The Jewish Story: Stories of Blood and Fire

we all want to forget something there's a Kurosawa so we tell stories it's easier that way now I'm not looking to forget I actually want to remember but as everybody knows there's a very strange dynamic between the two I'm Rob Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story episode 30 stories of blood and fire as a graduate school one of the best courses I took was project evaluation and there's no time or even need to go into exactly why I love the class though I would encourage anyone listening to spend some time delving into the power of systems thinking if you ever get a chance but for now the most memorable event of the course was right at the beginning when a professor sat us down in one of the university's lecture halls and showed us Akira Kurosawa's classic film Rashomon if you haven't seen it it is a must a classic of 1950 cinema and by the way the film that brought Kurosawa onto the international scene it's the story of a brutal crime hardly unique in the history of cinema but the way in which he tells the story changed the way in which moviegoers see the world to this very day the event is presented through the eyes of four different people the perpetrator the two victims and a witness and it's more than a thriller it's actually an exploration of the clash between narrative and truth they actually clash is the wrong word the film asserts that the search for objective truth as a measure of human morality is a fool's quest because even the most honest and well-intentioned person can't separate their inner experience from what we like to call reality unless I give you the impression that Rosh Hashanah is just another one of these depressing postmodern films where good and evil are presented as equivalent and the very notion of morality called into question you should go watch it yourself but the reason I'm bringing it up now is that my professor considered the film required viewing before he could teach a class on project evaluation no one goes into a project without a vested interest even if it's simply financial and you one otherwise because people aren't interested in a project don't tend to make it happen and that very interest essentially amounts to a story Who am I and why am i doing what I'm doing when it comes to evaluating a project I have to make it clear what's the narrow reality of interest that brings me to the table or you or whomever else I'm speaking to Who am I and why am i evaluating this and then I have to map the stories the whole constellation of interests that go into making the project happen and whether my standards of evaluation are financial environmental political or moral I'll run up against the problem that each party can only tell you their story my job as the evaluator is to weave them into a picture in which all interests can agree that it's depicting what's happening so we're at a turning point in the Zionist project and I've been striving in this era to tell a story which lays the foundations they can hold multiple perspectives not out of some need to placate opposing opinions but rather from a desire to come to some sense of a wholeness in the Jewish story and things are getting messy fast in the last couple of episodes we witnessed the symptoms of what I like to call narrative divergence within the Zionist movement been grin and Jabotinsky labor Zionism revisionist Zionism they differ on so many things we first saw their struggle really around the legacy of yours of trumple door and the battle tell high is the plough of the primary tool of Jewish national aspiration or the gun the battle over the Battle of Tel high was a struggle for the ownership of a national myth a powerful tool to be sure and not one to be conceited lightly but in the last episode we witnessed the beginnings of the struggle for national leadership if the struggle between ben-gurion and Jabotinsky was just a question of me bellows who gets to be in charge then it wouldn't even be worth remembering such things are hardly unique after all for all his passion Shepperton ski is going to die in 1940 and ben-gurion will be the undisputed leader of the new state for many years to come there's no question who won that contest but their struggle was actually quite a bit more it was one of divergent visions of what it means to be on the arts so of people in its land and those visions in turn rested in a large way on the fault lines that split Western culture of their day the typography on which the personal and national conflict between the labor rights and the revisionists played out was one of competing narratives stories about how the best balance values which can help guide human development to a better personal national and human expression the socialist perspective that underlay ben-gurion politics envisioned the world whose development was guided with the quest for equality it's true that the path to equality would demand not only tremendous sacrifice but also perhaps a phase of unequal centralized distribution but in the long run the worker's paradise would be so productive that marks famous dictum would finally become possible from each according to his ability to each according to his needs and of course the workers of Zion may have been Zionists but there were also members of the international socialist movement national liberation was a stepping stone to world economic revolution on the other hand Jabotinsky political vision emphasized freedom every man a king as his trademark saying goes therefore the revisionists leaned far more toward a free market than their socialist brothers and we see today how clearly unfettered capitalism comes at the cost of inequality the challenge to the idea of Liberty when my freedom comes at the cost of somebody else's has not yet been adequately addressed not only that it's noteworthy that Jabotinsky and the revisionists demanded absolute loyalty willingness or self-sacrifice in pursuit of their goals things that might appear to contradict his vision of freedom and that's where his charismatic appeal managed to create thousands of loyalists who would willingly give up a measure of their personal freedom for the goal of national liberation and last but certainly not least Jabotinsky was a happy particular list he believed wholly and the importance of national existence wish well for every individual citizen within the stadiumvision provided that individual accepted the jewish national project so the introduced narrative has already begun to diverge around the tensions between the particularly universal militancy and restraint equality and freedom and just when you thought that was bad enough we have to add the Arab narrative into the mix now this is the Jewish story and my belief is that by following the conflicting narratives and subsequent breakdowns within um Israel I can best serve the goals of healing justice and peace nevertheless we can no longer tell that story without at least considering how our external antagonists soon to be the Arab people's see the situation and you know you might ask why I never spoke about how the Romans felt during the great revolt or how the Greeks saw the Hanukkah story and I would tell you that's a very good question the short answer is as the Greeks and Romans are gone we're still living chicken gel with the Arabs the particular issue in this episode around which the Jewish and Arab narratives begin to diverge is violence and we're talking about way more than the question of who started it you know as a parent I can tell you that asking who started the fight is always a risky business even if you are an eyewitness to the events in question too many studies have shown that you can't erase your personal perspective from your experience what you're seeing and of course the questions of justice which are triggered by who threw the first punch this morning can't be divorced from the fight last night or from underlying relationship issues in the household so we're going to visit some of the first national clashes between Zionist Jews and Palestinian Arabs in this episode and we'll also get a bit of a taste of what our media today loves to call the cycle of violence all the elements will be there the rinse and repeat sequence of striking counter-strike international condemnation the desire on the part of the official organs of justice frequency and of course the dispute amongst Jews whether force or restraint is the real measure of power if you read the news this should all sound familiar something else this episode is going to induce is the third party element in this so-called cycle of violence a piece that's often downplayed or even downright missed this is more than a chapter about violence between Jews and Arabs the British own an increasingly bigger part of the plot structure in this narrative and as does the international community in today's story of violence I mean it's all well and good for the United States be an advocate for peace but they are selling arms to every side of this story so we're gonna wade into some of the origins of Arab Jewish violence today despite my trepidations and I'm warn you now this story is going to get harder as we go along it'll get harder for me to tell as the narratives not only begin to diverge but compete and it will get harder for you to listen as elements within the story begin to challenge your own narrative sometimes maybe even your core identity if we're just a question of the Jewish perspective versus the ERR perspective we would struggle but I do my best but then we have to add in the British or international angle that makes it even worse but the real lens which I hope that this stage of the Jewish story can offer is the divergence in the internal Jewish narrative and as we'll see in the long run this might be the biggest challenge to tell you a unified story because whether it's the universal versus the particular the gun versus the plough equality versus freedom we have a growing split within the Zionist movement which is going to color how we engage the Arabs of the Palestine province from day one and how we relate to Britain and other foreign powers that have played their role in the emergence of a language of violence that is sadly one of the primary ways we speak to each other in our day and just to make matters worse if you've been listening to the Jewish story since season one you have a sense of the momentum behind the quest of um Israel to return home Zionism isn't some simple 19th century European nationalism despite everything that it takes from that source there's a much bigger story coming to fruition here so this is our challenge for today something small how do I begin to tell a story which is honest in the sense of presenting multiple perspective as well as true in the sense that the Torah uses the word of moving the world toward a more whole expression of God's will in creation all I ask is that you prepare yourselves to be both challenged and affirmed and by the way that you send me your challenges and affirmations Rob Mike Boyer at gmail.com you can always reach me there your thoughts your feedback your challenges your affirmations are always welcome in God willing you can help me keep telling a story that the whole world can hear when the Ottoman Empire ruled the land of Israel every spring on the Friday before Good Friday thousands of Muslims would gather in Jerusalem for their annual pilgrimage to the Nabi Musa shrine on the way down to Jericho not far from where I live today according to tradition and some archaeologists this shrine was first built in the time of Saladin right the great Kurd defeater of the Crusaders to mark the spot from which is possible to see mountain of Voe where the Torah tells us that Moshe himself was buried now over the centuries despite had become confused with Moses burial place itself and marked by successive waves of building and neglect in the early 19th century the Ottomans renovated the dilapidated shrine and they instituted a three-day festival hoping to give their Muslim subjects a reason to celebrate while the Christians of Jerusalem were marking the Orthodox day of Easter and perhaps not incidentally to get them out of town as the chroniclers of that time record that the tribes had a tendency to arrive from Jerusalem with banners and heavily armed for the occasion and the Turks were always careful to deploy overwhelming force to keep order well apparently the British rulers who took over the Palestine mandate didn't get the memo about potential religious violence because only a hundred or so police were assigned to keep the peace in the spring of 1920 and it may not have been obvious to the British but it was clear to the Zionist leadership that spring that violence was in the air the Muslim Christian Association had been founded already by Java's mayor a year before with the express aim of rallying the Arabs against the Balfour Declaration and they immediately commands who publish anti-jewish incitement and secretly to gather arms in the February of 1920 in a first show of force anti Zionist demonstrations were conducted throughout the Palestine mandate now the British military administration was committed to the idea of free expression and democracy they were after all Westerners and therefore they allowed the demonstrations to proceed unfortunately in a classic case of cultural miscommunication there permissiveness was perceived as approval and for the first time the cry of the government is with us was heard in the streets and of course the battle of Tel hiya was on the 1st of March only a few days later all these elements were enough to induce Haim Weitzman and the rest of the official Zionist leadership to warn the military governor Ronald stores that there was a pogrom in the making and to plead with the British to come out and force maybe stores and general Allenby the conquer of Jerusalem thought that the memory of the British victory was fresh enough that a simple warning from the ruling powers would be enough to keep order but unfortunately they were wrong maybe they underestimated British prestige or perhaps they didn't appreciate that a new nationalist element had arisen amongst the local Arab tribes really since the Frank of Syrian war the preceding months on April 4th 1920 tens of thousands of Muslims gathered within the walls the old city of Jerusalem ready for the festival and as they waited two voices rang out to them one was the mayor of Jerusalem Musa ah who say me and he addressed them from the balcony of the Municipal Building a government functionary the other was his nephew Amin al-husseini his choice of platform was the gallery of the Jerusalem Arab Club a nationalist location for a person who'd become a religious figure Amin al-husseini soon to be Haj Amin when he completes his first pilgrimage to Mecca he's gonna play an important role in development of Palestinian nationalism he'll be with us for some time to come he'll also play a significant role in setting the pattern of arab-jewish of violence for decades to come so he needs a bit of introduction I mean was born in Jerusalem at the end of the 19th century son of the mufti of Jerusalem Taher al husseiny a religious leader who from the first appearance of the Zionists became their fervent opponent now the Hussaini clan wasn't just another group they claimed descent from Hussein son of the Caliph Ali and Fatima the daughter of Muhammad the Prophet himself which gave them a prestige that crossed of tribal boundaries and thus made them natural leaders in the emerging nationalist movement only a year before our events Amin had attended the pan Syrian Congress of 1919 as a representative of the Palestine region this was the conference that precipitated that failed Franco Syrian war in which tell high was destroyed and by 1921 looking forward a bit it was no longer the pan-searing Congress but rather the Syria Palestine Congress and change in name marks a critical perhaps even a watershed moment for Palestinian nationalism Palestine was now something other than the southern end of the Syrian province a development which was in part a result of the French British boundary agreement in 1920 that ended the Franco Syrian war peace was kept between competing colonial powers as it had always been by drawing a line on a map without considering the people who actually lived there and suddenly at the stroke of a pen Palestine was no longer part of the Syrian province as it had been since Roman times basically the French got the big chunk of the pie and the British took the holy land but we could discuss that some other time now the terms Palestine in Palestinian do appear a few years before these events as we'll see in a moment but the public statement issued in 1921 by the Syria Palestine Congress to the League of Nations demanding recognition of the independence and national rule of Syria Lebanon and Palestine could be labelled as the birth of formal national aspirations for the Palestinian segments of the Arab people but these are international questions and everybody knows real politics are local and Amin Hosseini's true entry into power politics came when he helped the whip The Jerusalem crowd into an anti-zionist frenzy on that April day in 1920 and as his rhetoric grew more impassioned cries of independence independence and Palestine is our land that Jews are dogs filled the air you know mixed into these new nationalist slogans was also the traditional religious call to violence against the Jews Kaiba Kaiba yaaahooo right Jews remember Khyber the army of Mohammed is returning in this mix of religious and nationalist themes is important but for now not all the Jews of Jerusalem were the ones that the Arabs used to know the blood of your suit rumpled off was barely a month dry and ZEB Jabotinsky had not been idle Haim Weitzman in the official Zionist leadership saw British protection as a solution to threaten violence Jabotinsky saw the solution as the Jews being ready willing and able to fight led by veterans of the Jewish Legion young men had begun training in hand hand combat months before and arms were slowly being gathered now unfortunately the Jews inside the old city were completely unprepared for the violence to come and the riots which erupted after all who say incitement lasted for four full days five Jews and for Arabs died 23 Arabs in two hundred and sixteen Jews were injured on the second day of violence the British actually barred the gates the old city in an attempt to contain the riots but that meant that Jabotinsky strained men were trapped outside only two were able to slip in disguise his medical personnel and they managed to organize some sort of rudimentary defense when Japan insky approached the military governor to suggest that his volunteers be deployed to keep order not only did stores refused but he confiscated Jabotinsky pistol and threatened to arrest him if he didn't reveal the location of the rest of his arms the British went on a search and in the offices and apartments of the Zionist leadership and building used by captaincies nascent Defense Force they found three rifles two pistols and 250 rounds of ammunition and they arrested nine men when Jim buttinsky came back to protest to the police that he was their commander and therefore solely responsible he just joined them in jail the 19 were sentenced to three years in Cabot insky himself received a 15 year prison term for possession of weapons in the end order was restored or the riots ran their course depending on who you ask the al husseiny Klan paid for the disturbances add to Jabotinsky his defense force música scene was replaced as mayor by his hated rival and I mean was sentenced to 10 years for incitement but he had already fled to Syria after skipping bail there was only one element left in the three-part drama of violence punishment and politics which is going to dominate this region for decades a commission of inquiry the Palin Commission named for its head Major General Sir Phillip Ellen heard over a hundred and fifty witnesses and the zionists leadership made sure to present a strong case the Arabs by the way more or less refused to address them the argument of the Jews what these were riots but rather a pogrom now the significance of the term lies in more than the projection of historic trauma though for the Eastern European Jews returning to their homeland the Arabs are going to quickly replace the Cossacks of their exile nightmares and don't forget the role which the kitchenette program played in the awakening of the Zionist movement through the call for Jewish self-defense what could be more righteous than offending yourself against murderers and conniving policemen as one of the members of the Commission said the word program was problematic because it means quote an attack on the Jews of the city carried out by the lower lawless elements were given free play by the non-interference of the police not necessarily with the connivance of the government but almost invariably of the lower police official violence between the Arabs the bridge and the Jews is going to be a complex dance from here on out but one whose steps are going to be increasingly familiar if the word program opens up the sort of psychodynamic dimensions of the violence which will become increasingly common in the mandate the conclusions of their commission set the political pattern the Palin Commission identified three causes for violence number one Arab disappointment at the non fulfillment of the promises of independence which they claimed had been given to them during the war number two err belief that the Balfour Declaration implied a denial of the right to do self-determination and their fear that a great increase in Jewish immigration would lead to their economic and political subjugation number three the aggravation of those sentiments by propaganda from outside Palestine associated with the growth of pan Arab and pan Muslim ideas all the pieces are in place and the ball is rolling the only question is where will it head violence is always a shock but it was actually the nationalist tone which emerged in the nemi Moussa riots that really took the leaders of the zionist organization in the labor movement by surprise the riots of 1920 in Jerusalem in the more serious round which will follow in Jaffa less than a year later cemented the national consciousness that had been developing among the Arabs of Palestine for almost a decade Arab nationalism in the European sense of a political movement which aim to gain sovereignty over a particular territory on behalf of a clearly-defined people is often seen to have its origins in the revolt against the Turks during World War one go back to episode 27 for the details of how the British and Kurds that through the McMahon Hussein correspondence but for now the early nationalism of the Arab revolt in many ways relied upon the religious affiliation of Muslims as a means of transcending the tribal boundaries that divided their culture and prevent in any sense of national solidarity the tribal association of the sharif of mecca and his sons was Hashemite but their religious status as guardians of Mecca was as universal as it was unassailable and with British support and and an obvious enemy in the Turks they were able to cobble together some sense of Arab nationalism in World War one the Arab revolt made its final triumphal march into Damascus at the end of the war what are the oldest mo important cities in the Arab world and so it's no surprise that its leader Faisal should seek to become the first king of Syria despite the massive Kingdom envisioned in his father's correspondence with McMahon and as we mentioned he didn't last long the French have other ideas about who would rule in Syria and in the wake of the Franco Syrian war Faisal was deposed not to worry though because the British quickly carved out a new kingdom of Iraq for him in the Mesopotamian province and as we'll soon see his brother Abdullah received a similar gift from his colonial backers in the form of the kingdom of Transjordan but more on that later our question right now is if pan Arab nationalism in the modern sense began in the Arab revolt when did a specifically Palestinian national consciousness arise and I already mentioned the Syria Palestine Congress of 1921 as evidence that the Arabs of Palestine no longer saw themselves as simply southern Syrians and remember this was largely a result of their being caught between the struggle colonial powers of France and Britain but interestingly enough the earliest written signs amongst the Arabs of southern Syrian province that they were actually Palestinians can be found at a newspaper published in the city of Jaffa from 1911 until 1914 when it was finally suppressed by the Ottomans it's name not surprisingly by the way is Philistine from its inception the paper includes articles that deal with Jews and Zionism right the pioneers of the second alia were big news economically and culturally in 1911 the alimentive culture clash can't be undervalued by the way keep that in mind it's a significant part of the early stages of conflict between the Arabs and Jews the college scene the pioneers of that second halia were themselves rebelling against the restraints of their own traditional society and the socialist egalitarian attitudes that they espouse or a direct threat to the patriarchal way of life that ruled Arab society even today there's a conservative progressive struggle here in our country that crosses sometimes national boundaries the initial attitude of the editorials in Luis Deen toward Zionist immigration range from enthusiastic to somewhat suspicious and what's more noteworthy in the context of these early articles about Jewish development the term Palestinian and Palestine are almost entirely absent but this changes around amount mid nineteen twelve when the Abner's the paper turned toward a critical and even hostile view of the Zionist project maybe it was the culture the Jews brought or the success at land purchase or just the sheer increase in numbers together with this hostility toward the Israelites as the Jews are termed in the paper comes a growth in the uses of the phrases colonization of the Palestinian land the country of Palestine the Palestinian community the danger for Palestine and its inhabitants and by the summer of 1914 not only was the area increasingly identified as Palestine but as an Arab had ants have begun to think of themselves as Palestinians now aside from the historical interest in the point of origin of Palestinian national identity I admit that the information here is far from decisive it's one newspaper but what we need to see is a clear sense of nationalist consciousness born in conflict in conflict with the colonial powers of France and Britain in conflict with the Zionist project of immigration and settlement and that has vast implications for the conflict still burning in our day insofar as the Arabs in the Land of Israel Muslims their identity reaches way back to the seventh century insofar as they're Arabs it crosses all the boundaries of the Middle East and even into large parts of Africa but insofar as their Palestinians their national consciousness was born in conflict and all but depends on the struggle you do the math I have asserted many times that identity is a life or death issue and in our era nationalism is a particularly powerful organizing principle for collective identity therefore the maintenance of this conflict might just be a life or death issue for the Palestinian people what would happen if peace broke out but this is the Jewish story and at some point anyone who dreams of being a people at peace in its own land has to consider to what degree our own national identity was born out of and therefore depends on this conflict as well nearly attitude of early Zionists toward the Arab inhabitants in the Land of Israel is a complex question in his book the Jewish state it seems that Hertz will assume the Arab peasants he saw in his visits to Palestine would welcome the economic and social benefits which the Jews brought with open arms and back in episode 25 we discussed the famous phrase a land without a people for people without a land that made Zionism seem like such a neat solution to the Jewish Question and there were definitely Zionists who believed that the Land of Israel had remained empty of inhabitants waiting for the return of her children and there were even Arden Zionists who upon their first realization that this wasn't true and there were actually people already living in the Palestine Providence however many it was turned away from the idea of Zionism toward the notion of territorialism it seems they wanted to avoid the moral challenges of national reinvent by building a home in some empty unclaimed territory though I'm not quite sure where that would have been but the majority of early Zionists simply didn't think too hard about the issue life was too pressing and if they did think about it they certainly recognized that while there were Arabs in the land there was not an Arab people which claimed it as their national home and the pragmatic approach of the labor Zionists made sidestepping the Arab issue particularly easy they themselves had abandoned her CIL's grand vision of a state granted by the international community into which world Jewry would flow on mass one more dunam one more goat doesn't preclude having Arab neighbors at least in the beginning as we've seen by 1920 the labor zionist had reached the point of institution building and the Anglo zionist alliance had once again brought the question of the national home back into focus the attitude of the Socialists toward the Arab in hadatha mandates was no longer one of benign neglect but was marked by basically two fundamental attitudes each more romantic than the next the first was the idea that the Arabs of the Palestine province were actually there long brothers they were descendants of Jews who hadn't fled with the destruction of the second temple but rather had converted first Christianity and then to Islam over the course of centuries David ben-gurion actually discusses this theory in the Land of Israel past and present it's a book he published while in America during World War one and by the way it wasn't just a theory in his eyes in the early days of the state when Israel was still a country in search of a people as he called it ben-gurion seriously considered the mass conversion of the thousands of Bedouins living in the Negev desert because he saw them as lost Jews and truth the matter is there are many people ranging from serious scholars to serious cooks who continue to argue for this idea to this day now I'm I'm not interested in the truth of the notion for our story we need to see it as expressive of the general view with which the labor Zionists saw the Arabs in the Land of Israel that they certainly had no natural existence and they might actually support the Jewish national narrative the other lens which the social scientists applied to the Arab question as it came to be known in the 20s and it's something we'll have to consider at some point how is it that the solution of the Jewish Question produced the Arab question mother lens is best expressed in the words of Ben Graham himself quote the Arab worker is an organic integral part of the country just like one of the mountains and valleys the destiny of the Jewish worker is linked to the destiny of the Arab worker together we will rise or fall now despite the heavy dose of European tendency to romanticize 'men natives unless somewhat fraternal istic attitude can't help wondering how it feels to be seen as part of the scenery the socialist side of thank Bereans worldview saw real potential in the workers of the world uniting under Zionist leadership but unfortunately early efforts by the Histadrut to organize Arab labor bore little fruit the Arabs did not see themselves as long-lost Jews nor did the class consciousness of the European socialist division exist amongst the Arab fella him it was religion at anything that United him along with the rising voice of nationalism and with each way of writing that voice will grow stronger with the help of God may he be praised I gave you the good news that I was saved from death the danger that hung over my head has passed completely and I have almost healed from the injuries and blows I suffered last Sunday I'm sure you've read about the pogrom that happened in Jaffa and you saw my name amongst the wounded now I shall tell you exactly what happened from beginning to end these are the opening lines a letter from the Jaffa merchant Yaakov letter Berg to his brother Abraham written in the wake of the riots of 1921 this second explosion of violence rocked the issue in a way in which the nemi Moussa riots had not done I mean Jaffa was the heart of Zionist settlement with nearly 10,000 Jews already by the beginning of the 20th century but it wasn't just the location which was so unsettling the Jaffa riots were marked by brutality that would come to characterize the anti-jewish violence in the years of head and the disturbances actually began as a scuffle between rival Jewish groups it was May Day right the great day of the workers of the world there was a parade of mainstream's soldiers party off-duty Avada which clashed with their rivals in the Socialist Workers Party but what began as a brawl between social scientists and Bolshevik anti-zionists soon became a general disorder when the Arab populace of Jaffa was drawn into the fray according to most accounts rumors spread that the Zionists were attacking in the Arabs of Jaffa went on the offensive as a mop bearing clubs swords and even pistols and descended on the Jewish quarter of the city the violence lasted for several days and even spread to surrounding communities it was in one of these outlying farms that the author York's of hind Renner met his fate as we spoke about a couple episodes before but the most brutal events took place during an attack on an immigrant hostel run by the Zionist Commission in the very heart of the city this'll rosenberger survivor described the scene in its aftermath on the first floor the belongings of the immigrants were scattered and outs I'd stood male and female Arabs and their children dividing the spoils the courtyard looked like a place that had been destroyed and many wounded wand the ground next to the door with the body of mrs. chair that Tchaikovsky and was clear that the murderers had raped her we found a let and killed and a large number of wounded you know afterwards the victims would claim that an Arab neighbor had warned mrs. chair Kowski to leave the hostel while she still could casting doubt on the spontaneous nature of the violence after all the casual encounter the Jaffa riots was far higher than that in Jerusalem the year before forty-seven Jews and forty-eight Arabs were killed more than 200 wounded on both sides the Jews were killed by the riders while most of the Arab deaths resulted from clashes with the British forces attempting restore order restoring order by the way was not a quick process and it came at a price in more than blood the British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel declared a state of emergency at the outset of the riots he imposed press censorship he called for reinforcements from Egypt and in fact Allenby sent two destroyers to the port of Jaffa but then Samuel went and he met with Arab representatives in attempt to calm the situation when he did Moosa Kazim al husseiny the deposed mayor of Jerusalem who'd been dismissed due to his involvement in the previous year's riots demanded a suspension of Jewish immigration as the price for the end of violence and Samuel assented in fact two or three small boats were refused to dock and were actually sent back to ýstanbul with over 300 Jews and finally in an effort to further placate the Arab nationalist camp Samuel appointed Haj Amin al-husseini Grand Mufti of Jerusalem the Zionists were obviously dismayed at his actions which they perceived his appeasement and as a threat the lifeline of their whole project immigration but the worst was yet to come because no round of rioting is complete without a commission of inquiry the Commission which Herbert Samuel appointed consisted of its head the president of the Supreme Court of the Palestine Mandate Thomas hatecraft and the representatives of the Muslim Christian and Jewish communities at the end of 291 interviews and two months of deliberation 'z the Commission finally published its report they named the Arab community of Jaffa as guilty guilty of murder and mayhem as they called it but they judged the cause of their violence to be quote a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with and hostility to the Jews due to political and economic causes and connected with Jewish immigration and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents now hatecraft report was a judicial statement about the situation on the ground not a policy paper that recommended what actions should be taken in light of Arab hostility to Jewish immigration but it was followed quickly by such a document the church a white paper of 1922 which was the first official statement from the British government that served as an interpretation of the Balfour Declaration I mean everybody had been saying whatever they wanted about the fact that Her Majesty's Government viewed with favor the idea of an establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine and the white paper had three main points none of which found favor in the eyes of the Jews the first regarded the causes of the recent violence quote the tension which has prevailed from time to time in Palestine is mainly due to apprehensions based upon exaggerated interpretations of the meaning of the Balfour Declaration favouring an established of a Jewish National Home in Palestine he goes on to say that unauthorized statements have been made saying that the purpose in view is to create a holy Jewish Palestine phrases have been used such as that Palestine has become as Jewish as England is English it concludes that part by saying His Majesty's Government regard any such expectation as impractical and have no such aim in view the second point addressed immigration as another source of strife in the mandate and it said the immigration had been limited to what was called economic absorptive capacity and furthermore he should not derive any section of the present population of their employment now the idea of living emigration it's the potential to absorb sounds logical but sitting here in a country of 8.5 million people it's hard not to question the motives behind such a statement finally the third point which was the real bombshell actually came not in the white paper itself but in what's known as the Transjordan memorandum it was companion to the white paper delivered to the Secretary General of the League of Nations and which dealt with the boundaries within which the Palestine mandate would be applied quote the provisions of the mandate for Palestine are not applicable to the territory known as Transjordan and then it goes on to detail what those boundaries are as the white paper stated the terms that Valvo declaration do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a national home but that's such a home should be found in Palestine and here with the Transjordan memorandum at the stroke of a pen 2/3 of the Palestine mandate everything east of the Jordan River was excluded from the area in which the British were responsible for creating that National Home Instead the kingdom of Transjordan was born and as I mentioned earlier the British placed Abdullah even Hussein on the throne some of the Sharif Emeka who had led the Arab revolt in World War One and brother of Faisal who they'd placed first on the throne of Syria and then Iraq when the French drove them out now I realize you may be on information overload I understand it's a lot of details keep straight 1920 1921 riots pogroms white papers commissions memorandums so just remember this every parent knows that when a child resorts to Tantrums and violence and get their way it's almost a guarantee that there's another round soon to follow Jewish self-defense has been at the core of the Zionist project from the early 20th century one could in fact argue that the pattern that plays itself out in 20s Palestine mandate was really set in the kitchen at Bagram in the waves of violence that followed substitute Arabs for Russians but the basic premise is that the new Jew the muscular Jew is ready to defend himself the key word at this point is still defense and we'll see in our story going forward that there's a question over whether the defensive posture is one of weakness or strength Jurgen Hagen AHA every the Hebrew defence organisation better known simply as the Hagana began to form in the aftermath of Japanese attempts at organized self-defense during the nabi musa riots his existence was formalized in 1920 when the after Tavo da you were called join with Palladian to form the map I miss Leggett Paul a artist Raphael the party of the workers of Israel that political party which will rule the country for decades to come in December that year the Hagana was placed under the control of the Histadrut labor union making it a universal union with its own army and now you know why the Easter drew actually became the foundation for many of the structures of state power now at first the Hagana absorbed all the militant Jews the mandate veterans of the Jewish Legion the Zion mule Corps Jabotinsky volunteers from Jerusalem and even the hot summer guards who I hope you remember were formed back in 1909 to guard Jewish settlements but from the outset there were tensions between the army veterans who wanted a tight-knit professional organized group and the Hashem air people who wanted more of a popular militia and freedom of operations me after all even though the Hagana was completely ineffective in protecting the Jews of Jaffa in 1929 the hot Romero faction within Hagana dispatched an assassin to take revenge on tewfiq Baek ala sayyid he was the Jaffa chief of police whose forces collaborated with the rioters that's a very different approach how you keep order the political leadership of the labor zionist organization wanted the Haganah to become a legal body and therefore needed them to be subordinated to the British well many of the actual soldiers the Hagana objected because they feared they'd lose not only their independence but their arms as well and eventually that tension is going to lead to a split within the Hagana between the more militant and independent faction which will follow Jabotinsky is revisionist leadership the more mainstream defensive posture but that story lies ahead it is worth right now touching on the founding values of the haganai however and this is all from their sort of foundational doctrine the Hagana organization is the armed force of the Jewish nation that is building its political independence in the Land of Israel and the organization is under the authority of the World Zionist Organization in cooperation with the Zionist assembly in the Land of Israel now that may just sound like political gobbledygook I want you to hear the emphasis on official Authority organization organization because the Hagana will dismiss anyone who breaks away from it as dissidents and that's gonna come very important in the struggles ahead so the doctrine goes on to say the duties of the organization are defense of the Hebrew shove in the Land of Israel defense of the Zionist endeavor and the political rights of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel defense of the Land of Israel against any enemy activity from abroad and as you can clearly hear the Hagana was as its name indicates a defensive organization and what began as a posture of defense is going to evolve into a well articulated military doctrine during the coming Arab revolt of 1936 and 1939 it's known as half laga or restraint in english now it's important to understand what that restraint implies because the Hagana is going to go on to become the core of the modern Israeli army which of course in Hebrews called tava Hagana please rail the Israel Defense Force but before it does this doctrine of restraint is going to lead to a split within its ranks as I mentioned over whether it's actually the proper posture toward a violent enemy who holds the overwhelming advantage of numbers and is unrestrained in their use of violence unless you think this question is just one of the past just last week after yet another flare-up on the Gaza border I heard a minister from a right-wing party complained in the media about the limited nature of the Army's response restraint he said causes escalation wow there's a whole episode in that statement don't you think so as I said mahogany did not exist in the nemi Musa riots and it was more or less ineffective in Java in 1921 but it was the riots of 1929 which transformed the Hagana into a countrywide organization with the backing of the political leadership Baja Ghana began to recruit the youth and young adults of the key with seaman settlements which became the backbone of the organization and they also recruited many in the cities and they started the beginnings of an underground smuggling an arm's production industry which become critical in the struggles ahead truth is the riots of 1929 transformed our situation as a whole right the shoe of the Jewish settlement and in many ways the entire relations between Arab Jew and British in the Land of Israel the Israeli academic hill Cohen actually calls the riots of 1929 years zero of the arab-israeli conflict he says on one hand no other factor was more influential in bringing the established Jewish communities in Palestine meaning the oldest shoe of the religious world and the new Zionist community together under a single political roof right and thus by the way bringing about the true beginnings of an Israeli identity born in blood and fire and he also notes on the other hand that the heat of the riots gave the final weld to the scaffolding of religion naturalism and violence which underlay a particularly Palestinian national identity now at this point in our story all the distal causes of conflicts have been identified Jewish immigration and land purchase the Anglo cyanus Alliance which created a colonial native dynamic within the mandate the culture clash and rising Arab nationalism the proximal cause or as we call it the trigger took place on Yom Kippur 1928 you know today if you go to the Kotel you can find a fantastically beautiful open plaza and there's a story of how this great space came to be and I'll tell it when we get to 1967 please God we get there but for now erase it from your mind I want you to picture the Kotel a front of which is a narrow dirty alley off strewn with garbage and even worse and don't tell anyone I said this nomic itza no divider between men and women you know some things never change in my darker hours sometimes I wonder if the mist heats of wars being fought at the Kotel today aren't some spiritual echo coming down to us from the High Holidays of 1928 because that year the Jewish community decided to actually put up a movable screen by the wall in order to separate between men and women and prayer it was a change not a big one but enough to trigger the reaction of the waffa waffa was the Muslim religious trust under whose authority the wall and all the Temple Mount resided and which was guided by the supreme Muslim council at whose head sat you guessed it Haj Amin al-husseini since his appointment as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by Herbert Samuel back in 1921 al husseiny had taken it upon himself to restore the Dome Iraq in a way to build up his own personal prestige and of course the prestige of Jerusalem and so he gathered funds from around the Muslim world and he painted its dome with gold that's when it became the golden dome and it was Haj Amin who approached the brita to day or two after the screen went up and he made the claim that the Jews aim is to take possession of the mosque of al-aqsa gradually by starting with the western wall of this place this is perhaps the origin of the cry which is unfortunately heard before violence down to our very day that the Jews are trying to take over the mosque now that year in 1928 rumors swirled and ill-feeling began to grow amongst the Muslims and basically stood for an entire year and then in the months leading up to the holidays of 1929 the British authorities announced that they would uphold the status quo and allow no innovations at the western wall meaning there would be no more mijita and now is the turn of the Zionists to feel their rage members of Betar the youth organization associated with Zev Jabotinsky x' revisionist zionist movement decided to respond by organizing marches first around the walls of the old city on the night of the 9th of AAB and then the next morning carrying flags down to the western wall itself and by the way if you're familiar with modern Israeli society you should know that those two institutions still exist the ninth of on the old city walls and the flag march on Jerusalem day so in addition to praying when they reach the ball and showing force by carrying sticks they raised their flags and shouted the wall is ours but fortunately the British police had been warned and they came out in force no violence occurred however the waffle is not about to let such an assertion go uncontested and they organized a counter demonstration at the site the very next day and with the crowd into such a frenzy that they began to burn Jewish prayer books and destroy any religious article they could find a week of extreme tension following marked by incitement in the Muslim and Jewish press and sporadic interpersonal violence but then the storm burst between the 23rd and the 29th of August 1929 the Jews of Jerusalem have roan and Safed and a number of rural areas were brutalized by attacks attacks which began at 4:00 on Friday Muslims from the outlying villages poured into Jerusalem for Friday morning prayers and then following the Sermon outward in a wave of violence of 133 Jews killed in that week almost half died in the Hebrew massacre of August 24th hundreds more wounded individuals and whole families were murdered mainly in their homes unarmed in brutal fashions particularly in Cairo and that just don't deserve description right now 116 arabs were killed as well and a hundred or more wounded now I want you to hear the numbers we've gone from a four and five 45 47 to hundreds now most of the arrows were actually killed by British troops and police the British were brutal in their use of force to restore order and often apparently indiscriminate in one case Cohan records I quote they arrived after the end of an incident when no one was in danger any longer and fired indiscriminately killing women and old people the arbitrary British response was the principle call the large numbers of Arab casualties in Jerusalem and its surrounding villages 50 Arabs died as a result the triangle violence and hatred was cemented by the horrific events of 1929 for the Jews it was a monstrous slaughter of innocence and a seminal event which drew all the Jews of the country together in a realization that blood and Fire was going to be part of their identity for the Arabs it was another round in the defense of their national home as Cohen says in their eyes the homes the Jews built stood on Arab land and the fuels they plowed or Arab soil and they did so under the protection of British bayonets with the goal of transforming the land into a Jewish one how there's so much more to say I mean aside from all the detail I skip we need to consider how the cycle of riots that culminated in 1929 helped to create both Israeli and Palestinian identity locked in a life-or-death struggle we have to think about how this seemingly inter-communal battle was actually a three-way dynamic which included the British and how that foreign party element plays a critical role in the dynamics of the conflict down to our very day and of course there was the inevitable commission of inquiry and official political response the Shaw Commission and the past fueled white paper but we can't do anything and I'm done with the information dump and furthermore if we want to understand how Jewish consciousness has developed in its historical context which is after all the goal of the Jewish story then we can do worse than ending with the words of Zeb Jabotinsky because unlike the romantic conceptions of the Arab populace which grip the labor scientists in the early 20s in all fairness they moved on from the romantic conception into the pragmatic conception and in 1924 ben-gurion attitude was already moving toward partition a national home for the Jews and a national community at least for the Arabs but Jabotinsky had no such illusions and when he published his vision of a healthy relationship between Arab and Jew in his famous 1923 essay the iron wall it's clear from his first words that he knew he was already being painted by his fellow Jews as an evil fascist quote I'm reputed to be an enemy of the Arabs who wants to have them ejective from Palestine and so forth it is not true I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights and that we shall never tried to eject anyone this seems to me to be a fairly peaceful credo but after that opening he makes a powerful and challenging statement but it's quite another question whether it is always possible to realize a peaceful aim by peaceful means remember our question does restraint lead to peace or escalation in Japanese he goes on to say our peace mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools whom we can deceive by masking our real aims or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim the priority in Palestine i repudiate this conception of the Palestinian Arabs we may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims but they know what we want as well as we know what they do not want the Zionists want only one things at Jabotinsky Jewish emigration and this Jewish emigration is what the Arabs do not want and so he says Zionists Allah nation must either stop or else proceed regardless of the native population which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population behind an iron wall which the native population cannot breach that is our Arab policy says Jabotinsky whether we admit it or not and he goes on to say in this matter there is no difference between our militaries and our vegetarians and pay attention to this except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers and the others are content that they should be British and then Jabotinsky makes an important assertion that every Jew must consider and not just for themselves they have to consider it from the perspective of 1923 from the perspective of 1940 five and from the perspective of 2018 we hold that Zionism is moral and just and since it is moral and just justice must be done no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree with it or not and finally Jabotinsky concludes with words that ring true from the violence we've just described right down to the war you can read about in the papers today as long as the Arabs feel that there is at least hope of getting rid of us they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter because they are not a rabble but a living people and when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us because they can make no breach in the iron wall in other words the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present those are words which are food for thought I just want to thank you people I want to thank people who give their hard-earned money and help make this show possible to keep it out there and free and accessible and I want to invite you to join them I'm in the middle of raising funds right now for season three please put your money where your ears are go right now to rob Mike calm the upper right hand corner you'll see up be a patron button click on through to give a little bit of per podcast support I want to thank the Land of Israel that's the Land of Israel dot-com for creating a network that allows me to reach so many wonderful people I want to thank the partes Institute where I'm sitting even as we speak that's WWV a our ups or KL for building an institution that allows me to teach so many wonderful Jews [Music]