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.
00:00:00.000Just looking at ownership, and this is so basically of two-thirds Palestinian or two-thirds Arab population in Palestine and one-third Jewish populations.
00:00:11.820At this point, what would you declare for nation?
00:00:16.080How would you define this as a nation?
00:00:19.440What would you think if there's any other area?
00:00:22.020Yeah, 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.
00:00:36.380Now, 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?
00:01:16.620Today, we're going to be talking about some of the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
00:01:24.820Last week, we talked about how the modern Western political landscape is interpreting and the discourse surrounding this conflict from their perspective, from our perspective.
00:01:37.880This 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?
00:01:52.360So, we're going to cover a few topics.
00:01:54.640We'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.
00:02:10.800So, what does it mean to be a nation versus a people?
00:02:14.900What does it mean to have a right to exist?
00:02:17.200We'll look at some thinkers along the way, like Trish Wood and her podcast.
00:02:30.660We'll look at what some modern commentators on the issue, like Dave Smith, have to say.
00:02:37.080And, 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.
00:02:45.100Yeah, it's definitely a loaded and complex situation.
00:02:51.360And even before all this, it was one of those intimidating topics where there's so much there.
00:02:58.660And I think we have these, we often hear like little quips from either side on this topic.
00:03:04.900We hear these things that are repeated.
00:03:07.160And I was more curious on like, well, what laid the foundation of all this?
00:03:12.280And if we look in the 1800s, the Jewish people were scattered across Europe.
00:03:19.840They didn't really have a unified language at this time.
00:03:23.740You had Jewish people in Germany speaking German.
00:03:49.340And at that time, there were lots of brutal attacks on Jewish people throughout these different countries in Europe.
00:03:55.640And it was very common for anti-Semitic views, both in groups of people and even like officials in these countries.
00:04:07.100Anti-Semitic views are very common as well in the 1800s.
00:04:10.480So if we look in the Palestine region, there has always been a mix of Orthodox Jews, Christian, and Muslims in that region.
00:04:23.280So that was controlled by the Ottomans at the time in the 1800s.
00:04:29.700One thing worth noting is under the Ottoman Empire, there wasn't the same kind of tension that we're seeing today.
00:04:36.700You 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.
00:04:51.280So it wasn't like the Ottoman Empire really favored or pushed or required people to assimilate to one certain religion.
00:05:01.900I think with the areas that the Ottoman Empire covered, it made sense for them to just allow a certain amount of flexibility in there.
00:05:11.660So in Palestine in 1880, Jews were about, I hear a few different accounts, like anywhere from like 2% and no more than 10%.
00:05:24.260So it was under 10% of the population.
00:05:26.300And one source or even looking at it is like, well, there's 15,000 Jews, 42,000 Christians, and 400,000 Muslims in 1880.
00:05:36.820So that kind of gives you an idea of the percentages and the rough makeup.
00:05:42.700Let me ask, we were talking a little bit before we started recording.
00:05:45.520At 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.
00:05:59.680There 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.
00:06:11.180Yeah, you had more of a tribal, different settlements, different tribes.
00:06:17.700It 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.
00:06:29.180But that was under the Ottoman Empire.
00:06:31.440And I guess when you look at some of these shifts, when you're really asking like, well, what makes a nation versus a people?
00:06:40.300Like people, you can trace kind of a way of living, so a little bit of culture.
00:06:45.640You can also trace somebody living in a certain area.
00:06:49.460But a nation really breaks down to a collective identity that you kind of export to a central authority.
00:06:59.600You almost take away, you get more freedoms in some way.
00:07:03.880You 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.
00:07:17.880And 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.
00:07:31.840That 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.
00:07:41.360So I think during that time, the drive for a state wasn't amazingly strong, like with the rules that were set up.
00:07:52.080But obviously, like there is always a drive for a certain amount of independence, especially when you look around and other places gain independence.
00:08:02.180So I guess it's worth noticing, we're talking about like in 1858, one thing changed in the laws within the Ottoman Empire.
00:08:14.000And there is an Ottoman land law of 1858, which basically enabled Russian Jews to start buying land.
00:08:23.320And that's where you really started seeing the first wave of immigration.
00:08:28.740To 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?
00:08:42.120Well, 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.
00:08:54.100But during this time, we also had Zionism as a concept emerge in response to kind of the persecution of Jewish people throughout Europe.
00:09:06.460And 1897, that's when Zionism started forming and Theror Herschel was...
00:09:16.680And that's where it was starting to be understood.
00:09:19.560And these ideas are being spread around.
00:09:21.180Still very much in its infancy, this was not something that like all Orthodox Jews even like recognized.
00:09:30.220Not everybody was on the same page of this.
00:09:33.920So when you look at Zionism, you could...
00:09:39.880And this is relevant to kind of the promises that were made and the way that this unfolded.
00:09:46.020If 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.
00:09:58.460And 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.
00:10:17.020The 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.
00:10:33.040And also reinvigorating and also reinvigorating and like reestablishing Hebrew as a language and kind of telling the story and lighting that fire within individuals.
00:10:43.960And 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.
00:10:58.460And basically you're creating the value and you'd be welcomed with open arms that you wouldn't have to buy political favors.
00:11:06.720You'd be creating the kind of like warm relations that you would naturally be accepted.
00:11:11.800It'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.
00:11:41.800Settle 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.
00:11:54.000And 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.
00:12:13.340Then, 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.
00:12:34.340They're throwing all their troops and people from their colonies into the meat grinder, which is the trenches, uh, just battling over these areas.
00:12:44.340And 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.
00:12:55.340So 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.
00:13:23.020Um, 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.
00:13:53.020Um, and that convinced them to fight for the British.
00:13:58.160And 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.
00:14:11.280I 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.
00:14:21.540Um, so that was one promise that was made another promise was made to the French, that the French would get Syria.
00:14:31.320So I'm like, well, that's, that's another big promise.
00:14:34.940Third 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.
00:14:55.420And 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.
00:15:05.080Yeah. 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.
00:15:23.000And 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.
00:15:33.000So 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.
00:16:03.000People who grew up or like, who were sharing some of the cultures in, in Europe.
00:16:08.280Interesting. 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.
00:16:27.020Yeah. So after the war, Britain didn't really, well,
00:16:33.000they 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.
00:16:55.000It 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.
00:17:07.140And 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.
00:17:27.840So 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.
00:17:55.700Um, 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.
00:18:14.500Um, 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.
00:18:25.700Like 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.
00:18:42.500I 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?
00:18:57.660Yeah. 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.
00:19:09.200And 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.
00:19:25.300And 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.
00:19:49.180Um, 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.
00:20:08.680Some 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.
00:20:28.680Um, 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.
00:20:55.680So 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.
00:21:22.080Um, 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.
00:21:48.080Okay. 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,
00:22:10.080uh, 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.
00:22:23.080Yeah. 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.
00:22:38.080And 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.
00:22:59.080Yeah. Or I should say lower percentage Jewish.
00:23:03.080Yes. 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.
00:23:17.920Um, 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.
00:23:46.920And 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?
00:24:06.200Yeah. 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.
00:24:19.580That'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?
00:24:38.780What, what, what does that mean from a historical standpoint? Like when we look at this area, this is in 1945.
00:24:47.680And 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.
00:25:11.920So 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.
00:25:31.440If 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.
00:25:38.800If 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?
00:25:56.900If you could just answer that for, for our viewers, that'd be great. If you could just solve this for us please right now.
00:26:01.140If, 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.
00:26:10.140And like, well, are we going to displace however many millions of people who are now living in North America?
00:26:18.000And 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.
00:26:39.360I would say there's got to be a different solution than that, because that will never fly, especially at this time.
00:26:46.200So 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.
00:27:00.100And you have, um, the exchange that way, what we don't know.
00:27:05.220And 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.
00:27:17.240Um, but these are word of mouth accounts that are difficult to verify, but you will hear stories.
00:27:23.600If 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.
00:27:35.780So this idea of property rights kind of really dovetails in 1947, 1948.
00:27:45.580Um, so this is the official creation of the state of Israel, correct?
00:27:50.700It'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.
00:28:07.640So the, the British mandate was starting to expire, um, and it was set to expire on 1948.
00:28:15.480And in 1947, the UN general assembly, uh, this was resolution one eight one.
00:28:23.040Um, it called to divide Palestine into a unnamed Jewish state and an unnamed Arab state.
00:28:30.340Um, and then with Jerusalem under the UN trusteeship.
00:28:35.580So UN would control that at that time.
00:28:38.400And this is before the mandate actually expired.
00:28:43.560And in 1948, you had a war that basically changed everything.
00:28:49.120Um, so in these areas, um, these borders were kind of loosely defined.
00:28:56.720And 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.
00:29:06.820And basically they were coming into, uh, partially to establish their borders.
00:29:12.280Um, 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.
00:29:20.460And 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.
00:29:34.720They weren't going to mow through and they didn't have the military might to take on what was already established there.
00:29:41.940So, um, at this point, the military strength was in Israel's hands.
00:29:47.720They, they by far had the greatest number of troops and weapons and, um, they were the most well-funded at this time.
00:30:36.660These 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.
00:30:52.640So, so the Arab legions in 1948 came to the areas and during this time, Israeli forces kind of, they won by a great margin.
00:31:08.040And 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.
00:31:29.340So they, one idea is that they fled the war just because they were like, well, we don't want to get killed.
00:31:35.920So 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.
00:31:44.820So there was, um, not all of them were ideologically kind of tied into this situation.
00:31:50.260One idea was that they just fled out of fear.
00:31:55.480Another 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.
00:32:11.520So you're scaring people off and trying to get people out of their homes.
00:32:16.040Um, so the Palestine point of view and kind of today's terms is that during 1948, the Zionists, they wanted more land.
00:32:29.100They didn't have the, the amount of land in their homeland that they wanted.
00:32:33.120Therefore, 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.
00:32:47.560And the claim is that they use that war as an excuse to take a bunch of land, push people over their homes.
00:32:57.080And you have this, now you have this Palestine refugee crisis where, um, 700,000 Palestinians are now, they don't have anywhere to live.
00:33:07.800And then after the war, as in Israel declares their, like establishes their nation, Palestine still doesn't have, they're not an established nation.
00:33:20.900These refugees weren't allowed back into their homes.
00:33:24.120That was the first major start of like a massive displacement of the Palestinian people.
00:33:30.320And that's one of the major grievances that has persisted even to today.
00:33:34.240The, the map we just looked at where it was basically one third Jewish people to two thirds Palestinians that flipped.
00:33:42.780And now you had, it was basically turning into a Jewish majority at this point with more land and population.
00:33:51.400And that was even before more people came in.
00:33:54.680So 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.
00:34:12.060The 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.
00:34:20.260So 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.
00:34:28.960It's not just one nation border and another nation borders.
00:34:32.000This is all within one area and you have mixed populations.
00:34:34.600So 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?
00:34:46.520This is already getting, this is already getting, like turning into a very messy situation with.
00:34:53.040And 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.
00:35:15.040In a very small area of land that, like you say, has ill-defined or shifting borders, sometimes overlapping, sometimes with big gaps in between.
00:35:28.580If you want to look at, you know, what eventually ended up getting settled on as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
00:35:36.740It'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.
00:35:44.760Anyway, 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?
00:35:56.900I, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.
00:35:59.300I think the initial split was, was something close to 50, 50, ended up being 80, 20.
00:36:05.260And for a period of time was 100% controlled by Israel.
00:36:09.980It has since shifted from that, but maybe, maybe give us a little bit of more direction on that.
00:36:16.200Um, 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.
00:36:32.980But even if you look at before, before the war in 1948, that was still a massive shift.
00:36:39.400And that, uh, basically the amount of land in areas like gained and the population rebalancing, because you have a mass exodus of people.
00:36:49.640Um, 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.
00:37:03.100Um, 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.
00:37:12.980So 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.
00:37:37.020So the Jewish national fund was, was founded in 1901.
00:37:42.980And 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.
00:37:59.720That's 93% of Israel's land is the ILA.
00:38:03.740The JNF owned 50% of the land held by Jews in 1948.
00:38:10.960And if you think about this refugee crisis with most of the land being held by government.
00:38:16.160And if you think about any land that is gained during that time of war, that's not going to go directly to individual citizens.
00:38:23.660And you think about these organizations or a way of them managing this land.
00:38:27.240So 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.
00:38:42.180And that's one of the major issues there.
00:38:44.080And part of that is the shifting of property rights from individuals to these government bodies.
00:38:55.860Well, I think I fully understand it now, James, and I'm ready to make a determination.
00:39:00.960The, 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.
00:39:19.460I 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.
00:39:42.700Um, that, that's kind of, that's my sense of the situation.
00:39:46.440I 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.
00:39:55.940I 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.
00:40:32.360What, what, what does land, uh, land rights even mean?
00:40:36.060Can, can you have, can you have a spiritual or a, a metaphysical claim on a piece of physical land?
00:40:46.340It's, it's a very, it's a very confusing and it's a very, uh, unusual discussion to even have.
00:40:53.820Uh, 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.
00:41:01.440Uh, and, uh, I'm just going to share my screen here with, um, Dave Smith.
00:41:07.660Uh, we've talked about him a couple of times, I think, on this podcast.
00:41:11.240He'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.
00:41:28.200And being, uh, you know, sort of coming to the defense in a way lately of the Palestinians.
00:41:48.300He'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.
00:42:38.940It's a question of reasonable, of a reasonable solution and one that would result in the fewest violation of individual rights.
00:42:44.700I'd say 67 borders is probably the best compromise.
00:42:48.460Either way, the more relevant question in this conflict is, do Palestinians have a right to exist?
00:42:53.960So 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.
00:43:06.760Do you, do you have any thoughts on that?
00:43:08.020Um, I think at this point when you, between 1948 and 1967, you had a huge amount of immigration.
00:43:15.560So I think once you get a certain amount, you're already into like a couple generations of people.
00:43:22.180It 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.
00:43:35.060And 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.
00:43:46.200So I think that maybe, maybe that's where that perspective comes from.
00:43:57.620He just has a, uh, he had a pretty thorough response.
00:44:01.300Uh, I'll read it to you, uh, to the listeners here.
00:44:04.020So, um, this is, uh, C Massner, uh, on Twitter at C Massner, uh, Israel, the nation has a right to exist.
00:44:12.300It'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.
00:44:21.900And I think James, uh, your earlier, uh, talk about this was, sort of backs that up.
00:44:29.720He continues, Israel has the right to exist because Britain legally granted the Jews the territory they now inhabit as a sovereign state.
00:44:35.980That transfer was legitimate and legal by any understanding of international law and convention.
00:44:40.200Israel has the right to exist, both Gaza and the West Bank, thanks to treaties signed with both Egypt and Jordan.
00:44:47.040Again, James, you've talked about this.
00:44:49.640This is also indisputable and is legal under international law and convention.
00:44:53.840The 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,
00:45:00.340and no understanding of international law or convention grants the current residents of Gaza or the West Bank sovereignty.
00:45:05.700So he doesn't, doesn't mince words with this statement for sure.
00:45:11.780What do you, do you have any thoughts on this?
00:45:14.060So, again, he's talking about the, as we went through the history, at what point was that a sovereign state?
00:45:23.340Because when it was controlled by Britain, it was still a coexisting land of majority Arabs and a minority of Jewish people.
00:45:36.080So right before 1948, when we look at those, that percentage of land ownership and the demographic breakup,
00:45:45.560I'm like, well, that's, when people just sum things up like this, it makes it sound like back after World War I,
00:45:53.980there was a homogenous area of land, like settlements of Jewish people with very defined borders around it.
00:46:04.480And it's more complicated than that, especially as you get the mixing of people.
00:46:09.020So it's hard to even, you can't simplify things like this.
00:46:14.060And it just sounds like these things are technically true in ways,
00:46:18.980but what got violated along the way is individual property rights of citizens.
00:46:26.240Because like Palestine was never established, but the citizens there were established.
00:46:31.500Yeah, 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,
00:46:44.480it feels like both Israel and Palestine, with respect to one or the other being or not being a sovereign state,
00:46:54.260it 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,
00:47:04.560in 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.
00:47:18.260It feels like there isn't, there was never necessarily a consensus by any majority, uh, world, uh, you know,
00:47:28.400the majority countries in the world of what exactly this area was.
00:47:32.160And it sort of depends on whose word you're taking for it.
00:47:38.720One thing worth noting on that is, uh, like we talk about a nation versus people, like a peoples, they're living there.
00:47:47.360They are, they go generation to generation, they're cultivating the land, they're doing this.
00:47:52.500And most sovereign nations had centuries of people living there and breaking their backs to basically establish that land.
00:48:04.140In this case, a lot of the legitimacy came from the ideas behind it, uh, the political Zionism and the way that it's,
00:48:16.000I 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.
00:48:29.720Um, that, that's, that shows like quite a lot of tenacity from them.
00:48:35.420Um, and it's impressive that they're able to get these ideas out.
00:48:39.460Um, 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,
00:48:52.520the 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.
00:49:13.080Um, 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.
00:49:24.660Well, 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.
00:49:32.040I 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.
00:49:48.100So in another, you know, in any other place in the world, land is won and lost through war.
00:49:58.500Um, 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.
00:50:20.400You had, it was less defined that way.
00:50:25.180So the war ended up just affecting the property rights of a lot of individuals.
00:50:31.960So that, that's, that's where it seems a little bit different than like two nations fighting about the imaginary line on a map.
00:50:39.960This was like an interwoven shared area.
00:50:43.720And 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.
00:50:55.180Change 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.
00:51:09.500It'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.
00:51:22.040And, 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.
00:51:38.020And 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.
00:51:52.060Yeah, 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.
00:52:05.120And 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.
00:52:32.860And 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.
00:52:52.060And as you get more perceived harm, you get more radicalization on both sides.
00:52:58.680Um, you'll, you'll, you get Hamas now.
00:53:01.940Um, 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.
00:53:22.880They can't even like, they can't even like, look at these radicals.
00:53:25.680They, they have no, no place on the international stage because their conduct.
00:53:32.340And 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.
00:53:45.280So 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.
00:53:58.680And I think the more radical one side gets, the more radical another.
00:54:02.080And 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.
00:54:11.080Yeah, 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.
00:54:31.920And 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.
00:54:54.260So 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.
00:55:07.880I appreciate the, uh, the research that you did on this one, James.
00:55:11.000Um, and yeah, in a future episode, we're going to dive a little bit, uh, deeper still.
00:55:15.960So thank you again, uh, from, uh, me and James, this is the critical compass podcast, and we will see you again soon.