True History of the Middle East with Simon Sebag Montefiore

0:02One of the things [music] we see in the

0:03sort of in the moronic discourse is that

0:05Israel is a new country while all the

0:08Arab countries are ancient countries.

0:09[music] This is completely untrue. These

0:11ancient countries had actually existed

0:13for 18 months. They are invading a

0:15country that [music] has literally only

0:17existed for 12 hours.

0:20The French and the British [music] said,

0:21"Well, we we totally agree with you

0:22about the empire thing, but we'll call

0:24them mandates instead." So, mandate was

0:26just a new word for an imperial province

0:29until the people were ready to rule

0:30themselves. There are 500,000 Jews there

0:33[music] roughly and they have nowhere to

0:35go. It's either survive or die.

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1:04your thoughts on this video.

1:06>> Simon Sebag Montefiore, welcome to

1:08Triggernometry.

1:09>> Lovely to be here, guys. Thank you very

1:10much for having me.

1:11>> Well, it's great to have you on. You

1:13have written this amazing book about the

1:16history, the recent history of the

1:17Middle East, the last 120 years or so.

1:20Um and it's rather timely given

1:21everything that's going on, but it's

1:23also history which we love on the show.

1:25We really enjoyed reading it. It's great

1:26to have you on and it's great to be able

1:29to look at this complex region in the

1:32level of detail, but also objectively,

1:35which is something that you do, which

1:37literally no one who now talks about the

1:39Middle East does.

1:40>> Well, that's the great challenge. I

1:41mean, one of the reasons I wrote the

1:43book is because this book didn't exist.

1:46And Benjamin Disraeli, who's one of my

1:47great heroes, always said, "When I when

1:49I want to read a book and I can't find

1:51it, I write it myself." So, that's sort

1:54of what I've done here. I mean, as you

1:56know, there is an industry now on the

1:59Middle East. I mean, the sort of

2:00publishing industry. It's partly

2:01historical, partly sort of moral. It's

2:04almost a religious movement. And um

2:07and it's just sort of obviously it's all

2:09virtually always partisan and is kind of

2:12following I did an ideological pathway

2:15that is like so narrow and so

2:18inaccurate. And so, I wanted to avoid

2:21writing, you know, obviously a book just

2:23following the ideal sort of a

2:25neo-Marxist ideology of sort of

2:27decolonization.

2:29But at the same time, I didn't want to

2:30write a Zionist book, either. I didn't

2:32want to write a Martin Gilbert's books

2:34again, wonderful as they were. I wanted

2:37to do something like you like you were

2:38touching on, something that was that was

2:40as balanced as I could make it for all

2:43sides and without ideology.

2:45>> Well, you've definitely succeeded. So,

2:47let's talk about it. You you start uh

2:49you basically cover the 20th century and

2:51the the recent 20 years as well up to

2:53October 7th. And it's absolutely

2:55fascinating. I think we have to start

2:58with something that people now don't

2:59talk about, which is the role of Turkey,

3:01which was at that point the Ottoman

3:02Empire, which controlled pretty much all

3:05of that region at the time. And it's

3:07it's it's collapse following World War I

3:10that leads to much of the chaos we see

3:11today.

3:12>> Yeah, I mean, the Ottoman Empire is a

3:13fascinating institution. I mean, it goes

3:15on for 400 years or more. It's like all

3:19great empires, like the Roman Empire,

3:21Byzantine Empire, it has many kind of

3:23versions of itself during that period.

3:25It's not always the same

3:27um institution. It's a it's an Islamic

3:30empire. That's the point. It's a

3:32sultanate caliphate. And the later

3:35sultans really emphasized their roles as

3:38caliphs as well as sultans, which is of

3:41course very relevant today cuz the

3:43caliph ideas of caliphates are often in

3:45the news. But the point about it was it

3:48was it was it was

3:50you could it was it was tolerant up to a

3:52point. And you know, it's often stated

3:56it it is there's a huge cliche when

3:57people say like you know, it was it was

3:59so tolerant that you know, the Middle

4:00East has been destroyed by by America or

4:03by nationalism. And that's true up to a

4:05point. But actually, the myth of the

4:09great tolerance of the Ottoman Empire is

4:12something that you see you read about

4:14quite often um in journalism, of course.

4:17And in fact, there was a period when

4:20after Tanzimat, which was the series of

4:23reforms starting in 1839 going up into

4:26the 1850s, when um everyone was made

4:30citizens of the Ottoman Empire. And um

4:33and for about 20 or 30 years, the wars

4:36there was a sort of period of quite

4:37extraordinary tolerance. But it ended

4:39pretty quickly because this opening up

4:41of the Ottoman Empire, which happened

4:43right after the Crimean War, led to um a

4:47discombobulation of all the arrangements

4:49they'd made to rule it. And so, the

4:50first thing that happened in the Middle

4:52East was this massacre of Christians in

4:55Damascus could known as the Damascus

4:57events in 1860. And um it it started in

5:01a war between the Christians and the

5:03Druze, which we may

5:05sects that uh complicated and we may get

5:08to talk about later if we have time. But

5:10we want to we want to do a more um a

5:12larger more overarching our trajectory.

5:15But that led to one of the first Western

5:18um interventions in 1860 when the French

5:21and other powers sent an army there. But

5:23anyway, the point is after that, um

5:27Abdul Hamid, the the Sultan, started to

5:31impose a sort of religious Ottomanism on

5:34the empire and using various um various

5:39uh minorities like the Kurds to crush

5:42the Christians who were restive and

5:43seeking gradually seeking independence.

5:46And that led to the Armenian massacres,

5:48the Bulgarian massacres, and um Abdul

5:52Hamid was nicknamed um

5:55the bloody sultan. So, the Ottoman

5:58Empire was a little different from the

5:59cliche. And then one has to remember too

6:02that

6:03the Ottoman Empire, far from being

6:05tolerant, it ended with the the rule of

6:08the three Pashas in World War I.

6:11And um the Ottoman Empire was on the

6:14side of Germany and the Central Powers

6:16and Austria. And the Ottoman Empire um

6:20fought much more in a much stronger way

6:23than the British or French or anyone

6:24expected because it was known as the

6:26sick man of Europe. But it ended up

6:29under this regime of the three Pashas,

6:32Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and and Jamal

6:35Pasha, who

6:37really brought in and imposed

6:40a sort of proto-fascism,

6:42a sort of racial eugenicist

6:44um Islamic Turkish supremacism.

6:49And that included um

6:52the the massacre of the Armenians, the

6:54killing of the Armenians of over 1.1

6:56million Armenians. And also forgotten

6:59genocides then too that included the

7:02killing of the the starving of Maronite

7:04Christians, um and also the massacres of

7:08Greeks in in what is now Turkey, in

7:11particular the Pontic Greeks. Pontus

7:13means the Black Sea. So,

7:16the Ottoman Empire in the end was

7:17something quite different um from the

7:20way it had started. And

7:23in many ways we're still seeing now the

7:27the consequences of and the sort of

7:30chaos after the the the breakup of the

7:32Ottoman Empire.

7:33>> Well, right. I mean, it's often said by

7:35people who may be ignorant, but I'm

7:36probably one of them, about the Middle

7:38East that it seems from the outside

7:40superficial analysis that

7:42it's hard to have control of any of

7:44those portions unless you're really,

7:46really tough.

7:47>> Yeah.

7:47>> Unless you're willing to be quite brutal

7:49about it. And the Ottomans controlled

7:51that area for 400 years. It's therefore

7:54no surprise then that once their empire

7:56collapses,

7:57>> Yeah.

7:58>> you know, it becomes as as as volatile

8:00as things have become. Is that fair? Is

8:02that

8:02>> That's fair. And also the Ottomans, you

8:04know, lost control of huge parts of

8:06their empire for large periods of time

8:08as I explained in the book. At one time

8:10an Egyptian ruler, Muhammad Ali the

8:13Great, almost conquered the Ottoman

8:15Empire and was only stopped by the

8:17British. And it was incredibly ruthless.

8:20And in fact, throughout its rule, there

8:22were kind of massacres of minorities. By

8:25the by the sort of

8:27by the early 19th century, so the in the

8:29early 1800s,

8:31much of what is now the Levant or

8:34you know, the period that the the area

8:35that is now, you know, Israel, Syria,

8:38Jordan, was incredibly impoverished. And

8:42um and empty. I mean, Jerusalem, I wrote

8:44a book about Jerusalem.

8:46Um

8:47you know, by the sort of 1780s,

8:49Jerusalem was pretty much empty. It was

8:52still run by a small group of uh of

8:54Palestinian Arab families like uh the

8:57Husaynis and the Nashashibis and others,

9:00um

9:01who controlled the the holy places

9:03there. But basically, it was half empty.

9:06There were about 2,000 people living in

9:08Jerusalem. So, it was tiny. You know,

9:10cuz nowadays in our age of sort of CNN

9:13news, when it's sort of like Jerusalem,

9:15you know, sacred to three faiths, you

9:17know, you one imagines that it's always

9:19been the center of the world. Well, it

9:21wasn't. It was very neglected for about

9:22two or 300 years. Um

9:25but you're right that, you know, the

9:27the idea was that you had to be you had

9:29to be pretty tough to control the Middle

9:31East. And the Ottomans were absolutely

9:33ruthless. During World War I,

9:35apart from slaughtering the Armenians,

9:38they had to deal with with a bigger

9:39problem. And the big problem was Arab

9:42nationalism.

9:43In the beginning of the beginning of the

9:45the the century 20th century,

9:48there were three big imperial powers

9:50dominating the Middle East. So, you have

9:53the Ottomans from Constantinople who

9:54were who were Turks. Everyone spoke

9:57Turkish, by the way. If you wanted to

9:59get on, you had to speak Turkish. It's

10:01interesting that in the dynasty that

10:03ruled Egypt, only the last king, Farouk,

10:06spoke Arabic. All the rest of them just

10:08spoke Turkish and didn't speak any

10:10Arabic. Everything was done through

10:12through Turkish. Everything was done in

10:14Constantinople.

10:15Um and and basically that you know, they

10:19were absolutely ruthless about any kind

10:21of rebellions. Um and you know, in in

10:24World War I, for example, rest there was

10:27restive Arab nationalism, the beginnings

10:29of Arab nationalism. The Turk the three

10:32pashas went down there and and hanged

10:35enormous numbers of Arab notables in

10:37Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem. The

10:39bodies of those Arab nationalists were

10:42dangling around the walls of Jerusalem

10:44and and in the main square of of

10:45Damascus. It's still called Execution

10:48Square. So, yeah, they had ruled it very

10:51toughly. Then you have World War I,

10:54um when there's a sort of entire story

10:56the entire story of World War I is now

10:58rather neglected and forgotten. And most

11:00people don't know it. It was really hard

11:02fought. The great majority of Arab of

11:06Arabs soldiers fought for the Ottoman

11:08Empire and fought all the way through

11:11the whole war without the without

11:13deserting or defecting or anything. But

11:16at the same time, the British started to

11:19look for a way to organize an Arab

11:21revolt against the Ottomans.

11:24And they did that through a family

11:27called the Hashemite family, which whose

11:29story is very much part of the story of

11:32the Middle East up to today because

11:34Jordan is still ruled by a Hashemite

11:37king who's descended from these people.

11:39So, it's a a very interesting process.

11:42At one point,

11:43um the Ottomans fought so hard they

11:45defeated an an Anglo-French army at

11:47Gallipoli, as as everybody knows. At

11:50another time, they surrounded a British

11:52army at Kut in in Iraq, and that army

11:54surrendered in in probably the great one

11:57of the greatest disgraces of the British

11:59army during World War I.

12:01So, for much of World War I, the

12:03Ottomans actually actually were pretty

12:04impressive. And of course, their most

12:07important general at the Dardanelles at

12:09Gallipoli was Mustafa Kemal Pasha, who

12:13became Ataturk and who created Turkey.

12:16And the creation of Turkey

12:18is I think one of the one of the most

12:20misunderstood parts of this story, and I

12:22don't know if you like to Well,

12:25at the end of the war, the Ottomans had

12:27conducted this this genocide of the of

12:29the Armenians. They'd killed 1.1

12:31million.

12:32Um we have all the orders and um

12:36and telegrams and so on that they sent

12:39in order to organize this. So,

12:42it's you know, it's it's it's a

12:43historical fact. Um and at the end of

12:47it, most of the most of the victors, in

12:50other words, the British and the French,

12:52um and the British were led by Lloyd

12:54George, were were convinced that the the

12:56Ottoman Empire was a sort of should be

12:58punished. The

12:59leaders of it should be punished and

13:01tried, but the actual empire must be

13:04broken up. And that to do this, they

13:07would support a lot of nationalisms.

13:10And those nationalisms included the

13:12Armenians, the Kurds, and of course, the

13:15Arabs. They also included and to in a

13:18much less important a much less

13:20important factor, the Jews. And the

13:22Balfour Declaration was a part of that.

13:24At the same time, they made promises to

13:28each other about what they would get.

13:31And what they would get was so

13:33extraordinary, and this is Sykes-Picot.

13:36And Sykes-Picot is totally

13:37misunderstood. It's constantly unquoted

13:40by people who don't know what

13:42Sykes-Picot was.

13:43The reason is it's come to mean a sort

13:46of um an imperial mentality where you

13:50where you divided up places against

13:52their will. Of course, that's the whole

13:54idea of empires. That's what empires do.

13:56That's why they're called empires. But

13:58um in this case, Russia was really one

14:02of the big winners of Sykes-Picot. Cuz

14:04Sykes-Picot should be called

14:06Sykes-Picot-Sazonov, who was the foreign

14:08minister of the Russian Empire. And the

14:10Russians were going to get

14:12Constantinople,

14:15most of Eastern what is now Eastern

14:17Turkey, where they were going to have a

14:20have a vassal state, the Armenians.

14:22And they were also going to be share a

14:25have a share in Jerusalem and Palestine.

14:29So, if the Tsar hadn't been overthrown,

14:32um

14:33and if the provisional government that

14:34succeeded the Tsar in 1917 hadn't been

14:36overthrown,

14:38Russia would rule Constantinople. Russia

14:41would rule Eastern Turkey. And Russia

14:43would would have would have played a

14:44much bigger role in Palestine. That

14:46didn't happen because as we know, the

14:49Russian the Russian Revolution happened.

14:51The other powers that were going to do

14:53really well out of this were the

14:54British, who wanted a sort of who wanted

14:57a large section of the went from Haifa

15:00in Palestine all the way to Iraq. And

15:02that was about oil.

15:04And the French, who wanted basically

15:06wanted greater Syria.

15:08And

15:09the Greeks and the Italians, who'd been

15:11promised large parts of what is now

15:13Turkey.

15:15And Constantinople was going to be

15:16international. So, it would have been an

15:18entirely different Middle East. There'd

15:20would been a large Greek empire.

15:22And after the war, that's that they

15:24started to put this into practice. So,

15:28at the treaties of of Sevres and San

15:30Remo in 1920, the ruling powers agreed

15:34on this carve-up of the Ottoman Empire.

15:36And it's so fascinating because it's San

15:39Remo and Sevres, not not Sykes-Picot,

15:41that actually happened. And the big

15:43difference was that Britain got the

15:46mandate for Palestine cuz they didn't

15:48have to share it anymore with the with

15:51the Russians cuz the Russians were now

15:52Bolsheviks and they didn't and they and

15:55they themselves had liberated it, so

15:56they didn't have to share it with the

15:58French.

15:59So, they got it all. And the French got

16:03got greater Syria.

16:05And um

16:07greater Syria, which included Lebanon,

16:09what's now Lebanon.

16:11By the way, their idea of what Syria

16:13should be was also very different. They

16:14were actually going to divide it into

16:15five or six states. And there was going

16:18to be a state for the Christians, that

16:20would be Lebanon, a state for the Druze,

16:22a state for the Alawites,

16:24who the Alawites later provided us with

16:27the Assad family that ruled that ruled

16:29until recently.

16:30>> Great guys.

16:31>> Yeah, great guys. And then two Sunni

16:33states. But they didn't do that. But for

16:35Turkey, it all went wrong because the

16:38Greeks started to invade Turkey. And

16:42Kemal Pasha, um Mustafa Kemal Pasha

16:44Atatürk, um said, "I'm going to take

16:47control of this. I'm going to stop

16:49this."

16:50And

16:51the Turks had been assigned a small

16:53square around um around Ankara, what is

16:57now Ankara. And he based himself there,

17:00created a national pact, became was

17:03appointed commander, took control of the

17:06the main surviving Ottoman Empire

17:09Ottoman army, and started to resist.

17:13First, he defeated the the Armenians who

17:15were trying to set up a state. Then he

17:17defeated the French in a small in the

17:20Frank the Franco-Turkish War, completely

17:22forgotten story. He threw them out back

17:24into Syria. And then he turned around

17:27and he took on the Greeks. And the

17:28Greeks were advancing towards Ankara.

17:31And he defeated them. And out of this

17:34um defeat um he faced down Britain and

17:37France and overturned the whole plan.

17:40And in that plan he also overthrew the

17:44the Lloyd George government. That's how

17:45Lloyd George fell from being Prime

17:47Minister, thanks to this this story.

17:49So, in the end there was another treaty

17:52called the Treaty of Lausanne, which

17:53created what is now modern Turkey.

17:56And with Ataturk as Prime Minister and a

17:59new nation the Turks created basically

18:03the the Muslim

18:05inhabitants became Turks, the Christian

18:08inhabitants became Greeks. And there was

18:10a huge population swap in which a

18:12million people basically moved between

18:15the two countries.

18:17So,

18:18out of this

18:20um a sort of uh imperial a

18:23counter-imperial rebellion of a brutal

18:26ethnic war um in which Smyrna that was

18:30including the burning of the Greek town

18:31of Smyrna, now Izmir.

18:34Um

18:35uh and then a sort of new kind of

18:37religious nationalism and then the

18:39creation of a new state that had never

18:41existed before.

18:43Again, it sounds very like Israel.

18:45And it is very similar to Israel, but on

18:47a much bigger scale. And out of that

18:50came the Turkish state. Now, it's very

18:52relevant today because of what is

18:54Erdogan is doing now.

18:55>> And what is he doing now?

18:56>> Well,

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20:30>> What Erdoğan is doing now is promoting

20:33what it what what is usually called

20:35neo-Ottomanism, which just means that

20:37he's looking back before um before

20:40Atatürk to the sultanate, the great

20:43Ottoman sultanate, which is an

20:44extraordinary institution which which

20:46which ruled the whole Middle East from

20:49from Algiers

20:51to the borders of Iran and to to

20:53Baghdad, let's say, all the way from

20:55Yemen, all the way to the Black Sea to

20:58to Crimea at its greatest. And

21:02and and of course into Europe to

21:03Budapest, as far as Budapest. I think

21:05just a huge institution. But what he's

21:07what he's interested in is the Muslim

21:10part of it. And he's now saying

21:13Turkey has the biggest army in NATO

21:15after America.

21:17Um

21:18we now make our own weapons. It's a very

21:20impressive sophisticated society.

21:23Um it's got mass which is still

21:25important in our era.

21:27And he's saying now it's natural

21:30um Iran has been somewhat diminished

21:33and we now need to take our place

21:36in the Middle East and we can control or

21:39regain control of some of the areas that

21:41we once controlled as Ottomans. And so

21:44he's challenging the Treaty of Lausanne

21:46I agreed earlier.

21:48And people often say well did did

21:50Ataturk

21:51is this totally new? It's not totally

21:53new. Um even at the time Ataturk wanted

21:57to take to get control of Mosul which is

21:59now part of Iraq.

22:01But in the end that was that was stopped

22:04and he didn't get control of Mosul that

22:05went to Iraq and to the which was then a

22:07British mandate. So interestingly

22:11he's now talking openly about you know

22:14Ottoman cities Turkish cities Beirut

22:17Damascus

22:18um and Jerusalem. And

22:21um the you know the government is

22:23fanning flames of

22:25um war with his potentially with Israel.

22:28I mean one of the interesting things

22:29about the area now is that you know it's

22:33it's the Arab world but the three most

22:36powerful countries in it are not Arab

22:37speaking even you know which is the

22:39three preeminent military powers is Iran

22:41Turkey and Israel.

22:43And

22:44so so you know a book like mine The

22:47Cauldron has to be also a history not

22:50just of the Arab world but also of the

22:52Jewish Persian

22:54um and Turkish worlds too. But that was

22:56how they created Turkey and that's why

22:58it's very relevant now. You know what's

23:01happened is Erdogan has managed to

23:03um achieve some influence in Washington.

23:07Um, basically through his relationship

23:10with

23:11with Trump. He's

23:13established Turkey as a really powerful

23:16drone manufacturer, which has been

23:18incredibly influential. And he's also

23:23he's also really engineered the fall of

23:25the Assads in Syria. And that has meant

23:27that Turkey is now incredibly powerful

23:29in Syria. It's not often realized

23:32cuz we often hear about occupations in

23:34the Middle East.

23:35And we often hear about the Israeli

23:37occupation of the West Bank, for

23:38example.

23:39In 2016

23:41the Turks occupied a large strip of

23:44northern Syria, which they still occupy.

23:46And he is now the preeminent power.

23:49Erdogan is now the preeminent power in

23:51Syria.

23:52Um

23:54They're very involved in Libya. They're

23:55very involved um, in Somalia in Somalia.

24:00Um, so you know

24:02actually we're seeing a real Turkish

24:04ascendancy. And to understand it, you

24:06have to go back to the creation of

24:07Turkey in 1922, which which is why it's

24:10worth telling the story.

24:12>> And they also played an integral part in

24:14the October 7th peace deal, ceasefire

24:16deal, I should say.

24:17>> They did. They did. And they are playing

24:19an increasing part. And one of the ways

24:21that these powers um, are are placing

24:25themselves in the Middle East is by

24:28is by mediating with the West.

24:31Particularly with the West that is

24:32struggling to control these

24:35these these factions. And you're

24:38absolutely right cuz Erdogan comes from

24:41the Muslim Brotherhood or Muslim

24:42Brotherhood aligned party. And

24:46so he had a special relationship with

24:48the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim

24:49Brotherhood plays a big part in this

24:51book and in this story. It's something

24:53again that we anyone who's interested in

24:55the Middle East needs to know about.

24:57It's founded in the late 20s in Egypt by

25:00Hassan al-Banna, a a teacher, an Islamic

25:03teacher, and the idea was that Islam is

25:06completely central to all political and

25:09national life.

25:10And it's it's also supernational. It's

25:13not just in Egypt. It's it's outside.

25:16And it became a challenge to the the

25:19people who were ruling the the the cast

25:21that had long ruled Egypt from from

25:24Ottoman times from Mamluk times. And

25:26that is the Turco-Circassian

25:29um elite. And

25:32it's a great word, Turco-Circassian. No

25:34one knows what it means, but basically

25:35it means that the people who who um set

25:39up the Ottoman Empire and the empires

25:41before it um were slaves who had been

25:45stolen from their from their families by

25:49um Muslim war warlords like the Ottomans

25:51or the or or the the different

25:53dynasties.

25:54Um they'd been taken as tribute. They'd

25:56been enslaved.

25:58The women had been um put to work as

26:01put to work in households

26:03in harems or become wives, and the boys

26:06had become the administrators and

26:08soldiers of these empires. And the idea

26:12was that as they grew up, they were

26:14brought up as Muslims, they learned the

26:15language,

26:17and they forgot their childhoods in

26:20Circassia. In other words, in Ukraine,

26:22in South Russia, in the Caucasus, or in

26:24the Balkans,

26:26um Bosnia or Serbia. And they became

26:29Turks.

26:30And these Turks um were the rulers of

26:34the empire. They married into the

26:35Ottoman family. They they became um

26:38viziers and generals and so on. And

26:42in Egypt, that class was known as the

26:45Turco-Circassian class, descended from

26:47these slave generals. And by the way, it

26:50is an amazing story because many of

26:51these slave generals started as slave

26:53started as boy Christian boys became

26:57Islamic

26:59converts then officers then generals and

27:01then kings. So the story is that they

27:04become some of them became sultans. So

27:06there's a meteoric rise took about a

27:07meteoric rise and literally from slave

27:10to king. But anyway, so the Turkish

27:13Circassians rule still ruled Egypt all

27:15these centuries later. And in Egypt in

27:18the in the 20s um they were increasingly

27:21associated with the British who

27:23dominated

27:25who were who ruled Egypt in what was

27:27called the veiled protectorate for

27:29obvious reasons. They were sort of they

27:31pretended that the that the royal family

27:34were ruling Egypt but in fact in fact

27:36they dominated Egypt. And so the Muslim

27:39Brotherhood got more and more popular.

27:42It had it had hundreds of thousands of

27:44members. It was growing but it also had

27:47a terrorist wing. And also had the youth

27:50kind of armed youth wings. But then so

27:52did everybody in the 1930s. It was the

27:54time of fascism. But

27:56over time it came increasingly to

27:59threaten

28:00first of all the kings of Egypt and then

28:02after the coup by Nasser it threatened

28:05him. So he arrested all of them hanged

28:08many of them and suppressed the Muslim

28:10Brotherhood. Jump ahead to 2011

28:14um the fall of Mubarak the Greek

28:18the Arab Spring and you have you have an

28:20election in which one of the Muslim

28:22Brotherhood is elected Morsi. So this

28:25was a moment of great opportunity for

28:27President Erdogan of Turkey because this

28:30is an ally from the same movement as

28:32himself.

28:33But that didn't last long. The generals

28:35retook control crushed the Muslim

28:38Brotherhood presidency.

28:40And President al-Sisi is the is is is

28:43still ruling Egypt. But

28:46um another offspring of of branch or

28:50offshoot of the of the Muslim

28:51Brotherhood was Hamas in um, Gaza. And

28:55Hamas was a Muslim Brotherhood um,

28:58faction that gradually sort of declared

29:00its declared its separation from the

29:03Egyptian mothership. And became the

29:07leading

29:08um,

29:09uh, terrorist faction that destroyed the

29:11Oslo Peace Accords. And really the idea

29:14of a two-state solution. Of that more

29:16later. So, that's why as you're right,

29:20that Turkey had special influence of

29:21Hamas. And Turkey and and Qatar are the

29:24two big Sunni backers of Hamas.

29:29Alongside the Iran, which is a Shia, but

29:31still also backs Hamas. So, everything

29:33in the Middle East is kind of

29:34complicated.

29:36But but fascinating.

29:37>> I mean, when you come to regions, it

29:39doesn't get more fascinating, really.

29:41But let's go back now to So, the British

29:44had a mandate for Palestine in that area

29:46at the time. What does that mean, a

29:48mandate?

29:49>> Well, that was such a good question. The

29:51British and the French invented a new

29:53word for empire. Because

29:56>> [laughter]

29:57>> they had to deal with President Woodrow

29:59Wilson. And President Woodrow Wilson,

30:01who created Wilsonian foreign policy,

30:04which is that it was that everyone

30:05should have self-determination.

30:07And that American foreign policy should

30:09be essentially a kind of moral

30:12It should support human rights. It

30:13should be moral. It should support

30:14self-determination for everybody.

30:17As soon as President Wilson, who was a

30:19tremendous hypocrite, incidentally, he

30:20was a Democrat. He went from the

30:22president, you know, he went from the

30:24the head of a university to president in

30:26literally 2 years. An extraordinary

30:28rise.

30:29And he was highly intelligent, but not a

30:31but more he was he was actually

30:34had a higher kind of higher conception

30:36of his genius than everybody else did.

30:39And when he came to Europe, he found out

30:42that it was actually incredibly hard to

30:43manage the Middle East and Europe.

30:45>> [laughter]

30:45>> And and he had to deal with Lloyd George

30:49and um

30:50uh and and Clemenceau, who was the

30:52French leader, who were determined to

30:54get empires in the Middle East out of

30:56the Ottoman Empire.

30:57And dealing with um dealing with

30:59Clemenceau and um

31:02uh and Wilson, Lloyd George said it was

31:04like sitting between Jesus and Napoleon.

31:07>> [clears throat]

31:08>> Which is quite fun. But, you know, so

31:10So, when he got there,

31:11he said everyone has to have

31:12self-determination, but what does that

31:14mean? You know, so out of this,

31:17um the French and the British said,

31:18"Well, we we totally agree with you

31:19about the empire thing, but we'll call

31:21them mandates instead." So, mandate was

31:24just a new word for an imperial province

31:26until the people were ready to rule

31:27themselves. It actually says that in the

31:29League of Nations um in the clauses

31:31about the mandates. So,

31:34the French got mandate for greater

31:35Syria, which was discussed a little bit

31:37earlier, and the British got a mandate

31:39for Iraq, which was originally called

31:41Mesopotamia just to confuse your

31:43listeners, which means the land between

31:45the rivers. Um

31:47they renamed it Iraq, and they also got

31:50Palestine. And Palestine included what

31:52is today Israel

31:54and the West Bank

31:56and Jordan.

31:57And this was a completely invented

32:00entity.

32:01It wasn't that the word Palestine wasn't

32:03ancient. Palestine is a very ancient

32:05name

32:06um that goes all the way back to

32:07Philistia and the Philistines. Um

32:11and was used at various times by the

32:13Romans as a um as a as a net province

32:16provincial name.

32:18They had Palestina Prima, Seconda, and

32:20so on. But,

32:22in modern times, um the Ottomans for for

32:25for 400 years had ruled this region.

32:29And they divided into provinces that

32:31they called vilayets, ruled by a vali,

32:33and each

32:34um and each one could, you know, ruled

32:36it from a certain city, ruled a certain

32:38area.

32:39So, what is now Palestine, Israel,

32:42Jordan was then ruled from Damascus and

32:46from Beirut. Or, you know, and and and

32:48and so so that's how they called it.

32:51But, Westerners had always used the word

32:53Syria and Palestine, which were nice

32:56good old Roman names. And

32:59um so Britain got Palestine and Jordan,

33:01but almost immediately

33:03um they faced a problem because in World

33:05War I they had promised this one family,

33:08the Hashemite family, that they would

33:10support their independence in the Middle

33:12East. And we were talking earlier about

33:14the the promises that everybody made in

33:16World War I.

33:17The key thing about these promises are

33:19they made promises to everybody, not

33:21just the Arabs and the Jews in the sort

33:23of cliche of history version, but also

33:25as we saw the Greeks, the Italians, the

33:26French, the Russians. I could go on, the

33:28the Kurds, the Armenians.

33:31They made promises to everybody cuz they

33:32were desperate to win the war. They

33:34wouldn't have made these promises at any

33:36other time in the whole of human

33:37history, but they made them then because

33:40they were losing hundreds of thousands

33:42of men on the Western Front. Anything to

33:44try and get to try and get away to stop

33:47the slaughter on the Western Front. And

33:50so

33:51um they made they made these promises.

33:53As we've seen, the Armenians and the

33:55Kurds didn't get theirs. The Turks

33:58destroyed the promises made to the

34:00Greeks and the Italians. And then so now

34:03the British have to deal with the Arab

34:05and the Jewish promises.

34:07Well, the Jewish promise was easy

34:09initially because it was just like

34:11a homeland, you know, in Palestine, not

34:14of Palestine. So, whatever it just meant

34:16we can allow more Jews into into this

34:19province, basically.

34:21>> Simon, may I interrupt you just there

34:23cuz I think it's really crucial.

34:24>> Yeah.

34:25>> How are the Jews there at this point?

34:28>> The history of the Jews

34:30um

34:31is inextricably linked with um, Judea.

34:35And it's it's always important to

34:37realize that

34:38the word Jew comes from Judea,

34:40which is which is the kingdom of Judea

34:42the kingdoms of Judea which ruled what

34:45is now Israel Palestine or also known as

34:47Palestine. And so,

34:50um, it's often said that that Zionism is

34:53it was invented in the 1890s and that

34:55there's you know, it had never existed

34:57before.

34:58It the the opposite is true. Zionism is

35:00just a modern name for a specific

35:03political movement with many branches

35:06and and and and and mindsets and

35:09approaches, but which was a new name for

35:12an ancient

35:14um, an absolutely ancient 2,000 years

35:17ancient belief um, that the Jews were

35:20linked to Judea, hence the name and that

35:23they were linked to Jerusalem. And they

35:26were virtually always Jews living in

35:29Judea Palestine, whatever you want to

35:31call it. And um,

35:35even when they were expelled from Judea

35:38in 586

35:40BC, in other words,

35:432,500 years ago,

35:45they they were taken to Babylon and they

35:47dreamed of getting back to Judea, hence

35:50the famous song,

35:52um, you know, by the rivers of Babylon.

35:55Beautifully performed by Boney M among

35:57others. Um, so so that went right

36:00through the history and there were other

36:02times they went back in the in the Roman

36:04times there'd been the Maccabean kingdom

36:07and the the Herodian kingdoms of Judea

36:10and King Herod, a Judean Jewish king had

36:13built the second temple in all its glory

36:16and that was the building that was seen

36:18by Jesus when Jesus threw out the money

36:21changers etc. That was the building.

36:23That was the place he prayed in as a

36:25young Jewish

36:26a young Jewish man from from Galilee.

36:30>> The people who watch this show have

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37:53>> [snorts]

37:53>> So, it remained the home of the Judean

37:56people, all the Jewish people. And

37:58Judean and Jewish or would or entirely

38:00interchangeable.

38:02But Judea is a useful because it reminds

38:04us of the land where they came from.

38:07And

38:08in in in 66 AD,

38:11the the Jews rebelled against Emperor

38:13Nero, the Romans. There was a huge

38:15Jewish revolt. It was crushed by the new

38:18Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus. And

38:21they crushed the Jews, they crushed

38:23Jerusalem, and they destroyed the temple

38:26and the city of Jerusalem. And um

38:30the money was so vast that they got from

38:32the temple that they were able to build

38:33the Colosseum, which you can still see.

38:36That is the prizes. That's the prizes of

38:40the conquest of the temple. And you can

38:42see the picture of the triumph on

38:44Titus's arch if you've been to Rome. And

38:47if you haven't, you should go to see it.

38:49Um

38:49but

38:51there was one more Jewish revolt again

38:52in a hundred in about in in about a

38:54hundred and twenty to twenty a hundred

38:56and thirty to thirty-five. And that was

38:58the revolt of Simon Bar Kokhba, prince

39:00of Israel. And he

39:02again defeated the Romans under Hadrian.

39:05Hadrian sent an army, and this time they

39:07really destroyed the they killed

39:09hundreds of thousands of Jews, and they

39:12changed the name of the land from Judea

39:16to Palestina, which was also an ancient

39:19name, but the point was it was no longer

39:21belonged to the Jews. And it was then

39:24that the Judeans became Jews, and many

39:27many hundreds of thousands of started to

39:29live around dispersed around the Roman

39:32Empire and in Persia and in what is now

39:35Iraq.

39:36And many communities started then. And

39:39the ones that lived in the Arab world

39:40were known as Sephardics or or as

39:43Mizrahi.

39:44And the ones that lived in Europe became

39:46known as Ashkenazi mainly. And the the

39:50the Jews that lived in the Arab world or

39:52the Islamic world um the Mizrahi

39:55I mean, my my family's descended from

39:58them, the the Sassoons

39:59and the Montefiores. And and you know,

40:01they had multiple identities. And one of

40:04the themes of of the cauldron is

40:06understanding that

40:08the Middle East is full of multiple

40:09identities. We think everybody is a is a

40:12you know, is an Palestinian or Israeli.

40:14No, it's actually very complicated. And

40:17you know, you've got Syrian Druze,

40:19you've got Iraqi Kurds, you've got you

40:22know, you've got Mizrahi Israelis,

40:24you've got Palestinian Israelis. Okay,

40:26so it's it's complicated and much more

40:28interesting and nuanced than we're

40:30expected to believe. So, all this time

40:33throughout these centuries, the Jews

40:35craved returning to Judea, to the Middle

40:39East. And Zionism in the 1890s was

40:44was a new movement that that grew up,

40:47but a new a reheating of an old of an

40:51old movement that had existed without

40:53without interruption for 2,000 years.

40:57And it was recognized by

41:02the rulers of the British Empire and the

41:03rulers of the French Empire and

41:05Americans. So, it's always blamed just

41:08on Britain, but actually it was the

41:09three kind of the leading Allied powers

41:12all for their

41:14very similar reasons decided to embrace

41:16Zionism. And by the way, there was also

41:19a Zionist movement in the Ottoman Empire

41:21and in Berlin. In other words, with the

41:23central powers. And

41:25it's possible that they would have

41:27recognized

41:29a Jewish homeland as well. And they were

41:30considering it and discussing it, which

41:32is often forgotten. But in 1917,

41:36when Balfour, Lloyd and Lloyd George

41:39It's always called the Balfour

41:40Declaration, but really it should be

41:41called the Lloyd George Declaration. But

41:44when they recognized

41:48the Jewish idea of a homeland,

41:51they were partly reflecting the fact

41:52that like Jewish the Jewish Bible

41:56because of Christianity was so much part

41:59of the education and culture of Western

42:02Christian Christendom

42:04that they were very familiar. And Lloyd

42:05George said, "You know, the place names

42:07in Judea are more familiar to me than

42:10the played names of the battles on the

42:12Western Front.

42:13And so, that was partly what they were

42:16doing. They were partly recognizing

42:17something they'd been brought up on.

42:19But also,

42:21um they were reckon they were

42:22recognizing what they thought was an

42:24injustice that the Jews had faced great

42:26anti-Semitism over centuries, had never

42:28had their own land, and why not now that

42:31the Ottoman Empire was breaking up

42:33facilitate this small group,

42:36um along with other groups. And the

42:38other groups that were promised

42:40homelands were the Armenians, the Kurds,

42:43and and of course, the Arabs already

42:45were there in their homeland, and the

42:47Arabs also wanted states.

42:50So,

42:51the Arabs were represented by the family

42:53called the Hashemites.

42:55And the old sharif the old emir of

42:58Mecca,

42:59um was called Hussein, and he was one of

43:03the Hashemites, and he negotiated with

43:05the British as as well. So, while all

43:07these other negotiations were going on,

43:09he was negotiating, and he said, "I'm a

43:12family descended I'm a Hashemite family

43:14descended from the Prophet Muhammad.

43:17They were directly descended They are

43:18directly descended from the Prophet

43:19Muhammad, so they literally have the

43:21most kind of kudos

43:24um of any family. Though they're ahead

43:26of a lot of people in the Arab and

43:27Muslim world descended from Muhammad,

43:31including much of the leaders today. I

43:32mean, you know, the supreme leader Ali

43:34Khamenei is also is a sayyid. He was

43:36also descended from the Prophet. Um and

43:39descended from the Prophet is probably

43:41accurate in many cases. It's probably

43:43been handed down. But the Hashemite

43:46family were this Arab family,

43:48um

43:49who would traditionally ruled Mecca and

43:51Medina, the holy cities. And they were

43:54ruled by the Ottoman Empire, so they

43:55were also in the Ottoman Empire. And

43:57when World War I started, they among

43:59many other people started to negotiate.

44:01And they said, "We Hashemites can lead a

44:04huge Arab revolt, and we can bring down

44:07the Ottomans.

44:08But to do that, we've got you've got to

44:09promise us that we, the Hashemite

44:12family, me and my sons, can rule an

44:14empire that will include all of Arabia,

44:17all of Jordan, all of Israel,

44:20all of and all of Iraq and all of Syria.

44:23So, in other words, just the whole map.

44:25And you've got to realize that the

44:26Hashemites had at most under their

44:29command at this point about about a

44:30thousand men, and they'd only ever ruled

44:34Mecca, which is a which is of immense

44:36importance. It's the holy city, but it's

44:38very it's very small and far away from

44:40all those other places.

44:43So, the British, understandably,

44:44negotiated um

44:47a slightly blurred agreement that

44:49deliberately didn't quite promise

44:51anything. And it said, "You can have

44:54things to the sort of east of this line,

44:56west of this line, um and also this is

44:59all dependent on what we've promised the

45:01French." And they did this knowing that

45:03they were promising the French the whole

45:05of Syria and also and other thing and

45:07they themselves wanted Iraq and

45:09Palestine. So,

45:11they were double-crossing them. But the

45:13Arab family, the Hashemites, were also

45:15double-crossing the British cuz they

45:16were asking for everything,

45:18understanding that they were unlikely to

45:20get it all. Um and both and on both

45:22sides, when you look into the

45:23correspondence of both sides, you see

45:25that both say like, "You ask for more

45:27and we'll we'll sort of manage to sort

45:29of blur that." And so, in the end, they

45:31agreed.

45:33Vast amounts of money descended on the

45:34Arab desert,

45:36delivered by people like Lawrence of

45:37Arabia who joined them, and they

45:39launched this rebellion in 1916, and in

45:42various and fairly small armies of about

45:456,000 people

45:47started to fight their way along the

45:49railway line, the Ottoman railway line

45:51in Arabia,

45:53and then into Jordan.

45:55But they couldn't really defeat the

45:56major Ottoman armies. So, it was a

45:58British army with lots of Australians

46:01that then invaded what is now Palestine,

46:04fought their way up Palestine, which

46:05took a year. They took it They took it

46:08They took Jerusalem.

46:10And Lloyd George said,

46:12"I want to I want to give a a a

46:14Christmas present to the British nation.

46:16And the Christmas present is Jerusalem."

46:18So, in in December 1917, the British

46:20people got a Christmas present,

46:22the the holy city. And so, they got the

46:24holy city. And

46:27and then the British and French, as we

46:29were saying, had to decide what nerve to

46:30do with these promises. So, they set up

46:33the mandates. And the mandates, as we

46:35said, were kind of imperial provinces

46:37under a different name. The League of

46:39Nations, a new international

46:40organization, sign um included these in

46:43its char- in charter in its charter and

46:46recognized it. So, it was It was

46:48recognized by international law,

46:49whatever that means.

46:51And they started to rule. But of course,

46:53they then found these these places

46:54incredibly hard to rule. So,

46:58they they renamed Mesopotamia Iraq. So,

47:00they ruled Iraq. And the the the French

47:02tried to rule Syria and tried all sorts

47:04of different ways to rule it. Um and the

47:06British had had Palestine. And they they

47:09really enjoyed having Jerusalem. But

47:12almost immediately, one of the sons of

47:14the Hashemite um emir, Abdallah,

47:17galloped up from um Arabia and conquered

47:20Amman and said, "I want this to be my

47:22little kingdom since we we haven't got

47:24the other places we've been promised."

47:26And so, the British said, "Okay, you can

47:29have that. We'll create Jordan out of

47:30that bit of Palestine." So, half of

47:32Palestine was given to a new emirate,

47:35which was called Transjordan.

47:37At the same time, his brother, Faisal,

47:41um it's a bit of family politics here,

47:43but his brother, Faisal, was declared

47:45king of Syria.

47:47There was a problem there because the

47:49French had been promised Syria.

47:51And so, the French invaded and threw him

47:54out.

47:56So, then the British have another

47:57problem, what to do with

47:59former King Faisal of Syria.

48:01And they decided to give him Iraq.

48:04So they made him King of Iraq, and he

48:06the Kingdom of Iraq lasted from 1920 to

48:101958.

48:12So we may come to that later cuz there's

48:13a horrible massacre in 1958, but

48:16but um so the British tried to create

48:20Iraq into a sort of stable mandate under

48:24this king.

48:25And there was a huge revolt against the

48:27British, um an intifada, which the

48:30British crushed ruthlessly with the new

48:31RAF.

48:33And then um in Syria there was a huge

48:35revolt against the Syrian mandate in

48:381925, and the French crushed that

48:40brutally, bombarded Damascus.

48:43And they realized that, you know, they

48:44they that was going to be harder than

48:45they would have expected.

48:47And then in Palestine

48:49the British um hoped that they would

48:52rule Palestine for a while and

48:53ultimately they would create a state of

48:56Palestine

48:57that

48:58would be

49:00um a joint Jewish and Arab state.

49:04And

49:05Churchill published a white paper

49:06explaining this.

49:08And Jews started to immigrate to um to

49:11join their compatriots who had already

49:13been there for centuries.

49:15And so the population started to rise.

49:18But at the same time the Arab the Arab

49:20population of Palestine rejected British

49:22rule.

49:24But they didn't quite revolt.

49:26Um they could have done

49:28um as the Syrians had done, as the

49:29Iraqis had done.

49:31As the Egyptians had just done, too. So

49:33everybody revolted against this system

49:35of mandates.

49:36But they decided just to to protest and

49:39to to but to refuse to take part in the

49:41British schemes for the Palestine

49:43mandate.

49:45And

49:46um the Jews the Jewish idea for

49:49Palestine

49:50was

49:52pretty different from the image you now

49:54see in sort of the ideological

49:57decolonization

49:59picture. In fact, completely different.

50:01Most of the Jewish immigrants were um

50:05from the Russian Empire.

50:06They

50:08they they were socialists of various of

50:10various kinds, and they wanted to create

50:14um

50:15little farming communities which were

50:17called moshavim or actual communist

50:19communities which were called kibbutzim.

50:21And to do this, they just wanted to

50:24labor the land. And

50:27a lot of the time they labored the land

50:29with Arab workers.

50:31Um and sometimes they would they would

50:33they didn't want to seem like um Western

50:38um landlords, so they worked the land

50:41themselves. And they bought farmland.

50:44And some of this farmland they it was

50:46from money they raised themselves, and

50:47some of it was from philanthropists like

50:50the Rothschild family.

50:51And so that's what happened um in the

50:54'20s. And actually the the there were

50:57there were spasms of violence, but

50:59actually

51:00the British the British mandate of

51:02Palestine was relatively successful

51:05until 1929

51:07when stories that the Jews hoped to

51:10destroy the Arab shrines and mosque

51:13Al-Aqsa on the Al-Aqsa compound, the

51:15former temple site of the Jewish temple

51:18um created

51:20an an event that was very like October

51:227th

51:24um in our own time when an Arab mob

51:27attacked the Jewish the Jews in in

51:30Jerusalem, but especially in Hebron

51:33where where the the Jewish population

51:35had been there for centuries cuz it was

51:37one of the Hebron is one of the holy

51:39cities of Judaism. And also in Safed,

51:42which is another of the holy cities of

51:44Jerusalem. And in those attacks um there

51:47were mass rapes, there were beheadings,

51:49there were there were children killed,

51:51and so on.

51:52And so,

51:54then the British started to realize that

51:55they had a bit of a problem.

51:57And but at that point,

52:00there were actually relatively few Jews

52:03um had immigrated. Um what changed

52:06everything, of course, was Hitler.

52:08And the rise of Hitler enormously raised

52:12again the um

52:14the Jewish immigration, and that led to

52:17the crisis in the mid-'30s, which would

52:20lead to an Arab revolt, its crushing,

52:23and the and the and the idea, the the

52:25the the conviction that the Jews in

52:27Palestine could only be safe if they had

52:29a state.

52:30>> And this is, I think, the perfect moment

52:32to talk about the Grand Mufti, because

52:34he was a fascinating character at that

52:36time. Particularly his views, which, you

52:39know, you look at now and you go,

52:40they're kind of on brand for some

52:42people.

52:43>> Yeah.

52:43>> And also his relationship with Hitler.

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54:07>> With the Grand Mufti, um was a

54:09fascinating character. He was the

54:10ultimate aristocrat of Jerusalem. The

54:13Husseini family had basically run

54:15Jerusalem or run the Temple Mount and

54:17the the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem for

54:20um

54:21for hundreds of years, and they were the

54:23grandest of the families, but they were

54:25also the most Islamic of the families.

54:28And

54:29they normally um acted as one of the

54:32major um they held one of the major ro-

54:35roles, the major jobs by hereditary

54:37right on the Temple Mount. And different

54:40of the And different of these families

54:42all controlled different places on um

54:45or in Jerusalem. And the Grand Mufti was

54:48actually created by the British. There

54:50hadn't been a Grand Mufti really before

54:52the British. In order thinking, and

54:54again, you see this so often in our own

54:57society here. It's still going on. Where

54:59the British There's a huge British

55:01tendency to think like let's find the

55:02most extreme Islamic organization, and

55:06we'll make that the official Islamic

55:08organization, and then they'll become

55:09moderate.

55:10Yeah. And that's exactly what happened

55:12with the Grand Mufti. They literally

55:14said like Grand Mufti,

55:16um we'll hold an election for the Grand

55:18Mufti. They held an election, but a

55:20moderate won the election. So, the

55:22British typically said like we'll back

55:23we'll scrap the election then. What

55:25we'll do is appoint the most extreme

55:27young national ultra Islam Islam Islamic

55:31Islamist nationalist who's the this

55:33young member of the Husseini family.

55:36And this is Amin al-Husseini. We'll

55:38appoint him. And we're not only call him

55:40Mufti, we'll call him Grand Mufti. So,

55:42he's the leader of the whole Islamic

55:44community in Palestine, cuz that will be

55:46much easier to deal with. And if we give

55:48him all this power, um he'll become more

55:50moderate. And not only did they do that,

55:52but they also gave him

55:54the entire economic organization,

55:57um which was called the Supreme Muslim

55:59Council, which was which owned

56:01everything and all, you know, owned all

56:03the institutions, the mosques, and

56:05controlled the budget of the entire

56:07Islamic They said like So, they made him

56:09not just the religious leader, but the

56:11political leader and the economic

56:12leader. And they gave him everything. He

56:13was in his 20s.

56:15But they thought this guy, this is, you

56:16know, he'll he'll be able to control

56:18that side of things. And of course we

56:20have the Jewish agency or

56:23um which which is under which was under

56:26Weizmann or under Ben-Gurion, who were

56:27Zionist leaders.

56:29And they control their little community.

56:31And together then we can simply deal

56:33with these two communities, but it

56:34didn't turn out like that.

56:36Because he gradually turned against the

56:39British.

56:40And then when Hitler came to power,

56:44he immediately sought out the German

56:46consul. And what he said to the German

56:47consul was that,

56:49you know, he didn't just say, "I'd like

56:51you I'm an Arab nationalist and I'd like

56:53you to back us against the evil British

56:57Empire." Um which would have been

56:59understandable and lots of other people

57:01did that in fact in Egypt. Anwar Sadat

57:03did that in Egypt, the future of

57:04Palestine for example. No, he said, "I

57:07actually

57:08I actually I'm a convert almost to

57:10Nazism.

57:12And I embrace your racial view of the

57:14world. And um the And I embrace your war

57:19on the Jews."

57:20And

57:22during the early '30s, there were

57:23actually negotiations, interesting

57:25negotiations between

57:27um the Mufti's people and Ben-Gurion and

57:30the the Jew and the Jewish leaders. And

57:34they really did get they did actually

57:36come up close to ideas that could have

57:39worked actually.

57:40Um

57:42then in then in 1936 a rebellion began.

57:45This was the the the Arab revolt of

57:47Palestine.

57:48And

57:50out of it first the British came up with

57:52an idea and they came up with the first

57:54idea, what the hell do we do with this

57:56problem? We're going to do we're going

57:57to we're going to divide it up. We're

57:59going to partition it.

58:01And so they offered a very small um

58:05a very small Jewish bit and a large Arab

58:08bit. And they offered it to the to the

58:11Arabs and they said that the Arab bit

58:12could be ruled by King Abdullah who we

58:14met earlier creating his own kingdom

58:16next door in Transjordan.

58:19This was a this was actually extremely

58:21good idea. And it could have worked.

58:24And they even had

58:26um

58:27the great rival of the Husseinis is the

58:29Nashashibi family.

58:31Very distinguished and wealthy Arab land

58:34owning family. And the leader of that

58:36family, Ragheb al-Nashashibi, said I'll

58:38be the prime minister of this new state.

58:41And the new state would have been Jordan

58:42and the Arab areas of and that was

58:45always the best idea and it was doable.

58:48And the Jews would have got a small area

58:49but the but the but the Mufti

58:53said absolutely we will reject it. Why

58:55did he reject it? And this is where this

58:57explains much of the history

58:59subsequently. And it really explains

59:01what's happening today.

59:03He said

59:04we reject that because Palestine is

59:07sacred Islamic land.

59:09And therefore

59:11um though we we we could tolerate the

59:13small Jewish population before um World

59:15War I

59:17we cannot tolerate this Jewish

59:18population. And so he restarted the

59:21revolt, rejected the plan, killed as

59:23many as he could of the Nashashibi

59:25supporters who were the moderates in the

59:27Palestinian Arab community

59:29and and led this massive armed uprising

59:33which the British crushed crushed with

59:35absolute brutality

59:37um using many of the methods that that

59:39were later used actually by the Israelis

59:41blowing up villages and so on and also

59:44they were commanded by a General

59:45Montgomery

59:46of El Alamein fame who we've all heard

59:48of and they also trained Jewish

59:51commandos and among those commandos they

59:53trained was Moshe Dayan and other all

59:55the other kind of leading Jewish

59:57generals were were trained by the

59:59British.

1:00:00And at the end of this period um

1:00:04the Palestinian community was devastated

1:00:07and the um the Mufti had escaped

1:00:11and he went to Iraq. This is the bit

1:00:13that's often missing from the story. He

1:00:14went to Iraq and led an anti-British

1:00:16revolt in Iraq and became the chief

1:00:19advisor almost a sort of

1:00:21cabinet minister sat he sat with the

1:00:23cabinet

1:00:25of this rebel government in Iraq that

1:00:28was anti-British and was calling for in

1:00:30Hitler.

1:00:31And so Churchill ordered the invasion of

1:00:34Iraq

1:00:35the first Iraq war forgotten

1:00:37um now in 1941. They took Iraq, they

1:00:40threw out the Mufti and the Mufti

1:00:41escaped

1:00:42and Churchill was toying with the idea

1:00:44of assassinating the Mufti. King

1:00:46Abdullah said please assassinate the

1:00:48Mufti this you know even the the new

1:00:51king of Saudi Arabia which we may

1:00:53discuss somewhere in this with

1:00:55>> Before we run out of time.

1:00:56>> We've got lots of time.

1:00:58>> E- E- the even the king of Saudi Arabia

1:01:00Ibn Saud King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud said

1:01:03please can we just just can we eliminate

1:01:06this character? So he was hated by all

1:01:08the reasonable people in the Middle East

1:01:10but he escaped and he went to Rome and

1:01:13through Rome he went to Berlin and in

1:01:16Berlin he was received by Hitler

1:01:18who incidentally said to him you're very

1:01:20blonde you're obviously of Aryan descent

1:01:24um because the Mufti was was fair-haired

1:01:26with sort of ready hair and freckled

1:01:28freckled features. So Hitler thought

1:01:30like this is the sort of this is the

1:01:31sort of Arab leader I can deal with. And

1:01:34he also promised him that there'd be

1:01:37a liberation of the British and French

1:01:40power in the Middle East.

1:01:42And that the Jewish community in

1:01:44Palestine, which was now about 400,000

1:01:46people, would be eliminated. And they

1:01:50actually assigned an Einsatzgruppen in

1:01:53other words an SS annihilation

1:01:55extermination squad in Greece, which was

1:01:57ready to join the

1:02:01the

1:02:02Mufti's people in Palestine to to

1:02:05exterminate the entire Jewish community

1:02:07there.

1:02:08The Mufti completely embraced the

1:02:10Holocaust. He was told about the

1:02:11Holocaust by Hitler and by Himmler.

1:02:14And he completely supported the

1:02:16elimination of the Jews in Europe and in

1:02:19the Arab world in Palestine. And

1:02:22this was regarded ultimately as

1:02:25a disastrous mistake

1:02:28for the Palestinian side.

1:02:29And the Mufti kind of just made one

1:02:31mistake after another. And you know,

1:02:33when one looks at the leaderships of of

1:02:36the Palestine-Israel

1:02:38the both sides, I mean the the Israelis

1:02:40always said the Palestinians never

1:02:41missed an opportunity to miss an

1:02:43opportunity. Same also I'm afraid is

1:02:45true of the Israeli side, but

1:02:48but the Mufti made just colossal errors

1:02:50and this was the biggest one. He spent

1:02:52the war in Berlin. And frankly

1:02:54afterwards he was lucky not to be

1:02:56prosecuted and hanged as a war criminal.

1:02:59But at the end of the war

1:03:02he he he he was he was he he made it

1:03:05back to Egypt and the king of Egypt gave

1:03:08him

1:03:09who was trying desperately

1:03:11to to project Arab nationalist vibes

1:03:15gave him

1:03:16um

1:03:17gave him factory, but

1:03:20just to jump back one step, which is

1:03:22important.

1:03:23After the Arab revolt, after they'd

1:03:24crushed these Arabs and the Mufti had

1:03:26gone into exile,

1:03:28Neville Chamberlain became Prime

1:03:29Minister in Britain.

1:03:31And Neville Chamberlain said, "If we

1:03:32have to just If we have to offend one

1:03:35side,

1:03:36if we have to defend the Arabs or the

1:03:38Jews, we really need to offend the Jews

1:03:40cuz there are more Arabs. So, we are

1:03:43going to reverse entirely our pro-Jewish

1:03:46policy." So, he does a complete U-turn

1:03:49and decides to end rescind the offer of

1:03:53a partition and a small Jewish entity.

1:03:57And instead, he holds a conference in

1:03:59London called the St. James's

1:04:00conference, and he invites the the Mufti

1:04:03to send delegates.

1:04:04Mufti is now in Iraq, as I said.

1:04:07And these delegates um

1:04:09they start to negotiate with the Jews,

1:04:11and what the British say

1:04:13is we offer you a single Palestine

1:04:16state, a state of Palestine

1:04:19is what you always wanted, a Palestine

1:04:21state.

1:04:22And the only kind of problem with the

1:04:24Palestine state is that there are

1:04:27400,000 Jews in it.

1:04:29And

1:04:31you know, they are going to have to have

1:04:32some kind of community relations uh

1:04:34relations, you know, some kind of entity

1:04:36to to to to ensure defense, but also

1:04:38self some sort of self-government, some

1:04:41sort of autonomy.

1:04:42The Mufti rejected this completely

1:04:44because this was an act of another act

1:04:46of madness because

1:04:49um

1:04:50you know,

1:04:51I mean, I you know, this this wouldn't

1:04:53have been a great thing to happen, but

1:04:55inevitably, the Arabs were the majority

1:04:57in Palestine, and they would have taken

1:04:59control of the state of Palestine. And

1:05:02if they were controlled by moderates

1:05:04like King Abdullah, the Jews would have

1:05:05stayed as a sort of protected um entity

1:05:09within a community. If the Mufti had

1:05:11taken control, they would have no doubt

1:05:13been driven out in a brutal civil war,

1:05:16but things would have been different and

1:05:17there would have been a Palestine state.

1:05:19The Mufti turned this down.

1:05:22So,

1:05:22um

1:05:23>> For the same reason they didn't want

1:05:24Jews too many to to live.

1:05:26>> Or one Yeah, one one of these one Yes,

1:05:28basically would not recognize a Jewish

1:05:30community on this sacred on this sacred

1:05:33Arab soil, sacred Islamic soil as he

1:05:35called it. And it's this belief that

1:05:37you know, this area has been has been

1:05:39controlled by Islam since since 638 when

1:05:43it was taken um by the by the Arab

1:05:45invaders in 638 during the great great

1:05:48Arab conquests. And that it had to

1:05:50remain it had to remain completely Arab

1:05:53and Islamic ever since. And you know,

1:05:55much of this viewpoint is the viewpoint

1:05:57we see today.

1:05:59And I think it is in some ways

1:06:01um

1:06:03there's definitely and there has always

1:06:05been definitely

1:06:07large constituencies within the

1:06:09Palestinian community and within the the

1:06:11wider Arab community who are willing to

1:06:14make

1:06:15peace with Israel, to recognize Israel,

1:06:19to compromise.

1:06:21And of course that was what the Oslo

1:06:22peace peace accords were about. But

1:06:24there's also another large constituency

1:06:28that really has always rejected any

1:06:30compromise with the Jewish state.

1:06:33Um in in the Middle

1:06:34and and but was willing to make some

1:06:36sort of um

1:06:38some sort of settlement, some sort of

1:06:40compromise as a as a as a sort of middle

1:06:43stage perhaps in the dismantling of the

1:06:45Jewish Republic.

1:06:47And there's another section that would

1:06:48like said would would say

1:06:50um

1:06:51you know, let's negotiate with the

1:06:52Jewish state. Let's It's going to It's

1:06:54here. We may not have liked

1:06:56the way it was created.

1:06:58Um we didn't like 1948, but

1:07:01it's there. It's going to be there for

1:07:03for the foreseeable future. We need to

1:07:05negotiate with them and work out a deal

1:07:07that also includes autonomy for the

1:07:10Palestinians. So, some of the the more

1:07:12the some of the more extreme view

1:07:15now represented by people like Hamas and

1:07:17some of their supporters in the West

1:07:20is exactly that of the Grand Mufti.

1:07:23>> The sort of maximalist position.

1:07:24>> The maximalist position.

1:07:25>> And there's so many questions to open up

1:07:28here, but I think because we want to

1:07:30keep this relatively um concise.

1:07:33>> Yeah.

1:07:34>> We should probably

1:07:35skip over, you know, there's a long

1:07:37period between the two wars, but if we

1:07:39had to the creation of the state of

1:07:40Israel in 1948 uh and what follows, the

1:07:43Nakba as the the Arabs [clears throat]

1:07:45call it. Tell us about that. How is the

1:07:47state of Israel ultimately created and

1:07:49and and what is the reaction to it?

1:07:51>> The creation of the state of Israel

1:07:52actually was very like the creation of

1:07:54Turkey,

1:07:55which was only 25 years earlier. And

1:07:58what happened was at the end of World

1:07:59War II,

1:08:01um Churchill had put aside the offer

1:08:04from Neville Chamberlain, his

1:08:05predecessor, to create a state of

1:08:08Palestine. But in 1945, the election was

1:08:11won by the Labour Party. Attlee came to

1:08:13power.

1:08:14And he came to power with a plan to get

1:08:17out of many of the the big problems that

1:08:19the British Empire faced.

1:08:21This was interesting This was an

1:08:23interesting cuz it wasn't full

1:08:24decolonization. It was decolonization of

1:08:27two extremely awkward um places. One was

1:08:31Palestine and the other was

1:08:34India, the Raj. And um

1:08:37>> Churchill, by the [clears throat] way,

1:08:38from your book, famously I think

1:08:40described

1:08:41having to have control of the Middle

1:08:42East as sitting on an ungrateful

1:08:44volcano.

1:08:45>> An ungrateful volcano that cost 40

1:08:47million a year.

1:08:48>> Yeah.

1:08:48>> So, Churchill Churchill was um Churchill

1:08:52and Attlee were both very sympathetic to

1:08:54Zionism. But the challenge was how to

1:08:58how to how to solve the the impossible

1:09:00problem of the Middle East. And so um

1:09:04the first thing they did was to

1:09:07negotiate and was to invite all the

1:09:09parties to a negotiation in London

1:09:11again. And now you're dealing with Atlee

1:09:13and the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.

1:09:16And they they invited everyone to London

1:09:18and they said to them um basically

1:09:21again, you can have a state of

1:09:23Palestine, a full state of Palestine. Um

1:09:27which they'd offered which Chamberlain

1:09:28had offered in 1939. And they said, "But

1:09:32again, there's a large Jewish community

1:09:34in in Palestine now." By the way, the

1:09:37Jewish community in Palestine called

1:09:38themselves the Palestinian Jewish

1:09:40community. And um which is why all the

1:09:44all the institutions like the Palestine

1:09:46Bank, the Palestine football team, the

1:09:48Air Palestine, and the Palestine Post

1:09:50were actually all Jewish. Um

1:09:52so

1:09:53But

1:09:54>> So you're saying Jews control Palestine?

1:09:56>> [laughter]

1:09:57>> I'm getting I'm getting to uh I'm

1:09:59>> Yeah, am I right in that at that point,

1:10:00my reading certainly from your book and

1:10:02elsewhere is that the vast majority of

1:10:04the Jews who were living in that part of

1:10:06the world at the time wanted to be part

1:10:09of a state that wasn't just them? They

1:10:12were happy to share in a broader entity

1:10:16in which they would be allowed to live,

1:10:17right?

1:10:17>> That's right.

1:10:19>> The fact that you're with us this deep

1:10:21into an episode about the history of the

1:10:22Middle East says something about you.

1:10:24You don't do shortcuts when it comes to

1:10:26understanding a topic properly. That is

1:10:28exactly the audience a show called

1:10:30Unpacking Israeli History is built for.

1:10:32It's hosted by Dr. Noam Weisman, an

1:10:34educator who spent his entire career

1:10:36studying and teaching Israeli history.

1:10:38Each episode walks through the people,

1:10:40events, and decisions that shaped modern

1:10:42Israel from the earliest roots of

1:10:43Zionism through to today. What makes it

1:10:45work is that Weisman isn't trying to

1:10:47tell you what to think. He digs into

1:10:48where the narratives actually differ,

1:10:50and he brings on guests who don't all

1:10:52agree with each other or with him. From

1:10:54journalist Haviv Rettig Gur to

1:10:56Palestinian activist Ahmed Ford

1:10:58al-Khatib. It's built for people who

1:11:00want to understand the place properly,

1:11:02not just have what they already believe

1:11:04confirmed back to them. We all know

1:11:05podcasts can go either way. This one

1:11:07held our attention. It doesn't rush the

1:11:09story to get to a neat conclusion, and

1:11:11that's rarer than it should be. Search

1:11:13Unpacking Israeli History on Spotify,

1:11:15YouTube, or Apple Podcasts, or click the

1:11:17link in the description to start

1:11:19listening.

1:11:20>> I mean, especially in the '20s and the

1:11:22'30s after

1:11:23If you look at the 30 years before the

1:11:26Israeli independence this in the Nakba

1:11:28and Israeli war of independence, Zionism

1:11:30just means that they they believe that

1:11:32they should live in in the holy land.

1:11:35And there was a huge span of opinions.

1:11:38On one side you had people who actually

1:11:40believed that they should be in an Arab

1:11:42kingdom

1:11:44living as an independent entity. And

1:11:46that was what King

1:11:47King Faisal had discussed King Faisal of

1:11:50Iraq and Syria had discussed. That was

1:11:52what his brother King Abdullah had

1:11:53discussed.

1:11:54And actually, that was one one road that

1:11:58could have worked if they had been

1:12:00provided with safety and if they'd been

1:12:02recognized. And it might have worked in

1:12:04a system under these Hashemite kings

1:12:06because

1:12:07they they grew up in an Ottoman world.

1:12:09They you know, they were they were kind

1:12:11of they'd grown up. They'd been educated

1:12:13as Ottomans and they understood there

1:12:15was there could be more than one

1:12:17community, which Islamists like the

1:12:20Mufti did not understand and did not

1:12:22recognize. And so there are these two

1:12:25great traditions in the Arab world and

1:12:27you know, that's that again brings us to

1:12:29what's happened now in a in a much wider

1:12:32plane, which is what is happening now is

1:12:35not just between kind of the West and

1:12:39and a resistant axis of Iran and its

1:12:42allies like Hamas and Hezbollah. No,

1:12:44what's really happening today is

1:12:47a debate and a war within Islam

1:12:50about which which road of Islam

1:12:54they should follow and there is a huge

1:12:56tradition, a huge tradition and one that

1:12:59I love within Islam which is open to

1:13:02others, which is which is always

1:13:04negotiating how the relationship between

1:13:07Sharia law and society and state should

1:13:10be, which recognizes

1:13:13all sorts of viewpoints

1:13:16within itself. And that tradition

1:13:20is is as ancient as the Arab as the Arab

1:13:23state is ancient. And you see it you see

1:13:26it throughout the history of the two

1:13:27great empires, the the Umayyads and the

1:13:30Abbasids into the Fatimids. This is

1:13:33constantly a

1:13:36presence that and it's one that we would

1:13:39we recognize and we would welcome.

1:13:42The other one is actually a much more

1:13:44modern

1:13:45invention. Of course Islam has often

1:13:48seen extraordinary revivalist,

1:13:52puritanical

1:13:53explosions

1:13:55such as the Almoravids and the Almohads

1:13:58who burst out of the the Moroccan

1:14:01deserts with these kind of extremist,

1:14:04Messianic, Mahdist versions of Islam.

1:14:07Again, we saw it in Sudan famously with

1:14:09the Mahdi,

1:14:11you know, in the 1890s when General

1:14:13Gordon was killed and so on. So and we

1:14:16see it again today in all sorts of

1:14:17different ways. We see it in the Islamic

1:14:19state. We see it in another version of

1:14:21it in the Iranian state, a Shia version

1:14:24of it. We see it

1:14:26in in organizations like Hamas and

1:14:28Hezbollah even though they're both from

1:14:30different sects of Islam. But but the

1:14:34but the the new version of this of

1:14:37Islamism um

1:14:39is a modern invention. And it's really a

1:14:41modern invention of the Islamic

1:14:43Brotherhood in the 1820s

1:14:46cooked in the in the 1950s in Egypt and

1:14:49then it's developed through to what to

1:14:51what we see today and it's it's it's

1:14:55called political Islam but

1:14:58it's it's a modern invention. It

1:15:00pretends to be

1:15:02a return to the the ancient purity is

1:15:05all the 7th century but actually it's as

1:15:09modern an invention as

1:15:11American Christian evangelism or modern

1:15:14military religious Zionism are a modern

1:15:18modern political inventions and and it

1:15:20really belongs with them. So going back

1:15:23to this period so now

1:15:25>> about the negotiations in London.

1:15:27>> So they had the negotiations in London

1:15:29and in these negotiations again the

1:15:32British offered a state of Palestine and

1:15:34again the Mufti turned it down. The

1:15:36Mufti was in exile and in disgrace but

1:15:40still controlled

1:15:41with a ruthless iron hand by the way. He

1:15:43had everyone assassinated who

1:15:45disapproved of his delegation which was

1:15:47led by members of the Husseini family.

1:15:50Three of the delegates were called

1:15:51Husseini and they rejected this offer at

1:15:55which point the British were now in

1:15:58despair and at the same time they were

1:16:01dealing with an even bigger problem

1:16:03which was India and exactly the time in

1:16:06these negotiations

1:16:08they were facing the problem that India

1:16:11which they'd hoped to hand over as a

1:16:13single entity. This is relevant by the

1:16:16way to hand [clears throat] over to a

1:16:17single entity to the Congress party led

1:16:20by Nehru who had very good relations

1:16:23with the British and they had hoped to

1:16:26hand over independence and create a new

1:16:28entity which had never existed before.

1:16:30There'd been many Indian states, very

1:16:32few of them had controlled all of this

1:16:35all of what is now Pakistan, Bangladesh

1:16:37and India and Burma which were all parts

1:16:40of the Raj.

1:16:42They hoped to hand these this this vast

1:16:44territory over to a single state that

1:16:46they called they were called India.

1:16:49But, there was a problem, and the

1:16:51problem was the Islamic community um led

1:16:54by Jinnah who wanted an independent um

1:16:58Islamic state and to carve out an

1:17:00independent Islamic state regarding the

1:17:02Congress party as overwhelmingly a Hindu

1:17:06party.

1:17:08And the British had hoped to avoid this

1:17:09because

1:17:11all imperial powers want to keep things

1:17:13as neat as possible and find neat

1:17:14leaderships, neat ways to package, neat

1:17:17administrations.

1:17:18And so, they knew this would be deeply

1:17:20complicated. But, Mountbatten, the last

1:17:23viceroy, suddenly realized that there

1:17:25was no other way but to do this. And so,

1:17:29he agreed

1:17:30that they would divide the Indian Raj

1:17:32into two states.

1:17:34A two-state solution. And the two-state

1:17:36solution was Pakistan, which was in two

1:17:38halves where the overwhelmingly Muslim

1:17:41areas were, which is now Bangladesh and

1:17:44now Pakistan, then called East and West

1:17:45Pakistan.

1:17:46And

1:17:48um

1:17:48the larger part of India, Burma would be

1:17:51becoming independent country, and the

1:17:52larger part of India would be a Hindu

1:17:54state ruled by Nehru. So, that was what

1:17:57was agreed. This led to a massive

1:18:00massive uh violent violent spasm and

1:18:04also massive transfers of population. It

1:18:08um

1:18:08around 12 million people

1:18:10were were forced to move from their

1:18:13homes. Um there was a vast population

1:18:15swap between the Muslim areas and the

1:18:18Hindu areas of of India.

1:18:20>> Because in each of these areas, let's

1:18:21say something with an area was majority

1:18:23Muslim, there would have been a minority

1:18:25of Hindus, for example.

1:18:26>> it was India, it was huge. The numbers

1:18:28are huge. So, in each of those places

1:18:32um there was a massive population

1:18:33transfer, just as in the creation of

1:18:36Turkey and Greece over several wars and

1:18:40many decades, millions of people were

1:18:42swapped in in desperate circumstances as

1:18:45refugees. Um

1:18:48and um in this case, 12 million people

1:18:51they estimate moved uh as refugees and a

1:18:55million people were killed. And you have

1:18:57the sort of tragedy of the Indian

1:18:59partition and you have trains arriving

1:19:02with everybody in the train massacre. Do

1:19:04you know you have these extraordinary

1:19:06So, the British the British give

1:19:08independence to India and um

1:19:10and and then they turn back to the next

1:19:13problem. And they've now tried to solve

1:19:16the problem of Palestine. And so they've

1:19:20offered the state. The state has been

1:19:21rejected. And now they turn back to a

1:19:24new supranational organization, which is

1:19:27a new version of the Wilsonian version.

1:19:29We talked about President Wilson earlier

1:19:31of the League of Nations. That's called

1:19:33the United Nations. And it's created by

1:19:36President Wilson's Secretary of the Navy

1:19:39um Deputy Secretary of the Navy um

1:19:41uh uh

1:19:42Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt. So um the

1:19:46United Nations is is handed Palestine by

1:19:49a desperate British government who just

1:19:51cannot understand what to do and are

1:19:53desperate to get out of there. By the

1:19:56way, as I said, they were decolonizing

1:19:57these places but their presence was it

1:20:01totally important to Britain. That the

1:20:03military presence in Egypt and military

1:20:05presence controlling the the Suez Canal

1:20:07and their military presence in Iraq

1:20:10um because of the oil, the supply of

1:20:12oil.

1:20:14In Persia

1:20:15Brit- the British and the Russians were

1:20:17occupying large parts of Persia. We'll

1:20:18come to that in a minute. So

1:20:21in this in in this um

1:20:23frantic debate about what to do with

1:20:26Palestine, the United Nations the new

1:20:28organization meets appoints a United

1:20:31Nations Palestine Committee and this

1:20:34committee decides to partition

1:20:38Palestine.

1:20:39And

1:20:40um

1:20:41they do it in an appallingly bad way.

1:20:44Just as the just as the the civil

1:20:46servants to who designed Pakistan and

1:20:49India just months earlier had done in

1:20:51India with disastrous consequences. Same

1:20:54happened here. Palestine is actually

1:20:56divided into seven parts. If you look at

1:20:59the map and you may show one while we're

1:21:02talking, you'll see that not one part of

1:21:05this was defensible. Um every part of it

1:21:08was was militarily and economically

1:21:11unsustainable,

1:21:12politically unsustainable, and the

1:21:14British kept a large section of South

1:21:16Judea around um around

1:21:20uh Jerusalem, which they called in the

1:21:22document, by the way, South Judea.

1:21:24Um and so the Jewish leadership under

1:21:28David Ben-Gurion accepted this.

1:21:30And the Palestinian Arab um leadership

1:21:34still under the Mufti rejected it.

1:21:37However,

1:21:38um the King of Jordan, he was now King

1:21:40of Jordan, not Trans- He'd got a new

1:21:42name. He'd become king and he was now um

1:21:45he'd got a new country, Jordan.

1:21:48So King Abdullah

1:21:48>> He's no longer Trans-

1:21:50No. No longer Transjordan.

1:21:52>> No more Trans- No more Transjordan.

1:21:54>> Gender-neutral Jordan.

1:21:55>> Um this is this is um this is this is

1:21:57really um this is really combustible

1:21:59with

1:22:00>> Sarah would call it about here.

1:22:01>> But the British said to the king the

1:22:03king of the king of Jordan, Abdullah,

1:22:05who by the way is one of the heroes of

1:22:07these stories because

1:22:09he risked everything to make sat to make

1:22:11a to make a settlement and it costed it

1:22:13cost him a lot.

1:22:15>> You Sorry, just to interrupt, but you

1:22:16actually made that point in the book

1:22:18that actually some of the best rulers in

1:22:20the Middle East were these kings who

1:22:23served their country for a long period

1:22:25of time.

1:22:25>> Yes. I mean, some of the best

1:22:27governments, and this is ironic to our

1:22:29ears because we're so used to hearing

1:22:30everything has to be democracy,

1:22:32but the best governed states in in in um

1:22:36the Middle East have often been

1:22:38um

1:22:38absolute monarchies. And that is

1:22:41counterintuitive to us, but it's just a

1:22:43fact. It may be something to do with the

1:22:45fact that many of the monarchies were

1:22:47created

1:22:49by generically, organically, such as

1:22:52Saudi Arabia and the and the the Gulf

1:22:54states and Morocco, rather than created

1:22:57by Britain and France. But, you know,

1:23:00that's that's a that's an interesting

1:23:02um debate. But, anyway, the British said

1:23:05to King Abdullah,

1:23:06"Why don't you just take the Arab bits

1:23:08of Palestine.

1:23:10The Jews will great take the Jewish bits

1:23:12they've been assigned, which is they've

1:23:13accepted,

1:23:15and you can take that and you can rule

1:23:16it and it make a much bigger kingdom of

1:23:18Jordan."

1:23:20And um he agreed to this, and there were

1:23:22many meetings with the Jewish leaders.

1:23:25And

1:23:26this actually this is it's a tragedy

1:23:28this didn't work cuz again, this would

1:23:30have worked. He also said

1:23:32to the Jewish leaders, "Don't declare

1:23:34independence because I could I'd love to

1:23:36create a big Jordanian

1:23:39Palestinian Jewish state. And

1:23:43I will make sure you're safe within it."

1:23:46And by this point the Jews had been

1:23:48through the Holocaust,

1:23:50they'd been through the Arab revolt, and

1:23:52they were convinced that they needed an

1:23:54independent state.

1:23:55A a view they'd come to later uh come to

1:23:58quite late. We were talking earlier

1:24:00about what did Zionists want? Well, some

1:24:02of the Zionists wanted to be part of an

1:24:03Arab state and learned Arabic and went

1:24:05to see King Faisal and and King Abdullah

1:24:08to discuss it. Other ones just wanted um

1:24:11farming communities where they could

1:24:13where they would um where they would

1:24:15rule themselves, but be part of a larger

1:24:17sort of Palestine state. Other of them

1:24:20had much more like like Jabotinsky had

1:24:22much more nationalistic viewpoints. And

1:24:26um Jabotinsky was part was created a a

1:24:29created a militia the Irgun which was

1:24:31about to become part of the story. And

1:24:34but he even their views were surprising.

1:24:37I mean Jabotinsky is now regarded as the

1:24:39precursor of Netanyahu and Likud. But he

1:24:44was an interesting character and he said

1:24:46what I want is not one Arab should be

1:24:49removed from Palestine. Um now I want to

1:24:52create a state where the Jews are safe

1:24:55but no Palestinian Arabs are removed.

1:24:58And in fact, I want a state where when

1:24:59the Prime Minister's Jewish, the Deputy

1:25:01Prime Minister should be Arab. And when

1:25:03the Arab's Prime Minister,

1:25:05the Deputy Prime Minister should be

1:25:07Jewish. In other words, in many ways a

1:25:09one-state solution but one where there

1:25:11was real coexistence. So, whatever what

1:25:14Zionism meant is completely different

1:25:17from the view now being propagated in

1:25:19demonstrations in by activists in

1:25:21Britain. It was

1:25:22>> Not Yeah, not to sidetrack you again but

1:25:24in reading the book it I kind of

1:25:27the way Correct me if this is wrong

1:25:29because you're the expert here but it

1:25:31sort of felt like there's a process of

1:25:33mutual radicalization going on.

1:25:35>> Of course.

1:25:35>> Where the extremists on both sides

1:25:38always win out. At every juncture, it's

1:25:40the extremist that kills some of the

1:25:43civilians on the other side and then

1:25:44they go this is what they're all like

1:25:45and they just that's been going on the

1:25:47entire time.

1:25:48>> That's right. Yeah, it is. And it

1:25:50actually does make you you know, it

1:25:51makes you wish for a responsible

1:25:55imperial power or responsible

1:25:57supernational organization that actually

1:25:59could have managed this because

1:26:02the tragedy of 1947-48 which we're we're

1:26:05getting to actually is relevant to what

1:26:06this is like United Nations

1:26:09take agrees control of this. Britain

1:26:11completely abdicates any responsibility.

1:26:14An appalling act by the way. And the

1:26:16plan that's that's offered and agreed by

1:26:18the United Nations, yes, it offers a

1:26:21Jewish state for the first time, and it

1:26:23specifies, this is a Jewish state, this

1:26:25is an Arab state. And

1:26:28the problem is that it's absolutely

1:26:29unworkable, unworkable, and that, as I

1:26:33said, there are seven different kind of

1:26:35segments, all of them not half of them

1:26:37not properly joined.

1:26:39And um

1:26:41and there's no overseeing no one to

1:26:43oversee how this would happen. And so,

1:26:45of course, what happens is um a drive to

1:26:48violence. And almost immediately um

1:26:53uh even though King Abdullah had

1:26:55secretly agreed with the British and the

1:26:58Jews that he would take over the Arab

1:27:00bits, which, as I said would have been

1:27:02ideal.

1:27:04Um

1:27:05he um is under massive pressure from the

1:27:07Arab League to which is a new

1:27:09organization just formed in um in in in

1:27:13Egypt. And

1:27:15um he's under massive pressure not to do

1:27:17this deal. But if the deal had gone

1:27:19according to plan um it would have

1:27:22solved the crisis it would have solved

1:27:23the entire um Israel-Palestine problem.

1:27:27But instead, what happened was that

1:27:30militias um Palestinian Arab militias

1:27:33immediately started attacking the Jewish

1:27:34community. The Jewish community had

1:27:36celebrated the announcement of this plan

1:27:38and accepted it. They immediately

1:27:40started to um

1:27:42to attack Jewish um farms and um um

1:27:47areas

1:27:48burrows in the in the cities. And at the

1:27:50same time um the Arab League, namely the

1:27:54newly independent um countries of Syria

1:27:57and Iraq um

1:27:59and Egypt, as well um

1:28:02started to put together a new

1:28:03organization, Arab Liberation Army,

1:28:05which they hoped would avoid them having

1:28:07to do anything, but they could fund it.

1:28:09And it would somehow back their

1:28:10Palestinian bro- brothers,

1:28:13uh Palestinian Arab brothers,

1:28:14but and prevent a Jewish state.

1:28:17And that immediately started to

1:28:20um militarize the situation.

1:28:23One's got to realize that it was not a

1:28:26it was not a done deal. It was not a

1:28:29certainty at all that the Jewish

1:28:31community in in um in Palestine would

1:28:34survive at all. And in fact, in 1947,

1:28:38Ben-Gurion had rushed to Britain to

1:28:40London and to Liverpool where there was

1:28:42a I think the Labour conference was

1:28:44taking place. And he'd rushed there and

1:28:46said, "Please stay another 10 years. We

1:28:48don't want in the We won't declare

1:28:49independence. We promise." We

1:28:51He thought that the the Jews would be

1:28:53wiped out by this attack. And um and and

1:28:58indeed, the Jewish community, which had

1:29:00its own militias, had two main militias,

1:29:02the Haganah and the Irgun,

1:29:05but the Jewish community was in military

1:29:07desperate straits.

1:29:08And it was not a full it was not a it

1:29:11was not a done deal that the

1:29:13the Palestinian Arab militias would win.

1:29:16They seized large areas of um Palestine

1:29:20and the whole of Galilee in effect. And

1:29:23they also um other militias under the

1:29:25control of um the Mufti um attacked

1:29:30the Jewish communities around around um

1:29:32Jerusalem under the command of the

1:29:34Mufti's cousin, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni.

1:29:38So,

1:29:39this is happening. And when you look at

1:29:42the um documentation, there is huge

1:29:44panic in the in the Jewish community

1:29:46there, whether they will be completely

1:29:48wiped out. But,

1:29:50um there's two things. One is they

1:29:53literally have no choice. They have

1:29:55nowhere to go. There are 500,000 Jews

1:29:59there roughly.

1:30:00And they have nowhere to go. It's either

1:30:02It's either survive or die.

1:30:05And the the rhetoric of the Palestinian

1:30:09Arab side and the Arab powers

1:30:11is entirely genocidal. It is literally

1:30:14um

1:30:15you can analyze these things any way you

1:30:17like, but you know, the actual quotes

1:30:20are you know, we will drive them into

1:30:21the sea, we will there will we will we

1:30:23will massacre them. There'll be a

1:30:24massacre like the Mongol massacres and

1:30:26so on and so forth. And though they've

1:30:28all been

1:30:29like all the quotes in this story, all

1:30:32of them have been kind of manipulated by

1:30:33both sides and used and put on X and

1:30:37TikTok and stuff. The fact is these

1:30:39quotes are pretty clear what they mean.

1:30:41And so

1:30:43so the war begins. But the British are

1:30:45still there in their barracks and

1:30:48there's there's fighting all over

1:30:49Palestine.

1:30:50And

1:30:51uh in the end the day comes when the

1:30:53British are leaving.

1:30:55And Ben-Gurion declares an independent

1:30:58state of Israel. He looked at other

1:31:01names by the way cuz the obvious name is

1:31:03Judea to call it. But they weren't clear

1:31:06that they would ever get the southern

1:31:08part or around Jerusalem which is Judea

1:31:12and they weren't clear that they would

1:31:13secure that. But they were more likely

1:31:15to secure the northern bit which is the

1:31:18the the historic kingdom of Israel.

1:31:20Hence they call it Israel. But also

1:31:23um Jewish people had always called it

1:31:25Eretz Israel, the land of Israel for

1:31:272,000 years. So that's why they named it

1:31:29Israel rather than other names. And so

1:31:33they declare independence at that

1:31:34moment.

1:31:36Something interesting and terrible is

1:31:38happening at this moment.

1:31:40Huge communities of uh Palestinian Arab

1:31:44um population is leaving and fleeing

1:31:48their towns and cities.

1:31:50They are not being driven out.

1:31:52Yes, there are cases where

1:31:54um the Israelis would drive out people.

1:31:57We'll come to that in a minute.

1:31:58But at this stage, no one is being

1:32:00driven out. No one's being driven out,

1:32:03but hundreds of thousands, and it's

1:32:05estimated I think something like

1:32:06300,000, which is half the entire

1:32:09refugee number um of the Nakba is

1:32:13happening now out of fear um of the the

1:32:18coming war or the fact or or what the

1:32:21Jews would do when they got control. But

1:32:23they are not being driven out. They are

1:32:24being left They are leaving being a move

1:32:27which was in at least encouraged by much

1:32:29of the Arab leadership. And in places

1:32:32like Haifa, Safed, Safed, um Tiberias um

1:32:38Jaffa and Haifa, big cities, big mixed

1:32:41cities um the Jew the Jewish agency and

1:32:45the Jews begged the Arabs to stay.

1:32:47And if you read the the memoirs and

1:32:50diaries of Palestinian Arabs, there's a

1:32:53very famous one by Wasif Jawhariyyeh,

1:32:56who's called the lute player of

1:32:57Jerusalem. Everyone should read it. It's

1:32:59It's a must-read. Um He describes how,

1:33:01you know, they left. They were very

1:33:03frightened, and they left and they had

1:33:05every plan to come back, but they

1:33:06weren't driven out. Similarly

1:33:09a certain um Arab

1:33:11a Palestinian Arab talking about how it

1:33:13talking about the Nakba recounts how he

1:33:16was brought up in Safed, pronounced

1:33:18Safed where he said that, you know, the

1:33:21Arab Liberation Army in the end moved

1:33:23out um and we me and my family, I was

1:33:28just a boy we left We left Safed and we

1:33:31fled because we were afraid that the

1:33:33Jews would take revenge for the

1:33:35massacres of 1929, which was more than

1:33:3710 years before, 20 years before.

1:33:40The name of that boy was Mahmoud Abbas.

1:33:43Now president of the Palestine

1:33:45Authority. Um in other words

1:33:48half the peo- half the Arab population

1:33:52that were made refugees in 1947-48

1:33:55in the Nakba when were had left before

1:33:58Israel was declared and before Israel

1:34:01launched any kind of offensives and

1:34:03before anybody was driven out of

1:34:05anywhere.

1:34:06Which is a very important detail. So, in

1:34:08other words,

1:34:09you know, much of the history of the

1:34:10Nakba

1:34:11um

1:34:13is is is mis-

1:34:14>> so many of them leave if there was no

1:34:16violence being committed?

1:34:17>> There was violence. I mean, there was

1:34:18violence. There was a There was a There

1:34:20was a sort of asymmetric war going on

1:34:23between

1:34:24um the Arab militias and the Jewish

1:34:26militias. And so, it was violent and

1:34:28they left because they were afraid of

1:34:30the war, but they also knew um that the

1:34:34Arab states would would would invade if

1:34:37the Arab militias failed. And that would

1:34:40be a major conventional war and they

1:34:44felt that they wanted to get their

1:34:46families out. But, there are lots of

1:34:47records of them of of of leaders saying

1:34:50like, "Anybody who's got cousins in

1:34:52Beirut or Alexandria has left us and

1:34:54only kind of the ordinary people are

1:34:56left." So, there was a kind of

1:34:57There were all sorts of things happening

1:34:59in this period. And, you know, it's a

1:35:02tragedy for the for the Palestinian Arab

1:35:04people that this happened, but

1:35:06the next stage is interesting.

1:35:10Ben-Gurion declares an independent state

1:35:12on the 15th of on the 14th of May, 1948.

1:35:16And

1:35:17um almost immediately, the Arab states

1:35:20five Arab states invade to crush the new

1:35:24Jewish state.

1:35:25Why did Why didn't the plan of King

1:35:27Abdullah just to take the Arab take

1:35:29control of the Arab um

1:35:32uh sectors work? Well, that comes to

1:35:35your point about extremists continually

1:35:37pushing um

1:35:39uh and you know, uh and sabotaging

1:35:42um schemes to to make it work. And so,

1:35:46what happens is

1:35:48an a Jewish militia goes into Dayasin, a

1:35:51village on the edge of Jerusalem, and

1:35:54massacres some of the people there. Um

1:35:57there was also fighting in Deir Yassin,

1:36:00and it's unclear um

1:36:03how many were fighters, how many were

1:36:04civilians, but it un but it's it's

1:36:06totally clear that it was a Jewish

1:36:08massacre that included massacre of

1:36:12Palestinian Arab um civilians. And the

1:36:15news of this massacre radicalized the

1:36:17Arab world in the in the news. And it

1:36:21forced King Abdullah to change his plan,

1:36:23and rather than get rather than

1:36:25fulfilling his secret plan, he was

1:36:27forced to take command of the um Arab

1:36:31League forces, which were five five

1:36:33countries, and now they invade. And now

1:36:37this becomes a full-scale war.

1:36:40And again,

1:36:42um all of these Arab leaders um are

1:36:46hoping to steal, to annex, to carve up

1:36:50Palestine. The Egyptians hope to get the

1:36:52Negev and South

1:36:54South Palestine. Um they are very keen

1:36:57to add territory to the kingdom of

1:36:59Egypt. The Jordanians want to get as

1:37:02much of it as they can.

1:37:04Um and the Syrians want to get more of

1:37:07the north, as do the Lebanese.

1:37:09But

1:37:11the Arab side is hopelessly um misled,

1:37:14badly commanded, and divided amongst

1:37:17itself.

1:37:19Even before the invasion started, the

1:37:21Arab Liberation Army was basically at

1:37:23war not just with the Jews, but with the

1:37:25Mufti's forces.

1:37:27And so the Arab situation was hopelessly

1:37:31divided, and the leadership was

1:37:32appalling.

1:37:33The most efficient army on the Arab side

1:37:36was the King of Jordan, King Abdullah's

1:37:38Arab Legion, which was

1:37:39British-officered,

1:37:41British-led, British-armed,

1:37:43and was incredibly it was was was

1:37:45incredibly more efficient than any of

1:37:46the others.

1:37:48There's one point that's very important

1:37:49to make here.

1:37:50One of the one of the things we see in

1:37:52the sort of in the moronic discourse

1:37:55about the subject is that Israel's a new

1:37:57country and um that it never existed

1:38:01before

1:38:02while all the Arab countries are ancient

1:38:04countries that well, this is completely

1:38:06untrue. One of the one of the

1:38:07interesting parts of this

1:38:09all these countries had just been

1:38:10created.

1:38:12So,

1:38:13you know, these are just like the this

1:38:15is a war of totally new countries with

1:38:17new with new armies that had only

1:38:19existed for a matter of months fighting

1:38:22each other.

1:38:23Um Syria and Lebanon had just been

1:38:26invented and created by the French. Um

1:38:30Jordan was only 20 years old. Uh Egypt

1:38:33had just become independent of Britain.

1:38:36Um and and um

1:38:39and of course Iraq was was a newly

1:38:41invented country that had never existed

1:38:43before ever.

1:38:45So, all of these countries had just

1:38:47become independent in 1945

1:38:50or 46.

1:38:52So, these ancient countries had actually

1:38:54existed for 18 months. And they are

1:38:58invading a country that has literally

1:39:00it is has has only existed for 12 hours.

1:39:04So, war is joined and it's now that the

1:39:07Jew the the the the Jewish forces do the

1:39:09Israeli forces do a counteroffensive.

1:39:12At first they could have been crushed by

1:39:14these invasions. This is what they most

1:39:16feared.

1:39:17But there was great chaos and there was

1:39:18no coordination between the Arab forces.

1:39:21And the Egyptians

1:39:23sent one force straight up the coast to

1:39:25take Tel Aviv and another towards

1:39:28Jerusalem to try to to get there before

1:39:31the Jordanians got there. The Iraqis

1:39:33moved through Jordan and invaded and

1:39:36took Jenin in northern West Bank.

1:39:39And

1:39:40the um the Jordanians took the south and