The Critical Compass Podcast - March 07, 2024


Early Palestinian History ｜ A Critical Compass Discussion

Israel Land Authority - State Land Ownership ｜ A Critical Compass Clip Was the 1948 War Justified or Ethnic Cleansing？ ｜ A Critical Compass Clip

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Length

55 minutes

Words per minute

143.35

Word count

8,014

Sentence count

383

People

Also mentioned:
Dave Smith Theodore Herschel Trish Wood Judaism Israel

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Hate speech

18

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the early history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, starting with the arrival of the first settlers to the area in the early 19th century, how British colonial management of the area led to the creation of a Jewish state, and what it means to have a right to exist as a nation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Just looking at ownership, and this is so basically of two-thirds Palestinian or two-thirds Arab population in Palestine and one-third Jewish populations.
00:00:11.820 At this point, what would you declare for nation?
00:00:16.080 How would you define this as a nation?
00:00:19.440 What would you think if there's any other area?
00:00:22.020 Yeah, if I'm just a neutral party looking at this map and looking at these population breakdowns, to me this looks like an Arab state with a small Jewish population.
00:00:34.720 That's just what it looks like.
00:00:36.380 Now, the problem is, this kind of moves us nicely into our next point about what does it mean to have a right to exist and what does it mean as a people versus a nation?
00:00:52.020 To have a right to exist.
00:01:11.880 Hello, welcome to the Critical Compass podcast.
00:01:15.060 My name is Mike and this is James.
00:01:16.620 Today, we're going to be talking about some of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
00:01:24.820 Last week, we talked about how the modern Western political landscape is interpreting and the discourse surrounding this conflict from their perspective, from our perspective.
00:01:37.880 This week, we're going to talk more about what, starting all the way from the late 1800s, early 1900s to today, what was the historical context that set into place the factors that have led up to what we see today?
00:01:52.360 So, we're going to cover a few topics.
00:01:54.640 We'll start from the early 1900s and the first settlers to the area, what Zionism is and what the different types of it are, how British colonial management worked at that time, all the way to the mid-1900s.
00:02:10.800 So, what does it mean to be a nation versus a people?
00:02:14.900 What does it mean to have a right to exist?
00:02:17.200 We'll look at some thinkers along the way, like Trish Wood and her podcast.
00:02:30.660 We'll look at what some modern commentators on the issue, like Dave Smith, have to say.
00:02:37.080 And, yeah, I think, James, why don't you take us off with some of the research that you did into the early history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
00:02:45.100 Yeah, it's definitely a loaded and complex situation.
00:02:51.360 And even before all this, it was one of those intimidating topics where there's so much there.
00:02:58.660 And I think we have these, we often hear like little quips from either side on this topic.
00:03:04.900 We hear these things that are repeated.
00:03:07.160 And I was more curious on like, well, what laid the foundation of all this?
00:03:12.280 And if we look in the 1800s, the Jewish people were scattered across Europe.
00:03:19.840 They didn't really have a unified language at this time.
00:03:23.740 You had Jewish people in Germany speaking German.
00:03:27.320 You had Russian Jews. 0.99
00:03:28.420 You had kind of, they were spread out geographically.
00:03:32.060 They weren't homogenous from their culture.
00:03:35.160 And also the Hebrew language was lost at that point as well.
00:03:40.060 So it wasn't common for every Jewish person to speak Hebrew.
00:03:44.720 Not really a unified set of people.
00:03:49.340 And at that time, there were lots of brutal attacks on Jewish people throughout these different countries in Europe.
00:03:55.640 And it was very common for anti-Semitic views, both in groups of people and even like officials in these countries.
00:04:07.100 Anti-Semitic views are very common as well in the 1800s.
00:04:10.480 So if we look in the Palestine region, there has always been a mix of Orthodox Jews, Christian, and Muslims in that region.
00:04:23.280 So that was controlled by the Ottomans at the time in the 1800s.
00:04:29.700 One thing worth noting is under the Ottoman Empire, there wasn't the same kind of tension that we're seeing today.
00:04:36.700 You had these three groups coexisting within the Ottoman Empire, and it seems that there were kind of enough laws set in place that the freedom to practice your religion was there.
00:04:51.280 So it wasn't like the Ottoman Empire really favored or pushed or required people to assimilate to one certain religion.
00:05:01.900 I think with the areas that the Ottoman Empire covered, it made sense for them to just allow a certain amount of flexibility in there.
00:05:11.660 So in Palestine in 1880, Jews were about, I hear a few different accounts, like anywhere from like 2% and no more than 10%.
00:05:24.260 So it was under 10% of the population.
00:05:26.300 And one source or even looking at it is like, well, there's 15,000 Jews, 42,000 Christians, and 400,000 Muslims in 1880.
00:05:36.820 So that kind of gives you an idea of the percentages and the rough makeup.
00:05:41.600 Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
00:05:42.700 Let me ask, we were talking a little bit before we started recording.
00:05:45.520 At this time, in that area that we're talking about, the modern is, you know, where the modern day Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip are, there wasn't necessarily a nation there called Palestine at that time.
00:05:59.040 Is that correct?
00:05:59.680 There was more, it was more like there was sort of distinct tribal groups all generally following the same sort of religion and same sort of lifestyle.
00:06:10.200 Is that right?
00:06:11.180 Yeah, you had more of a tribal, different settlements, different tribes.
00:06:17.700 It wasn't as much a unified nation as you look at like Britain at that time was very well established and you had this collective identity.
00:06:29.180 But that was under the Ottoman Empire.
00:06:31.440 And I guess when you look at some of these shifts, when you're really asking like, well, what makes a nation versus a people?
00:06:40.300 Like people, you can trace kind of a way of living, so a little bit of culture.
00:06:45.640 You can also trace somebody living in a certain area.
00:06:49.460 But a nation really breaks down to a collective identity that you kind of export to a central authority.
00:06:59.600 You almost take away, you get more freedoms in some way.
00:07:03.880 You lose some of your own kind of self-reliance in a way because you are now, well, you're now saying like all grievances should be handled by a state, by the central authority.
00:07:17.880 And I guess when you look at some of these colonial powers that have occupied multiple areas, that kind of waters down national identity a little bit.
00:07:31.840 That kind of blurs the lines because a nation's just lines on a map and then just the will of a state to enforce rules within those lines.
00:07:41.360 So I think during that time, the drive for a state wasn't amazingly strong, like with the rules that were set up.
00:07:52.080 But obviously, like there is always a drive for a certain amount of independence, especially when you look around and other places gain independence.
00:08:02.180 So I guess it's worth noticing, we're talking about like in 1858, one thing changed in the laws within the Ottoman Empire.
00:08:14.000 And there is an Ottoman land law of 1858, which basically enabled Russian Jews to start buying land.
00:08:23.320 And that's where you really started seeing the first wave of immigration.
00:08:28.740 To sort of summarize what the situation was between what happened with the British and the Ottoman and promises made and promises broken, what was happening in that time?
00:08:42.120 Well, to understand that time, we have to actually understand, well, we had the first wave of Russian Jews settling into there between like 1881 and 1903.
00:08:54.100 But during this time, we also had Zionism as a concept emerge in response to kind of the persecution of Jewish people throughout Europe.
00:09:06.460 And 1897, that's when Zionism started forming and Theror Herschel was...
00:09:13.240 That's when the term is coined.
00:09:15.720 Yeah, it's coined.
00:09:16.680 And that's where it was starting to be understood.
00:09:19.560 And these ideas are being spread around.
00:09:21.180 Still very much in its infancy, this was not something that like all Orthodox Jews even like recognized.
00:09:30.220 Not everybody was on the same page of this.
00:09:33.920 So when you look at Zionism, you could... 0.77
00:09:39.880 And this is relevant to kind of the promises that were made and the way that this unfolded.
00:09:46.020 If you look at the different types of Zionism, some of this overlaps, but you could split three main types into like political Zionism, cultural or spiritual Zionism, and a practical Zionism.
00:09:58.460 And you differentiate like political is all about trying to achieve the goals of a Jewish state, a Jewish home, through political means, through leveraging political power, and trying to get the legitimacy through being recognized on the international stage.
00:10:17.020 The cultural or spiritual Zionism, the cultural or spiritual Zionism was the path to establishing a Jewish state was through revitalizing the culture and creating like a spiritual hub for Jewish people.
00:10:33.040 And also reinvigorating and also reinvigorating and like reestablishing Hebrew as a language and kind of telling the story and lighting that fire within individuals.
00:10:43.960 And then there's a practical Zionism of like saying that, well, goals can only be achieved by building infrastructure and setting up good relationships with people.
00:10:58.460 And basically you're creating the value and you'd be welcomed with open arms that you wouldn't have to buy political favors.
00:11:06.720 You'd be creating the kind of like warm relations that you would naturally be accepted.
00:11:11.800 It's interesting what you said earlier about how you mentioned how when Zionism is first conceptualized, most Jews throughout the world would not have been privy to this and would not have had necessarily access to this idea that, well, now we need to form a homeland, or more accurately, we need to rediscover our ancestral homeland.
00:11:41.800 Settle there and move, you have disparate groups of people that generally share religion, generally share certain lifestyle choices, things like that, that, that culturally make them Jewish. 0.99
00:11:54.000 And then you also have, in the same way you have in the, in the area that would become Israel and Palestine, the same thing, you have disparate groups of Arabs who wouldn't necessarily identify all as the same members of the same nation state, generally sharing a lifestyle, generally sharing cultural traits.
00:12:13.340 Then, um, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British, the British were kind of in a bind because you think about the colonies that the British had, the British were bleeding money.
00:12:34.340 They're throwing all their troops and people from their colonies into the meat grinder, which is the trenches, uh, just battling over these areas.
00:12:44.340 And the British were trying to look for any advantage that they could, and as well, they were looking for any ways to increase their funds and, or get some money after.
00:12:55.340 So interesting, um, data point is this was the time world war one was when the, when Britain came off the gold standard, because this is when they started printing money is they wanted to get through the war and like, well, basically the printing money was a tax on their own citizens to like, well, they're devaluing the, the, the wealth that their citizens had just to be able to pay for this war.
00:13:23.020 Um, but this need to get any kind of advantage, uh, it, it led to them making promises and they promised the Arabs in that area and the surrounding area.
00:13:35.440 So Palestine and, uh, would be Syria. 0.79
00:13:39.420 Basically, if you fight for us, you will get your Arab independence after the war. 0.76
00:13:46.600 So that was one promise that was made.
00:13:48.400 You will no longer be considered an Ottoman territory.
00:13:50.340 Yeah.
00:13:51.120 If the Ottomans are defeated.
00:13:53.020 Um, and that convinced them to fight for the British.
00:13:58.160 And despite the fact that there's not necessarily, uh, any major qualms with Ottoman occupation of at the time, there still is an underlying sort of desire for their own unique, distinct Muslim land.
00:14:10.800 Yeah.
00:14:11.280 I think there was the idea of independence was strong enough to over, uh, overturn any good favor that they did have for the Ottoman empire at this point.
00:14:21.540 Um, so that was one promise that was made another promise was made to the French, that the French would get Syria.
00:14:31.320 So I'm like, well, that's, that's another big promise.
00:14:34.940 Third promise was to the very powerful Zionist lobby, uh, the, the political Zionists at that time, they worked with the British to make a deal that after the war, they would be, um, they would be promised their Jewish homeland.
00:14:55.420 And by this point in time, this is about 20, this is about 20 years or so, 25 years, maybe post, uh, creation of Zionism and this movement is gaining some steam.
00:15:05.080 Yeah. So Zionism is about, yeah, 25 years old. And at this point, um, there was enough knowledge of it. There was enough conversations and political dealings for, um, the Zionists to get the support of British. 0.62
00:15:23.000 And there was something called the British and there was something called the Belford Declaration and the Belford Declaration, uh, it directly contradicted the promise of Arab independence.
00:15:33.000 So the British were not going to be able to make everybody happy at the same time. Um, the other thing with the Belford Declaration is, um, basically that helped Britain get the support of wealthy Jewish bankers and those kinds of relationships seemed more important than, um, fulfilling a promise to the Arabs, which they still, they, they had less in common with the Arabs here than, um, a lot of the Jewish people.
00:16:03.000 People who grew up or like, who were sharing some of the cultures in, in Europe.
00:16:08.280 Interesting. So the, so the relationship that when the British are hemorrhaging money, they're at risk of devaluing their currency to, you know, I, I would assume historically a level probably never seen before since they have no more gold standard, certain relationships become more valuable than others.
00:16:27.020 Yeah. So after the war, Britain didn't really, well,
00:16:33.000 they didn't fulfill the promise to the Arabs, they gave Syria to the French and the British mandate was established. Um, and that was reinforced by the League of Nations in 1919 and the, the area of Palestine, that land, um, and it was known as Palestine at the time.
00:16:55.000 It wasn't the nation, but that land was, they established Israel under British rule. So the, um, they allowed the Zionists to start establishing their, their homeland. 0.85
00:17:07.140 And what that looked like was the British were, they, they have a certain style of management where they, it's not like they had all their troops in there at all times, but they do have key people in certain positions throughout the towns to maintain their British rule.
00:17:27.840 So the, the, there was a mismatch of power dynamics. Um, the Zionists had more support from the British than the Arabs did at that time. Uh, the Arabs are less unified. Um, think about just the way that their settlements and their political structure were, they're a little bit more disorganized in that way. And they didn't have the same kind of unified movement as the Zionists at this time.
00:17:55.700 Um, even though there were different types of Zionists and different people, different goals, there was still a, a centralized Zionist fund for buying land and giving it to basically leasing the land to people, to settlers who'd want to move in.
00:18:14.500 Um, one, one thing to note is a lot of these earlier set settlers, like this is a fairly new movement. These were revolutionaries, um, moving in.
00:18:25.700 Like you'd have idealistic, a lot of them from Russia, like idealistic Jews. Um, a lot of them with some of these kind of left-leaning communist social ideals, um, coming into and moving into Palestine at this time. 0.98
00:18:42.500 I think that would add fuel to the fire of, if conflicts are going to emerge, it's going to be when you, like, when you have an influx of men of that fighting age into any area, that's going to feel more threatening than families, right?
00:18:57.660 Yeah. Then, then families. So I think that, uh, potentially adds fuel to the fires you do in 1920. You do have, um, some riots during a festival that was held every year on Sunday.
00:19:09.200 And they're not sure what the trigger was, but you have five Jews and four Arabs killed and several hundred are injured. And that's probably the, one of the single biggest events to start some of these, some of these conflicts.
00:19:25.300 And these things can perpetuate over time. Um, so in the 1930s, you had a huge number of like the immigration increase dramatically, uh, with Nazi persecution. Um, so that was a, you saw a huge influx of Jewish people during that time.
00:19:49.180 Um, but, um, there was still a Arab majority of land ownership and a Arab majority in numbers at this time. So the Jewish people were still in the minority. I think they were over 10%. I think they're between like 10 or 20% of the total population at this point.
00:20:08.680 Some of the, some of the, some of the data gets like a little bit fuzzier of like the exact numbers during each period. Um, but even, even before world war II, um, you did have an Arab revolt demanding independence. Um, they're pushing back against, um, immigration.
00:20:28.680 Um, and this was suppressed at that time. Uh, the British came in and, um, uh, there were Zionist fighters as well, but the British suppressed the Arabs at this time. And from my understanding is that, uh, there were more Arabs disarmed than Zionists and Zionist, uh, militias were able to keep their weapons or keep some of their strength.
00:20:55.680 So there's already another kind of power imbalance there where the Arabs can't really, they don't really have the same kind of unification, but they don't even have at this time, the like manpower and weapons and, or the same kind of like strength, even establish or protect their own settlements. Um, so yeah, that was before world war II.
00:21:22.080 Um, obviously there's a huge amount of immigration. Um, obviously there's a huge amount of immigration after world war II, after the Holocaust. Um, and during that time, um, let's just bring up the map and the numbers, uh, just give you an idea of the location and the percentages between these populations.
00:21:41.080 Um, so let's bring this.
00:21:48.080 Okay. So this is 1945, 1945, just after the war, but this is before, um, some of the tensions and before the UN got brought into things here. So, um, it was, as we can see in like the dark green, we have Arab, uh, red, we have Jewish, and then we have public or other land. Um, I imagine, um,
00:22:10.080 uh, some of that's hard to define during some of this time. Uh, there's probably many areas that were, yeah, it's, it's, it's not clear one way or the other, and you do have some mixed Christians as well.
00:22:23.080 Yeah. So there's still, still plenty of Christians around there. So as you can see, um, there's more Jewish settlements in the north as well as a little bit more on the coast.
00:22:38.080 And you can think of like that land access or that water access was, uh, a little bit easier for settling. And then some of the Arab lands, the lands best suited for growing were along some of those areas as well. Um, yeah. Sort of, as you start to move south and east, it becomes more, uh, higher percentage Arab. 0.97
00:22:59.080 Yeah. Or I should say lower percentage Jewish. 1.00
00:23:03.080 Yes. So you can see in the south, the percentage of, like the percentage of land owned by the Zionists were, was quite low at this time, especially in the Holy Land.
00:23:17.920 Um, which was part of the goals of the Zionists is to recapture their, the Holy Land, which they were promised. Um, so given this stage, like it's hard to even in 1945, here's a question to you, like just looking at ownership and this is, so basically I have two thirds Palestinian or two thirds Arab population in Palestine. 0.85
00:23:46.920 And one third, uh, Jewish populations. Um, at this point, would you declare, what would you declare for nation? Like how would you define this as a nation? What would you like, what would you think if there's any other area?
00:24:06.200 Yeah. Yeah. If I'm just a, if I'm a neutral party, like looking at this map and looking at these population breakdowns, to me, this looks like, this looks like an Arab state with a small Jewish population.
00:24:19.580 That's just what it looks like. Now, the problem is this, this kind of moves us nicely into our, into our next point about what does it mean to have a right to exist? And what does it mean to, as a, as a people versus a nation to have a right to exist?
00:24:38.780 What, what, what does that mean from a historical standpoint? Like when we look at this area, this is in 1945.
00:24:47.680 And if you, if you want to zoom out a little bit, let's zoom out to, uh, let's say two millennia ago, because the Jewish argument for what it means that their state should have a right to exist over an Arab state is that Judaism, uh, predates Islam in that area by about 2000 years.
00:25:11.920 So I understand that. But if you have a current, a current population of Arabs that has been living there for what is the, what is the average memory of a, of a generation, maybe two, three, maybe four generations prior, maybe you knew you, who your great grandparents were.
00:25:31.440 If that's all that, you know, and you're an Arab person living in that area, what does 2000 years ago mean to you? That doesn't mean anything. 0.54
00:25:38.800 If you like, if it comes down to the question of what, when does a claim to a piece of land expire, does it expire? And what are the conditions in place that grant a, a people, an area of land to call theirs?
00:25:56.900 If you could just answer that for, for our viewers, that'd be great. If you could just solve this for us please right now.
00:26:01.140 If, if there was an easy answer, then I'm sure it would have been enacted already because you have claims in North America of, well, this is stolen land.
00:26:10.140 And like, well, are we going to displace however many millions of people who are now living in North America?
00:26:18.000 And like, what would it actually look to give it back to native people and to try to make things right, to have a sense of justice or reset it to some time before, if that involves displacing and or like forcibly uprooting millions of people. 0.64
00:26:39.360 I would say there's got to be a different solution than that, because that will never fly, especially at this time.
00:26:46.200 So I think it's worth noting, um, a greater context of this is if you frame the situation through a sense of property rights, this is where you have like land legally purchased, um, by buying.
00:27:00.100 And you have, um, the exchange that way, what we don't know.
00:27:05.220 And I've heard stories of like, since some settlements in Palestine in the early 1900s, didn't have paper, they were forced out and they were strong armed into giving up their land.
00:27:17.240 Um, but these are word of mouth accounts that are difficult to verify, but you will hear stories.
00:27:23.600 If you talk to, if you dive into that side, you will hear stories about, uh, people being, basically their property rights being broken and being violated that way.
00:27:35.780 So this idea of property rights kind of really dovetails in 1947, 1948.
00:27:45.580 Um, so this is the official creation of the state of Israel, correct?
00:27:50.700 It's, if you say official in the sense of Israel declared themselves a state and the UN kind of sanctioned it, but the wording's kind of strange.
00:28:07.640 So the, the British mandate was starting to expire, um, and it was set to expire on 1948.
00:28:15.480 And in 1947, the UN general assembly, uh, this was resolution one eight one.
00:28:23.040 Um, it called to divide Palestine into a unnamed Jewish state and an unnamed Arab state.
00:28:30.340 Um, and then with Jerusalem under the UN trusteeship.
00:28:35.580 So UN would control that at that time.
00:28:38.400 And this is before the mandate actually expired.
00:28:43.560 And in 1948, you had a war that basically changed everything.
00:28:49.120 Um, so in these areas, um, these borders were kind of loosely defined.
00:28:56.720 And one way of thinking about the 1948, 48 war is that you had the surrounding areas, like you had the Transjordan, uh, you had Egypt.
00:29:06.820 And basically they were coming into, uh, partially to establish their borders.
00:29:12.280 Um, you will hear, you will hear on the Israel side saying that, well, the Arabs ganged up and they're trying to wipe out Israel.
00:29:20.460 And the deeper I look into it, it doesn't seem like it's that case because there's no evidence to showing that like Transjordan wanted any part of the Palestine area.
00:29:34.720 They weren't going to mow through and they didn't have the military might to take on what was already established there.
00:29:41.940 So, um, at this point, the military strength was in Israel's hands.
00:29:47.720 They, they by far had the greatest number of troops and weapons and, um, they were the most well-funded at this time.
00:29:56.200 So this war was fine. 1.00
00:29:57.580 And who were they being funded by?
00:29:58.580 Originally, you had funding from the British, you had funding from Russia as well.
00:30:06.760 Um, and then eventually, well, the funding's primarily today by America.
00:30:13.760 So it's kind of shifted a little bit.
00:30:16.560 So you had funding from them, but you also had funding from, um, these Jewish organizations and or banking.
00:30:23.060 Um, there was some very wealthy Jewish people that, that were putting money into these organizations as well.
00:30:30.300 Um, so.
00:30:32.260 European Jews, not, uh, not from the area, correct?
00:30:35.480 Not from the area.
00:30:36.660 These were Jewish people in other areas, basically living vicariously, like putting money into this and like, well, they can establish a homeland and they didn't have to basically be on the ground fighting out these moment to moment, um.
00:30:52.640 So, so the Arab legions in 1948 came to the areas and during this time, Israeli forces kind of, they won by a great margin.
00:31:08.040 And one consequence of this was a, I believe at the time, I think there was 1.5 million Palestinians and almost half of them up to 700,000, depending on where, which numbers you'd like to see left their homes.
00:31:29.340 So they, one idea is that they fled the war just because they were like, well, we don't want to get killed.
00:31:35.920 So they fled because these are, think of these settlements and these different, there were a lot of Arabs that were just impartial and they just wanted to live their lives. 0.98
00:31:44.820 So there was, um, not all of them were ideologically kind of tied into this situation.
00:31:50.260 One idea was that they just fled out of fear.
00:31:55.480 Another thought, and this is more of the, on the Palestine side, you'll hear the mentions of coercion, fear tactics, announcing plans of going through a village and like preemptively announcing it.
00:32:11.520 So you're scaring people off and trying to get people out of their homes.
00:32:16.040 Um, so the Palestine point of view and kind of today's terms is that during 1948, the Zionists, they wanted more land.
00:32:29.100 They didn't have the, the amount of land in their homeland that they wanted.
00:32:33.120 Therefore, if they just established those borders, they, they really don't have the areas, especially the Holy land that they were really hoping for that they were promised in kind of the more in their kind of mythology.
00:32:45.680 side of things.
00:32:47.560 And the claim is that they use that war as an excuse to take a bunch of land, push people over their homes.
00:32:57.080 And you have this, now you have this Palestine refugee crisis where, um, 700,000 Palestinians are now, they don't have anywhere to live.
00:33:07.800 And then after the war, as in Israel declares their, like establishes their nation, Palestine still doesn't have, they're not an established nation.
00:33:18.560 They're just kind of existing.
00:33:20.900 These refugees weren't allowed back into their homes.
00:33:24.120 That was the first major start of like a massive displacement of the Palestinian people.
00:33:30.320 And that's one of the major grievances that has persisted even to today.
00:33:34.240 The, the map we just looked at where it was basically one third Jewish people to two thirds Palestinians that flipped.
00:33:42.780 And now you had, it was basically turning into a Jewish majority at this point with more land and population.
00:33:51.400 And that was even before more people came in.
00:33:54.680 So that really shifted the power dynamics in that region and the UN kind of, they recognized, well, at the point they recognized Israel as a legitimate nation.
00:34:12.060 The only problem is you look at any other nation, they've established borders that are rigorously defined and the borders weren't well defined at that point.
00:34:20.260 So that's one thing that kind of makes Israel a little bit different than any other nation that exists today is they're kind of still in flux.
00:34:28.020 And it's a little bit different.
00:34:28.960 It's not just one nation border and another nation borders.
00:34:32.000 This is all within one area and you have mixed populations.
00:34:34.600 So this is, it's already complicates this situation even more because how do you define borders where you have settlements with people living within the same areas and coexisting?
00:34:46.520 This is already getting, this is already getting, like turning into a very messy situation with.
00:34:52.140 Yeah.
00:34:53.040 And when you have, well, when you have, when you have Arab Jews who view themselves ethnically and culturally differently, and then you have European Jews and you have, you know, Arab Muslims, you have, it's a conflation of, of a cultural and a religious group.
00:35:15.040 In a very small area of land that, like you say, has ill-defined or shifting borders, sometimes overlapping, sometimes with big gaps in between.
00:35:28.580 If you want to look at, you know, what eventually ended up getting settled on as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
00:35:36.740 It's very, it's very, it's unlike, like you say, it's unlike any other country currently that, that we can point to as a, as a concurrent example.
00:35:44.760 Anyway, I was going to ask you, um, are you familiar with the percentages of, um, the land deals and how they shifted pre and post, uh, the, the two major wars in the region?
00:35:56.900 I, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.
00:35:59.300 I think the initial split was, was something close to 50, 50, ended up being 80, 20.
00:36:05.260 And for a period of time was 100% controlled by Israel.
00:36:09.980 It has since shifted from that, but maybe, maybe give us a little bit of more direction on that.
00:36:16.200 Um, so I, I believe around that time it was, it was closer to 50, 50, or that was during some of the talks at the UN, um, it was like 47, 53 and that was, it was more balanced after the war.
00:36:32.980 But even if you look at before, before the war in 1948, that was still a massive shift.
00:36:39.400 And that, uh, basically the amount of land in areas like gained and the population rebalancing, because you have a mass exodus of people.
00:36:49.640 Um, so that was of no benefit to, to Palisades, not helping them, like, if they had any chance of a nation, they are fractionated, uh, they are divided.
00:37:03.100 Um, and if you look at even West Bank versus Gaza, there's, it's not even like their, their area right now is even unified.
00:37:12.980 So the, the other thing worth, worth noting is, uh, uh, uh, let me just pull up based, uh, so currently today, the Israeli government owns 93% of the land, um, of Israel that's owned by the government and it's leased out to the people.
00:37:37.020 So the Jewish national fund was, was founded in 1901.
00:37:42.980 And that fund itself owns 13% of the land, but, um, most of it's owned by the Israel land, um, administration, the ILA that was established a little bit later in 1960.
00:37:59.720 That's 93% of Israel's land is the ILA. 0.73
00:38:03.740 The JNF owned 50% of the land held by Jews in 1948.
00:38:10.960 And if you think about this refugee crisis with most of the land being held by government.
00:38:16.160 And if you think about any land that is gained during that time of war, that's not going to go directly to individual citizens.
00:38:23.660 And you think about these organizations or a way of them managing this land.
00:38:27.240 So now you get the land transferred into the hands of the Israeli government and yeah, so you're left with Palestinian refugees that are not let back into their settlements in their homes.
00:38:42.180 And that's one of the major issues there.
00:38:44.080 And part of that is the shifting of property rights from individuals to these government bodies.
00:38:50.240 Okay.
00:38:54.840 All right.
00:38:55.860 Well, I think I fully understand it now, James, and I'm ready to make a determination.
00:39:00.960 The, uh, it gets more and more complicated as you dive in and there's, there's going to be the one thing with this, there's going to be disagreements even on some of these, um, some of these facts, um, or some of these points and everything you can.
00:39:19.460 I mean, it is interesting to seeing the same events framed from different points, but I'm just coming from this, from a standpoint of like, well, what things were in place and like, when you look at individual property rights, it looks like they were, they were violated over time.
00:39:42.700 Um, that, that's kind of, that's my sense of the situation.
00:39:46.440 I don't think, I don't think even, I don't even think that the strongest pro-Israel, uh, pro-Zionist person would deny that.
00:39:55.940 I don't think you can because there just physically are homes and settlements being, that have been, or that are being built on areas that used to be occupied by people who identify as Palestinians.
00:40:11.020 Like this, that's just a fact.
00:40:12.960 Now, what the, what the, um, the crux of the matter is, is who, if anyone is entitled, quote unquote, to that land.
00:40:24.680 So again, it comes down to a matter of, of, of rights.
00:40:29.800 Um, what, what does existing mean?
00:40:32.360 What, what, what does land, uh, land rights even mean?
00:40:36.060 Can, can you have, can you have a spiritual or a, a metaphysical claim on a piece of physical land?
00:40:46.340 It's, it's a very, it's a very confusing and it's a very, uh, unusual discussion to even have.
00:40:53.820 Uh, I'd like to just bring up at this point, if I could, we'll, we'll jump from, uh, we'll just do a quick, uh, 70 year jump to today.
00:41:01.440 Uh, and, uh, I'm just going to share my screen here with, um, Dave Smith.
00:41:07.660 Uh, we've talked about him a couple of times, I think, on this podcast.
00:41:11.240 He's, uh, he's an interesting guy and he's got, um, he's got some, uh, some fans and some detractors because he is a Jewish man who is, uh, pretty, uh, outspoken on, um, be, as being an anti-Zionist.
00:41:28.200 And being, uh, you know, sort of coming to the defense in a way lately of the Palestinians.
00:41:34.140 Not lately.
00:41:34.740 He's, he's discussed it over the years, but, but, um, much more frequently now since October.
00:41:41.540 He is a comedian podcaster, but he's also fairly outspoken in the libertarian community.
00:41:47.940 Is that?
00:41:48.140 Yeah.
00:41:48.300 He's a, he's a leader in, in, uh, the American, uh, one of the, you know, uh, I think a fairly high level person in the American, uh, libertarian party.
00:41:55.300 Yes.
00:41:56.120 So very much on individual rights more than state, state rights.
00:42:02.680 Yeah, very much so.
00:42:03.840 Very much so.
00:42:04.440 And he's, um, he's been outspoken in the past, uh, primarily on, uh, the atrocities that are occurring in Yemen.
00:42:12.020 That's sort of his, what I've known him for.
00:42:14.640 He's talked about Yemen.
00:42:15.640 He's talked about Syria a lot.
00:42:17.100 Uh, uh, in the last, uh, couple months, it's obviously been more about the Palestinian conflict.
00:42:22.560 So in this, uh, he's got a Twitter thread here and it's on the screen for those who are just listening.
00:42:28.060 He's being asked on Twitter here, do you think Israel has the right to exist?
00:42:31.920 And if so, under which borders?
00:42:34.120 Uh, and he says every human being has the right to exist.
00:42:37.680 Governments don't have rights.
00:42:38.940 It's a question of reasonable, of a reasonable solution and one that would result in the fewest violation of individual rights.
00:42:44.700 I'd say 67 borders is probably the best compromise. 0.87
00:42:48.460 Either way, the more relevant question in this conflict is, do Palestinians have a right to exist?
00:42:53.960 So interesting points, interesting, um, idea there that he's not the only person that I've read that says, uh, that uses the 1967 borders as a reasonable starting place.
00:43:06.760 Do you, do you have any thoughts on that?
00:43:08.020 Um, I think at this point when you, between 1948 and 1967, you had a huge amount of immigration.
00:43:15.560 So I think once you get a certain amount, you're already into like a couple generations of people.
00:43:22.180 It gets very difficult to like turn back things because it would, I think 67 in his point of view, like the borders in 67 would be the least amount of people uprooted.
00:43:35.060 And like, you wouldn't have to, like, you wouldn't be forcing a whole bunch of people out of your homes just to, just to kind of reinforce or establish those borders.
00:43:46.200 So I think that maybe, maybe that's where that perspective comes from.
00:43:50.200 That's where he's coming from.
00:43:51.440 Okay.
00:43:51.800 Okay.
00:43:52.440 Um, I'll, I'll show also a response to it.
00:43:54.980 Um, I don't know who this person is.
00:43:57.620 He just has a, uh, he had a pretty thorough response.
00:44:01.300 Uh, I'll read it to you, uh, to the listeners here.
00:44:04.020 So, um, this is, uh, C Massner, uh, on Twitter at C Massner, uh, Israel, the nation has a right to exist.
00:44:12.300 It's thanks to the fact that the sovereign Ottoman Empire lost World War I and Britain and France, both sovereign states, ended up with their former territories in the Middle East.
00:44:20.320 This is indisputable.
00:44:21.900 And I think James, uh, your earlier, uh, talk about this was, sort of backs that up.
00:44:29.720 He continues, Israel has the right to exist because Britain legally granted the Jews the territory they now inhabit as a sovereign state.
00:44:35.980 That transfer was legitimate and legal by any understanding of international law and convention.
00:44:40.200 Israel has the right to exist, both Gaza and the West Bank, thanks to treaties signed with both Egypt and Jordan.
00:44:47.040 Again, James, you've talked about this.
00:44:49.640 This is also indisputable and is legal under international law and convention.
00:44:53.840 The facts argue that all of the territory now controlled by Israel was acquired either by acts of sovereign states or as a sovereign state itself,
00:45:00.340 and no understanding of international law or convention grants the current residents of Gaza or the West Bank sovereignty.
00:45:05.700 So he doesn't, doesn't mince words with this statement for sure.
00:45:11.780 What do you, do you have any thoughts on this?
00:45:14.060 So, again, he's talking about the, as we went through the history, at what point was that a sovereign state?
00:45:23.340 Because when it was controlled by Britain, it was still a coexisting land of majority Arabs and a minority of Jewish people.
00:45:36.080 So right before 1948, when we look at those, that percentage of land ownership and the demographic breakup,
00:45:45.560 I'm like, well, that's, when people just sum things up like this, it makes it sound like back after World War I,
00:45:53.980 there was a homogenous area of land, like settlements of Jewish people with very defined borders around it.
00:46:04.480 And it's more complicated than that, especially as you get the mixing of people.
00:46:09.020 So it's hard to even, you can't simplify things like this.
00:46:14.060 And it just sounds like these things are technically true in ways,
00:46:18.980 but what got violated along the way is individual property rights of citizens.
00:46:26.240 Because like Palestine was never established, but the citizens there were established.
00:46:31.500 Yeah, and what it feels like is that for the, at least in the early to mid-20th century and carrying on through into the 60s and 70s,
00:46:44.480 it feels like both Israel and Palestine, with respect to one or the other being or not being a sovereign state,
00:46:54.260 it feels like it was, they were sort of defining that based on, in, in, uh, I don't know the words I'm looking for here,
00:47:04.560 in the context of some other granting authority, either, either the British or the UN or, uh, private interests or religious interests or, uh, revolutionary groups or tribal groups.
00:47:18.260 It feels like there isn't, there was never necessarily a consensus by any majority, uh, world, uh, you know,
00:47:28.400 the majority countries in the world of what exactly this area was.
00:47:32.160 And it sort of depends on whose word you're taking for it.
00:47:36.580 Does that make sense?
00:47:38.720 One thing worth noting on that is, uh, like we talk about a nation versus people, like a peoples, they're living there.
00:47:47.360 They are, they go generation to generation, they're cultivating the land, they're doing this.
00:47:52.500 And most sovereign nations had centuries of people living there and breaking their backs to basically establish that land.
00:48:04.140 In this case, a lot of the legitimacy came from the ideas behind it, uh, the political Zionism and the way that it's,
00:48:16.000 I must give them credit, like to unify that identity and like to keep that identity going and to propagate these ideas throughout the national sphere, like the international sphere.
00:48:29.720 Um, that, that's, that shows like quite a lot of tenacity from them.
00:48:35.420 Um, and it's impressive that they're able to get these ideas out.
00:48:39.460 Um, it does come at the cost of, we were talking about, so the, the cultural and practical Zionism, I think has been a little bit more muted over the years that the ideas of like, well,
00:48:52.520 the legitimacy comes from establishing yourself and working and building relationships, I think it's turned more into more of the assertion aspect of like, well, we deserve this land and, or we fought for this land and, or it's like, this is, we, we should be granted this land because we are owed.
00:49:13.080 Um, because that, that's more of a heavy, heavy handedness rather than a historical, um, fact of them being on the land for multiple hundreds of years.
00:49:24.660 Well, and, and as well, I feel like a more convincing case rather than, you know, this is a, this is a country that was granted sovereign rights and et cetera.
00:49:32.040 I think a more convincing argument would be, uh, they did, they did weather, not only weather, but they did actually win two wars, uh, from a conglomerate of Arab nations against them and they came out victorious.
00:49:48.100 So in another, you know, in any other place in the world, land is won and lost through war.
00:49:56.260 So I don't know.
00:49:57.680 What do you think about that?
00:49:58.500 Um, I would say in this case, it's because you had established settlements and you still had individuals and you didn't have like a, it wasn't as much of a united front in the way of, it's not like you had the nation of Palestine and you didn't have an established war.
00:50:20.400 You had, it was less defined that way.
00:50:25.180 So the war ended up just affecting the property rights of a lot of individuals.
00:50:31.960 So that, that's, that's where it seems a little bit different than like two nations fighting about the imaginary line on a map.
00:50:39.960 This was like an interwoven shared area.
00:50:43.720 And that seems, I think that's where you get more into the language where people will call this ethnic cleansing of like one group wanting to live.
00:50:55.180 Change the demographic split of an area that is shared and you could, you could find other examples in, um, in Africa or even examples of, uh, um, in Eastern Europe.
00:51:08.520 Yeah.
00:51:09.500 It's, this is something that's come up before, but I think when you have intermixed populations, this is a little bit more than two sovereign states trying to establish their borders.
00:51:20.120 Well, yes.
00:51:22.040 And, and as is the case with, with, I would say, um, probably pretty uncontroversially most wars in history, it is the common person, the average person that suffers the most and has, and has truly the least stake in it.
00:51:38.020 And more often than not, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's the, the battle of, um, two ideologies, maybe, maybe represented by rather actually a small percentage of, of both populations.
00:51:52.060 Yeah, you can kind of narrow it down to, you have the elites and you have their ideologies being fought out by just the common people.
00:52:05.120 And I would like, in our next episode, I would like to dive into kind of the, kind of the differences between what some of the average people believe, um, some of their views and kind of how, how that coexists with the ideologies that, that kind of, um, get fueled by blood feuds and this idea of justice and revenge.
00:52:32.860 And I think the most difficult part is that any idea of justice now is a lost cause because both groups will define justice as something that's unattainable without massive harm to the other group.
00:52:52.060 And as you get more perceived harm, you get more radicalization on both sides.
00:52:56.600 So you'll get more radicalized.
00:52:58.680 Um, you'll, you'll, you get Hamas now. 0.92
00:53:01.940 Um, which is, seems like it's basically a hindrance to any, any two state solutions going to be hindered by the more radical elements in Hamas because, um, in the international community, they'll say, well, they can't govern themselves because look at the, look, they're a loose cannon.
00:53:22.880 They can't even like, they can't even like, look at these radicals.
00:53:25.680 They, they have no, no place on the international stage because their conduct.
00:53:32.340 And then as you get radical elements on one side, you get radical elements on the other with this more kind of tunnel vision idea of what an Israeli state should be.
00:53:45.280 So you have some more balanced Zionist, some of the more practical, some of the more cultural, and then you have the hardcore political that really have a vision for what that area should look like.
00:53:58.680 And I think the more radical one side gets, the more radical another.
00:54:02.080 And I think this is what perpetuates these, these atrocities, but we can always dive, dive into it a little bit more into, in our other episodes.
00:54:11.080 Yeah, well, and I think that's a good place to leave it here because in, in a future episode, what we're going to do is, uh, we're going to explore some more in depth as to what, um, thinkers who are much more qualified on this than us have to say about, uh, what some possible one or two state solutions might be.
00:54:31.920 And we're also going to show some, uh, some short clips from documentaries, uh, of, uh, Palestinians and, uh, Israelis, uh, what, what life looks like in certain areas of both, uh, both territories now and just what, uh, what the future might look like for this region, uh, post October 7th, 2023.
00:54:54.260 So thanks for coming along with us on this, uh, short, um, more of a history lesson this time exposition of the history, more of a history lesson than a, uh, than a discussion, but I, I like it.
00:55:07.880 I appreciate the, uh, the research that you did on this one, James.
00:55:11.000 Um, and yeah, in a future episode, we're going to dive a little bit, uh, deeper still.
00:55:15.960 So thank you again, uh, from, uh, me and James, this is the critical compass podcast, and we will see you again soon.
00:55:22.480 All right.
00:55:23.220 Take care.
00:55:24.260 Take care.