Content warning for discussions of antisemitism and genocide.

Also, note that from 19:10 until 20:05 you can hear an electric saw in the background. Nothing I can do about that.

Episode music can be found here: https://uppbeat.io/track/paulo-kalazzi/heros-time

Day 2 will dive deeply into the historic context of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the Gazan Genocide. Starting 3700 years ago this episode will hit the major beats of the story and attempt to make everything a little bit clearer, if not really easier to understand.

Episode transcript follows:

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome to Day 2 of Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard. Thank you for everyone who tuned in for Day 1 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. Today we’re going to be discussing the Gazan Genocide, what is often called, in mainstream, Western, media the Israel-Palestine Conflict. However, we’re not going to be starting in 2023, we’re not even going to be starting in 1948. To the best of my abilities we are going to drill into the historic context of this genocide and the ongoing historic and ethnic tensions that exist in the region.

Before we start with that context I would like to state for the record that what is being done to the people of Gaza is, unequivocally, a genocide.

Now, to find the beginning of this we are going to have to go back about 3700 years to the Levantine region. The regions known as the Levant is comprised of the modern nations of Cyprus, parts of Turkey southwest of the Euphrates, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and of course Israel and Palestine. Both historical record and genetic testing of modern Jewish and Palestinian people show them both being descended from ancient Canaanite cultures. While Biblical narratives show the Israelites entering the region from Egypt and conquering the region under the command of Moses' successor Joshua. Modern archeology and the historical view has, however, discounted this. The Bible is not and should not ever be used as a valid historical source. Indeed, modern archeology and historical research shows that the Jewish ethnicity emerged naturally as an offshoot of the Canaanites in much the same way that the Palestinian ethnicity did.

It is also interesting to note that historically, Palestine appears to have been a name for a region and not a distinct nation or kingdom. Indeed, during the seventh century BC, no fewer than eight nations were settled in Palestine. These included the Arameans of the kingdom of Geshur; the Samaritans who replaced the Israelite kingdom in Samaria; the Phoenicians in the northern cities and parts of Galilee; the Philistines in the Philistine pentapolis; the three kingdoms of the Transjordan– Ammon, Moab and Edom; and the Judaeans of Kingdom of Judah. The first written record of the region being called Palestine, by the way, comes from 12th century BCE Egypt, which used the term Peleset for the area.

Around 720 BCE, Kingdom of Israel was destroyed when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which came to dominate the ancient Near East. Under the Assyrian resettlement policy, a significant portion of the northern Israelite population was exiled to Mesopotamia and replaced by immigrants from the same region. During the same period, and throughout the 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah, experienced a period of economic, as well as population growth. Later in the same century, the Assyrians were defeated by the rising Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Judah became its vassal. In 587 BCE, following a revolt in Judah, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and the First Temple, putting an end to the kingdom. The majority of Jerusalem's residents, including the kingdom's elite, were exiled to Babylon. This marks the first historic diaspora of Jewish people from their indigenous homeland.

Jewish people in the region enjoyed a brief period of political independence and national sovereignty following the Maccabean Revolt. This would only last for a few brief decades before the area would be conquered by the Romans. During the first Roman-Jewish War Jerusalem and the Second Temple, which has been built back in about 516 BCE were both destroyed. From that point on Roman rule would crack down even harder on Jewish people living in the empire. Many of these tensions were caused by the cultural and religions differences between the Romans and Jewish people. Their refusal to worship Roman gods and their refusal to venerate the emperor made them perpetual pariahs. 

Jewish communities would continue to resist Roman rule and oppression and this resistance would come to a violent head in events like the Kitos War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The Bar Kokhba revolt, led by Simon Bar Kokhba was certainly influenced by the Romans building a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. The revolt, as with the First and Second Roman-Jewish Wars was a complete military defeat for the Jewish people. The Jewish Talmud relates that, when the fortress of Betar was besieged in 135 CE that the Romans went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood up to their nostrils.

This revolt would result in Judea being literally wiped off the map. And I mean that quite literally, while the Jewish population was greatly reduced from the area, both by slaughter at the hands of the Romans and because many people were forced from the region, there was still and there has always been a Jewish population in the Levant. But any Roman map from after the Bar Kokhba Revolt would now show the region labeled as Syria Palestina.

The Diaspora of Jewish people from Israel and Judea would result in Jewish populations congregating all around Eurasia. Jewish communities would settle near the Rhine, eventually collating into the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would settle on the Iberian Peninsula and in Northern Africa collating into the Sephardi Jewish ethnicity. Jewish communities would also remain in the Middle East, in Syria Palestina (though they were forbidden by the Romans to live in Jerusalem) and collate into the Mizrahim Jewish ethnicity. There are also smaller Jewish ethnicities like the Bene Israel from India and the Beta Israel from Ethiopia.

One of the conclusions that is important to take away at this point is that both Palestinians and Jewish people, Judaism being both a religion and an ethnicity, are indigenous to the lands of Israel and Palestine. I don’t really care if you favor a one state or two state solution, but the fact of their mutual indigineousness is undeniable.

Now, at this point we’re going to take a huge jump forward in time to 1516 when Syria Palestina falls under Ottoman rule. As many ethnically Palestinian people had converted to Islam following the Islamic Conquests of the Middle East in the 7th century CE they were largely seen as good Ottoman citizens and interfered with very little. Jewish people, on the other hand, because they were not followers of Islam found themselves living under the dhimmi system. This was a common system under Muslim empires that allowed people to practice other religions, but with limited rights and at the cost of increased taxes.

Some of the restrictions placed on Dhimmi were: In addition to other legal limitations, dhimmis were not considered equals to Muslims, despite being considered “people of the book” Their testimony against Muslims was inadmissible in courts of law wherein a Muslim could be punished; this meant that their testimony could only be considered in commercial cases. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses and camels, and their houses could not overlook those of Muslims.  All that being said, the lives of Jewish people in the Ottoman Empire were still demonstrably better than those of Jewish communities living in Europe and they were much more freely able to practice their religion.

We’re going to jump ahead again to the First Aliyah which took place between 1881 and 1903. Aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning “ascent”. There have been five “official” Aliyah throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These Aliyah are periods of increased Jewish immigration to their ancestral homeland. This First Aliyah saw Jewish people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Yeman move to Ottoman Palestine because of an increased number of pogroms. Most of the Jewish people from Eastern Europe came from the Pale of Settlement and by 1903, saw about 25,000 Jewish people immigrate. This period also saw many thousands of Jewish people immigrate to the US in order to escape the ever increasing amounts of antisemitic violence around Europe.

This First Aliyah also marks, more or less, the beginning of the Zionist movement. Political Zionism as a movement was founded by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. He saw antisemitism and antisemitic violence as an indelible part of any society in which Jewish people lived as minorities. He also believed that the only way a Jewish State could be established would be with the help of European powers. He also described the Jewish State as an outpost of civilization against Barbarism and compared himself to Cecil Rhodes. So, safe to say that Herzl was not a man with good intentions for the people that would become his neighbors.

Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where some Zionist figures, including Herzl, supported a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as "Uganda" (actually parts of British East Africa today in Kenya), Argentina, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Mozambique, and the Sinai Peninsula.]  Herzl, was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state. Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch. It is unclear if Herzl seriously considered this alternative plan, and he later reaffirmed that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jewish people to that area.

This, as it was always going to, brings us to the Balfour Declaration. As soon as World War I began the Great Powers of Europe began deciding how they were going to carve up the Ottoman Empire, the Sick Man of Europe, like a Thanksgiving turkey. The Balfour Declaration was part of this planning. The declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 stating their support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

The entire Declaration reads as follows: His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

They clearly failed in all regards of their declaration after the first statement.

The end of World War I saw the League of Nations place Palestine under British colonial control, leading to the creation of Mandatory Palestine in 1920, with the League officially giving Britain a Class A mandate in 1922. Britain was originally supposed to guarantee Arab independence following the defeat of the Ottomans in exchange for the Great Arab Revolt that took place against Ottoman rule. The creation of Mandatory Palestine and the existence of the Balfour declaration was partially responsible for Jewish immigration over the next 30 years.

As Jewish immigration increased, Palestinian peasants, known as fellahin (fellahin were often tenant farmers or other such peoples who didn’t own the land they worked) were forced off the land they worked to survive. These tensions would result in small-scale conflicts between Jewish and Arab people living in Mandatory Palestine, though the first conflict of real historic note would be the Great Palestinian Revolt of 1936. The revolt lasted until 1939. It was a popular uprising of Palestinian Arabs that demanded Arab independence and and end to open-ended Jewish immigration to Palestine. The revolt eventually ended with the issuance of the White Paper in 1939. The White Paper was going to attempt to create a national home for the Jewish people within an independent Palestine within 10 years. However this proposal was rejected by both the Arab and Zionist sides of the negotiation.

Before the White Paper, and before the massive violence of the Great Revolt was an Arab General strike that lasted for 6 months in order to try and get their voices heard. This led to the creation of the Peel Commission, which recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. This plan was, like the White Paper that would come after it, rejected by both sides.

Of force everything would change after World War 2. After the war the British Mandate for Palestine was dissolved and the Israeli Declaration of Independence was issued later that same day. This declaration came as part of the UN partition plan which was outlined in UN Resolution 181 (II). The Resolution set forth to create an Independent Jewish State, an Independent Arab State and a Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.

This UN Resolution came during the context of the 1947 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine which began after the UN initially voted on the partition plan resolution. This war would have far reaching consequences for everyone in the region and would lead to events like the Nakba and the Israeli government initiating Plan Dalet.

Nakba, an Arabic word meaning Catastrophe, refers to the initial ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes following the 1947 Civil War and the broader 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Some 750,000 Palestinian people were forced to flee their homes and their country after the First Arab Israeli War saw Israel in control of all of the land the UN had granted them in the partition plan as well as roughly 60% of the land that was to be Palestine. Causes of Arab flight from Palestine include: Jewish military advances, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare and fears of another massacre by Zionist militias after the Deir Yassin massacre, which caused many to leave out of panic; direct expulsion orders by Israeli authorities; the voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes; collapse in Palestinian leadership and Arab evacuation orders.

This period of time would also see many thousands of Jewish people expelled from the surrounding Muslim countries. As you might expect the majority of those people would move to Israel.

While we can see that tensions in the region and Zionist abuses of Palestinian people existed before this point, if we HAD to point to a single moment that defined the entire conflict, ethnic cleansing, and genocide it would be this moment.

Following the flight of the majority of the Palestinians from Palestine, Israel passed a number of laws, known as Israel land and property laws, disallowing the Palestinians their right to return to their homes in Palestine. Wars would continue over the decades, but the point at which things start to get particularly heinous comes at the end of the Six Day War, also known as the Arab Israeli War. Following this war, which Israel fought against Syria, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq, Israel now had control of the Golan Heights, The West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and the Sinai Peninsula leaving very little land still under Palestinian sovereign control.

Israel would eventually cede the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in 1978 as part of the Camp David Accords in exchange for peace and Egyptian recognition of the State of Israel. They retained control over the rest of the territories they had seized.

The actions of Israel during this time put increasing strain on Palestinians as more and more of them were forced into refugee camps, and while Gaza is technically under the control of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas and the West Bank is under the partial control of the Palestinian National Authority both still find themselves heavily under the control of the Israeli government and military. Especially since October of 2023.

Human Rights Watch, a non-government organization, considers Israel to still be an invading and occupying force in these two Palestinian regions.  The two of which are separated from each other by the nation of Israel.

“Even though Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlements from Gaza in 2005, it continues to have obligations as an occupying power in Gaza under the Fourth Geneva Convention because of its almost complete control over Gaza’s borders, sea and air space, tax revenue, utilities, population registry, and the internal economy of Gaza. At a minimum, Israel continues to be responsible for the basic welfare of the Palestinian population in Gaza.”

We actually have to backtrack a little bit here before we can finally catch up to the modern day. We need to pop back to 1987, the First Intifada, and the creation of Hamas.

The First Intifada lasted from December 1987 until, basically the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, although some date the end in 1991 with the Madrid Conference. The Intifafa, or Uprising, was a sustained series of protests, strikes, and riots that began after an IDF truck hit another car carrying Palestinian workers, all four of whom died in the crash.

Now, where does Hamas come into this, well in the long history of the Western world, they were created by the people they now fight against. Hamas, in the beginning of its existence, received funding from the Israeli government to act as a counterweight against the more moderate elements of the PLO. Israel would then turn around and try and destroy Hamas when they started to get too powerful.

It was Hamas who was behind the October 7th Attacks on Israel. Hamas, by the way, has been the defacto ruling party of Gaza since 2007. Hamas said its attack was in response to the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, rising Israeli settler violence, and recent escalations.

The attack on October 7th began with some 300 missiles being fired into Israeli territory along with coordinated attacks at locations and events like the Re’im Music Festival and various kibbutz’s such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri. The attack lasted into the 8th of October and saw 1,143 people killed, 767 of whom were civilians and 36 of whom were children. Also roughly 250 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage with the intent of using them to try and secure the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It does bear mentioning that Israel has knowledge of such an attack a year in advance, according to the New York Times, but dismissed it as impossible.

Since this attack by Hamas Israel has been increasing the violence and slaughter that it is committing against the Palestinian people. In the name of their alleged war with Hamas Israel has forced the people of Gaza to move farther and farther to the south as they bombed the northern part of the Strip to glass. Today most of the surviving population of Gaza, some 1.5 million people are forced to live in the city of Rafah, a city that they were told they’d be safe in. They is no longer the case as Israel is now bombing Rafah as well. 

Israel has also been blockading Gaza since 2007 and, effectively, has complete control over the food, water, electricity, and medicine that gets into Gaza. Part of this control comes from the fact that Israel keeps bombing hospitals, like they did with Al Shifa in November of 2023. Israel claims that Hamas was using the hospital as a staging ground, despite this being proven false by independent investigations.

We know from our previous video that genocide isn’t just the mass slaughter of a particular group of people. It is also inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part. By this definition, concentrating 1.5 million people into a small area without adequate food, water, or medicine, and then bombing that area demonstrates clear intent to destroy. 

An even more clear example of this intent was the Flour Massacre that occurred on February 29, 2024. On that day Israel let food aid into Gaza after over a month of not letting anything through their blockade. When people lined up to receive this aid, the Israeli military shot them. The Israeli military set a deliberate trap to lure in starving civilians and then shot and killed over 100 people.

We also have massive amounts of intent demonstrated in the words of members of the Israeli government. Such as with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the people of Gaza Human Animals and said that they would allow no food or water to get in. Or when Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister said they’d turn Gaza into a deserted island. 

There can be no denying the genocide in Gaza. None whatsoever. The actions of the Israeli government are inexcusable and must be condemned with all possible haste. We are in the midst of a genocide, and so if you’ve ever wondered what you would have done during something like the Holocaust, now you know. Whatever you’re doing now, is what you would have done then.

Hopefully what we covered today will provide some needed context for everything that is going on right now. I don’t know if it will make anything clearer, and I doubt it will provide you with any solutions, but just because you learn information doesn’t mean you can necessarily apply it.

Thank you for joining me for Day 2. This was a very heavy topic and next week will not get any lighter. Next week we will be diving into the history and context of the ongoing trans genocide that is currently ongoing in the United States. 

Last thing we're gonna do today before we do is the outro is read some reviews that came in on Apple Podcasts over the week. I say over the week, all three of these came in on the 21st. 2 of them came from Canada!

And now my notes say “read the reviews* Oh… wait, that was something i was supposed to DO. Not an actual sentence i was supposed to read. I hope i remember to edit this out…

Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. PLease remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day and Free Palestine.