The War Before the War: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Orrin Kessler. Orrin Kessler is a writer, journalist, and political analyst whose work has appeared in foreign affairs, foreign policy, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He's also the author of Palestine 1936, "The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict." This episode is all about the Arab Revolt of the late 1930s. Back when what is today Israel was British Mandate Palestine. That revolt set the stage for the war that Israelis called their war of independence and Arabs called the Nakba. And we could see the seed of many features of today's Israel-Palestine conflict in that revolt. In this conversation, we also talk about whether it's true as Dave Smith and others frequently alleged that Israel introduced terrorism into the region. So without further ado, Orrin Kessler. Okay. Orrin Kessler, thanks so much for coming on my show. Thank you so much, Coleman, for having me. I've been a fan for a long time, your book on Palestine 1936, which is like one of the only comprehensive books for the general public on the very important Arab riots from '36 to '39 is excellent. I highly recommend people read it. And that's a lot of what we'll cover today, but we'll also cover some general topics on the history of the Arab Israeli conflict. And maybe a few of your thoughts about what's going on. Now, before we get to that, how did you come to have such an interest in the late 1930s Mandate Palestine? And what was your background up to that point that led you to write that book? Yeah. And I grew up on me. I grew up in upstate New York for the most part in Rochester, and a little bit here in Tel Aviv where I'm talking to you from. I was a journalist and a think tanker for a long time. I was a journalist here in Israel at Haaretz, Jerusalem Post. I covered Arab affairs. I was a translator for a while. And then I got a stringer for foreign policy in a few other places. And then I started sort of think tanking in London and then in DC. I was in DC for about five years. It was Deputy Research Director at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But I had always been kind of a history buff. And I'd always had a somewhat masochistic urge to write about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. My parents are from here. My parents are both from Israel from Tel Aviv. And as I mentioned, we lived here for a bit when I was growing up. And for whatever reason, I always wanted to write a book about this place. But I very quickly discovered that a lot of other people had had that exact same idea. And so it was really, I was quite discouraged for a while, recognizing that every, seemingly every aspect of this history, this conflict, had been written about from 15 different angles. But then I discovered this period of the great Arab Revolt in 1936 to 39, which was really very much under, under written about, under studied, under under known, if that's a word. And but really just really seminal and formative and decisive in sort of shaping the conflict as we know it today in many ways. And just populated by really fascinating, compelling characters on all three sides. And it's important to remember there are three sides. It's a triangle in this period. The Arabs, the Jews, and of course the Brits who were running the show. And so that was really sort of the impetus just to kind of fill that gap in the literature of telling the story of this Revolt and everything that emanated from it for all sides, for the Arabs side, for the Jewish side, for the conflict, for attempts to resolve the conflict. And just sort of the legacies thereof until today. So giving your identity as a Jew and you live in Israel, obviously writing about the history of this conflict, inevitably people on the other side, many of them will just dismiss any argument in the book that you don't like. Or any section of the book that they don't like as partisan, right? Like you're partisan to the conflict. So how can you play the role of objective historian? They would say, how do you approach writing, trying to write a work of history knowing that at some level you have a dog in the fight, right? Yeah, it's a great question. This may be bad luck to say it, but somehow I've gotten much less flak than I expected. I knew I was stepping into a minefield. I expected to get it from all directions. But really, if anything, I've gotten a little more flak from the sort of pro-Israel side, but not that much. The only negative reviews of editorial reviews that the book has gotten were now three years later when the book came out in Hebrew because, of course, Israelis are a very critical society and the critics here have some thoughts. But other than that, the book has gotten, has been well received as far as I know, including from sort of pro-Palestinian quarters and critics. In terms of how to navigate that, it's very difficult. It's difficult for anybody. There's probably no such thing as objective history. There's with every choice that you make as a historian, as a writer, every choice of what you choose to include and not include. That's a choice. And oftentimes, you don't know why you're making these choices. It's not a deliberate. You're like, "Okay, I'm going to put this in to show this." You don't know what exactly is operating behind what's interesting to you, what's compelling, and what's not. But what I tried to do in this book is really to find the most kind of eloquent, spokespeople on all three sides and let them make their best case to the reader and then let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. For example, on the Arab side, one of my main characters is a guy named George Antonio, who was a very prominent Cambridge-educated Arab intellectual originally from Lebanon, lived in Jerusalem many years. He wrote a book called The Arab Awakening in 1937, '38, which was very, very influential. It was kind of the seminal book in English, anyway, on Arab nationalism. And so there's another man, Nusah Alami, who's also a Cambridge man. And these are in my book. And they're very eloquent. They're very, especially Alami, is very sympathetic in his way. Very, very charming, very intelligent, had a lot of friendships across ethnic and religious lines. And so through these really compelling characters, I, this sounds like a Columbia Seminar or something, but I try to complicate the, you know, I think the reader sometimes feels like, "Oh, wow, that's a really good point." Oh, shit. This other side makes you a really good point and it's, and because it's very, very complex at the end of the day. Yeah, there are definitely a lot of, a lot of elements and quotes from both of those people as well as others, other more known figures like Ben Gourillon and Al Husaini that I hadn't seen in other, in other histories, more broad histories of the, the, the Arab is really conflict. So I highly recommend that for, for people. It was a really, it was also a fun read, actually. So thank you for writing that book. Thank you so much, Koma. So let's see. Where do I want to start? Let me start with this, this point because it's one I raised recently in that I've been thinking about. I've sometimes been called a Zionist because, you know, on Joe Rogan and, and, and other spheres talking to Dave Smith. I defend Israel's right to defend itself from terrorists on its borders. I think the establishment of the state of Israel was a defensible choice, certainly defensible choice at the time. And now that it's there, I defend its right to maintain its security the same way I feel I would defend Australia's right to maintain its security against terrorists that wanted to dissolve the Australian state. But I don't answer to the word Zionist. I've never, I've never quite understood why I would need to be, someone like me would need to be categorized as Zionist or that there needs to be the word Zionism at all. And someone on the internet put it this way, which I, I very much recognize myself in, which is like, I'm very much against slavery. I would never call myself an abolitionist. Why? Because the abolitionist movement was a specific historical movement that took place in the 18th 19th century, it achieved its aim, which was to abolish slavery legally. And now abolitionists only exist in history books. Right. Zionists were a movement that wanted to establish a Jewish state somewhere in Palestine. That state was established in 1948. It's been a UN member state since then. And now Zionists, in my view, only exists in history books. What do you make of the word Zionist? Is it necessary? Is it useful? And do you identify as one? I agree with you completely. And I've heard you make that point, but I think it was it was Dave Smith and some other podcasts. I think it's incredibly strange that that this word still exists only for this country. And as you say, there's there's no comparable word for any other country. There's no, you know, whether Pakistan should or shouldn't exist is not debated other than I presume a few diehards in India, maybe more than a few, are still angry about it. But it's not a it's not a it's not a worldwide topic of discussion. It's so I would agree that I mean to to be a Zionist even a sort of passive by default Zionist just means you're not trying to dismantle this country or completely overhaul its demographics. And I'm not aware of any other country where where again, where anyone other than perhaps the parties involved, you know, I know that there are you know, serbs and and Kosovars have beef and Indians of Pakistanis and they're all kinds of beef and rivalries and and conflicts in the world. But for this to be a topic of conversation that that the entire world is meant to have an opinion on whether this country should exist, structure is incredibly strange in suspect. So all this is to say I essentially agree with you. In fact, I think the India Pakistan comparison is incredibly apt in many ways. And it's one that I'm not quite sure why it's not made more often. This was the the partition of India was exact was a year before the partition of Palestine, both of them of course were part of the British Empire. You even have the similarity of the you know the eyesight and the peace side all the enough. I'm no expert at all in the partition of India but just at face value, you've got you've got one side of that once independence based solely on on religion right. My understanding is that we're do and Hindu and Hindi are essentially interchangeable other than the script that they're written in some. Yeah, the differences are emphasized because of the political divisions, but yeah, it's like British English and American English maybe even more similar. Right. Right. I actually I understand that it's even more different than say German and Yiddish. Yiddish is often described as German and Hebrew characters, but Hindi and ordo is understand that are essentially interchangeable mutually understandable. It's really the only difference. I'm sure I'm simplifying here, but the difference is a religious one. And the movement for Muslim independence in India succeeded despite the wishes of Gandhi and others. And the the fallout from that partition was so massive, the damage the cost in blood and treasure was so massive, but it's over for the world again, except for some folks in India, it's over. Pakistan nobody has an opinion on whether Pakistan should exist. I suspect at you know at the risk of getting ahead of my skis, I suspect Mayor Mamdani doesn't have doesn't isn't isn't you know it doesn't stay up at night, um, bemoaning the the existence of Pakistan. Whereas, um, right. You have, you know, I think there's something like 15 million people were displaced in that partition on both sides of the belief and at least half a million were killed. I mean horrific human suffering, right. And yet on the Israel Palestine question, everyone is meant to be an expert and a revisionist. And um, and to it's it's instructions incredibly odd. So it's either that the the the circumstances in which Israel was born are so nefarious that it alone among the nations needs to be undone. Or there's something else going on that that to me is quite suspect. All this is to say, I'm a dual citizen of the US and Israel, the vast majority of Jewish Israelis are want this country to continue to to to be what it is so that that would make me a Zionist. And I would add there was an interesting pull of of American Jews recently in which they asked about this this word, the z word. And um, and about one third of American Jews, I hope I'm getting this right. One third of American Jews, perhaps this one third of young American Jews, I think it was one third of all all Jews identify as Zionists, all Jews. And then they asked, okay, do you do you want Israel to continue to be to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and and of eight and ten said, yeah, for of course. So then there's Zionists. If you're if this if you're not trying to dismantle, I listen to your podcast with Robert Wright and he said, you know, there's a moment that I recognize that Zionist because I realize I'm I support the two state solution. So, um, so that's all it requires to be Zionist. I think it's been a tremendously effective PR campaign by the call them propel Stinion or anti-Israel crowd to make this word really toxic to make it right up there with white supremacist racist, you name it. And it's and I've really noticed the difference just in the past just in the past few years that it's really it's been a very very successful branding of this word is something that nobody or very few people want to be associated with. Yeah, I mean, the it's it's interesting to me because it's almost a kin to the idea of being an American colonist, right? It's like at a certain point in history, there were people that many people that strongly felt American should conquer all of North America or most of North America. And essentially that happened, right? Like we instigated war with Mexico. We took territory. We took it from the Indians. We pushed them further west. All kinds of things were done. Uh, be out of a strong belief that from from sea to shining sea, the terror, you know, we had a destiny handed down from God actually to and so to to be an American colonist sort of meant something in that in that context. Now that America's here to stay and we have the international norm that borders are grandfathered in no matter pretty much no matter how how they got there because almost all borders involved, you know, atrocities, wars, forced migrations, tragedies, and so forth. It's really, it's very few innocent situations of nations just kind of coming into their territory peacefully. That's not that's not what history looks like. Even though some on the left would like to paint, you know, indigenous histories as if there wasn't war and human sacrifice and conquest. And then you run into questions like, well, how did how did he ask tech empire get so big? Did they just they just were born that big? They were the only how did the how did the you know, the how to China become so large? It was just for some reason, you know, a third of Asia was speaking the same language overnight. Well, no, all of these things involved a mix of conquest and violence and voluntary conversion and and all kinds of things. So once that norm is there, I think, I think it behooves the world to just to just accept it. So I want to get into some aspects of your book that are interesting to me. I mean, one sticking on my Dave Smith podcast, one of the points he made and it's a common talking point among anti-Israel folks is that actually Jews introduced terror to the region of if you want to call it historic Palestine. And this is often this point is often used as a way of justifying Palestinian terror today. In other words, how can you really be against terror targeting civilians for political aims or targeting property for political aims when that's exactly what Jewish groups like like Lehigh did against the British. So that I guess there's two related points. One is like does Jewish terror during the mandate period justify Palestinian terror today? Does that make Jews hypocrites to complain about Hamas? That's one point. And then there's just a historical point. Did Jews introduce terror to this region where that tactic was previously unknown? I'll take the second question first because it's so easy to answer, which is no. Clearly, I don't know of any reputable historian, maybe I need to read more widely, who believes that there's the Lehigh, which you mentioned, this hardline extremist, you could say Jewish group, is founded in 1941. So in the period of my book, 36 to 39, in which I would remind, well, I don't need to remind you because you read the book, but I would remind listeners 500 Jews and about 250 British servicemen were killed in the Arab revolt. And so left he didn't exist yet at that point. What did exist in the mid and late 30s was an organization called the Ergun, also known as Ezel in the Bayehit Hebrew acronym, the National Military Organization. And this organization really starting in 1937, starts to wage attacks that can only be described as terrorism. We're talking about leaving bombs in Arab-Vedital markets with the intention of killing Arab civilians. If that's not a terrorism, then nothing is. And so certainly starting in 1937, you have an organized Jewish group, not large, but an organized Jewish group that wages dozens of these attacks. It's all in my book. That said, this is many years after Arab terrorism appeared on the scene in Mandate Palestine. The first sort of, you could say mass casualty attack in Mandate Palestine. Is before the Palestine Mandate is even ratified. It's in April 1920, it's called the Nabimus riots, in which it actually doesn't sound like a mass casualties by today's standards. But about five Jews were killed and many more wounded in and around Jerusalem. And then in 1921, you had the Jaffa riots in which 50-some Jews were killed that's just a year after. And then more famously, infamously, you had the 1929 Hebron riots, which were in Hebron and it's fought in a few other places in the country, which were very incredibly grim and gruesome, really reminiscent of the October 7th attacks in their cruelty, in which 133 Jews were killed. And there were quite a few instances of rape and just really horrific violence. So that was all 1929. And so this is not to excuse for a moment of the act of leaving bombs in the Arab-Bitchable Market in Haifa. But the notion that the Jews started it has no basis in history. What the Arab argument was in the period by more articulate figures like George Antonius, which was this political hour, not hour, but the Arab physical violence is a direct response to the moral and political violence that's being done against us, with this mass Jewish immigration, with holding our national rights, while all of our Arab brethren around us are moving towards independence, we are stuck in this strange and in their mind, unjust system called the Jewish National Home, in which, of course, the Balfour Declaration is enshrined and Britain is committed under its League of Nations obligations to facilitate large-scale Jewish immigration to the land and close settlements on the land. So that's how I would look at it. Yeah, I mean, the thing about this early period is that you can just, I at least can just easily see the argument on both sides. Right? Like if I put myself in the shoes of a Jewish refugee at any point from 1880 to 1945, whether it's I'm fleeing massacres in my Russian village, where pogroms swept after the change in czar, or whether I'm fleeing Nazi Germany, fleeing Poland, whatever it is, and the entire world after 1920 or so, 24 is basically closed off to me. I can't go to New York anymore. That's where Jews have been going for a very long time. You know, you can't go to Canada. You basically can't go anywhere because of the quotas. And I'm very reasonably fleeing for my life. And now there's this place, there's this Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine that wants me, that will protect me. And there's a community of Jews that are organizing around self-defense in our historic homeland that we've been praying to for thousands of years. Right? So, I mean, and by the way, the vast majority of this immigration is simply legal immigration. Right? It's legal immigration to a political entity, whether it's the Ottoman Empire. You immigrate there legally, you purchase land from a willing Arab seller, and you join this community of co-religionists. Right? Like all of that to me is perfectly understandable and defensible. And then when I look at it through the other lands, I say, "Okay, you live in this community of that's majority Arab. It's a been majority Arab for a very long time, and you're an Arab. You speak Arabic, you're probably Muslim, maybe you're Christian. But all of a sudden, this mass immigration event into your, what you view as your homeland starts. Right? And it's one with nationalist aspirations that are sometimes downplayed in public, but are clear and real. And the power of the British Empire is backing those nationalist aspirations in a place where your people are the majority. And you haven't had control of this entity for hundreds of years because it's been controlled by the Turks. All of a sudden, the Turks are gone. Everyone's getting their own state or their own territory. And you feel that since you're the majority, and since this mass immigration event by Jews is so recent, that it belongs to you. Right? Not only that, it's not a democracy. So, you know, if it were a democracy in 1920, you would win, you would shut down the borders, and it would be an Arab state. But you have, you know, you feel you have no way of actually manifesting that political will because it's not a democracy. And so, what do you do? You take up arms. Right? And that is, like that feeling of wanting to maintain a demographic majority is one that almost any group of people similarly placed would have. And so, you know, my, my siding with the idea that, that Israel is here to stay and has the right to defend itself, it can easily be taken as a negation that the Palestinians had any valid argument or have any valid nationalist argument. But that's certainly not what I've ever meant to convey by it. And I think reading your book, and especially the more moderate Arabs, spokespeople, not the Al Husseinis of the world, but the, you know, George Antonius and the other gentleman you mentioned, really, it really brings forth that there was just a, there, there always has been a valid Palestinian nationalist aspiration. Yeah, I don't, I don't think, I don't think even proud Israelis or Zionists or whatever should be all that shocked or surprised that the, the Arabs of, of the time, didn't want Jews coming here on mess very few people in world history have wanted other people's coming to lands that they're living on, on, on mess. There was some sentiment at the time of in certain quarters that saw in the Arab community that saw some benefit economically and otherwise to very small scale Jewish immigration. But that was the minority position. And certainly once the British mandate began following the, of course, you have the Balford Declaration in November 1917 and then the mandate begins really in the early 20s, 1920, 2022. And really the numbers to start growing and growing, they really take off in the, in the 30s, particularly after Hitler comes to power in January 1933 and other anti-Semitic movements are on the ascendant around across Europe and in Poland and Hungary and Romania. And so the numbers just keep climbing and climbing. And so in, in 1935, we have 60,000 Jews coming to this land legally and perhaps some more illegally, we don't quite know, but the majority of them legally, the vast majority, most likely. And that's, that's two, that's double the figure of two years before. So, you know, the, the Arab community in this land is not, is not stupid. Even, you know, the subsistence farmers in the countryside who, perhaps many of whom were still illiterate in this period were certainly perceptive enough to recognize that the face of this land was changing rapidly and that if things went on this way, the Jews would be a majority before long because in the period that I'm writing about 36 to 39, the kind of the core of my book, the Jews are already approaching. Roughly 300,000 people, which is about 30% of the population. And so again, it really shouldn't be all that shocking that there was Arab opposition to this. The question of course, then as now. But especially then was how, how they responded. And of course, it was, it was sort of from the, from the Arab or Palestinian perspective, the argument is often heard that well, we tried diplomacy, we tried to work within the, within the boundaries of, of the law. law and when that didn't work return to violence and there's a certain There's a certain way in which you can make that argument and you can say that the revolt was a result of desperation that he had tried everything else. On the other hand, as I mentioned, there were outbursts of violence, serious violence, right at the get-go, right at the start of the mandate. And so, yes, that's a very long-winded way to say, I think, the fundamental, that's really a figure in my book and in the history of this land called Vladimir Jabotinsky, who's kind of the ideolog, the intellectual inspiration, let's say the ideological forerunner of sort of right-wing Zionism. He's really the ideologically sort of the ancestor of the Likud, another right-wing Zionist movements today. And what he says, and he's no slouch, no peace in the himself, but he says the tragedy is that this is a conflict of right against right. He says very rarely in human history, is there a case in which right is all on one side or another. But in this case, it's really a question of right against right. But he said, in his view, the Jewish case was nonetheless stronger. It was the difference between my forget the exact metaphor, but I think it was something like a starving man and a man who'd like another helping at the table or something like that. So he viewed the Jewish condition, the Jewish plight as so desperate as to override the rightness and the justice of the Palestinian Arab Plane. Right. And so in the case where there's two rights where both sides have a legitimate claim to a state or nationalist aspiration in the same region, the logical thing is to compromise. And though what I've been saying is that I can sort of equally see it from both sides, the way it's not symmetric is in the total unwillingness of the Arab leaders who actually mattered at key points like Al Husseini to compromise. That through line throughout the history. Consistently, Jewish leaders have many times begrudgingly, many times with longer term hopes to get more territory, but they've been willing to compromise at key points, the Peal Commission, the UN partition and so forth. But Arab leaders have not been willing to compromise. And so the notion that we try diplomacy, so now we have to do violence. Even if you want to make a true version of that argument, you have to change it to become we tried using diplomacy to get everything we wanted, to get 100% of what we wanted. And when that failed, now we have to try violence to get 100% of what we wanted. The notion of using diplomacy or whatever to get 50% of what we want has been so taboo in the Arab community for such a long time. One of the lessons you could take from the great Arab revolt of the late 30s is that terrorism works because Palestinians had a goal of reducing Jewish immigration and they met that goal. Zooming out to the broader history of the conflict, to what extent do you think Palestinian terror has worked as a tactic and to what extent do you think it works for them today? So I think in the period of the revolt, it's certainly bore fruit. The after the first six months of revolt, which was matched by a general strike, actually one of the longest general strikes anywhere in history. The Arab economy cut all the contact with the Jewish economy with the British administration. And after these six months, the British agreed to send a royal commission known to history as the Peel Commission after its chairman, Lord Peel. And this is the highest form of inquiry in the British Empire. This is answering to the king directly. It's in the name of the king and they send this delegation over here to the Holy Land and they spend several months here and they interview dozens of prominent Jews and dozens of British administrators and eventually a number of prominent Arabs, I say eventually because the Grand Mufti, Aminella Husseini, who is the head of the Supreme Muslim Council and is by far and away the most prominent, the most powerful Arab and Muslim in Palestine and appointed by the British. The Mufti boycotts the proceedings completely because they refuse to stop Jewish immigration completely at the Gecko. So he boycotts the proceedings until the 11th hour and then finally is there about to leave. He says, "Okay, you know what? We'll talk." And so they speak to the Mufti and a few other prominent Arabs and they go back to England and they write this very long report. And the report ultimately ends up being sort of a win for the Jews because it's the first time in history, it's the first time in Palestine's modern history that this notion of a two-state solution is put on the table, this idea of partition, this radical, dramatic, revolutionary solution to this burgeoning Jewish Arab conflict, namely a two-state solution. This whole idea of a Jewish state, not just the Jewish national home, as pledged by Balfour, but a state where everything that needs. And so that is seen as a tremendous win by the Jews even though the state only comprises about 17, 18% of the land between the river and the sea. But nonetheless, the fact that the British send this commission is very much recognizing Arab grievances and then the real, the real undeniable achievement of the Arab revolt and Arab violence comes two years later in 1939 in the white paper. And so in mid-1939, this is obviously a crucial, critical, perilous time for the Jews of Europe. Britain decides to wash its hands of the whole Palestine affair. The war clouds are gathering over Europe. The war is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge war. The Muslims of India, of the empire, were angry about Palestine that it would cause real problems for the war effort. And so they call a conference in London and they will, they produce this white paper, this policy paper, this statement of policy which basically says we're done. Basically says this Balfour experiment has essentially reached its aim. There is a Jewish national home now of 300,000 people and basically from here on out any further, they set a cap on Jewish immigration of 75,000 total over five years. Which may sound like a lot but consider that in 1935, 60,000 Jews came to Manid Palestine legally in one year. And now the limit is 75,000 over five years. And again, this is 1939 on the cusp of the Second World War and as we know in hindsight the Holocaust. And after that point, any further immigration would be contingent on Arab consent which everyone understood would not be forthcoming. And so this is a tremendous win for the Arabs but the Mufti. And so you have celebrations in the streets of Nazareth and Nablus and it's seen as finally the sacrifices that the Arabs have themselves made in their revolt are finally seem to be vindicated. But the Mufti, this doesn't go far enough for the Mufti. The Mufti surprises all of his aides by rejecting this because instead of he doesn't want 75,000 Jews, he wants zero Jews and he doesn't want independence in five or ten years, he wants it now. And so the Mufti as many of your listeners know will become infamous in the Second World War. He spends it in Berlin, meets with him several times, meets famously with Hitler once and really becomes the most important propagandist and recruiter for the Nazis in the Arab and most of the world. All of this to say the violence of the Arab revolt yielded real gains for Arab Palestine but their leadership was so intransigent, namely the Mufti and so inept that they were not you, they were not able to capitalize on really on any of them. There's a couple nuggets in your book that were really interesting to me because they bear on this core question of what the Palestinian hatred and fighting of Jews in that land is really about. One thing it might be about is national aspirations of the kind that are recognizable all over the world. Groups of people that speak one language feel like one nation. They want to have a nation state. Another thing it could be about is jihad. In other words, a religious motivation that comes from scripture, that comes from the idea that Jews and Christians are non-believers. They reject the prophet Muhammad and that the proper political organization ordained by the Quran is a Muslim state where all other people of the book, Jews and Christians live as dummies, as second-class citizens. And that it's a further affront for Jews to have any level of control over anything that's been a Muslim land at any point. And whether Palestinian terrorists or political groups are motivated by the former or the latter, it's pretty important because it's possible to compromise on nationalism, on territory and so forth. It's much harder to compromise if the motivations are religious. Jihadism, as we've seen from ISIS to al-Qaeda, is a totalizing philosophy that admits of no compromise, really. And I think they're interesting elements in your history that sort of bear on the question. One that I hadn't heard was that I think this is like in 1919, the first Palestine Arab Congress happens. And the initial ask from the Arabs of Palestine is not to have a country called Palestine, but it's to be part of Syria, to be the southern part of Syria. And this is interesting to me because it puts an outer bound on when true Palestinian nationalism, like a distinct Palestinian identity and political consciousness could have arisen. Obviously, this is very controversial territory for people because people on the pro-Palestine outside of this debate want to say, like, Palestinian identity has been a thing as distinct from Arab identity for hundreds of years or something like that. But the fact that in 1919, the obvious ask from the Arabs of the region was no. There was an Ottoman, basically, county of the Ottoman state called Syria. That's what we're part of and we want to be part of an Arab version of Syria. What is your view on sort of when Palestinian, distinct Palestinian national identity arose and also an even bigger question to what extent is the anger directed at Jews, a product of nationalism as opposed to religious belief? Yeah, so I think it's a plausible reading of history. I think it's the likeliest reading of history that if the Jews had not, if Zionism had not really happened, not really taken off, if the Jews hadn't come here in significant numbers, this land would almost certainly be part of a greater Syria. That was, as you mentioned, that was kind of the goal, the ask after the First World War. There was kind of a Syrian, Palestinian, and Congress. Even the Mufti, before he was the Mufti, he in the riots of 1920 that I mentioned, when he was just a young man, he was actually convicted and absentia by the Brits for inciting, for riling up the crowd. And he was holding up a portrait of King Faisal of Syria, a very short-lived Hashemite King of Syria, later the King of Iraq, and saying, "This is your king, this is your king." And so it was, and even in the period of my book, 1936, 789, when the Mufti rejects this two-state solution that I mentioned in 1937, when the Arab leadership rejects this proposal, the statement that they put out says, "Palestine will be Arab, will be independent in a wider Arab Federation," or something like that. So almost exact, it's almost an exact quote. "Arab, Palestine will be Arab, will be free in an Arab consideration." So there were different, even as late as the 1930s, it wasn't entirely clear and obvious. It was not only one sort of voice in terms of what the Palestinian Arabs wanted. The unanimity, or the near unanimity, was against Zionism, was against, was on arresting the growth of immigration and land purchases and any advance towards any kind of Jewish autonomy. So it was quite clear what they were against, but in terms of what the end goal was, it was not even as late as the '30s, and arguably the '40s, it was not at all clear. And so, look, I don't need to suggest that there was no notion at all of Palestine's identity before the '40s, or even before the British mandate. I mean, there was an Arabic newspaper here in Jaffa, called Palestine, before 1917. So clearly the word existed in some way, shape, or form. But typically, this land to two Arabic speakers was typically referred to. It was typically, if you were in Jerusalem, it was Jerusalem. If you were in Nablus, it was Nablus. But in general, this land was considered southern Syria for the most part. And there's even a somewhat well-known quote by a member of the Khaledir family, one of the major Arab families of Jerusalem, of course, Rashid Khaledir is a prominent professor at Columbia, of course. There's a member of the Khaledir family who complains to, I can't remember if he was complaining to Herzl or to the Brits, that I think it was to the Brits, where he says, "This word Palestine was invented by the Zionists. For us, it was always southern Syria." And so it's complicated, but the notion that there was a distinct Palestinian identity, going back to the Canaanites, I think, is rather a stretch. In terms of, I think, and I don't think Palestinian nationalism is alone in this, and that's so much of it develops in relation to something else, as a mere image or reaction to something else. I don't think that necessarily delegitimizes it by definition. It's extremely common. And so you could even argue that it's a norm in some ways. But yeah, so that's on that question. And the question of religion, look, I think on the whole, there was a significant, there still is, but there was an even larger significant Christian Arab minority here during the mandate. Bethlehem was still a majority Christian. Now it's very much a minority. And when you look at the sort of aggregate Christian attitude to the revolt, look, I never found a single instance of a Christian Arab taking up arms against the British or the Jews. It may have happened, but in five years of research, I never found a single instance. On, which may come as news to anyone who's seen Anne Marie Jasser's film, Palestine 36, but wrote a piece about that in the free press about, but that's a different, that's a different discussion perhaps. In any case, there, in terms of violence, there was little to none on the part of Christians. What there was is, there was certainly a significant element of the Christian community here, the Arab Christian community that agreed with the political aims of the revolt. Namely, Palestine needs to be, whether it's in a confederation or independent, it needs to retain a strong Arab majority. There are, I think, there were, there were probably significant other reserves of Christian Arabs here who probably would have wanted the British mandate to remain indefinitely. It's kind of a, kind of a hedge, kind of a safety, sort of safety mechanism. There's a line in, in my book written by the editor of Palestine, this is the most prominent Arabic paper. There's a Christian guy named Yusuf Hanna. And this is, this was some of the most illuminating material that I found in my research with these, these letters between him and the correspondent for the New York Times, who was a Jewish, Jerusalem born anti-Zionist Arabic speaking guy, but I'm Joseph Levy, Levy. And they had very, very candid correspondence between them. At a certain point, this editor of Palestine writes to the Jewish New York Times correspondent and says, look, there's not an Arab worth his salt in Palestine who wants to be ruled by Jews. But there's no self-respecting Arab who wants to be ruled by bandits. And he's talking about the Mufti. And he's talking implicitly about this radical extremist, Islamist sort of philosophy and leadership exemplify by the Mofti. The Mofti is is kind of really set the template for this kind of ideology and leadership at least here. Starting in the 20s, he launched this thing called the Barack campaign. The Barack is the Arabic name for the Western Wall, in which he really promoted this idea that Al-Aqsa is in danger. The Jews want to rebuild the temple. And really in many ways this set the scene for the riots that I mentioned earlier of 1929 in Hembron. But really this, the most the long before he was hanging out with Hitler and Hitler in Berlin was completely committed by any measure. And so yeah, so it's, there was a strong, there was in the Arab revolt you see a strong kind of melding of nationalist themes with Islamic themes. It's not to say George Antonio's was Christian and he was very much ideologically on board with the with the revolt arguably and certainly against Zionism. So it is complicated, but it's really in this period that led by the Mufti you have this melding of Arab nationalism with Islamism. Another related point that I didn't know that I found in your book and thought was really interesting was I think this is when the Peal Commission becomes official, the president of Lebanon at the time who's a Christian, I think he he congratulates is it was a wise man. And he says, but he says, look, I can't congratulate you publicly because if that got out, the Christians in my country, Lebanon would would suffer a massacre. And so I guess, you know, first of all, how seriously do you take that was he was he exaggerating for effect? Was he expressing a real fear? And if so, what does that say about the nature of the Arab Muslim grievances? In other words, a lot of what you hear is that well, these Jews had all most of them had to recently come from Europe. Most of them were, you know, to find their indigeneity, you'd have to go back a few thousand years. And there's a statute of limitations on that. Well, okay, put that to the side. Lebanese Christians, no one doubts their indigeneity. They're equally indigenous as the Arabs, if not maybe even more so. But the idea that they were under threat to simply because they were a religious minority, dissects out the variable of recent arrival and paints a picture of the inherently vulnerable status of religious minorities in Islamic Arab Islamic policies. The whole, the relationship between the Christian leadership and Lebanon and the Zionist leadership before Naising 48 is really fascinating and under very much underwritten about as far as I can tell. But you went in the instance that you mentioned was in 1937 when they published the Pillar Report. And it's not just that Emil Ede, the president of Lebanon sent writesman a telegram or something. They worked together in the same hotel lobby in Paris, I think it was. And the president of Lebanon raised the toast to writesman and said to the to the future president of the Jewish state. The, and you also have, you have British, you have reports from the British consulate in Beirut, in which they also confirm that the Christian element, as they call it, in Lebanon is on the whole happy about this prospect of a Jewish state. It was kind of a surprise to everyone, to the Jews, to the Arabs, to the Christians, and Lebanon, that the peel proposal granted Galilee to the Jews because at the time most of the Galilee was, was still overwhelmingly Arab in this, in this period. So it was seen as kind of a gift to the Jews, kind of the agricultural hinterland for the future state. And so the Lebanese Christians, there were of course exceptions, but on the whole, were quite pleased that this notion of having a non-Muslim neighbor to their south. But as you say, they couldn't say so publicly. Even the Maranite Catholic Archbishop also sent writesman a letter of congratulations. You even had the Sunni Muslim Prime Minister of Lebanon, who was on very good, was very on very good relations with, with the Zionist leadership, and they actually coordinated the setting up of a settlement on the border, the Jewish settlement on the border of Lebanon. It was all done in cooperation with the Sunni Prime Minister because there was this tremendous fear of Islamic extremism, particularly after the Mufti, the Mufti in 1937 flees Palestine, because by this point it's clear to everybody that he's pulling the strings of the revolts, where he flees the country, and he ends up in Lebanon outside of Beirut. And so the Christian Lebanese, and not just the Christians, were extremely worried about this radicalism taking route there. And this is at a time when the Christians would have been the majority of Lebanon, right? So there hasn't been a proper census in Lebanon since 1932, I believe, and even then I'm not sure how accurate the numbers were. I think the consensus is that there was probably a Christian majority, or at least plurality in that period. But of course the Christians in Lebanon were always the likeliest to emigrate elsewhere. And there are questions of birthrate, and I'm not a Lebanon expert by any stretch, but the Christian population of Lebanon has, in many ways it's a fascinating, when you look at Lebanon, in many ways it was sort of meant to be a Christian Israel, right? It was meant to be a Christian national home. It's not a perfect adalong, but it's not a crazy thing to say. It was meant to be a sort of Christian national home for the Christians of that area of Mount Lebanon and Beirut, but also just sort of the region. It was meant to be a refuge. And you know, I think sometimes I think, you know, those people who call for a right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants and their grandchildren and great grandchildren, or who call for a two-state solution, sorry two-state, a one-state solution between the river and the sea. What they're really calling for is Israel, it's for Israel to look like Lebanon, namely a complete mess where everyone's at each other's throats, where everything where politics are purely a sectarian affair, not to mention years of horrible bloody civil war. I mean, that's the future that awaits a multi-ethnic mosaic where everyone's battling it out for supremacy because the demographics are so kind of splintered. I think that's actually slightly even too optimistic because, you know, Lebanon, obviously it had, you know, 15-year civil war or something like that, it was in the late 20th century precisely along this Muslim Christian split, but there, both sides, they weren't fighting over indigeneity, they were just fighting over, you know, basically political power sharing and so forth and having different interests. With Israel, I think the passions and the hatreds in some ways are even deeper because the Palestinian politics has elevated to a sacred dogma that no part of the land can be Jewish at all. And so you're right, it's, I mean, one of the things I found really flippant when debating people like Dave Smith and who agree with that is like, okay, if you were living somewhere and you were being asked to make a political choice that was very likely to end in civil war because that's what happens in every neighboring country anytime there's political instability, anytime it's extremely sectarian. All of these countries, whether it's Sunni, Shia, or Christian Muslim, exist on a nice edge without adding the variable of this is our land and these interlopers don't even belong here. It doesn't even need that variable to ignite in civil war, the Middle East. Can you honestly say that you would just say, oh yeah, well, you know, sure, okay, 40% risk of civil war, yeah, I'll take that because because of some abstract philosophy about what people deserve, it's like it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's split and by the way, I would say the same thing from the Palestinian side. I'm not I'm not saying a Palestinian every Palestinian would agree or even most would agree, but if a Palestinian said like, look, I don't think that you I think by rights it's all ours, but I understand if we live in a one state reality, it's going to be it's it's going to make this a serious civil war look like look like child's play. We can't even we don't even have the state capacity to control the extreme element on our side if we wanted to and I'm not sure that we want to and my my children could end up dying in that war. I mean, why would I why would I mandate that why would I go charge headfirst into a reality where my whole whole family could die because of an abstract notion of justice that that I've been sold. I think it's you know, know, I don't really forgive anyone. I, sorry, I forgive people in the conflict with skin in the game, their opinions and prejudices, but people living in the West thousands of miles away with no skin in the game to say, well, like obviously, obviously they've got to do, they've got to be like Lebanon. And if they're not, you're a monster. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And it's, it's, it's really bothersome from a perspective of, I guess, virtue signaling is sort of the word, right? You're saying that because it makes you look good. And you literally couldn't give a shit if this led to a million deaths because it's thousands of miles away. It's not you. I think that's right. I think, I think that's exactly right. Yeah. No, no debate there. Okay. So I guess that gets to the end of my questions about your book. My last question is, what are you thinking about these days? I assume you're paying attention to the latest news, the prospects of a, of a true piece, the splitting of Gaza between Hamas control and Israeli control. What, what are your, what's your optimistic outcome over the next six months to a year and what's your pessimistic outcome? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a tricky one. It's hard to be optimistic when it comes, when it comes to this region, when it comes to the prospects of any kind of Israeli, Palestinian accord, certainly when it comes to, to the Gaza strip, I'm old enough to remember the withdrawal from the Gaza strip. I was already working in journalism at the time, when Israel pulled out from Gaza in 2005, when the Bush administration encouraged, sort of pushed Israel to sort of, can see, I can see to or accept the idea of Palestinian elections, which produced the Hamas victory 2007. Of course, Hamas forcibly pushed out Fatah and the PA from, from Gaza, I remember all of that. And I, you know, I remember the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Israeli settlers there. This is not, this is not in ancient history. It's very hard to be optimistic, let alone the horrors that we've seen on October 7th. And of course, the horrors we've seen in this Gaza war over the last two plus years. So with all of that, throughout clearing, having, having been made, it's, look, things can only, things can only, I was going to say things can only get better, but I'm not even sure that's the case. I would like to think that all of this, these, these massive pledges of, these pledges of billions of, of dollars, what they actually happen, that they come to fruition, that there's, that there's, you know, investment in, in Gaza, that there's, you know, that there's some kind of, that this technocratic committee can, can, can, can somehow create a better, a better horizon for, for the strip. It's, it's, it's hard for me to see from this vantage point, in some honest with you. It's hard for me to see how the sticking point really, the bottom line, you know, even with the most complicated issues in this part of the world, it's typically a bottom line. And I think the bottom line in, in Gaza is disarmament. And I, I've really struggled disarming Hamas. There are estimates that Hamas has, these really estimate is that Hamas has 60,000 collashnikovs, for example. And Hamas is essentially, is, is, I don't see a world in which they agree to give those up. I really don't. And, you know, there are those who say, there's even a member of the technocratic committee. The kind of, there's the, the most, the most pro-Hamas member of the technocratic committee is the guy who's in charge of tribal affairs, anyway, a long story. But this guy said just yesterday, he said, look, these, these, these, these AKs, these collashnikovs are for self-defense. They're not, they can't do any real harm. Well, of course, on October 7th, some of the, you know, much of the death and destruction, the massacres and the atrocities were conducted with exactly these kinds of weapons. And that's exactly these kinds of weapons with which Hamas both executes its own people in Gaza and just, you know, keeps its iron grip on the territory. So I think it'll ultimately come down to disarmament so far. No country other than Israel has proved itself willing to risk its own soldiers to disarm any Hamas members, let alone, you know, tens of thousands of them. So it's, I think that's the bottom line. And I don't really see how you square that circle. So I kind of, at this point, the most, the likely scenario that I see, unfortunately, is that Hamas continues to be the most powerful actor in the half of the Gaza Strip that it still controls when 99% of Gaza's live. And as we've read to Gore put it, I think there's nothing you can build in Gaza that Hamas won't either unbuild, destroy or repurpose for terror. So as long as that's true, it is hard to be optimistic. And as happy as I was to see, to see that Trump was able to get a quote-unquote peace plan or really more of a ceasefire, I don't think people should be misled by his salesmanship about, you know, what's likely to happen here or what he achieved. You know, so the saga continues. There'll be more to talk about. In the meantime, I think there's a lot in your book, Palestine, 1936, the great Arab revolt that people won't have heard or read in other books. So I really recommend that they get it. And it's an engage, you tell the history in a very engaging character-focused way as well. So I really recommend people get that book, follow you online or in Kessler. Thank you so much for coming on my show. Thank you so much, Coleman. It's a real, it's a pleasure and an honor. Thanks so much.