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Episode 31: The century-old harbinger of October 7, a conversation with Yardena Schwartz
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- [00:00]
Yardena Schwartz
Foreign.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Welcome to a special episode of Ask Khabiv Anything. This episode is actually a live conversation recorded last week with Yardena Schwartz, author, journalist, which we taped at Martha's Vineyard at a special event hosted by Chabad on the Vineyard. Thank you so much to Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz for having us. I've received a lot of requests from our Patreon supporters. I want to say this right now. It's important for an episode on Gaza, on the latest developments and what it means, the dramatic pivot of the Israeli military effort and the question of famine in Gaza. And this is something that I've talked about, expressed opinions about, been cited by many people who then came out and talked about it. We're going to dig into it. We're working on an analysis that is hopefully going to be very useful and really try and give a sense of where things are going, where the Israelis are at, and what this very dramatic pivot actually means for the war, for Gazans, for Israelis, for the soldiers, for the future of Hamas, for the future of the Israeli Palestinian relationship. As always, if you have suggestions for topics, if there's something that you would like us to tackle, we look to our Patreon subscribers for suggestions of those episode topics that we then pick up and run with. So join us. It helps support the podcast. This conversation with Yardena covers her book that came out last year called Ghosts of a Holy War, which is about the 1929 Hebron massacre. The parallels to October 7, including and especially in Arab discourse around the events in the Jewish responses to the events in the religious aspect of a great deal of what was going on. We explore this moment. She will describe it for us. We will have a back and forth about what it means and what we can learn from it. It's part of the Israeli Palestinian encounter conflict, century of history that many people in the west have a difficult time seeing and addressing in a serious way. It's an important piece of the puzzle. It reflects, it showcases an important piece of the puzzle that we're going to try and raise in that conversation. Before we get into the content of the episode, I want to tell you that this episode's sponsor asked to remain anonymous. First of all, thank you for your sponsorship. And he asked to dedicate this episode in honor of his Slovak Jewish grandparents who survived the Holocaust. His Savta was sent to Auschwitz. At the selection line, she was separated from her family. She was beaten, leaving her blind in one eye. And that separation was the very reason she survived. And she was the only One to survive, our sponsors, Saba, was sent to various work camps, including Mauthausen. His first wife and daughter were murdered in the Holocaust. Those two survivors, Anna and Joseph, were Shidducht, or betrothed, and then married. After the war. They had one child, a son they called Chaim Life. And they made aliyah to Israel in 1948 when Chaim was 18 months old. That baby, despite hardships, they built a new life in a moshav, which is a village in the south of Israel. And that baby, like everyone in his age group, literally grew up with the country. Thank you for that sponsorship. It helps a lot. And thank you for that beautiful dedication. And let's get to it. Martha's Vineyard conversation with journalist Sierdena Schwartz about her book Ghosts of a Holy war, on the 1929 massacre in Hebron. Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for having us. Rabbi, for the hospitality, I wanted to start us off with. I'm just going to throw it to Yardena and introduce a little bit just this book and why this book is very significant and why this book, I think, tells us about that massacre in 1929, about a massacre 96 years ago. But that book traces a very particular arc, and it's an arc that teaches us, I think, a great deal about what happened on October 7, about the things that are not necessarily visible, obviously visible, certainly not part of the debate about October 7, about Gaza, about Israelis and Palestinians and the Western public discourse in the Western media. And it's an arc without which that if you don't see it, you don't understand what is happening to us. 1929, August 23rd and 24th, 1929, in Hebron saw one of the worst pogroms outside of Europe that had happened to Jews. It was a pogrom that was religious in nature, in intent, in purpose, in vocabulary, in experience. The pogrom is themselves saw it as a religious experience. It included a lot of the features we saw in October 7th. It included the murder of children in front of family. It included rape. It included mutilation. And these are very particular kinds of crimes. It is one thing to murder someone in a moment of passion. It is one thing to hurt someone out of hatred. But if you are doing humiliation crimes, if you are murdering in ways that are intended to dehumanize, There is a lot of research about rape, for example, generally about rape, not just rape in war. It's not a crime of libido, it's a crime of power. And that feature of October 7th was profoundly present in August 1929. And Yerdena, you convincingly argue, I think, that it was part of a larger crisis of Islam and a larger feature of the politicized Islam, of the Palestinian national movement that was very much part of the need on October 7 to humiliate the Israelis and of the psychology on the Palestinian side of both carrying out October 7th and also supporting October 7th among the population. So let's get started with basically describe to us that event, that historical event. A lot of people have heard about it vaguely, what actually happened on August 23, 1929.
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Yardena Schwartz
So first, I should say I began writing this book in 2019, and I never imagined that when I was writing about the massacre of 1929 that this would become so relevant. I was still writing my book on October 7, 2023, and my intention was not to tie it to events of today in such a dramatic, horrific, haunting way. But sadly, what we saw on October 7th was chillingly similar to what happened on August 24th, 1929, in Hebron. And what happened that day was families, entire families were locked inside their homes, hiding inside rooms, beneath furniture, behind furniture, waiting as they heard rioters outside their homes shouting allahu Akbar. Chanting Itbach al Yehud. Murder the Jews, shouting Palestine is our land. The Jews are our dogs. They were led by Muslim clerics and Muslim teachers leading the mobs. There were about 3,000 men marching through the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron, one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world. Jews had lived in Hebron for thousands of years. Even through exile. Hebron had always been home to at least a small presence of Jews. And the reason they lived there was because Hebron is the burial place of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. The tomb of the patriarchs and matriarchs is believed to house the bones of our forefathers and mothers. At that time, it was off limits to Jews because in the seventh century it became home to the Ibrahimi Mosque. And at the time, the Jews living in Hebron lived as essentially second class citizens. Hebron was home to about 20,000 Muslims and about 800 Jews. And the Jews lived, many of them, in the ghetto. It was known as the ghetto. It was the Jewish quarter. And those who lived outside of the ghetto lived in homes they rented from Arab landlords. And I say this because before the massacre on August 24, 1929, the Jews living in Hebron, the reason they were able to exist there and live there, just 800 Jews amid 20,000 Arabs, is because they lived in peace and harmony. This wasn't just Jews living side by side with their Muslim neighbors. This was that they were friends, they owned businesses together, they rented their homes from Arab landlords, they drank coffee together. About half of the Jews living in Hebron were Arabic speaking native Jews, Sephardim, Mizrahim. And on August 24, 1929, it was their neighbors who slaughtered them in their homes. 3,000 Muslim men out of a population of 20,000. So very large portion of the population participated in this massacre, including Arab policemen. Since most of the policemen in Hebron were Arabs, all except one who was Jewish. And the chief police officer in Hebron was British. This was during the British mandate. The British authorities had essentially ignored all the warning signs that told them that this riot, riots were going to break out in Jerusalem. They broke out a day before the massacre began in Hebron. But the day the riots reached Hebron, that was when we saw the climax of what had begun in Jerusalem. And over the course of a week, 133 Jews were murdered across Palestine. Hundreds were wounded, but more than half of them were killed in Hebron, the place that had been a beacon of coexistence in Palestine among Jews. It was considered one of the safest places for Jews to live in Palestine, to the point where in summers, Jews from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would vacation in Hebron because it was in the mountains, it was, you know, a cooler climate. Imagining Jews in Tel Aviv today vacationing in Hebron is quite the mental, the, you know, the mental gymnastics there are really hard to imagine.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
It was the Martha's Vineyard. Exactly, I would say of the, of the mountains of.
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Yardena Schwartz
Exactly, yeah. So that day, the men, women and children who were hiding in their homes, hoping that these riots wouldn't reach them, when rioters did break into their homes, the people often saw, you know, friends, neighbors, co workers amongst the people coming to kill them. 67 unarmed men, women and children were murdered that day in the most horrific of ways. Most of the people were mutilated. Women and teenage girls were raped before their fathers, husbands, children, infants, were slaughtered in their mother's arms. People are burnt alive and the police did nothing if not participate in the massacre. It's important to note that more than 200 Jews, at least 200 Jews were saved that day by their Muslim neighbors. At least a dozen Arab families took Jews into their homes to hide them or stood guard outside of Jewish homes, preventing the mobs from entering those homes. And some of them were stabbed in the process. But sadly, the Jewish community of Hebron was decimated. And exiled from Hebron. So the British authorities evacuated them and told them never to return. And so from 1929 until 1967, when Israel conquered Hebron from Jordan, which had been occupying Judea and Samaria from 1948 until 1967, this was the first time that Jews had entered Hebron since 1929. There were some families who returned after 1929 against the orders of the British and actually against the wishes of the Zionist movement, which had not wanted them to go back because it felt they couldn't protect them. The British, obviously could not protect them. And the British were the only ones controlling Hebron at the time. And so the Jews who returned a year later, they soon had to leave again when riots broke out again in 1936. But this ancient Jewish quarter was destroyed. Ancient synagogues were looted and destroyed. There was this Jewish clinic called the Hadassah Clinic that for decades had served needy Arabs and Jews alike in Hebron. It provided them with free treatment in Hebron, and that too was destroyed. And the pharmacist who had worked there for 40 years, he was actually a Turkish Jew, you know, spoke Arabic, was. He had actually lost a leg because when he was treating a patient, he fell down some stairs. He too was slaughtered, and his daughter was raped. His wife was killed. I mean, when you talk about the way in which people were killed, it was absolutely just this. Just the most horrific methods of torture were used that day. And again, this was two decades before the state of Israel was born. Jews at the time represented about 17% of the population. The population was less than 1 million people. And the language used that day was completely religious. The rioters were praising God, claiming to be acting in defense of Islam, in defense of Al Aqsa. And the reason they were was because the. The entire reason these riots broke out was because they followed an entire year of propaganda, a propaganda campaign led by the leader of Palestinian Muslims under British rule, the Grand Mufti, Hajimeen Al Husseini. You might know that name. He began a campaign of propaganda about a year earlier in 1928, claiming that the Jews of Palestine were planning to conquer Al Aqsa Mosque to rebuild the ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem. And that campaign of propaganda was extremely successful. It was successful in distracting the Muslim population from the Grand Mufti's own failures and his own corruption and nepotism and misuse of funds that were meant for Muslim institutions. Because the Grand Mufti oversaw all Muslim holy sites in Palestine, he was essentially the equivalent of Chief Rabbi of Palestine. But the chief Muslim official in Palestine. And he had, you know, among his various misdeeds, he had funneled 70,000 British pounds away from Muslim holy sites and sharia courts and Muslim schools into building his mansions in Jerusalem. He had established this hotel in Jerusalem, the Palace Hotel, atop a Muslim cemetery. He employed actually a member of the Haganah, interestingly enough. And so he faced all kinds of criticism in the Arabic press and from rivals, political rivals. And once he began this campaign of disinformation surrounding Al Aqsa and this supposed Jewish plot to destroy it, much of that criticism melted away. And in Hebron, one of the reasons they were able to convince Muslim leaders in Hebron, were able to convince friends to turn on their neighbors, was because that propaganda campaign extended to the Ibrahimi Mosque, the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron. So Muslim leaders in Hebron told worshipers in the mosques in Hebron that once the Jews conquered Al Aqsa in Jerusalem, the Jews of Hebron were going to conquer Ibrahimi Mosque and turn it into a synagogue.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Why does the story begin in 1929 for you? And in the book, you talk about it as the starting point. The year zero of in 1920, you had the Nebi Musa riots. Religious a little bit in terms of the language. Violence erupts. Hajameen leads a lot of it. In 1936, you have the beginning of the great revolt, which is when, you know, hundreds of Jews will die, thousands of Arabs will die, the British have to rush troops to the land. There's three years of terrible violence. What is special about 1929 that makes you say that that is where our story of the Israeli Palestinian encounter conflict should, should begin.
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Yardena Schwartz
Well, 1929 wasn't the first time tensions had erupted in Palestine between Arabs and Jews. They'd been simmering for years. As you mentioned, in 1920, there was the Nebi Musa riots. But 1929 was the first mass casualty event of this conflict. And it's also when the forces that drive this conflict today, particularly Al Aqsa mosque and this supposed Jewish plot which continues today, to destroy Al Aqsa and rebuild the Jewish temple, this is when that disinformation campaign begins. And we see how it has continued to fuel violence for the last century. I mean, it's no coincidence that October 7th was called the Al Aqsa Flood. It's no coincidence that Hamas presents itself as the defense defenders of Al Aqsa against the Jews. Their logo, their icon, is Al Aqsa with guns in front of it. The entire resistance, if you listen to their own words. It's about protecting Al Aqsa, liberating Al Aqsa. When the Palestinian leaders talk about liberation, it's not a liberation in the sense that we know it in the West. It's a liberation of holy Muslim land from Jewish contamination. These aren't my words. These are their words.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
So that's really, I mean, my next question, which is your book, that's your main thesis. Your main thesis traces this century long arc and argues that there's something at work here that isn't the usual run of discussion about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, at least in the west, that it's competing nationalisms, that it's an anti colonial struggle, that it's over land. All of these paradigms you suggest, they're not what the actual drivers of the violence ever say they're dealing with. There's certain ideological elites, certain diaspora intellectuals at Columbia University who describe it that way, but not the people driving the actual events in the land for a century. Al Aqsa is in danger. The Jews are defilers. That's something we heard on October 7th. That's something we heard in Hebron in 1929. Hajja means religious propaganda. They called October 7th the Al Aqsa flood. They called the violence of 1929 the Al Buraq rebellion. Al Buraq is Muhammad's horse, who he places in the Sunni tradition at the Kota, at the Western Wall and then goes onto the Temple Mount to where the shrine is the Dome of the Rock and that is obviously above a boulder where he steps and ascends to heaven. That's his stepping stone for his ascens. And so there's also holiness to the Al Buraq Wall, as it is called in the Muslim tradition. That is the beginning of an arc in which the violent politics, those specifically religious violent politics, are fully formed and it hasn't changed. And even if you have other pieces of Palestinian politics, Fatah might speak sometimes in a different language, it always seems to come back to this narrative of the Jewish defiling of the and of the crisis of Islam, of Islam being pushed back. The problem isn't Jews. Excuse me. The problem isn't Jewish nationalism. The problem is Islam losing ground and the need to reconsecrate that Islamic land. That was a question.
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Yardena Schwartz
I'm sorry, no, and I'll take it from there. I mean, it's also the beginning or an early spark of the rejectionism that has characterized the Palestinian movement for the last century. The rejection of living together, inequality. So there was There was coexistence before 1929, but coexistence as long as Jews were second class citizens, as long as Jews were kept out of places like the Tomb of the Patriarchs, as long as Jews didn't have a role in leadership. For instance in Hebron, there was just one Jew on city council, one Jewish police officer, even that was pushing it. There was this allergic reaction to this idea that under the British, Jews would become equal citizens, Jews would be allowed to immigrate into Palestine. Because under the Ottoman Empire, before the British took over, before the British Mandate of Palestine under Ottoman rule of Palestine, there were quotas on Jewish immigration. Jews were restricted from purchasing land. Jews were already the majority in Jerusalem and yet they were restricted from purchasing land even in Jewish quarters. So there was this rejection of any notion of Jewish power. And that was very evident in 1929 with these cries of Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs. You know, there was this rejection of this idea that Jews would have any kind of equality in Palestine and a rejection of a shared future. So the Grand Mufti, after inciting these riots, he was able to keep the powerful positions that the British had actually appointed him to and he became even more powerful. And after inciting the riots that characterized the revolt that began in 1936, the British began to have negotiations with Jewish leadership in Palestine to figure out what could be done. The British had already decided they wanted out of Palestine, but they didn't know how they would get out. And they began to talk about potentially a two state solution. This was the first time they didn't call it that, but they talked about dividing the land between an Arab independent Arab state and independent Jewish state with self governance. And the Jewish leadership wasn't totally thrilled by the idea because it would give just 20% to the Jews and some, something like 80% to the Arabs. But they were excited that this was even just, you know, being spoken about some kind of independence in the land of Israel for the first time in 2000 years. Meanwhile, the Grand Mufti was adamantly opposed not just to the idea of two states, but to the idea that the 400,000 Jews then living in Palestine would even be able to live there. He said when they, when the British asked him in 1936 what should be done with the Jews now living here, he said we can, we can get to that later once we get to self governance, Arab self governance. And they said, well, can they stay? And he said no. And that was his first rejection, of course, in 1947. He and every other Arab leader rejected the UN partition plan. You know, this is all to say that if this conflict was truly about land and who gets to live where, this conflict would have been solved years ago. Decades ago, 2000, there was a two state offer that was rejected with no alternative. 2008, even more generous offer rejected out of hand by Abbas. You know, this, this notion that settlements, however problematic they may be, and we can talk about that, this idea that settlements are the key obstacle to peace is a fallacy. I mean, there were less than 200,000 settlers living in the West bank in 2000 when Arafat rejected the two state solution. Today there are more than nearly 500,000. So it's, it just shows that, you know, sharing this land is not an option for one side of the equation. And you know, maybe that's true that today Israel is led by a government that also doesn't want a two state solution, but that is relatively recent that, that, that set.
- [25:57]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
So you take time in the book describing the, the murderers themselves, talking about the murders as a religious, spiritual experience. And to me that was a kind of linchpin of a window of understanding. Something else is happening here. You will read the New York Times, for example, for 50 years and not see this thing now. There are many things happening in Palestinian society, many things happening in Israeli society, many pieces to this narrative and how they understand their history and their future and what is happening to them. But there is a piece of it that is what this book is about, that is almost completely missing from the Western debate, Western discussion, Western observation of this conflict, and without which almost nothing makes sense. One of the real powerful questions for me after October 7th, and I experienced this as a young soldier in the second Intifada, was I basically, my platoon was in a checkpoint in the north and west bank where a suicide bomber blew up and his car blew up. And it was multiple, I don't know, few, dozens of kilos of TNT in the car. It was something like five bus bombings worth of TNT blew up in that car at that checkpoint. So that's a very successful day. If you're a soldier at that checkpoint in the middle of the second intifada, I remember my 19 year old self asking, what the hell are they thinking? What are they going to accomplish? They're going to blow up a school bus in Jerusalem, Then what? What happens then? What do they actually suspect is then going to come? Why would this make sense to them? And that sent me on a journey and I suddenly learned from Palestinian writers about the Algerian example that eight years of terrorism kicked the French out after 130 years. And Arafat genuinely thought that's what was going to happen in the second Intifada. And I learned about. But then there's this element, this deep religious arc, and in the west, it's totally missing, it's totally invisible. And if you bring it up, they think you're propagandizing. But it's almost all Hamas ever talked about for 40 years, since its founding in 1987, and it's all they talked about in 1929. And it's most of what they talked about in the second intifada, including, by the way, secular nationalists in Fatah, for example. This is a profound piece. And so my question is, why can't Westerners see this? And I just, I really. This is not an argument about, oh, look at everything screwed up on the Palestinian side. There are many things on the Palestinian side that are not this. There's many things moving, all these moving pieces all at once. This is a huge one according to them. Why can't a Westerner look at this and see it for what it is or even just see that it is before they then try to understand it?
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Yardena Schwartz
So, as you know, the second intifada is known in Arabic as the Al Aqsa Intifada. I mean, the second intifada wasn't about globalize the intifada and shaking off the occupation. This was defending Al Aqsa. It's called the Al Aqsa Intifada because what sparked it was Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that awakened these fears of Jewish takeover of Al Aqsa. Despite the fact that Al Aqsa has been in control of Israel since 1967, and we still haven't destroyed it yet and never will. And this, this reverence of martyrdom and terrorism within the educational system in Palestinian society and Palestinian media and leadership, not just in Hamas, but also in Fatah. You know, there's a reason. There's the, the Martyrs Fund. When you talk about it, you're right, you're, you're considered a propagandist or an Islamophobe. But this is, these are the facts. When there are reports in the EU about how problematic the education system is in, in Palestinian society, whether it's in the UNRA schools or Palestinian schools run by the paper, it is a fact that children are being taught to aspire to become martyrs. They're being taught that the greatest way to glorify their people is to become.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Martyrs in the entirely religious mode of Thought not as Marxist revolutionaries in Vietnam, entirely Islamic religious modes. That is the discourse, that is the vocabulary. And it is there for a century now. And it is incredibly difficult to have a conversation about it in the West.
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Yardena Schwartz
And I think the reason why it's difficult to have a conversation about it in the west is because so many news organizations will not cover it. Not only will they not cover it. When I was reporting from Israel for a decade for publications like Time, the New York Times, the Economist, when I would put pieces like this in my stories about from their own mouths, whether it was Hamas or Palestinians I interviewed in the west bank or in Jerusalem, those elements of my stories were almost always edited out. And in 2021, I did an investigative piece for Foreign Policy about the Palestinian education system and how it is tantamount to child abuse, what they're teaching children, and how I interviewed schoolchildren as young as seven nine, showing me what they were learning. And they were literally pictures of terrorists portrayed as heroes of their people. And it's really impossible to imagine Foreign Policy magazine publishing that story today. There's this willful denial, voluntary ignorance, I don't know what you want to call it, but this denial of what they're telling us, what they're doing, and this idea that if we just reflect our own issues, our own struggles onto this conflict over there, that will somehow make it easier to understand, but in reality, it's made it impossible to understand because we're looking at it through the lens, through a Western lens, through a lens of, you know, racism in America. So many writers on Palestine, in this country, try to imagine that what's happening in Israel and Gaza and the west bank is. Is exactly like, you know, the African American experience. And it is just not. It's just not the case. And I think one of the reasons why, aside from the American tendency to do that, to kind of just look at other countries through our own lens and imagine that they're just like America. Is also this. The. The fact that in the west, we haven't had religious wars for centuries? You know, holy wars are over for us, but they are not over in the Middle East. That's evident in Syria. It's evident all over the Middle east. Not just the Israel, the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And yet this decision within the legacy media for which I once wrote, the decision to ignore that, is helping to fuel this conflict and dooming us to another century of massacres. Because when you can't understand a conflict, it is never going to be resolved.
- [33:45]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
And finally, this is my last question that I want to try and sift through. And then we're going to open it up to your questions. Speeches, questions go wild. The 1920 Nebi Musa riots convince the Jews that they are unprotected and they founded the Haganah. But the Haganah was this very loose voluntary network, basically of people. And then in 1929. In 1929, by the way, the riots, Hebron was the big massacre, but there was also a smaller massacre in Tzfat. And there was, I think, in Motzah and as you said, in Jerusalem. And British officers in Tzfat, for example, literally walked away when they saw the crowd coming. And so the Jews watched the British leave. And they had, I don't think, a single gun in the entire Jewish community of Suffet. And they were massacred right there in front of the British Hebron.
- [34:37]
Yardena Schwartz
The British police officer was literally on his horse as teenage Jews were slaughtered, clinging to his horse, trying to get him to help. And he only fired his gun when the rioters turned on him.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Yeah. And that experience of the Haganah not being enough in its state at the time and the British being totally undependable in the most dire situations created a new mobilization for the Haganah. And something I never knew and learned for the very first time and had never had known so little about. I never even knew it was. Interesting question, which was after 1929, the Haganah was no longer purely Ashkenazi, which I want you to get into. Talk to us about that. And I should just say in 1936-39, that arc that violence, the Great Revolt, the British need the Haganah's help to suppress the violence, and so they actually start giving the Haganah proper military training and weapons. The Jewish response is a unity. The Jewish response is a bolstering of strength and capability, a bolstering of boldness and a coalescing into a state that could defend itself by 1948. And that's the Jewish response to the sense that this violence was. Wasn't about something the Jews were doing. It was much, much more fundamental than that. So tell us a little bit about that Jewish response.
- [36:03]
Yardena Schwartz
So prior to 1929, Zionism was not a dominating, unifying, rallying force in Palestine. It was actually highly controversial. It was almost exclusively an Ashkenazi movement.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
You mean among the Jews?
- [36:18]
Yardena Schwartz
Secular among the Jews, yeah. So Hebron, one of the reasons why Hebron became the epicenter of the Rio and the face of the riots of Palestine in 1929, was because this wasn't a community of Zionists. The Jews of Hebron were pious, religious Jews living a quiet existence centered around the Torah. Two dozen of the victims were yeshiva students, including the protagonist of my book, which I probably shouldn't have said. Sorry, spoiler alert.
- [36:49]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
A young man named David from Memphis, Tennessee opens her book. It's very accessible is what I'm saying. But he was. Yeah, he was a. He was not Zionist.
- [36:59]
Yardena Schwartz
Anti Zionist.
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Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Anti Zionist. He went to study in the Yeshiva, not anything else. He is one of the people massacred that day.
- [37:06]
Yardena Schwartz
Yeah. So one of the reasons it was so galvanizing for the old Yishuv, which was not Zionist at that point, was because they had believed that the return of the Jewish masses to Zion should only be achieved through the will of God. The arrival of the Mashiach, this is not something that should be done by man, certainly not by secular European Jews just coming over. Yeah, exactly. And the fact that the Jews of Hebron, these non Zionist pious Jews, were the ones who paid the heaviest price. And the fact that the British were completely unreliable, had they couldn't rely on any foreign power to protect them. The Jews who had opposed Zionism until 1929, many of them realized that Zionism was their only hope. That if they were going to live in Land of Israel, even if they were religious and disagreed with the secular, you know, leaders of the Zionist movement at the time, they needed Zionism, they needed a Jewish state, they needed their own army to protect them. And this is when the Haganah went from being an almost exclusively Ashkenazi operation to, to having Sephardi Mizrahi Jews who were much more traditional until then, very suspicious of the secular European Zionists. This is when many Sephardim and Mizrachim began to join the Haganah. And Haganah became a much stronger, more centralized fighting force because they realized that they were completely in equipped and unprepared for what happened in 1929. And it also sparked a rebellion within the Haganah. Because the Haganah, their motto was restraint, defense only. The Haganah was not about preemptive attacks, retaliatory attacks. And so after 1929, we saw the emergence of the Irgun, which was started by dissenting factions within the Haganahu believe that we shouldn't just be about defending communities. No, we need to preempt attacks. We need to carry out retaliatory attacks to prevent further attacks. And so the Zionist movement was strengthened by these riots. So, and, and it's just One example of many in which these violent acts which are meant to extinguish the Jewish power, Jewish strength, Jewish unity, have the opposite effect. And we've seen that on October 7th to devastating consequences. I should say that this holy war is not between Islam and Judaism. It's between those who weaponize religion and glorify violence. And I think that's really important to remember. And you see that in the 200 Jews who were saved by their Muslim neighbors in 1929, hundreds, if not thousands of Jewish Israelis were saved by Muslim Israelis on October 7th. Whether it was Bedouins in southern Israel who risked their lives to save Israelis fleeing the Nova massacre, Muslim men who were working at the Nova massacre, sorry, at the Nova festival, many of them were killed. Some were taken hostage to Gaza. And you know, there is a very clear source of this incitement. And I think there hasn't been enough attention on eradicating that incitement and doing more to. And the child abuse that is the Palestinian education system. And I think that, you know, maybe it's easier for international leaders or peacemaker makers to just force people to the table to negotiate, but you can't negotiate anything when the foundation isn't there for those leaders to say yes and tell their people yes, I just negotiated with the enemy. If they're being told that Jews have no right to live in this land, if they're being told that there's no Jewish history in this land, why should they want to share this land? But that is what they're being taught. And so long as that is not a target of all peace efforts, of changing that foundation so that they can say yes when the next two state, if we ever. I mean, I feel silly even talking about a two state solution right now because all polls show that both sides aren't truly interested. And, you know, the possibility isn't there right now. But I do believe that at the end of the day, self determination for both sides is something that is the only way we will see an end to these endless cycles of violence.
- [42:02]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
Just outed her as a secret Lefty. You were all witnesses. Let's take questions. You are, I just want to say there is a recording. It's going on a podcast. Yes. Over here. Harvey. You can't resolve a conflict unless you understand it. Implies that you can resolve it if you do understand it. Do you think that's true? Do you think you can resolve it? Your statement, just to repeat your statement that you can't resolve a conflict if you don't understand it. Implies that you can. If you do, do you think you can resolve this conflict if you do understand it?
- [42:36]
Yardena Schwartz
I, Yardena Schwartz, cannot solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. But I do think that those in power who have the resources and the time and the desire to see peace in Israel, Palestine, should and need to focus their efforts on the true sources of the conflict, which are the disinformation, the incitement, the exploitation of religion. I think that it's at least worth seeing what focusing on those things and empowering the moderates, empowering those in Palestinian society who do want peace. Because there are plenty of Israelis and Jews around the world who would be happy to share this land. And even if it means evicting Jews from their homes, which obviously we did in Gaza, you can see what happened there. But that, again, that was because the foundation wasn't there to actually see peace. But if a leadership, a Palestinian leadership emerges which does acknowledge Jewish sovereignty over at least some part of the historic Jewish homeland, and there are Palestinians who do, there are Palestinian leaders who have not been empowered the way they should be by international leaders and by NGOs and human rights organizations. Many Palestinians who do speak out for peace have been forced to flee the country for the sake of speaking out. And I think that so long as that is the case, there will never be a different kind of Palestinian leadership. And so I think that if the people who want. Who truly want peace actually focus their efforts on empowering a different kind of Palestinian leadership, I think we could see different outcome.
- [44:27]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
I think the west has to start seriously understanding religion and learning about it again. And so in my podcast, we have one episode dedicated to this religious discourse because it's deep and it's profound. One episode is explicitly, here is the theological lineage of basically mostly Egyptian theologians that produce Hamas and Al Qaeda. And you know what's interesting about them? That in 1860, the teachers who would teach a guy named Abdulkhun, who would teach a guy named Rashid Rida, who is the teacher of Hassan Al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood chapter established In Gaza in 1987, the great, great grandpa of Hamas, intellectually, was a farmer who wanted Islam to build universities and to bring Islam into the modern age. And that turned into, in other words, learn this. Both the strangeness of it, the fascinating, the depth of it, and also how it all went wrong. We have to start teaching about it. And so what can I do about it? I can make a podcast episode. But Westerners really need to begin to understand this is Deep, serious religion. And also it's why nothing can ever move forward. There will always be this deep, serious religion in some corner of Palestinian politics coming in to destroy it for everybody else over here. Yes, Alan, I know the name of somebody here.
- [45:43]
C
With all due respect, I fundamentally disagree with both of you. I don't think this is about religion. I think religion is a cover for hatred. And the evidence of that comes from a lot of sources. Number one, the Saudis are more religious than anybody in the world and they're prepared to make peace because it's in their economic interest to do so. This is going to sound surprising, but the guy who wrote probably the second best book on this after you is Benjamin Netanu's father, who proved that the Inquisition had nothing to do with religion, that the Inquisition was all about anti Jewish racism and anti Semitism and was the prelude to the Holocaust. And so I think even if we were to persuade all the religious people in the world to change their religious views and become more accommodating, the deep, deep, deep, profound hatred of the Jew is at the core of all this. And we have to address that problem rather than the COVID which is the religious problem. Just one more little point and that is that the problem for all of this, the superficial problem, was caused by a Jewish guy named Samuels who was the High Commissioner of Palestine for Britain. And he came and he picked the Grand Mufti. He was the one who selected the leader of the Arab people. They didn't call themselves Palestinians, the Arab people. And he gave the Grand Mufti who had nothing to do with the religion. I guarantee you the Grand Mufti doesn't believe in God. Didn't believe in God. The Grand Mufti was purely a Hitler hating politician and he knew how to use religion in the same way Hitler knew how to use nationalism. And I think we're falling for it when we give them too much credit for having these based on truly religious beliefs. I'm sorry to be a naysayer here, but that's my view.
- [47:38]
Yardena Schwartz
Well, you're right, it is absolutely about hatred, but it's a hatred fueled by religion. And I say that because the hatred of Jews within a certain brand of Islam has to do with the fact that Judaism is the bedrock of Islam. If you look at Islam, I mean Abraham, Abraham is perceived as a prophet in Islam, which is why the Ibrahimi Mosque and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Temple Mount, there's a reason why Al Aqsa was built atop the Temple Mount.
- [48:11]
C
There's no hatred worse than the Catholic hatred toward the Jews? Never. I mean Islamic hatred was nothing compared to Catholic hatred toward the Jews, the Inquisition, the pogroms and all that. And that changed overnight. The Pope said no, come on, they're the father religion. Yeah, they're the Abraham. You turn that positively. Religion can be exploited and manipulated and changed. The devil quotes scripture and the devil can quote Koran.
- [48:41]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
I, I respectfully and with great trepidation, I just want to say, I'll tell you, I think I disagree because yes, a pre existing almost primordial hatred drove the violence and drove the couching of that violence. In religious terms. That primordial pre existing hatred is originally religious. And you're not just right about Catholicism. That is what it is. In other words, antisemitism is born in one place and one moment. And all antisemitism since is a copy that uses that one antisemitism and is a branch of it. And that moment is early Christianity. The Jews produce this other religion. This other religion says they are the fulfillment of the Jewish ark of redemption. And the Jews don't accept that fulfillment of that ark. And so they call into question the validity of that redemption of Christ. And that is how Augustine, St. Augustine himself, the great saint of love, writes, the Jews must be oppressed for all time. As a message to my people, my people being Christians, that the Jews did not accept Christ and therefore must be oppressed. This is a man who doesn't want to oppress anyone on earth except the Jews because of that rejection of Christ and that secularizes in Marxism. But doesn't actually the Jews for early Christianity, when the People's Crusade or going down the Rhine river, you might have heard, if anybody here is a big fan of, of the free press, I've talked about this on the free press, so I apologize if you heard this before, but when the People's Crusade, the First Crusade is the Zeroth Crusade, the Crusade before the First Crusade is 40,000 peasants marching down the Rhine river to the Holy Land. To save the holy land, the first Muslim army they encounter of Seljuk cavalry massacres them 20 kilometers into Muslim territory. But before they get completely massacred and wiped out by the first Muslim army they encounter, they kill probably a third of all the Jews of the Rhine. And as they're killing them, we have these diaries, we have these testimonies of Catholics and of Jews. They tell them it is because you rejected Christ for all of Christianity. The fact that Christianity depends on the Jews and doesn't is the source of and the Pope didn't one day turn it off. The Holocaust made it embarrassing. And therefore the Pope then declared, oh, by the way, you're our older brother in Vatican ii and even parallel covenant, you can even go to heaven as a Jew because God doesn't lie in the first covenant, even if there's a better second one. But that's all because of the Holocaust and not anything else. And when you read the Quran as a historical text, it's the memory of Muhammad by the people who came later. When you read the Quran as a historical text, you discover that there's exactly the same arc at the beginning of Islam of Muhammad's mission. He wants the Jews to convert. And so he institutes in Islam all of this Jewish stuff. You fast, we fast. You prayed in one direction, we pray in that direction. We're basically you, but you know, true and better. And then at the end, the Jews have not converted. And then you get in the Quran these statements about massacring them and about murdering them and about at the end of time, every tree and every rock will tell us a Jew is hiding behind me and Luther at the founding of Protestantism. He begins by talking about, you know, why the Jews aren't Christian. Because we hate them and we oppress them. Maybe we didn't oppress them so much, they'd all convert. And by the end of his career, he is advocating doing to Jews what the Nazis claim to be doing to Jews, not what the Nazis actually did to Jews, but what they claim to do to Jews. Concentration camps and ripping them out of their communities and destroying them so socially so that they would forcibly convert. And so it's always, always been one thing. And that thing is the Jews stand in the way of the redemption of the world because they reject the great truth. And by the way, if you go to the Columbia University campus, what are the Jews doing? Why is everything Palestine? Everything's not Palestine. What they mean is everything is Zionism. And what they mean by everything is Zionism is the Jews are standing in the way of the redemption of the world in our great ideological Marxist vision that we all know is true and the Jews won't do it. Zionism is the distillation of all bad things that we have learned to hate about the West. And that idea that the Jew stands in the way of the redemption of the world, that's all anti Semitism ever was, and it's born in religion. And yes. So they borrow this thing, dress it up. He was this corrupt, probably deeply unbelieving, horrific guy. He, by the way, murdered Palestinian political factions who opposed him in the great revolt in 37, etc. The Nashashibis. But. So you're absolutely right. But also before that step that you mentioned, there was the religious step.
- [53:08]
Yardena Schwartz
Okay, I think we all agree. Yeah.
- [53:12]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
I just want to note, for podcasters who maybe can't see you, I just got Alan Dershowitz to say he agrees to my argument. It's an important. Okay, we'll go over here. Yes.
- [53:27]
Yardena Schwartz
So.
- [53:30]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
This is the last question. I apologize, but you still have to sit down out of politeness. Yes.
- [53:36]
D
The military strategy in the Gaza war now is pretty much to prioritize a military victory over freeing the hostages, although freeing the hostages is a huge priority as well. My question is not about strategy or which strategy you think is right or you favor. It's about the meaning to Israeli society, because most Israelis that I speak to say that they have it. The release of the hostages has to be privileged over absolutely everything else, including military victory over Hamas. And when I ask why, they say, because that's who we are. That's Israeli society. So what does it mean going forward for Israeli society that, in fact, a military victory has pretty much been prioritized?
- [54:36]
Yardena Schwartz
It's a great question. I think that you're right. This isn't just anecdotal from your conversations. It's reflected in nearly every poll of Israelis going back nearly a year. A vast majority of Israelis, not just on the left, if not, you know, whatever is left of the left, want this war to end in exchange for the release of the hostages. And there is a. That is why there is so much anger at the government for claiming to. And telling Israelis that this military. That the military force is going to free the hostages, when Israelis have seen that, in fact, the military force has in many occasions led to the death of hostages at the hands of Hamas, of course, because Hamas has told the captors to kill hostages if they hear the IDF approaching. And, you know, this. This sense among Israelis that we are all together is one of the most beautiful things of Israeli society. You know, it's a family. And when family is left behind, you feel debilitated. And I think the reason why so many Israelis haven't been able to move on from October 7th and Israeli society has not moved on from October 7th is not because Hamas is still standing. I mean, that's also obviously a huge problem. But the fact that there are still hostages in Gaza and you know that so many have died there as a result of this war continuing and this war not ending in exchange for the use of the hostages, which at the end of the day, Hamas, for all, I have nothing positive to say about Hamas, but at the end of the day, Hamas has offered to release the hostages in exchange for the end of the war. Of course, then you have the conversation about, well, how can you end the war with Hamas still standing? And then you need to go back to the early days of the war when there was talk about regime change. I think in the aftermath of October 7, most Israelis expected that there would be regime change in Gaza, not just a two year long war to kill every last Hamas fighter, which is, you know, most Israelis believe now that that won't be possible. And you know, I think that there are a lot of missed opportunities to empower some kind of alternative governing force that could fill the vacuum. Because so long as there is no alternative to Hamas, Hamas is going to stand.
- [57:11]
Rabbi TZVI Al Perowitz
That's what a lot of Israelis feel. I should just say, when you ask Israelis, do you want to destroy Hamas? The answer is yes. And when you say to them, if Hamas remains in Gaza, will we be fighting another war in Gaza in five years? The answer of most Israelis is yes. And so you say to them, so why would you want to end the war now? And that follow up question is, when you hear this thing that breaks my heart for Gazans, for God's sake, and also for Israelis and also for the hostages. And that is they don't trust this Israeli government to know how to do it. When you see 70% of Israelis saying we have to pull out of Gaza, it's done, we can't get anymore. If they don't think their government can win, then you cut your losses, get your people out. And yeah, our one job between now and the war five years from now is to not let them kidnap anybody. That's what you hear at protests. That's what you hear when you ask Israelis who want to pull out, by the way, some of them deep from the right, some of them having spent 250 days fighting Hamas in Gaza. And so Israeli society is having this conversation that some of you might know, if you heard me talk about this, that I blame on our government. I mean, our government has managed to not speak to the Israelis. You don't know what the strategy is in Gaza. The Trump administration is having trouble understanding what the Israeli strategy is in Gaza. I'm going to tell you a dark secret. Don't tell anybody outside of this room, this tent that neither does any Israeli. What the hell's the strategy in Gaza? Now, I think that I, based on some military experts that I talk to and read and kind of understand and try to describe to people what I think the Israeli government thinks, but nobody's doing the work of actually telling anybody. And so it's a loss of trust that prevents Israelis from believing that that's possible. But I should also say maybe we should end the war and take those hostages and let Hamas retake Gaza. Maybe that's the best scenario possible. Maybe because this government can't succeed in the actual war, and maybe it's a whole new kind of war that nobody would succeed in. But just understand the costs, not to Israel. If Hamas retakes Gaza. Nobody knows how to rebuild Gaza, and Hamas will never do anything in Gaza except plan the next war. And so there is no one on this earth who actually cares about Gazans who wants Hamas to win this. There are a whole lot of people who want Hamas to win this. Not one of them because they care about Gazans, because those are two opposite trajectories. Leave the Israelis completely out of it. If I didn't care anything about any Israelis. If Hamas stays in Gaza, Gaza stays a ruin, and Gaza doesn't ever have that new day and Gaza doesn't get rebuilt and nobody can send money into a bank account in Gaza and nothing better happens. So it is an irony of history, because history is ironic and God has a sense of humor that the worst thing Israel could do for Gaza now is leave Hamas there. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being here.
- [60:04]
Yardena Schwartz
Sa.