It Could Happen Here - The Nakba and the Deir Yassin Massacre

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Shereen and James are back to go through the Deir Yassin massacre and history of the Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” and how this violent expulsion and destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 still has devastating repercussions 75 years later.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. It's still Shereen, and I'm still joined with the one and only James Stout. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. Yeah, anytime. The listeners, they get what they want, you know? They demanded it, and here we are delivering.

Log on to the subreddit. No, I mean, I was interested in having someone else receive the information I had because it's really hard to do it by myself. And it's also hard not to like sound like a bored professor or something because I just sound like this um something I have experience with yeah yeah you don't have like a professor but it's also very emotionally challenging to just be like here's some terrible fucking things that have happened again and

exactly yeah it's nice when you're by yourself's like, it feels a lot heavier for some reason. And so I'm glad to have someone else on anyway. Thank you. Today, I wanted to talk about something that happened 75 years ago this month. So there's going to be some history here, but I think it's really important history. So please stay tuned if you want to learn some stuff. But 75 years ago this month, before Israel was officially established, the Deir Yassin massacre happened. This massacre was part of the Nakba, or the catastrophe, and it matters even 75 years later, and it should always serve as a reminder of the atrocities and massacres that took place in order for a country that was already there to be stolen, renamed, terrorized, have people killed and forcibly

removed from their homes. And the indigenous people were expelled from their homes and the ownership of their own land was granted to someone else. And I think reminding everybody of what happened to make that happen is extremely important because we're not that far removed from that brutalization. It's not like we can say like, oh, that was medieval times. Like people were different. It's like, no, that was like less than 100 years ago. Shut up. in Arabic, it refers to the violent expulsion of approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland by Zionist militias in the new Israeli army during the State of

Israel's establishment between 1947 and 1948. The Nekeba was a deliberate and systematic act intended to establish a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. Amongst themselves, Zionist leaders use the euphemism quote-unquote transfer when discussing plans for what today would be called ethnic cleansing. The roots of the Nakba and the ongoing problems in Palestine and Israel today, they lie in the emergence of the political Zionism from the late 1800s, when some European Jews, influenced by the nationalism that was sweeping the continent, they decided that the solution to anti-Semitism in Europe and Russia was the establishment of a state for Jews in Palestine. They began immigrating to Palestine as colonizers,

where they started depossessing indigenous Muslim and Christian Palestinians. In November of 1947, following World War II and the Holocaust, the newly created United Nations approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of the majority indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Again, this was not their decision or choice to make. Regardless, the UN approved of a plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states against the will of Palestinian people. It gave 56% of that land to the proposed Jewish state, despite the fact that Jews only owned about 7% of the private land in Palestine and made up only 33% of the population. And a very large percentage of this percentage of 33% were recent immigrants from Europe. So handing over more than half of someone else's land truly doesn't make sense. I

don't care what religious text you're citing. It was wrong at this point in time to take that land. It was just wrong. The Palestinian Arab state was to be created on just 42% of Palestine, even though Muslim and Christian Palestinians made up a large majority of the population and were indigenous to all of the land. Jerusalem was to be governed by a special international administration. Almost immediately after the partition plan was passed, the expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias began. plan was passed, the expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias began months before the arming of neighboring Arab states began to be involved. So there was no other person to say, don't do this, or like there was no one else to fight to hold them back, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

And by the time these Zionist militias and the new Israeli army finished, the new state of Israel covered 78% of Palestine. So they didn't even follow the rules either. They just kept on swallowing up the land that wasn't even theirs to begin with, with this violent Nakba that it's just, it's a terrible, horrific thing they did. There is a film on Netflixflix called farha it's the first film that depicts any kind of uh story about the nakba and it's by a palestinian filmmaker it's really powerful uh i would recommend seeing that if you want an example of what happened because it's all factual as far as like the terror that they did um so i'd recommend that film give it five stars for the haters you know what I mean oh god

I can imagine the reviews are just like death yeah that was the film that the Israeli government tried to ban

and they were a lot of Zionists were commenting like terrible things about it and giving it one star or whatever they wanted Netflix

to take it off Netflix but no we fuck the haters help us out. Five stars. Put it on the background of your TV. It doesn't matter.

Just keep streaming it on a loop. Just keep streaming it. Exactly. Yeah. Strike a blow against colonialism. But that's just an example of how important and scared they are of the truth. Because it's a movie. It's a fucking movie.

Yeah. Control of the narrative is so important in these things exactly yes and even the way you refer to it right not not calling it the knock like calling calling it a transfer not a cleansing exactly uh these things calling it like not referring to it in the same terms as we would do like the genocidal settler colonialism that settled this country or you know the way that britain and france and germany behaved in africa like trying to not like specifically opposing calling it an apartheid state right when when that's what it is that's what it does like all of those things are so important and they might seem like petty battles

but uh they they really control how we see things i think when you control language you can control how people perceive things 100 and i think controlling the narrative is so parallel to like controlling the history books because that's what gets remembered by the people that want to the narrative to have a certain thing. Not all history books, obviously, but a lot of the times, the things that are considered facts are biased, you know? I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, or you're only getting half of the things, right? I mean, as a historian, we are all biased,

and so we should declare our biases and sort of go forward that way rather than presenting our biases as unbiased and neutral and then obviously creating a biased thing which is what we tend to get in the u.s especially when we look at this stuff right yeah no totally i love that i like i didn't bash historians but i criticized them but you're like i'm a historian yeah i won't i will will not jump to the defense of Zionist historians. I've worked with like, there's a chapter in my book about volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. And like about 30% of volunteers were Jewish people, right? And many of them had been like, couldn't go back to like, there are some of them who like fought in the spanish civil

war were guerrillas in the second world war survived the holocaust in some cases and then were anti-zionist and so like they didn't have a place like you know there wasn't a place for them as people who had had stuck to their very decent principles of like you shouldn't impose shit on force by people who don't want it and we were opposed to fascism or opposed to colonialism. There wasn't a place for them in, in that sort of post-World War II Jewish movement, that Zionist movement. There were in other places,

but yeah, it's very sad that their stories aren't like, like a friend of mine was the person who first wrote articles about them, but like their memory is completely erased right and or at least it's not present and then they should be people that like any reasonable person would be very proud of right they were willing to die for someone else's battle and then yeah they were kind of that they they stuck to the same principles the whole way through and the world kind of moved around them yeah and i mean i think as time goes on those things won't even be existing in people's reality you know what i

mean like if no one remembers that that happened if no one is part of what that happened like it's just going to go away it's going to disappear yeah that's why it's so important to do history and to do like to use different sources right and to do history uh from a people's perspective not from a perspective of people who are in power exactly wow history from below that's what we call it but say that sounds one more time if people call it history from below but uh like and to look at other sources right like um without like riding my hobby horse too much um like i was primarily a historian of sport and anti-fascism and like specifically sport i got a ton of pushback on

when i started because it's not important right um it's not you know it's not like fucking i don't have any charts or whatever uh and um like it's actually very important it's where people are able to express who they were and who was on the team and who was not on their team right and that's where you find these people who are very impactful lots of other areas and i think like if i was a younger person and i was trying to find my way from my identity and be like hey design ism seems wrong like in the same way that other things seem wrong to have those people to be like yeah these people also saw that right like they didn't want to boot on anyone's neck yeah not not just not no

didn't want it to be their boot on someone else's neck and that was fine you know they'd like having seen the holocaust having seen what happened in spain they're like now this shit is wrong it's still wrong it doesn't matter if we're doing it um yeah their humanity prevailed yeah and it's important for people like to have those uh those stories to be like okay well i'm not fucking crazy or it's not that i just don't understand what it was like back then because a lot of people could see it and we're like no we shouldn't be doing this yes wow historian james thank you for joining me today sorry no why are you apologizing i love that shit it's great nerd no i love it uh

history from below is what you said yeah that's quite an old theme now but i mean i think it's a good thing to to abide by so i'm glad that there's a little catchy phrase for it stewart hall and things like that yeah we'll do another episode on this one day yes Yes, please. So as we mentioned before, Israel stole about 78% of Palestine, and then this left 22%. And the 22% was compromised of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. And these regions fell under the control of Jordan and Egypt, respectively. In the 1967 war, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, the Israeli military occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Israel began colonizing them shortly afterwards. And just to give you some numbers, I think they're important sometimes just to get the context of the scale of something, but the Nakba by the numbers is what I'm about to

continue. Between 750,000 and 1 million Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and they were made refugees by Zionist militias, amounting to approximately 75% of all Palestinians. Between 250,000 and 350,000 Palestinians were driven out from their homes by Zionist militias between the passage of the UN Partition Plan on November 29th of 1947 and the establishment of Israel on May 15th of 1948, prior to the outbreak of war with the neighboring Arab states. Several dozen massacres of Palestinians were carried out by Zionist militias and the Israeli army, which played a critical role in prompting the flight of many Palestinians from their homes. More than 100 Palestinians, including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were massacred in the Palestinian town of Deryassin near Jerusalem on April 9th of 1948 by Zionist militia. This is the main massacre I want to talk about today because it's been exactly

75 years on April 9th, but it was one of many massacres and it was the one that is cited as igniting a lot of the domino effect. The massacre at Deryassin was one of the worstacres, and it was the one that is cited as igniting a lot of the domino effect. The massacre at Deir Yassin was one of the worst atrocities committed during the Nakba and a pivotal moment in Israel's establishment as a Jewish majority state. And again, it triggered the flight of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and beyond. The Deir Yassin massacre is commemorated annually by Palestinians around the world. Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained inside what became Israel's borders in 1948, a quarter of them internally displaced. These Palestinians, who are sometimes referred to as

Israeli Arabs, were granted Israeli citizenship but stripped of most of their land and governed by violent undemocratic military rule as of 1966. As of 2023, there are more than 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship comprising more than 20% of Israel's population and they are forced to live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, subject to dozens of laws that discriminate against them in almost every aspect of life because they're not Jewish. Let's take our first break here, and I'll come back and tell you more terrible things. So, BRP. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter... Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows.

Presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas. The host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Okay, we're back. I'm going to finish up a little bit more of these numbers, and then I'm going to talk about Deir Yassin. More than 400 Palestinian cities and towns were systematically destroyed by Zionist militias and the new Israeli army, or they were repopulated with Jews between 1948 and 1950. Most Palestinian communities, including homes, businesses, houses of worship, vibrant urban centers, they were destroyed to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners, who were now refugees outside of Israel's borders, or they were internally displaced inside them. Today, there are more than 7.2 million Palestinian refugees, including

Nekba survivors and their descendants. They're located mostly in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and neighboring Arab countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, and they're denied their internationally recognized legal right to return to their homeland. This is the last big number I want to say, just because I think it's so big I had to say it. Approximately 4,244,776 acres of Palestinian land was stolen by Israel during and immediately after the establishment of the state in 1948. Millions of acres. Like, it's not just a tiny little place

that no one was in before. Like, no. Millions of acres of land were forcibly stolen. Yeah. So, yeah. And all of them, like, land that people have had for generations, that they've farmed. Like, this is, like, land that people have had for generations, that they've farmed.

Like, this is, like, it's not the oldest settlement on Earth, but people have been living here for tens of thousands of years. I said Al-Aqsa yesterday was built in 1035. Like. Yeah. This shit is very old. And, like, sometimes the same people or people's sort of family have lived. It's not just a, like, loss of property. It's a loss of have it's not just a like loss of property so lots of everything that's

sacred and like the al-aqsa mosque or these things that are sacred and important to you you know and yeah and similar to what you said earlier it's like we have to remember these things because otherwise they'll get forgotten in the in whoever's recording the history you know what i mean like it's yeah i mean they have been here, right? When we look at how America sees itself, it sees the land that it expanded into as like terra nullius, like empty land that was unoccupied, which it was not.

There was not a wilderness to tame. There were people living here and they were living very happily and they were living... They weren't like, I don't want to do the whole in commune with nature thing, but this wasn't a wild and savage place right there were people existing here and taking from the land and living on the land and like

we that just doesn't get fucking like ruth bader ginsburg was citing the doctrine of discovery you know like you know all the libs love ruth badiley ginsburg but like it's so subsumed into what america is yeah uh that like like obama did a fucking tweet like this nation was built on peaceful protest it was built on fucking genocide like fuck off yeah but we've allowed that to just go completely forgotten right like you don't go to school in california and be like oh there is a fucking unit that just changed actually there was a unipro has set a high school and like this is a person who did genocide like we wouldn't have a fucking goebbels high school in germany uh you know and britain does a shit too i'm not

not like uh yeah i'm in a glass house so i don't say that. But yeah, this wasn't an empty place. And it's really important to remember that, because that is so often the talking point of fucking stupid people that try to defend what Israel is doing. Let's go to now the main massacre or topic I want to talk about today, which happened on April 9th in 1948, just weeks before the creation of the state of Israel, when members of the Ergun and Stern gang, Zionist militias, attacked the village of Deir Yassin and they killed

at least 107 Palestinians. Zionist militias tore through Palestinian villages, massacring villagers and expelling those who remained alive to clear the way for the creation of the state of Israel. those who remained alive to clear the way for the creation of the state of Israel. And this was one of the many massacres that happened during the Nakba, where again, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed and some 750,000 fled their homes as refugees. It ignited a very terrifying domino effect. This year, the UN will host its first ever high-level event to commemorate this forced displacement that resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel in May of 1948. So this is the first time ever that the UN has recognized that the Nakba even happened, or like, happened enough to mention it and commemorate it. But Palestinians have never ceased to commemorate the loss of each village that was once part of their homeland. Among them was Deir Yassin, and it was a village perched on a hill west of Jerusalem,

and this massacre has become emblematic of the suffering that Israel would inflict on the Palestinians. Many of the people slaughtered, from those who were tied to trees and burned to death, to those lined up against a wall and shot by submachine guns. Many of these people were women, children, and the elderly. And Farhad does a really good job of showing this lack of discrimination of life in general in that movie that I mentioned earlier. As the news of these atrocities spread, thousands fled their villages in fear. So again, on April 9th of 1948, the Israeli militia struck Deir Yassin, where about 700 Palestinians lived. According to the

Israeli narrative, Operation Nashon, N-A-C-H-H-S-O-N, apologies if I mispronounce that, but this operation aimed to break through the blockaded road to Jerusalem and the fighters encountered stiff resistance from the villagers that forced them to advance slowly from house to house. It's kind of silly and strange how the same excuse is being used like a century later to justify acts of terror. They're saying that villagers resisted them and that's why they butchered them. It's it's it's it's pathetic it's stupid and pathetic and like yeah for having the i don't know temerity to be like no you can't take my home yeah they carried out a collective punishment on yeah and that's the israeli

narrative that's what their history books say is that this was the aim of this operation they were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to go from house to house like that's what their history books say, is that this was the aim of this operation. They were simply encountering the stiff resistance and they had to go from house to house. Like, that's, it's just a fucked up narrative. But Palestinians and some Israeli historians say that the villagers had signed a non-aggression agreement with the Haganah, which was the pre-Israeli state Zionist army. They were nevertheless murdered in cold blood and buried in mass graves. According to a 1948 report filed by the British delegation to the UN, the killing of, quote, some 250 Arabs, men, women, and children took place in circumstances of great savagery. Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic This is from a 1948 report filed by the British delegation.

Like, it's in the record. Weren't they both, like, the Stern Gang and the, whatever the militia was called that McGee was in, it's like IZL, I think, were like, they hadn't really done any military operations before, right? They'd just been, they'd just like bomb, like they did car bombs and shit previous to this. The British had already like, they were killing British people

and I guess Arab people in Palestine before this. Yeah. people and uh i guess arab people in palestine before this yeah yeah it's i mean the escalation in violence was like pretty severe um right but i think they would have gone there eventually you know they just kind of hit us forward i think they'd already like established an intention or like a willingness to kill just about anyone who got in their way, right? And they wanted to show that they were, like, unlike the, like, I guess the labor-aligned Zionist movement, that they were, like, more hardcore than that. Exactly. Like, that's why they made a spectacle of violence like this.

Mm-hmm. They were establishing their power and dominance. Right. Israeli historian Benny Morris said that the militias, quote, ransacked unscrupulously, stole money and jewels Right. I mean, there's nothing to say to that. Yeah. it ranges from 100 to 250. A representative of the Red Cross who entered Deir Yassin on April 11th, two days later, they reported seeing the bodies of some 150 people heaped haphazardly in a cave, while around 50 were amassed in a separate location. Prominent Jewish intellectual Martin Buber wrote at the time that such events had been quote-unquote infamous.

In Deir Yassin, hundreds of innocent men, women, and children were massacred, he said. Let the village remain uninhabited for the time being. Let its desolation be a terrible and tragic symbol of war and a warning to our people that no practical military needs may ever justify such He also noted that Deir Yassin had a profound demographic and political effect, and he's referring to the fact that the news of this massacre spread, and it prompted hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes. Four nearby villages were next. Qaylounia, Seres, Beit Saruk, and Bidu. Deir Yassin was no mistake, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pape.

Ilan Pape has been called a Israeli quote-unquote revisionist historian because he tells the truth, the actual truth of what happened in their history. Yeah, the concept of revisionist history is nonsense. It suggests that there is a settled history at some point, which there's not, right? We're always looking at sources again. We're always looking for new sources, different perspectives. It's not like there is this monolith of history

and then some meddling bastard comes and chops it down. It's fundamentally misunderstanding how history is done. It's why you shouldn't pay attention to Malcolm Gladwell for that and many other reasons but yeah it's a ridiculous idea he's not he's not like it's not like everyone was like oh yeah this wasn't a bad thing and then he came along and like injected some kind of political animus into his history he came along and looked at maybe new sources maybe the same sources that people had i don't know and was like now you you guys have you got this wrong you called this wrong like but that's what

historians do like you can't fucking write your phd without disagreeing with someone and doing some new history like that's what takes you from a master's to a doctorate and like you're supposed to do three articles in a book to get tenure like your articles can't just be like yeah we pretty much called this one right the first time you know like the the process of doing history is to revise and hope to better understand things from different perspectives totally i like that the point of history is to revise because you're right uh and i just think it's it's so discrediting of his work to call him a revisionist historian yeah it's condescending you know and And someone that interviewed him called him this Yeah, I mean, hopefully he gave them both barrels Because it's kind of a ridiculous

Yeah, it shows that they fundamentally aren't qualified To be discussing the topic, I guess Yeah I want to talk about what he said But I realized that I didn't take the last break And I want to right now And that is my choice So stay tuned

thank you welcome I'm Danny Thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas. The host of a brand new Black Effect original series. Black Lit. The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas. podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to

protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. And we're back. We were talking about Ilan Pape, a revisionist quote-unquote historian, but not really, you know, he was called that because he was talking about Israel the way it should be talked about with actual historical facts. In one of his writings, Pape wrote, Depopulating Palestine was not a consequential war event, but a carefully planned strategy,

otherwise known as Plan Dalet, which was authorized by the Israeli leader Ben-Gurion in March of 1948. Operation Nashan was, in fact, the first step in the plan. And, as I said, the massacre unleashed a cycle of violence and counter-violence that has been the pattern ever since this happened. Jewish forces have regarded any Palestinian village as an enemy state or a military base, and this has paved the way for this blurred distinction between massacring civilians and killing combatants, according to the historian. So what does all of this say about Israel's vision today? This is why I wanted to talk about this, is because this started this whole cycle of violence that we still see perpetuated today. And it's why Palestinians refuse to forget it and forget what happened. And they'll always

talk about Palestine because they don't want to be erased from history books. Deir Yassin has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian dispossession, as well as a historical fact Israel must confront when retelling its national narrative. According to Pepe, given that terrorism is a mode of behavior that Israelis attribute solely to the Palestinian resistance movement, it could not be a part of any analysis or description of chapters in Israel's past. One way out of this conundrum, he says, was to accredit a particular political group, preferably an extremist one, with the same attributes of the enemy, thus exonerating mainstream national behavior. Israeli historians, as well as Israeli society, they've only been able

to admit to the massacre in Deir Yassin by attributing it to the right-wing group Irgan, but have covered up or denied the other massacres, notably the one in Tantura in 1948. This was carried out by the Haganah, the main Jewish militia, from which the current-day Israeli military has evolved from. And despite this shift of blame, leading human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have labeled Israel itself an apartheid state. I've just seen the worst ever op-ed in the Jerusalem Post about. About what? Tell me. It's about this, but it's about the Nakba. It contains this kind of narrative that, oh, the Nakba was coined by historians

to explain the failure of the Palestinians to defend themselves, which is, A, what does that fucking matter? And B, what are you saying? That contains within it the notion that they would have to defend themselves from someone who was that pal um and then like uh like going back and forth on the number of people killed like which you know like low estimates are as low as like 107 high estimates are in the 250s um based on claims that the militias

themselves made right so like again uh what is it cool to kill, like, 100 people, but 250 people is, like, you know, we should step in there. And just, like, I was just checking the author's affiliation, because that's always fun, and he's a research fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. I may have pronounced that incorrectly, but when the organization you work for is memorializing heritage of one of the dudes

who led the massacre, you might want to like step aside from, I mean, or not, right? Or just shut up. Just dive the fuck in. But like you are flying your flag as a fairly partisan. Like I said, all historians are biased. But yes, if I work at the Colonel Custer Heritage Center,

please take my account of the United States violent assault on the Lakota people with a pinch of salt because I'm coming at this from a certain perspective. And yeah, here we are, 2023, still doing the thing where we were like... Rather than just taking the L and just being like, oh, it's bad, actually, to rape and mutilate and murder people, trying to equivocate.

It's funny you mentioned articles, though, because I just saw one when i was researching for alexa yesterday uh of this israeli cop that admitted that the videos he saw was a bad look like that's what he said like it was just like good cop uh yeah and of course the solution to that is to not allow people to take videos of you brutalizing yeah yeah that's the solution yeah yeah tim apple uh known anti-cop yeah anarchist um so human rights watch and amnesty international have labeled israel as an apartheid state and human rights watch said in 2021 we reached this determination based on our documentation of an overarching government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians. As recognition grows that these crimes are being committed, the failure to recognize that reality requires burying your head deeper and deeper into the sand.

Today, apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. apartheid is not a hypothetical or future scenario. And apartheid is a very light word to use, but I did want to just mention that an organization said that, not just like, I don't know. It's officially on paper that Israel sucks. Like, why are we still defending it? I'm just like, go rewatch the Bernie Sanders video from yesterday, or audio, because there's no reason we should be funneling

any kind of support into that country. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's mad. We still made a lot of money selling weapons to Israel that are used against, like, I know Robert and I pursued a public records request going on two years for, like, these batteries that launch hundreds and hundreds of smoke grenades and flashbangs that a US company is selling to Israel.

Yeah, it's great. They can fire them into a mosque. I mean, not surprising. No, it's just annoying. Annoying is the wrong word. But yeah, there are people who make a lot of money every time. Things get more violent there, right? And people are very invested in that.

Yeah. And yeah, that's ghoulish as fuck. It is. And that's actually all I have. That's a good place to end, if any. But I hope you learned something, if you didn't know something in this episode. And I hope you go watch Farha or Gods of Fights for Freedom. I don't think this is history that should ever be understated or forgotten.

So I'm always more than happy to talk about it, even if it's depressing. So thank you for joining me today, James. It's okay. It's been very uplifting. I don't think you're right. It's important. It's very important. Hopefully one day we'll have the PK Gaza gaza episode yes that'll be great um yeah i guess if you're in the uk and have old copies of men's health you can read about uh young people doing parker in gaza um it's pretty hopefully i will have another story about that soon but yeah where

should people i think a good thing maybe if we could end on like uh where where is a good place to find news about um palestine where can i really like al jazeera especially their opinion pieces are pretty good because a lot of the times they're written by people that are really passionate about what they're writing yeah um i think writing. I think following actual Palestinians on social media is always a good call. Like Mohammed Al-Kurd is one of the most prominent voices recently that has been uplifted. And I would follow his social medias. His sister has one as well. His family's house was basically had the threat of being demolished last year. His house was in Sheikh Jarrah, if you remember any of that stuff from last year with the violence going on there. I also really like Subhita. He's on Instagram mostly, and he has a podcast now.

I would highly recommend following his stuff. He is so informed and so just easy to understand, too. So I would watch that um and yeah muhammad al-kurt actually was on some news program like like face the nation or no maybe not that but he was on recently uh like basically uh handing the asses of the people that were talking to him about israel and palestine um is that the right way to say that I don't know he was just stating he was he was not willing to be uh talked over and whatever yeah which I like yeah he shouldn't be um my friend Hossam is a photographer in Palestine um most of those Al Jazeera pieces you'll see are his photographs actually well um hossam salem g uh uh he's photographed we've

worked together before but yeah if you're a person who'd like to see pictures uh his pictures are very good yeah that's a good point too also there are a lot of uh accounts that are solely about palestine and a lot of these palestinian activists follow them and share them so you will find more organizations by following them there is uh i for palestine there's i think it's like land palestine and like i think there's a lot of really trusted accounts on the internet you just have to find the the ones that are trusted and uh a lot of times it's stuff from the ground and that's the stuff that needs to be seen and shared. Because if there's going to be any upside to fucking Internet and social media, it has to be to spread stuff like this around and make sure people know about it. I don't know.

Yeah, I think it gives us a way to like get underneath that like hegemonic narrative and see what happens to real people every day. Yeah. So yeah, that's all. Okay, whatever. That's the episode. Bye! It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow.

Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds

and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.