The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - September 30, 2025


PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Lebanon's history is UK's Future


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34 minutes

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5,021

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422

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

In this episode of Brokernomics, I am joined by Faraz to talk about the Lebanese civil war. We talk about what it was like growing up in Lebanon in the 70s and 80s, and why we don't want to have another one.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Brokernomics.
00:00:29.440 Now, I need to be schooled on some basic realities and the man to do that is Faraz. 0.83
00:00:35.400 Faraz, thank you for joining me.
00:00:37.460 My pleasure.
00:00:38.920 I'll tell the audience why I said to you, I think we need to have a chat.
00:00:45.200 It's on two subjects or two very related subjects.
00:00:49.940 The first is I have a very hazy understanding of Lebanon.
00:00:54.940 Because when I was a small child, Lebanon, well, Beirut, Beirut was basically a euphemism
00:01:03.660 for violence and conflict.
00:01:06.100 So, you know, and in the disconnected, you know, miles away West, you know, that would
00:01:12.460 manifest as, you know, two people were having an argument and somebody else walking and
00:01:15.460 say, well, it's like Beirut.
00:01:16.360 It was just a term for there is great conflict.
00:01:20.280 It was a byword for chaos and conflict.
00:01:22.040 Yes.
00:01:22.540 Yes.
00:01:23.020 And I'm vaguely aware that there was a conflict and I'm vaguely aware that Lebanon had been
00:01:31.200 a fantastic country before that point.
00:01:35.120 Yes.
00:01:35.400 It was sort of described as the Paris of the Middle East.
00:01:38.500 Yes.
00:01:39.160 It had a large Christian population and Muslim immigration kept on going up and eventually
00:01:44.760 bad things happened.
00:01:47.220 So I'd like to understand that.
00:01:48.540 And the reason I'd like to understand that is because the more I hear about what actually
00:01:52.800 happened in Lebanon, the more I think, okay, well, yes, but we're doing all of those 0.97
00:01:56.640 things now.
00:01:57.580 Yes.
00:01:57.840 And my loose understanding is that once there was a slight majority of Muslims, that's when
00:02:04.620 it got really bad.
00:02:06.400 And I'm sure you'll correct me on the details of that, but I'm looking at this and thinking,
00:02:09.420 well, the demographics in Lebanon just before the civil war is basically where we're going
00:02:15.380 to be in about a decade.
00:02:17.560 Yes.
00:02:18.360 And that's worrying.
00:02:20.140 And the second thing I wanted to talk to you about, which we can come to as well, is
00:02:24.020 when you are on the right, you kind of see the absolute madness, the clown world around
00:02:31.700 you.
00:02:32.820 And sometimes you could just find yourself drifting into, oh, maybe it wouldn't be so
00:02:36.940 bad if we had a civil war and sorted all this out.
00:02:40.160 Yes.
00:02:40.700 And you put out a very good tweet the other day, basically saying, no.
00:02:44.720 Yes.
00:02:45.080 You really, really don't want that.
00:02:46.760 You don't want a civil war.
00:02:47.540 But that's harder for us to get our head around because we've not been in one and we
00:02:53.380 don't know anyone.
00:02:54.160 Well, I know some of you who's been in one now, but I mean, you know, most of us, we don't
00:02:58.180 know anyone who's been in one.
00:02:59.400 Our parents weren't in one.
00:03:00.660 Our grandparents weren't in one.
00:03:01.860 We've got no cultural memory of what a civil war is actually like.
00:03:05.960 And actually, it's not a, you know, heroic overthrowing of the government.
00:03:11.320 It's not quite that simple.
00:03:13.360 There can be some downsides.
00:03:16.160 It's the chaos and randomness of the violence.
00:03:22.460 I was very fortunate that my father had to leave Lebanon because they wanted to kill 1.00
00:03:27.360 him, essentially.
00:03:28.220 Right.
00:03:28.900 Before I was born.
00:03:30.120 So I was born abroad in Jordan, but I'd visit Lebanon every summer.
00:03:36.340 And some summers you just have to, you know, spend two days in front of the bathroom because
00:03:40.680 that's where there's a double ceiling.
00:03:42.100 And so if a shell fell, you wouldn't get buried under the rubble as opposed to in your bedroom
00:03:48.400 where you would.
00:03:49.860 Yes.
00:03:50.700 And so you, you know, I was not as exposed to it as everybody else who lived through the
00:03:57.700 conflict.
00:03:57.860 That is more than most 10-year-olds who grew up in this country would be familiar with,
00:04:01.980 though.
00:04:02.100 Yes.
00:04:02.840 Yes.
00:04:03.280 Yes.
00:04:03.880 Yes.
00:04:04.200 As in the whole family is literally huddled in front of the bathroom because there happens
00:04:08.840 to be a storage room above it.
00:04:10.480 Right.
00:04:11.340 And that provides two layers of concrete protecting you, meaning that if a shell were to fall on
00:04:18.640 your house, it wouldn't necessarily penetrate and kill everyone.
00:04:22.900 It slightly reduces the likelihood of it.
00:04:24.840 It reduces the likelihood of you dying.
00:04:25.600 And that was enough.
00:04:26.220 And that was sort of, you know, the best that's available.
00:04:29.180 So there are stories about my grandmother sort of, you know, there are guests in the
00:04:32.840 house and you would invite them to the salon and they'd be sitting there.
00:04:37.620 And then the shelling would start to, please, please, would you, would you, would you join
00:04:40.980 us in the bathroom?
00:04:42.140 Yes.
00:04:42.900 And then everybody would sort of huddle until the shelling was over.
00:04:45.400 Having to make awkward conversation clustered in the bathroom for quite three days or whatever
00:04:50.020 it took.
00:04:50.480 Well, days, hours, whatever, whatever it was until it was over.
00:04:53.760 So you don't want people living through that.
00:04:58.200 Yes.
00:04:58.960 If you don't.
00:04:59.680 So if there is any other way to do it.
00:05:01.520 So we must get into all of that.
00:05:03.320 But first of all, it might be helpful.
00:05:06.080 Because again, I've got a very hazy understanding of this.
00:05:08.200 My very hazy understanding, you can correct this.
00:05:10.300 So let's start with the causes.
00:05:11.500 Yes.
00:05:11.880 Well, no, my hazy of Lebanon itself is that in the Middle East, originally there were Jews
00:05:18.340 and lots of other things.
00:05:19.680 Yes.
00:05:20.360 Then Christianity came along. 0.99
00:05:21.760 There was quite a lot of Christians in that region.
00:05:24.960 That was, you know, Middle East being Middle East, whatever, until 1400 something Islam 1.00
00:05:30.800 popped up.
00:05:32.060 They were a little bit feisty in their spreading out and recruitment process and all the rest
00:05:38.180 of it.
00:05:39.160 And the Lebanese Christians kind of clustered around the mountains and then the Muslims took 1.00
00:05:43.800 up the lowlands and somehow worked.
00:05:46.920 More complicated than that.
00:05:48.220 Yes, I'm sure it is.
00:05:48.820 So 1400 years ago, the Muslims begin their heresy. 1.00
00:05:52.700 And they, like all heresies, are seeking first material power.
00:05:58.740 Nice.
00:05:59.060 And Islam is quite unique in its obsession with gaining power and ruling. 1.00
00:06:05.340 So the Jews have a long history of not being in power. 0.87
00:06:08.000 The Christians had 300 years of oppression before Rome was converted.
00:06:15.540 Islam has never quite had that. 0.95
00:06:17.720 It's always been synonymous with...
00:06:19.540 Expansionism.
00:06:20.540 With not just expansionism, but also political power, worldly power, temporal power.
00:06:25.800 And the separation between the temporal and the spiritual is very limited in Islam, whereas
00:06:33.980 it's quite deep in Christianity.
00:06:36.120 Yes, that's an interesting point.
00:06:37.040 With Christians, because they started out under Rome, it was, okay, we don't have power, but 1.00
00:06:43.300 we get our benefits in the next world.
00:06:46.220 And I suppose that was a kind of foundational thing for them.
00:06:48.740 And so they kind of got used to just, okay, well, we can just wait for the spiritual rewards
00:06:53.560 where with Islam, it was all, no, we're taking both. 0.74
00:06:57.460 Yes.
00:06:58.160 And we will call you all unless you convert. 0.99
00:07:00.420 Exactly.
00:07:00.940 Well, not quite.
00:07:02.680 So what Islam did was that it sort of said, you can stay Christian or you can stay Jewish. 0.89
00:07:09.080 You pay extra taxes.
00:07:10.580 Yes.
00:07:11.060 The jizya, isn't it?
00:07:12.020 The jizya. 0.91
00:07:13.060 Which is a kind of poll tax.
00:07:16.700 And with some randomization of the application of it.
00:07:19.640 Yes.
00:07:20.020 I have said before that the first Muslims were basically just Jews who wanted a tax break. 0.99
00:07:30.060 Not quite, but they were.
00:07:33.500 No, it's the same population.
00:07:35.360 Because what you're reducing, what you're taking away from that is the sheer pride and arrogance
00:07:40.440 of Islam.
00:07:40.840 And that it tells the Jews that your beliefs are all wrong because you've been lying in
00:07:46.340 your scriptures.
00:07:47.420 And it tells the Muslims, the Christians that your beliefs are all wrong because you've falsified
00:07:52.120 your scriptures.
00:07:53.180 Yes.
00:07:53.920 And that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ never happened.
00:07:56.640 Well, I have read the Quran and basically it's just grabbing hodgepodge bits of the Jewish 1.00
00:08:03.220 and Christian holy books in a kind of random order plus stories about Mohammed.
00:08:09.860 Yes.
00:08:10.600 And it's a complete incoherent mess.
00:08:12.220 I think the story of the flood is in there like 40 times and it's just randomly interspersed.
00:08:17.020 So the story of Moses keeps on getting repeated in different versions.
00:08:20.060 There is some order in the first chapter, Surat al-Baqarah, which sort of goes through a very brief
00:08:30.820 summary of bits and pieces, especially of Genesis and Exodus.
00:08:36.260 And then it mixes that.
00:08:40.780 But with all of those stories, there's a reason why there's a deeper truth hidden within them.
00:08:46.060 Yes.
00:08:46.420 But with the Islamic version, none of that's been understood.
00:08:49.920 And it's just they just get a bit of the narrative and whack it in there.
00:08:53.260 They get a bit of the narrative.
00:08:54.600 They don't fully understand it properly.
00:08:55.980 And they don't give any of the characters real depth.
00:09:00.940 So if you were to look at Abraham, the story about Abraham lying to Pharaoh and saying that
00:09:05.820 his wife is a sister is sort of briefly mentioned in the Quran.
00:09:09.180 But without the sort of broader context that gives it meaning, which is that here was a man who was so weak
00:09:19.020 that he had to lie about his wife being his sister.
00:09:22.460 And then God saves him.
00:09:24.760 And then from this very fragile, very broken man, he takes him and makes him the father of nations.
00:09:31.600 So that sort of implication is you could look for it if you then refer to the Jewish scriptures, but sort of missing.
00:09:45.540 The deeper meaning of the crucifixion, it's completely taken away because the Muslim interpretation is that 1.00
00:09:51.080 depending on which Muslim authority you believe, either Judas Iscariot was crucified instead of Christ,
00:09:58.960 meaning that, you know, that changes the story a little bit, or that Christ had one of his disciples be crucified for him
00:10:08.520 while he hid away, which is insulting to Jesus Christ in every sense.
00:10:16.920 Well, both of them are quite insulting.
00:10:19.540 But the focus, I think, is the insistence on temporal power.
00:10:23.860 So after the Islamic invasions, the majority population that Muslims ruled over was still Christian. 0.79
00:10:30.360 They weren't forced to convert.
00:10:33.220 They were pressured gradually.
00:10:36.360 And most Christians said, OK, we'll pay the poll tax. 0.97
00:10:39.820 And what really changed things was the westernization of Middle Eastern Christians,
00:10:45.520 whereby they slowed down in terms of reproducing, whereas the Muslims just went mad. 1.00
00:10:54.480 Well, again, exactly like the UK here today.
00:10:57.180 Largely like Britain here today. 0.97
00:11:00.600 And that shifted the demographic balance quite a bit in places like Syria, places like Lebanon, even in Palestine.
00:11:07.020 Palestine, that really shifted the demographic balance.
00:11:13.340 What really drove the Lebanese civil war was in part that demographic imbalance,
00:11:20.300 as the Muslim population kept on growing, because Lebanon used to be just Mount Lebanon.
00:11:25.980 So Beirut, kind of Lebanon, not Lebanon, or just barely.
00:11:36.020 And it used to be a small walled city.
00:11:39.580 And now it's a two million plus metropolis, pretty much half of the population.
00:11:44.360 So my loose understanding is the demographics were something like 60% Christian, 40% Muslim,
00:11:50.000 coming into the 19th century.
00:11:51.660 Yes.
00:11:53.300 And in Mount Lebanon, it was a tiny Shia minority, the Druze and the Christians.
00:12:02.560 Right.
00:12:03.260 For those who aren't familiar with Druze.
00:12:05.600 So the Druze are a heretical Shia Muslim sect.
00:12:10.020 Originally, they are very extremist Shia.
00:12:13.220 But then who came to the conclusion that the hidden meaning of religion is what matters,
00:12:23.080 not the literal scriptural meaning.
00:12:26.240 Right.
00:12:26.920 And they came up with their own holy quintity, holy five, as an answer to the holy trinity,
00:12:35.800 but in a sequential order, whereas in the holy trinity, they're all one at the same time.
00:12:45.600 And who kind of have some bad things to say about Muhammad and praise Ali, his son-in-law and cousin instead.
00:12:54.800 Okay.
00:12:54.980 Well, that sets up a bit of conflict.
00:12:56.380 It sets up quite a bit of conflict.
00:12:57.620 And this is why this minority sort of exists only in the mountains.
00:13:01.360 Similar to the Alawites, another heretical extremist Shia group that only exists in the mountains of Syria.
00:13:11.340 So are the Druze fairly specific to Lebanon?
00:13:14.840 Lebanon, Syria and northern Palestine.
00:13:17.820 Okay.
00:13:18.080 But it's a relatively contained area which you find them.
00:13:21.020 Very.
00:13:21.500 And always mountainous.
00:13:22.440 Because that means that you can set up a proper defense and you can beat a more numerous force.
00:13:28.300 Okay.
00:13:28.520 So you've got this country which is diverse, but still majority Christian coming into...
00:13:35.400 Majority Christian coming into the 1920s, where basically during the First World War,
00:13:43.960 the Ottomans decided to starve Lebanon.
00:13:46.760 Right.
00:13:47.320 Because since Mount Lebanon was Christian, it was a way for Western powers to project power. 0.94
00:13:57.680 And they decided that we're just going to starve Mount Lebanon completely. 0.94
00:14:02.860 And so a third of the population died in famine over a period of three years.
00:14:07.180 Okay.
00:14:08.020 Which does upset the demographic balance.
00:14:10.560 Yes.
00:14:10.920 To address that, when the French came in 1918, during the defeat of the Ottomans, there was the mandate set up.
00:14:21.300 The Brits started setting up a Jewish homeland in Palestine for what became Israel today.
00:14:28.640 The French took Lebanon and Syria under their mandate.
00:14:34.200 And they...
00:14:34.960 Were the French good governors?
00:14:36.680 The best that we've had.
00:14:38.420 Right.
00:14:38.720 But you're also comparing to the Ottomans.
00:14:40.780 Not the highest part, but yeah, still the best.
00:14:43.340 Yes, the best.
00:14:44.740 You're comparing it to the Mamluks, to the Ottomans. 0.90
00:14:49.340 You know, you'd have to go back to Crusader times for anything comparable, anything else to think about.
00:14:57.040 And the French and the Christians decided to expand Lebanon from just being Mount Lebanon, to include the plains of the Bekaa Valley, and to include more of the coast.
00:15:11.600 And the idea was that this would give Lebanon a little more depth, and mean that it can't be starved again, because these were good agricultural lands.
00:15:22.220 Whereas the mountain, it's impossible to grow grains in the mountains, because you need flatlands, for example.
00:15:28.160 Defensible, but...
00:15:29.620 But you must trade.
00:15:31.440 Exactly.
00:15:31.700 You know, so this expansion meant that the Christians and the Muslims were... the Christian majority was tiny, as opposed to Mount Lebanon, which is mostly Christian.
00:15:44.300 And this set things up badly, because the Christians modernized, and the Muslims didn't, sociologically speaking, in terms of family, and how you build a family. 1.00
00:15:59.420 And that meant that over time, the balance tipped.
00:16:03.340 So Lebanon was set up so that for every six Christian seats in Parliament, there would be five Muslim seats, preserving a Christian majority in Parliament.
00:16:11.620 And having the top positions of the state for the Christians, with the Muslims having pretty important positions, the Speaker of Parliament, the Prime Minister, but with a lot of power concentrated in the hands of the Christian president.
00:16:26.200 Okay.
00:16:26.940 Well, again, this sounds...
00:16:28.140 So the demographic shift was a big issue.
00:16:31.260 Well, I mean, this sounds exactly where the UK is now, where, you know, we've got Muslim mayors running basically everything, Muslim Home Secretary, you know, that...
00:16:38.620 I mean, it's not codified in this way, isn't it?
00:16:41.400 We're not saying, okay, we can have six to five.
00:16:43.520 Exactly.
00:16:43.940 But it is happening exactly like this.
00:16:46.740 And what about the creation of Israel?
00:16:50.220 Because obviously that's very contentious in the Middle East.
00:16:52.700 Yes.
00:16:53.060 But I'd imagine opinions differed considerably between the Christian Lebanese and the Muslim Lebanese.
00:17:00.240 And of course, Israel being directly below Lebanon. 0.76
00:17:03.920 So, for the Christians, there was some ambivalence about this.
00:17:11.620 Do we care?
00:17:12.780 Do we not care?
00:17:14.300 Does this mean that we can draw the whole Eastern Mediterranean closer to the West?
00:17:19.540 And could this be a positive thing?
00:17:23.080 For the Muslims, it was a religious humiliation. 1.00
00:17:26.800 It came at the time that the Caliphate had just ended.
00:17:31.540 For the first time in Islamic history, there was no Caliph.
00:17:35.220 So there was no central authority.
00:17:38.560 And although there were periods in history where the actual temporal power of the Caliph was very weak,
00:17:46.420 the Caliphate was still a unifying institution.
00:17:49.540 And it meant that the Muslims had a point of reference.
00:17:54.940 Right.
00:17:55.480 And it's possible for there to be at least some change or moderation because it's coming from a central point.
00:18:00.020 Exactly.
00:18:00.840 Which is why British policy, especially as the empire expanded, focused on working with the Ottomans 0.75
00:18:07.820 because they knew that if the Ottomans were to call for a jihad against the British empire,
00:18:12.940 this would have implications for their ability to maintain parts of the empire that were Muslim.
00:18:21.380 So there was this moral authority that was gone.
00:18:26.280 And then what emerged as a result of that was Islamo-leftism, which is what you're seeing here in Britain. 0.75
00:18:34.240 You end up basically with a lot of the Muslim population that wanted to rebel against Israel,
00:18:43.920 looking around and saying, well, what can we do now that the Caliphate is out of the picture?
00:18:48.820 Yes.
00:18:49.440 And part of the answer was socialism with Islamic characteristics. 0.74
00:18:54.640 Again, very familiar.
00:18:55.860 Exactly.
00:18:56.200 Characterized by Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt after the 1952 revolution,
00:19:02.940 which was a direct consequence of the defeat of the Egyptian army in 1948.
00:19:10.640 Characterized by the uprisings in Syria and the series of coups that happened in Syria from around,
00:19:17.660 I want to say, 49 onwards was when the coup season began in Syria.
00:19:23.160 And there were years that there would be three coups in one year.
00:19:26.200 And that was a consequence of different factions trying to adapt, okay, what are we going to do?
00:19:32.640 And the answer seemed to be, well, the only people who went from traditional empire to strong modern state were the Soviets.
00:19:42.820 Which means that the socialist model is right.
00:19:45.480 And so we need to adapt that to the Muslim world and we need to control the religious institutions of Islam that have been so far a hindrance to progress. 1.00
00:19:58.420 Remember that under the Ottoman Caliphate, there was a period where the printing press was banned for 300 years.
00:20:05.020 Yes.
00:20:06.040 To preserve the role of the ulama, the learned scholars of Islam, who partly relied on copying manuscripts for their income.
00:20:17.660 So that emergence of Islamo-leftism was understandable in some senses. 0.97
00:20:25.620 And there was a whole debate, is Islam naturally capitalist?
00:20:31.080 Is Islam naturally socialist? 0.99
00:20:33.360 I'm of the view that Islam is naturally more capitalist. 1.00
00:20:36.540 But also that Islam is fundamentally unprincipled in its pursuit of power. 1.00
00:20:45.000 And that was always my take on the emergence of Islam.
00:20:46.820 It was a business model.
00:20:49.180 It was, if you are a Muslim, you can't hurt other Muslims because, you know, they're part of the franchise network.
00:20:54.300 But you can go off and do anything you like to anyone who isn't.
00:20:57.240 And as long as you kick up 10% to the big guy, it's more of a mafia.
00:21:02.820 20%.
00:21:03.220 There is a mafia model that you have to sort of pay a fifth to the ruler, of which a fifth of that is his personal money.
00:21:18.160 Yes.
00:21:18.760 That's a good view of him.
00:21:19.120 The rest is sort of for the state.
00:21:21.540 Although, in reality, the state wasn't strong enough to actually always collect a fifth.
00:21:27.120 But they tried.
00:21:28.280 So the reason I mention Israel is because I understand at the time of the creation of Israel, it was something like 55% Christian to about 45% Muslim.
00:21:39.960 Something in that region.
00:21:41.740 Yes.
00:21:42.420 And then the Palestinians came. 1.00
00:21:43.880 Yes.
00:21:44.680 So this is the thing that first got me worried.
00:21:47.800 There was a large influx of Muslim integration.
00:21:51.080 Didn't take that long for it to fundamentally change the country and lead a civil war.
00:21:55.660 Yes.
00:21:56.100 Completely.
00:21:56.660 Completely.
00:21:56.900 So there were the first expulsions in 1948.
00:22:01.480 The first ethnic cleansing, according to Ilan Pape, an Israeli historian, he calls it an ethnic cleansing based on plan de lit.
00:22:09.220 Then there was the ethnic cleansing of 1967, less severe, but another bunch of Palestinians got thrown out.
00:22:17.500 And what had happened was that the Arabs had failed in 1948.
00:22:22.980 They had been saved by the Americans in 1956 when, I think it was the Eden government here.
00:22:32.240 Britain, France, in partnership with Israel, tried to take over the Suez Canal militarily.
00:22:36.480 Yes, didn't work.
00:22:37.040 And the Americans said, absolutely not.
00:22:39.040 And partnered with the Russians to sort of put the final nail in the coffin of the British and French empires. 0.83
00:22:45.680 And the result of that was the beginning of the Palestinians from wherever they were against Israel. 0.93
00:22:57.140 And this was called the Fidei yin, those who would give their lives for the cause. 0.59
00:23:05.000 And this really escalated after 1967.
00:23:08.820 Because the size of the Arab defeat in 1967 discredited the Arab governments enormously.
00:23:17.860 Yes, no, Lebanon was a party to that.
00:23:19.720 Lebanon was not part in 1967.
00:23:21.460 Lebanon did not fight in 1967.
00:23:23.620 It did not fight in 1956.
00:23:25.240 It barely fought in 1948.
00:23:28.220 And there was a quip by the, I think it was either prime minister or defense minister at the time, Rabin, perhaps his first premiership.
00:23:38.560 He was asked, which army shall we send, which division shall we send to Lebanon?
00:23:42.840 And he said the musical band.
00:23:45.560 So the Lebanese army was in a weak state.
00:23:50.340 I mean, that must have been a conflict in itself.
00:23:51.960 If you've got a country which is half and half almost effectively at this point,
00:23:54.800 especially after these waves of Palestinian immigration.
00:23:58.220 It must have been problematic inside Lebanon that there is this, you know, five armies going against Israel in 1967.
00:24:07.300 And yet, you know, we're not...
00:24:08.680 It was disastrous for Lebanon.
00:24:09.360 Yes.
00:24:10.620 Because the...
00:24:12.560 You have to understand that throughout the Israeli-Arab conflict,
00:24:19.060 the Muslims of Lebanon, Sunni and Shia, fully sided with the Arabs.
00:24:24.560 Much more so than the Sunnis, 0.97
00:24:26.220 which is important because the Sunnis at the time held much more power than the Shia.
00:24:31.520 The Shia at the time, they were the most backwards community in Lebanon. 1.00
00:24:35.200 They had been, under the Ottomans, barely tolerated for 400 years.
00:24:40.020 The Ottomans hated Shia Islam because of what they believe is its heresies.
00:24:46.480 My view is that, yes, it is heretical.
00:24:50.300 And in a way, its heresies make it closer to Christianity. 0.75
00:24:55.720 But that's a different conversation for another time.
00:24:58.260 And they were really quite enfeebled and led by a bunch of traditional families whose only focus was enriching themselves. 0.98
00:25:09.180 So the Palestinians played a big role in this because as the Fida'iyin movement emerged,
00:25:16.180 emerged, the Muslims who had sided with the Palestinians on a regional perspective or from a regional perspective,
00:25:26.520 thought that now they had an armed ally whom they could use to contend against the Lebanese army,
00:25:35.760 whose officers were mostly Christian.
00:25:39.440 Yeah.
00:25:40.040 And again, I see the parallels to the current situation where in London you can often have hundreds of thousands marching through London.
00:25:47.020 Yes.
00:25:47.940 Supporting Palestine.
00:25:49.620 While you've got the British state, which is, you know, the Muslims, they just don't sign up to the military. 1.00
00:25:54.980 No.
00:25:55.240 A handful of them do.
00:25:56.260 Well, more Muslims have joined Islamic State. 0.72
00:25:58.540 Yeah, indeed.
00:25:59.000 In a couple of years' time, people say it as though the absolute number matters.
00:26:04.200 No, no, no.
00:26:05.360 Over the last sort of 20, 30 years, the British army has ended up with a total of maybe 500 Muslims.
00:26:13.540 Over the course of two or three years, perhaps more than 2,000 Muslims joined Islamic State.
00:26:21.300 So the time factor suggests that if things were to kick off, the ability of the Muslims to mobilize,
00:26:29.000 is going to be enormous.
00:26:30.980 Yes.
00:26:31.400 And you just have to see the number of Muslims going out of a mosque on an average Friday to see that.
00:26:36.620 And this would have been the situation in Lebanon in around 1967.
00:26:39.420 In Lebanon.
00:26:40.200 They weren't in the military, but they were militant.
00:26:44.040 They were militant.
00:26:44.640 And supporting Palestine.
00:26:46.820 And so you had basically, you had another thing that has parallels here in Britain,
00:26:52.580 which is the gradual failure of the state to enforce the law.
00:26:56.300 So one big problem was this.
00:26:57.840 Starting about 64, but really escalating after 1967, the Palestinians began conducting operations
00:27:06.160 against Israel out of Lebanese territories.
00:27:09.320 Right.
00:27:10.540 And the Israelis... 0.96
00:27:11.560 Not officially sanctioned.
00:27:12.860 Not officially sanctioned.
00:27:13.720 Just with militant support.
00:27:14.940 Just with support from the leadership of the Muslim political establishment.
00:27:21.680 And pretty much all of the Muslims who weren't in frontline villages that would be targeted by the Israelis.
00:27:28.460 So is this the emergence of Hezbollah or does that come later?
00:27:30.860 No, no, no.
00:27:31.120 That comes much later.
00:27:32.060 Okay.
00:27:32.320 That comes 15, 16 years later, 17 years later.
00:27:40.320 The issue was that the Israelis would retaliate with sort of collective punishment.
00:27:47.180 Ah.
00:27:47.480 They just bombed the villages from which the people came, the attackers came.
00:27:55.100 Even though they might have been just passing through effectively.
00:27:57.500 Even though they might have been passing through.
00:27:59.100 Right.
00:27:59.340 And that was them putting pressure on the local community to reject the Palestinians. 0.95
00:28:04.160 And that was them putting pressure on the Lebanese state to stop the Palestinians. 0.94
00:28:09.260 The Lebanese army tried.
00:28:10.880 But then throughout the late 60s, you would have these battles with the Palestinians and with Palestinian groups.
00:28:19.320 Where the key problem was that the country would politically implode if the state took a hard enough stance against the Palestinians.
00:28:29.380 Because the Muslim half of the country backed the Palestinians. 0.95
00:28:33.940 And again, this is exactly where we are today.
00:28:36.620 Exactly where we are today.
00:28:37.820 I mean, Keir Starmer has just given, what is it, Palestinian statehood or recognized Palestinian statehood because he's afraid he cannot go after basically half of his voting base.
00:28:47.900 Pretty much.
00:28:48.800 Pretty much.
00:28:49.900 So you see this, the way that Islam plays this nefarious role where the, so to give you an example, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Jordanians, they were all militantly anti-Israel. 0.99
00:29:07.820 Much more so than the Lebanese, because Lebanon is Christian-led. 0.99
00:29:12.340 Up to this day, he still has a Christian president. 0.58
00:29:14.660 Much weaker.
00:29:16.060 But up to this day.
00:29:19.100 They would never tolerate the Palestinians conducting operations out of their territories against Israel because there would be Israeli retaliation.
00:29:29.440 Except in Lebanon because in Lebanon, the Muslims in Lebanon saw that as a way of fighting the Christians and weakening the Christians and calling the Christians disloyal.
00:29:43.280 So in Jordan, it got, the Fideiyin attacks on Israel got to such a problem that there was an actual battle between the Jordanian army and the Fideiyin on the one side versus Israel, the Karama battle.
00:29:58.480 And then the Jordanian army in what is called Black September in 1970 just wipes out the Palestinian militant presence in Jordan and exercises total control and nobody dares say anything about it.
00:30:14.260 In Lebanon, if this had been done and the Palestinians had been disarmed, the Lebanese civil war would not have happened. 0.69
00:30:22.080 And the subsequent Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982 would not have happened.
00:30:28.380 But the Christian leadership was not strong enough to do it.
00:30:30.980 Because the country had to be ruled in partnership with the Muslims, who could at any point resign from the cabinet and paralyze the government. 0.98
00:30:42.240 Because while you could, because you had to have a Sunni Muslim prime minister, not by the constitution, but because if you didn't, the Muslims would riot. 1.00
00:30:56.100 And the rioting would eventually mean that the army would have to be deployed against them and the army would split.
00:31:03.540 Which is incidentally what ended up happening several years later.
00:31:06.340 So the Arab states were with one side of their mouths saying, we want to maintain the stability of Lebanon.
00:31:15.280 With the other side of their mouths, they were pressuring the Lebanese state from 64 until 69.
00:31:21.520 Until in 69, they pressured the Lebanese army leadership enough to sign an agreement in Cairo secretly.
00:31:29.360 It wasn't revealed until a year or so later or several months later.
00:31:34.900 Saying that the Palestinians had the right to conduct armed operations against Israel out of Lebanese territories.
00:31:43.040 Right.
00:31:43.660 While at the same time, if this had happened out of Egypt, they wouldn't tolerate it.
00:31:48.100 It would have been crushed immediately.
00:31:49.060 It would have been crushed.
00:31:50.020 In Jordan, it was militarily crushed a year later.
00:31:53.000 And King Hussein at the time bombed the Palestinians camp, the Palestinian camps, to get the Fideiyin out. 1.00
00:32:01.520 The Fideiyin went out of Jordan. 1.00
00:32:04.800 They go through Syria.
00:32:06.300 The Syrian government says, no, you can't operate against Israel from here.
00:32:11.520 And sends them on to Lebanon. 1.00
00:32:14.400 Yes.
00:32:15.360 At that point, the Muslims think, aha, now we have an army. 0.99
00:32:20.540 Yes.
00:32:20.940 I mean, it's a slightly off topic.
00:32:23.760 I don't want to get dragged into this too much.
00:32:25.280 But I mean, this is why I've always believed that the two-state solution is the most unworkable possible solution for Israel. 0.92
00:32:32.740 Yes.
00:32:33.020 It has to be the three-state solution because Egypt, well, I mean, neither of them want the Palestinians. 0.99
00:32:38.260 But it would work because Egypt would be able to control Gaza. 0.89
00:32:42.140 And Jordan would be able to control the West Bank. 0.94
00:32:44.300 And they would come down on them like a ton of bricks.
00:32:46.660 And you would have stability.
00:32:47.520 I mean, it can't work because neither of those countries are willing to take on Palestinians after what happened to Lebanon. 0.98
00:32:52.720 But it would work.
00:32:55.060 Look, 60-70% of Jordan's population is Palestinian.
00:32:59.500 People forget this.
00:33:00.520 There is a tribal elite ruling in Jordan.
00:33:06.340 And these guys control the security apparatus and the military alongside a Palestinian and Jordanian business elite.
00:33:12.800 And a king who was actually from Hijaz, from Mecca, but who rules over Jordan.
00:33:22.580 So why not take a few more Palestinians in? 1.00
00:33:24.760 Because it would mean that they have participated again in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
00:33:33.520 Because the Israelis are never going to give up the West Bank for their own religious reasons and for their own strategic reasons.
00:33:40.260 And they can't trust Jordan to remain stable.
00:33:43.500 And because the Israelis worship power in a very real sense. 0.94
00:33:49.200 They want to use force to clear out the Palestinians of the West Bank. 1.00
00:33:55.080 They've been talking about it since the 80s.
00:33:57.440 Yes.
00:33:58.000 Now it's become a mainstream idea.
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