Part Two: Hunger Strikes: From Ireland to Palestine

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Shereen about the long history of hunger strikes by prisoners and refugees.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Ryntrall and Anderson's squirrel Chasing Hour
Hell Yeah, podcast in which the dogs Rintrall and Anderson
chase squirrels, or at least make noises at squirrels in
the background while we record a podcast called cool People
Who did Cool Stuff. It's all very texture.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's called yea yeah, Sorry you introduce me yet.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Well that's Scharene Sharen.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Lanny Nis is here post him ethnically ambiguous host. It
could happen here, poet, filmmaker, friend icon.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I did it, but we're great. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you first and foremost a friend first and foremost
a friend second, second, foremost. I forgot to mention it.
Mother of Bunny the cat, Mother of Bunny the cat.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I have a cat. Okay, so it's the how.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Does Bunny you feel about squirrels?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
She loves to watch. Yeah, she'll she will be the
observer to the squirrel chasing listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I want to brag about Margaret for a second listeners.
Before we started recording part one, Bunny was Bunny was
being bad, and so I called Bunny bad. Bunny and
Margaret knew that reference. And I just want to give
credit where credits due.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, not only did she know, but she knew that
Bad Bunny was Porto Rican.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
There was there was like.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
There, Yeah, it's because Bad Bunny is done work with
Cardi B and Cardi B supports sex workers.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, so that's a great way to know who Bad Bunny.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Is and and Bad Bunny is actual. So my parents
have a bunny that like an actual bunny rabbit that
this is so much information that the listeners don't need.
But there's a bunny that lives in their yard and
my parents leave out seeds and appropriate bunny and squirrel
litle and deer food for they live in the woods.
And I got them to name the bunny Benito, which

(02:01):
has been bunny's actual name, and so they but but
they've now changed it to bun Eto. And that's just
a little bit about why I am the way I am.
Honestly that.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Benito is great on its own for it bunny, honestly,
I know, and it ends in an osna. Bunnies are
the best. I love bunnies.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
But yeah, that that has been unnecessary animal talk, but
also necessary animal talk.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Someone out there appreciates it. I know at least one person.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
And everyone else has been pressing for fifteen seconds.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
And that's fine, okay, Sorry, No, I'll just bring up
animals every like minute or so, so they'll just keep skipping,
you know what I mean, Like they'll talk about stuff
and then they're still talking about fucking cats.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
And then we can think, Yeah, like the things that
we can form relationships with that aren't people that make
our lives enriched. How boring is what people will say
because they have no heart or soul or something. The
other voice you've heard is Sophie.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Oh Ship, it's me, mother of Anderson yea of podcasts,
podcast podcast, friend of Benito, the Bunny.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Friend of.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Our audio engineering is done by Ian Hi.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Ian I I the.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Father of an animal.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yeah, Ian, I don't.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
I don't think Ian has, but I feel free to
put in a fun animal fact here if you're bored,
and if you're not, and if you're not bored and
you don't feel like putting in a fun animal fact,
that's also okay.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
But you don't have anything, you know? We love? Ian
is the point.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, yes, but you have to say hi, Ian before
we can continue. We've made a rule. Everyone has all right,
And our music is written for us by young woman.
And this is part two of a two part series
about hunger strikes, the last recourse of the desperate against

(04:07):
their oppressors. Where we last left our heroes, the Irish
Republican Army, who are a lot of people's not heroes,
but are in a situation where they also feel like
they have no recourse. They have just been told that
they were not to be treated as prisoners of war
anymore in Her Majesty's prison Maze, but instead as common
criminals fed to the minotaur, even though many of them

(04:31):
were getting picked up without charges, evidence or trial, which
is a fun way to find yourself a prisoner is
to not get accused of any crime.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
The first inmate to protest this was a guy named
Kieran Nugent. And what led him to a life of
the IRA Well, maybe I'm not certain, but I think
there's like one part of his past that I can
think might have radicalized him. It's when he was fifteen
years old standing on the street with a friend when

(05:01):
a car stopped asked them for directions. When they started
to answer, someone in the car pulled out a submachine
gun and shot him eight times and killed his friend.
He survived getting shot eight times as a fifteen year old,
and I can't imagine why he went and joined the
IRA after that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Was there not that there's ever a reason to do
any of that, but was there any motive?

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Not that I'm aware of. I'm under the impression it
was literally like, let's just go kill those Catholic kids. Wow.
So when he was sixteen, he joined the IRA. He
spent five months in jail without being convicted of anything,
and then he was arrested again, I think when he
was seventeen, and this time he got a conviction. He
spent he served nine months. When he was eighteen, he

(05:50):
got arrested for hijacking a bus. He was the first
person sent to the Minotaur's maze after they decided to
stop treating paramilitaries like prisoners of war. And so he
showed up and they're like, all right, put on your
prison clothes, and he's like, I'm not a fucking criminal.
I'm a fucking freedom fighter. I'm not I'm not going
to do that. Or more specifically, he said that if
they wanted him to wear a uniform, they would have

(06:10):
to nail it to his back. He wore a blanket instead.
This gets called the blanket protest. Very direct namers at
this particular juncture.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Also too cute for my liking. The troubles was cute,
you know, blanket protest. I understand what it's doing. It's
very literal.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
But yeah, terrible.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Things have cute names, and that makes me unsettled.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, I'd be like if Bunny wasn't your cat but
instead like a giant creature in the woods with red
eyes that sings the British national anthem.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
I don't know, like that is terrify.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
I know, what if there's like a monster in your
woods that just like say nationalist of Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
So.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
The second prisoner to join the blanket protest was a woman,
so of course she has left out of most of
the narratives. I like had the whole script written where
I was like, and then the second prisoner is and
as this other guy, and then later I was like, no,
this other person was the second person to join the protest.
She was in a different prison for women, and she
had a version of the best name ever. Her name

(07:20):
was mari Ed, which is Irish from Margaret, and she
was in prison for fourteen years for bombing a hotel
that was being used by British soldiers, and at trial
she refused to acknowledge the colonial court.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Well about us cross the board, check check check.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, she fucking she goes hard. The third prisoner to
join the blanket protest was a man named Jackie McMullen.
He is usually marked as the second because why would
women matter, even though women have been active participants in
Irish struggles since literally forever.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
But women are at people.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, totally, yeah, Jackie. This guy, Jackie had been arrested
twenty times as a teenager. He has a quote about it.
Every male aged thirteen to sixty five would have been arrested,
the vast majority for screening. Like basically they would just
arrest every Catholic they saw to see if they were
like opt no good or whatever. Right, So he've been

(08:14):
arrested twenty fucking times.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
So we still don't really know how they know they're Catholic. Really,
maybe like.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
The neighborhoods they're in or again someone knows, yeah, but
I don't know. The neighborhoods were increasingly I think since
nineteen sixty six, the neighborhoods were increasingly segregated, were actually
going to talk about some people who like actually had
grown up in very like mixed neighborhoods and were perfectly
fine and everything was happy until nineteen sixty six when

(08:41):
Protestants started like self segregating away from the Catholics and stuff.
So Jackie was a freedom fighter with the IRA. He
had a nickname. His nickname was Teapot. Love it because
one of his tops of one of his ears had
been shot off. Well he was, I know, they don't
fuck with the guy named Teapot who has a revolver

(09:01):
and is a missing part of his ear. When you
look up photos of all of these guys now, like
the ones who survive all of this, they're just like
they're just some old Irish guy. It's like real cute.
There's just like, oh there's anyone's yeah yeah. And so
Teapot had been caught with a revolver when he was twenty.
His trial was only forty minutes long. He also refused

(09:23):
to recognize the court. When he was in prison, his mother,
alongside other Irish women, changed herself to the railings outside
the Prime Minister's house in London. Wow, and by Christmas
that year, So a few months later it started in September,
there were forty prisoners wearing blankets, mostly IRA and the
Irish National Liberation Army.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Folks, we're not to acquire these blankets.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
It's like what they have in prison. It's like the
it's the blanket that they're like, all.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right at or airplane blanket.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yeah, probably whatever. The whatever your fucking scratchy wool blanket
you have in prison.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Is okay, So they all have like they access to
get a blanket. I guess what I'm saying, Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah. By nineteen seventy eight, they escalated from the blanket
protest to the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to wash
and then started smearing their shit and menstrual blood on
the walls of their cells.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Okay, I'm not mad about it.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
No, I mean whatever, whatever fucking works, yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Or whatever. I mean, that's fucking disgusting. Yeah, if you're
not going to get shamed into action, maybe you'll get
disgusted into action.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, totally, Like I don't want Yeah, it's probably just
to get the guards to be like, man, I don't
want to deal with this.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
I don't get paid enough for this shit.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
They had five demands and their demands weren't freedom for Ireland,
like that's what they were fighting for as their cause, right,
But this sort of strike is usually about specific conditions,
and specifically they had five demands related to essentially prisoner
of war status. They demanded the right to not wear
a prison uniform, the right to not do prison work,

(11:03):
the right of free association with other prisoners and to
organize educational and recreational pursuits. The right to one visit,
one letter and one parcel per week, and full restoration
of remission lost through the protest. Basically, it's like, while
they were protesting, the state was like, well, this doesn't
count as your life time served because you're like not

(11:24):
being nice outside of prison. People start organizing for their support.
The kind of at the beginning of this people are like, yeah,
I mean, I guess that matters, but what really matters
is like the struggle, you know, and then people were like, actually, no,
those people in prison matter outside prison. By eighteenth not
eighteen seventy nine nineteen seventy nine, the usage writing about

(11:46):
the eighteenth century nineteenth fuck whatever. Nineteen seventy nine, the
Northern Irish socialist politician Bernadette mccawsky is a working class
Republican woman, because republican means socialist at this point in
time in history, in this particular place, because political labels
change what they mean depending on context. She started to

(12:06):
fight for folks she'd been present at Bloody Sunday. Later
in nineteen eighty one, people break into her house trying
to assassinate her. She gets shot nine times in front
of her children, and she lives.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
She was like, all right, kid, you got shot eight times.
I'm gonna get not shot nine times and live. So
she's working to support the prisoners. This is before she
gets shot. In nineteen eighty the Dirty Strike goes Hunger Strike.
One hundred and forty eight prisoners in the men's prison volunteer,
but they pick seven of themselves total as a symbolic

(12:42):
thing about the number of folks who signed the nineteen
sixteen Declaration of the Republic. When kind of the Easter
Rising sort of kicks off what leads to the independence
the semi independence of Ireland. At the nearby women's prison,
three women join, including our girl Marriod, and later just
to end her saga. Unfortunately, in nineteen eighty eight, she's

(13:07):
killed during her arrest In Joe Bralter, she's trying with
some IRA friends to car bombs some British soldiers when
they get caught, and inquiries later show that she was
actually illegally shot because she had been trying to comply
with her arrest when they killed her. Wow, But for
now she's hunger striking.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Is it like something on top of like, it's not
replacing the dirty strike.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's like in addition to they might have stopped smearing
their shit on their walls. I'm not sure. They probably
were pretty excited to take a shower.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, I mean it's it's not great for the person
doing the dirty strike either, I'm sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah. And then the hunger strike is also it's just
a it's an escalation, you know. And and they win
this hunger strike in nineteen eighty. The strike lasts fifty
three days, but in the end the government blinks. They're
afraid of the backlash loget if they kill this prisoner.
Which is another thing that nonviolence pairs really well with

(14:07):
is violence m H. It was the threat of violence
that caused the British government to concede to this non
violent tactic. So the government say all right, fine, we'll
meet you five demands. But then the government being a government.
I don't know if you knew this. Sometimes governments don't
hold their promises.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Oh my god, are you serious?

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, I know it. It changes the law, don't.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Follow the law. People don't care about morals or or anything.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, you'd think. I mean, obviously there's no system by
which people would get elected if they weren't honest.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
And my god, I really thought, I really thought governments
could help us.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, well, this is probably the only time in place
where a government has done this. Okay, great, So they
start another hunger strike on March first, nineteen eighty one,
and the IRA has a military command structure, right, the
officer commanding of the imprisoned IRA members is a guy
who's in prison and his name is Bobby Sands, and

(15:13):
he's like, well, I'm in charge, and so I'm going
to do the honorable thing, and I'm going to go first.
So he stops eating, and you know, they're like, we
are political prisoners. We will be treated as such. They
have the five demands, the same five demands they've ostensibly
already won, but have not. Bobby Sands, he grew up
in a mixed neighborhood Protestant Catholic neighborhood. But when he

(15:34):
was twelve in nineteen sixty six, all of his Protestant
friends stopped talking to him. I think their families basically
made them ice him out. As an adult, he tried
to just go be a guy, right, and he went
to get work as a coach builder, which is a
busmaker in American English. I had a double check.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
He thought building coaches to like go to the NBA
or anything.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
I know.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
I was like, oh, okay, okay. Whereas I was thinking
it was like horse drawn carriages, they still had horse
drawn carriage.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
You know, wait, what is it really say it against bus?
A bus?

Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, he made buses bus where he tried to make buses,
but a bunch of guys wearing fucking like paramilitary Protestant
armbands who he worked with. The word that gets used.
The verb they used is harassed. They harassed him into quitting,
And by harassed, I mean they stuck a gun in
his face and told him to fuck off. And his

(16:28):
family and almost all the other Catholics in the family
were driven out of their homes at gunpoint. So he's
like all right Ira time he bombs a furniture store.
I have literally no idea why. I'm sure he had
a reason. And then he gets in a shootout with
the cops and he gets sentenced to the Minotaur's Maze.

(16:48):
And then March first, nineteen eighty one, he begins to
hunger strike. More prisoners join at staggered intervals. Basically the
idea is that if we join at different times, there's
always going to be different prisoners at different lengths of it,
basically because they know that they're doing this until they die.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Right, So so nothing really changed after the first one, right,
so what did how did it end?

Speaker 4 (17:12):
Then?

Speaker 2 (17:12):
Per se? Like what did what?

Speaker 1 (17:14):
They were like, Oh, we're going to meet all your
demands and then they were like, oh right we win. Yeah,
then they just didn't okay.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah. And so by doing this as staggered intervals, they
have different people at different stages of it. So instead
of everyone dying all at once, people die at different intervals.
And the reason that we know so this is like
the famous hunger strike in Ireland. There's a bunch their
hunger strikes have been work going on in Ireland. I

(17:42):
didn't write them all down but since nineteen seventeen, Like
it is, as long as there's been people fighting for
an Ireland, it probably goes back way while, as we
talked about, it goes way the fuck back. While he
was two months into the hunger strike, Bobby Sands ran
for the British House of Commons basically like ran for
government in Northern Ireland and he won. He won, he

(18:05):
was in the prison. How is he able to run? Well,
they ended up passing the law after this that says
that you can't run for British Yeah, and so he
runs and he gets a seat in a House of Commons,
he's not allowed to sit it. It doesn't get him

(18:26):
out of prison, right, And he's also two months into
a hunger strike. So it's a protest vote basically. It's
like people are like, well, we're going to vote for
this dying guy because we support his cause and that's
how we will show it. Margaret Thatcher, who is trying
to give Margaret's a bad name, said, crime is crime.
There's no special concessions, like we're not gonna treat anyone

(18:49):
like prisoner as a war and this guy can't sit
even though he's been elected. Fuck democracy, you know, and
winning an election will starving yourself is a really good
way to get media attention for your hunger strike. It's
also a good way to get the UK to pass
a law specifically for make sure no one ever does
what you do again. And this is actually the reason

(19:10):
that they hadn't really thought about this before. I think
is that this is when the IRA came around to
electoralism as a strategy. Before that, they were absentationists, right,
they refused to vote, and then eventually they're like, all right, fine,
we'll just start fucking voting and nationalists because we actually
are the majority of people here.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
You know.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
On his sixty sixth day of hunger striking, Bobby Sands,
who was twenty seven years old, died. No more than
one hundred thousand people came to his funeral. France, the
Margaret Thatcher was like fuck you, I don't care. She
wrote a whole bunch of stuff basically being like, he's
an evil terrorist trying to blackmail us with his life.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Such a bad margaret.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah sorry, no, I mean.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
I'm sorry that you're Margaret. And yeah she has that name.
That's not fair.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
I know, we got called a lot there. God give
her a different name, just to take it back for
the Margarets monster stature. Yeah, well, I'll think about it.
Sorry that thatchue Kanye's baddy. Apparently I've learned on the
show that baddye means good.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
So no, baddie means like like Cardi B's a baddy.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Yeah, no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
I Ian was was like I've said. Ian texted me
after editing that episode, was like, I was like, I
was so confused, and then you explained it to Margaret
and then it mads it.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
In my mind. Baddy is like the are we the
Baddy sketch where the Nazis have to admit that they're
that might be on the wrong side. No, anyway, no, anyway.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
We've time has progressed since then. I suppose I am
now aware.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, do you know what else you should be aware of?
That it's a time for an ad break.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Oh well, if you want to be a batty, you
should wear clothing that is advertised. You know, actually, whether
or not these companies advertise clothing, you should try to
buy clothing from them. You should write them and say
make it happen, please sell me, not T shirts, not

(21:12):
branded stuff like I want them to make article full
articles of clothing, like I want to see their textile capacity.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Quilts.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, blankets, blankets you could wear a you could start
your own blanket protest by buying blankets from the gold
vendors who are going to come on to sell you that.
Here you go and we're back for lists enough. A
bunch of people who died after Bobby Sands. Francis Hughes

(21:47):
died next, then Raymond mccreash and Patsy O'Hara, who had
once been shot at the age of fourteen by a
British soldier. Joe McDonell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieren Doe,
Thomas Mcgillwey and Michael Devine died. Ten people died. They
were all in all in their twenties, and the strike

(22:10):
ended in a sort of draw. Eventually, the other Hunger
strikers withdrew because a lot of their families were like, look,
even if you fall unconscious, if you fall unconscious, we're
going to allow medical intervention. So they withdrew and England
declared it a victory. But the strikers won four of

(22:30):
their demands during this they won everything but the right
to avoid work, and the other hunger strikers didn't want
to withdraw because they were like, no, Bobby Sands has
died for this. We can't turn our backs now.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
But it basically their hands were forced because you can't
control what happens to you when you're unconscious. But they
actually won their fifth demands soon enough. They won it
through another means, the kind of sideways means. They went
it through a means that's called the Great Escape.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Who yes, tell me more.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Another thing that people in prison sometimes choose to do
is on the twenty twentieth, twenty fifth of September nineteen
eighty three, thirty eight IRA prisoners broke out of jail.
This is a maximum security prison. This is like considered like,
I mean, it's Her Majesty's fucking maze, right.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
How do they do it?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Do we know?

Speaker 1 (23:24):
How they do? We do?

Speaker 2 (23:27):
They didn't break original.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, they wounded twenty guards in the process. Hell yeah,
they inadvertently killed one who died of a heart attack.
To be fair, they'd also stabbed the guy. No, I know,
I know, to be fair, they'd also stabbed the guy.
But later a coroner's report was like, actually the heart
attack was unrelated to the stabbings, and so like someone
who got caught during all of this actually had their

(23:49):
charges lessened because they hadn't they had killed him, the
heart attack did. Yeah, six handguns had been smuggled into
the prison, and so like a cell block or whatever
takes the guard's prisoner, some of them were shot and
stabbed as necessary, like people who like tried to run
to set the alarm and stuff and stuff like that.

(24:11):
The escapies got out of the cell block and they
hijacked a truck. They're still inside the prison guard right,
And then they took the truck over to the gatehouse.
They took over the gatehouse, taking over guards there, and
then they tried to drive out, but the exit was
blocked by cars, so they climbed over the fence and
they made it free. And this was the largest prison

(24:33):
break in British history. And I will say Britain if
you don't want to take that, l just admit that
it was Ireland and not Britain. And then it wasn't
the large jail break in British history.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well that's an easy out, you really.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, I found the solution. About half of the men
stayed free, some rejoined active duty, and others moved to
Ireland or the US. Basically like they got back to
IRA headquarters and the IRA is like, look, you can
either come back to active duty or we will buy
you like tickets and get you whatever you need to
move to the US or Ireland, and about it was

(25:11):
about half and half what people chose to do. A
lot of the people who moved to Ireland or the
US later got arrested, They got caught, and they had
they were facing an extradition to but then a lot
of them successfully fought that extradition, both in the US
and Ireland. There was a lot of places where like,
now we're not gonna extradite your political prisoners are so
obviously political prisoners. And two of the escapees were never

(25:32):
heard from again. But the heroes of this escape was
that there was a rear guard. When they took all
of the guard's hostage in the cell block, they needed
someone to stay behind to keep the guards from putting
up the calling the alarm to give everyone time to
get out. So a couple people stayed there and kept

(25:53):
the guards hostage, and then once everyone had had enough
time to escape, they went back to their cells. Well,
they basically fell on the proverbial grenade.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
And the thing that happened is after this escape, the
work camps at Her Majesty's Prison Mays were shut down
because like prisoners were no longer like trusted to work. Right,
So the strikers won their fifth demand.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
That's great, that's great to hear. That's yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Don't give us all five of our demands. We're going
to stab and shoot people, don't you do.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, it's what happened when non violence turns.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Violent, yeah, which is when you don't let it be nonviolent.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
And just to briefly wrap up the Irish situation with it,
in twenty twenty three, shin Fane, which is the socialist
political party that grew out of the IRA They are
now the largest political party in Northern Ireland. The UK
slide into right wing politics and out of the EU
helped that happen, right, because Northern Irish people like, wait,

(27:01):
we don't want to leave the fucking EU. We'd rather
join Ireland and stay with the EU, you know. And
of course Star Trek has predicted an Irish unification of
twenty twenty four. So it's just around the corner. Yeah,
fingers crossed. Yeah, but now we're going to go twenty

(27:22):
six hundred miles from Ireland to another country that has
struggled for recognition and freedom because of some decision that
England made.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Fucking England.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, God, the country of Palestine. To draw the connections,
Ireland is trying to recognize Palestine as a state. Both
of the lower houses have passed a motion to recognize Palestine,
but the government, I think that means an executive branch
or whoever makes the decisions after the lower houses. I
don't actually know enough about English Irish politics. They won't

(27:54):
go for it until it's formally acknowledged by the rest
of Europe. So they're ignoring what the majority of Irish
people want, which is to recognize Palestine. They are the
first EU country to condemn Israel's de facto annexation of
Palestinian land. And as we talked about, it's not because
Irish people are like inherently cooler, it's because they have
a lot in fucking common Yeah. Shin Faine, the IRA's

(28:14):
political party essentially, or the political party came out of
the IRA, wants to see the Israeli ambassador remove from
the Republic of Ireland, and John Boyne, the Foreign Affairs
speaker for the party, told Al Jazeero, once the time
has gone for words of condemnation, now is the time
to take decisive action against a lawbreaker that presides over
an apartheid system.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
That's that's the most attractive thing I've ever heard an
Irish person say. I love Ireland.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
It's also just like I don't know, I think more.
I don't think enough people know that, like know just
how much Ireland like it's an advocate for Palestine. I
think the majority of people don't realize like this very
Caucasian place. Yeah, that's like known for other things, is
also pretty fucking badass and like the biggest advocate advocate

(29:07):
for like people that don't have a voice.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, I actually that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
So if you're Irish out.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
There, Yeah, And it's like particularly funny because like Irish
American is like one of the primary white identities that
Americans cling to, but the way that Irish Americans cling
to it is in this weird right wing way. And
I've talked about this before, but there's nothing more depressing
than watching listening to Ira songs on YouTube and seeing
all the comments from right wing US people being like,
that's right, Republicans, you're our guys, and then like all

(29:36):
the Irish people have going to be like, we're socialists.
That's what Irish, That's what Irish Republican means.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
People who know the meaning of different words in different places.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, speaking of words that have a lot of meanings
that are complicated. We're gonna talk about Zionism now. Strap
In Irish leftists used to have more sympathies for Zionism
before nineteen thirty seven because they had sympathies for a
stateless people. But they were not excited. When I say they,

(30:08):
I'm talking about like large groups and governments and stuff.
I'm not trying to say every individual Irish person is
good or bad, right, but they were not excited about
the partition and the creation of an ethno state. If
folks want to learn more about what's going on in Palestine,
we're going to talk a little bit more. But I
really recommend there's this podcast sharene that you might have
heard of that covers a lot about what's going on
in Palestine. It's called it Could Happen Here. And if

(30:31):
people look up any episodes that Sharine has done. It
is one of the best sources that I will It's
where I get a lot of information.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
Don't give you too much credit. There are a lot
of people doing good stuff talking about Palestine, but I
do try to give people the bare minimum of what
they should know because no one else is talking about it,
so I gotta do it. But thank you for that
shout out. I wasn't sure where you were going with that,
to be honest.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
No, No, it's I mean, well, I don't know. I
feel like when I came up into politics, I feel
like talking about what was going on Palestine was like everywhere,
and I feel like that's not as much the case anymore.
And I have complicated ideas about what the reasons for
that might be. Yeah, but it's a shame.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, I think I mean people, not people. But like
the media, this big word like makes it so that
it's too complicated to talk about for the majority of people. Right,
like what you said about earlier, Like it's not about
religion for the processing, Like, it's not just about religion
for for the Irish and English. It's the same thing.
It's not this like ancient religious conflict that it's like unsolvable.

(31:43):
It's actually much more simple than that, and much more
like violent and evil than this complicated. I don't know
it just it's it's all a bunch of words tossed around,
making making people confuse. But yeah, I think a power struck.
Knowing more about Palestine is like, even if something doesn't

(32:04):
affect you, I think it is shameful if you don't
give a shit about people suffering in another part of
the world. I don't think that's an excuse that I'm
willing to accept.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Though, and especially when our tax money is one of
the primary things that fuels exactly. So, I know more
about Jewish history than I know about Palestinian history, and
so some of what I'm going to talk about is
from this perspective, just literally to understand part of what

(32:36):
creates that or part of what's going into that. So
I want to talk about Zionism. I ran this past
one last night. I'm like running all this past one
of my anarchist Jewish friends about how to talk about
this stuff. In the twentieth century, most Jews lived in
the diaspora, which is the spread out community no longer
where it culturally originated from and without a specific homeland.

(32:59):
There's roughly three attitudes that were happening about how to
handle this anti Zionism, leftist Zionism, and right wing Zionism.
Anti Zionism, which was largely leftist, said basically, this culture
that we have built in the diaspora is also beautiful
and it is not to be abandoned, and we have
to fight for our rights here where we are here

(33:20):
being largely Eastern Europe in the east coast of the US,
with Warsaw and New York City as I believe the
two largest population centers for Jews. We talk a little
bit more about this relationship in the Warsaw Ghetto episode
with Miriam Who's my friend who I was wow? I
was trying to talk to about all of this. And
this anti Zionism was largely internationalist and therefore opposed to

(33:43):
anything like nationalism, and this tended to include the anarchists
and many of the communist Jews, which was a huge
percentage of the Jews in both Eastern Europe and New
York City. There's also some right wing or i guess
religiously conservative anti zionism from within Judaism. At this time,
which is basically the idea that Judaism is a spiritual
project and not a political one, and that for some people,

(34:06):
Jewish immigration to Palestine was actually a sin that contradicted
the will of God, having to do with more complicated
stuff that is above my head about like prophecy and such.
Then there's left wing Zionism, which is sometimes conflated with
or is the same thing then diagrammed with labor Zionism,
which is basically like, well, we should go back to
Palestine in mass but not necessarily. For some people it was,

(34:28):
and some people it wasn't. Let's set up a specific
separate state. They were split on that. It was also
very specifically, we don't want Western powers to give us
a state. We want to organize a socialist society of
kaboots communal farms and go from there. In the end,
a lot of the labor Zionists did a lot of
the really bad shit, a lot of the early Israel

(34:50):
bad stuff, like the displacement of seven hundred thousand Palestinian
Arabs during the nineteen forty eight war.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
The Nekva, the catastrophe is what.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
It's yeah, that was largely perpetrated by left wing Zionists,
just to be upfront about that. Yeah, within labor Zionism
you also have what's called cultural Zionism, which Albert Einstein
considered himself a cultural Zionist, which supported the Jewish return
to the homeland, but only in the context of Jewish

(35:20):
Arab cooperation, and it was opposed to the creation of
a Jewish state. Now I'm quoting Einstein with quote borders
an army in a measure of temporal power. And a
lot of the Jewish anarchists who weren't anti Zionists fell
into this category where clearly anarchists don't usually advocate for
the creation of a state. They tended to present what

(35:41):
was called the bi national solution, which is a single
state with Arab and Jewish equality. Today, Israeli's anarchist movement
largely calls for the no state solution, which is just
sort of the like, let's get rid of all the governments.
We're anarchists. Also, a lot of these left of Zionists
show up to lay the groundwork right all the Zionists
talks and Jewish folks began moving to Palestine, only to realize, oh,

(36:05):
this would be really bad. The Communist in particular recognized
this in the nineteen twenties, several showed up ready to
form like socialist parties, and we're like, oh, it's actually
mostly Arabs living here. We like literally didn't know that
because we live in a very strange media sphere. In
the nineteen twenties, it would actually be really shitty and
discriminatory if we set up a Jewish state, even a
communist one. And so those folks became anti Zionists and

(36:27):
worked alongside Arab workers to set up things like the
Palestinian Communist Party. Of course, communism had this wonderful thing
happened where Joseph Stalin came and killed all the people
doing good things within it. My dog doesn't approve of
Joseph Stalin. I'm shocked by this good boy.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
And uh yeah, you've raised him well.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
One of the guys behind this like conversion to anti
Zionism within leftist Sionism, his name was jose Burger Barzali.
He wound up caught in Stalin's purges and sent to Siberia. Right,
that's your reward for being a morally consistent communist in
the nineteen twenties. Then there's right wing Zionism, right wing
zionem Is Zionism is We're going to go back and

(37:17):
get what's ours and fuck everyone else. During the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising, all three factions were present. Is where I
know more about it from right the research I did
for that episode. But until the very end, the leftists
wouldn't throw down with the right wing Zionists because they
fucking hated them, because they were fascists, and they were like,
the only thing that's different between you and the Nazis
is that the Nazis are currently in control. Obviously, the

(37:40):
Jews weren't the only folks who were pondering the impact
of large scale immigration to Palestine. The Arab people who
lived there at the time Palestine was eighty three percent Arab,
eleven percent Christian, and five percent Jewish around the turn
of the century. They were like, this might not go great,
and they were right by Arab, you mean most right.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
I do.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
Actually, now i'm realizing that that I like, I actually,
I'm actually curious. When I was doing this research, a
lot of things would specifically be like Arab and Jewish
as like the way to contrast things rather than Muslim
and I don't like that at all. Okay, that's really
good to know, and I'm.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
I mean, people have different opinions on it. I just
think it furthers this. I mean, part of me does
appreciate it because it kind of equates both being Arab
and actually, no, that's all I want meant to say.
You know how like the word Jewish can be in
both cultural and religious. Yes, I think that's true for
a lot of religions. I think that's true for Christianity

(38:36):
and Islam, you know what I mean. Yeah, but I
think it gets overlooked. But it would be different if
they said Muslim and Jewish and they were equating it
that way. But I think their version of that to
say Arab. But that's assuming that the Christians weren't also Arab.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
I would you know?

Speaker 2 (38:53):
They were all Arab? In my there were just different
religions that all actually got along great before the fucking
British got involved.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
But but yeah, I think that's where people get confused
because before like the the mass like stealing of homes
and the catastrophe and all that stuff, there weren't a
lot of white European Jews in Palestine. You know, Like
I think that's when the racial stuff started changing. In

(39:22):
my opinion, I don't.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Know, no, no, that that's incredibly useful context. As I
was reading it, I was like I went back and
forth about like how I was going to try and
present the stuff, and I just didn't know, you know,
And so I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
No, of course. And I also think it's like some
like a lot of Arabs are white passing, So I
think it's kind of confusing to even like differentiate it sometimes.
But there is a huge difference like in my opinion
of Arab versus like a like a white European X,
Y and Z.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
But yeah, all the Arab states or countries rather like Syria, Lebanon, Palestine,
all the religions co mingled so seamlessly and beautifully, like
in Syria even when I was growing up there, like
like when I was when I would visit as a
teenager or like a young adult or like kid or
whatever the shit, Like since I was like two, my

(40:18):
grandpa would like go on a daily walks. He would
go pray at the mestig, grab some bread from the
Jewish baker, grab some what is so from the Christian guy.
No one fucking gives a shit, you know, until it's
become this land grab and like literal genocide. Like it
didn't have to go that way, is what I'm trying
to say.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, no, that that makes sense to me and attracts
with the bit I've read about it, and I'm kind
of curious. I'm under the impression that some of the
left left Zionists were like, we just want to go
participate in the existing like happy everyone gets along. Mm hmmm,
Palestine thing, and obviously the larger portion of them created

(41:02):
a state, and you know, I.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Don't think it actually is a thing. I think the
way it started, the fact that you've exiled and murdered
and masacred people, if that's how you're gonna start, there
is no peaceful cooperation after that, Like it's so totally
you know, like I think, I think it's kind of
like a pipe dream. Unfortunately, when people kind of go

(41:24):
that route, because even though they have good intentions, it
is really naive and low key stupid. Sorry, sorry, maybe
that's too harsh, but I just don't think it's reasonable
to be like, for example, oh, the Native Americans and
indigenous people and in the Pilgrims they're friends now, Like, no,
that's not how that works, you know, I don't know.

(41:46):
I think it's just as ridiculous as that. But sorry,
I can write about this forever and I apologize.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
No, I mean there's a reason that had you is
that guessed on this episode? Yeah, you know, like I
in this case, I was game specifically about the like
before like the like like turn of the central that's
what you mean.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yes, sorry, sorry, sorry, I got myself but angry.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, yeah, whatever the intentions of the various wings of
its Jewish founders, what Israel became is a settler apartheid
state founded on this genocide and the Knakba.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, I think, okay, sorry, just to go back to
what you were saying, there is now that I know,
the time period or like the pre Israel thing you're
talking about. I don't think people realize that Christianity, Judaism,
and Islam are basically the same religion, just at different
time periods. Like Christianity is the continuation of Judaism, and
Islam is the continuation of both Judaism and Christianity. Like

(42:42):
it's just like extending the timeline. And that's why the
Land of Palestine and the dough month of Rock and
all of that. It's it's sacred. That space is sacred
to all of them. There's a reason for that because
they're all extremely similar and based on the same ideals
of like a one God, religion and all this stuff.
So I think there was a time when it was

(43:06):
completely just cultural and vibrant, and I'm sure there were problems,
like there are everywhere, but I think people don't realize
that now, and they still see Islam as being this
like different thing, and Judaism is different and Christianity is different,
when really they're all the fucking same. Like Alma just
means God, Like that's that's just an Arabic word for God.

(43:26):
It's not a different God. It's the same fucking God.
And Judas and not Judas. Jesus and Moses are both
like really important prophets for Muslims, and I don't think
people know that. I don't know, so I apologize.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
No, I mean, I only learned that Jesus was an
important prophet to Islam as an adult, but I learned
almost nothing about Islam as a kid. And then yeah, like.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Mean, why should you, I don't I don't follow you.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
For that I mean, yeah, like, I'm glad I've taken
the time to learn as an adult, and I would
recommend that other people do too. Yeah, speaking of the
continuation of it, Shinead O'Connor, who died yesterday as we
record this, left the Catholic Church because it was a horrible,
monstrous thing that attacked her, but then still sow it
very hard to believe and wound up at the end

(44:14):
of her life converting to Islam. All right, Yeah, I'm
just sad about it. So, yeah, if you haven't been
keeping track what's going on and w actually before we
talk about hunger strikes in Palestine, we should talk about
stuff things. Here you go and we're back. We're gonna

(44:44):
talk about some Palestinian hunger strikes and we're gonna talk
about it because in the context of apartheid, in displacement
and just disproportionate retribution and just raw oppression, right, Palestinians
are kept in open air prisons and treated worse than
it is easy to imagine the troubles the Irish thing
that was bad, that was a bad time to live

(45:05):
in Ireland. My family in Ireland didn't like to talk
about them, and wish that they could just not talk
about politics. Civilians were killed, lots of civilians. Killing civilians
is a moral. Car bombs and crowded places is a moral.
It's bad. Many freedom fighters lose their legitimacy in my
eyes when they do shit like that. But we can
see why they did it, we can see like and

(45:27):
we can support an overall cause and some of their
actions without necessarily supporting all of the actions that all
individuals take, and without drawing a false moral equivalence between
the violence of a colonial authority state and the violence
of the people resisting it. As my irant, I had
the advantage I had to write my rent down.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
No, that was very eloquent. I liked it. But yeah,
it's like a similar thing of like, what do you say,
like a nail bomb versus like rocks, It's literally the
same thing.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
It's like it's yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Mean Palestine is a little very clear or just because
like they don't have any kind of army versus the
most powerful army in the world. So that's like a
little bit silly to even try. But yeah, don't I
know what you mean?

Speaker 1 (46:08):
No, totally, So, yeah, there's an order of magnitude difference
in the violence that is put upon a Palestinian people
and that they put back. While I was writing this script,
I saw footage of the occupation pouring cement into a
spring like a to cement it up so that people

(46:28):
couldn't grow food and have access to water, which is
actually a war crime, which doesn't matter, because yeah, power
is what matters to people.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
This is okay, Sorry, my last little tangent, Like I
actually can't promise that I might do this again. What
really confounds me, I guess about a certain brand of
Zionism where it's about returning to the homeland and loving
the homeland and that's where the the beauty will be

(47:01):
and all everyone will be united. What I don't understand
is like, if you gave a shit about the land youuron,
you wouldn't actively destroy it. You wouldn't like, there's the
whole thing I did an episode about, or yeah, exactly,
like I had an episode about olive trees and Palestine
like a couple months ago, and literally there's a whole
system of like uprooting olive trees and destroying farms and

(47:24):
all of these things that really just make you realize
it's not about this beautiful notion of X, Y and Z.
It's literally about destroying something that's not yours and pretending
that it is after that. And I think that is
just like one of my biggest arguments in face of that,
like retort of like this is our beautiful place to live, Like, no,

(47:48):
you're cementing springs and rooting out olive trees where they're
like meant to grow. That makes no sense to me.
So that's always really just like really bewildered me, to
be honest, I don't know what the defenses for that
when it comes to the land of Palestine. I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Power is a hell of a drug. Yeah, it's like
there's a reason that the one ring must be cast
into the fires of Mount doom.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Wasn't sure I was going to get in a lot
of the rings reference in this episode, but I did.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
It's impressive.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
It's impressive. So a lot of Palestinian folks hunger strike,
specifically Palestinian prisoners, specifically Palestinian prisoners who are held Oh
it's going to be the name of it's in my script,
but I forget much like how the Irish were allowed
to be held without any charges or trial, and Israel

(48:45):
has decided that it is legal for them to hold
people on secret evidence that no one ever sees, and
hold people without charges and without trial just the same
the there's no rule of law, you know, there's no
due process of law.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
And now it's on video everywhere, Like they just arrest
people on the street, like boys usually, yeah, like not
even a teenage boy. Just get sent to jail and
are there for years.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
So in twenty seventeen, on Palestinian Prisoner's Day, which is
April seventeenth, fifteen hundred Palestinian political prisoners started a hunger
strike to improve prison conditions, and they taking only salt water.
And you know what their demands were. It wasn't free Palestine,
although that is a valid and desirable thing, but it's
not the kind of thing you win with hunger strikes.
They didn't even have the five demands of our ira folks.

(49:35):
They wanted a public telephone so they could talk to
their families. They wanted bi monthly family visits. They wanted
to be able to take photos with their families. They
wanted air conditioning, not a famously cold placed Palestine. They
also wanted the end of imprisonment without trial. It was
called administrative detention, where people can be held on secret

(49:58):
evidence for years. It's still exists in Israel. Currently there's
more than a thousand Palestinians being held without charges or evidence.
Everyone knows Guantanamo Bay is bad right because it had
no due process of law. Guantanamo Bay currently holds thirty
one prisoners. Hunger strikes in Palestine have been going on
for decades. Here's some of them. In nineteen sixty nine,

(50:20):
prisoners struck for enough food and a repeal on the
ban of writing letters and no more being forced to
call the guards sir. Those were their demands. It was
broken by the strikers being thrown in solitary confinement, which
is of course very normal to an American audience, but
it shouldn't because it is absolutely classified as torture under
that above mentioned useless international law. Nearby the same year,

(50:44):
some strikers won stationary like that is the level of
rights that they're fighting for. In nineteen seventy, some women
prisoners fought for let us have sanitary products that the
Red Cross is trying to give us. They had to
starve themselves in order to say, please, let the red
fucking Cross, give us some goddamn sanitary products.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I'm kind of ang sorry, I'm just kidding angry.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
No, I'm getting angrier too. In nineteen seventy a political
prisoner named Abdul Kader abu Altham was murdered by guards.
He was hunger striking for stationary and for prisoners to
be able to get closed from their family. When guards
force fed him, they put a tube into his lungs
instead of his stomach. He will not be the last

(51:27):
person killed by this negligence and or malice. And since
this is the only place I've ever read about this happening,
I think it's fucking malice. But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yeah, I mean, you know how I feel.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Yeah. Nineteen seventy six, they were striking for stationary and
to replace plastic mattresses with actual mattresses. The prison said, yes,
they stopped striking the prisoner. The prison was like, no,
just kidding, fuck you. In nineteen eighty yeah. In nineteen
eighty two, more prisoners, Rasim Halloway and Ali Jafari, were

(52:01):
murdered by force feeding, once again just into the lungs.
Their strike wins and the conditions are improved in nineteen
eighty four, a thirteen day strike by eight hundred prisoners
won ventilation, they won better food, radio, TV, and clothes
is one of the more successful ones. And nineteen eighty seven,
three thousand prisoners go on strike for twenty days. They

(52:22):
don't win. And if you're a christ like.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
Three three thousand prisoners, what one exists to you in
these persons? Two is not all of them, you know,
and three go on a hunger strike like that is
just you know.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
That's actually the next part. The next thing I wrote
in my spae no no no, I wrote, Look, I'm
just going to say it. If your country of ten
million people has three thousand political prisoners, that's too many
and you're doing something bad.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Yeah that yes, thank you, margaret. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Or seven thousand prisoners went on strike in nineteen ninety two,
and which is I don't know if this is to
be fair or not. This is more than there are
currently Palestinian political prisoners. But seven thousand prisoners went on
strike in nineteen ninety two, and they want a decent amount.
They shut down an isolation unit, they stopped strip searches.

(53:15):
Prisoners were allowed to cook their own meals, and they
got more family visitation, but four years later in two thousand,
they're striking again for some of the same shit, like
let us have access to phones, stop putting people in solitary.
In two thousand and four, four thousand prisoners strike for
phones and shit like that again, not like cell phones
to hang out on the internet all day, but like, literally,
can we have a fucking payphone so we can talk

(53:37):
to our families the prisons. Instead of giving the four
thousand prisoners anything, they deny them books and newspapers and
cigarettes and salt and family visits. No salt in the desert.
There's more than that. There's more hunger strikes than that,
because they get colonial promises which are nothing. It's true

(54:00):
the US promises shit to indigenous people. It's true when
England promises shit to the Irish people, and it's true
when Israel promises shit to the Palestinian people. Have you
ever heard of Tristan Anderson. He's an American activist.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Sounds familiar, but please tell me more.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
I knew him. I'm using the past tense only because
I haven't talked to him in a long time, not
because he's dead. He's an American activist, I haven't seen
him in years. I haven't seen him since before what
happens here. In two thousand and nine, he was working
with the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank and
he was standing next to his Jewish partner when an

(54:36):
Israeli soldier shot a baton round at his face, even
though he was observing the protests at a distance. And
this was a round intended to be fired from around
four hundred meters at an arc and not very specifically,
not designed to be shot at close range or directly
at people. It was shot at sixty meters directly, and
it shattered his skull. Part of his brain had to

(54:59):
be removed, and he's been paralyzed and mentally disabled and
in need of round the clock care ever since. The
Israeli government didn't file any charges against the soldiers who
shot him. His family sued the State of Israel. His partner,
Gabby Silverman, came to support him and cared for him
during the trial. From an article on this trial the

(55:22):
civil Trial published by the IMMC quote. As soon as
the court hearing ended, Silverman, who is Jewish, received a
formal order that she must leave the State of Israel
within this next seven days. The reasons stated on the
paperwork included insufficient proof that there was a lawsuit going
on and insufficient proof that she was a Jew. Well,

(55:45):
this isn't The Times of Israel had actually erased Silverman's
jewishness before they had a headline quote pro Palestinian activists
assault Jewish woman in Oakland because Gabby Silverman and other
people through a rally for Tristan Right, and a Zionist

(56:06):
came to the rally for Silverman's maimed partner and wrote
Zionist slogans on the ground in chalk. So Silverman and
others ran the Zionist out. So, according to the Times
of Israel, the Zionist gets to be called a Jewish woman.
But Silverman is just a pro Palestinian activist because Israel

(56:27):
is a home for homeland for all Jews except for
the ones who support Palestine.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Also, just the just a harp on this like not
enough proof thing. Literally, like nine people that are like, hey,
I'm Jewish can go on birthright, Yeah you know what
I mean. Like it's so fucking easy for a lot
of like Jewish people in no matter if it's cultural
or whatever, to go on fucking birthright. It's not even anyway.

(56:58):
I mean, this is just clearly just yeah backwards and
not what they say it is.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
But yeah, yeah, no, totally like yeah, if she had
shown it wanted to be like, hey, I anyway, whatever, Okay.
A month after Tristan was shot, a thirty year old
Palestinian man named Bessim Abu Rame was killed by a
soldier who shot a tear gas canister into his chest
at a short range. In just the first half of
this year, Israel has killed one hundred and twelve Palestinians.

(57:24):
Palestine only has five million people total. This is like
if some foreign country killed seven four hundred Americans in
the first half of this year.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
I appreciate you making that comparison, because year after year
they kill hundreds of people and I don't know, the
world just goes on obviously, Yeah, but I don't know.
And the things you're mentioning, it's it's not like an
isolated occurrence to like fire someone at close range or
like yeah literally shoot like a sniper shooting a reporter

(57:57):
in the head. Yeah, that has press tracket on or whatever.
I think it's completely it's just vile. Yeah, it's vile
and normalized And I always plug this movie, and even
though it's been a while since it's come out, I
think it's a good example of just like how just
what's the word I'm looking for? Like vile is not

(58:19):
the the like evil enough to describe it. But Gaza
Fights for Freedom is a film by activist Abby Martin
and it's shot by cinematographers in Gaza or just like
people that have cameras in Gaza, and like they put
the footas together and you see IDF soldiers do heinous

(58:40):
things like like it's like they're playing a video game,
Like they shoot at someone and they're like, oh, I
got them, Like yeah, they're like cheering and their whatever,
and they're they're children, Like it's a lot of them
are like the majority Palestinians at least in Gaza are children. Yeah,
Like it's they're like below the age of like eighteen
or something. So as we're talking talking about the stuff
and you're hearing like they fired at your dad at

(59:04):
close range or whatever. These are not icoate ad incident
of anything. They're just like so normalized and unpunished that
they just continue to happen totally, and it it just
makes me so furious because I don't know, I'm someone
I have a really hard time reading about Middle Eastern

(59:24):
news personally like it used to, like I just especially
after like the Syrian civil I didn't want to call
it a civil war. It's like a fucking massacre. But
it's like seeing photos of like children like that look
like my cousins are like me. Not that they have
to look like me, but it just like really fucked
me up. Yeah, and it should fuck everyone up, is

(59:45):
my thing. I would be fucked up just point blank
with any kind like you know what I mean, Like
it's not.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Yeah, you weren't like, oh whatever. I don't care about
the Irish people when I was telling the Irish part
of the story, yeah, like yeah, it's humans.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
But I think similar to like I think the vast
majority of the world is accustomed to seeing certain types
of people be killed on camera or have violence done
against them, or the ways bring them on their dead
bodies on shore, whatever it is. There, there's just like
people of color, like specifically I'm talking about like black

(01:00:19):
Americans and like Arabs and like anyone else that's like
marginalized and like darker skinned. We're just so used to
seeing them suffer, and it makes me so mad because
it's the way it's normalized is just so evil. I
don't know, there's there's no I don't have the vocabulary
to actually explain just how angry I am. But I

(01:00:41):
don't know, I don't know. I'm also say I'm gonna cry.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
No, I'm I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
Yeah, just makes me mad. Everything makes me mad. And
Israel is the fucking just the stupidest excuse for or
I don't know, any kind of quote unquote democracy like
or whatever they want to call it. It's just like this,
just like our police, like they're all held accountable for anything,

(01:01:12):
and they're not gonna stop until someone does something, and
they probably won't. And so it's just like you have
these Palestinians that like literally are like you don't have
PTSD is something that like, oh, it can happen to
you sometimes if like you are taken out of the
context that you gave you that PTSD. They did a
study and I'm misquoting it probably, but like the vast

(01:01:35):
majority of Palestinian children are stuck in the state of
PTSD because they're just used to the terror and yeah
and violence that they have always known. And will only
probably ever know and in their lifetime. And that makes
me really fucking upset, because yeah, because it just should
and whatever. Okay, I'm done. I'm really sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
No, I literally why. I'm glad you're the guest.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
I'm not sweaty now me and I'm also sweaty because
it's hot, that's the only reason. But I'm just angry
and sweaty, and it's really easy for me to feel helpless.
I think it's probably the same for a lot of people.
It's like, well, what can we do? And I think
like you talking about it is making a difference, Like
me having episodes that I could happen here is helping

(01:02:24):
people be aware just how not okay it is or
just how the media has presented it to be in
a different way. I think that is a great starting point.
And with time, over these like decades, I guess, or
even just like the past like ten years, it has
become more acceptable to vocally support Palestine. It hasn't become
like great, but it's become more acceptable to even like

(01:02:46):
broach that subject when it comes to like celebrities and stuff.
And I think that's a little baby step that makes
me hopeful and we're so off topic now, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I'm just mad. I mean, I think about, Okay, I
think about how it was eight hundred or nine hundred
years after the first time that England colonized Ireland, before
Ireland won something like independence, and Ireland is still fighting
for independence, right, coming on a thousand years into colonization.

(01:03:19):
And it gives me hope for the indigenous communities of
North America who are also living in a settler state.
The United States is a settler state. It gives me
hope that decolonization is possible. And I think thinking about

(01:03:40):
it's like they want to normalize stuff, and denormalizing it,
I think is so important. And I think that what happens, yeah,
what happens to the Palestinian people is normalized, and we
need to stop that, you know, and like not to

(01:04:02):
be like, oh, don't worry another eight hundred years. No, no, no,
I know what you're saying, but like, but it is
a it isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
A sliver of hope. No, you're right, it's it's yeah.
I think the last thing I'll say before you continue,
and I will let you continue, I swear, but we
talk about shame, right and how hunger strikes are supposed
to will the captors or the the oppressors into feeling
so shameful that they change what they're doing. I think,

(01:04:31):
especially now with all the videos and cameras and iPhone
footage and everything else that's accessible that like actually portray
the IDF doing disgusting things, they don't have any shame.
They're past that. I really think there are some are,
So go ahead, sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
I feel shame. No, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm totally interrupting you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
No, no, no, I was kind of just sorry to ramble.
I think there's there're an example of a body that
has held so has been not held accountable at all
to the point where like shame is not even even
crosses their mind. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
No, totally, But and I think that it's like it's
less that the person will feel shame and more that
they will be shamed, right, yes, yeah. And actually, to
bring it back to the last example, the last hunger
striker I'm gona talk about is actually the reason I
did this whole fucking Okay, yeah, week's episode, and it's

(01:05:28):
going to come back to this. I apologize, No, no,
I don't. There's a man named a Kadira Non and
he was a militant Palestinian activist. He was born in
the West Bank, where he owned a bakery and a
produce store. In the early two thousands, he served as
the spokesperson for a group called the Palestinian Islamic Jihad

(01:05:49):
the PIJ. This is one of the most militant Palestinian
liberal liberation organizations, and so he's conflated with them for
some good reason and some other reasons we're going to
talk about that are not good. So I'll talk about
them really quickly, and if you have more context on them,
please inform me. But Palestinian Islamic Jahad is fighting not

(01:06:10):
for a two state solution, but for the return of
Palestine and the end of the State of Israel to
how it was before nineteen forty eight. Quote one of
their founders quote, I will never under any conditions except
the existence of the State of Israel. I have no
problem living with Jewish people. We have lived together in
peace for centuries. However, the PIJ uses suicide bombs against

(01:06:32):
civilians as part of their tactics to achieve that if
there's an organization in Palestine that might earn the label terrorist.
It is likely the PIJ. That is my impression from
my reading of this. Kadir Adnan left the PIJ, at
least according to his wife, and this is not contradicted
successfully anywhere that I've seen. He left in two thousand

(01:06:53):
and seven, so sixteen years ago. He was arrested again
and again without charges or trial for his affiliation with
the PIJ. One thing about arresting people without charges or evidence.
It sure makes it hard to prove to the world
that your arrests are justified, since your whole thing is
that you don't bother justifying it. So Israel's like, oh,

(01:07:14):
he arrest him because with the PIJ, they do not
present evidence that he was part of the PIJ, post
his choosing to leave it around two thousand and seven.
He was never charged with any attacks by Israel, and
he was a member of the Palestinian Reconciliation Committee. Israel
never bothered trying to find out if he'd done anything illegal.

(01:07:35):
They would just arrest him again and again. At the
start of twenty twenty three, he was on his twelfth
arrest by Israel and his fifth hunger strike. His longest
had been in twenty fifteen, when he was protesting his
evidence less arrest, and that time his strike won him
his freedom and an incredible amount of international attention from
human rights groups. And so this is that kind of

(01:07:57):
like Israel didn't feel any shame about this. They just
wanted a fucking jail, right, But enough people were able
to be like, what are you doing? And actually a
lot of it. One of the articles I read basically
was like Israel was afraid he'd become a Gandhi. Right,
Israel was afraid he would become like the center of
a I mean, the center of a non violence resistant

(01:08:21):
movement that gains power and infendance. Like that's what they
were afraid of. And so he won his freedom, but
he continued to get arrested and continued to hunger strike
over and over again because they just like see him
and they'd be like, aha, they're come here, and you're
fucking under arrest, you know. In February of this year,
he was picked up again. He al most immediately started

(01:08:42):
a hunger strike. He went without food for eighty seven days,
and on May second, twenty twenty three, he died. He
was forty five years old and he was a father
of nine. His wife Ronda agh Non, I pronounced that wrong.
I'm sorry. Ronda Non begged military not to launch any
attacks in his name that would go against his spirit

(01:09:03):
of non violent struggle. His death was met with a
general strike in Palestine, again nice reminiscent of what happened
during Bloody Sunday in Ireland as well. It was also
met by munitions fired towards Israel. I believe it was
like two rocket strikes and a mortar strike. This wounded
three construction workers. Those rocket attacks, which were not nice,

(01:09:27):
killed no one, and they were met with fighter jets
bombing Gaza, killing thirteen people. And I think three wounded
for thirteen dead is about the ratio. To understand the
scale of violence between these two organizations. Right, most Western media,
like literally, until I got deeper into it, every single
article I read just referred to him as affiliated with

(01:09:50):
the PIJ because he was the spokesperson for them sixteen
years ago. And yeah, a reporter named Muhammad al Kik
was held in twenty fifteen without trial or charges, and
he hunger strike for ninety four days to gain his release.
I think he lasted ninet four days because I think
he was saying glucose water. I had this moment where

(01:10:12):
I was like, wait, what, I've never read any anyway,
only to be arrested once more in twenty seventeen. He
is alive right now, he's survived. He was accused of
working for Hamas, which not trying to specifically go to
bat for Hamas. They're just a political party. Yeah, they
were the majority. They were in charge for a long time.

(01:10:33):
I think they're not currently in charge. I think Fatah's
in charge right now. But so they accused him of
being affiliated with the majority party of Palestinian politics. They
didn't bother bringing any evidence against him that he was
related to them. But Israel doesn't bother with legal proceedings,

(01:10:54):
and the world is silent on Palestine. Western progressive are
afraid it's too messy. Freedom fighters aren't always like cool
socialists in Palestine. Although if you want, there's an Israeli
group Anarchists against the Wall, that takes direct actions support
a Palestinian struggle. So you just listen to the anarchists
in that area, listen to what they have to say.
Just support Palestine being opposed to Israeli's apartheid state is

(01:11:18):
not anti Semitism. The people who claim that it is
are trying to cover crimes against humanity. You don't have
to support the actions of every rebel in order to
support the underlying cause. And although plenty of people use
their support, plenty of people do use their support of
Palestine to mask anti Semitism. That is an actual thing,
that is an actual problem, and those people's anti semitism

(01:11:40):
should be opposed. They are distinct things. You can be
against the IRA's love for car bombs and desire United Ireland.
You can be against suicide bombings and support Palestinian independence.
It's not that hard to be ethically consistent. Oppression is bad.
Settler states are generally bad. Targeting civilians bad. There you go, right,

(01:12:02):
People whose backs are against the wall will look for
whatever weapons are available. Sometimes those weapons are hunger strikes.
Sometimes people starve to death on the king's threshold, not
to change the king's mind, but to curse his memory.
And please don't go watering down this tactic by like
deciding your hunger striking for the end of capitalism or something.

(01:12:23):
Hunger strikes are specific tools used by people in specific situations. Thanks,
that's my end rant.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
That was worded really well. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
Yeah, yeah, I think I was thinking about, well, you
don't need anything for a hunger strike, I think is
what is important to remember. Like when a prisoner has
no other recourse and literally nothing else to protest with
but their body, that's when that comes in. I think,
because like this is my last attempt to I don't know.

(01:13:00):
I think it's actually a really scary, sad thing to
have to come to that point, and that just shows
you how how much that cause is important and necessary.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
You know what.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
I mean that I could push someone to that place,
and I think it's it's it's what you said was
really important about you don't have to support every rebel
to support the underlying cause. I think it's really important
to remember. I think remembering that anti Zionism is not
anti Semitism. It's really important to remember. And yeah, I

(01:13:37):
don't know, this was a I hope this was ago.
He's an episode minus my my tangents. But I think
all of my tangents are just me trying to to
relay that what's happening in Palestine is not okay. I
personally don't even like to call it Israel. Maybe that

(01:13:58):
is like a hot take. I don't know if I care.
It's Palestine, wilwas be Palestine, and I think no one
is not okay and making sure everyone else knows it's
not okay. I think it's the bare minimum that anyone
should do, and regardless of what you think, there should

(01:14:18):
be no excuse or justification for I know this doesn't
mean anything, but like all the crimes against humanity and
like literal ethnic cleansing and genocide and massacres that have
and I don't think there's anything that can justify that,
and there shouldn't be in anyone's mind if there is,
that sounds like a you problem, examply yourself. I don't know,

(01:14:40):
go to therapy, but you know what I mean. I
appreciate you doing this episode and having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Yeah, thanks, thanks for being on. I've wanted to talk
about some of these issues for a long time, and
I haven't. I mean, honestly, I've been nervous to it
right because I'm like, because one, I want to do
it right, and also because it's a thing that like,
I mean, I remember when I was first getting into politics,
you know, as nineteen or something, and I believed what

(01:15:07):
I had been told which was, oh, it's messy, You're like, oh,
both sides, I don't know, you know, was like what
I had grown up with, and meeting people who were
able to like sit me down and be like, it's
not a samey, samey. You know, there are things that
both sides are doing are bad and they don't compare,

(01:15:28):
and comparing them serves a specific narrative, and I really
appreciate the people who took the time to talk to
me about that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
Yeah, there's a depressor and the oppressed. At the end
of the day, there's nothing but those can never.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Be equated in my opinion. So yeah, but yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Hopefully this was educational for people, and I appreciate that
you want to talk about it. I mean, I understand
that it's nerve wracking because it's it is for me
too every time I talk about it. Not every time,
but there's always backlash when I criticize I and as
something particular or the state of Israel. Already think I
do have this bit I used to do, not recently
on Twitter, but I used to just like make fun
of the IDF because I would quote tweet them and

(01:16:07):
just like make fun of them. And that was really
fun for me. But I got that. I got yeah,
just like they have the dumbest, most like lying tweets
of like this person and this Palestinian kid is shaking
the hands of an IDF soldier and I'm like, that's no.
Uh so every once in a while I would do that.

(01:16:27):
But I actually don't have an end to the sentence.
I don't even know how it started. But I appreciate you,
and I will stop talking now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
All right, well, but now I'm about to ask you
a question.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Oh no, okay, where.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Can people find you? Oh hear more of your hot
takes or podcast stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
Maybe this will motivate me to go drag the IDF
Twitter again. But my Twitter is a Shiro Hero sixty
sixty six and my Instagram is shiro Hero. Yeah, fuck
the IDF and fuck Israel and all the good stuff.
I think there are plenty of resources and videos in
particular that you can watch if you do want to
learn more about what the IDEF is doing, or like

(01:17:09):
how exactly like like western like American and European settlers
literally just like take a Palestinian families home and that
they're just like from fucking New York or some shit
and they have the ability to do that versus like
I have palaestin your friends that their families literally cannot
go back there. And I think as you learn more

(01:17:30):
about Palestine, if you choose to which I encourage you
to do, you'll realize just how deep and it's insidious
it is. And maybe that'll make you angry enough like
it does to me, to just like not shut up
about it. Uh. So that's where you can find me,
and I will be motivated now to go drag the IDF.

(01:17:51):
So stay tuned for that excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Uh. If you want to argue with me about my day,
I'll be at the Anarchist Book Fair in Asheville, North Carolina,
and I won't engage because I don't want to argue
about it. I actually really dislike arguing about politics with
people because usually we don't change each other's minds. Yeah, yeah,
that makes sense, but it is From August eleventh, thirteenth,

(01:18:17):
I want to say, you'd think i'd know. In Asheville,
North Carolina, I will be presenting a lecture called a
Halfway Concise History of Anarchism. I will be playing as
Nomadic war machine. If you want to hear my band
Nomadic war Machine. It's Nomadicwarmachine dot bandcamp dot com. And
if you want to hear these episodes where instead of

(01:18:41):
cutting to ads, it's just weird, awkward ad transitions and
then us immediately coming back, it's like the best of
both worlds. It's Cooler Zone Media and you can subscribe
to it on Apple Podcasts and eventually you'll be able
to subscribe to it on Android. See you next week.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.