April 18, 2023 • 37 mins
Shereen and James are back to go through the Deir Yassin massacre and history of the Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” and how this violent expulsion and destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 still has devastating repercussions 75 years later.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back to what could happen here. It's still Cherene
and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thank you for joining me, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yeah, anytime the listeners they get what they want, you know,
they demanded it, and here we.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Are delivery log onto the subreddit.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I was interested in having someone else receive the information
I had because it's really hard to do it with myself.
And it's also hard not to like sound like a
boored professor or something, because I just sound.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Like this something I have experienced with. Yeah, you like
a pro professor. But it's also very emotionally challenging to
just be like, here some terrible fucking things that have
happened again and exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, when you buy yourself, it's like it feels a
lot heavier for some reason. Uh, And so I'm glad
to have someone else on Thank You today. I wanted
to talk about something that happened seventy five years ago
this month. So there's going to be some history here,
but I think it's really important history, So please stay
(01:11):
tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But seventy
five years ago this month, before Israel was officially established
the Dairya scene massacre happened. This massacre was part of
the Nekba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even seventy
five years later, and it should always serve as a
reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in
(01:34):
order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized,
have people killed and forcibly removed from their homes, and
the indigenous people were expelled from their homes and the
ownership of their own land was granted someone else. And
I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that
happen is extremely important because we're not that far removed
(01:58):
from that. Brulu. It's not like we can say, like, oh,
that was medieval times, like people were different. It's like, no,
that was like less than one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Shut up.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The Nakba aka the catastrophe in Arabic, it refers to
the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians
from their homes and homeland by Zionists militias in the
New Israeli Army during the State of Israel's establishment between
nineteen forty seven and nineteen forty eight. The Nekabo was
a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish
(02:30):
majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the
euphemism quote unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today
would be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nakba
and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today they
lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the
late eighteen hundreds, when some European Jews, influenced by the
(02:53):
nationalism that was sweeping the continent, they decided that the
solution to anti Semitism in Europe and Russia was the
establis publishment of a state for Jews and Palestine. They
began immigrating to Palestine as colonizers, where they started depossessing
indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In November of nineteen forty seven,
following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created
(03:16):
United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into
Jewish and Arab states, against the will of the majority
indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision
or choice to make regardless the UN approved of a
plant divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the
(03:37):
will of Palestinian people. It gave fifty six percent of
that land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact
that Jews only owned about seven percent of the private
land of Palestine and made up only thirty three percent
of the population, and a very large percentage of this
percentage of thirty three percent were recent immigrants from Europe.
(03:57):
So handing over more than half of someone else's land
truly does it make sense. I don't care what religious
text or citing, it was wrong at this point in
time to take that land. It was just wrong. The
Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just forty
two percent of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians
made up a large majority of the population and were
(04:19):
indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be
governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after the
partition plan was passed. The expulsion of Palestinians by Zionists
militias began months before the arming of neighboring Arab states
began to be involved, so there was no other person
(04:41):
to say don't do this, or like there was no
one else to fight to hold them back. I guess,
is what I'm trying to say. And by the time
these Zionist militias and the new Israeli Army finished, the
new State of Israel covered seventy eight percent of Palestine.
So they didn't even follow the rules either. They just
kept on following up the land that wasn't even there,
(05:01):
speakin with with this violent Nekba that it's just it's
it's a terrible, horrific thing they did. There is a
film on Netflix called Farha. It's the first film that
depicts any kind of story about the Nekba, and it's
by Palestinian filmmaker. It's really powerful. I would recommend seeing
(05:24):
that if you want an example of what happened, because
it's all factual as far as like the terror that
they did, so I'd recommend that film. Give it five
stars for the haters, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Oh guy, I can imagine. There were reviews just like yeah, death, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That was the film that the Israeli government tried to
to ban, and they were a lot of Zionists were
commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one
star or whatever. They wanted Netflix to take it off Netflix,
but no, we fuck the haters. Help us out five stars.
Put it on the background of your TV.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It doesn't matter, just keep streaming on those we get Exactly, Yeah,
strike a blow against colonialism, but that's.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Just an example of how important and scared they are
of the truth because it's a movie. It's a fucking movie.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah. The control of the narrative is so important in
these things, exactly. Yes, And even the way you refer
to it, right, not not calling it the knock, like
calling it a transfer, not a cleansing, exactly, calling it,
like not referring to it in the same terms as
we would do like the genocidal set of colonialism that
(06:34):
settled this country, or you know, the way that Britain
and France and Germany behaved in Africa, like trying to
not like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state, right
when when that's what it is, is what it does. Like,
all of those things are so important, and they might
seem like petty battles, but they really control how we
(06:55):
see things. I think when you control language, you can
control how people perceive things.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And I think controlling the narrative is so parallel to
like controlling the history books, because that's what gets remembered
by the people that want to the narrative to have
a certain thing. Not all history books, obviously, but a
lot of the times the things that are considered facts
are biased. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, Oh, you're only getting half of the things, right
or like, Yeah, I mean, as a historian, we are
all biased, and so we should declare our biases and
sort of go forward that way, rather than presenting our
biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a
biased thing, which is what we tend to get in
the US, especially when we look at this stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right, Yeah, No, totally. I love that. I Like, I
didn't bash historians, but I criticized them. But you're like,
I'm a historian.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I will not jump to the defense of science
historians I've worked with. Like, there's a chapter in my
book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, and like
about thirty percent of volunteers were Jewish people, right, and
many of them had been like couldn't go back to
(08:12):
Like there are some of them who like fought in
the Spanish Civil War, were gorillas in the Second World War,
survived the Holocaust in some cases, and they were anti Zionists,
and so like they didn't have a place like the
you know, there wasn't a place for them as people
who had had stuck to their very decent principles of
like you shouldn't impose shit on force for people who
(08:33):
don't want it, and we're opposed to fascism or opposed
to colonialism. There wasn't a place for them in that
sort of post World War two Jewish movement, that Zionist movement.
There were in other places, but yeah, it's very sad
that their stories aren't like like if a friend of
mine was the person who first wrote articles about them,
(08:53):
but like their memory is completely erased, right, or at
least it's not present, And then they should be people that,
like any reconall person would be very proud of, right
they were willing to die for someone else's battle, and
then yeah, they were kind of that. They're they stuck
to the same principles the whole way through it, and
the world kind of moved around them.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, And I mean, I think as time goes on,
those things won't even be existing in people's reality, you
know what I mean, Like if no one remembers that
that happened, if no one is part of what that happened,
like it's just going to go away. It's going to disappear.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, that's why it's so important to do history and
to do like to use different sources, right, and to
do history from a people's perspective, not from a perspective
of people who were in power. Exactly, history from below,
that's what we call it. Say that sounds one more
time if people call it a history from below, but
like and to look at other sources, right, like without
(09:51):
like riding my hobby horse too much. Like I was
primarily a historian of sport and anti fascism, and like
specifically sport. I got a ton of pushback on when
I started because it's not important, right, and it's not
you know, it's not like fucking I don't have any
charts or whatever, and like, it's actually very important to
(10:13):
where people were able to express who they were and
who was on the team and who was not on
their team, right, And that's where you find these people
who are very impactful lots of other areas. And I
think like if I was a younger person and I
was trying to find my way from my identity and
be like, hey, the Sionism seems wrong, like in the
same way that other things seem wrong. To have those
people to be like, yeah, these people also saw that right,
(10:35):
Like they didn't want a boot on anyone's neck, not
just not, I didn't want it to be their boot
on someone else's neck. And that was fine, you know,
they like having seen the Holocaust, having seen what happened
in to Spain, the like, now that this shit is wrong,
it's still wrong, doesn't matter if we're doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, their humanity prevailed.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, And it's important for people like to have those
those stories to be like, Okay, well I'm not fucking
crazy or it's not that I just don't understand what
it was like back then, because a lot of people
could see it and were like, no, we shouldn't be
doing this.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes, well, historian James, thank.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
You for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Sorry, No, why are you apologizing? I love that shit?
Fuck No, I love it history from below that you said, Yeah,
just quite no theme now, I think it's a good
thing to abide by. So I'm glad that there's a
little catchy phrase for.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
It, Stewart Hale and things like that. Yeah, we'll do
another episode on this one day.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yes please. So, as we mentioned before, Israel stole about
seventy eight percent of Palestine and then this left twenty
two percent, and the twenty two percent was compromised of
the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and these regions
fell under the control of Jordan Egypt, respectively. In the
nineteen sixty seven war, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank,
(11:52):
East Jerusalem and Gaza, and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards.
And just to give you some numbers, I think they're
important sometimes just to get the context of the scale
of something. But the Nekaba, by the numbers, is what
I'm about to continue. Between seven hundred and fifty thousand
(12:12):
and one million Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and
they were made refugees by Zionist militias, amounting to approximately
seventy five percent of all Palestinians. Between two hundred and
fifty thousand and three hundred fifty thousand Palestinians were driven
out from their homes by Zionist militias Between the passage
of the UN Partition Plan on November twenty ninth of
nineteen forty seven and the establishment of Israel on May
(12:34):
fifteenth of nineteen forty eight. Prior to the outbreak of
war with the neighboring Arab States, several dozen massacres of
Palestinians were carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli Army,
which played a critical role in prompting the flight of
many Palestinians from their homes. More than one hundred Palestinians,
including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were massacred
(12:56):
in the Palestinian town of Dariusne near Jerusalem on April
nineth of nineteen forty eight by Zionist militia. This is
the main massacre I want to talk about today because
it's been exactly seventy five years on April ninth. But
it was one of many massacres, and it was the
one that is cited as igniting a lot of the
Codomino effect. The massacre at Daria scene was one of
(13:18):
the worst atrocities committed during the Nakba and a pivotal
moment in Israel's establishment as a Jewish majority state, and
again it triggered the flight of Palestinians from their homes
in Jerusalem and beyond. The Dariacene massacre is commemorated annually
by Palestinians around the world. Approximately one hundred and fifty
thousand Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in nineteen
(13:41):
forty eight, a quarter of them internally displaced. These Palestinians,
who are sometimes referred to as Israeli Arabs, were granted
Israeli citizenship, but stripped of most of their land and
governed by violent, undemocratic military rule as of nineteen sixty six.
As of twenty twenty three, there are more than two
million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, comprising more than twenty percent
(14:05):
of Israel's population, and they are forced to live as
second class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens
of laws that discriminate against them in almost every aspect
of life because they're not Jewish. Let's take our first
break here and I'll come back and tell you more
terrible things. So here we okay, we're back. I'm going
(14:36):
to finish up a little bit more of these numbers
and then I'm going to talk about Darius. More than
four hundred Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by
Zionist militias and the New Israeli Army, or they are
repopulated with Jews. Between nineteen forty eight and nineteen fifty,
most Palestinian communities, including homes, businesses, houses of worship, vib
(14:56):
urban centers, they were destroyed to prevent the return of
their palace Stinian owners who are now refugees outside of
Israel's borders, or they were internally displaced inside them. Today,
there are more than seven point two million Palestinian refugees,
including Neckbus survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in
the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and neighboring
(15:19):
Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they're
denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland.
This is the last big number I want to say,
just because I think it's it's so big I had
to say it. Approximately four million, two hundred and forty
four thousand, seven hundred and seventy six acres of Palestinian
(15:40):
land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after the
establishment of the state in nineteen forty eight, millions of acres,
Like it's not just a tiny little place that no
one was in before, like noe, millions of acres of
land were forcibly stolen.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, so yeah, and all of them, like the land
that people have had for generations that they're farm Like
this is like it's not the oldest settlement on earth,
but people have been living here for tens of thousands
of years.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I said, Aluxey Yesterday was built in ten thirty five.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Like yeah, this shit is very old. And like sometimes
the same people or people's sort of family. It's not
just a loss of property, so lots of everything that's
sacred and like the Aluxa Mosque or these things that
are sacred and important to you, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And yeah, and so more it's what you said earlier.
It's like we have to remember these things because otherwise
they'll get forgotten the in whoever's recording the history, you.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Know what I mean, Like it's yeah, I mean they
have been here. Right when we look at how America
sees itself, it sees the land that it expanded into.
It's like Terrannullius, like like empty land that was unoccupied,
which it was not. There was not a wilderness to tame.
Like there were people living here and they were living
very happily, and they were living they weren't like I
(17:03):
don't want to do the whole like like in commune
with nature thing, but like this wasn't a wild and
savage place, right. There were people existing here and taking
from the land and living on the land, and like
we that just doesn't get fucking like Ruth Bader Ginsburg
was citing the doctrine of discovery, you know, like you
all the libs love Ruth Bader Ginswick, but like it's
(17:23):
so subsumed into what America is that Like like Obama
did a fucking tweet like this nation was built on
peaceful protest. It was built fucking genocide, Like fuck off, yeah,
but we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten, right,
Like you don't go to school in California and be like, oh,
there is a fucking unit they just changed. Actually there
(17:45):
was a Unipero Hessea High School and like this is
a person who did genocide. Like we wouldn't have a
fucking Gerbels High School in Germany, you know, and then
Britain does a shit too. I'm not not like I'm
in a glasshouse, so I didn't say that, but yeah,
this wasn't an empty place, and.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
It's really important to remember that because that is so
often the talking point of fucking stupid people that try
to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to now
the main massacre or topic I want to talk about today,
which happened on April ninth in nineteen forty eight, just
weeks before the creation of the State of Israel, when
members of the Urguon and Stern Gang Zionist militias attacked
(18:29):
the village of Dryasin and they killed at least one
hundred and seven Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages,
massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive, to clear
the way for the creation of the state of Israel,
and this was one of the many massacres that happened
during the Nekba, where again an estimated fifteen thousand Palestinians
(18:52):
were killed and some seven hundred and fifty thousand fled
their homes as refugees. Ignited a very terrifying domino effect.
This year, the UN will host its first ever high
level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in
the establishment of the state of Israel in May and
nineteen forty eight. So this is the first time ever
that the U one has recognized that the Nekbu even happened,
(19:14):
or like is it happened enough to mention it and
commemorate it. But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the
loss of each village that was once part of their homeland.
Among them was Darya Sine, and it was a village
perched on a hill west of Jerusalem. And this massacre
has become emblematic of the suffering that Israel would inflict
(19:36):
on the Palestinians. Many of the people slaughtered, from those
who were tied to trees and burned to death to
those lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns.
Many of these people were women, children, and the elderly,
and Fudha does a really good job of showing this
lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie
(19:57):
that I mentioned earlier. As the new of these atrocities spread,
thousands fled their villages in fear so again. On April
ninth and nineteen forty eight, the Israeli militia struck theiry,
A scene where about seven hundred Palestinians lived. According to
the Israeli narrative, operation Nashon and Ahhson apologies if I
(20:18):
mispronounce that, but this operation aimed to break through the
blockaded road to Jerusalem, and the fighters encountered stiff resistance
from the villagers that forced them to advance slowly from
house to house. It's kind of silly and strange how
the same excuse is being used a century later to
justify acts of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them
(20:41):
and that's why they butchered them. It's yeah, it's pathetic.
It's stupid and pathetic.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And like, yeah, for having the I don't know, temerity
to be like no, you can't take my home. Yeah,
they carried out a collective punishment on Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And that's the Israeli narrative. That's what their history books say,
is that this was the aim of this operation. They
were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to
go from house to house like that. It's just a
fucked up narrative, but Palestinians and some Israeli historians say
that the villagers had signed a non aggression agreement with
the Haganah, which was the pre Israeli state Zionist army.
(21:21):
They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in
mass graves. According to a nineteen forty eight report filed
by the British delegation to the UN, the killing of
quote some two hundred and fifty Arabs men, women and
children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and
children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by
(21:45):
automatic firing. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with
degrading brutality. This is from a nineteen forty eight report
filed by the British delegation.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Like it's in the record, wouldn't they both like the
stern going and the the whatever the military was called
the beginning was in It's like I said, l I
think were like they hadn't really done any military operations before,
right that they'd just been they just like bomb like
they did car bombs and shit to this, like the
British had already like like that. They were like they
(22:19):
were killing British people and I guess Arab people in
Palestine before this, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, I mean the escalation in violence was like pretty severe, right,
but I think they would have gone there eventually, you know,
they's kind of hit forward.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I think they'd already like established an intention or like
a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in
their way, right, and they wanted to show that they
were like unlike the like I guess the labor aligned
Zionist movement, that they were like more hardcore than that,
and they exactly like that's where they made a spectacle
of violence like.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
This, they're establishing their their power and dominant. Israeli historian
Benny Morris said that the militia's quote ransacked unscrupulously, stole
money and jewels from the survivors, and burned the bodies.
Even dismemberment and rape occurred. I mean, there's nothing to
(23:16):
say to that. The number of dead is disputed, but
it ranges from one hundred to two hundred and fifty.
A representative of the Red Cross who entered Darya scene
on April eleventh. Two days later, they reported seeing the
bodies of some one hundred and fifty people heaped haphazardly
in a cave, while around fifty were amassed in a
(23:37):
separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the
time that such events had been quote unquote infamous. In
Darya scene, hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred.
He said, let the village remain uninhabited for the time being.
Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of
war and a warning to our people that no practical
(24:00):
military needs may ever justify such acts of murder. He
also noted that Darya scene had a profound demographic and
political effect, and he's referring to the fact that the
news of his massacre spread and it prompted hundreds of
Palestinians to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next Ailunia, Cyrus,
(24:22):
bit Saruk and Bidu. Darya scene was no mistake, according
to Israeli historian Ilan Pape Iline Pape has been called
a Israeli quote unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth,
the actual truth of what happened in their history.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah, the concept of revision's history is nonsense, like it
suggests that there is a settled history at some point,
which does not right, Like we're always looking at sources again,
but was looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not
like there is like this monolith of history and then
some meddling buss had comes and chops it down. It's
fundamentally like misunderstanding how history is done. Yess why you
(25:02):
shouldn't pay attention to Malcolm Gladwell for that and many
other reasons. But yeah, it's a ridiculous ideas. He's not
like it's not like everyone was like, oh yeah, this
wasn't a bad thing, and then he came along and
like injected some kind of political animist in his history.
He came along and looked at maybe news sources, maybe
the same sources of people how I don't know. And
(25:23):
it was like, now, you guys, have you got this wrong?
You called this wrong. But that's what historians do. Like
you can't fucking write your PhD without disagreeing with someone
and doing some new history. Like that's what takes you
from a master's to a doctorate. And like you're supposed
to do three articles in a book to get tenure.
Like your articles can't just be like, yeah, we pretty
much called this one right the first time. You know,
(25:43):
like the process of doing history is to revise and
hope to better understand things from different perspectives.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Totally. I like that that's the point of history is
to revise, because you're right, And I just think it's
it's so discrediting of his work to call him a
visionist historian. Yeah, it's condescending, you know. And as someone
that interviewed him called him this.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, I mean hopefully he gave them both barrels because
it's kind of a ridiculous. Yay, it shows that they
fundamentally unqualified to be discussing the topic.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I guess, Yeah, I want to talk about what he said,
but I realized that I didn't take the last break,
and I want to right now, and that is my choice.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
So OAT, proud of you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And we're back. We were talking about Elan Pape, a
revisionis quote unquote historian, but not really. You know, he
was called that because he was talking about Israel the
way it was it should be talked about with actual
historical facts. In one of his writings, Pape wrote depopulating
Palestine was not a consequential war event, but a carefully
(26:58):
planned strategy otherwise known as Plan Dalette, which was authorized
by the Israeli leader Ben Gurion in March of nineteen
forty eight. Operation Nashan was in fact the first step
in the plan, and as I said, the massacre unleashed
a cycle of violence and counter violence that has been
the pattern ever since this happened. Jewish forces have regarded
(27:23):
any Palestinian village as an enemy state or a military base,
and this has paved the way for this blurred distinction
between massacring civilians and killing combatants. According to the historian,
So what does all of this say about Israel's vision today?
This is why I want to talk about this is
because this started this whole cycle of violence that we
(27:45):
still see perpetuated today. And it's why Palestinians refuse to
forget it and forget what happened, and they'll always talk
about Palestine because they don't want to be erased from
history books. Dariasne has become a powerful symbol of Palaestinian
dispossession as well as a historical fact Israel must confront
when retelling its national narrative. According to Pepe given that
(28:09):
terrorism is a mode of behavior that Israeli's attribute solely
to the Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a
part of any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's past.
One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to
accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one with
the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior.
(28:32):
Israeli historians as well as Israeli society, they've only been
able to admit to the massacre and Daria scene by
attributing it to the right wing group Irgun, but have
covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one
in Tantura in nineteen forty eight. This was carried out
by the Huganah, the main Jewish militia from which the
current day Israeli military has evolved from. And despite this
(28:56):
shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights
Watch and the State International have labeled Israel itself in
a parked tyde state.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I've just seen the worst ever op ed in the
Jerusalem Post about now what tell me it's about this,
But it's about like the knuckbar, like it contains like
this kind of narrative that like, oh well, the knuckbo
was coined by by like historians to like explain the
failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which is like
(29:27):
a what does that fucking matter? And be like what
are you saying? Like what that contains within it the
nonation that they would have to defend themselves from someone
who was that how And then like like going back
and forth on the number of people killed, like which
you know, the low estimates are as low as like
(29:47):
one hundred and seven, highest wins in the two hundred
and fifties based on claims that the militias themselves made right.
So like again, what it is it cool to kill
like one hundred people but two hundred and fifty people?
Was like, you know, we should step in there, and
just like I was just checking the author's affiliation because
(30:08):
that's always fun, and he's a research for the Menachen
Beguine Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly, but
when the organization you work for is memorializing heritage of
one of the dudes who led the massacre, you might
want to like to step aside from I mean or
(30:29):
not right, but just shut up, just dive the fuck in.
But like you are flying your flag as a fairly part.
It's like I said, right, all historians are biased. But yes,
when like you know, if if I work at the
Colonel Custer Heritage Center, like please take my account of
the United States like violent assault on the Lakota people
with a pinch of salt, because like I'm coming at
(30:52):
this from a certain perspective. And yeah, here we are
at twenty twenty three, still still doing the doing the
thing where we were, rather than just like taking the
l and just being like, oh, like it's bad actually
to rape and mutilate and murder people trying to equivocate.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
It's funny you mentioned articles though, because I just saw
one and when I was researching for Alexai yesterday of
this Israeli cop that admitted that the videos he saw
was a bad. Look like that's what he said.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It was just like good cop. Yeah, And the course
of solution site is to not allow people to take
videos of you brutal. Yeah, yeah, that's the reituation. Yeah yeah.
Tim Apple known anti cop anarchist.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So Human Rights Watch and Anasty International have labeled it
was reel as an apartheid state, and Human Rights Watch
said in twenty twenty one, we reached this determination based
on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain
the domination by Jewish Israeli's over Palestinians. As recognition grows
that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize
(32:04):
that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into
the sand. Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario,
and I apartheid is a very light word to use,
but I did want to just mention that an organization
said that, not just like I don't know, there's just
it's officially on paper that Israel sucks, Like why are
(32:26):
we still defending it? I'm just like, go rewatch the
Bernie Sanders video from yesterday, like or audio, because there's
no reason we should be funneling any kind of support
into that country.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it did. It's mad. We still
made a loan of money selling weapons to Israel, but
it used against like and a. Robert and I pursued
a public records request for going on two years for
like these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke
grenades and flash bangs that a US company is selling
(33:01):
to Israel, right, yeah, like it's great they can find
them into a mosque, I mean, not surprising, No, it's
just annoying. Annoying the wrong word, but like, yeah, there
are people who make a lot of money every time
things get more violent there, right, and people who are
very invested in that. Yeah, and yeah that's Gooulich as
(33:23):
fuck it is.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
And that's actually all I have. That's a good, good
place to end, if any But I hope you learned
something if you didn't know something in this episode, and
I hope you go watch Futterha or God's Fights for Freedom.
I don't think this is history that should ever be
understated or forgotten, so I'm always more than happy to
(33:46):
talk about it, even if it's depressing. So thank you
for joining me today, James.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
That's okay, it's been very uplifting. I don't be a right,
it's important, it's very important. Hopefully one day we'll have
the PK GASA episode. Yes, that would be great. I
guess if you're in the UK and have old copies
of Men's Health, you can read about young people doing
parkering Gaza. It's pretty heavy. I will have another story
(34:11):
about that soon. But yeah, where should people? I think
a good thing. Maybe if we could end on like, uh,
where is a good place to find news about Palestine?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I really like El Jazeera, especially their opinion pieces are
pretty good because a lot of the times they're written
by people that are really passionate about what they're writing. Yeah,
I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always
a good call. Like a Middle Kurd is one of
the most prominent voices recently that has been uplifted, and
(34:45):
I would follow his social media as his sister has
one as well. His family's house was basically we had
the threat of being demolished last year. His house was
in Schech if you remembered any of that stuff from
last year with the violence going on there. I also
really like Subitaha. He's on Instagram mostly and he has
(35:06):
a podcast now. I would highly recommend following his stuff.
He is so informed and so uh just easy to
understand too, So I would watch that. And yeah, Mohammed
Lakurt actually was on some news program like like Face
the Nation or no, maybe not that, but he was
on recently like basically uh, handing the asses of the
(35:31):
people that were talking to him about Israel and Palestine?
Is that the right way to say that?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
He was just stating he was he was not willing
to be talked over and whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, which I like, Yeah, he shouldn't be. My friend
Hussam is a photographer in Palestine. Most of those Auja
Zerra pieces you'll see are his photographs. Actually, well Sam
Salem Guh he's photograph we've worked together before. But yeah,
if you if you're a person who'd like to see pictures,
his pictures are very good.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Also, there are a
lot of accounts that are solely about Palestine, and a
lot of these Palestine activists follow them and share them,
so you will find more organizations by following them. There
is I for Palestine. There's I think it's like land Palestine,
Like I think, there's a lot of really trusted accounts
(36:26):
on the Internet. You have to find the ones that
are trusted, and a lot of times it's stuff from
the ground and that's the stuff that needs to be
seen and shared because if there's going to be any
upside to fucking internet and social media, it has to
be to spread stuff like this around and make sure
(36:48):
people know about it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I don't know. Yeah, I think it gives us a
way to like get underneath that like hegemonic narrative and
see what happens to real people every day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
So yeah, that's that's all. Okay, whatever, that's the episode. Bye.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Welcome back to what could happen here. It's still Cherene
and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Thank you for joining me, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yeah, anytime the listeners they get what they want, you know,
they demanded it, and here we.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Are delivery log onto the subreddit.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I was interested in having someone else receive the information
I had because it's really hard to do it with myself.
And it's also hard not to like sound like a
boored professor or something, because I just sound.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Like this something I have experienced with. Yeah, you like
a pro professor. But it's also very emotionally challenging to
just be like, here some terrible fucking things that have
happened again and exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah, when you buy yourself, it's like it feels a
lot heavier for some reason. Uh, And so I'm glad
to have someone else on Thank You today. I wanted
to talk about something that happened seventy five years ago
this month. So there's going to be some history here,
but I think it's really important history, So please stay
(01:11):
tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But seventy
five years ago this month, before Israel was officially established
the Dairya scene massacre happened. This massacre was part of
the Nekba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even seventy
five years later, and it should always serve as a
reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in
(01:34):
order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized,
have people killed and forcibly removed from their homes, and
the indigenous people were expelled from their homes and the
ownership of their own land was granted someone else. And
I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that
happen is extremely important because we're not that far removed
(01:58):
from that. Brulu. It's not like we can say, like, oh,
that was medieval times, like people were different. It's like, no,
that was like less than one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Shut up.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
The Nakba aka the catastrophe in Arabic, it refers to
the violent expulsion of approximately three quarters of all Palestinians
from their homes and homeland by Zionists militias in the
New Israeli Army during the State of Israel's establishment between
nineteen forty seven and nineteen forty eight. The Nekabo was
a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish
(02:30):
majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders used the
euphemism quote unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today
would be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nakba
and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today they
lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the
late eighteen hundreds, when some European Jews, influenced by the
(02:53):
nationalism that was sweeping the continent, they decided that the
solution to anti Semitism in Europe and Russia was the
establis publishment of a state for Jews and Palestine. They
began immigrating to Palestine as colonizers, where they started depossessing
indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In November of nineteen forty seven,
following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created
(03:16):
United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into
Jewish and Arab states, against the will of the majority
indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision
or choice to make regardless the UN approved of a
plant divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the
(03:37):
will of Palestinian people. It gave fifty six percent of
that land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact
that Jews only owned about seven percent of the private
land of Palestine and made up only thirty three percent
of the population, and a very large percentage of this
percentage of thirty three percent were recent immigrants from Europe.
(03:57):
So handing over more than half of someone else's land
truly does it make sense. I don't care what religious
text or citing, it was wrong at this point in
time to take that land. It was just wrong. The
Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just forty
two percent of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians
made up a large majority of the population and were
(04:19):
indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be
governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after the
partition plan was passed. The expulsion of Palestinians by Zionists
militias began months before the arming of neighboring Arab states
began to be involved, so there was no other person
(04:41):
to say don't do this, or like there was no
one else to fight to hold them back. I guess,
is what I'm trying to say. And by the time
these Zionist militias and the new Israeli Army finished, the
new State of Israel covered seventy eight percent of Palestine.
So they didn't even follow the rules either. They just
kept on following up the land that wasn't even there,
(05:01):
speakin with with this violent Nekba that it's just it's
it's a terrible, horrific thing they did. There is a
film on Netflix called Farha. It's the first film that
depicts any kind of story about the Nekba, and it's
by Palestinian filmmaker. It's really powerful. I would recommend seeing
(05:24):
that if you want an example of what happened, because
it's all factual as far as like the terror that
they did, so I'd recommend that film. Give it five
stars for the haters, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Oh guy, I can imagine. There were reviews just like yeah, death, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
That was the film that the Israeli government tried to
to ban, and they were a lot of Zionists were
commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one
star or whatever. They wanted Netflix to take it off Netflix,
but no, we fuck the haters. Help us out five stars.
Put it on the background of your TV.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
It doesn't matter, just keep streaming on those we get Exactly, Yeah,
strike a blow against colonialism, but that's.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Just an example of how important and scared they are
of the truth because it's a movie. It's a fucking movie.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah. The control of the narrative is so important in
these things, exactly. Yes, And even the way you refer
to it, right, not not calling it the knock, like
calling it a transfer, not a cleansing, exactly, calling it,
like not referring to it in the same terms as
we would do like the genocidal set of colonialism that
(06:34):
settled this country, or you know, the way that Britain
and France and Germany behaved in Africa, like trying to
not like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state, right
when when that's what it is, is what it does. Like,
all of those things are so important, and they might
seem like petty battles, but they really control how we
(06:55):
see things. I think when you control language, you can
control how people perceive things.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And I think controlling the narrative is so parallel to
like controlling the history books, because that's what gets remembered
by the people that want to the narrative to have
a certain thing. Not all history books, obviously, but a
lot of the times the things that are considered facts
are biased. You know, I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, Oh, you're only getting half of the things, right
or like, Yeah, I mean, as a historian, we are
all biased, and so we should declare our biases and
sort of go forward that way, rather than presenting our
biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a
biased thing, which is what we tend to get in
the US, especially when we look at this stuff.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right, Yeah, No, totally. I love that. I Like, I
didn't bash historians, but I criticized them. But you're like,
I'm a historian.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I will not jump to the defense of science
historians I've worked with. Like, there's a chapter in my
book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, and like
about thirty percent of volunteers were Jewish people, right, and
many of them had been like couldn't go back to
(08:12):
Like there are some of them who like fought in
the Spanish Civil War, were gorillas in the Second World War,
survived the Holocaust in some cases, and they were anti Zionists,
and so like they didn't have a place like the
you know, there wasn't a place for them as people
who had had stuck to their very decent principles of
like you shouldn't impose shit on force for people who
(08:33):
don't want it, and we're opposed to fascism or opposed
to colonialism. There wasn't a place for them in that
sort of post World War two Jewish movement, that Zionist movement.
There were in other places, but yeah, it's very sad
that their stories aren't like like if a friend of
mine was the person who first wrote articles about them,
(08:53):
but like their memory is completely erased, right, or at
least it's not present, And then they should be people that,
like any reconall person would be very proud of, right
they were willing to die for someone else's battle, and
then yeah, they were kind of that. They're they stuck
to the same principles the whole way through it, and
the world kind of moved around them.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, And I mean, I think as time goes on,
those things won't even be existing in people's reality, you
know what I mean, Like if no one remembers that
that happened, if no one is part of what that happened,
like it's just going to go away. It's going to disappear.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, that's why it's so important to do history and
to do like to use different sources, right, and to
do history from a people's perspective, not from a perspective
of people who were in power. Exactly, history from below,
that's what we call it. Say that sounds one more
time if people call it a history from below, but
like and to look at other sources, right, like without
(09:51):
like riding my hobby horse too much. Like I was
primarily a historian of sport and anti fascism, and like
specifically sport. I got a ton of pushback on when
I started because it's not important, right, and it's not
you know, it's not like fucking I don't have any
charts or whatever, and like, it's actually very important to
(10:13):
where people were able to express who they were and
who was on the team and who was not on
their team, right, And that's where you find these people
who are very impactful lots of other areas. And I
think like if I was a younger person and I
was trying to find my way from my identity and
be like, hey, the Sionism seems wrong, like in the
same way that other things seem wrong. To have those
people to be like, yeah, these people also saw that right,
(10:35):
Like they didn't want a boot on anyone's neck, not
just not, I didn't want it to be their boot
on someone else's neck. And that was fine, you know,
they like having seen the Holocaust, having seen what happened
in to Spain, the like, now that this shit is wrong,
it's still wrong, doesn't matter if we're doing it.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah, their humanity prevailed.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yeah, And it's important for people like to have those
those stories to be like, Okay, well I'm not fucking
crazy or it's not that I just don't understand what
it was like back then, because a lot of people
could see it and were like, no, we shouldn't be
doing this.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yes, well, historian James, thank.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
You for joining me today.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Sorry, No, why are you apologizing? I love that shit?
Fuck No, I love it history from below that you said, Yeah,
just quite no theme now, I think it's a good
thing to abide by. So I'm glad that there's a
little catchy phrase for.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
It, Stewart Hale and things like that. Yeah, we'll do
another episode on this one day.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yes please. So, as we mentioned before, Israel stole about
seventy eight percent of Palestine and then this left twenty
two percent, and the twenty two percent was compromised of
the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and these regions
fell under the control of Jordan Egypt, respectively. In the
nineteen sixty seven war, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank,
(11:52):
East Jerusalem and Gaza, and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards.
And just to give you some numbers, I think they're
important sometimes just to get the context of the scale
of something. But the Nekaba, by the numbers, is what
I'm about to continue. Between seven hundred and fifty thousand
(12:12):
and one million Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and
they were made refugees by Zionist militias, amounting to approximately
seventy five percent of all Palestinians. Between two hundred and
fifty thousand and three hundred fifty thousand Palestinians were driven
out from their homes by Zionist militias Between the passage
of the UN Partition Plan on November twenty ninth of
nineteen forty seven and the establishment of Israel on May
(12:34):
fifteenth of nineteen forty eight. Prior to the outbreak of
war with the neighboring Arab States, several dozen massacres of
Palestinians were carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli Army,
which played a critical role in prompting the flight of
many Palestinians from their homes. More than one hundred Palestinians,
including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were massacred
(12:56):
in the Palestinian town of Dariusne near Jerusalem on April
nineth of nineteen forty eight by Zionist militia. This is
the main massacre I want to talk about today because
it's been exactly seventy five years on April ninth. But
it was one of many massacres, and it was the
one that is cited as igniting a lot of the
Codomino effect. The massacre at Daria scene was one of
(13:18):
the worst atrocities committed during the Nakba and a pivotal
moment in Israel's establishment as a Jewish majority state, and
again it triggered the flight of Palestinians from their homes
in Jerusalem and beyond. The Dariacene massacre is commemorated annually
by Palestinians around the world. Approximately one hundred and fifty
thousand Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in nineteen
(13:41):
forty eight, a quarter of them internally displaced. These Palestinians,
who are sometimes referred to as Israeli Arabs, were granted
Israeli citizenship, but stripped of most of their land and
governed by violent, undemocratic military rule as of nineteen sixty six.
As of twenty twenty three, there are more than two
million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, comprising more than twenty percent
(14:05):
of Israel's population, and they are forced to live as
second class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens
of laws that discriminate against them in almost every aspect
of life because they're not Jewish. Let's take our first
break here and I'll come back and tell you more
terrible things. So here we okay, we're back. I'm going
(14:36):
to finish up a little bit more of these numbers
and then I'm going to talk about Darius. More than
four hundred Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by
Zionist militias and the New Israeli Army, or they are
repopulated with Jews. Between nineteen forty eight and nineteen fifty,
most Palestinian communities, including homes, businesses, houses of worship, vib
(14:56):
urban centers, they were destroyed to prevent the return of
their palace Stinian owners who are now refugees outside of
Israel's borders, or they were internally displaced inside them. Today,
there are more than seven point two million Palestinian refugees,
including Neckbus survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in
the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and neighboring
(15:19):
Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they're
denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland.
This is the last big number I want to say,
just because I think it's it's so big I had
to say it. Approximately four million, two hundred and forty
four thousand, seven hundred and seventy six acres of Palestinian
(15:40):
land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after the
establishment of the state in nineteen forty eight, millions of acres,
Like it's not just a tiny little place that no
one was in before, like noe, millions of acres of
land were forcibly stolen.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, so yeah, and all of them, like the land
that people have had for generations that they're farm Like
this is like it's not the oldest settlement on earth,
but people have been living here for tens of thousands
of years.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I said, Aluxey Yesterday was built in ten thirty five.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Like yeah, this shit is very old. And like sometimes
the same people or people's sort of family. It's not
just a loss of property, so lots of everything that's
sacred and like the Aluxa Mosque or these things that
are sacred and important to you, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
And yeah, and so more it's what you said earlier.
It's like we have to remember these things because otherwise
they'll get forgotten the in whoever's recording the history, you.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Know what I mean, Like it's yeah, I mean they
have been here. Right when we look at how America
sees itself, it sees the land that it expanded into.
It's like Terrannullius, like like empty land that was unoccupied,
which it was not. There was not a wilderness to tame.
Like there were people living here and they were living
very happily, and they were living they weren't like I
(17:03):
don't want to do the whole like like in commune
with nature thing, but like this wasn't a wild and
savage place, right. There were people existing here and taking
from the land and living on the land, and like
we that just doesn't get fucking like Ruth Bader Ginsburg
was citing the doctrine of discovery, you know, like you
all the libs love Ruth Bader Ginswick, but like it's
(17:23):
so subsumed into what America is that Like like Obama
did a fucking tweet like this nation was built on
peaceful protest. It was built fucking genocide, Like fuck off, yeah,
but we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten, right,
Like you don't go to school in California and be like, oh,
there is a fucking unit they just changed. Actually there
(17:45):
was a Unipero Hessea High School and like this is
a person who did genocide. Like we wouldn't have a
fucking Gerbels High School in Germany, you know, and then
Britain does a shit too. I'm not not like I'm
in a glasshouse, so I didn't say that, but yeah,
this wasn't an empty place, and.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
It's really important to remember that because that is so
often the talking point of fucking stupid people that try
to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to now
the main massacre or topic I want to talk about today,
which happened on April ninth in nineteen forty eight, just
weeks before the creation of the State of Israel, when
members of the Urguon and Stern Gang Zionist militias attacked
(18:29):
the village of Dryasin and they killed at least one
hundred and seven Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages,
massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive, to clear
the way for the creation of the state of Israel,
and this was one of the many massacres that happened
during the Nekba, where again an estimated fifteen thousand Palestinians
(18:52):
were killed and some seven hundred and fifty thousand fled
their homes as refugees. Ignited a very terrifying domino effect.
This year, the UN will host its first ever high
level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in
the establishment of the state of Israel in May and
nineteen forty eight. So this is the first time ever
that the U one has recognized that the Nekbu even happened,
(19:14):
or like is it happened enough to mention it and
commemorate it. But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the
loss of each village that was once part of their homeland.
Among them was Darya Sine, and it was a village
perched on a hill west of Jerusalem. And this massacre
has become emblematic of the suffering that Israel would inflict
(19:36):
on the Palestinians. Many of the people slaughtered, from those
who were tied to trees and burned to death to
those lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns.
Many of these people were women, children, and the elderly,
and Fudha does a really good job of showing this
lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie
(19:57):
that I mentioned earlier. As the new of these atrocities spread,
thousands fled their villages in fear so again. On April
ninth and nineteen forty eight, the Israeli militia struck theiry,
A scene where about seven hundred Palestinians lived. According to
the Israeli narrative, operation Nashon and Ahhson apologies if I
(20:18):
mispronounce that, but this operation aimed to break through the
blockaded road to Jerusalem, and the fighters encountered stiff resistance
from the villagers that forced them to advance slowly from
house to house. It's kind of silly and strange how
the same excuse is being used a century later to
justify acts of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them
(20:41):
and that's why they butchered them. It's yeah, it's pathetic.
It's stupid and pathetic.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And like, yeah, for having the I don't know, temerity
to be like no, you can't take my home. Yeah,
they carried out a collective punishment on Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
And that's the Israeli narrative. That's what their history books say,
is that this was the aim of this operation. They
were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to
go from house to house like that. It's just a
fucked up narrative, but Palestinians and some Israeli historians say
that the villagers had signed a non aggression agreement with
the Haganah, which was the pre Israeli state Zionist army.
(21:21):
They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in
mass graves. According to a nineteen forty eight report filed
by the British delegation to the UN, the killing of
quote some two hundred and fifty Arabs men, women and
children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and
children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by
(21:45):
automatic firing. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with
degrading brutality. This is from a nineteen forty eight report
filed by the British delegation.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Like it's in the record, wouldn't they both like the
stern going and the the whatever the military was called
the beginning was in It's like I said, l I
think were like they hadn't really done any military operations before,
right that they'd just been they just like bomb like
they did car bombs and shit to this, like the
British had already like like that. They were like they
(22:19):
were killing British people and I guess Arab people in
Palestine before this, yes.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Yeah, I mean the escalation in violence was like pretty severe, right,
but I think they would have gone there eventually, you know,
they's kind of hit forward.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I think they'd already like established an intention or like
a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in
their way, right, and they wanted to show that they
were like unlike the like I guess the labor aligned
Zionist movement, that they were like more hardcore than that,
and they exactly like that's where they made a spectacle
of violence like.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
This, they're establishing their their power and dominant. Israeli historian
Benny Morris said that the militia's quote ransacked unscrupulously, stole
money and jewels from the survivors, and burned the bodies.
Even dismemberment and rape occurred. I mean, there's nothing to
(23:16):
say to that. The number of dead is disputed, but
it ranges from one hundred to two hundred and fifty.
A representative of the Red Cross who entered Darya scene
on April eleventh. Two days later, they reported seeing the
bodies of some one hundred and fifty people heaped haphazardly
in a cave, while around fifty were amassed in a
(23:37):
separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the
time that such events had been quote unquote infamous. In
Darya scene, hundreds of innocent men, women and children were massacred.
He said, let the village remain uninhabited for the time being.
Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of
war and a warning to our people that no practical
(24:00):
military needs may ever justify such acts of murder. He
also noted that Darya scene had a profound demographic and
political effect, and he's referring to the fact that the
news of his massacre spread and it prompted hundreds of
Palestinians to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next Ailunia, Cyrus,
(24:22):
bit Saruk and Bidu. Darya scene was no mistake, according
to Israeli historian Ilan Pape Iline Pape has been called
a Israeli quote unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth,
the actual truth of what happened in their history.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah, the concept of revision's history is nonsense, like it
suggests that there is a settled history at some point,
which does not right, Like we're always looking at sources again,
but was looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not
like there is like this monolith of history and then
some meddling buss had comes and chops it down. It's
fundamentally like misunderstanding how history is done. Yess why you
(25:02):
shouldn't pay attention to Malcolm Gladwell for that and many
other reasons. But yeah, it's a ridiculous ideas. He's not
like it's not like everyone was like, oh yeah, this
wasn't a bad thing, and then he came along and
like injected some kind of political animist in his history.
He came along and looked at maybe news sources, maybe
the same sources of people how I don't know. And
(25:23):
it was like, now, you guys, have you got this wrong?
You called this wrong. But that's what historians do. Like
you can't fucking write your PhD without disagreeing with someone
and doing some new history. Like that's what takes you
from a master's to a doctorate. And like you're supposed
to do three articles in a book to get tenure.
Like your articles can't just be like, yeah, we pretty
much called this one right the first time. You know,
(25:43):
like the process of doing history is to revise and
hope to better understand things from different perspectives.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Totally. I like that that's the point of history is
to revise, because you're right, And I just think it's
it's so discrediting of his work to call him a
visionist historian. Yeah, it's condescending, you know. And as someone
that interviewed him called him this.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, I mean hopefully he gave them both barrels because
it's kind of a ridiculous. Yay, it shows that they
fundamentally unqualified to be discussing the topic.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
I guess, Yeah, I want to talk about what he said,
but I realized that I didn't take the last break,
and I want to right now, and that is my choice.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
So OAT, proud of you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And we're back. We were talking about Elan Pape, a
revisionis quote unquote historian, but not really. You know, he
was called that because he was talking about Israel the
way it was it should be talked about with actual
historical facts. In one of his writings, Pape wrote depopulating
Palestine was not a consequential war event, but a carefully
(26:58):
planned strategy otherwise known as Plan Dalette, which was authorized
by the Israeli leader Ben Gurion in March of nineteen
forty eight. Operation Nashan was in fact the first step
in the plan, and as I said, the massacre unleashed
a cycle of violence and counter violence that has been
the pattern ever since this happened. Jewish forces have regarded
(27:23):
any Palestinian village as an enemy state or a military base,
and this has paved the way for this blurred distinction
between massacring civilians and killing combatants. According to the historian,
So what does all of this say about Israel's vision today?
This is why I want to talk about this is
because this started this whole cycle of violence that we
(27:45):
still see perpetuated today. And it's why Palestinians refuse to
forget it and forget what happened, and they'll always talk
about Palestine because they don't want to be erased from
history books. Dariasne has become a powerful symbol of Palaestinian
dispossession as well as a historical fact Israel must confront
when retelling its national narrative. According to Pepe given that
(28:09):
terrorism is a mode of behavior that Israeli's attribute solely
to the Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a
part of any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's past.
One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to
accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one with
the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior.
(28:32):
Israeli historians as well as Israeli society, they've only been
able to admit to the massacre and Daria scene by
attributing it to the right wing group Irgun, but have
covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one
in Tantura in nineteen forty eight. This was carried out
by the Huganah, the main Jewish militia from which the
current day Israeli military has evolved from. And despite this
(28:56):
shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights
Watch and the State International have labeled Israel itself in
a parked tyde state.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I've just seen the worst ever op ed in the
Jerusalem Post about now what tell me it's about this,
But it's about like the knuckbar, like it contains like
this kind of narrative that like, oh well, the knuckbo
was coined by by like historians to like explain the
failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which is like
(29:27):
a what does that fucking matter? And be like what
are you saying? Like what that contains within it the
nonation that they would have to defend themselves from someone
who was that how And then like like going back
and forth on the number of people killed, like which
you know, the low estimates are as low as like
(29:47):
one hundred and seven, highest wins in the two hundred
and fifties based on claims that the militias themselves made right.
So like again, what it is it cool to kill
like one hundred people but two hundred and fifty people?
Was like, you know, we should step in there, and
just like I was just checking the author's affiliation because
(30:08):
that's always fun, and he's a research for the Menachen
Beguine Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly, but
when the organization you work for is memorializing heritage of
one of the dudes who led the massacre, you might
want to like to step aside from I mean or
(30:29):
not right, but just shut up, just dive the fuck in.
But like you are flying your flag as a fairly part.
It's like I said, right, all historians are biased. But yes,
when like you know, if if I work at the
Colonel Custer Heritage Center, like please take my account of
the United States like violent assault on the Lakota people
with a pinch of salt, because like I'm coming at
(30:52):
this from a certain perspective. And yeah, here we are
at twenty twenty three, still still doing the doing the
thing where we were, rather than just like taking the
l and just being like, oh, like it's bad actually
to rape and mutilate and murder people trying to equivocate.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
It's funny you mentioned articles though, because I just saw
one and when I was researching for Alexai yesterday of
this Israeli cop that admitted that the videos he saw
was a bad. Look like that's what he said.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It was just like good cop. Yeah, And the course
of solution site is to not allow people to take
videos of you brutal. Yeah, yeah, that's the reituation. Yeah yeah.
Tim Apple known anti cop anarchist.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So Human Rights Watch and Anasty International have labeled it
was reel as an apartheid state, and Human Rights Watch
said in twenty twenty one, we reached this determination based
on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain
the domination by Jewish Israeli's over Palestinians. As recognition grows
that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize
(32:04):
that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into
the sand. Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario,
and I apartheid is a very light word to use,
but I did want to just mention that an organization
said that, not just like I don't know, there's just
it's officially on paper that Israel sucks, Like why are
(32:26):
we still defending it? I'm just like, go rewatch the
Bernie Sanders video from yesterday, like or audio, because there's
no reason we should be funneling any kind of support
into that country.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it did. It's mad. We still
made a loan of money selling weapons to Israel, but
it used against like and a. Robert and I pursued
a public records request for going on two years for
like these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke
grenades and flash bangs that a US company is selling
(33:01):
to Israel, right, yeah, like it's great they can find
them into a mosque, I mean, not surprising, No, it's
just annoying. Annoying the wrong word, but like, yeah, there
are people who make a lot of money every time
things get more violent there, right, and people who are
very invested in that. Yeah, and yeah that's Gooulich as
(33:23):
fuck it is.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
And that's actually all I have. That's a good, good
place to end, if any But I hope you learned
something if you didn't know something in this episode, and
I hope you go watch Futterha or God's Fights for Freedom.
I don't think this is history that should ever be
understated or forgotten, so I'm always more than happy to
(33:46):
talk about it, even if it's depressing. So thank you
for joining me today, James.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
That's okay, it's been very uplifting. I don't be a right,
it's important, it's very important. Hopefully one day we'll have
the PK GASA episode. Yes, that would be great. I
guess if you're in the UK and have old copies
of Men's Health, you can read about young people doing
parkering Gaza. It's pretty heavy. I will have another story
(34:11):
about that soon. But yeah, where should people? I think
a good thing. Maybe if we could end on like, uh,
where is a good place to find news about Palestine?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I really like El Jazeera, especially their opinion pieces are
pretty good because a lot of the times they're written
by people that are really passionate about what they're writing. Yeah,
I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always
a good call. Like a Middle Kurd is one of
the most prominent voices recently that has been uplifted, and
(34:45):
I would follow his social media as his sister has
one as well. His family's house was basically we had
the threat of being demolished last year. His house was
in Schech if you remembered any of that stuff from
last year with the violence going on there. I also
really like Subitaha. He's on Instagram mostly and he has
(35:06):
a podcast now. I would highly recommend following his stuff.
He is so informed and so uh just easy to
understand too, So I would watch that. And yeah, Mohammed
Lakurt actually was on some news program like like Face
the Nation or no, maybe not that, but he was
on recently like basically uh, handing the asses of the
(35:31):
people that were talking to him about Israel and Palestine?
Is that the right way to say that?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
He was just stating he was he was not willing
to be talked over and whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, which I like, Yeah, he shouldn't be. My friend
Hussam is a photographer in Palestine. Most of those Auja
Zerra pieces you'll see are his photographs. Actually, well Sam
Salem Guh he's photograph we've worked together before. But yeah,
if you if you're a person who'd like to see pictures,
his pictures are very good.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Yeah, that's a good point too. Also, there are a
lot of accounts that are solely about Palestine, and a
lot of these Palestine activists follow them and share them,
so you will find more organizations by following them. There
is I for Palestine. There's I think it's like land Palestine,
Like I think, there's a lot of really trusted accounts
(36:26):
on the Internet. You have to find the ones that
are trusted, and a lot of times it's stuff from
the ground and that's the stuff that needs to be
seen and shared because if there's going to be any
upside to fucking internet and social media, it has to
be to spread stuff like this around and make sure
(36:48):
people know about it.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
I don't know. Yeah, I think it gives us a
way to like get underneath that like hegemonic narrative and
see what happens to real people every day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
So yeah, that's that's all. Okay, whatever, that's the episode. Bye.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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