Gaza. And I didn't really feel like returning to Netanyahu well was kind of I think this show does best, covering like things that are currently happening and like breaking news that's kind of why we started it could happen here. - Oh yeah. - Yeah, and I'm on other things in the last year or so, one of the best things we've done there is bring on Dr. Donna Alcurd to help us report on and not just stuff in Palestine, but you've done a lot of really good work for us. So I wanted to bring you on as a guest and talk about a subject that I think is in your wheelhouse and also really important today. But thank you for coming back. - Donna, should we call you Dr. Alcurd the whole episode? - No, no, please don't do that. That's super awkward. - It is cool. I mean, yeah, first off, have you been and yeah, clubables and stuff? - Yeah, no, I'm doing, I'm existing, you know, as many Palestinians are right now. But I'm happy that I edited this handbook called the Handbook on Aeropathoritarianism that just came out and it's open access and so that has been a shining thing for me right now. So yeah, thanks for asking. - Oh, that sounds great. I can't wait to read that. I've been doing some, for one of the things I read for this book, which is kind of about like the birth of terrorism and Palestine, the Holy Land, prior to the knockup, prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, this episode, if you had like an education like me 'cause I remember as a kid, most of what I was told about the series of conflicts there was that like number one, it's been going on for thousands of years. It's always been happening. And number two, that it's like primarily religious and always has been primarily religious in dimension. That like those are the two truths about it. And kind of when people are saying that one thing they're kind of tacitly saying I think is that like Muslims and Jews can't live together, right? Like that is, they don't tend to directly say that, but that's what you're meant to believe if those two first things are true, right? - Yeah. - And that they're both crazy. - None of this is news to you. And that they're both, right? - They can't live together, but they're also both crazy. - Right, right. And none of that's true to the conflict, right? For one thing, this, you could, I mean, yeah, obviously stuff that happened in ancient times is relevant for a variety of reasons, just because history is never, you know, discreet, right? But if you go back to like 1880, you can get a really good grounding and everything is really relevant to the conflict today, right? I mean, maybe you disagree with that. If so, I yield to your experience, but that's kind of been sort of what I've come to feel, like kind of reading into it that that's, you really, that's a really good grounding and kind of everything relevant to the day, to the day starts in the late 1800s. Like it's not that ancient, right? - No, no, absolutely, like if I'm always, anytime I talk about this or anytime I teach about this, like my main takeaway is like, this is a very recent conflict and recent in the grand scheme of human history and it's about nationalism. It's, it's, it's really well-established. - Yeah, it's about nationalism. And yeah, and one of the important things to understand is that prior to the outbreak, I mean, prior to a lot of things, I mean, Zionism being one of them, but nationalism, 'cause it's, I mean, Arab nationalism and also European nationalism are deeply tied to all of this. For, among other things, Jews and Muslims and Christians got along reasonably well in Palestine. For that, you know, never part, like no multicultural society is ever completely devoid of conflict, right? But there's a lot of, I mean, one of our sources for this is a book called Lives and Common that really goes into how different things used to be there and how the fundamental conflict has nothing to do with faith, right? So I wanted to talk about like that, how, how we got to kind of the point of no return before the establishment, before, you know, 1948 and before the Nakhba, right? Like how did things and how did the Ottoman Empire and the British mandate kind of help push things along to the point of no return, right? So that's, I think we're gonna talk about this week because yeah, that's just, I was initially planning to do episodes a little bit different, probably, on Menachem Vigen or on Vladimir Yevatinsky, but it just, it seemed to make more sense to cover it this way, in part because I actually didn't feel like just focusing on like one guy and trying to like sort out like how things went so wrong through a sink, I just didn't seem like the right way to do this. - Now this is more comprehensive, I would say, yeah. - Yeah, I'll say. - This is an I Heart Podcast, guaranteed human. - Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. - We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. - Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. 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Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) So the story that I'm gonna tell this week starts in the 1880s and ends around 1940 with a major terrorist bombing that kind of sets the stage for a lot of stuff going on today. But to start, we need to go back to Palestine during the Ottoman era. And when we talk about this period, the first thing I need to get across is that people living in Palestine during the 1800s and even the early 1900s would not have considered Palestinian a useful identity within the territory 'cause if you're like Muslim or Christian or Jewish, you're still a Palestinian, no one, someone identifying themselves as a Palestinian would not tell you what they believed, what community they were a part of necessarily, right? And like 1870, you know? - Yeah, I mean, these were Ottoman provinces. They happened to be there. Yeah, different communities happen to be there. - Yeah, exactly. And you know, in 1880 or so, the majority of residents in any city in Palestine would have identified as Arab, including most Jews. And this is not a category that you see a lot of people who claim today Arab Jew, right? But for a very long time, there were large communities of Arab Jews spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. And in some ways, these episodes are the story of why many of those communities cease to exist, right? Because that's also very tied up in the state of Israel and the wars that happen as a result of that, all that stuff, right? This is one of the communities that kind of, in a number of reasons, not purely ceases to exist, but it also gets transmuted. People stop identifying that way, right? And there's, when we talk about Arab Jews, there's a really, it seems to be kind of muddled distinction between that and like Sephardic Jews, where a lot of Sephardic Jews would have considered themselves Arab Jews and spoken Arabic primarily. But it kind of varied, right? That was more common as I understand it like Hebron, where the majority of the Jewish community in Hebron in this period was extremely Arabic and would have very rarely spoken kind of the language that most Sephardic spoke, which is Spanish derived. We'll talk about that later. - Like Ladino, yeah. - Yes, Ladino, right? It was noted like in Hebron, they would only use Ladino in songs like occasionally, right? If there was like people who might have been from like another city or something during like a religious celebration, right? Whereas in Jerusalem, Ladino was a lot more common, right? So, you know, stuff like that, it is kind of a blurry distinction between Sephardic and Arab Jews and it's not wrong. - And there's this category also, Mr. Rahim, that kind of slumps Arab and Middle Eastern Jews from Iran and in Arab countries, kind of all together, that becomes kind of a catch all term, I think, especially after the creation of the state of Israel. - Yes, yes, and I'm not the best, I'm trying to kind of hopefully not screw this up too much. These are very complicated, you know, when we kind of talk about how these, the terms and how identity has shifted in these communities over this period of time, like it's, it's more than we'll totally get into today. But you need to understand that like, Among other things, when you're talking about the 1880s and Palestine, when most Palestinians would be they Arab, you know, or Muslim or Christian or Jewish or whatever, if they were getting angry at a foreign power in those days, that power was the Ottomans, right? Like, that was the enemy for a lot of, basically, everybody, right? Or it was like the ruler that you just kind of like assumed, well, you probably can't do any better than this, right? This is just life, you know? You were upset about taxes, you were upset about the drought. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And also, the Ottomans are Turks, right? The rulers are foreigners. They're not Arab. And, you know, their empire is a foreign one that's holding a lot of Arab sea, it's holding Arabs in some form of bondage, right? And obviously, a lot of, you know, Jewish people are not like the Jewish religion is not, is also especially in parts of the, you know, it varies treatment in different parts of the Ottoman Empire, but they're not considered equal under the law, so they and also Christians have a lot of issues with the Ottomans, but Arab nationalists, which are increasingly becoming a thing in the late 1800s, are also really angry at the Ottomans. Everybody's pretty pissed at the Ottomans. They're not a good empire, especially by this point in time, right? Like things aren't going, they're the sick man of Europe is kind of the term people use, so in addition to being foreigners who are drafting people and taxing them, they're also just not holding up super well, right? And it's kind of increasingly obvious to everybody. But one of the things the existence of the Ottomans does is like a ruler over all the different, you know, religious groups and ethnic groups is that it mitigates a degree of internal conflict because everybody kind of has this foreign power that they all see as like the, the, the asshole, right? And it does kind of make people fight less with each other. I do think that's a little bit of what's going on in this period. I think there's some solid area that comes from everyone being angry at the same foreign power, right? So Yakov Yehoshua, a Jewish resident of Jerusalem in this time and a future Israeli wrote of this period, quote, "The residential court yards of the Jews and Muslims were common. We were like one family. We were all friends. Our mothers poured out their hearts to Muslim women and they poured out their hearts to our mothers. The Muslim women accustomed themselves to speaking the Ladino language, right? This is his recollection of how light, what life was like in this period of time when, and he's not recalling any kind of religious conflict, really. That's not, that doesn't seem to be certainly his primary memory of this time. It was a lot of solidarity. And it's accurate to note that and you, you run across a couple quotes like this in lives in common that some Arab Muslims would see Arab Jews or Sephardic Jews as the, one of the terms I've heard is like inferior locals. And they don't mean that and they racial or religious sense. They mean that and then they have not been here as long. They're locals, but they haven't been here as long. And that's true for a lot of these, especially like Sephardic Jewish communities, because you can tell this by the fact that they speak Ladino, right? Which is derived from old Spanish because many Sephardics were the remnants of the Iberian Jewish community who'd been exiled. And one of the things this actually does is there's a lot of solidarity between some of these Sephardic Jewish communities and some Arab Muslim communities who are descendants themselves of the Arabs that were kicked out of Iberia. And there's this kind of belief, pretty widespread, that some of these Sephardic communities have done a better job or the best job of maintaining some of like the musical and artistic culture of that community that was largely driven, entirely driven out by the Christians, right? So there's this really deep and we, I don't think these relationships exist very much anymore, but this very deep relationship between these two different religious groups who are both exiles from the same place and wound up in Palestine, which I actually just wasn't aware that that was a dimension of life in that period of time. I find it really interesting, especially when you think of how far back, you know, the expulsion of Muslims and Jews from Iberia is from this point in time. We're talking hundreds of years and there's, these are still really meaningful community relationships. I just find that fascinating. Now, depending on the city and community, the difference between like how these communities saw themselves and conflicts between them would, would vary and be blurry. But again, in places like Hebrew and the Jewish community spoke Arabic as the first language, and only occasionally includedly do no songs and worship celebrations, right? So it did change, depending on where you were, a Jewish resident of the old city in Jerusalem or Al-Quds during this time, Al-Aliyashar wrote that during his youth, quote, "We heard Arabic and spoke it utterly freely with our neighbors." Yakov Al-Azar, another resident, recalled Muslim women in mixed religion housing, in a mixed religion housing development, volunteering to draw extra water the day before the Sabbath, so as not to disturb their Jewish neighbors. Like you hear a lot of stories of this, of religion and faith that's like lived in common, and like this really kind of deeply emotionally affecting degree of religious solidarity and even co-celebration of a lot of different religious holidays, as we'll talk about. Now, before we get into some of those more positive stories, there is another fact of life in Palestine in like this period of time, the 1880s, 1890s, that we need to address, which is that, for a shockingly long time, slavery still existed there, right? People bought and sold and slaved Africans. For longer than you'd expect, and this is not just in Palestine, this is a decent chunk of the Middle East and in North Africa and bits in his book "Close in the Air of Slave Trade." Yeah. And this is, by the way, slavery is practiced and utilized by Jews and Muslims and Christians in this period of time. There's not seem to be a major religious difference between who is buying slaves. It's a wealth thing. You can afford it and you don't have a moral issue with it, you have slaves in this period of time. Some people do. It's not super common. Cline notes that the old city had a market where African girls specifically were bought and sold that operate until 1889, even though the Sultan had outlawed the trade in 1846. Per lives in common, quote, "At about 1880, a Haran Valero bought an Ethiopian girl who was around 10 years old. When the central government enforced the emancipation of slaves in Jerusalem, the girl chose to stay with Valero's family and converted to Judaism. A few hundred descendants of these slaves still live in the old city in what is called the Black or Slave Compound. Not an aspect of history that we talk about a lot, but I guess it's not-- And they considered themselves Palestinian today. Yep, absolutely. And it's, it is, I have heard this occasionally brought up in order to slander like Palestinians today as if it was something that only one religion did. And as that quote makes clear, there were plenty of Jewish slaveholders in Old Palestine. It was a money and a morals thing. If you were OK with it, you did it, you know? Coming into the 1880s, the Jewish population in Palestine numbered around 25,000. And Zionism as a political movement is not really-- there is some immigration from Europe, but it's not really a major political movement until like 1882. And this is when you see a bunch of smaller Jewish organizations in Europe, some of which had been sending migrants to establish farms or moved to cities in Palestine for a period of time before this start to coordinate on like a large scale, right? And that's part of the story, but not everything, because why is 1881, 1882 when this really gets going? Well, there's a lot of shit going on in Europe that makes it seem like a really good idea for a lot of Jewish people to get the fuck out of places like Russia. A big fuel for this wave of migration comes in the wake of the assassination of Zara Alexander II by anarchists. Russia blamed the Jews, as they usually did, and a program followed in the city of Kirovourad. And this isn't basically modern day Azerbaijan, if I'm understanding it. I think it's generally a zary is like the region that this is attributed to. I'm not sure specifically what country now, but that's kind of the area this is occurring in. But it spreads out of that community to the entire pale of settlement. And there's like a year and a half or two of horrific violence against Jews in a large portion. Yeah, massive. And this kind of, it leads to the Zara passing what are called the May laws in 1882, which further restrict where Jews could go and what jobs they can have, and it makes a lot of people want to leave. But per the Oxford and Cyclopedia, the history of terrorism, it does something else too. This also expedited the consolidation of Jewish nationalism. The most significant essay of the time was Ottawa Mancipation by Leon Pinsker, in which he advocated the idea of self-determination for the Jewish people in their ancient homeland. Now, it's worth talking about all this and talking about what's happening in Russia as how it helps to fuel Zionism. But it's also worth noting very few of the people who are fleeing Russia and other Jews who are fleeing Russia and other Eastern European countries in this period choose to go to Palestine. That's about of the huge number of refugees by a lot of Jews leave Russia in this, in the period immediately after 1882, about 3% of them immigrate to Palestine, right? In this first wave, by the way, it's both not big, and also a lot of them don't stay, right? Of that 3% of refugees who come into Palestine as significant, some people say most, some sources say most, leave pretty soon after, because it's like a pretty different climate than Russia. You know, a lot of people who are used to growing up there, maybe move to Palestine and they're like, "Oh, I can't handle this." Huge adjustments, right? Yeah. It's not right. New York's way easier, right, or somewhere else, you know, because it's hard to farm in the desert, right? Like, it's not the easiest place in the world, and there's not a massive amount. There's got to be cause. One of the things that causes problems is that some of these refugees who do stay, these early Zionists, a lot, most of them settle in cities, and that a lot become very integrated. But many settle in the country and start farms, or small number settle in the country and start farms. But even though it's not a lot of them, because resources are scarce, and because, you know, at this point, by the time you've had an area that's been farmed and, you know, people as long as Palestine has, there's not just a bunch of like good land that nobody's using. Right and they don't understand like indigenous farming like they're not talking to the locals They're really not adjusting well. Yeah, they're not adjusting well and there are conflicts There's you know, and in this period the violence I don't see a lot of reports about it being like hugely generally hugely Serious, it's mostly like petty theft and property damage right and you know There's some complaints from some of these Jewish farmers to the Ottoman authorities But obviously the Ottoman authorities aren't kind of take their complaints seriously not that they take a lot of Compl- the Ottoman Empire not great at addressing the complaints of its people, right? They certainly don't care about these like Zionist immigrants, right? They're the Ottomans in 1880 So from these initial concerns over security arose the first organized Jewish defense group in Palestine Which is called bargeora and bargeora and niche ultimately? I don't know if it becomes the Hashemura it's more accurate to say the Hashemura is kind of a spinoff of bargeora And then the Hashemura obviously gives away to the Haganah the Haganah becomes the IDF You know, that you see kind of how things go there But initially bargeora and the Hashemura they are like left wing organizations because the the primary Organizing kind of impetus behind them are these Jewish labor-foot federations and a lot of these had started with people kind of Organizing their communities back in the old countries and sometimes organizing like self-defense in those communities from the Gram back in the old country and so some of those people who make it over to Palestine and these are generally like leftists Initially start forming these like self-defense groups write this very first one And it's not gonna there's going to be like a right wing a major right wing swing that comes in after this And some of it is a reaction to the fact that a lot of people a lot of Zionists who are right wing are really fed up with a lot of these very left wing Like Zionist organizations and there are conflicts between them, too There's a left in a right wing Zionism is not like a single thing in terms of what people mean when they say it in this period of time Certainly not right to look at it that way people will mean a number of different things That said the kind of major Organizing like center is pretty well represented by theodore herzel, right? Who is like the big Zionist theoretician thinker of his day. You may have heard of him quoted in the big Lebowski In 1897 herzel announced the first Zionist Congress in Basil Which brought a bunch of these smaller European Zionist groups together for the first time in his biography of Menachem Begin Daniel Gordes makes it clear that Zionism developed alongside and was influenced by other nationalist movements It was not separated from them one of the things he does and obviously Gordes really likes Menachem Begin Who is a very does I mean his guy among other things does a lot of terrorism in life But one thing he does point out that I think is valuable is he has includes some quotes from Menachem and he compares them to different like it This is Menachem like quotes of that Menachem has has come up with that are like about Zionism and he compares them to different slogans and songs of like Polish nationalist groups in the area when menachem would have been growing up as a kid and points out the similarities and he's doing this to point out that Zionism cannot be extricated from Polish nationalism or German nationalism or any other kind of nationalism or they're all developing yeah exactly exactly And they're they're influencing each other right like at the same time even though a lot of these European Polish and German nationalists are also often very anti-Semitic that also influences the development of Zionism right? I mean, I'd like to point out that like we're talking about a time period like you said where like there are these empires and They're nobody is a citizen like it's not a democracy here Everyone is a subject and an empire and self-determination like nationalism fills A need you know, so like protect yourself especially like the international system starts to develop It's like we have to declare ourselves a nation and like argue for our people's rights. Otherwise, we won't be You know kind of legible on the international stage. We've got to you know move in this direction Obviously there are lots of ills that come from that, but we'll get that sure. We will and it's you know, it's also It's hard to not to understand how if you are a Jew in a place like Russia and you're constantly being told you're not Russian You're not you're part of a different thing. You don't belong here I can see how some people are like well, maybe that things, you know Zionism right maybe that's what I should be doing if I'm not a Russian if I can't be here like what else is there? And obviously that's not the choice most people make most people choose to go somewhere else for different reasons But like yeah, like you have to you can't separate this from all of the other movements at the time and this is something Gordists makes a really good point of making of writing about in his biography it began Quote the Jews like the Poles wanted their land back the Polish anthem declared Poland is not yet lost while we live We will fight with swords for all that our enemies had taken from us While the Hatikfa the Zionist anthem ended with the words our hope is not yet lost the hope of two millennia to be a free people in our land And you can see the similarities there and of course one of the big differences would be the Polish people were Singing were actively in Poland right and the European Zionists singing the Hocktava were mostly foreigners singing about land that other people already inhabit it Foreigners to the land they intended to go to right Who had not been born and raised there and that is a that is a meaningful difference right But you can also see how these things are influencing each other as they evolve In 1904 the kitchen of pogrom occurred in modern day moldova which is of course then part of the Russian Empire And the I think the cause of this is the most popular paper in kitchen of publishes a series of articles with titles like death to the Jews And crusade against the hated race I probably don't need to read you the text of any of those articles for you to get the idea of like the tenor of them right And this raises tensions to a fever pitch and then there's two murders of children one is a young boy And one is a young well one is a young girl who commits suicide right and neither of these have anything to do with the Jewish community But there are these longstanding myths and rumors that like rabbi is or sacrifice in Christian children to get their blood to do this kind of ritual right This is a huge part of like that's the term right yeah Massive part of mantisimitism history right and so when these these two young people turn up dead kind of in the same area at the same time There's just like a immediate disinformation campaign to be like it's the Jews right and then you get a pogrom right There's a massacre that starts on Easter Sunday I think 40 to 49 Jewish people are murdered hundreds more injured more than 1500 homes are damaged And the pogrom itself influences a lot more people to flee than we're directly impacted by the violence And one of the folks who is very Influenced by the kitchen of pogrom is Theodore Herzl and this this happens right before he dies He doesn't live a lot like much after this pogrom But one of his last acts and he had again not a few years before this he had held that first Zionist Congress He's a major Zionist figure But one of the things that's interesting is he gets so scared after this pogrom that he starts pitching something called the Uganda scheme And the Uganda scheme was a proposal that existed at this time that had been created by certain British imperial strategists Who thought it would be useful to kind of some of the great game politics? They were playing in Africa if they could create like a semi-independent Jewish community Not quite a state But more independent than a colony in East Africa right that could be useful to them It's like a book for there were a number of reasons they thought it would be useful right none of which had to do with the welfare of anybody in Africa Or any of these Jewish people right this is purely British power politics right and obviously Herzl and a number of other people are like well I guess you know, maybe this is better than nothing right and it doesn't go anywhere And a lot of Zionists get really angry at Herzl Because they are very focused on the primacy of Palestine with with in Zionism And Herzl is obviously somewhat more flexible where he's like look. I mean if they're offering Uganda Um, and this highlights a really important reality Which is like this whole ideology that is being developed right and all of these European Jews that are being influenced to move Are under this constant pall of doom that you know, these are the early warning signs of the holocaust and so There's a lot of Among other things it's not it wasn't definite that the Zionist movement would land on Palestine at this point in time You can see that by the fact that Herzl does embrace the Uganda plan And it also shows just how chaotic it things are how scared people are and how little knowledge there is about like where is a good idea to go and like what should be done Right It's hard to see in this period of time when these pogroms kind of rise up like this natural It's not surprising that so many Jews leave for like the United States in this period of time You know, it's really easy to see anyone who's paying attention being like well, I gotta go like that I don't know where I need to go, but like Eastern Europe is not the place to be right the fuck now like I'm I'm getting on a bus to Anywhere that's not this place right um and again, most people go to the Americas or elsewhere in Europe But it's not hard to see why they're leaving so fucking fast the first and second waves of migration to Palestine during the Ottoman Empire I known as the first and second aliyah between 1903 and 1914 35,000 to 40,000 Russian Jews moved to Palestine and it's during this time that Jewish immigrants near living near jafa Create the neighborhoods that are going to form the nucleus of Tel Aviv which eventually becomes the first like Hebrew city Right in Palestine. That's that's what people will call it It doesn't start and there's a huge like effort to deny that like jafa really was a city kind of now Because the idea that like Tel Aviv was could not have come into existence without jafa and without jafa forming a place for a lot of these Jewish communities to start And I mean until 1930 Tel Aviv's downtown was downtown jafa basically because Tel Aviv like didn't have one really like these They needed the economic opportunity that this very thriving city represented and actually that's like the basis of a lot of The tensions between them and the Palestinians is the is I mean you already mentioned kind of the labor aspect of it is like They were extremely exclusionary and they were trying to use these economics opportunities in a very kind of directed way. So they were rubbing up against a lot of issues. - It's very, what you said about them being exclusionaries, very accurate, a lot of these communities, number one, they only wanna speak European, whatever European language they came in. They're very, and they're not exclusionary just for the Muslims, they're exclusionary to the Arab Jews and the Sephardic Jews who had lived. There's a lot of complaints, a lot of quotes from Sephardics and lives in common that are like, well, these new immigrants don't even speak Arabic, like I can't even talk to them. - All right. So the conflict is not like a Muslim Jewish conflict, it is a native immigrant conflict, right? Like that's what's happening here. - When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. Just remember, this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. - Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. - I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. - They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. - I'm gonna have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed. - From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. - It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. - Hey, this is A's Davenport. - And Sean Clements. - We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook on the big money players network. - Our show is extremely accessible to first time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. - We've had a lot of great guests, like Sarah Sherman, not that great. - Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip this around, okay? What is the surprise one, man? Well, actually, you think as the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. - Love. - This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. - I would never let go of that. - I have, I would never set expectations for something like that. - It sounds like if the universe allows for something like that to happen. - I am open to it. - I'm always going to accept. - Okay. - You know, Danny McBride, fine. - Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway to be honest with you. - I was like, I was like, I was like, is that what you need? - Nope, it's fragile masculinity. - Ben stiller, no. - I think there's a lot of times out of context, people don't get it, or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, it's so stupid. - Everyone's so dumb. - And fake. - Right, fake, and also not interested, or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. - And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. - Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally, he loves the show, and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Piñero, and I travel by myself, because it's a rare space where I can say yes, without asking anyone else first. - Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smile good, that's not a lot of people smile around here. - It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran, or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - So, Jews also came to outnumber Muslims in Al-Quds or Jerusalem or the Holy City during this period. I think Cuds just means holy, right? - Yes. - Yes, yeah, yeah. So like the Holy City, yeah, the Holy, yeah. During this period, and we're talking, I think Jerusalem is about 30,000 people when that balance tips, right? So we're not talking about a massive city, but that change is significant. It shows how meaningful these kind of numbers of people that are coming in from Europe really have started to be. Most of the buildings in Jerusalem at this point in time, when Jews start to outnumber Muslims there, are still owned by Arab Muslims, right? And overall immigration to Palestine remains pretty small relative to the total population. In 1914, there are about 80,000 Jews in Palestine. And obviously that includes Sephardic and Arabic, that includes all of the other categories, not just Jews who would come in from Europe. And that means that the Jewish population is about a tenth of the total population of Palestine, kind of roughly, Jewish immigration to Palestine is not even all that significant during this period in terms of overall immigration, right? Like other people are coming in and Jews are a big chunk of that, but they're not yet, it's not yet what it's going to be, right? And as more people of foreign origin start showing up and buying property and come to dominate some neighborhoods, there are a lot of native Palestinian people who start worrying. Now, many of these, and these foreign Jews are often called Ashkenazim, right? That's one of the terms for them. They adopt, some of them do adopt like an Arab Jewish identity and they do blend into these, especially earlier refugees, blend into these earlier communities and become very integrated into these cities that are extremely multicultural in a lot of ways. But not everyone's always willing to do that and also not everyone's willing to let them, right? There are some real differences between what people are willing to accept from what they see as our Jews and what they're willing to accept from these foreigners. And I want to quote now from lives in common again. We knew they were different from our Jews. I mean, Arab Jews, we thought of them as foreigners from Europe, rather than Jews as such, wrote Gata Karmie, a Palestinian physician and writer who grew up in West Jerusalem. And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. Is that like, again, I know I'm harping on this, but these issues are not religious in nature. They're issues of like a bunch of European, showing up in a place that's not European. And like, that causes conflict, you know? - And there's a difference between immigrant and settler. Like, - Yeah, exactly. - Palestine has often, you know, historically obviously. Like, look at where it's placed. It's often, you know, absorbed different communities. But like you said, there's like the types that like blend in and then there's the ones that refuse and want to replace. - Yeah, 'cause that is a really good point. 'Cause I, I don't, and maybe I'll certainly yield to it 'cause I'm sure you've considered this more than I. I don't feel super like someone who just like is fleeing a pogrom and winds up moving to like, hebron or Jerusalem or, you know, Jaffa. And like becomes a member of the community. That's, less of a settler thing than someone who like starts a farm and like starts a separate community. - Refuses, yeah. - It doesn't want to let it, right? Those are two different kinds of things, right? - Absolutely. And the fact that they were like, especially the ones in Jaffa, for example, like they were disempowering the Palestinian laborer, you know? Like that is the issue. It's not the issue that there are new people necessarily. - Yeah, quite frankly, it's the issue that happens whenever there's a bunch of immigration from a separate place to a new place. There's always variants of these conflicts, right? Now, this is not entirely the same thing 'cause usually when that happens like in the US, you don't have a bunch of foreign organizations with a bunch of money propped up by some very wealthy people who are funding a lot of the immigration. And a lot of these Zionist groups are funded by very wealthy people who are paying for these people to go over there and sometimes paying for them to basically live. And so one of the complaints, again, that a lot of like Arab and Sephardic Jews have is that like these new immigrants, they're often just being paid to live by someone else. And that's also frustrating to me 'cause like, I'm a Jew and I've been here forever. Why don't they have to work, you know? Not that none of them are. Not that that's like most people, but these are the conflicts that are occurring, right? That is an attitude a lot of people have. And it's accurate to some of this influx community, right? And these are, we can see these conflicts starting to breed, right? Even Yakov Yehoshua, who is later the father of a celebrated Israeli novelist, claimed that Ashkenazam tended to prefer their own courtyards where they did not miss. with Muslims or Arab Jews." Muslim women descended to us from the roofs to while away the evening talking to our mothers. Our children played with their children and when other children came into the neighborhood to hurt us our Muslim friends who lived in the courtyard came to defend us. We were their allies and that is the you know the recollection of this guy Yakov who is a native and and to Palestine and Jewish right is that these immigrant communities do not have the same relationship that we do right and that quote is lovely but it doesn't apply something on lovely which is that there is still some international violence here right like the fact that in this neighborhood these Muslim their Muslim friends are like defending these these Jewish kids when they get bullied means that there also is some bullying right and I've run into quotes like that Minachem Klein's book and that's not again it's kind of happen anywhere you have like a multi think about the United States right think about whatever city you live in like there's sizable it's the United States sizeable non-white, sizable immigrant populations and if you listen to this show I hope that you consider those people your neighbors and are aren't a piece of shit and a racist but you know whatever city you live in has a not insignificant number of people who are pieces of shit and racist right against like folks who are just different that occurs everywhere there's different kinds of people right and you might not whisper yeah right right and so the fact that there's some violence like that I think says less than the fact that most of these accounts are about people being like yeah and our Muslim friends like protected us from those folks who were like you know assholes or whatever right like that's I think a better picture of life which is accurate it's kind of sound familiar to anyone who lives in the United States right and that is also Klein's conclusion right in lives in common which is that despite the fact that there are structural inequalities that Jews face under the Ottoman system in this period of time in daily life Jews and Muslims and Christians in Palestine got along and lived together much more often than they were in conflict right now that doesn't mean like things were always ideal when are they ever and there's a relevant quote from the book there relations between young Jews and their Christian and Muslim fellows sometimes grew strained Shulim at Laskov lived in Baka in the early 1920s in an apartment that the Kerakorians and Armenian family rented to her parents and to English tenants she played with the Kerakorian children and when she ate at their home she would occasionally participate in Christian prayers with them but when they fought her erstwhile friends would sneer Jewish at her right and this is a Christian family and they normally have good relations but it's this is just like people you know like yeah I think that that it's it's just human beings you're always going to encounter pieces like this right and I I don't think that should overwhelm the more important story of like this this really significant degree of social solidarity that exists in this period of time right you know the fact that there's bigotry that crops up an integrated community shouldn't take away from that but it's more and more of a day like you said oh so sorry to interrupt I was just saying like I think a bit like you said like it's like they're inferior status legally which applied also to Christian minorities like it's an Ottoman issue not their neighbor's issue right and sorry I'm smiling but my family's from Ba'ah so I can expect you to come up with a quote from there yeah I think what's one of the things that's also important to remember here is that while Arab Jews and Sephardic Jews and Christians who were born in Palestine and natives to there were second class citizens immigrant Zionist Jews weren't always treated that way especially in the latter the very near the very end of the Ottomans they might have endured more protection than Jews were native born because they're seen as European and because the Ottomans are really scared of pissing off the Europeans right not for any kind of like you know because they're necessarily more connected just because they're they're white right like the Ottomans don't want that smoke you know um that is that is a factor here right um so as more and more of these foreign more Jewish immigrants moved to Palestine in the pre-World War One years they start buying up property not just real property but in the cities and as individuals oftentimes just to you know you want a house but also a lot of these property and probably the bulk in terms of number are being bought on behalf of and buy these large organizations that are often doing it kind of strategically because they want to be able to kind of oh we would like this to be a majority Jewish neighborhood possibly because it's near in Jerusalem this happens a lot oh we want to kind of buy up as many of these communities near the wailing wall as we can right or we want to buy up as many of these communities near this other area that we're both of religious significance and that there is some conflict over and we want to move these people that we're immigrating into that's some of these large organizations are very strategically thinking about the property that they're buying that way and you have we have to deal with a couple of things when we talk about the purchase of property in Palestine by these these immigrants right if you read a lot of Israeli centered histories of Palestine you will come across the claim this is very common up to it to the present day that nearly all of the territory that became the state of Israel was uninhabited when these these these Zionist immigrants start showing up right this attitude is represented well from an article I found in the Jewish virtual library titled the Arabs in Palestine quote for many centuries Palestine was a sparsely populated poorly cultivated and widely neglected expanse of a roaded hill sandy deserts and millerial marshes mark twain who visited Palestine in 1867 described it as a desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over holy to weeds a silent mournful expanse a desolation here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life in action we never saw a human being on the whole route there was hardly a tree or shrub anywhere even the olive in the cactus tree those last friends of the worthless soil and almost deserted the country and I'm not used to being kind of pissed at mark twain but yeah where was he walking where was he walking and like he can't have seen all that much in terms of the actual expanse of the country but also I could drive through fucking Oklahoma where I grew up and be like wow a desolate expanse I didn't see a whole person for for hours like yeah man that doesn't mean the people don't aren't living there and using the land it was hot as hell maybe they weren't out there it's the s the time man like it's the estimate yeah Lewis French the British director of development wrote this of Palestine we found it inhabited by felahine who live and felahine are like Arab peasants right that we'll talk more about them later who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria large areas were uncultivated the felahine if not themselves cattle thieves were always ready to harbor these and other criminals the individual plots changed hands annually there was little public security and the felahines lot was an alteration of pillage in blackmail by their neighbors the betta win and I want to note both how divorced from that is from real history in the history I've read you so far I've read you a bunch of counts of accounts and these are all from like the 18 80s 18 90s the same basic period of time those two quotes I read about no one being in Palestine and these are quotes in a lot of cases from people who become Israelis who are like no there was like a vibrant community that I was a part of like a vibrant settled community that I was a part of it was mostly non Jewish right we have plenty of accounts like that this is obviously not true right and even that Jewish virtual library article cannot go long without technically admitting to the fact that what they've said previously is not really accurate the very next sentence after the stuff I just read reads the Arab population at the time was approximately 600,000 compared to 94,000 Jews well that's not nobody that seems like a good number to hit it yeah they're not here yeah and one one of the things that goes on that kind of obscures this this errant and deliberately errant view of reality is that there's just a lot less people in the world there's a massive boom in the human population that occurs kind of during this the end of the 18 hundred early 1900s a lot of it has to do with like the paper brush process with the fact that we figure out how to create a lot of nitrogen for fertilizer but human being like there's way more people in 20 or 30 years from now the period we're talking about and there are going to be later and so you can see that as like oh the these Jewish immigrants these scientists immigrants brought civilization to Palestinians like no there's more people everywhere man it's just what happened like we figured out how to make for fertilizer I don't know what to tell you and they just didn't understand like how these like for the hain like organized their land yes you know they didn't have yeah they didn't have like the property rights system that they were you know accustomed to and there was an example it's a whole thing that they don't understand or protected you and they didn't care to right now that article quoted Lewis French a British agent who lived in Palestine after the Ottoman Empire fell in the west to cover governance and he talked about the fellow he in these traditional Arab desert peasants as if they lived in primitive filth and were basically just bandits and I want to read you a different description of these guys from a Sephardic Jewish man named Joseph Mayus and Joseph Mayus is a Zionist although not not the kind you're used to hearing about we're gonna talk about what he believes because it's really interesting and he grows up in pal Abbi he's a he's a local right and he later wrote that when he was a kid which is kind of around this I think it's a little later than this but it's before things really start to get terrible he writes that for a 10 year period where he's a young man he's going to school he's training he was quote a constant guest in the homes of the fellas in the evening when I returned from the hater or during vacations and holidays I would always visit Muhammad and Fatma as well as Ali and Khadija my favorite neighbors they fed me of their bread I drank of their water and sometimes they honored me with their conversations and stories as dessert until late at night I would sleep in their homes and in this manner all their manners values way of life speech and the stories I loved served as my childhood education right that's a very different picture of the fella I think and Mayus felt the need to write down his recollections of life and end of the fallahine because during the 20s and 30s things started to get a lot uglier and he started to hear a lot of these very racist claims about these people that he'd grown up with and knew was not true and he starts to witness Jewish and Muslim communities closing off from each other becoming more hostile and this frightens and saddens him Mayus is a teacher of a heap an Arabic as well as French at the Evelina de Rothschild School for Girls. The Rothschilds fund a lot of the Zionist immigration in this period of time. That's not. I know people, when you're giving up the Rothschilds, it's nearly always conspiracy stuff. This is a thing like the Rothschilds do, right? They're funding a lot of this because they believe in this. And Mayuhas thinks it's his duty because of the kind of Zionist he is. He thinks it is his duty to encourage his co-religionists to admire, learn from, and blend in with the fallahine because they've lived there much longer, right? From the book Lives in Common, quote, "Mayuhas viewed the phylas as the original Arabs, as opposed to the desert nomads in the merchants of the cities." The phylas he wrote were the descendants of the Canaanites who are considered the most ancient inhabitants of Palestine. They've fully preserved all the ancient customs and more and more is that the Jews have forgotten because of their exile. In other words, his view is we don't need. we don't need to be separate from these people. We need to learn from them and become part of their community and let them teach us because they're living a more authentic version of ancient Jewish life than us, and we should learn more from them to honor them, right? That's his attitude as a Zionist, right? Because to him, it means something very different than it does to guys like Herzl. Foreign-born immigrants were likely to see Zionism as a struggle of conquest. In fact, that was probably certainly the dominant after a certain period of time, attitude. Whereas Mayuhas is a local, right? And he believes that Arabs and Jews are spiritual brothers and cousins, right? If European immigrants wanted to thrive in Palestine, he reasoned they need to have a close and respectful relationship with Arabs in order to be successful. How do you know how to live here? If you're not going to learn from these people who have lived here forever, right? And it should not break here, by the way. Yeah, sorry, shit. I don't know. Yeah, here's an Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the big money players network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. I actually, can you help me, can you, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this around? Okay. How, what is the surprise one then? Adam Scott, this entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that. I have, I would never set expectations for something like that. It seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen, I am open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I was like, is that weird? No, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. I think there's a lot of times in out of context, people don't get it, or even know what a circle is, you know what I mean? Like you're like, oh, it's so stupid. Everyone's so dumb. And fake, right? Fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're a for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm gonna have to look up this story. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is the Trojan horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and health captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced, but these aren't stories about what's taken from them. Their story is about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Bignero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meaning people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Sorry, I found that this guy really interesting because you don't hear about stories like this all that often or attitudes like this. It's interesting the counterpoint he provides these attitudes that like these people really meant nothing and had no impact on the development of society and civilization in Palestine. I think it's really important to look at someone who's not creating propaganda post-taste. This is somebody who lives in this area and lives in this life it is horrified by what he sees happening in the 20s and 30s. We'll talk about Mayuhas a little more later. So as for modern Israeli claims of a barren and empty Palestine, the reality is that prior to the mid 20th century, the area is a lot less populated, but at the end of the 18th, early 19th century, there's a population and it's not even World War I takes a real bite at a population growth in the region. Don't get me wrong, but it does start to happen after this period of time. This is also something that modern Israeli scholarship likes to credit Jewish immigration for, but the reality is this is happening in a lot of ways for the same reasons it's happening in many other places. Near the end of the 1800s, new rail lines open up and connect Palestine to the world and it brings trade and also brings tourists, right? A lot of European tourists want to come and see the holy land, and those tourists would have seen Jerusalem if they came in like 1900 as an incredibly cosmopolitan city. The Al-Wad neighborhood, to give one example, hosted three churches, three synagogues, and seven mosques. The many Jewish and Muslim holidays were celebrated by members of all faiths in particularly diverse neighborhoods. In the summer 2000 issue of Jerusalem Quarterly, Salim Tamari writes about an Ottoman era Muslim named Wasif Jawariah. "It was a pre-nationalist era in which religious identity embraced the other in its festivals and rituals. Jawariah narrates that the feast of Easter / Pesah as an occasion for Muslim Christian Jewish celebrations. He details the Muslim processions of Palm Sunday, which proceeded from the Abrahamic mosque in Hebron towards Jerusalem. The festival of Al-Nabi Musa is recalled here as a Muslim popular celebration that merges with the Christian Orthodox Easter. The Fantasia of Sapt Al-Nur fire Saturday commemorating the resurrection of Christ, as seen as the greatest popular Christian celebration in Palestine, closely coordinated with Muslim folk festivals. Purim was celebrated by Christian and Muslim youth in Jewish neighborhoods. Wasif describes in detail the costumes they wore on this occasion. Twice a year Muslim and Christian families, including the Jawariah family, joined the Jewish celebrations at the shrine of Simon the Justice in Sheikh Jarrah at the event known as Shafat Al-Yahudya, where heimed the Ud player and Zaki the tambourine player would sing the accompaniment of Andalusian melodies. Yeah, not a vision a lot of people want you to have of Palestine in 1900. I have to tell you like the Palestine that I was born and grew up in like even in my lifetime I'm 35. Like I've seen the progression of like that lessening even more. But I remember celebrating Christian holidays and like there was a lot of integration obviously the Jewish holidays have been kind of you know they've given them that they have kind of a different you know salience at this point but even even now like in the last 35 years we've seen a huge decline in that like and the city has changed so much. So you can imagine how much more it used to be integrated back then. Yeah, it's really sad to think about. I mean, yeah. Now again, obviously as I've noted, people are not, you know, Jews and Christians are not equal citizens of the Ottoman Empire. They have to pay an extra tax and they don't enjoy all of the same rights, but they're also protected by the state and allowed to worship as long as they accept their faith as subordinate, right? And that's alone doesn't really do a fair job of explaining the complex social and religious status quo that would have existed during the last days of Ottoman rule. As Daniel Schrochter, a historian at the University of Minnesota, told Canadian Jewish news reporter Jodi Schopak, quote, "The idea that Jews lived to second-class citizens makes little sense in this context because the idea of citizenship didn't apply in the pre-modern Islamic world," Schroeder said, adding, "Islam did see Jews and Christians as inferior, but that didn't prevent peaceful interactions between Jews and Muslims on a quotidian level, right?" And it's also important to keep in mind, right? That like, you can't really think about a quality and citizenship in nearly the same way that you can, right? Nobody was. Nobody had any rights. And when we say inferior, it's like, it's because Muslims believe in their faith, and they see these people who don't believe. It's the same as Christians. They're like, are these non-believers? They're less than us. Like it's the same thing. And it's not when people are using it, again, it's like when they're talking about people, how long someone's been here. That doesn't mean they don't think you're like a person who has worth their value. Well, your family hasn't been here quite as long, right? In the case of like, if you're speaking like a Spanish derive tongue in Palestine, you have it, right? Not that, you know, that matters in turn. Again, it doesn't generally matter in terms of how people treat each other in this period of time. That said, the fact that like things are, you've got all of these, among other things, a lot of wealthier Europeans are coming in, right? A lot of these, these, these Zionist immigrants are poor and they're being supported by money by wealthier people, but there's also wealthier immigrants coming in. And especially since they're white in European, they enjoy better treatment, right? And they're also buying up a lot of properties. We've talked about for future Jewish residents, and that causes conflict, not just with Muslim residents. In the first decades of Zionist migration, many Arab Jews and Sephardic Jews were extremely prejudiced against these new immigrants, in part because they didn't speak the language very well in part because they kept to themselves, and often were kind of mean to some of the Sephardic communities. There's a lot of conflict between the different Jewish communities in this period of time. Adding to the irritation that many Sephardic residents felt was the fact that a sizeable number of these new immigrants lived off money donated by wealthier Zionists. In 1891, that's the very first time that prominent Arab citizens of Jerusalem petitioned the government to stop Zionist immigration to Palestine by banning the sale of land of foreign Jews. They're starting to see this as a cultural invasion by Europeans, and they argue that it represents the threat to their culture. And as always, is the case with complaints like this. The people who made the most loudly are also the people who profited from the exact immigration they declined. And that's a big part of this, right? As Manachem Klein writes, the leaders of the Hussaini family, who lobbied the court to place restrictions on Zionists, also sold them land. Jerusalem's mayor, Tahir Al Hussaini, approved the sale of land to the Zionists and engaged in such transactions himself. In 1899, Rabat Al Hussaini sold the colonial lands west of Jerusalem to the Zionists, where the latter built the farming village of Mutza. He also helped Jewish land buyers get around the Ottoman land law stipulation that land which had not been farmed for three years automatically became state property. Ibrahim Said Al Hussaini worked for Baron Edmund D. Rothschild's land company J.C.A. He later resigned and signed protests against the Zionists. Saleem Al Hussaini made a fortune in real estate ventures with the Jewish community and partnered in a hotel with Yitzhak Rokak, an Ashkenazi resident of Jerusalem. And we'll hear about Yitzhak Rokak and the Rokak family a little bit late. Well, actually right now, because Rokak is interesting. His son, Shimon, moves to Jaffa and creates a series of Jewish community organizations, right? And he buys a bunch of land. And while his father had worked with the Hussaini family to buy up the land, and he'd be happy to do that, Rokak refuses to deal at all with Arabs, right? Once he's got property and once he owns property, he stops wanting to have any kind of dealings with the Arab community at all, with Muslims at all. Quote, he wanted to keep his distance from them, becoming one of the initiators of the construction of Neveid Setic, the Jewish neighborhood outside Jaffa's walls that became the nucleus of Tel Aviv. Shimon's son, Israel, was elected mayor of the new city. And this is something that Israel said after being elected mayor of Tel Aviv. Jaffa played no role in world history nor in Israeli history, and one cannot find their any relic of ancient culture from any period at all, Mayor Rokak said. And again, we've just heard that like, well, the only reason the Rokak family had the land that allowed them to do all this in the first place is because of like very close business relationships with with Arab Muslims, right? Like, and Jaffa Tel Aviv starts out of Jaffa, it's just, it's just, I don't know, I know we're getting a little bit off the topic here, but it really, it's really frustrating. If people are interested in this element, especially, I would recommend Elon Poffe's book on al-Hassanis, because it's really, I always remember this anecdote that like, one of the al-Hassanis also sold the land that later Hebrew university was built on. So it's like a very interesting kind of dynamic. Like, I think you're right that like they benefited a lot. I think also they didn't recognize what was right. What was happening? Yeah. That's part of this, dude. Like they're, there's this, this is, you can see a lot of this initially as like relative goodwill of like, well, why would I sell a house to them? And then it becomes like 20 or 50 or 100 and like, well, wait a second, there's something going on here. And obviously that is, I mean, there also are people who are pretty aware of what's going on and like, but I want to get money, right, and get my bag. That's always a factor too, but a lot of people, you know, it's not immediately clear what's happening, too. And I think some of this is just a sign that like, yeah, people weren't really all that shitty, you know, to, to their neighbors. They were like, well, yeah, these guys want to buy up some buildings. Why not? Right? And there's a close difference, too. It's like, yeah, you're a wealthy landowner. The, the, the land that lives on your land is going to get screwed. You don't really care. Yeah. And I, I do suspect a lot of these who say these would have seen these other wealthier like Jewish immigrants as more of like their type of people than like, certainly the fillahi, right? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, one of the things I didn't want to note about Rokok's statement there where he's like, uh, Jaffa played no role in world history, right? Nor, nor Israeli history. One of the things he's doing there, he's not just erasing like Palestinians from local history. He's erasing Arab Jews as well as like Muslim Arabs here because men like Rokok had to in order to make their view of history work. The reality is that they're in their community started out nestled in cities and towns filled with people who had been there for generations. And we're only able to get off the ground because of a lot of support from those people, including like the Muslim population. It took a purposeful effort to block these new immigrant Jewish communities off from their neighbors. That was not a natural state of affairs. It was a state of affairs that members people within these communities and people leading them had to want to make because they had to stop integration from happening, right? That is also a thing that's happening consciously and being done consciously. Now, some of the effort and some of the conflict here comes from a lot of these new immigrants see themselves. They are Europeans and they want to build new European-style cities. They don't like Arabic cities. They see them as barbaric and backwards. You'll hear that a lot. And that's a major motivation behind many of the settlements that become Tel Aviv. It's created as a European-style city for European Jewish immigrants who did not want to immigrate and didn't want to stop speaking European languages, right? That's like a big motivation for them in this period of time. Now, alongside this, 1909 sees the establishment of the Hashomer by Yitzak Benzvi and David Ben Gurion. This was a paramilitary organization meant to guard Jewish settlements and it's again the precursor to the Haganah. And it's often described as and certainly describes itself as a purely defensive, like, like, militia in this period of time, right? Although if you look at the Haganah slogan at its establishment, it doesn't sound purely defensive because the slogan is Judea was lost by blood and fire and will rise again by blood and fire, which is like, not super friendly. Like, I'm going to be honest, if some guys moved into my neighborhood and started walking around with guns and that was their motto, I'd be like, I don't know, there's a sound all that defensive. Well, a blood and fire. We don't have a lot of blood and fire in the neighborhood right now and I'm not really sure we need any. It's important to document the prevalence of that attitude even then without acting like it's the only one. Many Jews in Palestine preferred to work within the system. In the latter days of Ottoman rule, the growing Jewish community in Jerusalem especially was able to exercise great power by voting together. The Arab elite were fractured and Jewish leaders offered support to families like the Hussainis who could wield power directly in exchange for quid pro quo benefits. One such benefit was an early attempt to take possession of the western wall, a particularly holy site. The Hussaini family owned most of the houses on the other side of this alley and opposite, there's like a line of homes that are owned by the Jewish community and a line of homes on the other side that are their own primarily by Muslims right by the Hussaini family and occupied by Muslims and if the Hussainis sell these homes, they can be bulldozed and the alley broadened right and it made kind of an entirely Jewish community right. Mustafa Al Hussaini actually sells a number of these properties to Baron Rothschild in 1887 but fears among rabbis of a backlash and it's rabbis who were like wait a second, if we if we let this go through, it's going to like make people really paranoid and race. This is probably a bad idea and the deal does sputter out. In 1897 the Hussainis nearly sold the whole alley to Rothschild again from the al-Wakh religious trust until protest from Arab families forces him to stop right. So they're trying to do this and they're a protest from both the Jewish community and from the Muslim community that stopped this from happening and that's that also is really worth acknowledging right. In 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. Things come to a head when David Yellen, of the Association to maintain historical sites in the land of Israel, writes to the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman court, and he asks him to push the sultan to sell the western wall to the association. For the book Lives in Common, Yellen did not have the money to do so. He estimated the price would be at least 1 million French francs, including a 10% bribe for their relevant municipal officials. But he presumed he could obtain it from Jewish millionaires as soon as the Ottomans agreed to the sale in principle. But this never happens either, because Yellen had greatly overestimated how much money there was for the cause, right? Now, attempts like this, and continued immigration, spark unrest, and occasionally even violence from the Arab community. And a late attempt to slow this kind of migration, the Ottomans make it law that only someone with a thousand pounds or more in assets can apply for an immigration certificate. And this doesn't really stop anything. It basically creates another opportunity to bribe Ottoman officials. And one thing that like some rich people who want to like bring more folks in, they'll like put it, add the name of a poor immigrant on their door to make it look like they're part of the family for long enough for the officials to check to see like, okay, does there's someone financially supporting them? There's ways around all this stuff, right? Up through the start of World War One, then most Arab residents in Palestine had little reason to fear Zionism or believe that Jewish immigration would have a huge impact on their lives. There are people getting frustrated by it. There are conflicts over it, but it's not like the dominant thing happening, right? One of the relatively few people to see into the future accurately was Najib Azuri, Lebanese Maronite Christian who worked for the Ottoman government during its last days in Jerusalem. He declared in 1905 that Zionism and Arab nationalism were, quote, doomed to constant struggle until one overwhelms the other. And that is, again, Arab nationalism is really building this time again. We talk, we've done our whole series of episodes on Lawrence of Arabia. The great Arab revolt occurs during World War One that's happening in this period. It's happening because people are pissed at the fucking Ottomans, right? And so as much as some of these conflicts are going on in these cities, the much broader conflict is these, the much broader conflict Arab nationalists are interested in is dealing with these fucking Ottomans, right? Yeah. That's by far the termination of firearms generally. Right. Right. Yes. And obtaining, I was putting it crudely, but yes, obtaining self-determination, you know, both things are true. Right. Right. And yeah, also Arab Christians are also part of this. A lot of Arab Christians are Arab nationals because they're not being treated very well by the Ottomans, right? They're kind of a godfathers of it actually. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of Arab Christians want to be included in the community. So like a lot of the big names of Arab nationals and like Constantinus and like other people like that, they're Christians. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really important point. So the people who are most invested in a multicultural Palestine, then sometimes find themselves in this period supporting the ailing Ottoman Empire. And this is very weird. Like, Mayushia is one of a number of Zionists who want the Ottoman Empire to last because they, they see that it's kind of keeping a lot of conflict from happening within the community, right, within Palestine, right? The fact that there's these, these Turks who are like, you know, in charge of everything kind of stops a lot of conflict that might otherwise brew up. And Mayushia believes that Zionism is doomed to disaster if the Ottomans fall. He believes that everything, not just Zionism will fail, but Zionism will like, there will be horrible violence in this place that he loves between these communities that he loves if the Ottoman Empire falls. And he is right about that really. Up until the end of World War One though, most people would have been hard pressed to believe that something like that would really happen. It would be crazy to predict in like 1910, as someone living in Palestine as a normal person, that like, oh, the Ottomans are on their last legs. They don't have a full decade left of life. You, most people wouldn't have made that guess, because the Ottoman Empire had been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. And so, as a result, a lot of Muslim political leaders in this period of time treat Zionism as like a special interest to be courted, right? Salim Al Hussein, he served as mayor of Jerusalem for much of the 1880s and 1890s, and he was elected thanks to Jewish voters. In a speech he argued that Zionism, quote, is not a political movement, but a settlement one. And I am certain that no intelligent and rational Zionist will consider the establishment of a Jewish government in Palestine. Hmm. Famous, I mean, not last words, but not right, correct ones. Right, right. Yeah, he maybe didn't know enough about the Zionism. Yeah, maybe wasn't a saying enough. Right, attention. And unfortunately, one of the people who is very much seeing correctly where things are going is a major right wing Zionist leader named Vladimir Yeva Tensky, right? He had been born in Odessa in modern day Ukraine in 1880 to an assimilated Jewish family. And Yeva Tensky had become a Zionist prior to the Cition of Pagrom, and he had become a popular speaker and influential organizer. And he responded to that Pagrom by initially in Russia advocating and helping to organize the construction of Jewish self-defense groups. He was extremely controversial, as was his slogan, "Jewish youth learn to shoot." And obviously, when he's in Russia being like, "Hey, I think we might need some guns," hard to argue with the man, right? I mean, Zionist and non-Zionist said the same thing. Yeah, he's not going to stay there long, right? Like that's just kind of the fact. And we'll talk a lot more about him, about what happens to Zionism, what happens to Palestine, after and during World War I, in part two. But, you know, this is the end of part one. How we feeling? Wow, we covered so much. We did, that was a lot. People should like read the books, you know, and stuff that we're talking about, obviously, to get much more comprehensive. But, yeah, we got to fly through what's 60 years about. Yeah. Anyway. World events. Yeah, none of what you're new to you. But yeah, all right, anything you want to plug at the end here before we roll out in the part two? Yeah, check out the handbook on, uh, Authorities and In the Airbolts. Yes. Yes. Loops very politics. Yeah, awesome. All right, everybody. We'll be back Thursday. Woo! Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix. You don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. I choose Option B. 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