M in introduction. That's how we're starting this episode, the word introduction. Thanks, thanks Sophie, thank you for keeping my confidence level high. Also keeping my confidence level high. For part two of our episode on the Net Yahoo Family is Dana Elker. Dana, welcome back, everything, everything, everything going all right. Ten minutes later, uh yeah, yeah, the thing has changed drastically in my life. So it's all good. I mean, yeah, these are a day apart, so so things could have changed drastically in the world at the time they dropped. But yeah, really all we did was hopefully not let's all fingers crossed, let's not Yeah, let's not so Dana. When we left off, we were talking about the Net and Yahoo Boys BB and Yoni. Um. They're kind of pingponging back between the new State of Israel and the United States. You don't really like it in the US. They think it's shallow, and you know, they want to be back in Israel. And they're also frustrated at their dad because he didn't he didn't kill anybody. Um. So, in July of nineteen sixty four, newly adult Yoni went back home. He's an adult in nineteen sixty four, and he joins the I d F. Now he's three years older than BB so Baby is still back in the US doing high school ship UH. Yoni became a paratrooper, which at the time was pretty much the most elite unit in the new military UH. He subsequently went on to train as an officer UH and in general seems to have been a pretty good at being a soldier. Now Yoni's absence was devastating to his younger brother, Bebie would spend almost every one of his summers in Israel, usually alone, because his brother was in the military. He worked part time back in the US on the evenings and weekends so he could afford the air fair to spend every possible moment of his time that he wasn't in school in the US. Back in Israel, he was a good student, but was noted as being very detached from other teenagers. That said, his years in the US did rub off on him, and his friends in Israel noticed that he had adopted an American swagger over the years. While US fashion and pop culture definitely rubbed off on Bab, the politics of his second home did not. So Benjamin spent his teen years in the US during the explosion of the American civil rights movement, you know, Martin Luther King and all that that's all happening in the US, like while he is an adolescent, and the struggle of different groups within the United States to attain equal treatment under the law seems to have completely passed him by. Like his father, Baby disliked most American Jews who were liberal intended to vote Democrat. In fact, the only thing about the United States that he preferred to Israel was capitalism. So which is interesting because Israel in this point is is a quasi socialist state under Mapai right like businesses and whatnot are heavily centralized run by the government. Um, it is not very much like the United States in this period. Um and BB likes all of the things that are militant and austere and and kind of aggressive and and and ethno nationalist about the Israeli state. He hates the socialism. Um, he hates the kibbutz is, which is like kind of one of the things that Americans know broadly Israel has these And it's this aspect of a lot of the Marxists and socialists who were part of the left wroom of the Zionist movement. These these communal farms and like communities and whatnot, where everything is is shared by everybody, I think is the basic idea. This disgusts bb net and Yahoo. From an early age, he fell in love with the writing of Iron Brand, particularly the Fountainhead, which is I know that's the face. Yeah, um bab identified strongly with Howard Rourke, the heroic architect uberman ship the story, and as a result, he decided to get his degree in architecture. I mean, there's so much toxic masculinity, just like for me. And it was entire from pouring off of yeah man. And it's He doesn't talk about iron Rand a lot today because number one, Iron Rand and her philosophy is very anti religious. Um and he a big part of his coalition is religious, so he can't. But like he goes to he goes to M I. T. To get degrees and multiple degrees in architecture because he wants to be Howard Rourke like this. This book has a big influence on the guy. Um yeah, I know, you have your informative years during the civil rights era and up pick up Iron Ran. Yeah, it's and it's it's weird because like Martin Luther King was a big backer of the Israeli state, so it's not like he would have been pushed away from that because the politics of the civil rights movement where anti Israel. Um. He just really likes iron Rand and does not care for social justice. UM. So from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty six, violence between Israel and her Arab neighbors accelerated at a steady pace. A joint Arab military command was established, as was the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Israel launched a series of air strikes at Syria. There was this was over dispute over water, like there was Israel was diverting water and Scarria want to divert the water back. I don't I. I don't know a tremendous detail about it. It kind of when you I watched a documentary from Al Jazeera which made it, uh, seemed like the Israelis were sucking around with the water before Syria sucked around with the water. When I heard about this as a kid, it was cereal. Was Syria was trying to stop Israel from having water, and so they had to launch an attack. UM. I'm not an expert on the history UM, but Israel launches a bunch of air strikes into Syria. Palestinian guerrillas launched raids from Syria and Jordan's UM. Israeli paratroopers including Yoni, carried out a brutal raid themselves in late nineteen sixty six called Operation Shredder, where they basically blew up a whole town in Jordan's UH. They justified the attack by saying that the town was being used by Palestinian fighters as a base. This raid brought international condemnation, and at the time, the US is not the big military backer of Israel. At this time, it's France. France is giving Israel all of its advanced weapons systems, they're selling it most of its guns UM and France gets angry at Israel over this attack, but they don't stop selling Israel weapons. Now. The United States and the mid sixties kind of started dipping its toes into selling guns to Israel, like not guns, but like aircraft, mainly like modern jet aircraft UM. And it starts under JFK and it escalates under l DJ and it is limited to start with. For one thing, these military aircraft we sell them have certain offensive capabilities removed most of what we sell Israel or anti aircraft missiles, like the the ideas that will sell them defensive equipment, not things that they can attack with. That's not always how it works out in practice. That's the idea that's at least how it's sold to the American people at the start. UM and this series of tip for tap border raids lad in nineteen sixty seven to another war between Israel and all of its neighbors. And this starts with a massive Israeli air attack that wipes out the Syrian UH and Egyptian air forces. UM. And again you can you know, I think the Israeli justification is, well, they were going to attack us, and we had to attack them first. It's a preemptive struct that's a big part of Israeli military doctrine is it's okay for us to attack you first. Um, which again is completely ethically consistent to everything happening now. UM us not at all worth analyzing anyway. So bb Uh lands about a week before the Six Day War in nine seven starts because he wants to see his brother before Yoni goes off to war. Because everybody knows that they're about to start a war. Uh and Yoni spent the Six Day War fighting, while BB spent it in an air raid shelter in Jerusalem. The Six Day War ins and disaster for the Arabs and a shocked victory for israel Um. Jerusalem was now completely under Israeli control, as was a chunk of Syria and a bunch more Palestine, and at the end of the First War, in hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian Arabs had lived within the boundaries of the Israeli state. After the Six Day War, more than one point five million stateless Arabs now lived in under Israeli rule, mostly in East Jerusalem. The best went West Bank and the Gaza strip Um. Now, many Israelis thought that the end of the war would finally bring widespread Arab recognition of their state. There was an assumption among many of the more moderate Zionists that they would have to get up, you know, a sizeable chunk of Palestine for a peace steal, but that this would definitely push for a peace deal. But hardline right wing Zionists, the revisionist guys like Ben Zion thought that not only should they keep all of the Lamb that they'd taken, but they should take more. Babe and Yoni were not super political at this stage, UM, and they both assumed rightly that the end of the Sixth Day War would only set the stage for another conflict. So Beabie had graduated high school right before the Sixth Day War and he joined the I d F immediately after. He was marked out pretty much immediately for his athleticism. He was in great shape and his intelligence to serve in a new special operations unit, the Syrette MTCAL. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time in this episode going over military ship um, because that's not why people listen to this podcast. Most Americans. When you learn about Israeli, you learn about it through all these special forces units and these daring air raids and stuff. Which is part of like the inherent sympathy that a lot of Americans have is we just love guns. And if you focus on just the weaponry, it's really easy to just nerd out over different military tactics. And I'm not going to do that, UM, But to give you an idea of what the Siret Mut called the kind of operations these guys were picked for, I want to read one passage from Anchil Feiffer's b b Um, which is about the the nineteen seventy three Arab Israeli war, about a contingency mission that the Siret matt Call were marked out for. Quote. A mott Call team was to be flown deep into Sinai, where it would lay an object at the top of a remote mountain. The object, a small nuclear device, would be detonated as a running to the Egyptians in the event that they use chemical or biological weapons, bombard at Israeli cities, or simply seemed to be winning the war. So that's the kind of that's the kind of special opsunite. These are the guys who if we start losing a war, they're going to set off a nuke in Egypt. Like, that's the kind of unit that bb Net and Yahoo joins. Yeah, and again the whole question of like, I don't even think we absolutely know when the Israelis got their nuclear weapons. Their policy is one of like nuclear opacity, So they still don't like fully admit to having them, although everyone knows that they do. Um, it's this very like murky anyway, The whole story is a big murky mess that's beyond the confines of this episode. Obviously that mission was never carried out, but the fact that the not called were the guys who would have been called upon to do this shows you the kind of jobs that they did. These are like black ops, wet work guys. And net Yah, who was by all accounts a good soldier. He was noted for a near fanatical level of physical fitness, which made him a natural pick to be the platoons machine gunner. In the years following the Six Day War, Israeli forces continued to battle intermittently in Lebanon and Jordan's In night, they attacked the Beirut airport and retaliation for attacks on Israeli passenger planes, paratroopers were landed in Beirut and fourteen Lebanese airliners were blown up with explosives. The operation was actually much more destructive than the Israeli Prime Minister had approved of, and it infuriated the international community. An emergency session of the UN was called. Now, back in those days, pissing off the UN meant a little bit more than it does now, because it means absolutely nothing now, and France actually stopped selling israel weapons systems after the raid. French President Charles de gaul was enraged that Israel had attacked a foreign airport using French helicopters, and so you don't think too positive. Leave to gall he was mostly angry because the airline that those planes belonged to was largely owned by French investors. Um, and he declared, he's not being a nice guy, but he declares a permanent arms embargo against Israel as a result of this attack. Now, the United States was, however, by this point, waiting on the wings to sell Israel weapons. And again I'm not going to go into tremendous detail here because we all know the end result. Since nineteen sixty two, the United States has given Israel more than a hundred billion dollars in military aid UM, which is a lot of dollars in military aid. And Joe Biden's current budget, we're giving them almost three times as much in military aid as Joe Biden is dedicated to spending on climate change. Um, yeah, it seems like our priority. But really, yeah, seems so so cool and good. Bede participated in a bunch of different raids and battles in He's like he does. He's not one of these guys, these politicians who like joins the military and a show dot job. He fights, he does a lot of like sketchy shit, and he was a good enough soldier that he was able to convince his bosses to hire his brother Yoni, to join the sire at Maktal Matt call Sorry. One I d F psychologist who watched the two brothers work together later noted quote, I still remember the look of complete and utter admiration on Babe's face watching Yoni going in. It wasn't the kind of look you see on an adult. It was completely astonishing. And again that's really consistent. He seems to have basically worshiped his older brother. So in nineteen sixty nine, Golden my Year becomes the Prime Minister of Israel. Now, she was pretty old when she became prime minister. She was kind of one of the last members of the generation of politicians that had been responsible for the founding of Israel. She was suspicious of any attempts at making peace, and she listened too much to her generals. The Israeli military was extremely bullish about continuing to funk with Egypt and to hold on to the territory they'd taken from Egypt. During the previous conflicts, the international community, led by President Nixon, supported a peace plan that would have made Israel return to its pre war borders. My Ear attacked this plan and, under the advice of her generals, escalated what was known as the War of Attrition, which was a series of different kind of insurgent strikes between Israel and her neighbors, and part this issue launches a bunch of air strikes deep into Egyptian territory. Egypt responds by moving anti aircraft missiles close to Israel, and this period of brinksmanship continues until a ceasefire is signed in August of nineteen seventy, and the ceasefire is basically immediately ignored. Um. Nobody really takes this seriously. Now. During this time, a lot of Baby's fellow not call Special Forces operators were actually optimistic that there might be some hope of peace because the international community was increasingly giving behind this idea. And one of the interesting things is that Babe now makes a lot of the fact that he was in the special Forces unit. A ton of the dudes he served with hated him because they're like left wing socialist Zionists. Their kibbutz types. A lot of these special forces guys um, this generation of them, and they were exhausted by years of constant fighting. They wanted some sort of an into the violence. Um. Now that is not the normal opinion within the military establishment. Um all. There are some heads who kind of within the Israeli military warned the things aren't actually looking as good for them as they think. They may have actually not been winning the war of attrition. Baby doesn't believe this. He thinks that he's a you know, a muscular Judaism guy. Um. And he recognized kind of in a fairly savvy manner that the fact that the Soviet Union was now funding uh and and providing arms to Egypt, to Lebanon, um would had the chance to turn the conflict into a Cold war proxy fight, and that if Israel kind of stayed the course, the United States would support them because they weren't being backed by the Soviet Union. And we can turn this. One of the ways in which we can increase our situation here is if we make this into a cold war thing, because then the US will support us out of course, and we'll get all of their fancy as weapons systems which is not a dumb tactic to play um so Angel Fepper writes, quote the Net and Yah, who's had no sympathy for the Palestinians, And one of his letters he only described them as a rabble of cave dwellers fighting for liberty and progress, et cetera. In in another he wrote, my national identity is much stronger than theirs. So these guys are. While a lot of the dudes they served with are more nuanced in their opinions about the conflict and even wanted to come to an end. The Net and Yahoo brothers are let's keep fighting forever kind of guys, or at least let's keep fighting until we have it all. In nineteen seventy two, Babie was wounded during an operation to take back a plane from Palestinian hijackers UM and the way in which he was wounded is interesting. He had grabbed the hair of a female hijacker and her wig had come off in his hand. He grabbed her again and one of his comrades started pistol whipping her face, and this guy's gun went off and shot BB through the arm. So he was shot by what he was shot in combat, but by one of his own dudes, um, who was pistol whipping a lady um, which is I don't know, maybe not as sounds real special forces kind of. This is a very special sophisticated Yeah, yeah, real sophisticated operation when you shoot your buddy to buddy um. So later that year he's discharged from the army. He goes back to the US and he attends M I T to finish his education, and again because of iron Rand, he's working on a degree in architecture. He was studying hard when war broke out again in nineteen seventy three, and the Yom Kipper War was named for the fact that the Egyptian and Syrian forces chose the Jewish High holiday to launch a surprise invasion. UM. In Egypt's case, they motored across the Suez Canal and successfully assaulted and took several Israeli forts. Israel counter attacked with a crack armored division, which was almost completely wiped out because the Soviets that sold Egypt these man portable anti tank rockets, which are kind of the predecessors to the modern wire guided missiles, which is a big factor in the modern Syrian conflict. These back in earlier war is the fact that Egypt had a good armored division had made them kind of unstoppable in open battle. These man portable anti taque missiles really changed the game in a big, fat actor. And the Kipper War is interesting because when I heard about the again as a kid, in US textbooks and in Western documentaries, history channelship, it's depicted as yet another Arab is really war where everybody invades poor Israel and they win because of their superior fighting spirit. That's not the case. This war is not a victory for Israel. Now, Syria definitely lost because a bunch of their dudes got killed and they won nothing. But Egypt, sorry, yeah, go go ahead, go ahead. Sorry. Egypt considers this a win, and kind of rightfully, so they retake some land that they had lost to Israel in prior wars and they fight the Israelis to more or less a draw, which does a lot to restore national pride, because like, there was this idea of Israeli invincibility that gets punctured in a big way during the nineteen seventy three war. So I think, what's what's um important to note about that? You know, the Young War the October War, as as the Arabs call it, um is that Sadat only wanted to bring them to the negotiating table. Yeah, yeah, he so he you know, he's actually quite he's quite heavily criticized after UM and and kind of like the history that's written about this period um because people say, like he held back, he could have taken the entire Sini, but he really just wanted a step towards being able to like you know, quote unquote make peace with the Israelis at this point, Um, even though you know, public opinion has been you know, has become so upset with Israel because of some of the events during the War of Attrition where they like you know, bomb schools and like like the La massacre in Undergold my ear, and like so so public opinion wants said that to take the entire Sini, and they don't want peace with Israel. They just wanted through, you know, through you know, taking back the land and and and just leaving at that said, Dad has a different opinion. He wants a step towards Arab air Israeli normalization essentially, and that is so not how it was portrayed. I mean, there's a movie. UM. I think it's was The Sum of All Fears, which is the movie is not super about Israel, but it's about like an Israeli nuke gets in the hands of these terrorists and they set it off in the United States, and the way the nuke gets into their hands is during this desperate nineteen seventy three war, Israel puts a nuke into the air because they think they're about to be overrun and wiped out. And that was never really on the table because, as you said, so Dot didn't want to destroy Israel. He wanted to get them to the negotiating table. And I think there was also an element of like wanting to kind of restore national pride in a sense that like we're not like we don't have to lose to them. Um I A big for me just kind of coming to understand this from I think a more accurate perspective was there's a really good Al Jazeera documentary called The October War um that is I think very fair, and it talks too soldiers. It talks to Israeli and Syrian and Egyptian soldiers. You get a lot of like on the ground perspectives of what has happened. Um, I think it. It really kind of expanded my understanding of what actually happened beyond you know, what American movies had taught me about that conflict, um, which was nothing effectively nothing. Yeah. Yeah, you can't rely on Hollywood or political education on this one. No, No, you really cannot. Um. So yeah, um, and we'll we'll have a link to that Al Jazeera documentary. It's not super long, but it really is a pretty good historical grounding in it. Um. Now, Yoni is in the thick of fighting in nineteen seventy three from the beginning, and BB abandons his coursework in New York and flies back home to pick up a gun and take part in the defense. And kind of the way the Israeli military works in this period is, you know, you do your term of service, you leave, but when the fighting starts, you fly back home and you get handed a gun, like you sign one out, you pick up a uniform and you go fight. Um. And this is the deteen seventy three war is a lot bloodier for for Israel than prior engagements had been. About twenty two hundred Israelis died fighting, which is a not insignificant percentage of the entire population at this point, and it was seen as a disaster from inside the military. Their intelligence network had failed to see the attack coming. There's been a bunch of horrible communications issues, like they had not performed up to the level that they kind of expected. And a lot of it was because they arrogantly assumed they couldn't be attacked and if they were, that they would repulse them at these forts. Um like immediately, Gold of My Year actually resigned at the end of the nineteen seventy three war. Yoni, however, ended the war a national hero due to you know soldier ship Now. Ben Zion wanted both boys to get college degrees. He saw their military exploits as a distraction. UM and BB you know again is the guy who's going to do what his father wants. He leaves again after the war. He gets back to going to M I. T. Yoni, though, seemed to be increasingly unable to do anything but soldier. He quits the military on at least once um and tries to go to school, but he can't really focus. He has trouble holding romantic relationships together. He can't really focus on anything that isn't fighting UM now. He rose to be one of the leaders of the elite sire at Mortcall unit, but over the next couple of years he becomes increasingly unpopular with his subordinates. He has trouble focusing in meetings. There's actually a movement within the unit to fire him, and it seems again kind of from the outside that he's dealing with severe PTSD and it's kind of breaking him as a person. He can't exist as a civilian, but he's also increasingly unable to exist as a soldier. After the nineteen seventy three war, Babe never really returns to the military after this point. He gets a degree in architecture. He gets another degree in architecture, but he's no good at it, so he gets a business degree next UM and largely he seems to find his focus as being a campus activist for Israel, fighting to support to build US support for Zionism. UM. He's one of a small number of Israeli students who are all trying to do the same thing, and he stands out. You know, Nathan, his dad does that, you know, way earlier, or his grandpa and his dad both do that earlier. They don't stand out. Guys like Ben Gurion are much more effective. Baby stands out as a propagandist for Israel. Like he's everyone knows he's a great public speaker. He's good at this. Now. For most of Israel's history, leading up to this point, the quasi socialist Mapai party had dominated Israeli politics, and before there was a political into de called Israel, they had dominated Zionist politics. This changed in the nineteen seventies when the nach And beg him that begin that i c L leader. We talked about an episode one started to weld together. Weld together a coalition of secular right wingers, disaffected liberals like neoliberals who didn't like Mapai, and right wing religious extremists into an opposing electoral block. And as is always the case when you tie the centrist right to the far right, politics are more dominated by the far right than anything else. Of course, the far right doesn't see it that way. They think that we're compromising, but everyone else winds up compromising with the far right. It's the way it always especially because in the Israeli's system is like it's a parliamentary system system that they become kind of like, you know, I'm not I'm not an expert on politics, but you know I've been told that become kind of like kingmakers in this kind of system. Yes, and this is when that really starts, because they've been very like on the fringes of things up to this point. In September of nineteen seventy three, right after the war, that the Coud party was born. Now, the Likud party is the party that not that is net Yahoo's party today, it's the right wing coalition in Israel. UM. While all this was going on, is reelly u s relations were hitting a low point. Gerald Ford tried his hand bringing peace to the Middle East. But if you know anything about gerald Ford, nothing he did ever worked. UM. Israel was not willing to make concessions during this peace process, and so he froze arms sales to Israel. A compromise was eventually reached, which involved Israel pulling soldiers back from Egypt and exchange from more guns from the United States. And the fact that the US had been willing to stop selling weapons to Israel terrified Israeli's and it sparked an understanding that they were going to have to make. They were going to have to carry out a more active PR operation in the United States to make the idea of a U. S President stopping arms sales to Israel unthinkable. Right, they get and you can say Ford's not really playing hardball here. He folds almost immediately when they make a minor concession. But to Israeli's it's this idea like, oh, he even he was willing to threaten to stop selling this guns. We have to make sure this can't happen again. Now, doing that was going to require an unprecedented PR blitz, and baby Net and Yahoo wound up on the ground floor of it. In nineteen seventy five, he was sent by the Israeli Console to do a series of speaking engagements on local TV stations. He was a natural, but it was going to take something else to make him into a star. The death of his brother Yoni July four, nineteen seventy six, is really Commandos and Kenyan soldiers carried out a raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda, where another Israeli passenger plane had been hijacked. Yoni was the only Israeli to die in this rate. Now why is heavily debated today there's evidence that Yoni acted against orders and opened fire too early and he was shot down as a result of it. People will literally fight over this because after his death, Yoni becomes a heroic cult figure in Israel, and so the idea again critiquing him in any way becomes like verbot into a sizeable chunk of Israel now. The net and yah Who family obviously has a huge fested interest in the hero cult that forms around Yoni, to the point where they argue that he was shot dead by the German commander of the hijackers and not by a Ugandan soldier, which is much more likely, and Angel Feffer writes that this suggests to some that quote the family felt that being felled by an inferior African soldier was somehow a lesser way to die, So like, that's that's literally the thought that entered my mind. I was like, Wow, they can't even be killed by a black personally, and I can't even be killed by a black person. No um now and Yoni's letters and also this in Tebbi raid, like there's horrific consequences, including the fact that Idi Amine, who's the press into Uganda, massacres a bunch of Kenyans because of the fact that they helped participate in this raid. After the raid goes on, it's a whole, whole, ugly mess. Yoni's letters after his death are published as a book, um and there are books written about his fateful last battle. There have been movies made again. This guy is like a national hero. And as soon as he dies, ben Zion and Benjamin do double duty becoming evangelists for Yoni's memory. His dad, who had not approved of his military career and had like really been kind of disappointed in Yoni, becomes his biggest cheerleader after his death and and tries not just to make him to a war hero, but like a philosopher, hero warrior guy um. And to this day, Israeli politicians and lobbyists who want FaceTime with Beebe will make a point of visiting Yoni's grave. It's understood if you do that, Bebe will sit down with you in person. You know, or at least it improves your odds. You know who won't sit down in person with Benjamin Netanya? Who that's boy boy, oh boy, Jesus Christ um not Jesus Christ. Oh yeah, that's that's probably true. Um, he was definitely more of a turn the other cheek kind of guy. And you know who else turns the other cheek, Sophie to really hope is that Dick Bill's ad I hope so too, because that would be really funny. Let's keep our fingers crossed for Dick Bills, folks. All right, we're back. Um. So the reality of the situation again, this hero colt around Yoni forms that he's like this great warrior, great philosopher. He dies valiantly fighting in this incredible raid. The reality of the situation is that he was a pretty broken man by the time he got killed, and he probably there's a good chance he got killed because of he'd been increasingly erratic in his behavior. That's why a lot of his his subordinates were like, we need to get this guy out of the unit because we can't rely on him and he screws up on the battlefield. The last letter he writes to his girlfriend before his death revealed deep depression in trauma. It ended with the words stop the world, I want to get off like he is in a bat. He probably shouldn't have been taking part in military actions. Um at the time at which he died Um, and again there's something to be said about kind of the the fact that trauma and stuff was not being properly addressed here. Max Hastings, a British journalist, was contracted by the net Yahoo family to write a book about Yoni, and the Israeli state gave him unprecedented access to the military, to people who served with Yoni to write this book. Hastings does intense research on this, and he walks away very critical of the net Yahoo family. While ben Zion tried to convince him that Yoni had been a soldier and an intellectual titan, Hastings concluded that Yoni had been quote a troubled young man of moderate intelligence, striving to come to terms with intellectual concepts behind his grasp, who had been attively disliked by more than a few of his men. The book itself was a disaster. Hastings um writes a book. They hate it. They have to massively edit it in order to publish it. Hastings fights them on this, but in the end he lets them do it because he's not going to get paid otherwise, and he winds up very angry about this whole situation. He never visits It's Real again. Years later, he writes memoirs where he talks about the process of writing this shitty book, and it includes some scathing indictments of ben Zion and Bbe. He describes Benjamin as a slick, humorless marketing man and includes this quote from one of their conversations. In the next war, if we do it right, we'll have a chance to get all the Arabs out, he said. We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem. He joked about the Golani Brigade, the Israeli infantry force, in which so many men were North African or Yemenite Jews. They're okay as long as they're led by white officers, he grinned. So heys, thanks, hey, yeah, yeah, scans now. When Babe returned to the US, he took a job with the Boston Consulting Group, which is a stuper prestigious They send in you know, they're one of those your business isn't doing as well as you want, you send in guys from the Boston Consultant Group. They make your business more profitable. It's one of those things. His coworker is Mit Romney. Like he and Romney are employed with the same company at the same time. Now, the difference is they is just like, yeah, I mean, Romney plays this up a lot later because obviously US Conservatives always need to be super pro Israel. The truth is they barely knew each other. Romney was really good at this job. Bbie was not like, he wasn't bad, but he just like didn't stand out in the company. And Romney is kind of like a star employee. Um. And basically bb does not like working for Boston Consulting because he's a small fish and a mitt Romney sized pond. Uh. And he finds himself increasingly drawn to the work that he was doing lecturing about his dead brother two different groups of wealthy American Jews. When he was doing that, he was special, he was the center of attention. When he's at Boston Consulting, he's just kind of a mid level employee. Bb drifted more and more towards politics, while over in Israel, the right wing descendants of the Revisionist Zionists finally won an election. Manachan Beggin's Liquid Party finally broke the Labor Party, but as a conciliatory gesture, begin keeps a lot of the old Mapai people in power, which infuriates BB. The right wingers big and did see fit to bestow political gifts on we're again old iz L veterans. So he does not give anything to the net and Yahoo's, even though they're more prominent by this point. Um. And of course, part of why BBI doesn't get any kind of position in this administration is he never spent any time as an adult citizen of Israel. He had fought in the military, but every time he wasn't serving, he'd gone back to the United States. And that's one of the things about BB. There's no period of time that significant where he's like a civilian adult living in Israel and not either an elected leader or a soldier. You know. Um, he spends up most of his civilian adult years in the United States. He gets married in the United States, although the Union broke apart in the late seventies because he cheated on his wife le she was pregnant, she dumped him. He's a big sad guy for a while. Uh. He spends his time flitting between Boston and Jerusalem, mostly miserable his own soul. Only soulis were the moments of prominence that he gained as one of US TVs go to Israelis. In June of nine, he participated in a panel about self determination for Palestinians. He said that they shouldn't have any arguing that any Palestinian state would be a PLO state. And he's by by that he means, you know, a terrorist state. That's what he means by it. Now. During this period, there were a couple of different wings of the Palestinian resistance in Israel. Uh. The PLO was broadly secularist. The FATA party are leftist, and then of course there's the Islamists, and there's a couple of different Islamist groups. The biggest one comes to be Hamas And everyone listening knows how moss you hear about them whenever we talk about like fighting in in in Palestine hem us, you know, in the rockets and stuff. So man I just interject, yes, please please, for the love of God. Yeah, So the the Palestine the Rational Organization is an umbrella organization and incorporates a couple of different groups. You mentioned that there's like the Palestine uh uh from from sorry, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. So like a couple of different groups, some left this, some centrist whatever the is, the isn't this groups are not part of the PILO. They emerge uh much later um as like militant groups um, particularly during the first in the fol though, so we're talking like in late nineteen eighties, um, and they do not join the pillow. There's there's still not a part of the plow. There's been some discussion, but there. Yeah, it's kind of separate. Yeah, I should have been clear. I wasn't trying to say they were part of the PELO. I was just trying to like, that's like the Palestinian resistance. There's different kind of like chunks, right, yeah. And and but it's interesting he called them like a Plo nation or whatever it was, the Palo state because in his in his older age as Prime Minister um he would refer to you know, some future Palestinian state as a Hamastan since the POLO now is which you know, since the Polo now is like a more legitimate, yeah, you know, organization that's accepted as the representative of the Palestinian people. Now it's that's the boogyman. They're already become hamas Stan. I'm very grateful to you, because this is again one of the when I talked about like the complexity that like makes people like me kind of scared to cover this. It's that stuff. It's like, oh God, like how it's going to take so long to get to to gain like a more competent understanding. Um. So it's kind of like the left of Brian, you know, like you have like so so it's fine that you know, so it's fine that you don't know the little inns and ut. Yeah, God, that is a that is a good way to compare it. I think that was yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean yeah, I think you're probably right. Um. Now, one of the things that's interesting to me because again net Yah, who demonizes Hamas, which is not to say that like I think Hamas is an organization that doesn't do funked up shit, um, but they get sort of, especially in the US media, they're these like rocket wielding terrorist boogeyman. And I think it's interesting to note that in the late nineteen seventies, a big part of why Hamas gains power is that they are being funded by the Israeli government as a way to split the Palestinian opposition. And I'm gonna quote from a write up in the Intercept by Mattia Hassan. Brigadier General Yitzak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early nineteen eighties. Uh seg Of told later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a counterweight to the secularists and leftists of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the FATA party led by Yasser Arafat, who himself referred to Hamas as a creature of Israel. The Israeli government gave me a budget, the retired brigadier general confessed, and the military government gives it to the mosques. Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation. Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told The Wall Street Journal in two thousand nine. Back in the mid nineteen eighties, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide and rule in the occupied territories by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. I suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our faces. He wrote, Yeah, yeah, I mean, like of course, like the way that they will view their own history and their own impact is that there, you know, they might outsize their role. In this particular case, there was the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine that what you know, was supported and not repressed necessarily by the Israeli state because it did not advocate for any kind of existance. They're like, well, just religious, like you know, we're just gonna have to work on our own selves and like fix our souls. And you know what I mean. Like they were kind of like a demobilizing force. Yeah, and they kind of like help you know, didn't didn't repress them, help them along. A little bit later on, um, there he mess split off from like the you know, proper Muslim brotherhood because they wanted to resist. They wanted to resist because they were like, we're losing the public here, Like people don't take us seriously. There's like all this like repression and violent repression you know, from the Israeli side onto Palestinians, and we're just sitting here talking about our religious souls and religious you know what I mean, So we should probably just something about that. But but yeah, I just wanted to interject their Yeah no, I mean that's yeah, thank you. Um. And it's like it is, it is this thing you don't want to like obviously providing funds as a part to split the movement to say that, like I don't want to like say that, like, oh, it was just all this Israeli scheme and that's where we get hamas because that's not at all accurate and fucked up and it denies people of agency. I think what's more interesting is that you can you can draw a direct line between what Great Britain is doing with the Haganah um in the in the thirties and what Israel tries to do in this period. It's this it's this colonialism thing where okay, we have this opposition. If they're united, that's a problem for us. Let's split divisions and we'll pick one side and back them against the others. And like that is it's this thing that colonial powers always do. Um, because it works pretty well. Um, although there's you know, always unforeseen consequences to it as well. Um. Anyway, Yeah, in nineteen seventy nine BB and ben zion Net and Yah who created the Jonathan Institute named after Yoni Yoni Yonatan Jonathan Like it's spelled Yonatan, he's Jonathan, He's called Yoni. That's the you know, it's just like Benjamin. Like I think they actually spelled like the anglicit causation is usually spelled bin humin um when it's not being like anyway, it's beside the win um. So the Jonathan Institute, which is you know, led by Baby and his dad, hold a big international symposium on terrorism in nineteen nine, which was attended by multiple Israeli presidents and prime ministers, as well as former CIA Director George W. Bush H. W. Bush. The you know, the groping one um and the war cry, but they're both the war crying one. That doesn't really separate them in any way. Um, not the cocaine one. Not the cocaine Bush the other Bush. So basically everyone who attended this big symposium is a right winger. There are no non white voices really, um, there are no voices who are liberal or leftist. There's certainly no Muslim voices. And this represents one of the first concerted efforts by the Israelis to spin their struggles with Palestinians as part of an international battle against terror that the West is also a part of the big message of the conference is that insurgents fighting political powers are terrorists, not freedom fighters. Their causes are fundamentally legitate, illegitimate and can't be debated. Since this is the Cold War, Palestinian groups and other so called terrorists where all the fault of the U. S s are And at that point, they're trying to fold in Israel's fight with Palestine into the global Cold War. And this conference is often kind of over emphasized and it's importance. But what's important is we see this as the start of a conserted strategy, that being who is at the center of to tie in UM the Israeli fight against Palestinians into and to find a way to tie that into whatever the US is struggling against at the moment. And I seen seventy nine, it's communism. Post two thousand one, it will be terrorism, you know, but it's it's it's the same basic strategy UM that will be the blueprint for the next forty years of Israeli diplomacy. As as regards the West. And it's an it's an effective strategy. It's an effective way of framing what is really an ethnic cleansing as a battle against terrorism because you can rope in all of these other powers on your side. Um, and it it works. It's a it's an effective strategy. UH. In nineteen eighty, the Knnesset passed the and that's like the Israeli Congress basically parliament like whatever, UM passed the Jerusalem Law, which claimed that the entire city, which again Israel is occupying all of Jerusalem, that's in violation of international law and that they're they've been doing this for decades. At this point, UM, the Jerusalem Law, they claim the whole city is part united under Israeli sovereignty and direct again direct um opposition to international law begins. Right wing government made peace with Egypt a little earlier, but after that, UM, and and so it begins, government like makes kind of peace with Israel. That's this big kind of moment of hope. UM. And then immediately after that they make this hard right turn because they've kind of you know, Okay, we've made peace with one of our enemies. Now we can swing hard to the right and start pleasing the far right. That's why they passed the Jerusalem Law. Um. Begin bombs Iraq after this, which is in violation of international law to take out a nuclear power plant. Um. And this kind of marks the establishment of the Begin Doctrine uh in, which basically is Israel declaring that Arabs are never allowed to have atomic weapons. Um. That's that's the the the big foreign policy thing that Begin establishes in this period in the early nineteen eighties. Well, this is going on. Net and Yah who gets a job with the Israeli Embassy working as a pr man for the country in an official capacity, and he's very effective in this role. He charms New York's media elite, he charms DC politicians. Uh. He gives quotes to every major news organization on every development in Palestine. Since he speaks flawless English and is charming, he becomes a fixture on daytime television. When Hezbla blew up a US marine barracks and by route by was able to shove himself into close contact with George Schultz, who's the Secretary of State at this point, is also a former investor in theomus um and uh yeah, he's he's and again one of the reasons why Israeli foreign policy takes the role it is and is so successful in getting the US to back whatever it does is they've got BB who is very effective, who is basically an American in a lot of ways, and it's very effective at talking to Americans and getting them on his side. And there's no equivalent of that for the Palestinians. UM certainly not that has the kind of media um attention that BB is successful in getting. I don't want to overstate his role, but it's significant in this period. Um Manak and Began retired in nineteen eighty three, leaving no obvious successor to the head of the revisionist cause. Begin had welded together a powerful right wing electorate, contemptuous of any compromise with Arabs, and dead certain that Jerusalem was There's forever. For a while he was followed by a formal I l fighter, Jetsak Schmir. But yet Zac was not a great politician, and he wound up stalemateing with Labor in nineteen eighty four, and so both parties share power. They split prime ministership over the next four years. For BB, the main benefit of the schmir years is that he was ambassador, and he got to spend the next couple of years constantly taking the podium at the UN to attack different Arab leaders. He spent the late eighties building his power within Israeli politics, within international politics, and inside the media. He becomes a regular guest on Larry King Live. He and Larry King are good buddies. Larry King famously says that as a guest he's an eight and if he had a sense of humor, he'd be aten um, which kind of a back ended government. But okay, Larry is not the person to talk about. No, he's sure. He's sure as ship Isn't you know who is funnier than Larry King. Yeah, they're there. I mean Larry probably needs them. Um, he's dead, Robert all the more recent, Well, baby's still alive. That's not ideal. We're back, okay, so uh bb gets made an ambassador, he's on TV, he's doing Larry King. And in nineteen eighties seven, while Bebe is hob nobbing and forcing his second wife Fleur to convert formally to Judaism so he could become a prime minister, and she was Jewish, she was but she was half Jewish and Orthodox Jews didn't consider her Jewish enough, so she had to do this big public conversion process. Um and Like one of the stories that she'll tell is that like she would often have to like stop Bebi from like eating bacon and stuff because he's not super religious, right, But he's got to because of the people he wants to play too. He's got to play to that crowd, so he makes her convert in anyway. Well, all this is going on because he's getting ready to try to become prime minister, the first into Fata begins. This is not something we're gonna give as much to tail as it deserves. Um. The thing usually given as the cause of the into fata was the killing of four Palestinian civilians by an Israeli jeep on the Gaza Strip at a checkpoint. This brings out protesters. Uh an Israeli officer fires into a crowd of protesters. He's kills a seventeen year old. Um and it starts this massive resistance movement. UM and I found a good source on the website American Muslims for Palestine that argues that the real cause of the Indifatah is decades of building oppression and discontent. Quote, A whole generation of Palestinians had never known anything other than occupation. That occupation had made them economically dependent on Israel. Not only did they have to put up with being treated like inferiors and prisoners in their own homeland, but they were also grossly exploited for their labor. They were paid half the wages of Israeli workers, they were taxed higher, they had few benefits, and they were without job security because official Israeli policy denied them any rights within Israel. Many Palestinians were employed without the required work permits, which put them in an even more tenuous situation. They, like any other people, wanted to be free from Israel's tyranny. Like any other people, they wanted to resist the force being used against them, but without an organized resistance movement, they were powerless to challenge the occupation itself. The more dependent they were, the more the occupation became entrenched, and the more Israel profited. Beneath the surface, though their discontent was seething, Palestinians were also seeing their confiscated land being illegally settled by Jewish foreigners who were allowed to carry machine guns and were protected by the Israeli army when they used them to terrorist terrorize Palestinian families. These families were constantly under threat, not only for continuing to live on their own land and properties, but also for any outward expression of their cultural identity or nationalist feelings. Anything that was deemed pro Palestinian was forbidden or destroyed. The word Palestine was expunged from textbooks, and any products marked as Palestinian where relabeled as Israeli. Literature, art, music, and other activities that encouraged a national consciousness were subject to attack. In universities were often closed for long periods because they were seen as fomenting nationalist fervor. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the first of the father definitely like you know, erupted because of years of oppression. Um. And because at the time there wasn't the the segregation walls. They were used as kind of cheap labor much more commonly than they are today. Um even then that still continues today. But really the Palestinians have a history of mass mobilization like they you know did um, like with the Balfour decoration when when Balfour came to visit the Holy Land. They did a strike that was like, um, they do these marches, they do these protests even under you know, Israeli occupation after nineteen sixty seven in the West Bank and Gaza, there were like kind of cycles of like protests. None of them reached the level of a mass at the FOLDO, but like it had it had always been kind of the case because as you mentioned, like it's not like they you know, obviously the PLO has weapons and things like that, but that's kind of outside the territories. It's not fully you know, um present in the territories at this point, and um that this is how they can kind of challenge the Israeli state. And then with the INTFOD that there was this spark of like popular outrage and so the Palestinian kind of like intelligence here are like the you know, political leadership that they might have been like in medical associations, professional associations, not necessarily political groups, but they arose the occasion. They created an unifiational leadership of the uprising um and then they started to kind of coordinate the mass mobilizations and say like on this day we will do a strike. Yeah, on this day, we will do, uh, you know, a boycott whatever. Um. So yeah, yeah, and that's a big part. There's there's boycotts, there's like mass refusal to pay taxes, and there's like the kind of attendant these mobile clinics and mutual aid projects to support these activists to the thing that I think foreigners, if they've heard of the into FATA, like Americans, the image is like shirtless Palestinian boys with rocks and slings going up against tanks, right, Like those are like this, and that's like a a part of it. Like that's the image that certainly goes viral. And one of the things, um, that is kind of one of the things that happens internationally here is that these images of of kids with rocks going up against tanks kind of helps to start puncture the international image Israel had very carefully cultivated as an underdog constantly beset by powerful foes because you know, and again this is my education on this is Israel. Oh, everyone keeps invading them, all of these countries at once, and they fight them off and then suddenly you're seeing, well, no, they're driving tanks against seventeen year olds with rocks like that doesn't that they don't seem to be the underdog here. Um. Now, of course that is again I think kind of internationally has a big impact. One of the arguments I all hear is that the thing that actually scared the Israeli government was what you were talking about, the mass social disobedience, the boycott's, the refusal to pay taxes, which obviously has a lot more effect than anything else. Um. And from that right up I quoted earlier quote. To quell it, Israel report resorted to punishing the Palestinian population and moss. Ordinary citizens found themselves without power to pursue even the most routine daily activities. Curfews were ordered for weeks on end, thousands of Palestinians were arrested. With the closure of schools and universities, education effectively became illegal, and teachers and students had to resort to underground classes. Homes were demolished without warning, Alive trees and agricultural crops were destroyed. Vital water supplies were redirected to Israel, and then waters usage restricted so severely people had to queue with containers for hours to buy back their own water. I was born during the Intifada, actually uh, and my parents have like memories of um, you know, because of the curfew, they're not able to go out, and I needed formula, and like you know, massed Um activists would try to drop it off, you know, regularly, so that like I wouldn't starve essentially, And that was the case for you know, most of Palestinian society. That never ending curfews, the the severe repression, the break the bones policy. Meet zak Rabine was the Defense minister at the time, and he basically gave they go to, you know, the green light for the Israeli soldiers too if they saw m Pastinia processors or like Palestinian voice throwing rocks or something to like make them pay for it by literally like holding them down and using rocks to smash their bones, um, like their elbows and things like that. And it was kind on camera because you know, at that time, we're you know, we've got cameras to show these things. Yeah, so um, yeah, it was pretty brutal. Yeah, just I mean outrageously so. And I think one of the things I've read recently that was really starring it's just on the subject of water um Palestine, like in Gaza and the West Bank has some of the worst water quality in the world. Um like very like like very like poisonously bad water in terms of like the water that Palestinians have access to. But it gets more rain the West Bank, and it gets more rain than like, um, some parts of the Pacific Northwest, and a lot of that water goes directly to Israel. Like that that's like not yeah, there's there's a huge like it's a concerted effort to kind of like you know, create a fifth false drout. Yes, a false drout. That's a good way of putting it. And yeah, you brought up the breaking of bones, which happens under rabine. Um. And this this, the fact that footage of this gets out is a real pickle for a PR guy like bb net and Yahoo um, because his his whole job is to get on TV and say that like, we're just defending ourselves. The Palestinians are trying to destroy all of Israel. And then you see I d F guys breaking teenagers bones with rocks, and um, that doesn't look like an existential struggle for Israel. It just looks like thuggery because that's what it is. Um and bb leaves his job at this point because he's like, I can't. I'm not I'm not getting on board. I'm not. I'm not gonna like screw my career over by trying to defend this um. And before he heads back to Israel, because he's he decides he's going to start his iCal Career's gonna stop being a pr guy because the Intifat has made that a rough task. Um, He's going to go back home and get into politics. And before he goes back to Israel, he has a series of meetings with Republican Party political strategist where he gets advice on how to run for office. And he goes back to Israel and he starts his campaigning as a politician. Now, he initially denied that he had any desire to become a prime minister because his party was already in power, so that would have meant saying like I want to take over for you know, um shamir um. But he runs for and he wins a seat in the Knesset Um and he's too much of a new man for the party leadership to give him a good position, so he had to make a position for himself. And the way he does this is that in the Intifada goes on for almost six years, right, it's like five years, nine months something like that. Yeah, So what he does during the Intifada when he's new to the Knesset every time in Israeli because you know, there are reprisal attacks on Israeli Jewish citizens during this period. Every time that happens, he goes to the hospital, he meets with the victim or the family of the victim, and he demands that the international media give equal coverage to Jewish victims. Now, this is a problem because during the course of the into Fata six years, almost two hundred and seventy seven Israelis, a hundred and seventy five of them civilians are killed. That's not good, but more than three hundred Palestinians were killed during the first year of the into Fata. More than sixteen hundred were killed by Israelis by the time the violence of side in the early nineteen hundreds and one. Swedish NGO estimates that between twenty three thousand, six hundred and twenty nine thousand, nine hundred Palestinian children required medical treatment for beating injuries during the first two years of the Intifada. One third of these children were under the age of ten, which again is the problem with the whole equal coverage thing. Um is, it makes it and BB is smart by doing this, it makes it into this. Oh well, we have victims too. There's violence on both sides, which is the continual story of the Israeli Palestinian conflicts. Like, well, but look at how lopsided the violence is. Look at how lopsided the death toll is twenty nine thousand palaces. Israeli kids aren't being hospitalized for beatings during this period. Um, Yeah, I mean both size is um is like yeah, like no, no recognition of like power and balance, yes, exactly. Or the fact that you know, the attacks on Israeli civilians are largely in desperation for attacks these Reeli state is carrying out on Palestinian civilians. Um. And the fact that like, one of the things people will say is that like, well, okay, nothing being done to the Palestine has justifies terrorism against Israelis. It's like, okay, but the Israeli government has embarked in a consistent policy of collective punishment of all Palestinians for the actions of any individuals to carry out attacks. So why isn't the same thing justified on the other side. Oh, it's because we give money to one side. Um yeah, or like one is what like it's it's a state and the others are less of an entity. They don't have, you know, self determination that they can They're not seen as fully like a fully functioning part of a human civilization. Actually exactly yeah. Um. So in nineteen two, is the into Fata war on It's Sacrabine was elected Prime Minister in Israel and he ran on a platform of trying to find a peaceful political solution to the conflict. Rabin worked with President Clinton, with Pol oak chairman Yasir Arafat too. I mean he would frame it is trying to end the violence. He expressed a willingness to hand back territory that Israel had taken. Um. And this really pisss off net and Yahoo and the far right because they thought, we're never giving this ship off. Now. Rabine is the arm breaking guy. He is not at all a dove. Um. I think he's bad person. He had spent his entire life fighting brutal and often criminal wars against Arab states and the Palestinian people. Um. But if you believe the standard line that is said about being He gets kind of worn down by the violence during the anti Fatah and he starts to see Palestinian resistance not as just a military re threat, but as a political grievance that can be solved politically. In September of nineteen three, Rabine shakes hands with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn and delivers a famous line, we say to you today and allowed in a clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough. But bb net and Yahoo and the Likud party had not had enough. They saw Rabine's willingness to give up land as a heresy. Again, remember what we're talking about about what can justify political violence from Jewish people against other Jewish people. Bb This is a secular heresy, it's the sin against guys like his brother who had died fighting to take that land. But for hardcore religious right wing Zionists it's literal heresy. God had told them this land was theirs. Rabine has no right to give it up, and the Palestinians have no right to it now. Bibe is not a hugely religious guy, no matter what he says, But by the early nineteen nineties, he was actively running for Prime minister, and he had become the center of a right wing backlash against Rabine in the early nineteen ninety four at an anti Oslo The Oslo peace process is kind of the name for this attempt that Ravine and and and Clinton and um uh Ara Fat get into. He becomes like so in nineteen ninety four there's a big protest against Oslo and beating net and Yah, who leads a procession bearing a coffin with the inscription Rabine kills Zionism. Now, since it was widely understood that an e PM who stands against Zionism is a traitor, many Liquid members took this as a message which would seem to justify violence against Rabine. Net And Yah, who compared Rabine to Neville Chamberlain, who is the Prime Minister of England who did appeasement with the Nazis in a column for the New York Times, because again he's got all these US media connections. When twenty one Israelis were killed in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in late nineteen nine four, net and Yah, who claimed Prime Minister Rabine chose to favor Ara Fat and the well being of the people of Gaza over the security of Israeli citizens. At rallies, net and Yah, Who's followers started carrying posters with photoshops of Rabine dressed as Asser Arafat or just wearing a straight up Nazi uniform. From a write up in The Guardian, quote Benjamin Netanyah, who was the star speaker at two now infamous demonstrations, with the crowd slogans included death to Rabine. In July nineteen nine, Netanyah, who walked at the head of a mock veneral procession featuring a fact yet wanted that Israel's head of internal security, asked net Yahoo to dial down the rhetoric, warning that the Prime Minister's life was in danger. Net and Yah, who declined perhaps he, like Rabine, didn't imagine and Israeli jew could ever kill one of their own. Any threat surely came from elsewhere now. It was around this time that Yigal Amir, a Jewish religious extremist terrorist, decided to kill the Etzak Rabine. He later insisted that extremist rabbis and the rhetoric around Rabine had not swayed his decision. Instead, he claimed he decided all on his own that Rabine had rindered himself essentially non Jewish by offering to give back land that the Bible said belonged to Israel. A lot of people blame net and Yahoo for creating the rhetorical environment that radicalizes a guy named like a mere Um and a mere shoots unkills Rabine at a big pro peace rally that was, in retrospect, probably the height of the Israeli peace movement. UM. Now, the fact that Rabine gets killed at a moment when peace is kind of at its most popular with the a Israeli electorate should have meant that it would have been possible to work things out right. You can see how this could lead to increased support for the OSLO, but that is not what happened. Um. From the Guardian quote. Rabine's immediate successor was his decades long rival, Shimone Perez. Perez was like urged by one of his advisers to call a snap election. The right was weak, shamed by its association with the incitement that had led to murder. The wave of public grief embodied by the candlelit visuals of young people would surely lead to a landslide victory in an immediate mandate to complete Rabine's peacemaking work, but Perez said no, after years inter being shadow, he wanted to wait until the scheduled election the following summer rather than rely on a sympathy vote. He wanted to be elected by himself. It was just his egos as somebody who knew him at the time. And Perez loses in X. They wait too long, UM, and the winner is Benjamin Netan Yahoo, who gets elected to be Prime minister. Now he doesn't last long. He gets replaced initially UM, but he finds his way back into power. And more importantly, the right wing and the center right are in power basically the entirety of the time after Rabine's death. For all but twenty months of the last twenty five years, the right and center right have controlled the government in Israel. At the last election, the once dominant Israeli Labor Party, if it's Acrabine, got less than six percent of the vote and just seven seats in parliament. For twenty five years, Labor has failed to find a leader who could do what Rabine did, which is get people on board with any kind of peace process. UM. And at this point there's really no Israeli peace movement, not not in any meaningful sense. I think the left is about eight percent of the electorate. Um Israeli young Israelis are like way more conservative than young people basically anywhere in the world. And there's a lot to be said about why that is. But net and Yahoo was a core factor in that, um and a core factor in why you know, the Oslo process doesn't work out and why there's there's no real peace movement today. UM. I mean it's ironic because I think Rabine, you know, I didn't want the Israeli state to be de legitimized the way that it is today. Um bye, Like because he realized, like you know, this longstanding occupation was going to end up with the kind of discussions that are happening now right like apartheid and things like that. Then should we have a by national state, should we have a one state? That These are the kinds of discussions that are happening now because they didn't resolve the problem. The Also Accords wasn't intended to necessarily give the Palestinians a full state, but it was intended to like give them some semblance of self governance, get the interne actual community off their back, and very very cleverly contain them. And it worked. It worked. That's what's that's what's funny about all of this is like the also process worked in achieving that. Um. If they had, you know, taken it a little bit seriously, they would have resolved, like they would have fully demobilized Palestinians. Um. But um, you know, it's it's kind of like a like a a political like like you said, political heresy to say, like we can give them a little bit of self governance. Uh. Instead it's like, no, we must, we must ennex all of the aspect, we must take all of this land. Yeah, any kind of compromises, I mean, for one thing, you're compromising with terrorists. That's a big part of what net yahoo wants is trying to do since the seventies. There's no legitimacy to any of these causes. They're all just terrorists and as terrorists, you can't negotiate with them. Um and yeah, um BB is there's a lot of critiques about BB as a as an actual politician who people who will argue that he's incompetent in a lot of ways, there's a lot of and I don't want to get into the weeds on any of that. What he's good at, unindebatably in my opinion, is holding onto power. Because he does. Um. He gets re elected in two thousand nine. Um, and he's been in power ever since. He's the longest serving prime minister in Israel history. Um And yeah he Now it's interesting when he runs for re election in two thousand nine he publicly announces his support for a Palestinian state. In a decade later he would rescind any sort of support. Like again, he never really meant it, like he was saying what he thought was kind of because yeah, I mean, he has this speech at Boylan University where he says like, Okay, I'm fine with the Palestinian state. We don't we We can quabble about the terminology later. And you want to call it a state, you can call it a state. But it's so it's a state that cannot import missiles into their territory, field and army close their airspace, make PACs with the likes of Iran completely demotorized, otherwise they will become another hemas Sistan. Terminology is not important it's basically a state without sovereignty. Yeah, like that doesn't you know, we like what kind of conceptual stretching is that, Like this is not a state, right, the state that does not have yeah, like control over its own boundaries, controverton territories and not a state. You know, I'm not a big fan of states in general, but like one of the basic definitions of a state is it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of power. And what Yahoo is suggesting is a state where Israel has a monopoly of the legitimate use of power, which the people are he was not a state. Um, now they're not. Yeah yeah, sorry, sorry, I was just gonna say it. Literally says like they cannot forge any pacts, like they cannot have any over anything. Yeah that's yeah, um so yeah. And it's obviously in two thousand nineteen he even goes back on that and and like, is like that even that kind of milk to support for not even really autonomy doesn't last. Um, And shortly after he comes to office in two thousand and twelve, he orders a major offensive in response to rocket fire into Israel. This happens to two thousand twelve. It happens again in a big way in two thousand and fourteen. This leads to a fifty day war that kills Palestinians mostly civilians uh and sixty seven Israeli soldiers, including in six civilians um. And there's there's other you know, salies and attacks and whatnot. There's a pretty much kind of continuous level of violence. And it helps BB because he makes a lot of different domestic blunders. But every time something goes wrong for him, there's another conflict with Hamas Um and even like right now that's kind of going on, like BB, we'll talk about that in a little bit. I don't want to get out of myself. Um. But as time has gone on, Bbe has yielded more and more to the far right, who often don't like him because they see him as too much of a moderate, but he gives them what he wants, which is more and more settlements in Palestinian land. The settlement strategy has been part of a very cunning again, a strategy aimed at making a Palestinian state impossible by blocking Palestinian population centers off from one another, with Palestins with the Israeli towns. In two thousand and fifteen when US State Department official Frank Loewenstein like started looking at maps of settlements in Israel and realized what was happening. And he talked to a reporter with the New Yorker, and I want a reader quote from that article in the New Yorker, because I think it's it's it's telling. Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Loewenstein told me he saw the forest for the trees. Not only were Palestinian population centers being cut off from one another, but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Loewinstein's team did the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outpost, and the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated, they covered almost six of the West Bank. And again, these are illegal settlements under international law. The Obama administration complains. Everybody complains, nobody stopped selling weapons days reel um. Anybody even wants to boycott settlement No, no, nobody even wants to boycott goods made just in the settlement areas. Um. And in fact, people will say that that's anti Semitic um, which is frustrating. I mean, there's laws being pushed in the United States to stop even that kind of again very milk toast resistance. UM. And Yeah, while this is all happening, while settlements are expanding, settler culture grows paramilitary. There's a lot of I think a lot of interplay culturally with what's happening to the US militia movement at the same time. One thing I've seen embodying that recently is there's been photos of Israeli I think they're plain closed cops, but they're airing tactical gear, assaulting Palestinians and wearing patches that have an Israeli flag and a punisher skull on them. So there's this there's part of this kind of like growing global right wing paramilitary culture that the Israeli several quote settler culture feeds into and is fed by. That's probably a bigger subject than we could get into today UM. But for kind of a an overview of the violence carried out by these settlers, I want to read a write up by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UM and is it called Selim the human rights seem the human rights a bet Selim's Field researchers documented two hundred and forty incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including eight six bodily assaults in which seventy five Palestinians were injured, cases of stone throwing at homes, seventeen attacks on moving vehicles, a hundred and forty seven attacks were aimed at Palestinian farmers or their property, including eighty cases of damage to trees and crops owned by Palestinians, resulting in more than three thousand trees vandalized. In thirty nine cases, the violent acts took place during the olive harvest season. Of these incidents, seventy two took place in the presence of soldiers, police officers or d c O personnel who did not intervene to stop the assault on the Palestinians or their property. In twenty eight cases, soldiers dispersed the Palestinian residents by firing tear gas, dung grenades, and rubber coated metal bullets, and in at least five cases, even live fire. Israeli authorities arrested at least twelve Palestinians during these alter occasions. Yeah, I mean they they kind of some of the lynch mobs that we're saying now like it has a precedent in this UM. It's like they will you know, try to burned down mosques, burned down like churches. There was like the Duma arson attack in Um where they like burned a family, a lot of uh, they like run over kids, like they like you said, they've burned down these olive trees. Um. They're just really really like quite violent and it's kind of a UM. It's like a level of impunity because they walk around with guns and like that's nobody's nobody's nobody does anything like the cops are now you know, they're not actually cops. There is there is really um their army UM and and they like they do not intervene whatsoever. And through all of this net and Yaho has held onto power. Part of it is he's he's tough on terrorism. You know, security is kind of the whole thing that he You're a big part of why what he runs on. UM. He's the economy has broadly speaking done well under Baby UM, or at least during large parts of it, which is a big part of his popularity. UM. The Israeli left today is almost non existence, about eight percent of the voting population. Most of the country is center right, and that means the far right gets to dictate policy. UM. This has maintained even though BB has committed a lot of scandals. UM. He is currently the state's longest serving leader and also it's first to face criminal prosecution while in office. Corruption investigation started in two thousands sixteen led to him being charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate cases. He's alleged to have accepted gifts from wealthy businessmen and given out favors in exchange for positive press. UM. There's like, I I don't want to get into the current politics, but like he's basically the caretaker prime minister. Now there's been like a bunch of but it kind of looked like the opposition. There was a period a little while where it looked like he might get forced out as Prime minister. That doesn't seem likely to happen, at least in the immediate future here. Um, I don't know. I'm not gonna like again, I'm not an expert on Israeli politics, but it does seem like everything that's happening, he knows how to make use of it. Um to stay in power. Um. I kind of want to end by noting something I found in an article from March nineteen. Benjamin Netan Yahoo, in comments on Instagram, said that all citizens in Israel, including Arabs, had equal rights, but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed that year which declared Israel the nation state of the Jewish people, saying, quote, Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic Nationality law we passed, Israel is a nation state of the Jewish people and only it. As you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us, and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab sector than any other government. But you know that's you're saying that they're not really part of the state, like it's it's it's ethno nationalism without wanting to tell the Guardian that your ethno nationalist. Um. Yeah, it's like like he always just says this, says the thing and says it's opposite. And and it's you know, if we're if we're talking about Postinian citizens of Israel, there one in five. Well that's not an insignificant number. Um. But they're being told that the right to exercise natural self determination is only unique to Jewish people. Um. And then they don't have their language recognized as an official language. Um. And then Jewish settlement is basically enshrined in this law. And then that you know, that's just how senny citizens of Israel. Um. Let alone all these stateless people who live in the Gaza strip in West Bank and Ease Jerusalem, who don't even have like the right to call themselves a citizen, albeit apparently not a full one. They're just there. They've got no political will to speak of. It's not a great not a great situation, not a great situation. Um. But that is the end of my podcast script. D Uh. I mean there's no way not to end on a bad note. Oh yeah, there's no good note to end on, because what's happening is bad. Um, I don't know anything else you think we should get into anything else you want to talk about before we settle out. Um, I did remember that I actually made a mistake. It's seventy three years since the next but I don't know. I don't know that matters. Yeah, I mean it does. Yeah, so I just go I was off by two years because I'm stuck that before the pandemic essentially. Um, I don't know. Let me just see here in my notes. I mean, do you want to talk about what's happening today or yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean that's it's the kind of thing. Um, you know, it's it's it's started it. It seems like coming when I'm wrong. Here you've got shaik shaha. Um no Jafa right, yeah, you were right. The neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Um, right, that's the houses are being people are being eviction. Is the term these really state uses, um, which you know it's not really I think an accurate way to characterize it. It's another active ethnic cleansing. Um. There were protests as a result of that, and there was a right wing nationalist, religious extremist march on Aloxa, and that all kind of like combined together to a bunch of protests. Police violence. Police shooting grenades was met by you know, rock throwing and uh then violence from paramilitary groups and now you know, we're we've escalated to Gaza Is being carpet bombed and there's constant rocket fire and uh, it's just it's just it looks like a nightmare. All of the footage from inside, Yeah, Lynch mobs, people being beaten in the street, Palestinian businesses being attacked. Um, just horrible, horrible, horrible shit. Gaza looks. Yeah, it's apocalyptic. I mean, I don't even Yeah, Gaza Is is like beyond beyond comprehension. But where in Nadine who kind of fits into all this aside from the fact that he's the Prime Minister um and he obviously like foments this kind of bus all the time. UM. He brought into power, UM people who are like Kahonists, who are like um, they take like their ideology like their rare right wing religious Zionists who take their ideology from a band movement UM of like extremists. UM. And he he you know, did his best to bring them into power, into the kinesset and it's amount of been veer. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but um, he was one of these people who now finds himself in you know, mainstream politics, and he he is always in ship, like he's always antagonizing, he's always bringing settlers causing um, you know, like trying to agitate like he's he's doing it on purpose, um and like agitating people to commit acts of violence against the Palestinians outside. So, like, you know, it's good that we're talking about Nathania because like the man is like very deeply implicated aside from you know, aside from the fact that he is actually like you know, the political authority here. He's he's like fomented this. Yep. I mean, of course, not to say, like, you know, Natania has to blame for a structural condition of like settler colonial state that like does not treat everybody properly. Obviously, like there is this structural reason that people are upset, but this particular instigation we can trace it to his, um political decision making and his and his willingness to uh you know, um put his weight behind extremists. Yep. Yeah, Um, yeah, that's it's it's a real bummer. And I don't um, I don't know. Like the hopeful thing I guess is that, um, people seem to be pretty piste off. But I can't tell to what extent that will matter, because people have been piste off about a lot of terrible things that didn't get better. Um, So I don't know. Yeah, I mean I try not to think about it that way because I feel, um yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not productive. Yeah. So if we can't, we don't have any control or the situation. We might as well keep this stuff because I think apathy is apathy is worse. Like you should care, You should at least bear witness to what's happening exactly. Yeah, And what I mean that like like uh, particularly those of us, because you can't help but bear witness. But like people like me, people here in the United States, people who um you know, have grew up hearing one thing about what was happening in Palestine and have come to understand a different thing. Um. Anyway, Uh danna you want to you want to plug those um um um places people can can donate to help. Yeah, the there's medical age for Palestinians. Um, there's uh town and Palestine. That's t A A w O N. And there's UM Draftroots puts A l q U d s UM. There are all three organizations that either help on the medical, political or economic front. UM to help Palestinians across the territories and inside Jerusalem to to live with dignity. Well awesome, UM help out, Keep reading UM will include a lot of sources and stuff here. That documentary on the October War from Al Jazeera all worth checking out. And I don't know, keep keep bearing witness, I guess uh And yep, that's the super upbeat and I'm line, I'm gonna end on. Yeah, thank you, Danna