Transcription
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Orin Kesler. Orin 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 revolts of the late 1930s, back when what is today Israel was British Mandate Palestine. That revolt set the stage for the war that Israelis call their war of independence and Arabs call 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 allege, that Israel introduced terrorism into the region. So without further ado, Orin Kesler.
>> Okay, Orin Kesler, thanks so much for coming on my show.
>> Thank you so much, Coleman, for for having me.
>> Uh, I've been a fan for a long time. uh your book on Palestine 1936, which is like one of the only comprehensive books for for the general public on that on the 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 the late 1930s Mandate Palestine? And what was your background up to that point that led you to write that book?
>> Yeah, a bit of background on on me. I I grew up in upstate New York for the most part in Rochester. Uh and a little bit here in in Tel Aviv where I'm talking to you from. Um I was a a journalist and a and a think tanker for a long time. I was a journalist here in Israel at uh at Haaretz. Um Jerusalem Post. I covered Arab affairs. Um was a translator for a while. Um and then uh kind of a stringer for Foreign Policy and a few other places. And then I started sort of think tanking in in London and then in DC. I was in DC for about 5 years um as deputy research director at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Uh but I had always been kind of a kind of a history buff and I'd always had a somewhat um masochistic urge to write about the Israeli uh Palestinian conflict. My parents are from here. My parents are both from from Israel, from Tel Aviv. And and and as I mentioned, we lived here for a bit when I was growing up. And uh 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. Uh and so it was really I was quite discouraged for a while. Um uh recognizing that every seemingly every aspect of this this this history, this conflict had been written about from from 15 different angles. But then I discovered this uh period of the Great Arab Revolt 1936 to '39 which was really very much under underwritten about, understudied, under under known if that's a word and um and but really just really seminal and formative and decisive in um in sort of shaping the conflict as we know it today in in many ways and just populated by really fascinating compelling characters on all three sides. sides. And it's important to remember there are three sides. It's a it's a triangle in this period. There are the the the Arabs, the Jews, and and of course the Brits who are who were running the show. And um and so that was really sort of the impetus just to kind of fill that that gap in uh in the literature, telling the story of this this revolt and everything that emanated from it for for all sides, for the Arab side, for the Jewish side, for the conflict, for attempts to resolve the conflict. um and just sort of the legacies thereof until until today.
>> So given your identity as a Jew and you live in Israel, you know, obviously writing about the history of this conflict, inevitably people on the other side, uh 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 you're you you're partisan to the conflict. So, how can you play the role of objective historian? Um, they would say, how how do you approach, you know, writing a trying to write a work of history uh knowing that at some level you might you have a dog in the fight, right?
>> Yeah, it's it's it's a great question. I I somehow um this may be bad luck to say it, but somehow I've I've gotten much less flak um than I expected. I I knew I was stepping into a minefield. I expected to get at it from all from all directions. Um but really uh if anything, I've gotten a little more flak from the sort of pro-Israel side, >> but not that much. Um uh the only at the risk of sounding conceited, the the only negative reviews of editorial reviews that the book has gotten uh were now 3 years later when the book came out in Hebrew because of course Israelis are a very very critical uh society and the critics here have have some thoughts. Um, but other than that, I've I've really I've gotten the book has gotten has been well-received as far as I know, including from uh from sort of pro-Palestinian quarters and and and critics. Uh, in terms of how how to navigate that, it's it's it's very difficult. It's difficult for for for anybody. Um, there's, you know, there's there's there's there's probably no such thing as objective uh history. There's with every choice that you make as a as a historian, as a writer, every choice of what you what you choose to include and not include, uh that's a choice. And often times you don't know why you're making these choices, right? It's not it's not a deliberate like, okay, I'm going to put this in to show this. You you don't know what's what exactly is operating behind, you know, what's what's interesting to you, what's compelling, and what's not. Um, but what I what I tried to do in this in this book is really to find the most kind of eloquent spokespeople on all three sides. Um, and and let them make their best case to the to the reader and then let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. So, for example, on the on the Arab side, um, one of my main characters is a guy named George Antonius, who is a very prominent Cambridge educated um, Arab intellectual, originally from Lebanon, lived in Jerusalem many years, and 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, um, there's another man, Musa Alami, who's also a Cambridge man. Um, and these are in my book and they're and they're very eloquent. They're very, especially Alami is very sympathetic in in in his way. Um, very very charming, very very intelligent, had a lot of um, friendships across ethnic and religious lines. And so through these really compelling characters, I I um this sounds like a Columbia seminar or something, but I try to complicate the, you know, I I I think the reader sometimes feels like, "Oh, wow. That's a really good point. Oh, this this other side makes a really good point." And it's and because it's very very complex at the end of the day.
>> Yeah. There definitely a lot of uh I a lot of elements and quotes from both of those people as well as others other more known figures like Ben-Gurion and Al-Husseini uh that I hadn't seen in other in other histories more broad histories of the the of the Arab-Israeli conflict. So um I highly recommend that for for people. It was a really uh it was also a fun read actually. So um thank you for writing that book.
>> Thank you so much, Coleman.
>> So, let's see. Where do I want to start? Um, let me start with this this point because it's one I I raised recently and that I've been thinking about. I've sometimes been called a Zionist because um, you know, on on Joe Rogan 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. Uh 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. Um, and someone on the internet put it this way which I I very much recognized uh 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 and 19th century. It achieved its aim which was to abolish slavery uh legally. And now abolitionists only exist in history books. Right? Zionists were a movement that wanted to establish a Jewish state in 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 exist in history books. Um, what do you make of the word Zionist? Is it is it necessary? Is it useful? Um, and do you identify as one?
>> Uh, I I mean I I agree with you completely and I've heard you made make that point with I think it was it was it was Dave Smith and some and on some other podcasts. I think it's it's incredibly strange that that this word still exists um only for for for this country. Um and as as you say there's 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 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 uh topic of discussion. Um 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 um 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 you know Serbs and and Kosovars have beef and Indians and Pakistanis and there are all kinds of beefs and rivalries and um 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 strikes me as incredibly strange and suspect. Um so all this is to say I I essentially uh agree with you. In fact I think the India-Pakistan u comparison is incredibly apt in many ways and it's one that I'm I'm not quite sure why it's not made more often. This was the 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 I side and the P side oddly enough. uh the I'm I'm no expert at all in the partition of India but just at face value you've got you've got one side that wants independence based solely on on religion right my understanding is that Urdu and Hindu and Hindi are essentially interchangeable other than the script that they're they're written in in some
>> yeah, the differences are emphasized because of the political divisions but
>> right >> yeah, it's like British English and American English maybe even more similar
>> right right I actually I understand it's even more different than say German and and Yiddish Right. Yiddish is often described as German and Hebrew characters, but Hindi and Urdu as I understand it are essentially interchangeable, mutually understandable. So really the only difference I I'm I'm sure I'm simplifying here, but the the difference is a religious one.
>> And um the the movement for Muslim independence in India succeeded despite the wishes of of Gandhi and others. And the the the fallout from that partition was so massive. The damage the the cost in in blood and treasure was so massive. But it's over for the world again except for for some folks in India it's over. Pakistan nobody has an opinion on whether Pakistan should exist. Um, I suspect at, you know, at the risk of getting ahead of my skis, I suspect Mayor Mandani doesn't have doesn't doesn't stay up at night um, bemoaning the the existence of Pakistan. Whereas, um, right, you have, you know, I think something like 15 million people were displaced in that partition on both sides, I believe, and at least half a million were killed. I mean, horrific human suffering, right? Um and yet on the Israel-Palestine question, everyone is meant to be an an expert and a revisionist and um and to it's it strikes me as incredibly odd. So it's either that the the the the circumstances in which Israel was born are so nefarious that it alone alone among the nations needs to be undone or there's something else going on uh that that uh that to me is is quite suspect. All this is to say I'm I'm a dual citizen of the US and Israel. the vast majority of Jewish Israelis are want this country to continue to to uh to to be what it is. So that that would make me a Zionist. And I would add there was an interesting poll 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 it's 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 eight and 10 said, "Yeah, of course."
>> So then they're Zionists. If you if this if if you're not trying to dismantle I listened to your podcast with Robert Wright and he said, "You know, there was a moment that I I recognized I was Zionist because I realized I'm I support the two-state solution." So um so right
>> that that's all it requires to be Zionist. I think it's been a tremendously effective PR campaign by the call them pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel crowd to make this word really toxic to make it right up there with white supremacist racist um you name it. And it's and I and I've really noticed the difference just in the past uh just in the past few years that it's really uh it's been a very very successful um branding of of this word as something that nobody or very few people want want to be associated with.
>> Yeah. I mean, the it's it's interesting to me because it's almost akin to the idea of being an American colonist, right? It's like at at a certain point in history, there were people that many people that strongly felt Americans 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 out of a strong belief that from from sea to shining sea the ter 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, uh, and so forth. There's really there'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 the Aztec Empire get so big? Did they just they just were born that big? They were the only how did the how did the Chi, you know, the how did 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 I think it it behooves the world to just to just accept it. Um uh 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 of if you want to call it historic Palestine. Um, and this is often this 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 Lehi did uh against the British? Um so 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?
>> Uh, I'll I'll I'll take the second question first because it's so easy to answer which is no. Clearly there I I don't know of any reputable historian maybe I need to read more widely who who who believes that uh there's there's the the Lehi which you mentioned this this hardline extremist you could say Jewish group uh is founded in in in 1941. So in the period of of my book '36 to '39 in which I would remind well I don't need to remind you because you've read the book but I would remind listeners five 500 Jews and about 250 British servicemen were killed in in the in the Arab revolt and so he didn't exist yet at at that point. Uh what did exist in the mid and late 30s was uh an organization called the Irgun um also known as um Etzel by its Hebrew acronym the the National Military Organization and this re and this this uh organization really starting in 1937 starts to wage attacks that can only be described as as terrorism. We're talking about um you know leaving leaving bombs in Arab vegetable markets with the intention of killing Arab civilians. If that's not terrorism then nothing nothing is. Um and so certainly starting in 1937 you have an organized Jewish group not not large by any means but an organized Jewish group that wages dozens of these attacks. It's all 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 um you could you could say mass casualty attack in Mandate Palestine is is before the Palestine Mandate is even ratified. It's in April 1920. It's called the Nabi Musa riots in which it actually doesn't sound that like like mass casualties by today's uh standards, but about five five Jews were killed and many more uh wounded in and around Jerusalem. And then in 1921, you had the Jaffa riots in which um 50 odd uh Jews were killed. That's just a year after. And then uh more famously, infamously, you had the 1929 Hebron riots which were Hebron and and Safed and a few other places in in in the country which were very incredibly grim and gruesome, really reminiscent of the October 7th attacks in their cruelty. Um and in which 133 Jews were killed and there were quite a few instances of of rape and just um really horrific violence. So that was all 1929. And so um this is not to excuse for a moment the act of of of uh you know leaving leaving bombs in the Arab vegetable market in Haifa. But uh the notion that the Jews started it has no no basis in in in history. What the Arab argument was in in the period by more articulate figures like George Antonius which was you know this political our not our 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 withholding our national rights um 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 uh in which of course um you know the the Balfour Declaration is is enshrined and Britain is committed under its League of Nations obligations to uh facilitate uh large-scale Jewish immigration to the land and close settlements on the land. So that's that's uh that's how I would how I would look at it.
>> Yeah. I mean, the the 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'm uh 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 my Russian village um where pogroms swept after the change in Tsar 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. Um, you know, can't go to Canada. Can't 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 in British Mandate Palestine that wants me that that will protect me. And there's a 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, it it and by the way, the 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 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 lens, we say, "Okay, you live in this community that's majority Arab. It's 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 um starts, right? And it's one with nationalist aspirations that are sometimes downplayed in public, but 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 uh uh 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 know, 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 um like that feeling of wanting to maintain a demographic majority is one that almost any group of people similarly placed would have. Um 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's it can easily be taken as a negation that the Palestinians had any valid argument or or have any valid national nationalist argument, but that's certainly not what I've ever meant to convey by it. And I think reading reading your book and especially the more moderate Arab spokespeople, not the Al-Husseinis of the world, but the you know, George Antonius and and um the other gentlemen you mentioned. It re really it uh 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 um I don't think even proud Israelis or or Zionists or whatever should be all that shocked or surprised that uh the that Arabs of of of the time didn't want Jews coming here on mass. Very few people in world history have wanted other uh peoples coming to lands that they're living on on on mass. There was some sentiment at the time in certain quarters that saw um in the Arab community that saw some benefit economically and otherwise to very small-scale Jewish immigration. But um that was the minority position and certainly once the British Mandate began following the of course you have the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 and then the Mandate begins really in the early 20s 1920 2022 and um and really the numbers just start growing and growing. um 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 uh in 1935 you have 60,000 Jews coming to this land legally and perhaps some more illegally. We don't quite know, but the 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 the Arab community in this land is not is not stupid. Even, you know, subsistence farmers in the countryside who uh 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 um roughly 300,000 people, which is about 30% of of the population. And so again, it it really shouldn't be all that uh shocking that there was Arab opposition to this. The question of course then as now um but especially then was how how they responded and of course it was it was uh 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 of the law and when that didn't work we turned to violence and there's a certain there's a there's a certain way you can in which you can you can make that argument and you can say that the the revolt was a result of desperation. They 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. Um, and so yes, that's all a very long-winded uh way to say um I think the fundamental that's really there's a there's a there's a figure in my book and in the history of this land called Vladimir Jabotinsky who's kind of the um ideologue the the intellectual um inspiration yeah let's say the the the ideological um forerunner of revision of sort of right-wing Zionism. He's really the ideologically sort of the ancestor of the Likud and other right-wing Zionist movements today. And what he says, and he's no no slouch, no no peace himself, but he says the tragedy is that this is this is a a conflict of right against right.
>> Mhm.
>> He says very rarely in in human history is there a case in which right is all on one side uh or another. But in this case, it's really a tragedy, a question of right against right. But he said in his view the Jewish case was nonetheless stronger. It was it was the difference between um I forget the exact metaphor but I think it was something like a you know a starving man and a and and a man who'd like another another helping at the table or some something like that. So he viewed the Jewish um condition the Jewish plight as so desperate as to uh override the the rightness and the justice of the Palestinian Arab claim.
>> Right. And so it in a case where there is two rights where both sides have a legitimate claim to a 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 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 and that that throughine uh through throughout the history um consistently Jewish leaders have many times begrudgingly many times with with uh longer term hopes to get more territory but they have been willing to compromise at key points the Peel Commission the UN partition and so forth but Arab leaders have not been willing to compromise and so the notion that you you know we start we tried diplomacy diplomacy so we have now we have to do violence even if you want to make a true version of that argument you have to add that 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. Um, the notion of using diplomacy or whatever to get 50% of what we want has been so taboo uh in in in the Arab community uh 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 they met that goal. Uh zooming out to the broader history of the conflict, to what extent do you think Palestinian terror has worked as a tactic and uh to what extent do you think it it works for them today?
So I think in in the period of of the revolt, it certainly uh bore fruit. The the after the first um 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 contact with the Jewish economy, with the British administration. And after these uh six months, the British agree to send a royal commission known to history as the the Peel Commission after its chairman, Lord Peel. And this is the highest form of inquiry in um in the British Empire. This is answering uh to the king directly. It's in the name of the king. And they send this delegation over here to to the Holy Land. And they spend several months here. and they interview dozens of uh prominent Jews and dozens of British administrators and eventually a number of uh prominent Arabs. I say eventually because the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who is the head of the uh Supreme Muslim Council and is by far and away the most prominent uh the most powerful Arab and Muslim in Palestine and appointed by the British. uh the Mufti uh boycotts the proceedings completely because they refuse to stop Jewish immigration completely at the get-go. So he boycotts the proceedings until the 11th hour and then finally as they're about to leave he says, "Okay, you know what? We'll 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 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 with everything that means. Um, and so that is is seen as a tremendous win by the Jews, even though the state only comprises about 17 18% of the land uh between the river and the sea. But nonetheless, the fact that the British send this commission is very much um uh recognizing Arab grievances. And then the real the real undeniable achievement of 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 the Jews of Europe. Britain decides to wash its hands of the whole Palestine affair. The war clouds are gathering over Europe. It seems to be a question of when and not if war with Hitler is going to come. The Brits have already lost some 200 plus servicemen in in Palestine. There's a huge troop deployment to Palestine, the biggest between the World Wars for Britain and they decide it's not worth it anymore. They're particularly worried about um getting back to India. They're particularly worried about Muslim opinion in British India. This is pre-partition India. It includes the lands we now call Pakistan and Bangladesh with their large Muslim populations and they were worried that if the Muslims of India of the empire were angry about Palestine that would cause real problems for the war effort and so they call a conference in London and they they produce this this White Paper this policy paper this statement of policy which basically says we're we're done basically says this Balfour experiment is has essentially reached its aim. There is a Jewish national home now of 300,000 people and basically from here on out any the any further or they set a cap on Jewish immigration of 75,000 total over 5 years which may sound like a lot but consider that in 1935 60,000 Jews came to Mandate Palestine legally in one year and now the limit is 75,000 over 5 years and again this is 1939 on the cusp of of of the Second World War and as we you know, in hindsight, the Holocaust. Uh, and after that point, any further immigration would be contingent on Arab consent, which everyone understood would not be, uh, forthcoming. And so, this is a tremendous win for the Arabs, but the Mufti. And so, you have 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 the in the revolt are finally seem seem to be vindicated. But the Mufti, this doesn't go far enough for uh the Mufti. The Mufti uh surprises all of his aides by rejecting this because it because instead of he doesn't want 75,000 Jews, he wants zero Jews. And he doesn't want independence in five or 10 years, he wants it now. And so um the Mufti, as many of your listeners know, will become infamous in the Second World War. He spends it uh in Berlin. um meets with Himmler several times, meets famously with Hitler uh once and um really becomes the the most important propagandist and recruiter for the Nazis in the Arab and and Muslim world. Um, all of this to say the the violence of the Arab revolt yielded real gains for Arab Palestine, but their leadership was so intransigent, namely the Mufti, and so inept um that they were not they were not able to capitalize on really on any of them.
There's a couple uh a couple nuggets in your in your book that were really interesting to me because they bear on this core question of what the Palestinian uh hatred and fighting of Jews in that land is really about. One thing it might be about is nationalist 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 uh that comes from scripture that comes from the idea that Jews and Christians are non-believers. They reject the prophet Muhammad. uh and that the the proper political organization ordained by the Quran is a Muslim state where all other people of the book, Jews and Christians, live as dhimmi, as second-class citizens. Uh and that it's a further affront for Jews to have any level of control over anything that's been Muslim land at any at any point. Um, and whether Palestinian uh terrorists or political groups are motivated by the former or the latter is is pretty important because it's possible to compromise on nationalism on 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 a totalizing philosophy that admits of no compromise really. And um I think there there are interesting elements in in your history that uh that sort of bear on the question. One that was uh that I hadn't heard was that I think this is like in in 1919 the uh 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 right and this is interesting to me because It it puts an outer bound on when true Palestinian nationalism, like a distinct Palestinian identity and political consciousness could have arisen. Obviously, this is um this is very controversial territory for people because people on the pro-Palestine side of this debate want to say like Palestinian identity has been a thing as distinct from Arab identity for you know you know hundreds of years or something like that. But you know the the fact that in 1919 the obvious ask from from the Arabs of the region was no. I mean there was there's an Ottoman basically county of the Ottoman state called Syria. That's what we're a part of and we want to be part of a Arab version of Syria. Um what what is your view on sort of when Palestinian a distinct Palestinian national identity arose? And also a 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 I think it's a it's a 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 hadn't come here in significant numbers, this land would almost certainly part be part of a greater Syria. That was um that was, as you mentioned, that was kind of the the goal, the the ask. After the First World War, there was there was the kind of a a Syrian-Palestinian Congress. Um, even even the Mufti in 19 before he was the Mufti, he in the in the riots of 1920 that I that I mentioned, he was just a young man, he was actually um convicted in absentia by the Brits for inciting for rioting up the crowd and he kind of uh he was holding up a portrait of King Faisal of Syria, the 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 even in the uh the period of my book 1936, '37, '38, '39 uh you when you when um when the Mufti rejects the this two-state solution that I mentioned in 1937 when when the Arab leadership rejects this this proposal the statement that they put out says uh Palestine will remain will be will be will be Arab will be independent in a wider Arab federation or something like that. Yeah. So almost exact it's almost an exact quote. Arab Palestine will be Arab will be free and and in an Arab confederation. So there were different even as late as the 1930s it wasn't entirely clear and obvious. There was not only one sort of voice in terms of what the Palestinian Arabs wanted. The the the unanimity or the near unanimity was uh against uh Zionism was against was arresting the growth of of immigration and land purchases and uh and any any advance towards any kind of Jewish autonomy. Um but so it was it was quite clear what they were against. But the the 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 uh clear. And so uh so look, I'm I'm not I don't mean to suggest that there was no notion at all of Palestinian identity before before the 40s or even before the British Mandate. I mean, there was there was an Arabic newspaper here in Jaffa called Filastin before 1917. So clearly the word existed in some way, shape or form, but typically this land to to Arabic speakers was typically referred to. It was typically, you know, 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 Khalidi family, one of the one of the major families, the uh major Arab great Arab families of Jerusalem. Of course, Rashid Khalidi is a is a prominent professor at Columbia. Of course, there's a member of the the the Khalidi family who who um who complains to I can't remember if he was complaining to Herzl or to the or to the to the Brits that I think it was to the Brits where he says, you know, this word Palestine was invented by the Zionists. For us, it was always it was always southern Syria. Um, and so, uh, it's complicated, but the notion that there was a there was a distinct Palestinian identity, you know, going back to the Canaanites, you know, I I think is is rather a stretch. Um, in terms of the in terms of I I think and I don't think Palestinian nationalism is alone in this and that so much of it develops in relation to something else >> and as a as a as a mere image or reaction to something else. I don't think that necessarily >> delegitimizes it. History. It's it's extremely common. >> And so um if you could even argue that's the norm in some ways, but um >> uh but yeah, so so that that's on that question. And the question of of religion, look, I think I think on the whole there there was a significant there still is, but there was an even larger significant Christian Arab minority here during the Mandate. Bethlehem was still majority Christian. Now it's very much a minority. Um, and when you look at the sort of sort of aggregate Christian attitude uh to the revolt, look, I never found a single instance of a Christian Arab taking up arms against the British or the Jews. It it may have happened, but in in 5 years of research, I never found a single instance.
>> Wow. um uh which may come as news to anyone who's seen Annemarie Jacir's film Palestine 1936, but I wrote a piece about that in in in the Free Press about but that's that's a different uh that's a different discussion perhaps. Uh in any case, there in terms of violence there was little to none on the part of Christians. That what there was is there there was certainly uh a significant element of the Christian community here the Arab Christian community that um 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 I think there were there were probably significant other reserves serves of of Christian Arabs here who probably would have wanted the British Mandate to remain indefinitely as kind of a a kind of a hedge kind of a safety um sort of safety uh mechanism. There's a there's a line in in in my book written by the editor of Filastin, this the most prominent Arabic paper who's a Christian guy named Yusef Hanna. And he and this was this was some of the most illuminating uh material that I found in my research were these these letters between him and the correspondent for the New York Times who was a Jewish um Jerusalem-born anti-Zionist Arabic-speaking guy by the name of Joseph Levy Levy and they had very very
candid correspondence between them. And at a certain point, this editor of Philistine 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 MUI. And he's talking implicitly about this radical extremist, um, Islamist sort of philosophy and leadership exemplified by the MUI.
The MUI is kind of really set the template for this kind of, um, ideology and leadership at least here. Um, starting in the '20s, he launched this thing called the Barack campaign. The Barack, 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, uh, set the scene for the riots that I mentioned earlier of 1929 in Hebron. Um, but really, this, he, the MUI, long before he was hanging out with Hitler and Himmler in Berlin, was a completely committed anti-Semite by any, by, by any measure. Um, and so, um, yeah, so it's, it's, and it's, uh, there was a strong, there was, in the Arab Revolt, you see a strong kind of melding of nationalist themes with Islamic themes. Um, it's not to say, you know, George Antonius was a Christian, and he was very much ideologically on board with the, with, uh, with the revolt, arguably, and certainly against Zionism. So, it is, it is complicated, but it's really in this period that led by the MUI, you have this melding of, of Arab nationalism with, with Islamism.
Another, uh, related point that I didn't know that I found in your book and thought was really interesting was, I think this is, um, when the Peel Commission becomes official, the president of Lebanon at the time, who's a Christian. Uh, I think he, he congratulates, is it, was it Weizmann? Um, 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." Um, and, 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? Um, 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 recently come from Europe. Most of them were, you know, to, to find their indigeneity, you'd have to go back a few thousand years. Um, and, 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. Um, but the, the idea that they were under threat too, simply because they were a religious minority, dissects out the variable of recent arrival and paints a picture of, of the inherently vulnerable status of religious minorities in Islamic Arab Islamic politics.
The, the whole, the, the relationship between the Christian leadership in Lebanon and the Zionist leadership before 1944 is really fascinating and under, very much under, under-written about as far as, as far as I can tell. But you went, in, in, uh, the, the instance that you mentioned was, was in 1937 when they published the Peel Report. And it's not just that, uh, Émile Eddé, the president of Lebanon, sent Weizmann a telegram or something. They were together in the same hotel lobby in Paris, I think it was, and the president of Lebanon raised a toast to Weizmann and said, "To the, 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 confirmed 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 in 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 at this notion of having a non-Muslim neighbor to their south. But as you say, uh, they couldn't say so publicly. Even the arch, the Maronite Catholic Archbishop also sent Weizmann a letter of congratulations. Um, you even had the Sunni Muslim, um, prime minister of Lebanon, who was on very good, um, was very on very good relations with, uh, with the Zionist leadership, and, and they actually coordinated the setting up of a, of a settlement on the border, the Jewish settlement on the border of Lebanon, that was all done in cooperation with this Sunni, uh, prime minister, because there was this tremendous fear of, um, of, uh, Islamic extremism, particularly after the MUI, the MUI in 1937 flees Palestine because by this point, it's clear to everybody that he's pulling the strings of the revolt. So he flees the country and he ends up in Lebanon, outside of Beirut. And so the, the Christian Lebanese, and not just the Christians, were extremely worried about this radicalism, uh, taking, taking root there.
Um, yeah. >> 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. The, I think the consensus is that there, there was probably a Christian majority or at least plurality in that, in that period. But, um, but of course, the, the Christians in Lebanon were always the likeliest to immigrate elsewhere. And, um, and there are questions of birth rate. And I'm, I'm not a Lebanon expert by any, by any stretch. But, but, uh, 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 analog, but it's not, it's, it's not a crazy thing to say. It was meant to be a sort of Christian national home for the Christians of, of, of that area of Mount Lebanon and Beirut, but also just sort of the, of the region. It was meant to be a refuge. And, um, you know, any, I think sometimes I think, you know, those people who call for a, you know, right of return for 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, is 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, that's the future that awaits a, you know, a multi-ethnic mosaic where, you know, where everyone's battling it out for for supremacy because the demographics are so kind of splintered. I think that's actually slightly even too optimistic because, you know, Lebanon obviously had, you know, a 15-year civil war or something like that. It was, it was in the, 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, and, and so forth, and having different interests. With Israel, the, I think the passions and the hatreds in some ways are even deeper because, uh, because Palestinian politics has elevated to a sacred dogma that no part of the land can, can be Jewish at all. Um, and, and so you're right. It's, I mean, to, one of the things I found really flippant when debating people like Dave Smith and, and who agree with that. It's 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, it's extremely sectarian. Um, all of these countries, whether it's Sunni, Shia, or Christian, Muslim, exist on a knife's 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, 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, it's display. 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, I don't think the Jews, 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 the Syrian civil war look like, look like child's play. Um, 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, um, mandate that? Why would I go charge head first 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, I don't really forgive anyone. I, sorry, I forgive people in the conflict with skin in the game, their opinions and and prejudices, but people living in the West, thousands of miles away, with no skin in the game. Uh, to say, well, like, obviously, obviously they've got to do, they've got to be like Lebanon. Uh, 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, you're saying that because it makes you look good, and you literally couldn't give a if this led to a million deaths because it's thousands of miles away. It's not you. >> I think that's right. I, I think that's exactly right. Um, yeah, no debate there. >> Okay, so I guess that gets to the end of my questions about your book. Uh, my last question is, what are you thinking about these days? Um, I assume you're paying attention to the latest news, uh, the prospects of a, of a true peace. Um, 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?
Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a tricky one. It's hard to be optimistic, uh, when it comes, when it comes to this region, when it comes to the prospects of any kind of Israeli-Palestinian accord. Uh, certainly when it comes to the Gaza Strip. I'm old enough to remember the, the, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. I was already working in journalism at the time, uh, when Israel pulled out from Gaza in 2005, when the, uh, Bush administration encouraged or sort of pushed Israel to sort of concede, concede to or accept, uh, 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, uh, and I, you know, I remember the, the, the, the looting of the greenhouses that were left behind by the, the Israeli settlers there. Um, this is not, this is not ancient history. It's very hard to be optimistic, let alone the, the horrors that we've seen, uh, 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 throat-clearing having having been, uh, 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 dollars that they actually happen, that they come to fruition, that there's, uh, that there's investment in, in Gaza, that there's, you know, that there's some kind of, that this technocratic committee can, um, can, can somehow, um, 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, if I'm honest with you.
>> Um, it's hard for me to see how the sticking point, really the bottom line, you know, even with the most complicated, um, issues in this part of the world, there's typically a bottom line. And I think the bottom line in, in, in Gaza is disarmament. And, um, I, I've really struggled disarming Hamas. There are estimates that Hamas has, the Israeli estimate is that Hamas has 60,000 Kalashnikovs, 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 most, the most pro-Hamas member of the technocratic committee is the guy who's in charge of tribal affairs. Anyway, he said, "Look, these, these AKs, these Kalashnikovs are for self-defense. They're not, they can't do any real harm." Well, of course, on October 7th, uh, 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 it'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, I think that's the bottom line, and I don't really see how you square that circle. So it kind of, at this point, the most, the likeliest 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, where 99% of Gazans live.
>> And asvore put it, I think, um, 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, um, 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, um, I don't think people should be misled by his salesmanship about, you know, what's likely to happen here or what he achieved. Um, 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, uh, an enga, you tell the history in a very engaging, character-focused way as well. So, um, I really recommend people get that book, follow you on online. Orin Kesler, thank you so much for coming on my show.
>> Thank you so much, Coleman. It's a real, real, it's a pleasure and an honor. Thanks so much.