← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Books special: conversations with Daniel Taub and Yardena Schwartz
00:50:37
Day 39 of the war. Pesach. Instead of news, we brought you books — two of them, both essential. Jonathan speaks with Daniel Taub, former Israeli ambassador to the UK and author of Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement — about why Jewish argument culture might be the most relevant thing in the world right now, and how families torn apart over Gaza might actually talk to each other. Yonit speaks with Yardena Schwartz, award-winning journalist and Emmy-nominated producer, author of Ghosts of a Holy War — about the 1929 Hebron massacre, and why this nearly-forgotten event explains almost everything about the conflict today. Two books. Two conversations. One mid-week treat while we wait for whatever comes next.
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- [00:00]
Daniel Taub
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Jonathan Friedland
It's unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland in London.
- [00:10]
Anit Levy
And I'm Anit Levy in Tel Aviv. It's Tuesday, day 39 of the war. We're all still waiting for a decision one way or another whether we are heading for escalation or negotiations. But it is still the holiday of Pesach. And before our regular episode on Thursday, we thought of a treat for our listeners. Let's talk about books.
- [00:28]
Jonathan Friedland
Jonathan now, it is a cliche that the Jews are the people of the book, and it's a cliche that I think occasionally should be lived up to. But we have for a long time wanted to have proper conversations about books. And so we're doing something a little bit unusual. I'm going to speak to the author of one book and you're going to speak to the author of another. And they're both very different books, but I think will be of great interest to unholy listeners. So here is the first of those two books, Books Centered Conversations. Daniel Taub is a diplomat, a lawyer, and also a dramatist and writer. In the first capacity as a diplomat, he was Israel's ambassador to the UK between 2011 and 2015. As a lawyer, he's been an international lawyer, even a negotiator for Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians and others. And he has also written for the stage. He had a play that he co wrote with Dan Patterson here in London and also was the creator of a successful TV soap opera in Israel called In the Rabbi's Court. All of that background is tremendously relevant to his new book, Daniel Taub Beyond Dispute, Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement. Daniel Taub, very good to have you on Unholy. Every one of those words could deconstructed or could be the subject of a whole unholy episode in its own right. But one of the central themes of the book that you really stress is the importance and power of story. Can you explain to us why you think or what it is about story that matters so much?
- [02:14]
Daniel Taub
So first of all, it's such a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thank you, Johnny, and thanks for your advice in the course of writing the book as well. I think one of the things when you think about the conversations we have, we tend to have them in a pretty narrow register. Often it's one set of talking points arguing against another set of talking points. And actually telling our stories is a way of capturing so much more of what is going to us and in a way that is so Much more almost subversive. As I describe in the book, when I was involved in the peace negotiations, you know, I was pretty much prepared for any argument, statistic, talking point that the other side of the table might come up with. But it was the stories, the personal stories that were really very subversive and stayed with you, you know, long after the other things maybe had left. And that's one of the reasons why, when I meet with families, for example, who may be having a hard time because there's a generational divide over the Middle east, one of the things that I'll sometimes suggest to them is rather than throwing talking points at each other, tell the story of what shaped your thinking. And I can imagine a situation where, for example, a member of a younger generation will hear from their parent or grandparent what it's like to grow up in a house with a packed suitcase always under the bed, and a parent will understand maybe for the first time, what it's like to be on a university campus with a roommate who's phoning home to Beirut every evening to find out what's happening to their family. And sometimes I think enlargening your heart a little bit can be a really important entry point into thinking more broadly about issues.
- [04:03]
Jonathan Friedland
So give us. I'm going to, in a minute, ask you about a very specific example in the book, which I particularly love, but just give us an example in your own life or particularly in your work. I'm thinking when you were part of those negotiations. Now, it's obviously a thing of the past, direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. But when they were happening, you were involved. You were an important legal advisor to the Foreign Ministry. You sat around those tables. Can you think of an example where story actually shifted you?
- [04:33]
Daniel Taub
Sure? So actually, I can't remember what's on the record and off the record from the time that I was there, but I'll give a story that's very similar. When I came back from London, I worked for a philanthropic foundation dealing with some of the more disadvantaged societies in Israeli society. You know, I say I did things in the right order. It's much easier to be an ambassador for your country before you really know your country. And now I was really being exposed. And one of the things that I became very interested in was the situation of East Jerusalemites because, you know, I live in West Jerusalem and literally a kilometer away, people are living in a very different reality. And I looked at a lot of the statistics and the reports and so on, but ultimately it was when a friend of mine from East Jerusalem shared with me the draft of an autobiographical novel about what it was like to grow up in East Jerusalem. It was actually a very funny novel. It's called Shabbat Goy because he actually spent time working for Jewish families. But there was something that was so powerful about that. As a result, it was one of the things that led me to set up a group of philanthropic foundations that are focused specifically on East Jerusalem and just more broadly. The sociologist Lyn Hunt makes a really interesting point, which is that the rise of human rights, the human rights movement, happened more or less at the same time as the rise of the novel, because the novel was such a powerful way of getting people to live their lives in some way. And I can't remember who said it, but the point has been made that Charles Dickens was far more subversive and far more effective than Karl Marx in getting people to understand the real plight and the needs of lower parts of society.
- [06:27]
Jonathan Friedland
So in your own reading of that story, suddenly your eyes were opened to the reality of life in East Jerusalem in a way that a thousand sort of UN reports and data sets could never do.
- [06:38]
Daniel Taub
I think that's absolutely true. I think stories have, as I say in the book, the stories have a number of particular advantages. First of all, they're very subversive. There's a way that they can sneak under the portcullis in a way that other things can. Another thing is that they're very sticky. You know, it's very hard to forget them. They stay with you. They stay with you at night. There'll be triggers that bring them to mind. And that's why, as a diplomatic, I try to tell stories as much as possible. If I was giving a book, I would always try and give a novel rather than a historic book or something, anything that says, look, we are broader than our positions. And in a way, a story is the shortest distance between two people. And I think that's the thing you need to try and build on.
- [07:25]
Jonathan Friedland
I promised I was going to mention one, you know, that I really like, this one. It's so small, physically small object, but it's such a small story, and yet it explains in a way, the power of how these things can work. You tell it in the book. All I'm going to say the two words, and then you tell us the story about Musa's hook.
- [07:45]
Daniel Taub
So this takes me back to some of the early rounds of negotiations with the Palestinians, when we were in that particular case, talking about Israeli security responsibilities in areas that would come under Palestinian control. And it turns out that in sort of Palestinian history, as it were, or storytelling, there's a slightly mischievous character called Musa. And in this particular story, he sells his house, but he sells his house on one condition, which is that he will still be allowed to use a hook on the corner of the house. And the buyer thinks this is, you know, he's getting a good price. This is not a problem. But then Musa is in and out of the house every time of day or night. He's putting his hat on the hook, taking his hat off the hook and so on. And finally, the guy throws his hands up in the air in exasperation and moves out of the house. And the reason the Palestinians used this story, it was they were trying to say that, you know, you may be claiming that you need this toehold in our territories for security purposes, but to us, it feels like Musa's hook. So I think it's a good example of the power of story. It's also the good example of the power of humor. And actually, some of the negotiators that we've been with have actually used humor very effectively.
- [09:10]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah. And you describe in the book how it was in those negotiations where people were even in their dress and demeanor, able to talk about real stories about their families, about sport or whatever, that actually they would get closer rather than in just presenting papers and positions to each other. You make the point, though, in a way. Now you've established for us how important story is just in human understanding and human interaction. The next step you make in the argument, really, is that there is something very Jewish. And about this, that this is a Jewish way of approaching difficult things, difficult questions, but particularly conflict. Just explain to us what is Jewish about what feels a very universal thing, storytelling.
- [09:59]
Daniel Taub
So if I can just zoom out a little bit, the broad thesis of the book is that we should look into our tribal traditions, which we tend to think of as bodies of instinct that pull us apart, to try and find those insights and instincts that can pull us together. And I suggest to everybody to do this. And I have to say, one of the most moving things since publishing the book has been somebody sent me a screenshot of a Palestinian blogger who uploaded pages of the book because he found them meaningful to him, which was very moving to me. But I think every faith tradition and tribal tradition, but along with that, I do have a sense that the Jewish argument, tradition, which began about 2,000 years ago, is particularly relevant to some of the challenges we're facing today. And the point that I make is that I think the reason is that it came about because of a social crisis that is very similar to the social crisis that we're facing today. At that time, it was because of exile, the destruction of the temple, the loss of priesthood and so on. But the result was loss of social spaces, was loss of trust in authority, loss of trust in information, echo chambers and so on. And there were many different groups of Jews at the time that disappeared into the midst of history, the Sadducees and the Essenes and so on. And the one that survived was the one that had this sort of stroke of genius. That argument is not a bug, it's a feature. We need to welcome it in. And actually we need to think of a new conception of truth, which is a collaborative one. And that resulted in a very different text to the text that we'd had before, the Mishnah and the Talmud. And one of the things that is so striking about the Talmud is that there is no real distinction between law and stories. What are called halacha and agada are completely intertwined with each other. And I think the notion is that you cannot create or convey or shape a civilization with law, Allah. We actually need to be much broader and we need to bring the full orchestra on board. So I think that's what makes it very Jewish. None of these are exclusive, but I think there's something very powerful about regarding something as part of your heritage, because then, in a way, if you use it to reach out, you don't feel you're betraying your grandparents, you feel you're in some way.
- [12:35]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah. And so it's beautiful, that observation about the porousness between stories and lore. And you do think about, you know, certainly in my own very limited experience of the kind of religious academy, when two students are debating a point of law, they will. Each will illustrate it with, I suppose, what you would call a case law. But it will be a story about the oven in the neighbour's house or whatever.
- [13:00]
Daniel Taub
It's an interesting. Not only are there stories, but even the legal part is very unlike a British or, you know, legal book. People won't talk about defendants and plaintiffs, they'll talk about Reuven and Schimmer, and they won't talk about an object. They will actually describe an object. And if they want to make a different legal point, the object will morph almost magically from one thing into another. Just so you never really lose sight, I think. I mean, there are a few elements of this approach which are somewhat at odds with sort of the Western approach. But one of Them is a real skepticism about the ivory tower, a skepticism about what happens when you move too far away from reality. And, you know, one of the striking stories in the Talmud is of a great rabbi and his son who Flee and spent 12 years living in a cave and come out with such an intensity of learning that everything they look at sizzles and burns out. And God says, you think that's the highest level? You actually have to go back in and study more until you can re engage with the reality, because that's a higher level than the sort of. Than the ivory tower.
- [14:12]
Jonathan Friedland
So I want to pick out the word constructive in your subtitle, the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement. I think you nodded to it before. The notion that truth is arrived at through collaboration, that you construct something. And I know you cite this phrase that's often used in our tradition about argument for the sake of heaven. Just explain to people who are coming to this new what kind of argument this is that is constructive, that builds something, that finds truth, that has even something of the divine about it. Because people normally tend to avoid and worry about argument. And yet here you are applying to all these tremendously positive descriptors.
- [14:52]
Daniel Taub
So I think that's something else that's relatively unique. You know, as I say, if you go online and look for books about argument on Amazon, you'll generally find two categories. They're the ones with titles like Win Every Argument, which tell you how you're going to leave your opponent in a quivering heap on the floor. And then the others that have titles like how to have an Argument Free Marriage, which is how are you going to end up sweeping it under the carpet and drinking tea, just frightened it might surface one time again in the future. And the Jewish approach is neither of those. The Jewish approach says that we may have lost. I don't know that biblical voice from the heaven. And there's an extraordinary rabbinic legend that talks about truth being thrown out of heaven and smashed into a million pieces on the ground. But we can all take our little bits of truth, and as long as we remember we are holding truth but not the whole truth, then we can come together. And the truth in this approach is not to be found in you or in me. I mean, the idea of argument for the sake of heaven is it's not me that's for the sake of heaven. It's not you that's for the sake of heaven. It's this thing that we're building together. It's this argument that is for the sake of heaven. And it has some very surprising implications. One of them is that I want your side of the argument to be as strong as possible, even if I deeply disagree with it. I don't want to straw man you and take your weak points. I want to steel man you and actually bring that into the argument. So we are. We are creating. And I think the other thing that I think is important is because the search for truth is now not just an intellectual exercise, but it's an interpersonal exercise. It means it's a moral quest and not just an intellectual quest. And that means that although the truth is not within me, it can't be found without me. And so I have a duty to try and clear the channels as much as I can. And it's so striking that when the rabbis of the Mishnah give this list of qualities to be a great scholar without any category difference between them, they will mix up all of those academic qualities of being rigorous and having a good memory and being decisive and clear with other ones, like being humble and joyful and quoting your sources and so on and so forth. And I think there's something very moving about that.
- [17:13]
Jonathan Friedland
So let's come out the cave and go very practical in two ways. The first kind of dispute is one that may be familiar to a lot of listeners, which is within families. And particularly, I think you actually, in a way, alluded to when you talked about the camp, the campus and roommate and so on. We talk often on the podcast about this emerging divide. It's very visible, I think, in American jury, between the younger generation who are very alert to the injustices that they see most obviously in Gaza, and their parents who have a kind of historic bond with Israel. And we hear about cases where families can't talk to each other, where there's tremendous tension around the Pesach Seder table, for example. Let's just apply the lessons, the teaching that you talk about in your book. How would those two people, let's say a mother and a son, how would they talk to each other if they were drawing the distilled lessons from your book?
- [18:18]
Daniel Taub
So it's a question that I get asked a lot. It's rare, I would say, that I give a talk abroad, and it's usually a parent that will come up to me and say, how can I talk to my children? We're so divided on these issues, and I'm very hesitant to advise. Families are so individual and complicated. But I've got a sort of a menu of thoughts that I think it's helpful for people to think about, so just mention a couple of them. The first, I think you alluded to it. I think it's helpful to take this conversation offline. I don't think the extended family seder is the best way to try and achieve nuance in discussing something similarly with the family WhatsApp group. I think you need to try and have a place where the stakes, the reputational stakes within the family are as low as possible. The second thing, and here is something that I take from an Israeli conflict resolution expert called Adar Cohen. And he suggests that you should start difficult conflictual conversations with expressing what he calls the GEM statement. And the GEM statement is really a reminder of why this relationship is important to you and actually putting that context in there so you know that you understand why we are having this conversation. We're not representatives of the United nations and so on. And we have to realize that conversations take time to build trust. If I can give maybe a personal example and you can disagree with me, but I think it's very striking. First of all, your, your podcast is a marvelous example of a conversation where the value is in the difference. But I think it's also striking that one of the, if I can say, standout conversations between you and your nit, which is one in which you both spoke from the heart about some of the things that were most sensitive to both of you, was something that happened at least a year or a year and a half into your podcast. And I don't think you would have been able to do it straight out, and I'm not sure your audience would have been ready for it. So I think recognizing that there is a process of preparation and trust build. And the third thing that I would say is if we can think of our positions as being works in progress, then that opens the possibility that we can have a learning conversation and to think together. Look, we're at very different points, but there are processes of learning that we could both benefit from. Let's make a list of 3, 4, 5 voices that it would really be valuable for us to hear together. Maybe we would make a trip to the region and think about what it would mean to see people and not to pass judgment and not to score points. You know, the Jewish way of study traditionally is called chavruta. It's partners who study together where you need the difference. And I was looking for a translation of this, and the best one that I came up with was a phrase from Daniel Kahanaman, you know, the Nobel Prize winning economist who talked about the fact that he had fundamental differences with the social psychologist Gary Klein. And very impressively, what they decided to do was a series of experiments together to see which of them was right on the areas where they differed. And they called it adversarial collaboration. And if you think about it, it's a really beautiful, not an easy, but it's a really beautiful thing to do. So those are a number of things in the menu, obviously, telling stories. And if I could mention just one more, even where we differ greatly, we can usually find one or two areas or one or two values that we share. And if we can somehow place ourselves on the same side of the table, can we somewhere in the Middle east find a project that is reflective of values that we both share? Can we do something together to support it? And I think just reminding ourselves that, as Van Jones, the Democrat, said about his relationship with Newt Gingrich, which was such a surprising relationship, but Newt Gingrich taught him when he was a young politician, your 90% enemy can be your 10% friend. And so if we can spend some time on the same side of the table in that 10%, I think that can be helpful as well.
- [22:52]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, that may include, or take us to some of the answer to what is going to be my last question, which is there. We've talked about how your book might be applied to internal, even internal family conversations, but within the Jewish people. You were involved in negotiations with Palestinians. As I said before, they are really not on the agenda now. But were they to one day come back, and I think you'd probably be one of those people who believes they just have to at some point, what would you do differently in those conversations? What do you think Israel should do, Israelis should do differently, and perhaps Palestinians should do differently when they finally do sit down across the table again in order to succeed next time, given that despite effort after effort after effort, they failed last time.
- [23:42]
Daniel Taub
So I'll say the obvious that this is not a book about how to solve the Israeli Palestinian process. And as diplomats like to say, in the time of crisis, the speechwriters all tell you that what you really need is a good speech. I don't think that the solution to the conflict is a really good conversation necessarily. I think conversations are incredibly powerful, incredibly subversive. And I think it's worth remembering that even when leaders are not having those kind of conversations, that's something that any level of society can have. I do want to share one thought that I found helpful, and that is sometimes, sometimes talking about process can actually be more revealing and open more doors than Talking about substance. Actually, one of the most interesting track two dialogues that I was involved in was one that had a rule that we will not talk about the permanent status issues. We would talk about them over coffee breaks. But the feeling was we are so locked in to what we're going to say about those things. If we have conversations about what is going to make our conversation, what are the process, what have we learned from the way we negotiate together. And actually I develop more friendships actually from that dialogue, but just generally moving the conversation. I quote in the book a conversation between two arms negotiators, the Soviet and American arms negotiators back in the 1980s. And the American was so frustrated that he was making no progress and he burst out at the Soviet negotiator and the Soviet negotiator said to him, you know, your trouble is you keep asking me questions that I have answers to. Why don't you ask me questions that I don't have answers to? So I think steering the conversation into those areas where we have room for maneuver, where we have, you know, trial lawyers are usually taught don't ask a question that you don't know the answer to. And at the risk of annoying lawyers, I would say that a guiding principle should be quite the opposite. It should be a really good question is one where you really don't know. It's like flying without a net. You don't know what the answer is going to be and you might even be surprised where it will take you.
- [26:08]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, that could be very good advice for us on Unholy about the questions we ask. But for now, the book is beyond dispute. Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement. It is by Ambassador Daniel Taub. And Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on Unholy.
- [26:27]
Daniel Taub
Thank you so much.
- [26:33]
Anit Levy
Your Dinish words is in a world. Journalist and Emmy nominated producer, she was in Israel for a decade until 2023 and reported from here and her reporting appeared in various publications among them the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Her latest book is called Ghosts of a Holy the 1929 massacre in Palestine that Ignited the Arab Israeli Conflict. We have a lot to talk about. Yerdena, thank you so much for talking to us today on Unholy.
- [27:04]
Yerdena Schwartz
Thank you so much for having me on Ni.
- [27:06]
Anit Levy
I have to share with you this line that is echoing in my head and echoed it in my head rather when I heard you when I read your book. It's a line from a book by Connie Willis called Lincoln's Dreams and the Protagonist is an historian, and he's asked by someone, what is the effect of the Vietnam War on the American psyche? And he says, I'm still trying to figure out what the effect of the Civil War is on the American psyche. And it echoed in my head when I read your book, because we're trying to figure out what the effect of October 7th is on us. But actually, in a way, we're still trying to figure out what the effects of the Hebron Massacre of 1929 is. And those two events echo each other. Maybe one of them is a foreshadowing of the other. And we'll go into that. But before, can we talk about how this story, I mean, quite literally landed in your lap? How does this start? How does your, you know, connection to this attachment to this story begins?
- [28:03]
Yerdena Schwartz
I was living in Israel and working as a freelance journalist at the time, in 2019, when I was introduced to a family in Memphis, Tennessee, with an epic story to tell. They had discovered a box of letters in their attic in 2009, and the letters had been written in the 1920s by their late uncle, David Schoenberg, who had moved from Memphis to Hebron in what was then British Mandate Palestine to study at what was then the most prestigious yeshiva in the land of Israel. And over the course of his year living in Hebron, he wrote these beautiful, vivid letters, each of them about 10 pages long. So it was hundreds of pages of letters in this box. And they described what Hebron was before the massacre of 1929, which really shattered not only the peaceful coexistence that had prevailed in Hebron for centuries, but also really so much of the old Yishuv's conceptions of what coexistence could look like in the British Mandate of Palestine with the Jewish minority and the Arab majority. And it really set the stage for the conflict. And when I was introduced to this family and when I first read David's letters, he. I was not only captivated by them, but really shocked by them, because the Hebron I knew was the Hebron of 2019. I mean, I was a freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv, but I had done a lot of reporting in the West Bank. I had been to Hebron once. What I had seen there was the antithesis of the peaceful coexistence David describes in these letters. And also I really didn't know much about this massacre. And it led me on this journey to learn more about the massacre. And I came to realize that not only was the massacre in 1929 ground zero of this Conflict, but it really explains so much of what we're seeing today, not only with the massacre itself, but also the causes and the aftermath which continue to play out today.
- [30:02]
Anit Levy
I'm wondering, because people listening to this who have been to modern day Hebron, and you have been to modern day Hebron, obviously you've reported from there. It's a very different picture. And I wonder, you know, obviously in the areas that are controlled by Israel, there's a large Palestinian population. There are, you know, much less Jews there. It's a situation that I think anyone, you know, coming to it has their complicated and complex views on. I wonder how that kind of correlates or how that works into the story, how you weave that in.
- [30:36]
Yerdena Schwartz
That's a great question. Actually, before I started writing this book, I had been to Hebron once on a tour with Breaking the Silence, where I was really, you know, depressed by what I saw of how Palestinians are living on the Israeli side of Hebron. But one of the reasons why after reading David's letters, I was so interested in writing this book was that I felt that so much of the history that led to the realities we see in Hebron today have either been ignored or just are completely unknown outside of Israel and even within Israel. So that reality of Hebron today factors very prominently into the book because the reestablishment, the revival of this ancient Jewish community that was violently expelled in 1929 was the foundation of. Of the. The revival of this Jewish community after 1967, after the Six Day War, when Jews returned to Hebron seeking to re establish this Jewish community and were told by the government that they couldn't. Israel was still hoping to exchange land for peace at that time and had hoped to do so even for years after 1967 and had repeatedly said no to the settler movement that wanted to reestablish this Jewish community in Hebron. And it was only after a terrorist attack in 1980, what was then the deadliest terror attack in the west bank since Israel took control of it. And the perpetrator of that attack, despite leading to the revival of the Jewish community in Hebron today he's the mayor of Hebron and he is continuing the incitement that his forebears began in 1929. He is serving his second term as the mayor of Hebron, has no remorse. I interviewed him for my book and he has no remorse for his attack in 1980, and he rejects the facts of that attack. He insists that they were all armed, the people that he killed in that attack in 1980, which was not true. They were returning from prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. One of them was armed for defense. And in 1929, I discussed the rumors about Al Aqsa, about this supposed Jewish plot to destroy Al Aqsa in Hebron. Those rumors extended to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. In 1929, Jews were forbidden from entering the Tomb of the Patriarchs, despite its Jewish history. They were only allowed to pray outside of the tomb. And the rumor was in 1929 that Jews in Hebron were planning to destroy Ibrahimi Mosque, which is the Arabic name for this tomb. Because Abraham is considered a prophet in Islam, he's also holy in Islam. And those rumors are now being continued by the mayor of Hebron, who claims that Israel is working to conquer Ibrahimi Mosque, take over the entire mosque. Mosque he rejected. In my interviews with him, he rejected any Jewish history in Hebron. When I asked him about Abraham, you know, the first Jew in history, he said, Abraham wasn't Jewish, he was Muslim.
- [34:04]
Anit Levy
Can we talk about what happened on that day of 1929? And a little bit about how this is, in a way, a harbinger of what we saw on October 7 as well.
- [34:17]
Yerdena Schwartz
The massacre itself in Hebron took place on a Shabbat morning, August 24, 1929. But it actually broke out one day earlier in Jerusalem after Friday prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque, following a full year of propaganda and disinformation that had been spread by the leader of Palestinian Muslims under British rule. His name was Hajamina Husseini. Many of your listeners, I'm sure, would be familiar with that name. Around 1928, Yom Kippur of 1928, he started this rumor that is familiar to us today, that the Jews of Palestine were planning to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque to rebuild our ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. And that propaganda campaign was accompanied by a campaign to limit Jewish access to the Western Wall, which was the only place that Jews were permitted to pray. They couldn't access the Temple Mount. It was owned by the Muslim religious authorities and the mufti. So this campaign of disinformation was wildly successful. Over the course of a year, he convinced the masses of the Arab majority of Palestine that the Jewish minority of Palestine was something to be suspicious of, something to be challenged. And when the riots erupted in Jerusalem, it was the direct result of about 10 days earlier, there had been a Jewish march to the Western Wall to protest to the British, actually not against the Arabs, but against the British for failing to counter this disinformation. Campaign for their failure to protect Jewish worshipers from increasingly frequent Muslim attacks at the Western Wall. And what that march did was it played into the Mufti's hands. And he was able to use that as an example, point to his people and say, look, they're trying to take over the Western Wall. This is just their first step in conquering Al Aqsa, to rebuild their temple. And when Friday prayers were held at al Aqsa on August 23, 1929, imams called on thousands of armed Muslim worshipers to defend Islam and Al Aqsa with their blood. And this is when it began. They started to attack Jewish passersby in Jerusalem, set fire to Jewish businesses, and the riots just engulfed Palestine, reaching almost every Jewish community. And the British, despite the many warnings, were completely unprepared and understaffed. There was no military force in Palestine at the time. There was only a Palestine police force. And almost all of the British policemen were actually Arab Palestinians. And many of them took part in the riots or stood by and did nothing. Some of them did try to. To quell the riots, but they were just overpowered. And in Hebron, this was actually the site of the highest number of casualties and the most gruesome of atrocities, despite the fact that Hebron at the time was really considered the safest place to be a Jew in Palestine. It was a place where Jews and Muslims had not just lived side by side, but owned businesses together. Many of the Jews living in Hebron rented their homes from Arab landlords. And the day the riots arrived in Hebron, some of those landlords actually took part in the murder of their tenants, while others risked their own lives to save their Jewish tenants. So that day, on August 24, 1929, 67 unarmed Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered by their neighbors in ways that were eerily similar to the atrocities that took place on October 7th. But at least 200 Jews were saved that day by their Muslim neighbors, who hid them inside their homes or stood outside their homes and telling the rioters that they would only be able to enter those homes over their dead bodies.
- [38:18]
Anit Levy
What is the effect of this event on, first of all, the Jewish community?
- [38:21]
Yerdena Schwartz
Oh, in the immediate aftermath of the riots. Once the British managed to quell the riots, it took them days, and they actually ended up having to bring in warplanes and warships from across the British Empire. And the Jewish survivors were held for days in the British police station, and they were finally evacuated by the British about three days later. And they were told not to Come back. So the, the Jewish community of Hebron, one of the most ancient Jewish communities. You know, Hebron was a place where there had been a Jewish presence for thousands of years. This is of course the burial place of Abraham and the matriarchs and patriarchs of the Jewish people. It's the site of the tomb of the patriarchs and matriarchs. Hebron is the second holiest city in Judaism. You know, this place had been a site of Jewish, of a Jewish community for thousands of years. And that day that the British evacuated them was the first time in, you know, in thousands of years that there had not been a single Jew living in Hebron. And what this did to the old Yishuv at the time, the Jewish community of Palestine was it really led to a rallying around Zionism because until the massacre, many of the traditional Jews of Palestine, so more religious Jews and also Sephardi Jews, Mizrachi Jews, Jews who were Arabic speakers, who felt almost more in common with their Arab neighbors than their Ashkenazi Jewish neighbors, had really opposed Zionism. Not because they opposed living in the land of Israel, of course they were living there. They believed in, you know, the holiness and the centrality of Israel in the Jewish faith and Jewish peoplehood. But they rejected the idea of political Zionism because they believed that the return of the Jewish masses from exile to Tzion could only be achieved through the will of God, not the will of man, and only through the arrival of the Mashiach. And what the massacre did was really shatter those conceptions because they realized that they could not depend on any foreign power to protect them. The British had absolutely failed and really displayed a complete lack of interest in not only protecting Jews that day, but in countering the propaganda and incitement and disinformation that was being perpetrated by a man that the British had appointed to the Grand Mufti, was appointed to this most powerful positions by the British. And after the massacre, you know, the, the Jewish community really expected there to be some kind of count accountability. And instead what the British did was they sent this Royal commission from London to Palestine to investigate the causes of the riots. From the research of my book, I read these hundred hundreds of pages of these testimonies and hearings and deliberations. And it's really clear in that those hearings and this testimony from British officials, Arab officials, Jewish survivors, not just from Hebron, but other parts of Palestine that were that were affected by the riots, it was clear that the Muftis incitement and disinformation campaign had directly led to these riots. And yet the British, very conveniently, at the end, you know, in their conclusions of this report, they pardoned the Mufti, allowing him to retain his powerful position. And he became even more powerful after this. And instead they blamed it on this peaceful Jewish march to the Western Wall, saying that this march to the Western Wall had sparked fears among the Arab population that the Jews were going to destroy Al Aqsa. And the British actually responded to this massacre by limiting Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine. And, you know, the key word here is purchases, because, you know, contrary to so much of the modern disinformation we hear surrounding the foundation founding years of the State of Israel, this land wasn't being stolen. It was being purchased by Jewish, you know, either Jewish immigrants or Jews native to Palestine from very wealthy Arab land owners who often didn't live on that land and had Arab peasant farmers tilling that land for them. And rather than giving some of that money from those land sales to these Arab farmers, those farmers then, you know, lost access to the land. And the Arab landowners who profited from these land sales then turn around and blamed Zionism for evicting them from this land. So you really see so much of the beginnings of, and not just the beginnings of, but, you know, the parallels to how this continues today. And Zionism became a much stronger force after 1929, and the various militant factions of Zionism also were strengthened. Before 1929, the Haganah, the underground Jewish defense force that would later become the idf, was almost exclusively an Ashkenazi force. There were almost no Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews in the Haganah. And it was also a very weak and decentralized force. And after 1929, when the Jewish community realized that they could only rely on themselves for their protection, the Haganah became stronger, more centralized, better equipped, and, you know, manned now not just by Ashkenazim, but also Sephardi. But that that march in New York, two days after the massacre in Palestine, was a rebuke of the British failure to protect the Jews of Palestine. So 35,000 people marched down the streets of Lower Manhattan to the British Consulate. And similar protests were held throughout the world after the Hebron massacre. And yet the Arab leadership both denied that atrocities had taken place in Hebron and blamed the riots and even the massacre in Hebron on their Jewish victims. There was one really shocking statement that the Arab executive leadership put out, saying that it was yeshiva students in Hebron who had killed their Fellow Jews in order to raise funds from the Diaspora.
- [44:45]
Anit Levy
What I'm really curious about is the response to this book. And can you tell us a little bit about that? And were you surprised by, you know, major news outlets? We should say that maybe it didn't fit their narrative, this story. Could you tell us a little bit about this?
- [45:02]
Yerdena Schwartz
Yeah. So, you know, before I wrote this book, it's my first book, before I wrote it, I had spent the last decade of my life writing for, for publications like the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Foreign Policy. I worked at NBC News and msnbc. You know, I really had. And before my decade reporting from Israel, you know, I was a news producer in New York. And, you know, I didn't think that my book would be a shoo in for a New York Times book review. I know it's very hard to get a review in the New York Times. I had also written for the New York Review of Books from Israel. And you know, my book is not this one sided account of history. I mean, it's a very journalistic, well sourced account of history and it doesn't excuse or overlook the, the flaws of either side. And so I was really shocked that when since my book came out, it has gotten no coverage in any of the publications I wrote for, other than the Wall Street Journal, which, you know, of course I'm grateful for a review in the Wall Street Journal, it's an incredible thing. But it was very disappointing to see that not one of the publications I wrote for during my time reporting from Israel and the west bank were willing to cover my book. And I think it was very clear because seeing the books that they, they do cover or the books that certain independent bookstores that don't carry my book, the books that they do cover, sorry, the books that they do carry are ones that tell a very specific narrative and that are much less inclined to include facts about both sides, you know, and my book has, you know, I interviewed and spent hundreds of hours with Palestinians in Hebron, not just Israelis in Hebron. You know, this book includes the accounts of both sides. And, you know, I tell the story of the 1994 massacre in Hebron by Baruch Goldstein. And so it's been really disheartening to see that simply because my book is relaying the facts and history of this conflict and not sticking to this very specific narrative that so many would like to push, that it has really widely been ignored by, you know, I hate to use the word mainstream media, but, you know, liberal media, I should say, you know, it's gotten lots of coverage in the Jewish press and in the conservative press. But you know, I am not conservative. I've never written for conservative press. And so it's, I guess I have reported for the Wall Street Journal. But, you know, it's a different, the news gathering side is different. And yeah, it's been pretty disappointing.
- [48:02]
Anit Levy
Yossi Klein Halevi wrote about your book. If you're going to read one book to help you understand the current Middle east tragedy, this is it. Which I think summarizes that very nicely. Yildana Schwartz, thank you so much for talking to us today. So I think we should do this more often. I don't mean do separate interviews, I mean talk about books. Because I really enjoy the listening to your conversation and I enjoyed conducting my interview with Yerdena Schwartz. I thought the both of them, the book by Daniel Taub and the book by your Dennis Schwartz, really, really interesting books.
- [48:36]
Jonathan Friedland
But you know, I said the other day that we could talk about, we could have a Fiddler on the Roof spin off podcast. We could talk about that every week. We definitely could talk about Jewish books. One of the things we are blessed with in the Jewish world is a, an abundance of books that appear all the time with Jewish themes. This was just over Very, very wonderful taster.
- [48:53]
Anit Levy
In one of our earliest episodes, I tried to guess. Do you remember that? I tried to guess your favorite Jewish American and English author and Israeli author. I think I got them. All right.
- [49:04]
Jonathan Friedland
I was going to say, I think you did very, very well with that. You'll have to remind me, but I think you may have got three out of three.
- [49:09]
Anit Levy
It was of course, Amos Oz for Israel, definitely. And it was Philip Roth for the United States. I mean, come on. I don't want to say you're a walking cliche, my friend, but I mean, come on. And then, and then for the UK it was, I think it was George Orwell. I think I was, I tried to guess something else. I, I was thinking, I think it was John Le Carre. But no, you gave me.
- [49:32]
Jonathan Friedland
Well, I was gonna say, truthfully, if you had then said John Le Carre, I would have gone, yes, you're right, because I. It's impossible to decide between those two. They do different things for us in our lives, these sorts of authors. Le Carre is the master in the genre of the thriller in which I've dabbled. But Orwell is obviously on a whole other plane for writers of non fiction, so. And journalism. Anyway, see, we're doing it again. Another books podcast is happening. I will have to guess your three. That is going to be much more challenging because you have much more eclectic and less predictable and cliche tastes than me.
- [50:06]
Anit Levy
You don't read science fiction, so you will never know.
- [50:09]
Jonathan Friedland
Or fantasy, for God's sake. Oh, my word.
- [50:13]
Anit Levy
Our biggest divide ever.
- [50:15]
Jonathan Friedland
Yeah, people think the other stuff is a division. Wait till they get us onto that. Okay, we should wrap it up. We will be back with a regular episode very soon. And for now, though, our thanks as always to Michal Poret. And we'll see you next time, Yoni.