Part Two: The Origins of Terror in Palestine

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Cool Zone Media.

**Robert Evans** (0:05)
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, normally a podcast about everything you don't know, about the very worst people in all of history, where I read a story about a historical monster, some sort of terrible event to a guest who's coming in cold.
This week, I'm sort of doing my best to not embarrass myself in front of a guest who knows a lot more about the subject than I do, and also isn't this true a lot of it. Dr. Donald Curd, welcome back to the show. Thank you again for your time.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:30)
Thank you for having me.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:31)
It is kind of cool that we have several PhDs on staff, because James Stout also.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:38)
Also a doctor.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:39)
Dr. James Stout.

**Robert Evans** (0:40)
You know, I was declared a doctor by the state of New Jersey one time.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:43)
My brother's a doctor, that counts.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
There you go.

**Robert Evans** (0:47)
They don't let me prescribe anything, which really sucks.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:49)
I mean, he's an oncologist, so we're not even in the same like lettering system. But you know what?

**Robert Evans** (0:55)
You don't have prescription abilities, do you, Donna?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:58)
Unfortunately, political science does not have that.

**Robert Evans** (1:01)
I would have gotten a poli sci PhD if I could have got prescribed stuff.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:06)
Robert, this is not the time.

**Robert Evans** (1:09)
I mean, it's always the time.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:11)
It's kind of relevant. Yeah, it's kind of relevant.

**Robert Evans** (1:14)
Donna, do you want to plug anything up front before we get back into the story?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:19)
There's the handbook on authoritarianism in the Arab world. That's out with Williamsbury Politics, Open Access, so people could just Google and read up.

**Robert Evans** (1:27)
Yeah. That sounds much better. One of the sources for this that I read, which was useful in some ways, is like the Oxford Handbook in the History of Terrorism, which again, very useful for certain things. And also, we're not going to get into this, but in 1946, I think it was the Irgun, which is like the militia associated with Bittar, which is like a right wing Zionist group that is today become like its descendant is Netanyahu's party, bomb the King David Hotel and kill a bunch of people. And the Oxford, it's really fun when you like read what the British said about it, it's an act of terrorism. When you read what like everyone at the time said about it, it's an act of terrorism. And then you read the Oxford Encyclopedia of Terrorism, they're like, well, because the targets were primarily governmental, we can't call this an act of terrorism. And I'm like, okay.
But if it had been like Arab nationalists who bombed a hotel, it would be terrorism, right?

**SPEAKER_1** (2:18)
I can't even.

**Robert Evans** (2:19)
Right.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:21)
I'm a good one. Let's just put that out there.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:24)
Facts.

**Robert Evans** (2:31)
We're going to talk about Vladimir Yebatinsky, a lot more in these episodes.
So as we said last time, this is a guy who grows up in Odessa.
He is from a fairly young age, really concerned with fighting back against these pogroms by establishing Jewish self-defense groups.
And after, he's close for a period of time with Theodor Herzl, but he also has some break offs with him. And he is issue with a lot. He does not get along with most Zionists in his day because he is really right wing. He does not like these labor unions. He does not like the socialist politics that a lot of these Zionists have. He's very against that sort of stuff. And after Herzl dies in 1904, Jabotinsky becomes seen as the leader among right wing, a leader among right wing Zionists. He's a very big feature. He goes by Z. Jabotinsky most of his life, but he's still known as Vladimir at this point in time. We'll talk about why that change happens. And after Herzl dies, he's a political leader for a while. And then the war starts and he has to take a job as a newspaper editor. And in 1915, he's reporting from North Africa and he tours a refugee camp in Egypt for Jewish deportees from Ottoman Palestine. And we'll talk about this later too. The Ottomans start deporting a lot of these European Jews from Palestine during the war. And per an entry in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War by Ari Dubnov and Brian Horowitz, soon thereafter, he reached the conclusion that the Ottoman Turks would lose the war and Palestine would fall into the hands of the Entente powers. It was in this context that he came up with the idea of encouraging Jews to volunteer for the British army and secure a future Palestine for the Jews. And this is, unfortunately, a really smart play for him to make. No, very strategic. Right? He's a really smart guy, and this works very well for him, yeah, very much, unfortunately. And it is worth noting, like, he does kind of see where things are going, right? It's very accurate to say that the Entente is going to take over.