Ep. 170: gaza pt. 2: the brits & the making of israel

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Guess so. My question, I guess, is. So I don't know if you guys know this, but Valentine's Day, it's this week. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Honestly, until you texted me about it, I did not realize that. And then it was, like, everywhere. Then I was like, oh, shit. It felt like I've made this comparison before, but, you know, in the crying, like, after he finds out about Dill, and then he goes back into the bar and realizes, like, everyone's been, like, trans or in drag this whole time. No, nobody remembers the crying game. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Is it a movie? Yeah. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Oh, I remember the crying game, certainly. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Okay. Anyways, all that to say it was. [00:00:40] Speaker A: Like, that would have killed in your other group. [00:00:42] Speaker B: I know, right? Like, what's going on here? You said it was Valentine's Day, and then I looked around and I was like, oh, yeah, everything's decorated for Valentine's Day. [00:00:50] Speaker A: I know. What do you know about our pal val? Or, sorry, our pal's vow? Because there are plural. [00:00:58] Speaker B: What? [00:00:58] Speaker C: How long have you been married, Corey? [00:01:05] Speaker B: It'll be 15 years in a couple of months. [00:01:07] Speaker C: Yeah, 16 for me in a couple of months. Does Valentine's Day still exist for you? [00:01:13] Speaker B: Sure. I think if Kio is at home to buy me a box of chocolates or flowers or whatever. We don't do anything unless there's something going on. Okay, I'll get snacks. [00:01:30] Speaker C: There you go. [00:01:31] Speaker B: How about you? [00:01:32] Speaker C: Fuck, no, nothing. It does not exist as a 16 year old married gentleman. Maybe it should. Maybe it should. [00:01:40] Speaker A: It should. And you know what? I actually have just the way to get it to start because I personally think that romance and dates, the best thing you can do is always tell them a really long winded history story that they haven't asked for. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Agree? [00:01:53] Speaker A: Really set the mood of romance. Let me tell you about this guy that got murdered by the state. Super romantic. So romantic. [00:02:08] Speaker B: I'm in. [00:02:09] Speaker A: But there are actually multiple St. Valentines on the roles of the catholic church. Shockingly. And I guess I should preface this. Preface this by everything I'm about to tell you about St. Valentine is horseshit. [00:02:24] Speaker B: Excellent. Okay. [00:02:25] Speaker A: Because fun fact, no one really knows, right? There's multiple valentines. There's actually two sort of main contenders for the guy that we are celebrating. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:34] Speaker A: And the two guys are so similar in when they died and how they died and where they lived that they are more than likely possibly the same person. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Got their stories mixed up because weird fact about the catholic church, like, super good about chronicling their abuses against children, but not so much about people who are martyred for their coughs, which is really. [00:02:55] Speaker B: You would. You wouldn't mean. [00:02:58] Speaker A: It almost feels like that with a lot of the saints, right? They're like, who knows what the real truth is behind him? Because in reality, unless you believe that they've done this miraculous thing, probably like a little iffy. [00:03:09] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:11] Speaker C: Just super quick. And I'm sorry, because since we've talked about exorcism a couple of weeks back, I'm kind of finding the kind of historical catholicism bit quite interesting. What are the criteria for sainthood? How does one get sainted? [00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know the exact criteria, but you do need to have a miracle associated with your life in order to. [00:03:38] Speaker C: Be deemed a saint. [00:03:39] Speaker A: That's what Patrick miraculously got rid of all the snakes. Right? And you're like, even snakes on our. Usually they got to come up with something. Usually they come up with something after you've died, like, oh, we really liked this guy. Let's find something cool. And maybe it was to be considered a miracle. It feels like the more that you look into it. So I know that's at least one of them, and I think it has to be somehow verifiable that it was a miracle that happened. So with these two guys, like I said, they both even had a similar miracle in their life. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:12] Speaker A: I think they're the same person. Right? [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:14] Speaker A: He's either a bishop from Turney, or he's a priest and a physician from the same ish area in Italy. But essentially what I'm going to do is I'm just going to combine all of the myths into one sort of easy to read story. Right? [00:04:29] Speaker B: I feel good about that. Listen, if it's all kind of just, like, made up, then might as well. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Might as well, right? So I'll tell you my favorite story, which I personally think is the most popular, but let's back it up really quick. So we're backing it up to 270 CE. So another reason why it's understandable that a lot of it's been lost to time. Sure. But Emperor Claudius II is reigning in Rome. Is known as Gothicus to his very good nickname. Right? You're like Gothicus, so good. [00:05:00] Speaker B: Why is that not what we call. [00:05:04] Speaker A: I? Yeah, why am I messing around with Claudius II? Who cares? But he's known as Gothicus to his friends, and he's kind of known for two things. One was repelling a group of gothic invaders, shockingly, in 269. Nice. And second, he super hated christians love persecuting him, which kind of goes with Gothicus as well. [00:05:25] Speaker B: I feel like, yeah, right. [00:05:28] Speaker A: It's kind of adding up. But that was for his very short tenure as emperor. He only had the job for like two years. That's kind of his two main gigs that he gets. Okay, so Gothicus, right? Because he repels these gothic invaders. I got to shore up the military. He's a military guy. But all the guys in Rome were kind of like, I'd love just to live peacefully at home and have a family. Maybe Gothicus is like, hey, Nancy, no, you're joining the army. And he's like, I don't really want to do that. But he's like, fine, I'm outlying marriage that way. All you fools have to come join the army, right? Okay, so this is Valentine enters stage left. He's like, no, no, I can't abide this lack of love. I will continue to marry people. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Oh, Valentine loved love. [00:06:13] Speaker A: He loved love. So he's doing that, and Gothicus is like, hey, asshole, what did I just say? Throws his ass in prison, right? Almost immediately. He's like, forget this guy. He's in prison, which I can imagine, probably not a cool place in ancient Rome. Probably terrible would be my. [00:06:30] Speaker B: So I'm just thinking, this would have to be like, he would have had to have kind of been. You said he was a bishop, possibly. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Or also a physician. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Okay, because I'm just thinking, how do they even. You have to be kind of an important person, right, for them to even find that out, right? Because if someone's just in their backyard doing wedding ceremonies, it's not going to get the attention of the emperor. So he must have kind of been. [00:06:58] Speaker A: What was a crackdown, I think, right? As you're trying to recruit people, he's like, how come all these people keep being married? I thought I said you couldn't do that. What happened here? [00:07:07] Speaker B: I seem to distinctly remember you should not be married. [00:07:10] Speaker A: I distinctly remember saying, you must be single so that you can join my war machine. Okay, so Valentine finds himself in jail, but while he's there, he befriends the jailer's daughter, which is also weird. Like, why was she wandering around this. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Prison befriending take your daughter to work day? [00:07:29] Speaker A: Apparently. But she was blind, so maybe she just got to do whatever she wanted, I don't know. Also weird. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks a lot. All right, they're friends. [00:07:37] Speaker A: But what is interesting, right, is that here comes the saint part. Mark is that he heals her of her blindness. St. Valentine does. And this leads to a conversion of her entire health. [00:07:47] Speaker B: Did he know he could do that? Like 1 minute he was like, I'm marrying people. Then he was like, holy shit, I can cure blind. [00:07:52] Speaker A: Well, that's why I go with the physician angle, because it gives it more of a medicinal. Maybe he just like rubbed some dirt in her eyes. I don't know what he did. [00:07:59] Speaker B: It doesn't go into that. [00:08:00] Speaker A: Right, okay, but converts the whole house. And this is a very beautiful story, right? The catholic church loves conversion of whole houses. Gothicus, obviously unimpressed, is like, cool, well, I'm still going to kill you because I hate you and you're the worst, and you disobeyed. So now, the most horseshit part of the story, if you believe that he cured this blind girl of her blindness, the most horseshit part of the story is that allegedly he writes a letter right before he is about to be killed. That's know, dear, whatever, jailer's daughter. So glad we got to be friends. Great to meet you. You've been so wonderful. Signed, your Valentine. But you're like, first of all, I'm pretty sure this girl can't read, right? I don't see that's a thing. [00:08:42] Speaker B: She just started being able to see. And also she's literate. Yeah, it's a miracle, more than miracle. [00:08:50] Speaker A: That she also became literate immediately after. Anyway. But know ties in the Valentine story, if you want to go there. So he goes in, he gets the whole thumbs down from Gothicus. He's like, yeah, still unimpressed with you, sir. And they're like, all right, how do you want to do this? He get to choose. And Gothicus is like, you know what? Let's beat him to death. And then for good measure, we'll behead him. [00:09:13] Speaker C: So I'll do it. [00:09:14] Speaker A: February 14, 270. They do just that, beat him to death, which just is horrible, and then behead him, which feels like overkill, right? [00:09:24] Speaker B: Right. It's like, get it, man. He's already dead. [00:09:29] Speaker A: In Gothicus is kind of know. He gets. He dies of the plague, which also sucks. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Nice. So take that, Gothicus. [00:09:38] Speaker A: Take that, Gothicus. So St. Valentine gets made a saint and then is promptly forgotten. Literally, nobody celebrates him, no one cares. He wallows in obscurity for a thousand years. [00:09:49] Speaker B: To be fair, like, on the scale of shit saints do, it's like he married some people and cured a single blind girl. [00:09:56] Speaker A: He converted a whole household to Christianity. [00:09:58] Speaker B: And converted a household to Christianity. [00:10:01] Speaker C: The household were probably thinking about it anyway, right? [00:10:03] Speaker B: Yeah, they were on, just came along the cup. [00:10:05] Speaker A: They were on the verge. But then you flash forward a thousand years to the hype man of all hype men, 1375, Jeffrey Chaucer. [00:10:16] Speaker B: I was about to say, is it Jeffrey Chaucer? [00:10:18] Speaker A: Is it Jeffrey Chaucer? That's a nice. [00:10:19] Speaker B: Hail fame, protector of italian virginity. [00:10:25] Speaker A: He plucks Valentine from his obscurity. Right here he is. No one knows who he is. No one gives two shits about him. But Chaucer is like, got to really judge up. This poem I'm writing about birds. I know going to use this guy. [00:10:38] Speaker B: This is relatable. I get it, right? [00:10:42] Speaker A: So he writes, in 1375, Chaucer writes a poem called the parliament of fowls, which extols the virtues of romantic love and says, for this was sent on St. Valentine's Day, when every fowl cometh to choose his mate and apparently was a runaway hit in medieval times. They loved it because they're like, oh, February, dead of winter, nobody wants to go outside and you want us to bone. Yeah. [00:11:10] Speaker B: We also sign me up. [00:11:11] Speaker A: Valentine's. Sign me up and it becomes super popular. And so ever since then, people celebrate the feast of St. Valentine on February the 14th, the day he was viciously murdered. [00:11:25] Speaker B: Not like his birthday or anything. [00:11:26] Speaker A: No. Who cares about that? Also don't know when it is, right? Who cares? Because we don't really know which Valentine it is. But we do know when he died very violently. Now, that's why we celebrate this. So you're welcome, everyone. Feel free to share this with your. [00:11:42] Speaker B: Loved ones and say, yeah, I love. [00:11:44] Speaker A: You so much that I would have someone beaten and beheaded for you. I don't know. Or something like that. [00:11:52] Speaker B: And isn't that, in the end, the best way to display our love? [00:11:56] Speaker A: Isn't it? With violence? [00:11:58] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. [00:12:01] Speaker C: Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:12:04] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:12:05] Speaker C: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, misel Sen. [00:12:09] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said miselsen in such a horny way before. [00:12:13] Speaker C: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst. Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:12:19] Speaker C: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm going to leg it. [00:12:26] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:12:28] Speaker C: I think you feel great about it. All right, fuck it. Here we go with look, because, you know, we got her and you know, you need to listen to it. Anyway, it's another week. It's another jack of all graves, this week, something a little different for me. This week I'm essentially a guest. [00:12:46] Speaker B: You are? [00:12:48] Speaker C: Which feels good. Normally just days of research and painstaking pouring through dusty tomes, you know what I mean? Rifling through yellowed papers in attics, interviews, just really nitty gritty investigative kind of work that goes into this podcast week in, week out. Mainly by me, I will say. But it's been nice to just kind of take a little backseat because this week I'm a guest. Because this week jack of all graves brings you an extra helping of latitude. Do you know what I'm saying? Fucking right. Yes. Because this week it's the Corey and Kristen show. But what I will say just one thing. I know. I know. And you've always wanted one of you. I know. I know you have. [00:13:40] Speaker A: We used to have one. [00:13:41] Speaker B: We used to have one. [00:13:42] Speaker A: We used to have one. [00:13:43] Speaker C: Oh, was that fan cave? Yeah, the one that I specifically asked Corey to invite me on as a. [00:13:49] Speaker B: Guest saying this, and I don't believe you. [00:13:54] Speaker C: I'll find the tweet. No. Well, no, I won't. [00:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah, you can't anymore. [00:13:58] Speaker C: But I did. You should get me on your podcast is what I wrote. She never ever got me on the podcast. Never replied. Never replied. [00:14:05] Speaker A: Look it, we're fixing that right now. [00:14:08] Speaker C: That's what this is. We're retroactively fixing the wrongs of the past. [00:14:11] Speaker B: It's the Joe Ag fan cave. [00:14:14] Speaker C: Nice. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Excellent. [00:14:16] Speaker C: Just super quick. I don't know. I'm not going to say that we've been on a cancer tip of late. I don't want to say that because we have talked of cancer quite a bit of late. We had the. [00:14:28] Speaker B: That's true. Yeah. [00:14:29] Speaker C: Tapeworm cancer lad last week. I do want to just quickly mention that this week it's been widely reported in a lot of different places. Check this out. Wolves, right? Wolves who inhabit the area the exclusion zone around Chernobyl have mutated to be fucking cancer proof. Fucking right. Mutant cancer proof wolves around the Chernobyl exclusion zone. How fucking metal is that? [00:15:05] Speaker B: Do wolves get a lot of cancer generally? [00:15:09] Speaker C: Well, dogs do and people do. So probably, I don't know who told me this, but I'm sure someone told me once the cancer is a genetic inevitability. If you live long enough, you. [00:15:19] Speaker B: I think I told you that. [00:15:20] Speaker C: There you go. [00:15:20] Speaker B: There you go. See? [00:15:21] Speaker C: Retaining knowledge. [00:15:23] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. [00:15:23] Speaker B: As one might expect. [00:15:24] Speaker A: I did 90% of my things. I'm like, oh, someone was telling me this. Of course, that was me. I told you that I'm like, oh. [00:15:32] Speaker B: It'S always fun to hear the things you tell people repeated back to you though. It's like a game of telephone. How well did it come through the first time it comes back, you should. [00:15:42] Speaker C: Start inceptioning kind of lies to us. The goal being repeat the lie back to you at some point in the future. [00:15:49] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:50] Speaker B: It'll be like when they tricked Derek Akora on most haunted into channeling a ghost. That was anagram for Derek is a faker. [00:15:59] Speaker C: Very nice. [00:15:59] Speaker B: I'm going to start doing that. [00:16:01] Speaker A: You watch out. [00:16:02] Speaker C: But I just think it's super metal that there are cancer proof wolves around. Analyzing these wolves, they share traits with people who've been through intense radiotherapy. They've got the same kind of immune system or the same kind of cancer murdering kind of composition in them. [00:16:19] Speaker B: So that means certainly they must be then trying to figure out, can we channel some of whatever did this, the radiation at Chernobyl to make humans cancer proof? [00:16:30] Speaker C: There are boffins all over it trying to synthesize some kind of wolf based medicine. I'd take wolf pills any day. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. [00:16:41] Speaker B: Every day and twice on Sunday for sure. [00:16:44] Speaker C: Yes. Cancer proof werewolf. [00:16:46] Speaker B: Cancer proof. Oh, man, someone make that movie. [00:16:49] Speaker A: We're werewolves, not swearwolves. [00:16:52] Speaker B: I love that movie. [00:16:54] Speaker C: All of which to say, it's lovely to have you along and it's lovely to be talking at you. Obviously the topics aren't great, this current run of Joag, but it's shit you need to hear and it's shit I in particular need to hear. So school me, girls well with that. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Such a delightful intro into it. This topic sucks, but you have to listen to it anyway. Welcome to Jack of all graves. Anyway, yeah, and before we get started getting into all of that, of course we're going to go through our watches for this week. This week we're really going to go quick through them. It's not going to take us 40 minutes. It's going to be quick. We're just going to say that to ourselves over and over again. But you know what? You know where the timestamp is if you want to skip past it. And if you didn't know where the timestamp is, it's in the description and in a lot of your podcast apps. You can literally just skip sections based on those timestamps. I know in podcast addicts, that's what I do, selling ourselves. [00:18:00] Speaker C: Great. This week. [00:18:03] Speaker A: You can skip this part if you want. [00:18:06] Speaker B: If you hate it. Listen, I understand that there are people who enjoy info dumps, but they don't give a shit about horror movies and probably vice versa. So there is always, I do this for you, my dear friends. I put that timestamp in here every week, so you know what parts to skip and what parts to stay for. That said, before we get into our watches and all that kind of stuff, a few quick things to get to. Of course, this Saturday we have book club the 17th. What you reading behind her eyes, I believe is the name of the book. I should have seen that one coming. [00:18:44] Speaker C: Yeah, fucking right. [00:18:45] Speaker A: You walked right into that one to. [00:18:47] Speaker C: Go to book club. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Okay. [00:18:52] Speaker C: Reading behind her eyes. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:56] Speaker C: There you go. [00:18:57] Speaker B: There you go. That was beautiful. I felt really good about that. [00:19:03] Speaker C: In case you're interested, I was doing the limp biscuit version. [00:19:06] Speaker B: There's a limp biscuit version? [00:19:09] Speaker A: Naturally. [00:19:09] Speaker C: There is. [00:19:10] Speaker A: I could tell that by your general vibe. [00:19:12] Speaker B: There was a durstiness about it. [00:19:14] Speaker A: There was a durstiness, yeah, exactly. Dursesque. [00:19:19] Speaker B: Durstesque. Yes. [00:19:21] Speaker C: I'm feeling kind of Dursty. [00:19:27] Speaker B: I don't know if I like that or not. But this Saturday, February the 17th, we will be talking about that book. It is always a good time, even. It's a thriller. I haven't gotten to it yet because I've been reading like crazy for this, but they made a Netflix movie out of it, so I assume it's an interesting one. So looking forward to talking about that on the reading note as well. Our dear Ryan bookseller Ryan has put together a shoppable reading list at Gibson's of the books that we are reading and talking about for this series on Gaza. So that is in the description on our website, jackoballgraves.com slash blog. And you can just do a shout. [00:20:11] Speaker A: Out to Ryan because this past Christmas, I asked her for books. So I buy all the kids in my family books for Christmas. It makes it easier. So I gave her their ages and some of their things, and she made me a list through Gibson's, and I just had to click on the books I wanted. It was so lovely. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah, she's the best. [00:20:26] Speaker A: She does that for everybody. Maybe that was just a nice thing she did for me, but she's just the best. [00:20:31] Speaker B: And Gibson's is the best. [00:20:32] Speaker A: And they sent me a bunch of Pedro Pascal bookmarks once. [00:20:35] Speaker B: I was like, there's one in the book that I was reading today that is one of those Gibson's Pedro Pascal. [00:20:41] Speaker A: I think the story's too sad. I don't want to put him in there. [00:20:43] Speaker B: I know it did feel weird. [00:20:45] Speaker A: I was like, don't make him sad, please. [00:20:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a strange one to put Pedro in, but it is what it is. Most of my bookmarks now are the Pedro Pascal ones from Gibson's, so check that out. Like I said in the description or on the blog, you can find that as well as links to all of those. There's a pdf of one of the things that we read that I've linked to in there as well. So you know where to find the sources. And the other thing is, we're going to do a watch along on the 24th. [00:21:19] Speaker C: That is a week this Saturday. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes. Mark, do you have thoughts on a topic yet or are we going to pick a theme later? [00:21:28] Speaker C: I don't have one fucking thought. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Just generally. [00:21:33] Speaker A: But also generally, he's like, it's my. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Natural state of sin. [00:21:37] Speaker A: I choose to not mix it. [00:21:39] Speaker C: I ain't even got off the starting blocks yet, mate, on that one. [00:21:41] Speaker B: Okay, so we'll circle back. As always, if you have a category, a theme, whatever that has been bopping. [00:21:48] Speaker C: Around in your head for suggestions. [00:21:51] Speaker B: Yes, do let us know on the socials, but otherwise Mark will come up with something. He always does. [00:21:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm a reliable bag am, but I'll always pull something out of the bag. You know what. [00:22:10] Speaker B: Was clear? [00:22:11] Speaker C: I thought it was clear. [00:22:13] Speaker B: No, obviously. I don't know where my head was at. [00:22:15] Speaker A: I'm sorry. [00:22:17] Speaker B: Bag puller. That's what I call people who pull stuff out of bags. Bag puller. Did you listen to the kristen, the teens? [00:22:29] Speaker A: No. [00:22:30] Speaker B: They were like a, I don't know, swedish group probably that did AbBA covers, but also some of their own pop songs. And I was just thinking of inscrutable phrases like that. And they had a song that was called Floor Filler. I was like, I don't know, maybe that makes sense to a swede, but no idea what floor filler is supposed to mean. Think. It was supposed to be like a. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Floor with your dancing, right? [00:22:53] Speaker B: Everyone comes out on the dance floor. [00:22:56] Speaker C: I knew exactly what that means. A floor filler is one that will you get idioms. [00:23:00] Speaker A: All right? You invented them. [00:23:02] Speaker B: Okay? [00:23:03] Speaker C: If you're at a wedding, the DJ will all. It's all floor fillers. [00:23:07] Speaker B: Oh, well, okay. Is that a phrase people would use, 100%? No. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Have you heard it before or did you just get it from concert? [00:23:16] Speaker C: No. A zillion percent I've heard floor fillers. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Okay. [00:23:20] Speaker C: I think there's like a series of compilation albums called, like 100% floor fillers or similar. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Oh, like, wow. That's what I call music. [00:23:28] Speaker B: But wow. That's what I call floor fillers. [00:23:30] Speaker C: Wow. That's what I call music. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Honestly, I'm not opposed to it. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Well, I stand corrected. [00:23:37] Speaker C: That 100 scrutable playlist on Spotify. Yeah. [00:23:42] Speaker B: Amazing. Well, then, let's jump into what we watch, shall we? [00:23:47] Speaker C: Yes. [00:23:48] Speaker B: Pardon me. And this week, let's see. We managed. Okay. I've said several times in the past several weeks that I've been sort of struggling to get in the zone to watch movies or anything like that. I think just the world is overwhelming, and it's hard to sit and watch a movie. But you posted a skeet on the blue sky that referenced a film that I had not heard of called King Ralph. [00:24:23] Speaker C: You watched King Ralph? [00:24:24] Speaker B: I watched King Ralph. Kristen, have you heard of King Ralph? [00:24:29] Speaker A: I have not heard of. It's not scary, though. Is it scary? [00:24:33] Speaker B: No, it's not scary. This is just because Mark referenced it. That's why I'm bringing it up. But when I put it on, a lot of times Kia is just sitting on the couch and I just put on a movie, and he's like, this is happening to me. And so when I started it, he assumed he was like, oh, this must be like, she's like something from her childhood that she's bringing back. And I was like, oh, yeah, Mark referenced this. I'd never heard of it. He was like, you've never heard of King Ralph? And I was like, no. Should I have? This movie is about the entire royal family getting zapped and dying in one. [00:25:11] Speaker A: Fell swoop based off a dream that Mark had. Is that what you're. [00:25:15] Speaker B: No, he just. [00:25:17] Speaker C: It's quite close becoming reality. You know what I mean? If monarchs keep dying. [00:25:21] Speaker B: Right, which they should. So there's that. But, yeah. So the premise is the entire royal family dies off and the only heir that they can find in the line is the product of a one night stand who is John Goodman, who is like a Las Vegas showman, naturally, as he should be. So he comes, and this is like, I mean, Kristen, like, as someone who, a, loves the princess diaries and b, watches Hallmark movies, there is nothing not to like about this. This is your fish out of water american in royalty story. It's absurd. John Goodman is so charming and handsome in this. I was like, I did not realize John Goodman could get it. Yeah, he could get it. And it's just a delight. It's like a very fun, stupid movie. And it's got Vernon Dursley from Harry Potter. I don't know what his actual name is? That guy's dead. Rip him, as, you know, Lawrence of Arabia. [00:26:30] Speaker C: I bet he plays some sort of butler, doesn't he? [00:26:33] Speaker B: It's tricky. There's a twist with so. But he does play like an attache type, you know, whatever brits call their people who do stuff. I don't know, but, yeah, King Ralph valet. [00:26:52] Speaker A: A valet? [00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I don't know. [00:26:56] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:26:58] Speaker B: But, yeah, King Ralph was a blast. And listen, if you're looking for something stupid to watch and you like a floor John. Good. Well, there we go. You like a Hallmark royalty movie if you like a princess diaries, but you want it, like, maybe a little more vulgar. [00:27:15] Speaker A: That's what I've always said. [00:27:17] Speaker B: That's from diaries, but rated R. Naked R. Yeah. No, it's totally pg 13. It's just like, there's like, allusions to strippers in it and stuff like that. That kind of thing, but delightful. Also, yesterday I watched a movie someone had recommended on the dead and lovely Facebook called Landlocked. And this is a sparse, like, calling this an independent movie is like, it's not even that far into the studio system. This is a movie made by one guy, essentially. He has his family play all the roles in it, but it's mostly, like, just one of his siblings who's, like, the main character in it. And it is about a guy who. His father has died and they're going to demolish his house. And when he goes to sort of get the stuff out of it, he finds an old camera, like a video camera, the kind you put on your shoulder from the 80s. [00:28:23] Speaker A: Take it. [00:28:25] Speaker B: When he looks through this camera, he can see whatever the date was that the camera is set to. He can see what was happening in the place he's looking at on. That's called landlocked. Honestly, I don't know why it's called landlocked. I'm not sure. Like, Oklahoma or something. No, it takes place in New Jersey. [00:28:51] Speaker A: Famously not landlocked. [00:28:53] Speaker B: No. I'm not sure why it's called, like. Here's the thing about this movie. It's very sparse, and it is very much like the product of one guy making something. So it's not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. It is clearly, like, made on a budget of his milk money. There's nothing to this in that sense, but it's a guy who had a cool idea and just filmed it himself with his own stuff, got his family in these roles that they don't have to do much. So it's not like you're like, ooh, non actors. It's like they just kind of appear and are gone most of the time. And really as something to be made by one person under those circumstances, I think it was a really good effort. If this were something that was made by a studio, I'd be like, come the fuck on. But for someone to make this by themselves, I think it's creepy. [00:29:50] Speaker C: Just for the endeavor. Exactly. [00:29:53] Speaker B: It would just basically be me taking my little Osmo thing or whatever and walking around and making a movie. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think that all the time. Why not? And that's one of the things I love about this, is, like, he did that. We all think it, like, what if I just made, like, a little thing and he did it? And I think it came out very good for what it is. So landlocked. I recommend giving a go because it's on all of the free things like to be and Roku and all that kind of stuff. And it's an hour and 17 minutes. Perfect, right? It doesn't overstay its welcome. And then together we watched a first cinematic outing that was less good. [00:30:44] Speaker C: I think my fucking shit streak continues with kill her. It's all one word, and the h is capitalized like, kill her. [00:30:56] Speaker B: Wait, kill her, but kill her because. [00:31:00] Speaker C: It'S got women in it, you see? [00:31:02] Speaker A: Thank you. I mean, I feel like maybe that was the first indication. [00:31:07] Speaker B: The poster looked cool, though. I'll give them that. [00:31:09] Speaker C: The poster looked cool, and if you read what people say about it on Letterboxd, you could be fooled into thinking you were about to watch a good movie. [00:31:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of like solidly threes across the board, which is not, like, overwhelmingly great, but people say good things about it. Yeah, I would say it makes sense to have better expectations than the film we actually watched. [00:31:34] Speaker C: Good. I'm glad. You seem forgiving for me for putting that before us. Thank you very much. [00:31:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:31:39] Speaker C: Oh, I don't know what to even fucking say. They start off as quite a convincingly portrayed group of girls who go on a camping trip as a kind of a bachelorete party. Did I say that? [00:31:55] Speaker B: I like that? Yeah. You went for that. They went on a hendoo. [00:32:00] Speaker C: That's what they did. And something something mask, something killer, something something other guy and a bunch of fucking things. It thinks it's so smart, doesn't it? It thinks it's so much fucking smarter than it is. I think they've seen, like, one horror movie and we can do this. [00:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it kind of had that feel of like. Because what Alison Brie and her husband, the Franco, who's Dave Franco, they have a habit of doing this, like, seeing a genre that know, like romantic comedies or horror and things like that and being like, we're going to make it, but we're going to make it good. And then they just make a movie that it's like, yeah, I guess they've seen a horror movie once, but this is a bad version of that. This already exists in better forms. That felt like this, where it was like they like, oh, we're going to make a really clever horror. And it was like, okay, well, you've just remade a bunch of other horror movies that were a lot better. [00:33:03] Speaker C: Yes. [00:33:03] Speaker B: Including Sissy, one that both Mark and I have talked at length about on this podcast that we love. Another, though Mark has little recollection of it now, but at the time he's watched it twice and loved it. Both. [00:33:20] Speaker A: Know he always gets to experience it again. [00:33:23] Speaker B: Exactly. Another girl's trip craziness story that I think is a lot better. [00:33:32] Speaker C: Also. Look, bears fucking pointing out, right, that this is, for the most part, an entirely bloodless film. Right. For a fucking movie that 55 minutes. [00:33:43] Speaker B: Before you get a kill. [00:33:46] Speaker C: No kills at all. And don't watch it. Right? Yeah, but I'm merely going to spoil it because you're missing nothing. The killer is white and blonde. Right? The first kill is the gay black guy. Second kill is an asian character who literally is in it for the time it takes to get. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Like, to the point where I literally was like, wait, okay. So we had just been like, the first to die is a black man. And then she killed the second guy. And I was like, mark, was that an asian man? And he was like, yeah, yikes. [00:34:28] Speaker C: I didn't think the third wasn't the third. [00:34:33] Speaker B: It took a long time before a third person actually died. [00:34:37] Speaker C: But, yeah, so that's fucking horrible as well. [00:34:41] Speaker B: In 2024. You can't get away with that. Come on. [00:34:44] Speaker C: At best it's tone deaf, and at worst it's racist. Yeah, not cool. [00:34:50] Speaker B: Don't watch kill her. [00:34:52] Speaker C: Yeah, and it's a shit film as well. [00:34:53] Speaker A: You know what? Wasn't going to, but now I definitely am not going to. [00:34:58] Speaker B: What else do you watch, Mark? [00:35:03] Speaker C: Now then? I've worked out a way that I can get the kids to watch cool films under the radar, and that's to lie about the rating. I just tell a little lie, say it's a twelve a. You know what I mean? And that was how I got the kids to watch prey this week. [00:35:24] Speaker B: Nice. [00:35:25] Speaker C: And it was. You know how much I love. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Even Kristen loves Prey. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Prey is so beautiful. I also just watched it this week again. It's so good. It's beautifully done. Just freaking love it so much. [00:35:40] Speaker C: Yeah, it's phenomenal. It is absolutely phenomenal. The boys were fucking gripped the entire way through. [00:35:44] Speaker B: Amazing. I love to hear that. [00:35:46] Speaker C: Yep. Just an absolute banger. It's easily joint first of the predator. Fucking easily. [00:35:55] Speaker A: If not, have they watched other Predator movies, Mark? Or is this the first one that they've seen? [00:35:59] Speaker C: Well, no, but the predator is in Fortnite, you see. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Because everything is in Fortnite. Why wouldn't the Predator be in Fortnite? [00:36:09] Speaker C: But it landed so beautifully. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Love to hear it. [00:36:13] Speaker C: Peter was translating, like, little bits and bobs of the. He does French and. Yep, absolutely majestic. Just a fucking absolutely brilliant movie. And at last I got my arse in gear and picked up the Blu ray of robo Doc, that expansive, all encompassing Robocop documentary that came out. [00:36:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I need to get on that. [00:36:39] Speaker C: Look, your mileage may vary, right? But you've got to be really interested in Robocop to get a lot out of this film, out of this documentary, because it is forensic, right? It goes down to the fucking fine detail. It's got all the major players in it. Verhoven is just the most likable fucking lunatic on camera as he comes across. Peter Weller is just a fucking absolute crank, just a mental bat, all of the fuck. [00:37:15] Speaker B: He's one of those people who. There are certain actors that I can't totally match old version of them with young version of them. Like, Alec Baldwin is another one of those where I'm like, the guy from Beetlejuice is not the guy from 30 rock. That's two separate people. And Buckaroo Bonsai is not the same guy as the crank that you talk about here. And I can't imagine that personality, even though I'm sure he was exactly like that. But I can't imagine that personality on young Peter Weller. [00:37:48] Speaker C: Well, by all accounts, Dr. Weller, as he insists on fucking, I love. Yeah. Was very, very hard to pin down and to actually get in the documentary. I saw Christopher Griffiths, the creator, who was from Cardiff, I would like to say. Nice. [00:38:04] Speaker B: He's the same guy who did the video nasties doc, right? [00:38:08] Speaker C: He did video nasties. He did Hollywood nightmares, the Robert England story. [00:38:12] Speaker B: Oh, that's a great one, too. [00:38:13] Speaker C: Yeah, he did the it documentary. The Pennywise it documentary. [00:38:19] Speaker B: Oh, I haven't watched that one yet. [00:38:21] Speaker C: But, yes, a documentarian of some renowned and saw him do a panel on it some years back. And, yeah, well, I wanted paying, mate. He wanted paying. And, well, fuck, why wouldn't he? You know what I'm saying? But, yeah, the first episode talks in depth about the problems with getting the costume. The costume is a fucking huge issue. Weller went through months of kind of training and tuition with an italian ballet teacher to get the movements right, and then they get him in the costume, and he can't do fucking any of it. [00:39:03] Speaker B: He's just. That took four. Think you should leave the costume on. [00:39:07] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Too much fucking shit on him. [00:39:11] Speaker C: There was too much fucking shit on him. So that nearly ground the entire film to a halt. It nearly didn't happen because of that. And they had to cut a load out. But anyway, I can't wait to watch the rest of it because it's beautiful. Absolutely. It is food for my soul. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece. [00:39:28] Speaker B: Nice. Love that. Kristen, you actually have a horror adjacent watch? [00:39:34] Speaker A: I do have a horror adjacent watch. It's also historical. Spoiler alert. Well, I mean, fake historical, but, you know. Well, kind of half. It doesn't matter. [00:39:41] Speaker B: Historical fiction is a thing. [00:39:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's historical fiction. So it's on Netflix. It's called Jiangshang creature. It's a korean drama. So if you are into korean dramas, if you've ever watched a korean drama, it has that flavor of slow looks and romantic soft focus. But also the premise of it is it's April 1945 in Korea, so they're being occupied by Japan at the end, towards the end of World War II. And the Japanese are essentially. They've set up in Jiangshang, which is like modern day Seoul, and they are experimenting on prisoners that they keep at the bowels of this hospital. It's very terrible. And there's, like, a Mengela type character who's very awful. And they've found this parasite in the water that when ingested, certain people ingested, they turn into this horrible monster that when it's asleep, its protective mechanism is it sheds anthrax into the air. Yeah. And so it's like they have to move it at one point during the show, and so they trank it, and it's, like, asleep in this thing. So the guys that are around it are wearing these protective suits, but almost everybody that's being experimented on in the kind of prison basement gets anthrax poisoning and dies horribly. It's like, atrocious, and it's a little graphic in some areas. Like, when the monster wakes up, it just goes fucking hog wild and kills anything in its path. So it's a little bloody and crazy. Anyway, so the whole point is that the kind of main characters are searching for a couple of other people, and in the midst of that, they're kind of discovering, like, what is going on behind this hospital? Why is this weird guy with the wireframe glasses, like, very much an evil man? And so it's different than any other korean drama I've watched. So if you've watched a korean drama, they're usually very little softer around the edges. And while this does have components of that, it is intense. [00:41:48] Speaker B: It's kind of scurry. So, anyway, I'm going to have to have you send me the name of that because I can't begin to spell that phonetically myself. But of course, if you're into that concept, that will be in the. Just look in the show notes right below this episode or again on the blog. [00:42:05] Speaker C: I love that concept of an anthrax monster. [00:42:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like my mom and sister would love to watch this. [00:42:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because that's when it's asleep. So when it's awake, it's also, like. [00:42:15] Speaker B: It's just, like, every kind of deadly. [00:42:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just awful. And the opening credits are beautiful. I'm a sucker for a good opening credit. I love it when they've incorporated something right into the story. And I wasn't paying attention the first time, but then the second time I watched it, I was like, oh, this is giving me background on this monster. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Really well done. It's really cool. So anyway, I like it. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Very nice. [00:42:39] Speaker C: Very nice. [00:42:39] Speaker A: I watch scary things too. I'm cool like you guys. [00:42:42] Speaker B: You do. [00:42:42] Speaker C: It's true. [00:42:43] Speaker B: You do from time to time. I mean, listen, you've seen prey, sometimes an accident. It's like. It just depends if it intersects with another one of your interests. [00:42:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Historical monster show. I would love to watch it. [00:42:54] Speaker B: Okay, well, is that all the watches that we have for this week? [00:43:00] Speaker C: I think so. [00:43:01] Speaker B: All right. Look at us. I mean, that genuinely was, like ten. [00:43:03] Speaker C: Minutes ripped through it. [00:43:05] Speaker B: Great job, team. Proud of you guys. [00:43:08] Speaker C: Covid. There we go. [00:43:12] Speaker B: So now let's get back to the not fun part that Mark has already. [00:43:18] Speaker C: It can be. [00:43:20] Speaker B: No, no, we'll have fun. But also, it is terrible. We'll give you that. But last week on the cast, we talked about the birth of american imperialism. The point that not all that long. [00:43:32] Speaker C: Why don't I try and sum up last week to see what landed? [00:43:35] Speaker B: Oh, please do. Yeah. [00:43:38] Speaker C: Okay, so, quiz. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Pop quiz time. [00:43:40] Speaker B: Mark of himself. [00:43:44] Speaker C: America had a very strong and intense period there of under whatever auspices, be it missionary kind of work, or be it just flat out expansionism, thanks to one of the guy who. [00:44:11] Speaker B: That's a good hint. Cuddly Roosevelt. [00:44:13] Speaker C: Yes, of course. Edward Roosevelt. [00:44:15] Speaker B: Did you say Edward? [00:44:17] Speaker C: I did. [00:44:18] Speaker A: No, it's supposed to be Teddy. [00:44:19] Speaker B: Like Teddy. Like Theodore. [00:44:21] Speaker C: Yeah. Which is another word for Edward, Julie. [00:44:25] Speaker B: But in this case it's Theodore. [00:44:27] Speaker C: Okay, fine. [00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's like one of the Kennedys was Ted Kennedy and he was Edward, but yeah. [00:44:33] Speaker A: No, really, that guy's name was Edward? [00:44:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Didn't know that. Learned something new. [00:44:41] Speaker C: I don't know if I've said this on the cast before, but one of Peter's school friends is called Ted, and he's got a little brother called. Oh, his mum has called both of her kids Edward without realizing it. And apparently she gets really sensitive when people point it out because that's the joke with Bill and Ted, isn't it? Ted? Theodore Logan. He's called Ed twice. That's the fucking joke. [00:45:07] Speaker A: But anyway, apparently I've missed that joke. [00:45:11] Speaker C: For 30 years, whether it be Spain or the fucking Philippines or Cuba. I want to say lots of policy and hidden under loads of different fucking. Just excuses, basically, which all boil down to, I think we want that country as well. Thanks. [00:45:35] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much. That about sums it up. Yeah. As I put it here in my intro, basically the same idea. We went from believing that people of all nations have the right to self rule and self determination, to believing that we should own territories against people's will if it's economically or militarily beneficial to us. So we talked about the ways in which we justified that, as you were saying, how we separated ourselves from previous colonial powers by insisting that we wouldn't be tyrants, that we'd lead differently, that our presence would be benevolent, and that because of our benevolence, the occupied territories would accept us with open arms. Obviously, that's not how it worked. I don't think that's going to come as a surprise to anybody. Right. But if it does, please go back and listen to last week's episode to catch up on how we immediately turned into murderous tyrants and paved the way for our future involvement in Israel and Palestine. This week, we're dealing with the Palestine issue more directly, switching focus to your country, the UK. Dear Marco, and unfortunately I can usually give you a little bit of a welsh pass. But in this case, much of the movement toward the foundation of Israel and the acceptance of Zionism came under the leadership of your man, David Lloyd George. [00:46:56] Speaker C: Come on. [00:46:57] Speaker B: The first welsh prime minister. Yeah. Please. To play your saddest of trombones here. I want to lead into this week's main topic with some context from one of the greatest minds with whom we have the privilege of sharing this rapidly burning planet, Naomi Klein. Have either of you ever read Naomi Klein? Naomi Klein? [00:47:19] Speaker A: I haven't, but I've saved this book now that we've. [00:47:23] Speaker B: Incredible. I'd kind of encountered her and her work for a long time, but she was one of those people that I got into during lockdown times and. Yeah, incredible person, if you're not familiar with her. For one, she is not Naomi Wolf. Her most recent book, Doppelganger, is, in fact, about the fact that she's not Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolfe is an unhinged conspiracy theorist who thinks you can kill a baby by shedding vaccines on it. And Naomi Klein is a canadian leftist thinker who has dedicated her career to uncovering the actual ways in which corporations and governments collude to the detriment of folks like the working class, the global south, or literally everyone when it comes to climate change. Specifically, Klein is jewish, and she grew up in Montreal and, like most Jews, was raised heavily enmeshed in the jewish community. In the aforementioned book, Doppelganger, she talks at length about her jewishness, about anti semitism, and about Israel. And as we get into discussing the devastating effects of Zionism on Palestine, I want to first give a little context to the very real oppression of Jews that it's built out of, and how Klein grapples with that history while standing vehemently against Israel, visiting the same oppression onto the Palestinians. And before we even get into that, I want to point out that she lays out in this book what we've already started to broach in this podcast, starting with last week, that even the worst act of anti semitism in history, the Holocaust during World War II, was stitched together from policies used by the Brits and the Americans. She notes that Hitler once wrote, concentration camps were not invented in Germany. It is the English who are their inventors, using this institution to gradually break the back of other nations. And indeed, such camps had been used by the Brits during the Anglo Boer War in what's now South Africa, as well as by the Spanish and the US in Cuba and so on. So she quotes the british Royal Navy commander Bedford Pym as saying to the Anthropological Society of London in 1866 that there was, quote, mercy in a massacre of indigenous peoples, which is a very cool attitude. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Sure, yeah. [00:49:38] Speaker B: For their own good, eugenics laws and ideologies were rampant in the US before Hitler ever started imposing it upon the undesirables of Germany. With tens of thousands of Americans forcibly sterilized in order to take their dirty dna out of the gene pool. Most of these people being the intellectually and physically disabled, the poor, immigrants and people of color. Exactly you'd expect of the government. [00:50:03] Speaker C: Okay. [00:50:05] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. Right? Maybe we'll delve into that in another. [00:50:09] Speaker A: Episode, whole other series about how we got. [00:50:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a thing. And we don't talk about it. [00:50:17] Speaker A: No. [00:50:19] Speaker C: How long ago is this? [00:50:21] Speaker B: I think the last of this happening was like, the early 19 hundreds. Yeah, that was when sort of eugenics and biological racism and all that kind of stuff were thriving. Was in the early 19 hundreds. But we're really good at branding so that our atrocities are disguised. Hell, we call putting japanese people in concentration camps internment, a word which doesn't nearly conjure the same horror when we hear, like, what does that even mean? And when it comes to the formation of Israel, a mixture of hiding the brutality under less horrifying terms and pr spin and simply making sure no one knew about it, has hidden what we've done there. And Kristen will get into this. But most Jews have been taught that Palestine was a place without a people. For a people without a place, it was empty. What good fortune that the homeland was there, just waiting for them to take? Obviously, that was not the case. But here's why. For many Jews, Zionism, a thing, again Kristen will define shortly, is justified and necessary. For ages, Jews have been maligned, oppressed, villainized and displaced all over the world. According to Klein, scholars trace hatred of Jews all the way back to antiquity, quote, to hellenistic resentments of jewish self segregation, a perceived clannishness. And you definitely hear that shit today, right? Like, oh, the Jews, they stick together. They have to be plotting things, all that kind of stuff. It's been there a long time, apparently, but perhaps. Oh, go ahead, Mark. [00:52:09] Speaker C: Where is the academic view of it beginning anti semitism? Where did it. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Well, that's exactly it. This is what she says. It's traced to. To antiquity. I mean, we're talking about the early, like, gosh, I don't know. I'm so terrible with years when it comes to. [00:52:29] Speaker A: And I would assume it'd be, like, after the diaspora. Right? [00:52:34] Speaker B: Right, of course. Yeah. [00:52:35] Speaker A: Would probably be, I'd assume. I want to say when it started, but I would say always. [00:52:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Long enough ago that basically it's forever. We're talking about. [00:52:48] Speaker C: Functionally forever. [00:52:50] Speaker B: Functionally forever, yeah, that's a good question. I don't know the exact years that would be pinpointed for that, but she put it as antiquity, as when you see the beginning of this. But, yeah, unsurprisingly, it's christians who really hammered the anti semitism home, associating Jews with Satan and blaming them for killing Jesus, a thing Mel Gibson famously believes, if you need a reminder that you should not be supporting Mel Gibson in any way for many reasons. [00:53:21] Speaker A: So mad that they put him in that John Wick style. [00:53:24] Speaker B: Never fucking get over it. [00:53:26] Speaker A: So furious. [00:53:27] Speaker B: The worst. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Anyway. [00:53:30] Speaker B: Anyways, the killing Jesus thing spread into further conspiracies about the evils of the demonic Jews, perhaps most famously in the concept of blood libel that QAnon types have attached themselves to. This was the idea that Jews kidnap christian children and drain their blood for rituals. Insanity. And that's, like, legit, what, that guy shot up pizza gate over? Not shot up pizza gate. Pizza planet over. Yeah. These unhinged ideas about Jews served as a justification for mob violence against them and for their expulsion from the citizenry of places like Spain. And in fact, for a time, Jews and Muslims were closely allied with one another because they were both kicked out of Spain in the 1490s and were accepted into the otoman empire. But in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, Jews were second class citizens, relegated to ghettos and kept from owning land and participating in many of the key trades that would have helped them thrive. As such, they became street peddlers, merchants and money lenders, the latter a job Christians wanted nothing to do with. And by the 18th century, these small lenders had managed to grow into larger banks. While Christians had been happy to shove off an unwanted, ungodly job onto the Jews. They were not pleased when now that put them in charge of everybody's money. So Jews became painted as shrewd, money grubbing bankers who were responsible for everyone else's problems and were plotting world domination. And while that image has persisted, at the same time, Jews are also blamed for being at the center of a marxist cabal set on destroying capitalism as we know it, which is totally antithetical to the idea that they actually want all the money and to be at the center of global capitalism. But bigotry doesn't have to make sense. Klein points out, though, that Jews are overrepresented in leftist marxist circles, among some of the biggest names in leftist movements, like Marx himself, Emma Goldman, Trotsky, Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno, and so on. And many of these people died in horrible, violent ways, whether in concentration camps or in the streets or by suicide, because there was no other way out of the persecution. To Klein, the prevalence of Jews in leftist circles and leadership makes sense because many Jews saw a history of oppression and hatred behind them and envisioned a world of solidarity that was safe for everyone. And again, we can see that today so many jewish people are risking arrests, the loss of familial relationships and friendships, losses of jobs, and all of that to protest what's happening in Gaza. For many, many Jews, as Klein and others have put it, never again means never again for anyone. Whereas to zionist Jews, never again means never again to Jews. And one of the things I found fascinating was her discussion of learning about the Holocaust when she was growing up, and how in conversation with one of the leaders for jewish voice for peace, that person had said that what jews do regarding that history is not remembering, but retraumatizing. Remembering, she says, is a quest for wholeness. Quote at its best, it allows us to be changed and transmuted by grief and loss. But retraumatization is about freezing us in a shattered state. It's a regime of ritualistic reenactments designed to keep the losses as fresh and painful as possible. It's like tearing a scab off over and over and over again. This retraumatization causes Jews to feel that it is not safe and can never be safe for them anywhere in the world. That working towards trying to change societies, to be accepting of Jews is folly. And the only way for them ever to truly escape persecution is to have a state all to themselves that is entirely jewish, without a jewish ethnostate. The immutable specter of antisemitism, a fixed and unchanging characteristic of the world, it's always going to be there means that the next genocide of Jews is not a matter of if, but when. Thus, the trauma of the Holocaust, paired with the ongoing antisemitism worldwide, led a contingent of Jews to believe that Israel is their only hope of safety in the world, and that they have every right to seize that safety by any means necessary, including the wholesale slaughter of the Palestinians. This is how other colonies began. And to Zionists, it's anti semitic to say that they are not allowed to establish themselves in the same way that the rest of the world established themselves. So after that long winded overview Kristen. Hey, tell us more. [00:58:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure you guys are all wanting to hear more after that. [00:58:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:44] Speaker A: Thanks, Corey. That was a great setup for what we're going to kind of look at today. I know you mentioned it last week, and I know you mentioned it on social media this week as well. That kind of the book that we're kind of being, our resource for today is a book called the Hundred Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi. I personally read it a couple of years ago, and I did a book report on it for my book club. I don't do book reports for every book I read. [00:59:10] Speaker B: I feel like I need to say. [00:59:11] Speaker A: That, that it's like, oh, I have. [00:59:13] Speaker B: You did. [00:59:15] Speaker A: I just feel like it's important that you guys know that I don't do this for every book, just annually. It's a thing that my book club and I do. Okay, so I did happen to have a presentation for this book, and I was like, oh, my gosh, do you want my slides? And Corey's like, actually, yes. [00:59:30] Speaker B: You just want to talk about it instead. [00:59:32] Speaker A: Come talk about it. Anyway, so I just wanted to say that. But that's kind of the focus of the book, and that's where this information is coming from. One of the reasons that kind of led me to the book in the first place was that it's from a palestinian perspective. So Rashid Kli himself is palestinian. And so often as we see, right, that histories and other people's stories tend to get written for them. And Palestine has a long history of being silenced. The people of Palestine themselves, everyone else, telling them what they need, what's good for them, that what they're experiencing isn't real. And so for me, it was important to read something that came from someone who was like, no, this is how this has affected myself, my family, my people. I think that's important when learning about these types of things. Right? It's like we so often listen to the colonizer. They are the ones that are telling the main narrative, and we see that even today. And so it's important to always look for the perspective of the indigenous people of. [01:00:29] Speaker C: So what's that normal Donald line, hey, according to this history book, the good guys have won every single time. [01:00:36] Speaker A: What are the totally. But so the main kind of thesis of Rashid's book and Gorkhali's book in this sense, about this war on Palestine is that the modern history of Palestine can be best understood as a colonial war waged against an indigenous population by a variety of parties. So not just one party coming in, but by a variety of parties in order to force them to relinquish their homeland to yet another group against their will. When you put it in that sort of colonial terms, a lot of the language, a lot of the PR, a lot of the things that come out of this are going to sound really familiar. If you study colonialism, if you've ever read about anyone being colonized, you're going to like, gosh, that sounds familiar because colonizers have a handbook and they run the same plays and they borrow from each other. And so a lot of this is going to sound familiar, mainly also because the main colonizers for the first part of this story are the Og colonizers, the British. And so they really kind of shore up it all. They really did know a lot. So anyway, before we hop into that, though, and Corey, you kind of mentioned this a little bit. I do think it's important to understand sort of the concept of Zionism because I think, especially nowadays. [01:01:53] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:53] Speaker A: That's pretty charged. And that's, I think, on purpose in order to avoid criticism. If you can kind of muddle the definition and what people mean when you're saying that, then it's really easy to say, like, oh, you're just being anti semitic, or you don't understand. Honestly, both sides of the story. Either you're being anti semitic or you're not, depending on how you're using it and who gets to use it. But there is a definition to this, right? It's a political organization. It's a political ideology that was established in the late 19 hundreds, sorry, excuse me, late 18 hundreds, 19th century. I always do that by a man named Theodore Herzel. And it was out of the, like you said, kind of the direct answer to intense anti semitism in literally every country on the planet, mainly in Europe. That is where it was kind of born out of, but that's what it's born out of, right? They're like, the only way we can be safe and can really guarantee the safety of a jewish people is to have a jewish homeland that is comprised of only jewish people. And that's a really important aspect of Zionism in that the jewish homeland has to be in Palestine. It can only be made of jewish people. Therefore, anybody else who's there has to be expelled. And that is the main crux behind it. And you see that playing out in a very real way today. And as we kind of move through the story, you'll see how it's been playing out for the past hundred years. But the sort of rallying cry, at least at the early point when this political ideology was first taking off, was that Palestine was seen as terra nullus and its occupants nomadic, no real national identity, just kind of there. Super easy to kind of push him out of the way and take the land. The rallying cry, as we kind of mentioned before, was a land without a people, for a people without a land is the rallying cry of early Zionists. And actually just recently watched a film about Israel this week where a woman, I think the film was made in 2021 or somewhere around there. And she said that. And I was like, with no, Iran was like, oh, yeah, land without a people, for people. Isn't that so wonderful? And she's like, how can you be. [01:04:08] Speaker B: In your still think that? [01:04:10] Speaker A: And I was like, yeah, it's one thing if it's right. 19 one, you don't have a great grasp on geography. Someone's telling you that this place you've never heard of is empty. And you're like, awesome when you're like. But in 2020, when it's been very obvious that there are people who have lived there for generations, the fact that you're still kind of spouting that is troublesome to me. It taught me that you haven't tried to learn anything other than what someone's told you. [01:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And this concept of, I mean, again, when you talk about playbooks and things like that, Terranullius was a term that was used in North America as well to say, this is an empty spot. [01:04:48] Speaker A: We're going to go over there and. [01:04:49] Speaker B: We'Re going to clear all this out and it's going to be ours. And it basically is saying even if there are people there, it's the same thing as there being animals there. They're not human like us. [01:05:02] Speaker A: We can civilized so they can just move out and we can move in and it'll be great. Which was interesting in the book, Rashid's or Khalidi's uncle had a correspondence with Herzel when Herzel was kind of like floating this idea to him. And the uncle was lot of, we have a lot of people who live here. You can't just come in. He's like, no, no, it'll be great. It'll actually be great for you because we're going to come in and make it better. And he's like, what's wrong with it? There's nothing wrong with it now. Doesn't need to be made better. But the Zionism was very organized, and from its inception up until 1917. Up until World War I, they worked hard behind the scenes to put pressure on governments to organize people to graze funds. They are and continue to be, I think, very forward thinking and kind of reading the political landscape, understanding maybe who the next big player is going to be. And that is all going to work to their advantage later on when they actually are able to be in Palestine. But it's important that for this kind of, because the time period we're looking at today is about 1917 to 1948 is all we're going to look at today, essentially, that you're going to hear me using the term Zionist a lot because there is no Israel yet, right? It is Zionism. It is Zionists who are moving in. So that's why I wanted to sort of make sure we understand that term, this ideology, this political ideology that we're talking about. But up until this point, so it feels like they come out of nowhere, but in reality, they've been really working hard to organize themselves to be able to, when it was advantageous to make kind of their pitch, big pitch to like, hey, we really want to go to this place. And they're going to get that opportunity is going to present itself. Like I said, if 1917 and 1939 sound really familiar to you, probably should. That's bookended, right, by two world wars that are going to be the kind of the beginning and end of this story almost. And so at the 1917 is sort of the, another history lesson that I can't get into, but I'd love to talk about the Otoman Empire. Corey kind of mentioned it earlier, and I was like, oh, my God, are we going to talk about it? We're not going to do that. But otoman empire ruled for 400 years, and especially in Palestine, because that's the area we're going to talk about. But in much of the Middle east was the major governing body for, I mean, that's like 20 generations of people. So anybody who's alive is like, that's all that they've ever known. And so world War I happens not to spoil it. The Turks lose, and all of that empire gets broken up completely. And so european powers kind of move into other places in the Middle East, Britain occupying Palestine and kind of being their main thing. So Palestine, like every other country after World War I, really was ravaged. They lost about 6% of their population, and they had been ruled, like I said, for 400 years by the Otomans. All of a sudden to be not ruled by the Otomans and have this occupying force that doesn't share a culture or a language or anything infamiliar with them being like, we're the captain now. So thanks, guys. We're going to be in charge. And the first thing in the british playbook for colonization is to sort of cut off any sort of information to the occupied people. So they don't really know what's going on. Right. A lot of their people have died. Their economy is in shambles. The industrial revolution was like in full speed and it all just kind of gets like the, just kind of gets stopped in the wake of the war. And so the big, to me, what I think is one of the wildest parts of this story is that there's a guy, it's called the Balfour declaration. So Lord Arthur Balfour, he writes one. [01:09:03] Speaker B: Mean, it's a run on sentence. [01:09:04] Speaker A: It's a run on sentence, but it has only one period. So it technically is one sentence. And this one sentence changes the trajectory of the Palestine for the next 100 years, which is wild. [01:09:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:18] Speaker A: So if someone tells you words don't matter, this really matters. And so Balfour says this, in November of 1917, he releases this declaration to everybody. Spoiler alert. Except for the Palestinians. They don't really get news of this. And he says that his Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. So you might notice that the only time Palestinians themselves, though, aren't actually mentioned in this Balfour declaration, they are simply called the non jewish community, which is 95% of the occupants in Palestine at this time. And this is like, hey, guess what? If you want to move to there, you totally can. That is totes cool. We're not going to stop you. We're actually going to promote it. It's important that you do this. [01:10:27] Speaker B: And you're like, and it's kind of wild out the gate because a, like you said, the Palestinians are not told this. They have no idea this is happening. As all of a sudden a whole bunch of Jews start flooding in here and being like, this is our house now. Nobody told us what's going on here. [01:10:45] Speaker A: In addition to them and the British, who are also like, this is also our house. But we're going to let these other guys, my cousin's going to come sleep on the couch if that's cool, right? [01:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And then on top of that, one of the things that Khalidi points out is that this is saying that their civil and religious rights of the Palestinians shouldn't be infringed upon. But that's not saying anything about their right to govern and self government or anything like that. They're going to have the government imposed upon them now by this occupying group. But it's fine because their civil and religious liberties will be preserved. [01:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Which will totally be a thing that we enforce. Definitely. We're definitely going to do that. And so you're probably wondering, right, like, well, why are the, like, what's their deal with normally, like, we kind of talked about earlier, and we'll mention this, I'll mention it again, but normally when you get colonized, those people are the ones that are coming, but it's really. [01:11:45] Speaker B: Colonized on somebody else's behalf. [01:11:46] Speaker A: Somebody else's behalf. But Britain had kind of three reasons for wanting to support Zionism. One, they also believed that Jews had a God given right to this land, being it the land of the Bible. Right. There's a lot of religious baggage. Aggression. [01:12:06] Speaker B: I don't. [01:12:07] Speaker A: Aggression, I think I want to use entitlement in this. Yeah, but entitlement. And so it's wild. And so that's one of them. The second is just good old anti semitism because Britain's like, oh, I guess we don't have to let as many Jews into Britain if we can just send them to was, you know, that. [01:12:24] Speaker B: Came up also when we talked about colonization in America, some of the reasons why people were against imperialism in America were like the same kinds of things. Like, we don't want them here. Yeah. [01:12:34] Speaker A: So we'll just send them anywhere else. And they're like, luckily, the Zionists had an exact idea where they wanted to, so, and then the third was actually just geopolitical, normal, boring stuff, where even before this, Britain was like, we should probably have some kind of hold in that area. And this was the easiest place to do so because they kind of got to essentially kill two birds with 1 st in that. So anyway, like I said, palestinians last to know about this declaration because they don't have any sort of newspapers, the British aren't allowing them to really communicate or share information in the country. And then during this time, because right. When you're after war, everyone's sort of like, the economy is in chatters, zionist movement starts buying up large swaths of land throughout the country. Right. And like I said, when there's no communication, the Palestinians, no one knows what's going on? And it's also interesting because I don't know how much this is true, but there's this argument that after World War I, especially Woodrow Wilson's, everyone, like, wow, nations should self determine. Everyone should be able to decide. A lot of these countries in the surrounding know, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, all these places are trying to also kind of toss off the shackles of their colonizers. And Halestine's like, oh, yeah, we would also like to do that. And Woodrow's like, oh, no, no, not you. Sorry, I meant everybody else, but you. You don't get to do that. All these other people should for was. [01:14:05] Speaker B: A, it was against trend at that point. Everyone else was decolonizing. And all of a sudden, Palestine is. [01:14:12] Speaker A: Being colonized, being colonized. And so that's another interesting thing that at the end of the book, Khalidi kind of makes that point where he's like, essentially they're trying to colonize a country in what is a post colonial age when everyone's like, colonizer colonies aren't cool anymore. And yet they tried to do this anyway. And so the hard thing was that even when Palestine, even when some of the academic kind of class in the country got wind of exactly what was happening, they're like, okay, let's organize. Let's go meet with the British and try and do this. And the British are like, no, we're not recognizing you as a formal entity. And they're like, right, but we're the people who live in this country that you're occupying. And they're like, no, the only kind of people we recognize are these zionist leaders that we've allowed to come in, which obviously then makes it even more difficult to advocate for yourselves and for your homeland when no one, the people won't even take your meeting. They're not taking your calls at this point. They're just sort of sending you to voicemail. So obviously during this time, then, violent and nonviolent protests are kind of breaking out amid the working class in Palestine. And if you know anything about how the british love protests in their colonies, they do not, and they are violently put down. And we're going to talk a little bit about how they do that in a minute. But it starts here early, immediately. Right? So we're in the, they're already starting to experience this oppression in a violent way. And then really quickly, on the heels of the Balfour Declaration, 1922 is the mandate that comes down from the League of Nations, who 99% of the time, as my friend Leslie says, are about as useful as a potted plant. But every once in a while, they're. [01:15:55] Speaker B: Like, that's unfair to a potted plant. They make oxygen for us. [01:15:58] Speaker A: You know what? You're right. I'm sorry. Potted plant didn't mean to malign you. Thus, the League of Nations in 1922 issues this mandate for Palestine. Interestingly, never mentions the word palestinian or Arab in the entire document, but essentially pulls the Balfour declaration word for word and codifies it and gives it slicks and is like, jewish people have historic tie to this land, but completely ignore the fact that there are people physically living there who have literal historic ties and physical ties to the. They essentially, this mandate sets up a zionist parasite within Palestine, and they become seen as the only real government other than the british occupying force. And it is allowing for sort of, like I said, unlimited immigration to the area. And it's really obviously adding a lot of frustration, especially in the interwar years when so many Jews have to flee Europe, right, because of the rise of Nazism and the anti jewish laws in all of the surrounding countries in Europe are like, oh, no, you can't come here. It's like, literally the only place for them to go. [01:17:09] Speaker B: America is not accepting them. Nobody in Europe is letting. Brits are not letting them in. That's one of the things about this is like, it's a rock and a hard place. Where are they going to go? Well, there is this one place. [01:17:23] Speaker A: There is this one place where the zionist movement has bought up about 70% of the land that was formerly Palestine. And this is where you get a lot of the actual uprisings start happening from about 34, 36 through 37, is when people start really rising up in Palestine. They're like, no, this cannot be. You can't just kick me out of my home. It starts having some clashes between settlers and the indigenous people. And I don't know if we're going to put this article for people to read as well, Corey, the banality of. [01:17:57] Speaker B: Brutality, which talks a lot to that. [01:18:00] Speaker A: Okay, great. It's a footnote in this book. And then you can read it, but it goes specifically into british tactics and how they were able to. And you're reading it and you're like, it's wild to read it because you're like, oh, this is all very familiar. Not only is it going to sound familiar as we go through some of the examples from the things that Corey talked about last week on the podcast, but also the things that you see today. This is like the same old playbook that they continue to use. [01:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's honestly, I mean, this article is about 42 pages long. So we didn't summarize everything in here, but just sort of took a brief survey of some of the things that the British did in order to sort of quash rebellion and in terms of collective punishment and all that kind of stuff. So just ten things right here. That is only a quarter of the things that are in the Buzfeed article. [01:18:54] Speaker A: The top ten ways the British can violently put down. [01:18:57] Speaker B: Right, exactly. This is the buzfeedified version. Let's just go through some of the examples here. And again, they'll sound familiar and horrifying. So, for example, possession of firearms was punishable by death penalty, but the rural villagers of the area often kept guns for hunting and protection. So essentially they criminalized their normal lives and livelihoods. In this article, it points out one old man with no criminal record received a sentence of ten years for having three rounds in a coffee pot, which the police could easily have planted during their search. A sentence reduced on appeal to four years. So just random old guy, they raid his house, find some rounds, and he is thrown in jail for four years. But could be worse, could literally be death. The British made sure to go through the show of giving those they captured a trial because obviously extrajudicial murder is a war crime. But the trials were absolute shams, often carried out very quickly and with the prisoner almost inevitably being led to the gallows at the end. Another quote. Since late 1937, the army had been in charge with the full power of search and arrest, independent of the police and the right to shoot and kill any man attempting to escape, search or ignore challenges. So if you were like, no, you'd have no reason to go through my pockets. They could just kill you. Grenades may be used during searches of caves, wells, et cetera. Since November 1937, cooperating aircraft have been bombed up and pilots instructed to machine gun or bomb armed parties. So again, the way that he kind of talked about this in this is that it's essentially martial law. Without declaring martial law, it's a de facto instead of dejure martial law that's happening here. Collective punishment was par for the course. And british forces loved to blow up arab homes. The more impressive the home, the better. And they would loot them and destroy the property inside of the homes as well. The soldiers were struggling to actually find and kill the palestinian insurgents, so they simply made life a living hell for the civilians, which, again, we see know the idea of using the civilians as human shields, right? That's the thing that a lot of Zionists say is, you know, none of this would be happening if Hamas wasn't using civilians as human shields. And that's exactly what's happening. Like, you know, we're having trouble finding these people. Oh. Because the civilians are hiding them. So we're just going to make their lives miserable as a result. And it's important to realize that a lot of the civilians weren't for the rebels. They were not on that side. They were being oppressed by rebels as well. So we're not talking about, like, again, it'd be like, there's a lot of people now who are anti Hamas, who live in Palestine, and you're punishing everyone as if they are on that side indiscriminately, simply because they're there. On the morning of June 16, 1936, the British airdropped leaflets telling residents they needed to evacuate their homes by 09:00 p.m. They then blew up over 220 buildings, leaving some 6000 Palestinians homeless, many having little more than the clothes on their backs when they evacuated. This, by the way, is one of the things that Israel says makes them so moral. Now they argue that they warn the Palestinians when they're going to level their cities, which is a courtesy that they don't have to extend, but they do it because they're so good. You can see where they got it from. It was exactly what the Brits were doing there before. A british school teacher in Palestine noted that the soldiers would start destroying things simply because they were bored. Just a lot of pent up energy, so they would start smashing Palestinians'shit. Quote, the army also took away all the livestock, smashed up properties, imposed long curfews and police posts, blew up houses and detained some or all of the men folk in distant detention camps. [01:23:09] Speaker A: Detention camps is a nice way of saying that. [01:23:11] Speaker B: Yeah, detention camps. Like, even in this, it's like, okay, we're fun. [01:23:16] Speaker C: Think camp. You think fun, don't you? [01:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:23:18] Speaker C: Right? [01:23:19] Speaker B: I love camp. It's super cool. Go. Every summer, civilians bore the brunt of the punishment, whether fines, destruction of property, beatings, and even death. Despite the fact, like I said, that they often disagreed with the rebels, it didn't matter that they might actively oppose the same forces as the British. They were punished simply for being arab, like the rebels were. Troops shot Arabs indiscriminately in the streets when military actions were particularly intense, causing civilians to be in constant fear for their lives, whether walking down the road or tending their sheep. Again. Sounds familiar, right? Every single day, if you're watching feeds on Instagram and things like that you're seeing today. I saw a mom and her, like, six year old kid who were just sniped in the street, killed, and they were just dragging the bodies out of the street, like every day. This is what you see, just making it so people cannot walk anywhere, do anything without someone killing them. Major General H-E-N Bredden said at the time, as in order to bash anybody on the head who broke the law, and if he didn't want to be bashed on the head, then he had to be shot. It may sound brutal, but in fact was a reasonably nice, simple objective, and the soldiers understood it. Fuck me. British army practice was to make local Arabs ride. This is particularly horrendous. British army practice was to make local Arabs ride with military convoys to prevent mine attacks. OFtEn soldiers carried them or tied them to the bonnets of lorries, or put the hostages on small flatbeds on the front of the trains, all to prevent mining or sniper attacks. Quote, the naughty boys who we had in the cages in these camps were put in vehicles in front of the convoy for the deterrent effect. As one british officer put it, the army told the Arabs that they would shoot any of them who tried to run away on the lorries. Some soldiers would break hard at the end of a journey and then casually drive over the Arab who had tumbled from the bonnet, killing or maiming him. So they would use the guy to keep them from getting sniped or mined, and then afterwards knock him off the lorry and run him over. Horrifying. Like I said, we could go on and on. This is a 42 page article, but I think that gets the point across how brutal the british occupation was and how casual about it they were, about just destroying all of this because they did not see these as people. It's like having a field of cattle in the way. [01:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah. I was like, what do you even say about that? That's just what it was, and it's not crazy. But you should also remember, too, that this is just like, one example. The author even points out a lot, and I think it's important too. You see it a lot today, is how a lot of the tactics that they used to suppress the Irish were then used against the Palestinians. So there actually is a very big sort of brotherhood of the Irish supporting Palestinians because they were so often in the same time period as well, being subject to the same thing. So they tested out in Ireland like, oh, this actually really worked. Let's do that here as well. And so at this time, Palestine, like I said kind of earlier, is facing these three foes, right? The Zionism, the zionist kind of parasite that's there, a violent british occupier. And then the League of Nations. Apologies once again to the potted plant. I'm sorry for really saying that this kind of big uprising, and the article itself is kind of covering a period of insurrection, of rebellion in Palestine from about 36 to 39. And then, obviously, I don't know if you know this, then there's this other war that happens. World War II kicks off in 39, and that kind of will carry us through the next little bit, obviously, until about 45. And then the second kind of declaration of war is what Khalidi calls in his book. But I would say the second era of oppression, you could call it, kicks off. And this is going to be the one that probably that is going to be sounding familiar to most of you. People have been bringing it up often in recent news reports. But so following the war, there's actually this kind of group that gets set up to be like, there's all these Holocaust survivors. What should we do with them? And everyone's like, I don't know. We'll just send them to Palestine, this place that's ready made for them, which is already brought. There's already all of these issues going on, but that's happening. The UN now, right? So League of nations, they were like, well, that didn't work as great. Let's do another equally efficient world's power party. The UN General assembly votes in 40, 719 47, November 29 to pass resolution 81, which allows for the partition of Palestine and Israel. So they had first pitched it back in 37, and then there was this huge kind of right and uproar, and then the war happened. And so now they're kind of getting back around to it. Crazy. They don't actually learn their lesson right? And then later they're like, oh, my gosh, that worked so super well. We should just do it again in India. But they pitch it here and that resolution gets passed. And this is known to the palestinian people as the Nakba, or it means the catastrophe by Palestinians. So at this point now, Israel controls, or, I'm sorry, not Israel. Zionists are now control about 78% of what is formerly Palestine. And so from November 1947 until the creation of Israel in May of 1948, almost three quarters of a million Palestinians are immediately refugees. And so out of a population of 1.2 million people, we're talking 720,000 refugees are pushed out of their homes. And so not only are they then trying to either find a place in Palestine or it destabilizes the countries surrounding them. These countries that are also trying to fight for independence and trying to kind of set up their own self governance are now they are all receiving these refugees that have been expelled from their land in Palestine. And so it's this major humanitarian catastrophe. And you see it on the faces, I feel like, of people that they interview nowadays. Like, I just recently was watching a story of a woman who. That happened to her, and she's older now, obviously. She's kind of nearing the end of her age. And she's like, all I want is one year of stability before I die. And she doesn't think she's going to get it. One year is all she's asking. So this causes, obviously, a major, I mean, just crazy upheaval. The partition allowed for Zionists to control move into certain areas, but no one regulated it. And so nations or places that were supposed to stay arab and palestinian, no one policed that. When, you know, Zionists moved in, we're like, nope, we're also taking this. So 60,000 people out of Jaffa, you guys all need to get out of here. We're going to move in here. And they just depopulated, which is like, we're talking about. [01:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [01:30:32] Speaker A: And we're talking about huge urban area. [01:30:35] Speaker B: It's not just like, oh, they took over a bunch of people's farmlands. These were people's olive groves, people who were important, powerful people in Palestine. Nobody was safe from this. You couldn't buy your way out of the Nakba if they came. And they were like, we would like your house now. That was their house. And that was it. [01:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And like I said, they started taking places that were even technically not supposed to have been given to them and made it even worse. And the people were like, well, no, this isn't supposed to be. And they're like, doesn't matter. You need to vacate the premises immediately. Like I said, then you get to April or May 15, 1948, is the official creation of the state of Israel. And then at this point, Palestine has been split between three. So if you're still living in the area, if you're still living within Palestine, if you haven't been, if you're not a refugee in one of the surrounding countries, then you find yourself under one of three essentially occupying forces. So once Israel is created, the Brits are like, cool. You guys have this now, right? We don't need to be here. And they peace out. And so now we've got Egypt, who controls the area of the Gaza Strip, which would make sense if you remember your kind of geography of the area. They share a border with Gaza, and then you have Jordan, which controlled both the west bank and east Jerusalem. And then Israel then controls the rest of the land. And so, like I said, palestinians who had not been forced out but then were under israeli governance found themselves immediately being second class citizens because the constitution, the government set up by Israel only applied to Jews. And so if you weren't a jew in Israel, then that meant that you are now under the control of the military, and they have control over every little part of your life. So if that sounds familiar, it should. This isn't something that, like, oh, recently, after the Oslo Accords, this is something that happened. It's like, no, this is not a new concept. Like, Israel is established an apartheid government immediately in 1948, and that has continued in that until today. And it's obviously the land, the switching of who's in control of what has changed since then. But this is going to set the stage for numerous conflicts that are going to happen from 48, in 56 and 67 and 81 and throughout, and then into the 2000s as well. [01:33:13] Speaker B: Yes, exactly that. Thank you, Kristen. That's a lot. [01:33:21] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a vast, vast amount. And what I'm still struggling with is this idea of how the fuck can an idea like anti semitism shape global events the way it has? Because I can be left with no other conclusion that that simple fucking original hatred then has fucking formed and shaped politics and world powers. [01:34:16] Speaker B: You're really getting into actually what Naomi Klein's whole book is really about, doppelganger, and the idea of doppelgangers and doubles and all of that. And that's one of the things she sort of argues, is that all of these kinds of things have, like, a shadow. They have a doppelganger. They have sort of an equal and opposite thing. And that this Zionism being sort of that shadow, that reflection of that anti semitism that has pervaded culture globally for centuries or however long, that this dark force of Zionism and all this stuff that is going on is like, sort of. It's just sort of the equal and opposite element of that, which is not to say, like, it's an inevitability, but it's kind of what happens when you don't acknowledge your shadow and your trauma and those things that have been following you all this time. And instead, sort of this retraumatization that she's talking about like, what if you'd never work through that? And instead of trying to make everything better, you go for retribution. You go for keeping on peeling the scab off of those wounds and then blaming it on someone else and taking that out on someone. [01:35:39] Speaker A: Well, it's a cycle, right? We see it. This is like a large scale cycle. What you see, I think a lot of times in families who experience trauma is that when there's no way to break that cycle, it continues to then revisit itself upon the next generation. And so what is upsetting in this regard is that the trauma that zionist folks who ascribe to that have experienced, instead of working through that and being like, okay, how do we figure this out and move forward? It's like, well, now that trauma is being revisited on the Palestinians, it's like. [01:36:14] Speaker B: A parent who is abused going and abusing their children. [01:36:17] Speaker A: Going and abusing their children because they get to be in charge of these people. Right? And so it's that. But on a global scale, which has these consequences that we've seen that are, I don't even necessarily have words for the consequences of that happening. [01:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And I'm sure, Mark, that none of this was taught to you in, huh? [01:36:44] Speaker C: Not a word of it. [01:36:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is, I mean, I think that was as I was reading this and realizing, know, Lloyd George was at the center of a lot of this policy and things like that, I thought to know, I don't think that this is a thing that I've read about him at great length before and never saw that that was a part of who he was. And so it's all know, so much of all of this is about disappearing this narrative. Like Kristen said at the, like Palestinians not being able to tell their own story. And how much of this has been made invisible over these years, that whether you are a kid going to hebrew school or a kid in the american public school system or a Brit in your school system, this has been erased from how Israel came to be, which is why so many people are so ignorant of it and so defensive of Israel and this idea, like, well, don't they have the right to defend themselves? Don't they have the right to exist? Things like you have, if you take all of this context out, sure. But when you add that back in, then you have to start asking some really tough questions or answering those questions in complicated ways. So we'll continue on that track going into more of why America and Britain just can't get enough of this, why this is still going on and some of the later ways in which it's been hashed out. [01:38:21] Speaker A: But, yeah, can I say one more thing also? I wanted to point out that this is sort of the era as the British leave that's going to create the US to step in and take their place. And so you're going to see them as going to be the main backer. And then Nakba was kind of the British's last hurrah of getting this resolution passed and being like, okay, cool. Now we've set this up, we're going to go ahead and leave. And a lot of that was actually Israel seeing. And like I said, they have a very forward thinking of seeing the next big power coming up. They watched what was happening in World War II. They saw, like, the next horse to bet on is not great Britain. It's going to be the US. And if we want a stronger ally, that's going to be who we need to back up. So we're going to move away from the Brits now. [01:39:06] Speaker B: I mean, they're still there. They're totally still there. [01:39:08] Speaker A: But I would say, yeah, they're not physically still there and they're still there as allies. But I would say the main ally in our story going forward is going. [01:39:17] Speaker B: To be the US. [01:39:19] Speaker A: Yay. [01:39:20] Speaker C: Okay. [01:39:22] Speaker B: Thank you again, Kristen, for all of that. [01:39:26] Speaker A: Like I said, I love giving my presentation to people. [01:39:30] Speaker B: Very glad of that. [01:39:31] Speaker A: If anybody wants my slides, I'm more than happy to send them out. [01:39:34] Speaker B: There you go. Hit up Kristen, if you want some slides on this, I want to have. [01:39:37] Speaker A: A zoom and I can give you my full 40 minutes presentation on this book. [01:39:42] Speaker B: And all the sources and everything, of course, are in the blog, in the description, all of that kind of stuff. And we'll keeping on. Anything to conclude there, Mark? [01:39:54] Speaker C: No, not for me. Just echo your thanks. Thank you very much indeed, Kristen. It was great. [01:39:58] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun. I mean, it wasn't fun. It was terrible, but it was nice to talk it out. [01:40:04] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:40:06] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. [01:40:07] Speaker B: Dear listeners, thank you for joining us as well and keeping on this journey. And we hope you're finding it enlightening and that you're not too depressed and that if you are too depressed, it is spurring you to action. Write to your representatives, even if, like mine, they never send you so much as a form letter back. And until next time, dear friends, please to stay spooky close.