WEBVTT NOTE generated from 2026_08_12_war_all_the_time_israel_vs_palestine_194.segments.json — do not edit NOTE asr=whisper_cpp/ggml-large-v3-turbo-q5_0 diar=sherpa-onnx-node grade=aligned NOTE overlapping speech is not detected by this diarizer 0 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:12.610 Hey everybody, this is Daryl Cooper, and you are about to hear a special episode of the Martyr Maid podcast. This 1 00:00:12.610 --> 00:00:13.890 episode is 2 00:00:14.230 --> 00:00:21.730 meant to be a sort of addendum to Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem, my earlier series on the early 3 00:00:22.210 --> 00:00:22.340 history of 4 00:00:22.370 --> 00:00:24.560 Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian 5 00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:28.700 conflict. If you've managed to find this episode 6 00:00:28.740 --> 00:00:28.740 on 7 00:00:29.040 --> 00:00:33.070 Without having first listened to that earlier series, I recommend listening 8 00:00:33.070 --> 00:00:50.530 to that series first. I know it's a time investment, but it is very thorough. And there are going to be a lot of things in this episode that I'm going to glide past or maybe cover lightly. Because I'm going to be assuming that you're already familiar with that earlier material. I'll 9 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:50.710 try 10 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.240 not to do that, but it's going to be inevitable. 11 00:00:53.540 --> 00:00:54.350 This episode is 12 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:58.440 going to cover the period from 1948... 13 00:00:58.420 --> 00:00:58.650 the 14 00:00:58.830 --> 00:01:00.980 year of Israeli independence and the 15 00:01:01.300 --> 00:01:02.920 Palestinian Nakba, to 16 00:01:03.130 --> 00:01:03.890 the Lebanon 17 00:01:03.980 --> 00:01:06.150 War of 1982. It 18 00:01:06.330 --> 00:01:07.300 is not meant 19 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:15.040 to be a thorough history of that period, the way fear and loathing was of the pre-1948 period. To 20 00:01:15.190 --> 00:01:16.210 do justice 21 00:01:16.220 --> 00:01:23.640 to that story would require another ten episodes, not just this one. So this one has a narrower focus. 22 00:01:24.010 --> 00:01:24.750 The story I 23 00:01:24.750 --> 00:01:27.860 want to tell today is not about 24 00:01:27.860 --> 00:01:27.860 history, 25 00:01:28.110 --> 00:01:31.080 Every figure and every event and motivation Relevant 26 00:01:31.080 --> 00:01:41.180 to the conflict in those years It's specifically about How the level of savagery Has escalated over the years The steps 27 00:01:41.180 --> 00:01:43.300 by which those escalations occurred 28 00:01:43.550 --> 00:01:44.700 To bring 29 00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:51.990 us up to the point where we are now With virtually unrestrained violence And dehumanization completely normalized on 30 00:01:51.990 --> 00:01:52.890 both sides 31 00:01:53.150 --> 00:01:54.610 So it's not a 32 00:01:54.670 --> 00:01:56.660 pretty story 33 00:01:56.610 --> 00:01:56.840 And 34 00:01:56.990 --> 00:02:03.040 several sections of this podcast are not going to be for the faint of heart. It's not something to listen to with your kids in 35 00:02:03.070 --> 00:02:03.840 the car. At 36 00:02:04.070 --> 00:02:04.850 times when I was 37 00:02:04.850 --> 00:02:08.490 putting the notes together, it started to even feel 38 00:02:08.580 --> 00:02:08.580 a 39 00:02:08.630 --> 00:02:15.830 bit voyeuristic. The violence started to feel sort of gratuitous and pornographic, you could say. 40 00:02:16.210 --> 00:02:17.450 Because, well, you 41 00:02:17.540 --> 00:02:19.620 know, every time I tried to 42 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:22.980 delete a passage, though, I thought... 43 00:02:23.870 --> 00:02:26.200 No. Well, this has to be in here. 44 00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:27.020 And so I'd end 45 00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:34.030 up putting it back in. Because it's one thing to hear that there was a terrorist attack today and 14 people were killed. I 46 00:02:34.060 --> 00:02:35.120 think it's really 47 00:02:35.190 --> 00:02:41.180 important to try to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who goes through something like that. To 48 00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:42.150 see before 49 00:02:42.260 --> 00:02:45.790 our mind's eye what those people saw. 50 00:02:46.860 --> 00:02:52.790 Because only then can we even attempt to understand why people would react to these things the way they do. 51 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:53.990 That means 52 00:02:54.060 --> 00:03:03.230 imagining that it was your mother who was forced out of her home by Israeli soldiers after seeing your father killed. 53 00:03:03.810 --> 00:03:04.040 And 54 00:03:04.290 --> 00:03:23.360 then your mother walking out in the desert carrying your baby brother collapses in the heat before she can make it to a safe place and she dies and the baby dies before your eyes. And now you're 19 years old living in a refugee camp and somebody comes along asking if you want to join the resistance against the people who did that to you. And 55 00:03:23.530 --> 00:03:25.000 it means imagining 56 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:31.650 that the families butchered by Palestinian terrorists were your family. 57 00:03:31.970 --> 00:03:31.970 That 58 00:03:32.080 --> 00:03:37.940 your wife and children, or your husband and children, were brutally murdered in front of you. 59 00:03:37.950 --> 00:03:38.820 And then you're 60 00:03:38.820 --> 00:03:45.170 offered an opportunity to vote for a politician who promises to take a savage revenge on the people who did that. 61 00:03:45.170 --> 00:03:47.220 It's really hard for 62 00:03:47.350 --> 00:03:58.250 people outside of the region, or not from countries that have been engaged in serious local conflict recently... 63 00:03:58.220 --> 00:03:58.440 To 64 00:03:58.950 --> 00:04:03.530 understand what being in a state of war for such a long time does to people. The 65 00:04:03.970 --> 00:04:04.720 Palestinians 66 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:09.330 have been living in degraded conditions, terrorized and 67 00:04:10.090 --> 00:04:18.460 controlled by Israeli security forces, subject to periodic military assault for many decades now. Decades. Most 68 00:04:18.940 --> 00:04:19.330 Palestinians who 69 00:04:19.400 --> 00:04:25.490 are alive today, in fact virtually all of them at this point, have lived their entire lives under those conditions. 70 00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:26.620 Thank you. 71 00:04:26.640 --> 00:04:27.030 The 72 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:37.110 Israelis, you remember a few years back, back in 2015-2016, when ISIS terrorism in Europe and the U.S. was at its peak. And 73 00:04:37.110 --> 00:04:37.950 it seemed like 74 00:04:37.990 --> 00:04:41.550 an attack was happening somewhere practically every other week 75 00:04:41.970 --> 00:04:43.370 for a while. I remember 76 00:04:43.530 --> 00:04:56.340 that time well, and it was nerve-wracking. I remember myself saying some things that, in retrospect, I probably didn't mean about what might need to be done to get that under control. 77 00:04:56.290 --> 00:04:56.940 Well, the 78 00:04:57.220 --> 00:05:18.280 Israelis have been dealing with that kind of thing for many decades, as we'll see in this episode. Dealing with attacks every bit as savage as anything ISIS did in the U.S. or Europe. And all of it happening in a tiny country the size of a small U.S. state. War radicalizes and hardens people. And 79 00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:19.300 prolonged war 80 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:24.890 can corrupt the soul in profound ways that can be hard to see from the inside. 81 00:05:25.940 --> 00:05:26.540 What I 82 00:05:26.850 --> 00:05:27.860 don't like is 83 00:05:27.860 --> 00:05:34.990 when people who are not a party to the war, you know, Americans and others, who do everything that they 84 00:05:35.070 --> 00:05:44.170 can to cheer on the conflict and intensify the level of hatred and dehumanization that's driving it. I understand why Israelis and Palestinians 85 00:05:44.170 --> 00:05:53.860 have gotten in that place. It's their families being killed. I'm not going to tell somebody whose family has been murdered how they're supposed to feel 86 00:05:53.860 --> 00:05:54.690 about it. 87 00:05:54.690 --> 00:05:55.500 But if you're 88 00:05:55.570 --> 00:06:03.730 on the outside looking in, you know, I think we all have an obligation to try to talk the two sides back from the brink, to 89 00:06:03.860 --> 00:06:04.330 try to 90 00:06:04.470 --> 00:06:09.930 be peacemakers, rather than prodding them on like a group of middle schoolers yelling, fight, 91 00:06:09.930 --> 00:06:10.960 fight, fight. 92 00:06:11.850 --> 00:06:12.970 Anyway, enough 93 00:06:12.970 --> 00:06:15.150 preaching. I will 94 00:06:15.160 --> 00:06:15.590 try to 95 00:06:15.610 --> 00:06:22.210 avoid that in this episode. This topic makes me preachy, I know, and I hate when I get preachy as much as you do. 96 00:06:22.960 --> 00:06:23.380 I just 97 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:24.880 have a lot of... I'll just be 98 00:06:24.970 --> 00:06:24.970 up 99 00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:29.080 front. I have a lot of personal connections to people on both sides of this conflict. And 100 00:06:29.080 --> 00:06:29.480 I get 101 00:06:29.480 --> 00:06:35.250 agitated when I see people that I otherwise respect saying awful things about them. 102 00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:37.680 Anyway, after this is 103 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:39.920 released... 104 00:06:39.890 --> 00:06:40.090 and 105 00:06:40.090 --> 00:06:42.860 I've had time to knock out a few other projects I've been 106 00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:56.040 keeping on the back burner. I will do a follow-up episode that will focus on the period from 1982 up to the present day, with a focus on the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah and other jihadist elements in the Palestinian movement, as 107 00:06:56.310 --> 00:06:56.710 well as the 108 00:06:56.710 --> 00:07:00.320 profound impact caused by the Iranian revolution. Very 109 00:07:00.570 --> 00:07:02.240 quickly, as many of 110 00:07:02.320 --> 00:07:07.770 you know, I have another podcast with my friend Jocko Willink. 111 00:07:08.410 --> 00:07:14.580 That podcast is called Jocko Unraveling, and we discuss historical topics and current events. 112 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:16.010 We try to tie the 113 00:07:16.010 --> 00:07:17.560 two together. 114 00:07:17.830 --> 00:07:18.500 Most recently, 115 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:21.080 we've done a couple episodes on the latest 116 00:07:21.080 --> 00:07:24.310 outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. Jocko 117 00:07:24.380 --> 00:07:24.880 is pretty 118 00:07:24.940 --> 00:07:26.780 much the sole sponsor of the 119 00:07:26.780 --> 00:07:35.070 Martyr Maid podcast. So if you like this show, go check out Unraveling. Go check out Jocko Podcast, his main 120 00:07:35.070 --> 00:07:37.510 podcast feed if you haven't. 121 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:37.600 And 122 00:07:37.830 --> 00:07:49.850 head on over to OriginMaine.com. That's Maine with an E, like the state. O-R-I-G-I-N-M-A-I-N-E dot com. Where you will find super 123 00:07:49.850 --> 00:08:02.870 high-quality gear of various sorts. All made right here in America at the Origin Factory. They've got everything from buffalo hide boots, high-quality jeans, hoodies, 124 00:08:02.870 --> 00:08:04.210 jackets... 125 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:07.890 martial arts gear they got a line of archery hunting gear now 126 00:08:07.960 --> 00:08:09.430 you see when you 127 00:08:09.480 --> 00:08:15.990 go to the website the stuff is pricey but this is not something where the jocko name is licensed 128 00:08:15.990 --> 00:08:26.520 out or just slapped onto a product mass produced at some anonymous factory this stuff is all custom designed custom made and it really shows in the 129 00:08:26.860 --> 00:08:27.660 quality as 130 00:08:27.660 --> 00:08:29.180 you will see so 131 00:08:29.180 --> 00:08:30.440 let's get to 132 00:08:30.440 --> 00:08:30.740 it 133 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:31.060 You 134 00:08:31.330 --> 00:08:36.030 are about to listen to a special episode, War All the Time, 135 00:08:36.030 --> 00:08:40.320 Israel and Palestine, 1948-82. 136 00:08:40.870 --> 00:08:41.400 Here we 137 00:08:41.400 --> 00:08:42.830 go. I'm 138 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:45.380 content to die for 139 00:08:45.380 --> 00:08:47.840 my beliefs. So 140 00:08:47.990 --> 00:08:50.250 cut off my head 141 00:08:50.250 --> 00:08:51.660 and make 142 00:08:51.660 --> 00:08:52.230 me a 143 00:08:52.230 --> 00:08:54.120 martyr. 144 00:08:55.300 --> 00:08:56.240 The people 145 00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:57.940 will always remember it. 146 00:08:57.940 --> 00:09:01.340 No. They 147 00:09:01.340 --> 00:09:04.720 will forget. Hell does 148 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:10.410 exist. God is a thought. God is an idea. It 149 00:09:10.420 --> 00:09:11.100 is a 150 00:09:11.170 --> 00:09:13.100 place. It 151 00:09:13.100 --> 00:09:17.660 is somewhere. Hell does exist. 152 00:09:17.660 --> 00:09:18.660 Hell does exist. 153 00:09:18.660 --> 00:09:38.970 April 154 00:09:39.900 --> 00:09:41.430 1956 155 00:09:41.610 --> 00:09:42.050 at a 156 00:09:42.230 --> 00:09:44.110 funeral in southern 157 00:09:44.260 --> 00:09:45.090 Israel. 158 00:09:45.040 --> 00:09:45.550 Eight 159 00:09:45.840 --> 00:10:13.330 years since the Israeli war of independence, or as the Arabs called it, the Nakba, the catastrophe. The Arab states had fought with the newborn Israeli defense forces in 1948, but Jordan, Syria and Egypt were not up to that task. They lacked the resolve and the coordination of the Zionists, and they lacked the investment 160 00:10:13.380 --> 00:10:14.780 as well. And 161 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:23.000 when they felt they'd done enough to save face, their forces withdrew, leaving the Palestinians to pay the price for their 162 00:10:23.150 --> 00:10:24.820 failure. The Israelis 163 00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:36.820 invaded and took over parts of the country that still had large Palestinian Arab majorities. And in the process, they drove 700,000 Palestinian Arabs out of their homes 164 00:10:36.820 --> 00:10:37.670 for good. 165 00:10:37.780 --> 00:10:41.320 And for eight years now, in 1956, 166 00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:46.960 Those people had languished in squalid refugee camps ringing the borders of the new Jewish state. 167 00:10:47.250 --> 00:10:48.520 Palestinians who 168 00:10:48.520 --> 00:10:53.070 still lived within Israeli borders were restricted in their 169 00:10:53.070 --> 00:10:53.850 movement and 170 00:10:54.290 --> 00:10:54.610 activities, 171 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:56.570 herded into neighborhoods 172 00:10:56.670 --> 00:11:01.270 surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards to keep the men. 173 00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:02.780 No one, not the 174 00:11:02.780 --> 00:11:06.290 Israelis, not the Palestinians, 175 00:11:06.290 --> 00:11:10.270 not any country in the region, thought 176 00:11:10.270 --> 00:11:10.270 that 177 00:11:10.450 --> 00:11:12.610 That 1948 was the end of the matter. 178 00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:14.050 The secular 179 00:11:14.050 --> 00:11:19.800 rulers of Egypt, Syria, and a short time later, Iraq, 180 00:11:20.130 --> 00:11:21.080 they all 181 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:22.000 wanted 182 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:26.950 to unite the Middle East into a pan-Arab national state. Of course, they all thought they should 183 00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:27.930 be the ones leading it. 184 00:11:28.110 --> 00:11:28.630 And they saw 185 00:11:28.630 --> 00:11:35.100 Israel as an open wound in the heart of the Arab world that had to be healed before that dream could be realized. 186 00:11:35.580 --> 00:11:36.440 Okay. 187 00:11:37.350 --> 00:11:37.350 Arabs 188 00:11:37.350 --> 00:11:43.840 across the region were shocked and humiliated by the terrible performance of Arab forces in the 48 war. And 189 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:44.480 so leaders 190 00:11:44.550 --> 00:11:49.170 played on those feelings to bolster their credibility on the Arab street. 191 00:11:49.170 --> 00:11:51.200 For the Palestinians, 192 00:11:51.200 --> 00:12:00.030 this wasn't just a political game. It was much more personal, much closer to home, obviously. And as far as 193 00:12:00.280 --> 00:12:00.280 they 194 00:12:00.330 --> 00:12:06.190 were concerned, their resistance hadn't ended just because Syria, Egypt, and Jordan had thrown in the towel. 195 00:12:06.450 --> 00:12:06.630 A 196 00:12:07.890 --> 00:12:13.000 swelling hatred grew in the hearts of humiliated men in the Palestinian 197 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:31.610 refugee camps. Their mothers and their grandmothers were living in tents in tin and cinderblock shanties, living on canned rations delivered by the U.N. or the Arab states, while the homes and land that their families had lived in, sometimes for generations, 198 00:12:31.870 --> 00:12:31.870 were 199 00:12:31.900 --> 00:12:35.380 now in the hands of Jewish occupiers just a few miles away. 200 00:12:35.700 --> 00:12:37.680 And so raids and 201 00:12:37.680 --> 00:12:43.500 skirmishes never stopped when the 1948 war officially ended. 202 00:12:43.900 --> 00:12:44.930 Some young guy 203 00:12:44.930 --> 00:12:46.050 in a refugee 204 00:12:46.060 --> 00:12:52.060 camp with no job and no future might not be able to give his mother her house back, 205 00:12:52.310 --> 00:12:52.480 but he 206 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:53.980 could burn that house 207 00:12:54.060 --> 00:12:57.890 down. That sounds irrational 208 00:12:57.890 --> 00:13:00.060 and nihilistic, 209 00:13:00.710 --> 00:13:08.700 but I would be slow to judge until you've seen your mother chased out of her home at gunpoint, forced to walk out into the 210 00:13:08.700 --> 00:13:14.390 desert with whatever she could carry and ending up in the state that the Palestinians now found themselves in. 211 00:13:14.650 --> 00:13:15.140 The Arab 212 00:13:16.020 --> 00:13:18.530 governments were humiliated as well. 213 00:13:18.790 --> 00:13:19.290 And so they 214 00:13:20.160 --> 00:13:20.610 provided 215 00:13:20.610 --> 00:13:28.130 supplies and training and intelligence and just general encouragement to any Palestinian militants who were eager for revenge. 216 00:13:28.390 --> 00:13:28.910 Okay. 217 00:13:29.760 --> 00:13:30.870 Sometimes, those militants 218 00:13:30.870 --> 00:13:35.260 targeted infrastructure in Israel, and sometimes they targeted 219 00:13:35.260 --> 00:13:42.920 people. Their state sponsors were not picky about the targets, as long as they harassed and destabilized Israel. 220 00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:43.450 In one 221 00:13:43.560 --> 00:13:53.250 attack sponsored by Egyptian intelligence, a dozen Palestinian and Bedouin terrorists slipped into southern Israel and intercepted a bus on 222 00:13:53.250 --> 00:13:54.430 the road. They 223 00:13:54.540 --> 00:13:57.010 waved it down and stopped it 224 00:13:57.010 --> 00:13:58.440 at gunpoint, 225 00:13:58.440 --> 00:13:58.440 and when it stopped, 226 00:13:58.670 --> 00:14:03.920 They opened fire at point-blank range and killed 11 people. 227 00:14:04.130 --> 00:14:04.130 On 228 00:14:04.170 --> 00:14:12.890 board was a nine-year-old boy who had managed to avoid being shot by hiding under a seat. And after a while, after he 229 00:14:12.890 --> 00:14:16.920 thought that the killers had left, not knowing that every other person on the bus 230 00:14:16.920 --> 00:14:20.460 had been killed, he called out, "Have they 231 00:14:20.460 --> 00:14:22.050 gone?" But they 232 00:14:22.170 --> 00:14:23.500 had not gone. 233 00:14:23.700 --> 00:14:23.700 And 234 00:14:23.720 --> 00:14:26.130 one of the killers came back and shot the boy in 235 00:14:26.130 --> 00:14:31.510 the head. He lived a while longer, but he was paralyzed for 32 years, and then he died at 236 00:14:31.510 --> 00:14:32.360 age 41. 237 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:34.880 Now, the Zionists, 238 00:14:34.880 --> 00:14:41.780 after years of insurgent warfare and with the Second World War hardly in the rearview mirror, 239 00:14:42.010 --> 00:14:43.120 these were a 240 00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:49.180 hardened bunch, and they were well prepared to defend themselves from Arab 241 00:14:49.180 --> 00:14:51.800 raids when the occasion arose. 242 00:14:52.470 --> 00:14:52.470 But 243 00:14:52.540 --> 00:14:55.060 they couldn't defend everywhere all the time. 244 00:14:55.280 --> 00:14:56.220 The Arabs 245 00:14:56.220 --> 00:15:02.880 inevitably chose the time and place to harass or attack, and the Israelis had 246 00:15:02.880 --> 00:15:08.100 neither the organization nor the manpower to cover the whole border and interdict every raid. 247 00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:09.350 And so, Moshe 248 00:15:09.350 --> 00:15:15.890 Dayan, boss of the Israeli defense forces at the time, explained in a lecture 249 00:15:15.890 --> 00:15:18.520 what the Israeli strategy would be. 250 00:15:18.740 --> 00:15:20.800 Quote, 251 00:15:20.750 --> 00:15:20.910 We 252 00:15:21.250 --> 00:15:32.340 cannot prevent the murder of workers in orchards or of families in their beds, but we have the ability to set a high price for our blood, end quote. In 253 00:15:32.650 --> 00:15:34.960 April 1956, Dayan was 254 00:15:34.970 --> 00:15:40.040 standing over the grave of a young Israeli lieutenant who, by 255 00:15:40.040 --> 00:15:44.810 chance, he had just met personally the previous day. 256 00:15:45.730 --> 00:15:46.450 A squad of 257 00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:53.990 Palestinian militants had opened fire on a kibbutz near the southern border with Gaza, and the lieutenant had ridden out to confront them, 258 00:15:54.040 --> 00:15:56.570 but he was outnumbered and the guerrillas killed him. And 259 00:15:56.570 --> 00:15:57.410 then they 260 00:15:57.410 --> 00:15:59.680 gouged out his eyes. And 261 00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:00.160 then they 262 00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:05.620 dragged his body through a field and left the mutilated corpse for people to find. And 263 00:16:05.620 --> 00:16:06.330 Dayan was 264 00:16:06.420 --> 00:16:11.050 at his funeral to deliver the eulogy. Quote, 265 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:12.240 Let 266 00:16:12.500 --> 00:16:14.090 us not today cast 267 00:16:14.170 --> 00:16:19.910 blame on the murderers. Who are we to argue against their potent hatred for us? For 268 00:16:20.220 --> 00:16:27.100 eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes, we have been turning the land 269 00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:32.250 and villages in which they and their forefathers lived into our own inheritance. 270 00:16:32.260 --> 00:16:38.200 End quote. Now, Moshe Dayan writes, 271 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:38.320 It 272 00:16:38.380 --> 00:16:39.970 was no softy. This is a hard 273 00:16:40.110 --> 00:16:41.720 man, a clear-eyed soldier. And 274 00:16:41.730 --> 00:16:42.190 he was 275 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:48.270 not suggesting that his people should take pity on those refugees, much less that they should forgive 276 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:51.720 anybody who attacked Jews in Israel, whatever their reasons. What 277 00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:52.690 he wanted was 278 00:16:52.690 --> 00:16:54.100 for his audience to 279 00:16:54.100 --> 00:16:57.530 see things clearly, as he did. 280 00:16:57.720 --> 00:16:58.680 To not be 281 00:16:58.680 --> 00:17:04.730 delusional and understand that there could be no forgiveness from the 282 00:17:04.730 --> 00:17:06.750 Palestinians for what had been done to 283 00:17:06.750 --> 00:17:07.250 them. 284 00:17:07.230 --> 00:17:07.650 There 285 00:17:07.770 --> 00:17:11.930 could be no sufficient restitution short of 286 00:17:11.930 --> 00:17:18.890 giving back their homeland and abandoning the Zionist project. And so if the Israelis were not willing to do that, Dayan was telling them, then 287 00:17:19.150 --> 00:17:19.450 they were 288 00:17:19.450 --> 00:17:23.060 going to have to put aside this false hope that some arrangement 289 00:17:23.060 --> 00:17:26.620 can be reached where both sides get enough of what they want. They 290 00:17:26.770 --> 00:17:27.200 have to 291 00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:28.770 put that aside. And 292 00:17:28.950 --> 00:17:29.970 they'd have 293 00:17:29.970 --> 00:17:33.730 to look squarely at what was going to be required of them. 294 00:17:34.290 --> 00:17:35.970 Quote, 295 00:17:35.970 --> 00:17:36.110 We 296 00:17:36.280 --> 00:17:52.130 are the generation of settlement, and without steel, helmets, and the maw of the cannon, we will not be able to plant a tree or build a home. Our children will not live if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire fences and machine guns, 297 00:17:52.130 --> 00:17:54.970 we will not be able to pave roads or drill for water. 298 00:17:55.300 --> 00:17:55.990 Millions of 299 00:17:55.990 --> 00:18:00.230 Jews annihilated because they had no country— 300 00:18:00.380 --> 00:18:06.710 gaze at us from the dust of Jewish history and command us to settle and raise up a land for our people. 301 00:18:06.710 --> 00:18:07.450 We must not 302 00:18:07.540 --> 00:18:16.860 flinch from seeing the hatred that accompanies and fills the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who live around us, and await the moment when 303 00:18:16.860 --> 00:18:19.940 they are strong enough to get our blood. 304 00:18:19.940 --> 00:18:20.830 We will not 305 00:18:20.900 --> 00:18:27.060 avert our gaze lest our hands grow weak. This is our generation's destiny. 306 00:18:30.650 --> 00:18:31.060 The Israelis had 307 00:18:31.060 --> 00:18:38.070 reason to believe that the attack that had led to the lieutenant's death had been organized by the same Egyptian 308 00:18:38.070 --> 00:18:43.240 intelligence chief who had been causing a lot of their other problems, and they wanted that guy dead. It 309 00:18:43.240 --> 00:18:45.010 so happened that the 310 00:18:45.010 --> 00:18:45.430 dead 311 00:18:45.430 --> 00:18:52.390 lieutenant's cousin was a bomb maker for Israel's fledgling Special Operations and Military Intelligence 312 00:18:52.390 --> 00:18:53.250 branch, and so 313 00:18:53.250 --> 00:18:53.770 it seemed 314 00:18:54.400 --> 00:18:56.750 appropriate to make him the instrument of revenge. 315 00:18:57.700 --> 00:18:58.180 And so 316 00:18:58.510 --> 00:19:03.240 what he did was hollowed out the pages of a book and filled it with explosives, rigged 317 00:19:03.240 --> 00:19:03.800 to go off 318 00:19:03.800 --> 00:19:06.760 when the book's package was opened. That 319 00:19:07.020 --> 00:19:07.430 part was 320 00:19:07.430 --> 00:19:15.040 easy enough. The hard part was making sure that it got to the right guy without being opened by some lackey working in the mail room. 321 00:19:15.120 --> 00:19:15.970 And so the 322 00:19:15.970 --> 00:19:22.130 Israelis called on a Bedouin man who had been doing undercover work for Israel in Gaza. The 323 00:19:22.570 --> 00:19:22.750 thing 324 00:19:22.750 --> 00:19:24.140 is... 325 00:19:24.290 --> 00:19:24.290 The 326 00:19:24.340 --> 00:19:32.640 Bedouin wasn't actually working for the Israelis. Actually, he was a double agent working for the Egyptian intelligence boss that the Israelis were targeting. 327 00:19:32.820 --> 00:19:33.100 Now, the 328 00:19:33.100 --> 00:19:35.130 Israelis had already figured that out. 329 00:19:35.340 --> 00:19:36.460 But neither the agent 330 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:43.610 nor Egyptian intelligence knew that the Israelis had figured it out. And so rather than cut that guy loose or just kill 331 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:46.270 him, the Israelis thought this might 332 00:19:46.390 --> 00:19:46.830 come in 333 00:19:46.870 --> 00:19:50.430 handy sometime. And so they kept him on the payroll until 334 00:19:50.430 --> 00:19:50.900 it did. 335 00:19:50.960 --> 00:19:51.260 well 336 00:19:51.430 --> 00:19:54.780 now his number had been called and so they give him this package 337 00:19:55.100 --> 00:20:01.950 with the book in it and they really like play it up you know they're like look we are trusting you with this because it's just so 338 00:20:01.950 --> 00:20:18.420 important I mean like if the Egyptians ever got a hold of this I mean that would be the end of us I don't know what we'd ever do just pray the Egyptian intelligence boss never gets his eyes on what's in this book I mean they got him real excited 339 00:20:19.220 --> 00:20:19.470 They 340 00:20:19.630 --> 00:20:19.940 told him 341 00:20:19.940 --> 00:20:23.780 it was of the utmost importance that he bring this package to another 342 00:20:23.780 --> 00:20:30.550 Israeli agent in Gaza, hoping that instead he would rush to deliver the book to his Egyptian boss. And 343 00:20:30.770 --> 00:20:30.920 that's 344 00:20:30.920 --> 00:20:31.920 just what he did. 345 00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:32.980 When Colonel 346 00:20:32.980 --> 00:20:38.160 Mustafa Hafez heard what the book was supposed to contain... 347 00:20:38.420 --> 00:20:38.420 He 348 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:41.700 got so excited that instead of having the package checked by technicians, 349 00:20:41.910 --> 00:20:41.910 he 350 00:20:41.950 --> 00:20:46.060 just tore it open on the spot and 300 grams of explosive 351 00:20:46.060 --> 00:21:05.150 blew up in his face and he died on the floor right there in the headquarters of Egyptian intelligence. A brilliant operation on the Israelis' part. And while that couldn't bring the young lieutenant back to life, it could, as Dayan said, send a clear message that a heavy price 352 00:21:05.180 --> 00:21:07.260 would be exacted for Israeli blood. 353 00:21:07.940 --> 00:21:08.480 And that 354 00:21:08.520 --> 00:21:11.290 wherever you were, you might think you're safe. You 355 00:21:11.600 --> 00:21:11.600 might 356 00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:16.040 think you're too high up the food chain to be vulnerable. You are not. Now, 357 00:21:16.040 --> 00:21:18.100 intelligence and 358 00:21:18.100 --> 00:21:23.880 clandestine operations are an art, not a science. And 359 00:21:24.220 --> 00:21:27.900 sometimes bombs went off in the faces of the wrong people. 360 00:21:28.480 --> 00:21:29.410 Other times, 361 00:21:29.410 --> 00:21:36.700 Israeli units sent on punitive raids into Palestinian villages killed innocent people. 362 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:37.340 or 363 00:21:37.620 --> 00:21:37.990 destroyed 364 00:21:37.990 --> 00:21:49.350 the homes, or the orchards, or the livestock or gardens of Palestinian families as punishment for the crime of a cousin, or a second cousin, or an even more distant relative. Prominent 365 00:21:49.350 --> 00:21:50.530 targets were 366 00:21:50.580 --> 00:21:56.950 hunted individually, but the new state of Israel did not have the resources or 367 00:21:56.950 --> 00:22:02.960 the trained manpower for a whole lot of that kind of thing, so the explicit strategy in these 368 00:22:03.100 --> 00:22:04.020 early years... 369 00:22:04.190 --> 00:22:14.130 was deterrence through collective punishment, or as nationalists and other revolutionary thinkers in the 20th century called it, through terror. 370 00:22:14.410 --> 00:22:15.700 These were not law 371 00:22:15.780 --> 00:22:19.500 enforcement operations to take down a perpetrator, 372 00:22:19.650 --> 00:22:19.950 or even 373 00:22:19.960 --> 00:22:21.370 military operations 374 00:22:21.370 --> 00:22:25.290 to eliminate enemy personnel or resources much of the time. 375 00:22:25.770 --> 00:22:26.690 The purpose, 376 00:22:26.830 --> 00:22:33.420 to put it very bluntly, was to terrorize and intimidate the Palestinian population— 377 00:22:33.420 --> 00:22:33.560 So 378 00:22:33.830 --> 00:22:42.070 that they would put pressure on their sons and their brothers and cousins to stay out of the fight and don't piss the Israelis off because you're going 379 00:22:42.070 --> 00:22:43.940 to bring their wrath down on all of us. It 380 00:22:44.050 --> 00:22:44.640 was to say, 381 00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:48.930 look, if you want to kill Israelis, people close to you are going 382 00:22:49.040 --> 00:22:50.230 to die. They're 383 00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:50.680 going to 384 00:22:50.680 --> 00:22:54.020 get their houses blown up and their livestock killed and their 385 00:22:54.020 --> 00:22:55.670 orchards burned down. And 386 00:22:55.820 --> 00:22:56.200 so think 387 00:22:56.210 --> 00:22:59.060 about that before you plan your next raid. 388 00:23:00.620 --> 00:23:01.650 And you have to 389 00:23:02.080 --> 00:23:06.160 remember that back in these days, again, we're talking late 40s, early 390 00:23:06.160 --> 00:23:12.920 50s, Israeli intelligence did not have detailed files on all the militants in a given region. They 391 00:23:12.920 --> 00:23:13.670 didn't have 392 00:23:14.080 --> 00:23:19.690 electronic surveillance tracking their communications or high-altitude drones and satellites 393 00:23:20.080 --> 00:23:21.460 tracking their movements. Most 394 00:23:21.460 --> 00:23:22.400 of the time, 395 00:23:22.580 --> 00:23:26.670 they wouldn't know their names or what they looked like. 396 00:23:28.300 --> 00:23:28.300 Someone 397 00:23:28.300 --> 00:23:34.480 would take a few pot shots at a kibbutz, or an Israeli military patrol would run over a landmine, and 398 00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:35.230 then whoever 399 00:23:35.260 --> 00:23:36.300 did it was gone. 400 00:23:36.300 --> 00:23:36.960 And all the 401 00:23:37.270 --> 00:23:43.960 Israelis would know a lot of the time is that some eyewitness said they went that-a-way, towards some village, a refugee camp. 402 00:23:43.960 --> 00:23:46.100 And they also lacked 403 00:23:46.180 --> 00:23:52.090 the resources to track all the movements of the regular military forces of the neighboring 404 00:23:52.190 --> 00:23:56.780 Arab states. And so sometimes when Israeli units were sent out on punitive raids, 405 00:23:57.390 --> 00:23:57.670 They 406 00:23:57.830 --> 00:23:58.670 would encounter 407 00:23:58.670 --> 00:24:03.610 military units of the Jordanian or Syrian or Egyptian armed forces. 408 00:24:04.030 --> 00:24:05.020 And when that 409 00:24:05.720 --> 00:24:11.350 happened, the Israeli forces did not avoid contact if they thought that they could handle it. 410 00:24:11.350 --> 00:24:12.290 If they thought they 411 00:24:12.290 --> 00:24:15.520 could handle it, they would initiate contact. They would attack. 412 00:24:15.530 --> 00:24:17.620 And it sent a message to 413 00:24:17.650 --> 00:24:19.550 those countries that 414 00:24:19.550 --> 00:24:20.230 they were 415 00:24:20.230 --> 00:24:26.910 going to be held responsible for any trouble Israel had from the Palestinians coming from their direction. 416 00:24:27.330 --> 00:24:30.770 so that hopefully it would incentivize those other countries to get the 417 00:24:30.770 --> 00:24:35.370 Palestinians under control themselves in order to avoid Israeli retaliation. 418 00:24:35.600 --> 00:24:37.970 As the Israeli state 419 00:24:37.980 --> 00:24:43.460 was built out, its intelligence and military capabilities matured 420 00:24:43.460 --> 00:24:55.170 and differentiated and specialized. In 1953, David Ben-Gurion, longtime leader of the movement and now Israel's first prime minister, 421 00:24:55.180 --> 00:25:10.080 Ordered the formation of a new special operations unit under the command of a 25-year-old soldier named Ariel Shinerman, sometimes called Arik and better known to most of you as Ariel Sharon. Sharon's 422 00:25:10.080 --> 00:25:12.160 team essentially functioned as 423 00:25:12.190 --> 00:25:20.760 a targeted assassination squad, although they would sometimes conduct their own missions like infrastructure sabotage and other 424 00:25:20.880 --> 00:25:21.560 things. 425 00:25:22.060 --> 00:25:22.060 It 426 00:25:22.150 --> 00:25:27.030 was called Unit 101 and these guys were real cowboys. 427 00:25:27.260 --> 00:25:34.060 Their first mission was really just Sharon and a bunch of his buddies sneaking into a Palestinian village to blow up the house of an alleged terrorist 428 00:25:34.310 --> 00:25:35.780 while the guy was asleep 429 00:25:35.830 --> 00:25:36.480 inside. 430 00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:39.880 Very loose in terms of how they conducted 431 00:25:39.880 --> 00:25:48.290 their operations. Sharon had fought with abandon as a 20-year-old in the 1948 war and he was badly wounded 432 00:25:48.350 --> 00:25:48.940 in it. 433 00:25:48.980 --> 00:25:50.600 Now as a commander, 434 00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:50.780 he 435 00:25:50.830 --> 00:25:54.950 very quickly earned a reputation for always being out front of his men, 436 00:25:55.210 --> 00:26:03.530 always taking the most dangerous jobs and manning the most vulnerable positions, never asking his men to do anything that he wouldn't do himself. 437 00:26:03.770 --> 00:26:05.520 He was a very good 438 00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:08.280 soldier, very courageous, 439 00:26:08.410 --> 00:26:10.070 extremely motivated, 440 00:26:10.310 --> 00:26:13.530 sometimes too motivated. You see, 441 00:26:13.580 --> 00:26:15.140 officially, the 442 00:26:15.210 --> 00:26:16.110 way the process 443 00:26:16.210 --> 00:26:19.770 was supposed to work officially was... 444 00:26:20.060 --> 00:26:22.860 Military intelligence would identify a potential target. 445 00:26:23.130 --> 00:26:23.130 They 446 00:26:23.140 --> 00:26:25.120 would investigate that target. 447 00:26:25.360 --> 00:26:25.760 And if the 448 00:26:25.760 --> 00:26:31.960 target was approved for liquidation, then Unit 101 would get its orders to develop an operation 449 00:26:31.960 --> 00:26:33.180 and take that guy out. 450 00:26:33.460 --> 00:26:36.640 Well, that's a slow process. And 451 00:26:36.680 --> 00:26:45.900 patience was never one of Ariel Sharon's strong suits. And so while he waited for Israel's spies to identify his high-value targets... 452 00:26:46.090 --> 00:26:57.700 Unit 101 occupied itself by developing its own intelligence, running its own operations, attacking and terrorizing Arab villages where Palestinian militants were thought to be hiding or using for support. 453 00:26:57.930 --> 00:26:59.880 Sharon was one of those guys 454 00:27:00.010 --> 00:27:03.640 who was never comfortable unless he was out on an 455 00:27:04.020 --> 00:27:05.010 operation. As 456 00:27:05.190 --> 00:27:05.690 soon as one 457 00:27:05.690 --> 00:27:10.440 mission was over, he was begging his superiors to turn him loose on another one. 458 00:27:10.840 --> 00:27:10.840 And 459 00:27:10.890 --> 00:27:12.130 not just waiting for orders, 460 00:27:12.130 --> 00:27:15.650 but coming to them with ideas. You know, we should hit this, we should do that. 461 00:27:15.780 --> 00:27:16.310 He wanted to 462 00:27:16.310 --> 00:27:20.170 continue attacking Palestinian villages and camps, of course. 463 00:27:20.370 --> 00:27:20.860 But he also 464 00:27:20.860 --> 00:27:26.510 wanted to go after not just military, but civilian targets in Egypt and Syria and Jordan. 465 00:27:26.710 --> 00:27:28.290 Sometimes when he couldn't 466 00:27:28.300 --> 00:27:33.070 provide his superiors with a good reason to attack the Arabs, he and his men 467 00:27:33.070 --> 00:27:34.370 would just create one. 468 00:27:34.570 --> 00:27:35.190 They'd run an 469 00:27:35.190 --> 00:27:39.910 off-the-books operation to bait an Egyptian military unit to engage them. 470 00:27:40.350 --> 00:27:40.500 And 471 00:27:40.670 --> 00:27:46.550 then they'd call headquarters and say, we're under attack by the Egyptians, we need reinforcements, and the IDF would show up in force. 472 00:27:46.870 --> 00:27:48.010 Unit 101's 473 00:27:48.010 --> 00:27:51.590 intelligence officer, Uzi Ailam, said, 474 00:27:51.990 --> 00:27:52.330 There were 475 00:27:52.410 --> 00:27:53.150 many cases 476 00:27:53.150 --> 00:27:59.460 in which we, at Arik's bidding, provoked the enemy over the border and incited war. In 477 00:27:59.540 --> 00:27:59.880 a real 478 00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:08.700 analysis of who started it over the entire history of the IDF's retaliations, we will not come out squeaky clean. 479 00:28:10.180 --> 00:28:11.150 When I think 480 00:28:11.520 --> 00:28:18.810 about the early Zionists, I often make a comparison to the Americans colonizing the frontier in 481 00:28:18.810 --> 00:28:19.030 the 482 00:28:19.180 --> 00:28:21.660 18th and 19th centuries. Many 483 00:28:21.660 --> 00:28:21.990 of the 484 00:28:21.990 --> 00:28:25.920 Zionists, incidentally, made that same comparison to the point that 485 00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:30.760 the American cowboy aesthetic actually became popular among the settlers for a while. 486 00:28:30.760 --> 00:28:31.770 Obviously, 487 00:28:32.100 --> 00:28:37.450 there's a million differences between those two sets of circumstances, 488 00:28:37.450 --> 00:28:37.770 but 489 00:28:37.630 --> 00:28:38.010 I make 490 00:28:38.170 --> 00:28:42.390 the comparison because the bottom line in both of those situations was this. 491 00:28:42.930 --> 00:28:43.710 There was no 492 00:28:43.710 --> 00:28:45.560 way to turn North 493 00:28:45.560 --> 00:28:47.020 America into 494 00:28:47.030 --> 00:28:47.150 a 495 00:28:47.150 --> 00:28:54.160 European state and maintain good relations with the Native Americans. That was just not going to happen. 496 00:28:54.170 --> 00:28:55.490 It was not possible. And 497 00:28:55.790 --> 00:28:56.660 there was no way to 498 00:28:56.710 --> 00:29:02.710 transform Palestine into a Jewish state without coming into conflict with the Arabs who 499 00:29:02.770 --> 00:29:05.440 lived there. That was not possible. 500 00:29:06.740 --> 00:29:07.780 And so the 501 00:29:07.980 --> 00:29:14.660 people who came to settle America were not exactly a random cross-section of European society. These 502 00:29:14.660 --> 00:29:15.220 were a lot 503 00:29:15.230 --> 00:29:16.230 of bold people, 504 00:29:16.230 --> 00:29:21.330 a lot of desperate people, fanatics, zealots, adventurers, soldiers, 505 00:29:21.330 --> 00:29:23.400 some criminals. And then 506 00:29:23.400 --> 00:29:24.750 the Americans who 507 00:29:24.820 --> 00:29:33.240 went out into Indian country to colonize the frontier, they were self-selected to be an even harder group of people. 508 00:29:33.460 --> 00:29:33.460 Just 509 00:29:33.460 --> 00:29:40.020 imagine taking your family out into the middle of nowhere to build a cabin out of trees that you cut down with an axe in 510 00:29:40.170 --> 00:29:41.010 a place where 511 00:29:41.230 --> 00:29:47.740 there are no police to come to your rescue and the natives come knocking wanting to know why your home is on their hunting ground. 512 00:29:47.940 --> 00:29:48.760 It wasn't just 513 00:29:48.850 --> 00:29:50.900 anybody going out there. 514 00:29:51.050 --> 00:29:51.900 It was hard people 515 00:29:51.990 --> 00:29:56.950 who had an idea of what they were getting into and thought that they could handle it. 516 00:29:57.900 --> 00:29:58.730 sort of a 517 00:29:58.920 --> 00:30:05.180 similar situation with the zionists you know that kibbutz where that young lieutenant i mentioned a moment 518 00:30:05.180 --> 00:30:07.780 ago was killed it's called nahal 519 00:30:07.780 --> 00:30:08.070 oz go 520 00:30:08.160 --> 00:30:09.580 find that on a map 521 00:30:09.580 --> 00:30:10.200 it is 522 00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:15.760 less than half a mile from the border with gaza and then as now 523 00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:19.820 gaza was full of a lot of very unhappy arabs many 524 00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:24.010 of whom had been recently driven out of their homes by the 525 00:30:24.070 --> 00:30:24.760 israelis 526 00:30:24.750 --> 00:30:25.600 And there was 527 00:30:25.620 --> 00:30:34.140 no wall surrounding Gaza yet. No surveillance drones. No remote-controlled robot machine guns like they have today. None of that existed. And 528 00:30:34.140 --> 00:30:36.240 so what kind of people 529 00:30:36.240 --> 00:30:41.710 are you going to get to go live in a place like that? Because 530 00:30:41.910 --> 00:30:42.950 somebody's got 531 00:30:42.950 --> 00:30:45.130 to go live there. Because 532 00:30:45.140 --> 00:30:45.290 if 533 00:30:45.400 --> 00:30:48.310 your people don't go live there... 534 00:30:48.300 --> 00:30:48.520 then 535 00:30:48.640 --> 00:30:56.510 the Gazans are going to start to spread out and they're going to take that territory back just by osmosis. So you've got to go settle that land if you want to keep it. 536 00:30:56.520 --> 00:30:57.850 Who are you going to 537 00:30:57.850 --> 00:30:58.880 get to do it? 538 00:30:59.210 --> 00:31:00.110 And when the 539 00:31:00.110 --> 00:31:03.570 Arabs do attack and Jewish blood is spilled, who 540 00:31:03.730 --> 00:31:04.030 are you 541 00:31:04.030 --> 00:31:06.780 going to get to go across the border into 542 00:31:06.780 --> 00:31:12.580 their towns, into their villages, into their neighborhoods to take revenge? 543 00:31:13.700 --> 00:31:14.530 Today, in a 544 00:31:14.740 --> 00:31:19.040 place like America, we say, well, you send in the army, you know, send in the 545 00:31:19.040 --> 00:31:19.870 Navy SEALs, 546 00:31:20.040 --> 00:31:20.410 and then 547 00:31:20.410 --> 00:31:25.370 this massive bureaucratic apparatus kicks into gear to go deal with whatever 548 00:31:25.370 --> 00:31:26.050 it is. But 549 00:31:26.820 --> 00:31:27.280 institutions like 550 00:31:27.400 --> 00:31:27.980 the army in 551 00:31:27.980 --> 00:31:32.670 Israel at this time had not really developed into much more than a militia. And 552 00:31:32.670 --> 00:31:33.390 while the 553 00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:37.290 average soldier might be brave, might be prepared 554 00:31:37.290 --> 00:31:38.020 to handle 555 00:31:38.020 --> 00:31:42.640 a rifle and stand firm at his defensive position if the Arabs attack... 556 00:31:42.850 --> 00:31:42.850 Not 557 00:31:42.870 --> 00:31:45.970 everybody is cut out to go into hostile territory 558 00:31:46.240 --> 00:31:51.510 beyond the range of any rescue or reinforcement to go carry out assassinations or sabotage. 559 00:31:51.780 --> 00:31:52.700 And so who are you 560 00:31:52.770 --> 00:31:54.490 going to get to do it? 561 00:31:54.770 --> 00:31:55.790 There's only one 562 00:31:55.820 --> 00:31:57.990 answer to that question. 563 00:31:58.330 --> 00:31:59.070 There's only 564 00:31:59.070 --> 00:32:04.410 ever been one answer. You're going to get people like Ariel Sharon. 565 00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:06.160 You don't do something 566 00:32:06.270 --> 00:32:07.040 like what 567 00:32:07.040 --> 00:32:09.070 the Zionists were doing. 568 00:32:09.520 --> 00:32:09.650 Or 569 00:32:09.870 --> 00:32:14.640 what the Americans did on the frontier, for that matter. Without people like that. 570 00:32:14.990 --> 00:32:16.330 And those 571 00:32:16.330 --> 00:32:21.430 people often have a character that makes them heroic when the shit hits the fan. But 572 00:32:21.550 --> 00:32:22.260 makes them a 573 00:32:22.260 --> 00:32:23.980 dangerous liability in any 574 00:32:24.810 --> 00:32:26.100 situation short of that. 575 00:32:26.360 --> 00:32:26.490 Kind of 576 00:32:26.490 --> 00:32:31.140 like that tough guy friend that you always want to have your back in a bar fight. But 577 00:32:31.290 --> 00:32:31.610 for some 578 00:32:31.610 --> 00:32:35.920 reason, every single time you go out with them, you seem to get into a bar fight. 579 00:32:37.150 --> 00:32:37.730 well 580 00:32:38.300 --> 00:32:47.050 with men like Sharon at the business end of Israel's relations with the Arabs it was easy to see how things were going to turn out 581 00:32:47.050 --> 00:32:48.590 and of course Sharon would 582 00:32:48.590 --> 00:32:51.660 say they were always going to turn out that way only 583 00:32:51.660 --> 00:32:58.610 without men like him the whole Zionist project would have gone under it's like Dayan said in that eulogy how 584 00:32:58.610 --> 00:32:59.380 could they 585 00:32:59.500 --> 00:33:04.670 ever come to terms with a people whose land they had taken by force 586 00:33:04.870 --> 00:33:09.900 other than by giving their land back. You remember, at this time we're talking about, 587 00:33:10.130 --> 00:33:10.600 this was not 588 00:33:10.600 --> 00:33:17.720 something that had happened a few generations ago. It wasn't something that had happened to your grandparents or great-grandparents. 589 00:33:17.950 --> 00:33:19.090 It happened 590 00:33:19.090 --> 00:33:20.200 to you. 591 00:33:20.430 --> 00:33:20.780 Seven to 592 00:33:20.780 --> 00:33:30.700 eight hundred thousand Palestinians were living miles away in squalid camps while Jews slept in their beds in their former homes. 593 00:33:31.550 --> 00:33:32.250 But that 594 00:33:32.320 --> 00:33:34.130 is not something that can be fixed 595 00:33:34.130 --> 00:33:35.130 with words. And 596 00:33:35.130 --> 00:33:35.830 the more 597 00:33:35.830 --> 00:33:44.050 ruthless and practical Zionists like Sharon and Dayan knew that there was no way to make that right because they knew how 598 00:33:44.050 --> 00:33:50.010 men like them would react if that had happened to them. And so unless they wanted to just give up on the 599 00:33:50.100 --> 00:33:51.620 Zionist project, and at 600 00:33:51.620 --> 00:33:52.230 this point 601 00:33:52.250 --> 00:33:56.590 where could the Jews go even if they wanted to in the wake of World War II, they 602 00:33:56.590 --> 00:33:57.420 were just going to 603 00:33:57.490 --> 00:34:00.250 have to forget about questions of right and wrong. 604 00:34:00.590 --> 00:34:00.790 And 605 00:34:00.910 --> 00:34:02.110 just get ready to fight. 606 00:34:02.430 --> 00:34:03.970 Now the Palestinians 607 00:34:06.080 --> 00:34:08.130 were not only a problem for Israel. 608 00:34:08.450 --> 00:34:09.100 Anytime you 609 00:34:09.100 --> 00:34:11.630 uproot 700,000 610 00:34:11.630 --> 00:34:19.170 people, throw them out of their homes with what they can carry on their backs, and send them off to live anywhere but here, 611 00:34:19.490 --> 00:34:20.570 that population is 612 00:34:20.570 --> 00:34:24.060 going to present problems for any country where 613 00:34:24.060 --> 00:34:24.410 they 614 00:34:24.410 --> 00:34:25.170 end up. 615 00:34:25.140 --> 00:34:25.880 Where they 616 00:34:25.960 --> 00:34:32.680 ended up was in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Gaza 617 00:34:33.140 --> 00:34:33.760 borders Egypt 618 00:34:33.910 --> 00:34:39.120 and fell under Egyptian military control after the 48 War. The 619 00:34:39.120 --> 00:34:39.910 West Bank, 620 00:34:39.910 --> 00:34:46.120 which is on the western bank of the Jordan River that the Israelis hadn't taken, had been under the control 621 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:48.100 of Jordan since the 48 War. 622 00:34:49.340 --> 00:34:49.940 The 623 00:34:50.400 --> 00:34:55.530 influx of so many destitute refugees was very difficult on these countries. It was 624 00:34:56.240 --> 00:35:08.090 economically burdensome, socially disruptive, politically destabilizing for sure, in all the countries that received them. Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, these 625 00:35:08.100 --> 00:35:08.750 were all 626 00:35:08.760 --> 00:35:11.890 very young states themselves. Until 627 00:35:11.890 --> 00:35:12.850 the First World 628 00:35:12.950 --> 00:35:15.260 War, they'd been Ottoman Empire 629 00:35:15.260 --> 00:35:16.060 provinces, 630 00:35:16.700 --> 00:35:16.710 And 631 00:35:16.950 --> 00:35:18.140 then France controlled 632 00:35:18.140 --> 00:35:21.260 what would become Lebanon and Syria while Britain controlled Jordan. 633 00:35:21.530 --> 00:35:21.830 And these 634 00:35:21.980 --> 00:35:27.800 countries only really acquired independent statehood in the mid-40s during and after World War II. 635 00:35:28.080 --> 00:35:28.930 And so they're 636 00:35:28.930 --> 00:35:30.780 just a few years old. 637 00:35:31.070 --> 00:35:31.950 Aside from Egypt, 638 00:35:31.950 --> 00:35:39.480 these young states were held together with string and silly putty. And actually, even in Egypt, the government wasn't really stable. In 639 00:35:39.610 --> 00:35:40.470 Lebanon, for 640 00:35:40.470 --> 00:35:45.780 example, around 100,000 Palestinian refugees... 641 00:35:46.030 --> 00:35:50.140 entered a state with a total population of only about 1.3 million. 642 00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:51.980 And those people weren't 643 00:35:51.980 --> 00:35:57.120 distributed evenly throughout the country. They were concentrated in certain 644 00:35:57.120 --> 00:36:05.420 areas in the south, which meant that certain portions of the already fractious Lebanese population felt the brunt of the consequences. The Lebanese 645 00:36:05.420 --> 00:36:08.360 government was totally out of its depth 646 00:36:08.650 --> 00:36:11.330 trying to deal with that situation 647 00:36:11.340 --> 00:36:11.340 and 648 00:36:11.710 --> 00:36:16.150 And so, the various ethnic and religious communities started taking matters into their 649 00:36:16.150 --> 00:36:33.700 own hands. And tensions started to build, and Lebanon started down its path to disaster. 100,000 people is a lot in any case, but that's one-thirteenth of the population of Lebanon at the time. So, just imagine 650 00:36:33.900 --> 00:36:39.470 something like 25 million people coming into the U.S. all at once. 651 00:36:39.470 --> 00:36:39.720 With 652 00:36:39.830 --> 00:36:45.070 little or nothing to their names, and essentially taking over a region of the country. Oh, 653 00:36:45.070 --> 00:36:47.310 and by the way, they're at 654 00:36:47.460 --> 00:36:48.040 war with 655 00:36:48.040 --> 00:36:54.500 the country next door. And the country next door is going to hold you responsible for anything those people do. 656 00:36:54.860 --> 00:36:56.560 The largest group of 657 00:36:57.300 --> 00:37:00.070 refugees ended up in Jordan. And 658 00:37:00.190 --> 00:37:01.050 ever since the 659 00:37:01.050 --> 00:37:06.310 founding of Israel, the Jordanian monarchy has had to walk a tightrope. 660 00:37:06.930 --> 00:37:07.300 with 661 00:37:07.500 --> 00:37:10.930 provoking Israel by its support for the Palestinian 662 00:37:10.940 --> 00:37:19.230 cause on one side and inviting accusations of being a collaborator and a stooge of the Zionists on the other side. They 663 00:37:19.400 --> 00:37:20.130 still walk 664 00:37:20.130 --> 00:37:20.530 this 665 00:37:20.530 --> 00:37:21.710 tightrope. 666 00:37:21.770 --> 00:37:22.320 And just 667 00:37:22.340 --> 00:37:28.330 now, in the last few weeks, a record number of Palestinian protesters, hundreds of thousands of protesters, 668 00:37:29.130 --> 00:37:30.030 flooded the streets 669 00:37:30.060 --> 00:37:36.470 of Amman, the capital of Jordan, to denounce the Israeli assault on Gaza and call for action from the Jordanian government. 670 00:37:36.850 --> 00:37:38.190 This is not a 671 00:37:38.190 --> 00:37:44.280 small concern for a monarchy that is not even native to the region of Jordan. 672 00:37:44.740 --> 00:37:45.490 The Hashemites 673 00:37:45.490 --> 00:37:46.100 who ruled 674 00:37:46.100 --> 00:37:49.040 Jordan came from the Arabian Peninsula. At 675 00:37:49.190 --> 00:37:49.650 the time 676 00:37:49.650 --> 00:37:56.030 we're talking about, they had only been imported and installed by the British barely 40 years earlier. 677 00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:02.060 So it's not as if they had some deep claim to legitimacy. Palestinians made up 678 00:38:02.070 --> 00:38:14.000 over half the population of Jordan. They still do. The overwhelming majority of the urban population, which is to say the politically significant population. 679 00:38:14.320 --> 00:38:15.510 From the very 680 00:38:15.510 --> 00:38:17.880 beginning, whenever the 681 00:38:17.880 --> 00:38:25.470 subject of a Palestinian state came up, the worry of Jordan's monarchy was that someone was going to say, Uh, excuse 682 00:38:25.580 --> 00:38:25.940 me. 683 00:38:25.950 --> 00:38:26.130 Why 684 00:38:26.290 --> 00:38:28.760 shouldn't Jordan be the Palestinian state? You 685 00:38:28.890 --> 00:38:29.460 know, the 686 00:38:29.470 --> 00:38:34.530 Palestinians are the majority there, after all. And, you know, the 687 00:38:34.570 --> 00:38:39.890 Hashemites who rule that place are not even from the area. Why shouldn't that be Palestine? 688 00:38:40.220 --> 00:38:40.880 And so, in 689 00:38:40.880 --> 00:38:42.500 fact, a lot of the 690 00:38:42.530 --> 00:38:43.740 secular Arab 691 00:38:43.740 --> 00:38:50.010 leaders around the region, meaning the leaders of countries that had presidents, not kings 692 00:38:50.130 --> 00:38:51.350 like Egypt and Syria, 693 00:38:52.130 --> 00:38:52.140 they 694 00:38:52.310 --> 00:38:55.390 were asking exactly that question. Why shouldn't Jordan 695 00:38:55.780 --> 00:39:05.930 be the Palestinian state? The retreat of the European empires from their former colonies after the Second World War gave 696 00:39:05.930 --> 00:39:10.230 rise to a generation of charismatic nationalist leaders in the Third 697 00:39:10.740 --> 00:39:11.400 World. This was 698 00:39:11.400 --> 00:39:18.440 something you were seeing happen in Africa, it was happening in Asia, it was happening in the Middle East and North 699 00:39:18.460 --> 00:39:18.940 Africa. 700 00:39:18.910 --> 00:39:19.210 The 701 00:39:19.400 --> 00:39:26.880 people were swept up in the enthusiasm that comes with fresh independence. And charismatic leaders were rising up to represent those 702 00:39:26.970 --> 00:39:29.590 people and also to take advantage of that energy. The 703 00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:30.750 thing is, in 704 00:39:30.750 --> 00:39:43.820 many of these countries, the Europeans had pulled out their colonial administrations and pulled out their military forces. But they didn't give up ownership of the resources and the infrastructure in those countries. So 705 00:39:44.120 --> 00:39:44.860 that's just a 706 00:39:44.860 --> 00:39:46.800 recipe for conflict. 707 00:39:47.260 --> 00:39:47.400 In 708 00:39:47.570 --> 00:39:50.690 fact, many of the post-colonial conflicts in the 709 00:39:50.840 --> 00:39:53.060 third world throughout the 20th century 710 00:39:53.320 --> 00:39:53.320 were 711 00:39:53.370 --> 00:39:55.460 the result of exactly this dynamic. 712 00:39:55.670 --> 00:39:56.150 And so, for 713 00:39:56.150 --> 00:40:04.280 example, the British and the French still held a controlling interest in the Suez Canal, which is really Egypt's chief 714 00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:08.370 infrastructure asset, chief 715 00:40:08.430 --> 00:40:09.500 strategic 716 00:40:10.560 --> 00:40:11.200 asset of, 717 00:40:11.150 --> 00:40:11.730 The Suez 718 00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:19.610 Canal runs right through Egypt, it's all on Egyptian territory, connecting the Red and Mediterranean Seas, and it's still owned by the French and the British at the time. 719 00:40:19.630 --> 00:40:21.180 The Arab nationalists who 720 00:40:21.180 --> 00:40:29.820 were leading these new republics were not happy about the lingering foreign control in their countries, but it wasn't an easy thing to do something 721 00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:30.470 about it. 722 00:40:30.510 --> 00:40:31.620 The biggest 723 00:40:31.620 --> 00:40:36.090 problems the Arab nations have faced... 724 00:40:36.370 --> 00:40:41.460 Then, and that they still face, is that they've just never been able to cooperate with each other. Not 725 00:40:41.580 --> 00:40:41.940 for any 726 00:40:41.940 --> 00:40:43.820 length of time, anyway. 727 00:40:44.180 --> 00:40:44.560 Some Arab 728 00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:49.940 countries are ruled by monarchies, others call themselves republics. 729 00:40:50.230 --> 00:40:50.450 Some are 730 00:40:50.450 --> 00:40:52.010 religious and sectarian, 731 00:40:52.570 --> 00:40:54.490 others are secular and socialist. 732 00:40:54.790 --> 00:40:56.030 The leaders of each 733 00:40:56.030 --> 00:40:59.310 Arab country competed with each other as 734 00:40:59.520 --> 00:40:59.760 much or 735 00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:04.270 more than they did against outside powers, including Israel. 736 00:41:04.460 --> 00:41:04.810 And so 737 00:41:05.090 --> 00:41:06.010 they've always been 738 00:41:06.020 --> 00:41:09.100 easy marks for Israel and the West to play off against 739 00:41:09.160 --> 00:41:09.650 each other. 740 00:41:10.370 --> 00:41:11.480 These secular 741 00:41:11.490 --> 00:41:16.940 Arab leaders, they all wanted some form of pan-Arab unity. 742 00:41:17.770 --> 00:41:17.780 Whether 743 00:41:17.790 --> 00:41:29.390 that meant political unification, as in like an Arab Warsaw Pact, or just a lighter alliance like an Arab NATO, they wanted that kind of organization. But they 744 00:41:29.390 --> 00:41:29.760 all meant 745 00:41:29.770 --> 00:41:33.260 pan-Arab unity under their leadership, and they wanted that kind of organization. 746 00:41:33.260 --> 00:41:35.620 and so they could never quite agree on how to get it done. 747 00:41:35.850 --> 00:41:36.280 After the 748 00:41:36.290 --> 00:41:42.200 humiliation of the Arab armies in 1948, one of the ways to bolster popular 749 00:41:42.200 --> 00:41:42.930 support 750 00:41:42.950 --> 00:41:44.150 for you being the one, 751 00:41:44.360 --> 00:41:44.640 not only 752 00:41:44.640 --> 00:41:50.980 among your own people, but throughout the region, was to promise that you were going to be the one who was going to confront the Zionists 753 00:41:51.020 --> 00:41:53.230 and get justice for the Palestinians. By the 754 00:41:53.230 --> 00:41:55.590 mid-1950s, 755 00:41:56.040 --> 00:42:02.370 over a million Palestinians were now living in squalor, mostly in squalor, 756 00:42:02.350 --> 00:42:02.480 In 757 00:42:02.650 --> 00:42:06.940 neighboring countries with no end or change in their situation in sight. 758 00:42:07.250 --> 00:42:08.240 Israel was a 759 00:42:08.240 --> 00:42:18.190 constant reminder of the years of European domination. Actually, not just a reminder. To the Arabs, it represented the continued 760 00:42:18.190 --> 00:42:22.050 presence of European imperialism in the Arab world. 761 00:42:23.650 --> 00:42:24.730 while 762 00:42:25.130 --> 00:42:32.570 the Israelis saw themselves especially after World War II essentially as a nation of refugees themselves that 763 00:42:32.570 --> 00:42:33.530 is not how 764 00:42:33.570 --> 00:42:33.880 the 765 00:42:33.910 --> 00:42:40.470 Arabs experienced them the Arabs experienced them as invaders and colonizers that's 766 00:42:40.910 --> 00:42:40.990 not 767 00:42:40.990 --> 00:42:50.760 exactly new in history that's often how it goes the Turks who conquered the Byzantine Empire were only there because the Mongols had driven them off 768 00:42:50.970 --> 00:42:51.490 the steppe 769 00:42:51.490 --> 00:42:51.810 The 770 00:42:52.100 --> 00:42:59.180 Visigoths who sacked Rome in 410, they were being driven deeper into the Roman Empire because they were trying to get away from the Huns. Hell, 771 00:42:59.260 --> 00:43:00.930 a lot of early Americans 772 00:43:01.050 --> 00:43:05.110 believed that they were refugees from persecution, but 773 00:43:05.330 --> 00:43:05.850 that did not 774 00:43:05.850 --> 00:43:11.900 soften their impact on the Native Americans. And so, promises by the Arab 775 00:43:12.140 --> 00:43:15.930 leaders to drive out the Zionists were, 776 00:43:15.970 --> 00:43:16.330 were of 777 00:43:16.350 --> 00:43:19.890 a piece with their more general commitment to extirpate European 778 00:43:19.970 --> 00:43:24.770 influence, political and economic control from the Middle East. 779 00:43:25.150 --> 00:43:26.810 How you see the 780 00:43:26.810 --> 00:43:30.110 Israelis' behavior, 781 00:43:30.110 --> 00:43:38.570 both toward the Palestinians as well as toward the surrounding Arab countries, really depends on how broad a view of the situation you want to take. 782 00:43:38.570 --> 00:43:39.400 Or maybe a 783 00:43:39.500 --> 00:43:42.090 better way to say it is... 784 00:43:42.230 --> 00:43:42.230 It 785 00:43:42.280 --> 00:43:45.110 depends on when you want to start the historical clock. 786 00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:47.000 Somebody taking 787 00:43:47.000 --> 00:43:51.540 a close-in view would say, well, look, the Israelis are being attacked, 788 00:43:51.660 --> 00:43:52.080 so they're 789 00:43:52.080 --> 00:43:56.410 within their rights to retaliate. I mean, what are they supposed to do? Just let people attack them? 790 00:43:56.640 --> 00:43:57.860 Answer to that seems 791 00:43:57.860 --> 00:43:59.840 pretty obvious, right? 792 00:44:00.060 --> 00:44:01.130 But someone taking a 793 00:44:01.130 --> 00:44:07.070 30,000-foot historical view is going to say, well, wait a second, the Israelis were the ones who 794 00:44:07.070 --> 00:44:10.240 seized this land and drove these people out of their homes. 795 00:44:10.460 --> 00:44:10.800 Right? 796 00:44:10.780 --> 00:44:11.080 And so 797 00:44:11.180 --> 00:44:14.800 the Palestinians are surely within their rights to fight back. What are they 798 00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:18.280 supposed to do? Just accept their ethnic cleansing and move on? And 799 00:44:18.420 --> 00:44:19.240 the answer to 800 00:44:19.240 --> 00:44:28.020 that seems pretty obvious too. And you still see people throwing these lines at each other with full earnestness as people debate the topic today. 801 00:44:28.360 --> 00:44:29.710 Now that Israel's 802 00:44:29.710 --> 00:44:32.670 been around for 75 years, 803 00:44:33.080 --> 00:44:33.420 people on the 804 00:44:33.420 --> 00:44:39.980 outside tend to have a different view of the situation than when it had only been around for a decade or so. 805 00:44:40.770 --> 00:44:51.850 Today, many people look at Palestinian terrorism the way they would look at it if the American Indian movement here in 2023 started lighting off bombs, 806 00:44:52.530 --> 00:44:52.620 started a 807 00:44:52.620 --> 00:44:54.890 campaign of mass terror to take 808 00:44:54.890 --> 00:44:58.560 back North America. Just anachronistic, pointless 809 00:44:58.560 --> 00:45:03.360 violence, even if their original historical grievances were totally legitimate. But 810 00:45:03.690 --> 00:45:04.440 most of us 811 00:45:04.440 --> 00:45:08.050 view Indian attacks in the 1700s 812 00:45:08.050 --> 00:45:09.190 and 1800s 813 00:45:09.510 --> 00:45:14.930 During and just after European settlers were driving them out of their homes and colonizing their land, we 814 00:45:15.030 --> 00:45:15.600 view that 815 00:45:15.810 --> 00:45:19.470 differently than if the AIM started launching attacks today. 816 00:45:19.830 --> 00:45:21.280 When the Israelis and Arabs 817 00:45:21.380 --> 00:45:25.270 were killing each other in the 50s and 60s, either 818 00:45:25.470 --> 00:45:26.070 or both 819 00:45:26.150 --> 00:45:28.130 sides could be seen as acting 820 00:45:28.130 --> 00:45:28.300 in 821 00:45:28.300 --> 00:45:36.160 legitimate self-defense or taking justified revenge, depending on how you want to frame the question. 822 00:45:37.150 --> 00:45:37.830 But like 823 00:45:37.970 --> 00:45:44.630 Moshe Dayan said in that eulogy, for the Israelis, these were going to have to be moral quandaries for their children. To 824 00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:46.090 debate and judge, 825 00:45:46.090 --> 00:45:52.080 hopefully, in Israeli universities, in Israeli cities, but that was only going to 826 00:45:52.080 --> 00:46:00.250 happen if this generation, this first settler generation, put those quandaries aside and acted ruthlessly and decisively. This 827 00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:01.450 was in the 828 00:46:01.450 --> 00:46:04.350 wake of World War II. 829 00:46:04.340 --> 00:46:04.770 And so 830 00:46:04.940 --> 00:46:07.890 the Zionists were not in a mood to take moral 831 00:46:07.890 --> 00:46:09.390 advice from anybody, 832 00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:10.040 nor to 833 00:46:10.190 --> 00:46:13.210 listen to anyone's lectures on the laws of war. The 834 00:46:13.540 --> 00:46:14.430 attitude of many 835 00:46:14.510 --> 00:46:20.180 Israeli leaders was the same as that of many Palestinian militants. If 836 00:46:20.600 --> 00:46:20.810 America 837 00:46:20.810 --> 00:46:27.020 can nuke Japanese cities, and the Soviets can massacre their way through Eastern 838 00:46:27.020 --> 00:46:28.460 Europe... 839 00:46:28.450 --> 00:46:28.660 If 840 00:46:29.100 --> 00:46:35.950 millions of German civilians can be ethnically cleansed from European countries they lived in for centuries, then 841 00:46:36.180 --> 00:46:36.790 given the 842 00:46:36.790 --> 00:46:41.950 existential danger they faced, both Israelis and Palestinians 843 00:46:41.950 --> 00:46:45.180 felt that any means were justified in pursuit of their victory. It 844 00:46:45.660 --> 00:46:45.860 really is 845 00:46:45.860 --> 00:46:52.310 important to remember that historical context, meaning the fact that the initial 846 00:46:52.310 --> 00:46:55.350 acts which set off the cycle of violence 847 00:46:55.640 --> 00:46:59.990 happened right around the era of world war ii not because the context 848 00:47:00.410 --> 00:47:02.190 justifies anything but 849 00:47:02.540 --> 00:47:02.920 because it 850 00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:04.920 affected what people thought 851 00:47:04.930 --> 00:47:05.780 of as normal 852 00:47:06.030 --> 00:47:06.580 what people 853 00:47:06.580 --> 00:47:10.710 thought of as being within the bounds of what was normal 854 00:47:10.710 --> 00:47:12.090 in war the world 855 00:47:12.090 --> 00:47:16.700 had spent the last few years of world war ii engaged in 856 00:47:17.140 --> 00:47:21.860 total unrestrained violence against civilian populations 857 00:47:21.860 --> 00:47:21.860 and 858 00:47:22.000 --> 00:47:23.100 Both sides, the Axis 859 00:47:23.100 --> 00:47:24.200 and the Allies. 860 00:47:24.420 --> 00:47:25.530 When the 861 00:47:25.530 --> 00:47:33.470 Zionists expelled the Palestinians in 1948, the Soviet Union, a world power, 862 00:47:33.560 --> 00:47:34.290 a member in 863 00:47:34.380 --> 00:47:45.050 good standing of the UN Security Council, legitimized by the other Allies who had allowed Soviet butchers to sit as judges of war crimes at Nuremberg. 864 00:47:45.230 --> 00:47:46.520 At the same time that 865 00:47:46.620 --> 00:47:50.290 the Zionists were carrying out those expulsions, 866 00:47:50.270 --> 00:47:50.490 The 867 00:47:50.670 --> 00:47:57.310 Soviet Union was engaged in extraordinary violence against millions of people in the parts of Europe that it had conquered. 868 00:47:57.710 --> 00:47:59.560 In the Korean 869 00:47:59.720 --> 00:48:04.890 War, a few years later in the early 50s, we killed something like 870 00:48:05.020 --> 00:48:08.830 20% of the entire population of North Korea. A 871 00:48:09.110 --> 00:48:09.730 lot of it by 872 00:48:09.730 --> 00:48:13.450 using heavy bombers against an enemy that had no air force. 873 00:48:13.630 --> 00:48:14.880 And so that's the 874 00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:15.900 state of the 875 00:48:15.900 --> 00:48:16.770 world. 876 00:48:17.430 --> 00:48:17.430 The 877 00:48:17.520 --> 00:48:21.360 state of international affairs in the 40s and 50s. 878 00:48:21.700 --> 00:48:23.450 There's another point 879 00:48:23.450 --> 00:48:27.600 about the historical context, which is good to keep in mind. And 880 00:48:27.740 --> 00:48:29.890 actually, I guess I've already kind of touched 881 00:48:29.970 --> 00:48:32.020 on this, but it's worth bringing into the foreground. 882 00:48:32.330 --> 00:48:33.340 And it's that in 883 00:48:33.340 --> 00:48:39.090 these early days, Israeli government institutions were still in their 884 00:48:39.090 --> 00:48:40.100 infancy. I 885 00:48:40.340 --> 00:48:40.700 mean, they 886 00:48:40.700 --> 00:48:42.380 were just being put together. 887 00:48:43.180 --> 00:48:43.640 You hear 888 00:48:43.840 --> 00:48:49.400 about like an Israeli intelligence agency And a lot of times it just meant a shabby building With a few deaths thrown in it 889 00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:50.000 Today 890 00:48:50.080 --> 00:49:05.280 when we say Mossad or Israeli defense forces People picture this hyper-efficient High-tech organization With elaborate bureaucracies To handle everything from recruiting To training, to pensions To propaganda 891 00:49:05.280 --> 00:49:07.270 and legal questions Back 892 00:49:07.420 --> 00:49:07.950 in the 893 00:49:07.950 --> 00:49:10.960 early days None of that existed 894 00:49:10.930 --> 00:49:11.340 And the 895 00:49:11.460 --> 00:49:19.690 Israelis were flying by the seat of their pants a lot of the time, often building out these institutions as it became necessary in the course of operations. And 896 00:49:19.820 --> 00:49:21.040 so they were 897 00:49:21.040 --> 00:49:22.120 carrying 898 00:49:22.120 --> 00:49:30.380 out very bold operations. Operations that would never make it past legal review today in the modern world. 899 00:49:30.390 --> 00:49:31.710 They would often 900 00:49:31.870 --> 00:49:39.180 carry out operations in one part of the government that the rest of the government knew nothing about. 901 00:49:39.740 --> 00:49:40.110 Just 902 00:49:40.250 --> 00:49:53.830 like Sharon's Unit 101 Picking its own fights in Gaza Half the time the Israeli defense forces Sent in to reinforce them They just thought it was an Egyptian attack Which is what was intended by Sharon's unit 903 00:49:54.390 --> 00:49:55.020 Take an 904 00:49:55.020 --> 00:49:57.880 example from 1954 Famous 905 00:49:57.880 --> 00:50:07.540 example In 1954 Israeli military intelligence Recruited a handful of Jews Who were living in Egypt at the 906 00:50:07.600 --> 00:50:08.220 time 907 00:50:08.190 --> 00:50:08.780 and got 908 00:50:08.820 --> 00:50:20.200 them to agree to plant bombs in movie theaters, libraries, and education centers owned by Britain and the United States, where British and American people frequented. Two 909 00:50:20.540 --> 00:50:21.010 American 910 00:50:21.010 --> 00:50:24.010 libraries in a British theater were 911 00:50:24.120 --> 00:50:27.980 bombed by these terrorists working for Israel. 912 00:50:28.030 --> 00:50:29.340 They called it 913 00:50:29.340 --> 00:50:32.980 Operation Susanna. It's come down better 914 00:50:32.980 --> 00:50:34.840 known as the Levon Affair. 915 00:50:35.370 --> 00:50:37.430 after the Israeli defense minister at the time. 916 00:50:37.640 --> 00:50:39.000 The plan was to 917 00:50:39.000 --> 00:50:50.020 blame the attacks on the Egyptians to incite the British and the Americans against Israel's main enemy. Just a straightforward, dictionary-definition 918 00:50:50.460 --> 00:50:51.210 false flag. 919 00:50:51.460 --> 00:50:52.950 Fortunately, the 920 00:50:52.950 --> 00:50:57.020 operation was poorly planned and sloppily carried out. 921 00:50:57.250 --> 00:50:57.550 So the 922 00:50:57.550 --> 00:51:01.900 Egyptians caught on, and 11 Israeli agents, both Egyptian 923 00:51:01.900 --> 00:51:04.230 Jews and undercover Israeli officers, 924 00:51:05.110 --> 00:51:05.110 were 925 00:51:05.150 --> 00:51:08.920 captured, they were tortured, and except for two 926 00:51:08.920 --> 00:51:14.310 who managed to escape, sentenced to long prison terms or death. 927 00:51:14.610 --> 00:51:15.360 Israel, of 928 00:51:15.360 --> 00:51:22.860 course, denied involvement in the Levon affair, continued to deny involvement until 2005, when the government 929 00:51:23.420 --> 00:51:25.830 finally dropped the charade and officially honored the 930 00:51:26.340 --> 00:51:27.710 surviving agents of the operation. 931 00:51:27.960 --> 00:51:29.860 So that's the kind of 932 00:51:29.860 --> 00:51:32.010 thing that was going 933 00:51:32.010 --> 00:51:32.690 on. 934 00:51:32.640 --> 00:51:33.010 Two 935 00:51:33.490 --> 00:51:39.940 years later, 1956, the Israelis engaged with Western powers against Egypt more 936 00:51:40.020 --> 00:51:49.600 directly. Jamal Abdul Nasser had taken over as President of Egypt in 1956, and he was positioned as the natural leader of 937 00:51:49.810 --> 00:51:50.380 the Arab 938 00:51:50.380 --> 00:51:55.120 world. He was also Israel's number one nemesis from the mid-50s 939 00:51:55.120 --> 00:51:55.980 until the late 940 00:51:56.050 --> 00:51:57.400 1960s. 941 00:51:57.380 --> 00:52:05.670 Nasser was a complicated figure in many ways. In some ways I would say he was a 942 00:52:05.670 --> 00:52:12.460 great man, you know, in a political sense, a great man of 20th century history. He was 943 00:52:12.460 --> 00:52:24.700 tall, he looked the part, he was a very, very good orator, very inspiring figure. 944 00:52:25.220 --> 00:52:33.720 Sometimes, let's just say, his appetite was a little bigger than his stomach, and that brought some disaster onto his country eventually. Nasser 945 00:52:33.720 --> 00:52:35.170 championed the 946 00:52:35.170 --> 00:52:38.980 Palestinian cause, as all Arab leaders 947 00:52:38.980 --> 00:52:39.880 did, and 948 00:52:39.880 --> 00:52:40.490 he did it 949 00:52:40.560 --> 00:52:45.550 for his own reasons, as all other Arab leaders also did. Nasser 950 00:52:45.620 --> 00:52:46.900 wanted to bring the 951 00:52:46.900 --> 00:52:53.280 Arab countries under a single political authority, under his leadership, and, 952 00:52:53.270 --> 00:52:53.700 And so 953 00:52:53.940 --> 00:53:01.020 aside from questions of justice or law or religious obligation, Israel was just in the way. It was literally 954 00:53:01.020 --> 00:53:06.880 a physical impediment to his plans, separating Egypt from the rest of these Arab countries. All 955 00:53:06.880 --> 00:53:08.180 the secular Arab 956 00:53:08.180 --> 00:53:17.910 leaders in the region favored some kind of pan-Arab cooperation, if not outright political unification like Nasser wanted. All the republics 957 00:53:17.910 --> 00:53:18.890 wanted that. 958 00:53:19.970 --> 00:53:20.840 But none of 959 00:53:20.970 --> 00:53:27.300 the Arab monarchies wanted that. The Hashemite kingdoms of Jordan and Iraq, 960 00:53:27.310 --> 00:53:27.770 Saudi 961 00:53:27.880 --> 00:53:34.950 Arabia and the other Gulf shikdoms, the Moroccans, these countries were the personal possessions of 962 00:53:34.950 --> 00:53:40.890 their monarchs, and they were not going to allow their personal possessions to be absorbed into some 963 00:53:40.890 --> 00:53:43.110 pan-Arab socialist republic. Many 964 00:53:43.110 --> 00:53:44.640 of these monarchies 965 00:53:44.650 --> 00:53:48.080 had been put in place by the British Empire. 966 00:53:48.610 --> 00:53:48.790 And 967 00:53:48.930 --> 00:53:52.090 they continued to have chummy relations with Britain in the West. 968 00:53:52.090 --> 00:53:52.700 Now, the 969 00:53:52.730 --> 00:53:56.990 Prime Minister of Jordan, who served King Hussein in the late 60s, for example, 970 00:53:57.000 --> 00:53:57.410 that guy 971 00:53:57.410 --> 00:53:59.150 had served in the British Navy. 972 00:53:59.460 --> 00:54:00.350 And so, from 973 00:54:00.350 --> 00:54:02.970 Nasser's perspective, and 974 00:54:02.970 --> 00:54:03.920 that of the 975 00:54:03.920 --> 00:54:05.270 Syrians and the 976 00:54:05.270 --> 00:54:07.210 Ba'athists as well, 977 00:54:07.550 --> 00:54:08.560 these monarchies 978 00:54:08.660 --> 00:54:16.070 were illegitimate. They were pawns of Western powers. More importantly, they stood in the way 979 00:54:16.070 --> 00:54:17.010 of Arab unity 980 00:54:17.600 --> 00:54:17.990 and, 981 00:54:17.940 --> 00:54:18.630 And so they 982 00:54:18.650 --> 00:54:22.850 were all right next to Israel on the list of things that had to go. Egypt 983 00:54:22.970 --> 00:54:24.610 had for a long time 984 00:54:24.610 --> 00:54:28.100 been close to the British too. But 985 00:54:28.570 --> 00:54:28.670 neither 986 00:54:28.690 --> 00:54:31.850 the British nor any of the Western powers were in 987 00:54:31.900 --> 00:54:41.920 favor of Arab unification. And so once Nasser came to power in 1956, he began to pull away from the West and started seeking friendship with the Soviet Union. 988 00:54:42.700 --> 00:54:49.690 which was looking for allies in the region and making big promises of funding and engineering support and military training. 989 00:54:50.040 --> 00:54:51.820 And so 1956 990 00:54:51.820 --> 00:54:53.060 was going to 991 00:54:53.110 --> 00:55:08.960 be the year of the second Arab-Israeli war, the first being 1948. It's usually called the Suez Crisis over here, but it was the second Arab-Israeli war, and this time there was no question about who had started 992 00:55:08.960 --> 00:55:09.480 it. 993 00:55:09.490 --> 00:55:09.760 as i 994 00:55:10.490 --> 00:55:10.950 mentioned a few 995 00:55:10.950 --> 00:55:17.810 minutes ago egypt was a sovereign independent nation now but british and french investors still held the controlling interest 996 00:55:18.290 --> 00:55:18.290 in 997 00:55:18.330 --> 00:55:20.600 the suez canal which ran right through egypt the 998 00:55:21.010 --> 00:55:21.790 french and british 999 00:55:21.790 --> 00:55:24.110 reaped a majority of the profits from 1000 00:55:24.110 --> 00:55:26.670 shipping that passed through the canal 1001 00:55:26.670 --> 00:55:27.490 and so nasser 1002 00:55:27.490 --> 00:55:32.320 decided that had gone on long enough and that the canal properly belonged to 1003 00:55:33.870 --> 00:55:34.120 That 1004 00:55:34.250 --> 00:55:39.080 Egypt should be the one deciding whether and whose and how much shipping would pass 1005 00:55:39.430 --> 00:55:39.430 through 1006 00:55:39.470 --> 00:55:40.460 their territory, and 1007 00:55:40.460 --> 00:55:41.600 that the Egyptian 1008 00:55:41.600 --> 00:55:46.650 people should be the ones benefiting from it financially, and so he nationalized it. 1009 00:55:46.960 --> 00:55:48.350 Well, the British and the 1010 00:55:48.350 --> 00:55:55.820 French were not prepared to just let such an important strategic asset, not to mention cash cow, go without a 1011 00:55:55.820 --> 00:56:00.410 fight. The French and British wanted to take military action against Egypt. 1012 00:56:01.260 --> 00:56:01.590 But someone 1013 00:56:02.040 --> 00:56:09.900 was standing in their way, that someone was U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower. 1014 00:56:09.900 --> 00:56:14.970 Eisenhower was focused on the broader Cold War with the Soviet Union. He was not interested 1015 00:56:14.970 --> 00:56:17.930 in the petty financial interests of the French or the 1016 00:56:17.930 --> 00:56:21.160 British. And he was interested in 1017 00:56:21.300 --> 00:56:26.530 asserting America's authority in the post-war 1018 00:56:26.840 --> 00:56:27.590 world. 1019 00:56:27.620 --> 00:56:28.350 He was much 1020 00:56:28.490 --> 00:56:37.960 more concerned with the possibility of alienating all the countries of the Middle East and losing them to the Soviet Union and what that might mean in the context of the Cold War. A 1021 00:56:37.960 --> 00:56:39.320 global propaganda 1022 00:56:39.320 --> 00:56:53.460 war was being waged in the Third World and non-aligned countries. Soviet messaging was very simple. It practically wrote itself. They were saying to the Third World, Look, yeah, sure, we joined... 1023 00:56:53.660 --> 00:56:53.660 The 1024 00:56:53.680 --> 00:56:59.980 Allies, Britain, France, you know, America, we joined the Allies to fight the fascists during World War II. 1025 00:57:00.200 --> 00:57:02.500 But then what happened? Your 1026 00:57:02.500 --> 00:57:08.750 colonizers, backed by the Americans, went and allied with Japan and even Germany. 1027 00:57:08.940 --> 00:57:09.310 And they're 1028 00:57:09.310 --> 00:57:10.000 still trying to 1029 00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:17.720 control your countries. You know, we support your movement for national liberation. We're with you. They want to retain their empires. 1030 00:57:17.680 --> 00:57:17.880 And 1031 00:57:18.090 --> 00:57:22.780 just look at the French in Vietnam and Algeria, look at the British in Kenya, still 1032 00:57:22.780 --> 00:57:28.950 asserting control over the vital resources and assets in your countries, threatening you with violence if 1033 00:57:28.950 --> 00:57:38.970 you try to take back what's rightfully yours. Now, you can poke holes in that narrative if you want, but that's very powerful propaganda for newly independent 1034 00:57:38.970 --> 00:57:45.550 countries whose core infrastructure and natural resources are in fact still owned by their former colonizers. 1035 00:57:46.300 --> 00:57:46.860 And so while 1036 00:57:46.860 --> 00:58:03.100 the British and French were concerned with trying to keep their assets, at least some American leaders had their eye on a bigger picture. And they knew that France and Britain bullying countries in their former colonial stomping grounds made for very bad propaganda. And 1037 00:58:03.100 --> 00:58:04.640 so Eisenhower vetoed 1038 00:58:04.660 --> 00:58:09.240 any military action by the French or British against Egypt. 1039 00:58:09.910 --> 00:58:11.130 which was the most populous 1040 00:58:11.160 --> 00:58:16.820 and, in the terms that mattered to Cold War planners, the most important Arab power in the Middle East. 1041 00:58:17.170 --> 00:58:19.140 And so the French and the 1042 00:58:19.140 --> 00:58:22.010 British got together with the 1043 00:58:22.010 --> 00:58:23.020 Israelis. 1044 00:58:23.250 --> 00:58:24.090 And they huddled 1045 00:58:24.090 --> 00:58:26.380 together and came up with a plan. 1046 00:58:26.690 --> 00:58:27.670 Again, this was 1047 00:58:27.670 --> 00:58:31.380 1956, so the Soviet Union was 1048 00:58:31.380 --> 00:58:37.280 busy putting down a revolt in Hungary. They weren't going to be available to bail Egypt out of a military crisis. 1049 00:58:38.580 --> 00:58:39.460 And so the 1050 00:58:39.600 --> 00:58:40.920 three devised a 1051 00:58:40.920 --> 00:58:45.570 secret plan in which the Israelis would attack Egypt unprovoked 1052 00:58:45.700 --> 00:58:46.720 with the goal 1053 00:58:46.860 --> 00:58:55.290 of provoking an Egyptian counterattack, which would then allow Britain and France to move in and occupy the area as peacekeepers, 1054 00:58:55.290 --> 00:58:58.210 reclaiming the Suez Canal in the process. And 1055 00:58:58.210 --> 00:58:59.280 so that's what 1056 00:58:59.280 --> 00:59:02.900 happened, and it all went according to plan. 1057 00:59:03.230 --> 00:59:05.860 Israel invaded, Egypt retaliated, France 1058 00:59:06.250 --> 00:59:11.120 and Britain moved in, seized the canal, and Israel was rewarded for its role 1059 00:59:11.270 --> 00:59:12.380 with control of 1060 00:59:12.520 --> 00:59:14.380 the Sinai Peninsula. Now 1061 00:59:14.530 --> 00:59:16.180 they knew that the Americans 1062 00:59:16.180 --> 00:59:19.720 were going to figure out what happened right away, but 1063 00:59:19.720 --> 00:59:20.470 they figured 1064 00:59:20.470 --> 00:59:22.980 that Eisenhower would just accept the facts 1065 00:59:22.980 --> 00:59:25.510 on the ground once the deed was already done. 1066 00:59:26.020 --> 00:59:26.860 But they were 1067 00:59:26.860 --> 00:59:30.740 wrong about that. Eisenhower was not happy. 1068 00:59:31.360 --> 00:59:31.500 It 1069 00:59:31.790 --> 00:59:36.620 didn't help that David Ben-Gurion gave a speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, 1070 00:59:37.120 --> 00:59:38.820 crowing about how the 1071 00:59:38.820 --> 00:59:39.850 Suez Crisis 1072 00:59:39.910 --> 00:59:49.680 had made the 1949 peace with Egypt dead and buried, and that Israel would no longer be constrained by the terms of that deal. 1073 00:59:50.110 --> 00:59:51.130 There were calls for 1074 00:59:51.130 --> 00:59:56.390 a UN peacekeeping force to separate the Israelis and Egyptians at Suez, 1075 00:59:56.910 --> 00:59:57.040 but Israel, 1076 00:59:57.180 --> 01:00:01.040 Ben-Gurion said that under no circumstances would UN forces ever be allowed 1077 01:00:01.050 --> 01:00:07.420 on any territory controlled by Israel. And so Eisenhower was pissed, and he wanted to make it absolutely clear 1078 01:00:07.470 --> 01:00:10.770 who was calling the shots in the non-communist world. 1079 01:00:10.930 --> 01:00:11.500 He ordered 1080 01:00:11.500 --> 01:00:13.970 the French and British to get out. 1081 01:00:14.140 --> 01:00:14.720 He made the 1082 01:00:14.730 --> 01:00:21.920 Israelis give back the Sinai Peninsula, and then Nasser allowed UN peacekeepers to be stationed near the canal. 1083 01:00:22.670 --> 01:00:23.130 It was 1084 01:00:23.220 --> 01:00:32.110 probably the moment you can mark in the history books as the official end of France and Britain as real great powers on the 1085 01:00:32.110 --> 01:00:33.410 world stage. 1086 01:00:33.990 --> 01:00:36.190 Well, so Egypt had lost 1087 01:00:36.190 --> 01:00:43.770 that war militarily. They'd lost it badly. But Nasser was still able to 1088 01:00:43.770 --> 01:00:50.750 brag... Nasser had only been in office a few months. He came in in 1956, and that's when this happened. And he was able to brag 1089 01:00:50.750 --> 01:00:51.230 that... 1090 01:00:51.180 --> 01:00:51.360 He 1091 01:00:51.570 --> 01:00:51.990 stood up 1092 01:00:51.990 --> 01:00:57.600 to not just Israel, but to the two European powers that had dominated the Middle East since the Turks left, 1093 01:00:57.620 --> 01:00:58.420 and at least 1094 01:00:58.420 --> 01:01:01.460 ended up no worse than he'd started off. And 1095 01:01:01.630 --> 01:01:02.950 so his popularity 1096 01:01:02.950 --> 01:01:18.370 around the Arab world skyrocketed. Two years later, in 1958, he formed the United Arab Republic with Syria, a first step toward political unification. And while Syria remained nominally independent... 1097 01:01:18.530 --> 01:01:18.530 For 1098 01:01:18.610 --> 01:01:23.890 the few years that it lasted, Nasser was making most of the important decisions for both countries, 1099 01:01:24.150 --> 01:01:24.550 taking an 1100 01:01:24.550 --> 01:01:26.550 important first step toward 1101 01:01:26.550 --> 01:01:27.050 fixing 1102 01:01:27.050 --> 01:01:32.070 the Arabs' traditional problem of never being able to cooperate with each other. Nasser 1103 01:01:32.070 --> 01:01:32.600 was so 1104 01:01:32.600 --> 01:01:38.270 popular that Nasserite factions formed in other countries, 1105 01:01:38.530 --> 01:01:38.680 usually 1106 01:01:38.780 --> 01:01:44.790 led by military officers who wanted to model their own country's government and foreign policy on Nasser's Egypt. 1107 01:01:45.710 --> 01:01:46.460 Nasserite 1108 01:01:46.530 --> 01:01:50.360 factions gained momentum in Lebanon, Yemen, and 1109 01:01:50.930 --> 01:01:59.940 especially Iraq. Iraq, again, was controlled by a monarchy from the same Hashemite family as the monarchy that ruled 1110 01:01:59.940 --> 01:02:06.500 Jordan. Pro-Nasser military officers in Iraq wanted to overthrow that monarchy. 1111 01:02:07.040 --> 01:02:07.230 and 1112 01:02:07.400 --> 01:02:15.100 institute a secular government along the lines of Egypt and Syria. And in 1958, the year Nasser formed the UAR with Syria, 1113 01:02:15.100 --> 01:02:20.080 the plotters launched a bloody coup d'etat, which reduced Iraq to chaos for a while. 1114 01:02:20.080 --> 01:02:21.690 My wife's mother 1115 01:02:21.690 --> 01:02:24.260 was actually a little girl, 1116 01:02:24.620 --> 01:02:24.750 living in 1117 01:02:24.750 --> 01:02:28.040 Baghdad at the time of the revolution in 1958. And 1118 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:28.860 even though 1119 01:02:28.860 --> 01:02:34.150 she was very young, she remembers tanks pointing their cannons at her family's apartment building. 1120 01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:34.880 and 1121 01:02:34.950 --> 01:02:37.580 seeing cars dragging bodies through the streets. 1122 01:02:37.900 --> 01:02:38.710 This is from 1123 01:02:38.860 --> 01:02:44.360 Jillian Becker's book on the Palestine Liberation Organization. Quote, 1124 01:02:44.680 --> 01:02:45.310 In the 1125 01:02:45.310 --> 01:02:53.910 37 years since the British had created the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, there had been 57 ministries, a history of 1126 01:02:53.910 --> 01:02:59.220 instability with numerous uprisings, massacres, and barbaric assassinations. 1127 01:02:59.620 --> 01:02:59.830 The 1128 01:02:59.830 --> 01:03:03.560 regent, Abd al-Alaq, 1129 01:03:03.500 --> 01:03:03.750 The 1130 01:03:03.990 --> 01:03:09.120 uncle of the young King Faisal II had ambitions of his own for Iraq to dominate 1131 01:03:09.120 --> 01:03:16.780 in Arab unity embracing Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait. In February 1958, he achieved a union 1132 01:03:16.820 --> 01:03:21.850 between Iraq and Jordan, the two remaining Hashemite kingdoms. This 1133 01:03:21.990 --> 01:03:22.290 was as 1134 01:03:22.290 --> 01:03:28.860 intolerable to Nasser as the union of Egypt and Syria was unbearable to Abd al-Alaah. 1135 01:03:29.780 --> 01:03:30.230 Under 1136 01:03:30.370 --> 01:03:31.350 pro-Nassarite 1137 01:03:31.370 --> 01:03:38.010 leadership, a contingent of Iraqi troops dispatched by the region to help quell a pro-Nassar uprising in 1138 01:03:38.010 --> 01:03:41.680 Lebanon turned instead on their own ruling house. At 1139 01:03:41.680 --> 01:03:42.170 dawn on 1140 01:03:42.330 --> 01:03:59.300 14 July 1958, Faisal was murdered, along with his grandmother, his aunt, and others in the palace, including an orphan boy. His uncle, Abd al-Ela, was dragged through the streets of Baghdad tied with ropes to the back of a truck. 1141 01:03:59.960 --> 01:03:59.960 Then 1142 01:03:59.960 --> 01:04:05.680 his body was dismembered with axes and his limbs and head tossed about by the hysterical mob. 1143 01:04:06.020 --> 01:04:06.550 The torso 1144 01:04:06.550 --> 01:04:12.400 was hung from a balcony, and chunks of its flesh were sliced off and thrown to the crowd below. 1145 01:04:12.630 --> 01:04:12.970 The Prime 1146 01:04:13.060 --> 01:04:25.190 Minister, Nouriel Saeed, disguised himself as a woman and tried to escape, but he was found and instantly killed, and his body was left lying on the road to be driven over and squashed and broken 1147 01:04:25.190 --> 01:04:27.360 by the cars of exulting motorists. 1148 01:04:28.060 --> 01:04:28.440 He was 1149 01:04:28.620 --> 01:04:36.960 succeeded for a brief period by General Abdel Karim Qasim, who led the revolt and the massacre, and who favored friendship with the Soviet Union. 1150 01:04:37.170 --> 01:04:37.780 After five 1151 01:04:37.780 --> 01:04:43.220 years, Qasim, too, was murdered, and his body was devoured by dogs. 1152 01:04:46.060 --> 01:04:47.400 Now, I should 1153 01:04:47.560 --> 01:04:54.890 mention that Jillian Becker's book on the PLO definitely has an angle. It's not a neutral book. It's got an 1154 01:04:54.890 --> 01:04:59.820 agenda to the point that you would be justified calling it a polemic against the 1155 01:04:59.820 --> 01:05:03.420 Palestinian groups and their supporters and an apologia for 1156 01:05:03.490 --> 01:05:04.230 Israel. 1157 01:05:04.240 --> 01:05:04.960 But it's got a 1158 01:05:04.970 --> 01:05:11.950 lot of good information. Sometimes you just have to work through bias sources and account for the bias because sometimes 1159 01:05:11.950 --> 01:05:17.590 they provide information that is not spelled out well in other sources. And 1160 01:05:17.690 --> 01:05:18.190 in her 1161 01:05:18.240 --> 01:05:20.870 book, there's particularly good 1162 01:05:20.890 --> 01:05:27.970 information about how Arab leaders around the region use the Palestinian cause to jockey for position among themselves. Now, 1163 01:05:27.970 --> 01:05:29.120 Iraq was 1164 01:05:29.130 --> 01:05:31.480 just first on the 1165 01:05:31.480 --> 01:05:32.700 list. 1166 01:05:33.150 --> 01:05:35.870 Nasser wanted to see all the monarchies toppled. 1167 01:05:36.130 --> 01:05:36.130 In 1168 01:05:36.180 --> 01:05:47.010 1960, his agents killed the Prime Minister of Jordan with a bomb that had been intended for the king. In 1962, he took the side of revolutionary forces 1169 01:05:47.010 --> 01:05:52.370 against the monarchy in Yemen and fought a proxy war there against Saudi Arabia. 1170 01:05:52.370 --> 01:05:52.570 In 1171 01:05:52.680 --> 01:05:53.880 the meantime, 1172 01:05:53.880 --> 01:05:57.150 there was another coup d'etat in Syria, 1173 01:05:57.150 --> 01:05:57.350 And 1174 01:05:57.540 --> 01:05:58.990 that country pulled out of the 1175 01:05:59.000 --> 01:06:11.120 United Arab Republic in order to start reasserting its own leadership position in the region. Hopefully you're starting to get a picture of why the Arab nations were never able to organize and cooperate to keep from being pushed around by little 1176 01:06:11.120 --> 01:06:11.970 old Israel. 1177 01:06:12.360 --> 01:06:13.600 Meanwhile, the 1178 01:06:13.780 --> 01:06:22.360 Palestinian issue festered, and relations between Israel and its neighbors continued to deteriorate. 1179 01:06:22.370 --> 01:06:22.560 In 1180 01:06:23.050 --> 01:06:30.970 1964, with the Egyptians fighting in Yemen and Syria reasserting itself, Nasser had a clever 1181 01:06:30.970 --> 01:06:31.530 idea. He 1182 01:06:32.000 --> 01:06:32.790 called a meeting of 1183 01:06:32.790 --> 01:06:37.760 all the Arab heads of state as well as some important factional leaders to 1184 01:06:37.760 --> 01:06:38.380 see if 1185 01:06:38.380 --> 01:06:39.120 the one 1186 01:06:39.120 --> 01:06:39.730 issue 1187 01:06:39.730 --> 01:06:40.300 on which 1188 01:06:40.550 --> 01:06:46.900 they all agreed, the Israel-Palestine issue, could bring them together, under Nasser's 1189 01:06:46.900 --> 01:06:48.440 leadership, of course. 1190 01:06:49.490 --> 01:06:49.750 He 1191 01:06:50.270 --> 01:06:53.140 proposed to create a political entity to 1192 01:06:53.770 --> 01:06:55.940 organize and represent the Palestinian 1193 01:06:55.940 --> 01:07:03.310 people. The Palestinian people were scattered in many countries. They didn't have a national government of their own to speak for them. 1194 01:07:03.310 --> 01:07:05.600 And so the Arab League 1195 01:07:05.600 --> 01:07:10.780 approved the plan. They voted to fund this new organization. And thus 1196 01:07:10.930 --> 01:07:16.110 was born the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO. Again, 1197 01:07:16.290 --> 01:07:16.810 this was a 1198 01:07:16.810 --> 01:07:18.710 clever idea by Nasser. 1199 01:07:19.420 --> 01:07:19.890 He had 1200 01:07:20.080 --> 01:07:21.670 called the meeting, 1201 01:07:21.670 --> 01:07:21.920 he 1202 01:07:22.420 --> 01:07:27.800 chose the president of the PLO, and he expected that it was going to organize the 1203 01:07:27.870 --> 01:07:33.590 Palestinians into an Egyptian proxy that he could then put to use in the countries where Palestinians lived. 1204 01:07:33.620 --> 01:07:35.260 Later in the year, the 1205 01:07:35.450 --> 01:07:35.740 PLO 1206 01:07:36.610 --> 01:07:45.020 president was invited to represent the Palestinians at a meeting of the Arab League, and he was treated like the leader of a proper national state. 1207 01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:47.260 Well, this was 1208 01:07:47.560 --> 01:07:51.790 welcome to most of the participants, but not to King Hussein of 1209 01:07:51.790 --> 01:08:08.720 Jordan. Again, most Palestinians lived in Jordan. Most Jordanians were Palestinian. So an organization whose purpose was to politically organize and represent the Palestinian people would amount to forming an alternative state structure 1210 01:08:09.430 --> 01:08:10.860 within his country. 1211 01:08:12.030 --> 01:08:12.950 Worse, the 1212 01:08:13.070 --> 01:08:18.260 PLO had already started behaving like a state, demanding the right to levy taxes 1213 01:08:18.270 --> 01:08:29.620 on Palestinian citizens in Jordan to fund its operations, and even to raise a Palestine Liberation Army that would operate independent of the Jordanian military. These are 1214 01:08:30.050 --> 01:08:30.230 things no 1215 01:08:30.230 --> 01:08:32.690 sovereign country could tolerate. 1216 01:08:32.690 --> 01:08:35.020 Naturally, the actual government of 1217 01:08:35.020 --> 01:08:39.030 Jordan saw this as a threat to its authority and legitimacy. 1218 01:08:39.340 --> 01:08:51.900 which it was, and which is exactly what Nasser had intended it to be. So all political energy, most political energy around the Palestinian question started 1219 01:08:51.900 --> 01:08:56.240 flowing into the PLO at this point. But not all Palestinians were enthusiastic about it. 1220 01:08:56.550 --> 01:08:57.960 Some of them did 1221 01:08:57.960 --> 01:09:06.100 not trust the Arab states to stand for the Palestinians when the chips were down. In 1948... 1222 01:09:06.300 --> 01:09:09.590 They had fled as soon as they had done enough to say they'd done something. 1223 01:09:09.830 --> 01:09:11.420 These people didn't 1224 01:09:11.420 --> 01:09:16.470 trust international organizations to take any meaningful action on their behalf. 1225 01:09:16.710 --> 01:09:17.700 They believed that 1226 01:09:17.720 --> 01:09:24.620 only Palestinians could liberate Palestinians, that their liberation could only be achieved through 1227 01:09:24.670 --> 01:09:29.030 armed revolutionary struggle in keeping with the spirit of the age. 1228 01:09:29.290 --> 01:09:30.480 One of those who 1229 01:09:30.480 --> 01:09:32.630 thought this way was George 1230 01:09:33.000 --> 01:09:33.970 Habash, 1231 01:09:34.380 --> 01:09:41.300 a young Palestinian Christian who would later found and lead the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine, 1232 01:09:41.570 --> 01:09:42.460 the PFLP. 1233 01:09:42.770 --> 01:09:44.020 Habash was born in 1234 01:09:44.020 --> 01:09:46.080 1926, making 1235 01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:50.460 him 22 at the time of the 1948 war, in 1236 01:09:50.460 --> 01:09:50.590 a town 1237 01:09:50.750 --> 01:09:52.060 called Lidda. 1238 01:09:52.370 --> 01:09:53.740 During the war, 1239 01:09:53.740 --> 01:10:03.140 the new Israeli army had moved into Lidda and forced virtually every Arab resident out of the town with whatever they could carry, 1240 01:10:03.900 --> 01:10:06.840 driving them out into the desert on foot in July 1241 01:10:06.840 --> 01:10:11.030 to live or die however they could while Israeli soldiers 1242 01:10:11.030 --> 01:10:17.670 looted their homes and stripped them of valuables on their way out. And hundreds of them did die out in the 1243 01:10:17.670 --> 01:10:22.510 desert, especially old people and children, before they were able to reach the next safe haven. 1244 01:10:22.870 --> 01:10:25.050 The cleansing of Lida and a 1245 01:10:25.210 --> 01:10:28.440 simultaneous identical operation 1246 01:10:28.730 --> 01:10:29.070 in the 1247 01:10:29.130 --> 01:10:30.400 town of Ramla 1248 01:10:31.710 --> 01:10:37.150 resulted in some 50,000 Palestinians being driven out into the desert on foot as 1249 01:10:37.150 --> 01:10:38.300 a result of 1250 01:10:38.300 --> 01:10:39.880 one operation. 1251 01:10:40.020 --> 01:10:41.920 For people who 1252 01:10:41.920 --> 01:10:51.800 were there and for people who heard the stories of those who were, this act of ethnic cleansing and, you know, 1253 01:10:51.800 --> 01:10:59.670 look, there's some dispute over whether that term is appropriate here, but there's no controversy as far as I'm concerned, so I'm going to 1254 01:10:59.820 --> 01:11:00.300 use it. 1255 01:11:00.300 --> 01:11:00.640 the 1256 01:11:01.040 --> 01:11:05.920 order was given by the israeli government to drive the residents of lida and ramla out 1257 01:11:06.020 --> 01:11:06.560 israeli 1258 01:11:06.770 --> 01:11:13.690 military communications were already referring to the people as refugees while they were still in the cities 1259 01:11:13.690 --> 01:11:13.960 look 1260 01:11:13.960 --> 01:11:14.420 that's a 1261 01:11:14.420 --> 01:11:27.050 debate we can have another time the bottom line is one way or another tens of thousands of palestinians were driven out of the two cities at gunpoint and many of them died on their long walk through 1262 01:11:27.050 --> 01:11:27.820 the desert 1263 01:11:27.820 --> 01:11:27.820 and 1264 01:11:27.780 --> 01:11:28.060 And to 1265 01:11:28.060 --> 01:11:29.720 the people who went through that, 1266 01:11:29.830 --> 01:11:31.240 to the people who 1267 01:11:31.430 --> 01:11:38.160 went through that, it left a permanent impression of what the Israelis were actually all about, 1268 01:11:38.160 --> 01:11:40.090 whatever they might say. 1269 01:11:40.390 --> 01:11:43.030 Another young man who thought 1270 01:11:43.030 --> 01:11:47.510 like George Habash was Khalil al-Wazir, nom de 1271 01:11:48.370 --> 01:11:48.370 guerre 1272 01:11:48.430 --> 01:11:53.020 Abu Jihad, born in 1935 in the Palestinian town of Ramla, the 1273 01:11:53.020 --> 01:11:55.800 other city whose population was driven out. 1274 01:11:56.510 --> 01:11:58.410 during the operation I just mentioned. 1275 01:11:58.730 --> 01:12:04.170 Khalil was 12 or 13 years old in 1948, 1276 01:12:04.490 --> 01:12:04.780 when the 1277 01:12:04.780 --> 01:12:07.060 Zionist terrorist group known 1278 01:12:07.060 --> 01:12:13.650 as Irgun exploded a bomb in Ramla's main marketplace, killing 18 civilians and wounding another 45. 1279 01:12:14.860 --> 01:12:15.510 And then 1280 01:12:15.660 --> 01:12:20.870 later that year, he and his family and everybody he knew were driven out of 1281 01:12:20.890 --> 01:12:25.060 Ramla at gunpoint by Israeli forces and never 1282 01:12:25.330 --> 01:12:26.190 allowed to 1283 01:12:26.190 --> 01:12:29.240 return. Khalil and his family ended 1284 01:12:29.570 --> 01:12:29.750 up in 1285 01:12:29.750 --> 01:12:33.110 Gaza, and just three years later, when he was 16 years old, 1286 01:12:33.110 --> 01:12:34.160 he was already 1287 01:12:34.160 --> 01:12:43.400 leading a Palestinian militant group, 16 years old. He and his friends sought out men who'd gained experience fighting in the '48 1288 01:12:43.660 --> 01:12:43.800 war, 1289 01:12:43.920 --> 01:12:43.930 And 1290 01:12:44.090 --> 01:12:46.710 those men taught Khalil and his friends what they knew. 1291 01:12:46.950 --> 01:12:47.270 And then 1292 01:12:47.270 --> 01:12:58.280 Khalil's group went out and recruited and trained more fighters. And by the time he was 18, in 1953, Khalil commanded some 200 young fighters, 18 years 1293 01:12:58.290 --> 01:12:58.610 old. 1294 01:12:58.900 --> 01:13:00.120 Operating out of Gaza, 1295 01:13:00.120 --> 01:13:04.280 they launched operations against infrastructure and against 1296 01:13:04.280 --> 01:13:06.370 people in southern Israel. 1297 01:13:06.640 --> 01:13:08.520 And they were encouraged and 1298 01:13:08.520 --> 01:13:10.870 supported by the Egyptians. 1299 01:13:11.600 --> 01:13:11.650 who 1300 01:13:11.830 --> 01:13:13.960 used them as expendable proxies to 1301 01:13:13.960 --> 01:13:15.270 harass the Israelis. And 1302 01:13:15.450 --> 01:13:15.620 the 1303 01:13:15.620 --> 01:13:21.940 Egyptians would send Palestinian students from Cairo as reinforcements for the group. 1304 01:13:22.000 --> 01:13:22.930 One of the young 1305 01:13:22.930 --> 01:13:26.440 men they sent was an electrical engineering student 1306 01:13:26.730 --> 01:13:27.090 from the 1307 01:13:27.170 --> 01:13:29.200 University of Cairo named 1308 01:13:29.200 --> 01:13:37.720 Muhammad Yasser Abdelrahman Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa Al-Husseini, better known to all of you as Yasser Arafat. 1309 01:13:38.750 --> 01:13:39.670 Arafat and Abu 1310 01:13:39.710 --> 01:13:45.330 Jihad immediately recognized the other's talent, and they took a liking to each other, and 1311 01:13:45.330 --> 01:13:51.490 the two formed a partnership that would completely change the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 1312 01:13:51.490 --> 01:13:53.040 After a few years, 1313 01:13:53.040 --> 01:14:00.930 Arafat, Abu Jihad, and another friend who had become important to their organization, Saleh 1314 01:14:00.930 --> 01:14:01.570 Halaf, 1315 01:14:01.570 --> 01:14:03.060 traveled to Europe. 1316 01:14:03.340 --> 01:14:03.760 to go to 1317 01:14:03.800 --> 01:14:08.000 an international student congress sponsored by the Soviet Union in Prague. 1318 01:14:08.360 --> 01:14:09.280 Many prominent 1319 01:14:09.280 --> 01:14:20.020 Palestinians and other Arabs who could afford to do it would send their kids to school in Europe, and so the three guys made important connections 1320 01:14:20.020 --> 01:14:29.720 with a lot of these expats during their visit. And then instead of going back, immediately they moved on to Stuttgart in West Germany to go sound out the student movement there. This 1321 01:14:29.890 --> 01:14:30.280 was still 1322 01:14:30.280 --> 01:14:32.300 1956-1957. 1323 01:14:32.880 --> 01:14:33.060 So 1324 01:14:33.280 --> 01:14:37.030 there's not a whole lot going on internationally with 1325 01:14:37.160 --> 01:14:37.330 the 1326 01:14:37.480 --> 01:14:41.990 Palestinian movement outside of the Arab emigre students groups. Arafat 1327 01:14:41.990 --> 01:14:42.740 had become 1328 01:14:42.740 --> 01:14:43.570 accepted as 1329 01:14:43.580 --> 01:14:47.330 the leader of their little group by this point. And 1330 01:14:47.500 --> 01:14:47.840 since he 1331 01:14:47.920 --> 01:14:53.260 was an engineer, he applied for and got a job in Kuwait. And once he got there, he got 1332 01:14:53.260 --> 01:14:56.600 work permits for his friends to come and sent for them. 1333 01:14:57.330 --> 01:14:57.720 Well, 1334 01:14:57.880 --> 01:15:02.190 when Abu Jihad arrived, he had brought along a new friend that he had acquired in Europe. 1335 01:15:02.300 --> 01:15:03.810 The man was a 1336 01:15:03.810 --> 01:15:06.270 Palestinian, but he 1337 01:15:06.270 --> 01:15:15.490 had spent the previous few years fighting for the National Liberation Front, the FLN, against the French in the Algerian War of Independence. 1338 01:15:15.490 --> 01:15:15.870 The 1339 01:15:16.040 --> 01:15:17.700 Algerian War was 1340 01:15:17.700 --> 01:15:22.130 a savage affair that officially began in 1341 01:15:22.950 --> 01:15:24.590 1954. The Algerian War was a savage affair 1342 01:15:24.650 --> 01:15:25.170 that officially began in 1954. 1343 01:15:25.170 --> 01:15:25.470 That 1344 01:15:25.770 --> 01:15:34.870 year, the French had just been humiliated at Diem Bien Phu and driven out of Vietnam, and revolutionary nationalists in Algeria thought, hey, if the 1345 01:15:34.960 --> 01:15:36.250 Vietnamese can do it, 1346 01:15:36.280 --> 01:15:36.660 we can 1347 01:15:36.660 --> 01:15:38.090 do it too. Algeria 1348 01:15:38.140 --> 01:15:38.730 was very 1349 01:15:38.730 --> 01:15:39.930 different from 1350 01:15:39.930 --> 01:15:41.610 Vietnam, though. 1351 01:15:41.610 --> 01:15:42.290 There were 1352 01:15:42.300 --> 01:15:47.070 over a million French living in Algeria, many of whom had been born there. 1353 01:15:47.590 --> 01:15:47.590 And 1354 01:15:47.630 --> 01:15:49.910 many in the French establishment considered 1355 01:15:49.910 --> 01:15:54.850 losing Algeria to be akin to losing a province in mainland France. 1356 01:15:55.070 --> 01:15:56.110 And so it was 1357 01:15:56.110 --> 01:15:58.470 a very ugly affair. 1358 01:15:58.640 --> 01:15:59.460 It ran for eight 1359 01:15:59.600 --> 01:16:02.790 years, from 54 to 62, and the French 1360 01:16:03.200 --> 01:16:05.510 went out kicking and screaming. 1361 01:16:05.750 --> 01:16:06.920 The success of the 1362 01:16:06.920 --> 01:16:14.030 Vietnamese was proof that a determined national insurgency could defeat a European power. 1363 01:16:14.960 --> 01:16:15.380 But the 1364 01:16:15.740 --> 01:16:31.360 Algerians provided a demonstration of a whole new kind of war, a people's war designed for the mass media age, a very dark and ugly kind of war, but one that tries to answer the very hard question 1365 01:16:31.600 --> 01:16:32.140 of how a 1366 01:16:32.310 --> 01:16:38.100 far weaker force can defeat a vastly superior force in a prolonged conflict. 1367 01:16:39.160 --> 01:16:39.660 The problem 1368 01:16:39.960 --> 01:16:40.500 all these 1369 01:16:40.500 --> 01:16:44.240 anti-colonial movements faced was simple and similar. 1370 01:16:44.880 --> 01:16:48.080 There is a much more powerful military force in your 1371 01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:54.570 country. They don't want to leave. It is up to you to change their minds. So how are you going to do that? 1372 01:16:54.910 --> 01:16:55.790 The Vietnamese 1373 01:16:55.790 --> 01:16:57.110 showed that under 1374 01:16:57.110 --> 01:16:58.790 certain conditions, as 1375 01:16:58.920 --> 01:16:59.270 long as 1376 01:16:59.270 --> 01:17:05.480 you're tenacious and well-equipped and willing and able to take casualties, and 1377 01:17:05.480 --> 01:17:06.300 as long 1378 01:17:06.300 --> 01:17:12.110 as you have a safe haven you can retreat to to lick your wounds, 1379 01:17:12.110 --> 01:17:12.720 You might 1380 01:17:12.800 --> 01:17:16.210 actually be able to defeat that military in a war of attrition. But 1381 01:17:16.560 --> 01:17:17.160 most of these 1382 01:17:17.160 --> 01:17:28.290 resistance and revolutionary movements were working with far less in the Vietnamese, and yet they still had to solve that same problem. How do you make the stronger force want to leave? 1383 01:17:28.290 --> 01:17:28.880 Well, 1384 01:17:28.980 --> 01:17:30.360 it's a method with 1385 01:17:30.360 --> 01:17:36.980 which we're all now very familiar, because it's arguably the mode of warfare that has most defined the 1386 01:17:36.980 --> 01:17:41.560 post-World War II era of combat. In simplest terms, 1387 01:17:42.300 --> 01:17:42.300 The 1388 01:17:42.300 --> 01:17:43.100 insurgents 1389 01:17:43.100 --> 01:17:48.460 engage in acts of terrorism that are not intended to harm the capacity of the other side to fight, 1390 01:17:48.700 --> 01:17:48.920 but to 1391 01:17:48.940 --> 01:17:52.440 provoke the stronger side into retaliating 1392 01:17:52.610 --> 01:17:52.940 in a way 1393 01:17:52.940 --> 01:17:59.300 that will not play well in the media, and on campuses, and in parliaments back home and around the world. 1394 01:17:59.560 --> 01:18:00.420 And that's what 1395 01:18:00.420 --> 01:18:02.140 happened in Algeria. 1396 01:18:02.400 --> 01:18:02.760 The FLN 1397 01:18:02.760 --> 01:18:06.020 engaged in wanton acts of violence. 1398 01:18:06.290 --> 01:18:06.760 The French 1399 01:18:06.760 --> 01:18:09.090 responded with their own brutality 1400 01:18:09.680 --> 01:18:09.790 And 1401 01:18:09.960 --> 01:18:13.790 the left-wing and anti-colonial activists back in France, they took it from there. 1402 01:18:14.120 --> 01:18:15.640 By the end, by 1403 01:18:15.640 --> 01:18:21.140 62, the French military was not about to give up Algeria. 1404 01:18:21.140 --> 01:18:25.240 In fact, there was almost a military coup against the French government over it. 1405 01:18:25.550 --> 01:18:26.400 But by the early 1406 01:18:26.400 --> 01:18:27.900 60s, the French 1407 01:18:27.980 --> 01:18:28.780 people and 1408 01:18:28.780 --> 01:18:29.400 the French 1409 01:18:29.620 --> 01:18:33.180 political establishment had had enough. 1410 01:18:33.470 --> 01:18:34.360 Again, this 1411 01:18:34.360 --> 01:18:36.860 makes for a very ugly war. 1412 01:18:37.780 --> 01:18:39.050 Where when the enemy 1413 01:18:39.050 --> 01:18:48.040 responds to one of your operations by massacring some civilians, maybe some women and children on your side, or by torturing some 1414 01:18:48.040 --> 01:18:53.820 of your people who were held prisoner, then that's actually a successful operation. That's actually 1415 01:18:54.050 --> 01:18:55.100 the point. To get the 1416 01:18:55.200 --> 01:18:58.970 other side to do those things to your own people so that you can use 1417 01:18:59.070 --> 01:18:59.430 it as 1418 01:19:00.060 --> 01:19:03.840 propaganda, knowing that over time, at least when you're fighting a 1419 01:19:03.840 --> 01:19:05.760 western country... 1420 01:19:05.730 --> 01:19:05.870 it 1421 01:19:06.100 --> 01:19:07.400 tends to have its effect. 1422 01:19:07.860 --> 01:19:09.170 Well, 1423 01:19:09.400 --> 01:19:13.950 it had its effect in Algeria, and the Algerians drove the French out. 1424 01:19:14.310 --> 01:19:15.270 And that made a 1425 01:19:15.400 --> 01:19:19.430 huge impact on revolutionary movements around the world. 1426 01:19:19.430 --> 01:19:20.510 Arafat and his 1427 01:19:20.510 --> 01:19:23.400 friends took that lesson to heart. 1428 01:19:23.780 --> 01:19:32.980 Palestine would not be liberated by Arab armies. It would only be liberated through the armed struggle of a Palestinian people's war along the lines of 1429 01:19:33.260 --> 01:19:33.570 the one... 1430 01:19:33.550 --> 01:19:33.870 That 1431 01:19:34.060 --> 01:19:37.970 had returned Algeria to the Algerians. Arafat, 1432 01:19:37.970 --> 01:19:43.890 Abu Jihad, and Khalaf, they self-consciously separated 1433 01:19:45.020 --> 01:19:50.070 themselves from Palestinian elites and the Arab regimes. They presented their group as coming up 1434 01:19:50.070 --> 01:19:50.820 from the people. 1435 01:19:51.730 --> 01:19:52.460 You know, 1436 01:19:52.510 --> 01:20:00.860 they wanted to differentiate themselves not only from the Arab regimes who had lost the 48 war, but also from the Palestinian elites 1437 01:20:01.040 --> 01:20:05.900 who were perceived by many regular Palestinians as having sold the people out. 1438 01:20:06.050 --> 01:20:06.990 You know, these 1439 01:20:06.990 --> 01:20:11.150 people who could afford to just move to Beirut and buy a nice villa for their 1440 01:20:11.150 --> 01:20:16.990 family, that they had left the poor Palestinians, the rural Palestinians, hanging out to dry. 1441 01:20:17.860 --> 01:20:18.410 Arafat 1442 01:20:18.630 --> 01:20:22.390 himself was a cousin of the very prominent Husseini 1443 01:20:22.390 --> 01:20:26.420 clan, but he often denied or downplayed that connection publicly; 1444 01:20:26.490 --> 01:20:27.760 he wanted to be seen 1445 01:20:27.790 --> 01:20:28.710 as a man of the 1446 01:20:28.710 --> 01:20:33.260 people. They emphasized their lack of dependence on the Arab states, for 1447 01:20:33.260 --> 01:20:37.020 anything except places to train and conduct their 1448 01:20:37.020 --> 01:20:41.930 operations. They called themselves the Movement for the Liberation of 1449 01:20:41.930 --> 01:20:42.620 Palestine. 1450 01:20:42.580 --> 01:20:43.140 And 1451 01:20:43.250 --> 01:20:49.870 unfortunately, after they had settled on the name and started publicizing it and operating under it for a little while, somebody 1452 01:20:49.870 --> 01:20:51.430 noticed that 1453 01:20:51.660 --> 01:21:01.570 the Arabic acronym of the name spelled out Hataf, which in their language means something like quick death. And 1454 01:21:01.570 --> 01:21:01.920 so one 1455 01:21:02.020 --> 01:21:07.930 of them had the idea to switch it around from Movement for the Liberation of Palestine to the Palestine 1456 01:21:07.930 --> 01:21:09.580 Liberation Movement. 1457 01:21:09.830 --> 01:21:14.920 reversing the acronym to a word that translates to something like glorious victory, and that 1458 01:21:14.920 --> 01:21:20.520 is the name by which we all know Yasser Arafat's organization today, FATA. FATA 1459 01:21:20.520 --> 01:21:21.500 started 1460 01:21:21.500 --> 01:21:23.600 gaining momentum 1461 01:21:23.600 --> 01:21:28.480 around the time that the alliance between Syria and Egypt broke up. 1462 01:21:28.770 --> 01:21:29.450 Already by 1463 01:21:29.450 --> 01:21:35.460 1961, Arafat and Abu Jihad had been making a lot of moves. 1464 01:21:35.440 --> 01:21:36.050 They had 1465 01:21:36.070 --> 01:21:39.950 managed to insert their activists into student groups in Europe and 1466 01:21:40.040 --> 01:21:53.840 throughout the Arab world. They picked up a decent number of recruits, including a couple hundred Palestinians from European universities who actually went and traveled to the Middle East for training in guerrilla warfare. And they were forming 1467 01:21:53.840 --> 01:21:56.280 alliances with like-minded organizations. 1468 01:21:57.460 --> 01:21:58.030 After the 1469 01:21:58.360 --> 01:22:06.140 victory of the Algerians in 1962, the new government there turned Algiers into a headquarters for the world revolution. 1470 01:22:06.140 --> 01:22:07.130 They provided 1471 01:22:07.130 --> 01:22:10.740 subsidies to foreign revolutionary groups. They 1472 01:22:10.740 --> 01:22:11.020 gave 1473 01:22:11.360 --> 01:22:16.300 asylum to foreign revolutionaries who were on the run from their home countries. The 1474 01:22:16.300 --> 01:22:16.950 Algerian 1475 01:22:16.970 --> 01:22:17.780 government 1476 01:22:17.780 --> 01:22:25.820 recognized groups like the North Vietnamese and the Black Panthers as the legitimate representatives of their people. 1477 01:22:26.430 --> 01:22:26.890 and set 1478 01:22:26.950 --> 01:22:42.800 up embassies for them. And so Arafat met with the new president of Algeria and came away with offices and a stipend for Fatah. But then, in 1964, Nasser called that conference that created the PLO and activist and political 1479 01:22:42.800 --> 01:22:50.850 energy surrounding the Palestinian cause all began flowing into that channel. And the Algerians gave Fatah's offices to the PLO. 1480 01:22:50.850 --> 01:22:54.330 They weren't actually called Fatah yet. I'm just using it to avoid confusion. 1481 01:22:55.090 --> 01:22:55.330 And 1482 01:22:55.670 --> 01:23:03.960 Algeria redirected the subsidy and the other support that they had been giving to Fatah to the PLO as well. And so Fatah basically collapsed all the way 1483 01:23:03.960 --> 01:23:12.270 back down to its original core. Just Arafat, Abu Jihad, Saleh Khalaf, and a few others, about eight people. Arafat 1484 01:23:12.300 --> 01:23:13.490 and his friends 1485 01:23:13.490 --> 01:23:17.160 were sort of at a loss for how to proceed, but 1486 01:23:17.160 --> 01:23:17.650 help 1487 01:23:17.650 --> 01:23:19.410 was on the way. 1488 01:23:19.740 --> 01:23:19.750 Because 1489 01:23:19.800 --> 01:23:25.090 as fate would have it, they were not the only ones looking for an alternative to Nasser and the PLO. 1490 01:23:25.500 --> 01:23:27.080 The Syrians were 1491 01:23:27.080 --> 01:23:32.880 back on the scene, and looking to make their own bid for leadership of the Arab world. 1492 01:23:32.880 --> 01:23:34.290 The head of Syrian 1493 01:23:34.300 --> 01:23:36.880 army intelligence at the time, 1494 01:23:36.880 --> 01:23:40.910 Major General Ahmad Suedani, said in an interview, I believe 1495 01:23:40.910 --> 01:23:41.800 Israel is 1496 01:23:41.800 --> 01:23:48.480 not a state, but serves as a military base for the imperialist camp. 1497 01:23:48.460 --> 01:23:48.900 We must 1498 01:23:48.930 --> 01:23:51.020 not take the line of conventional 1499 01:23:51.020 --> 01:23:54.880 warfare, using conventional weapons. We must take the line of the 1500 01:23:54.880 --> 01:23:56.770 Popular Liberation War. 1501 01:23:57.250 --> 01:23:57.730 Should Israel 1502 01:23:57.730 --> 01:24:10.270 react to the Popular Liberation War by conventional warfare, the Arab armies must be ready to enter the battle in order to safeguard the bases of the Fedayeen, who are the basic element of popular warfare. 1503 01:24:10.750 --> 01:24:11.320 Arab unity 1504 01:24:11.430 --> 01:24:13.350 is a necessity. 1505 01:24:14.120 --> 01:24:14.120 We 1506 01:24:14.180 --> 01:24:18.390 believe that unity born in battle is the unity we long 1507 01:24:18.500 --> 01:24:19.150 for. He 1508 01:24:19.280 --> 01:24:26.380 who liberates Palestine will be the one to lead the Arab nation forward to comprehensive unity. 1509 01:24:26.760 --> 01:24:26.940 He 1510 01:24:27.100 --> 01:24:33.760 who ignites the fire of popular liberation war can throw all the reactionary regimes into the 1511 01:24:33.760 --> 01:24:34.380 sea. The 1512 01:24:34.400 --> 01:24:40.980 sons of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other reactionary countries will overthrow the kings 1513 01:24:40.980 --> 01:24:41.880 as traitors, 1514 01:24:42.040 --> 01:24:42.040 and 1515 01:24:42.050 --> 01:24:44.880 joined the liberation march, end quote. 1516 01:24:45.020 --> 01:24:47.600 Arafat and his buddies 1517 01:24:47.600 --> 01:24:57.040 were in Lebanon when they got word that Syrian army intel agents were working the refugee camps, looking for recruits to train as Fedayeen fighters. 1518 01:24:57.270 --> 01:24:57.830 Fedayeen 1519 01:24:57.830 --> 01:25:06.730 translates as self-sacrificers, but we're not talking about suicide bombers or anything like that. That comes quite a bit later. 1520 01:25:06.750 --> 01:25:11.650 Fedayeen is the common word for guerrilla fighters in the Arab world, especially in the 1521 01:25:12.180 --> 01:25:14.630 context of Palestinians fighting Israel. Two 1522 01:25:14.990 --> 01:25:16.120 years after the coup 1523 01:25:16.120 --> 01:25:21.770 d'etat that had led to Syria pulling out of the United Arab Republic, there 1524 01:25:21.770 --> 01:25:21.990 was 1525 01:25:21.990 --> 01:25:30.050 another coup in 1963, this time by Ba'athist military officers. And they immediately went to work trying 1526 01:25:30.080 --> 01:25:32.110 to reestablish their country 1527 01:25:32.110 --> 01:25:32.390 as a 1528 01:25:32.680 --> 01:25:35.550 powerful independent player in the region. 1529 01:25:35.600 --> 01:25:35.700 not 1530 01:25:35.860 --> 01:25:38.440 playing second fiddle to Egypt anymore. 1531 01:25:38.780 --> 01:25:39.190 Syria had 1532 01:25:39.190 --> 01:25:43.620 surrendered the initiative to Nasser when he'd formed the PLO. 1533 01:25:43.940 --> 01:25:45.260 But the Syrians began 1534 01:25:45.580 --> 01:25:52.770 working immediately to secretly build up a rival organization to counter the PLO, to counter Nasser's 1535 01:25:52.880 --> 01:25:55.430 play for leadership of the Palestinian cause. 1536 01:25:55.700 --> 01:25:56.910 And so Arafat and his 1537 01:25:56.910 --> 01:26:04.500 friends approached one of the Syrian agents, and right away the Syrians realized that they had something very useful in their hands. 1538 01:26:05.170 --> 01:26:05.540 Fatah 1539 01:26:05.750 --> 01:26:09.710 hadn't just brought them eight new recruits but eight 1540 01:26:09.710 --> 01:26:17.570 tightly knit operatives with experience recruiting, organizing, and leading others a few with combat experience 1541 01:26:18.110 --> 01:26:18.640 people who did 1542 01:26:18.640 --> 01:26:25.400 not need a lot of hand-holding or preparation before they could be put to work and so the Syrians put them to work right away 1543 01:26:25.970 --> 01:26:27.580 For their first 1544 01:26:27.620 --> 01:26:34.390 operation it was decided that they were going to bomb Israel's national water carrier here. 1545 01:26:34.260 --> 01:26:34.260 This 1546 01:26:34.300 --> 01:26:41.500 huge system of pipes and canals delivering water from the Sea of Galilee down to the dry areas in the south. The 1547 01:26:41.680 --> 01:26:42.990 attack was meant 1548 01:26:43.000 --> 01:26:46.830 to be more symbolic than anything else. The 1549 01:26:47.010 --> 01:26:47.180 teams 1550 01:26:47.260 --> 01:26:53.060 didn't go in with enough explosives to do any damage that couldn't be repaired very quickly. But 1551 01:26:53.230 --> 01:26:53.280 the 1552 01:26:53.480 --> 01:26:56.000 symbolic value was still significant, not 1553 01:26:56.230 --> 01:26:56.290 only 1554 01:26:56.290 --> 01:26:59.240 to Fatah, but to their new Syrian sponsors. 1555 01:27:00.320 --> 01:27:00.930 The water 1556 01:27:01.120 --> 01:27:06.530 carrier was one of the most important infrastructure projects in the early development of Israel. 1557 01:27:06.530 --> 01:27:07.030 It was a 1558 01:27:07.040 --> 01:27:08.500 vast project, and its 1559 01:27:09.090 --> 01:27:15.630 construction was seen as a marker that was being put down by the Zionists to say, we are here to stay. This 1560 01:27:15.790 --> 01:27:16.320 is the 1561 01:27:16.480 --> 01:27:20.040 new world. It is a permanent arrangement, and so you 1562 01:27:20.040 --> 01:27:21.030 better get used 1563 01:27:21.030 --> 01:27:21.750 to it. 1564 01:27:21.710 --> 01:27:21.930 The 1565 01:27:22.210 --> 01:27:24.070 Arab states, especially Syria, 1566 01:27:24.070 --> 01:27:30.110 had been blustering on about how they would never allow this project to come to completion, but no one had actually done more than 1567 01:27:30.110 --> 01:27:30.920 talk. The 1568 01:27:31.140 --> 01:27:32.460 bad news for Arafat 1569 01:27:32.460 --> 01:27:37.380 and his buddies was that the attack failed miserably. The 1570 01:27:37.620 --> 01:27:38.280 good news is 1571 01:27:38.280 --> 01:27:40.090 that that really didn't 1572 01:27:40.090 --> 01:27:41.480 matter. Again, 1573 01:27:41.530 --> 01:27:41.970 this was a 1574 01:27:42.040 --> 01:27:46.850 new kind of war, with different measures for operational success or failure. 1575 01:27:47.780 --> 01:27:48.350 The first 1576 01:27:48.580 --> 01:27:48.850 group of 1577 01:27:48.850 --> 01:27:49.910 Arafat's men were 1578 01:27:49.910 --> 01:27:56.880 caught before they ever laid their explosives. The second group laid their explosives, but they didn't go off, and then they were all caught. 1579 01:27:56.880 --> 01:27:56.960 A 1580 01:27:56.960 --> 01:27:58.460 couple weeks later, 1581 01:27:58.460 --> 01:28:04.670 a group managed to plant some bombs, and they did go off, but they didn't do any damage of any real significance. In 1582 01:28:04.670 --> 01:28:04.920 any 1583 01:28:05.300 --> 01:28:11.380 traditional mode of warfare, that operation was a complete and total disaster. But 1584 01:28:11.380 --> 01:28:12.180 this was not 1585 01:28:12.180 --> 01:28:13.320 any traditional 1586 01:28:13.320 --> 01:28:14.680 mode of warfare. 1587 01:28:15.090 --> 01:28:19.470 The group released a communique and sent it to several Arab media outlets, 1588 01:28:19.740 --> 01:28:24.730 crowing about the great blow struck against the Zionist beast by the Fedayeen, who, with 1589 01:28:24.800 --> 01:28:28.990 God's help and permission, had struck fear into the heart of the colonizer. 1590 01:28:29.260 --> 01:28:30.020 Well, that's what 1591 01:28:30.090 --> 01:28:31.690 the Arab papers printed. 1592 01:28:31.920 --> 01:28:32.220 And word 1593 01:28:32.220 --> 01:28:33.050 spread that a 1594 01:28:33.050 --> 01:28:35.950 great blow had been struck against Israel, 1595 01:28:36.230 --> 01:28:36.860 not by the 1596 01:28:36.860 --> 01:28:39.070 Arab states, but by common 1597 01:28:39.070 --> 01:28:41.790 people willing to give themselves over to the cause. 1598 01:28:42.080 --> 01:28:42.820 Okay. 1599 01:28:43.510 --> 01:28:59.080 Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan all officially denounced the attack. Egypt because they wanted Palestinian political energy flowing into the PLO. Lebanon and Jordan because the last thing they needed was their Palestinian population starting to think 1600 01:28:59.080 --> 01:29:05.200 about the possibilities presented by infrastructure terrorism. But Syria applauded and promoted it. 1601 01:29:05.230 --> 01:29:06.920 That attack signaled the 1602 01:29:06.920 --> 01:29:09.970 beginning of a shift in strategy for the Palestinian 1603 01:29:10.850 --> 01:29:11.550 militants. 1604 01:29:12.180 --> 01:29:12.490 They 1605 01:29:12.700 --> 01:29:22.250 had been relying on the Arab states to rescue them in 1948, and they didn't come through. They'd been waiting ever since, but they didn't have to wait. They 1606 01:29:22.400 --> 01:29:23.080 could take 1607 01:29:23.080 --> 01:29:26.060 matters into their own hands. Now, 1608 01:29:26.100 --> 01:29:27.680 the Israelis hardly 1609 01:29:27.690 --> 01:29:30.580 paid any attention to the attack, 1610 01:29:30.580 --> 01:29:31.400 had no idea 1611 01:29:31.400 --> 01:29:31.950 that it 1612 01:29:31.950 --> 01:29:37.200 was the first shot on a newly opened front in their long war against the Palestinians. The 1613 01:29:37.460 --> 01:29:38.510 Israeli security 1614 01:29:38.510 --> 01:29:41.940 establishment was, for good reason, ill. 1615 01:29:42.230 --> 01:29:45.420 totally focused on the threat from neighboring Arab militaries, 1616 01:29:45.610 --> 01:29:45.860 and they 1617 01:29:45.860 --> 01:29:47.850 considered these student groups and 1618 01:29:47.860 --> 01:29:52.020 other young radicals like Arafat Nabu Jihad to be a nuisance at most. 1619 01:29:52.270 --> 01:29:53.340 It was only in 1620 01:29:53.480 --> 01:29:55.310 1965 that 1621 01:29:56.170 --> 01:30:06.030 anybody in the Israeli security agencies was even assigned to the issue of monitoring and countering Palestinian terrorism. A three-man committee was set 1622 01:30:06.030 --> 01:30:11.120 up to identify and eliminate targets, and... 1623 01:30:11.310 --> 01:30:11.310 When 1624 01:30:11.380 --> 01:30:15.600 they came up with their list, Arafat and Abu Jihad were right at the top of it. 1625 01:30:15.870 --> 01:30:17.290 The committee was going to 1626 01:30:17.360 --> 01:30:17.890 have to be 1627 01:30:17.890 --> 01:30:20.050 very creative with their methods. 1628 01:30:20.340 --> 01:30:20.610 After a 1629 01:30:20.610 --> 01:30:23.340 couple high-profile failures by the 1630 01:30:23.600 --> 01:30:27.310 Mossad had caused the government to lose confidence in that intelligence agency. 1631 01:30:27.600 --> 01:30:28.440 There are actually 1632 01:30:28.440 --> 01:30:28.780 more than 1633 01:30:29.020 --> 01:30:30.390 a couple disasters. 1634 01:30:30.680 --> 01:30:32.530 Within the Mossad, there 1635 01:30:32.530 --> 01:30:37.220 was this Tier 1 Special Ops unit called Qasaria, which 1636 01:30:37.220 --> 01:30:39.690 specialized in assassinations. 1637 01:30:40.430 --> 01:30:40.770 The 1638 01:30:41.000 --> 01:30:46.310 unit's top spy in 1965 was an Egyptian-born Jew named Eli Cohen. Cohen 1639 01:30:46.740 --> 01:30:46.980 was 1640 01:30:46.980 --> 01:30:57.990 assigned to go into Syria posing as an Arab merchant who had been away for years in Buenos Aires and to work himself into the elite social circles of Damascus. His 1641 01:30:58.300 --> 01:30:59.300 Israeli handlers 1642 01:30:59.300 --> 01:31:01.050 recognized his value, 1643 01:31:01.050 --> 01:31:09.290 especially as he started to make connections, and they didn't want to waste him on anything worth less than 1644 01:31:09.290 --> 01:31:09.870 he was— 1645 01:31:09.820 --> 01:31:10.540 And so the 1646 01:31:10.660 --> 01:31:14.350 official order was to act as a pure sleeper agent. Just 1647 01:31:14.350 --> 01:31:14.550 go 1648 01:31:14.680 --> 01:31:14.690 be 1649 01:31:14.780 --> 01:31:20.820 this prominent Arab businessman. That's it. Only activate if you hear 1650 01:31:20.820 --> 01:31:26.510 that the Syrians are planning a surprise attack. Then you let us know and you come back to Israel. It 1651 01:31:26.510 --> 01:31:27.330 was his 1652 01:31:27.330 --> 01:31:27.860 only 1653 01:31:27.870 --> 01:31:28.700 job. 1654 01:31:28.700 --> 01:31:29.450 In case of an 1655 01:31:29.540 --> 01:31:36.700 impending attack, he would send a message alerting Israel to what was happening. Otherwise, he was to keep a low profile as a Syrian merchant. 1656 01:31:38.730 --> 01:31:46.540 unfortunately cohen got too comfortable too confident in his cover story and he began transmitting back all kinds of low-level 1657 01:31:46.780 --> 01:31:47.920 information including 1658 01:31:48.840 --> 01:31:49.190 simple 1659 01:31:49.190 --> 01:31:53.270 gossip he was picking up at parties and in other places 1660 01:31:53.270 --> 01:31:54.060 as handlers 1661 01:31:54.060 --> 01:31:56.950 should have told him to cut it out but they 1662 01:31:57.230 --> 01:32:03.390 didn't and eventually the syrians caught on cohen was arrested he was tortured 1663 01:32:03.390 --> 01:32:03.390 and 1664 01:32:03.340 --> 01:32:03.760 He was 1665 01:32:03.760 --> 01:32:12.690 hanged in Damascus' central square and left hanging, covered in a white sheet with the text of his death sentence written on it as a message to other Israeli 1666 01:32:12.700 --> 01:32:13.260 spies. 1667 01:32:13.640 --> 01:32:15.200 The savagery of his 1668 01:32:15.200 --> 01:32:23.900 torture was evident on his face, but the torturers had also pulled out his fingernails and electrocuted his testicles. 1669 01:32:24.930 --> 01:32:25.600 The Mossad 1670 01:32:25.740 --> 01:32:34.610 worried that he must have broken under that strain, and it turned out they were right. Cohen had given up secret encryption codes, he had deciphered hundreds 1671 01:32:34.950 --> 01:32:34.950 of 1672 01:32:35.010 --> 01:32:41.780 secret messages for the Syrians, told them everything else that he knew about how Israeli intelligence operated. Well, 1673 01:32:41.920 --> 01:32:42.880 just after this 1674 01:32:42.880 --> 01:32:48.890 debacle, an Israeli agent was uncovered in Cairo by the Egyptian government. He 1675 01:32:48.890 --> 01:32:49.400 would have 1676 01:32:49.570 --> 01:32:51.540 suffered the same fate as Cohen, 1677 01:32:51.540 --> 01:32:52.450 but... 1678 01:32:52.560 --> 01:32:52.560 The 1679 01:32:52.620 --> 01:33:01.160 government of West Germany agreed to help Israel by telling the Egyptians, falsely, that he was also working for them and so pretty please don't kill him and we'll owe you one. 1680 01:33:01.380 --> 01:33:02.600 And so this spy and 1681 01:33:02.600 --> 01:33:06.160 his wife were not hanged, but they were sentenced to life in prison. 1682 01:33:06.380 --> 01:33:08.580 So 1965 was a 1683 01:33:08.580 --> 01:33:11.460 tough year from Assad. 1684 01:33:11.680 --> 01:33:12.430 This is from a 1685 01:33:12.550 --> 01:33:15.660 book by Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman. 1686 01:33:15.940 --> 01:33:16.480 Quote, 1687 01:33:16.700 --> 01:33:17.070 Prime 1688 01:33:17.070 --> 01:33:19.360 Minister Esh Kahl said, 1689 01:33:19.610 --> 01:33:22.990 regarded the downfall of the two spies as a national disaster. 1690 01:33:23.260 --> 01:33:23.930 But despite 1691 01:33:23.930 --> 01:33:45.730 the bad state the Mossad was in, Eshkal decided to approve a special targeted killing mission by Qasaria in Uruguay anyway. Two months prior, a conference attended by representatives of the various intelligence agencies had been held to discuss the state of the hunt for Nazis, a matter that was not high on the list of priorities. 1692 01:33:46.450 --> 01:33:46.780 rafi 1693 01:33:46.940 --> 01:33:54.800 medan deputy chief of the amal unit which handled the issue surveyed the possible targets for assassination on the 1694 01:33:54.880 --> 01:33:55.600 list when 1695 01:33:55.730 --> 01:34:06.100 he came to the name of herbert kukurs a latvian war criminal who as an aviator had volunteered to assist the ss and the gestapo and began describing 1696 01:34:06.100 --> 01:34:08.530 his horrific acts a loud thud 1697 01:34:08.650 --> 01:34:09.040 was heard 1698 01:34:09.020 --> 01:34:09.290 The 1699 01:34:09.440 --> 01:34:19.220 head of Amman, the military intelligence directorate, Major General Aharon Yarev, had collapsed, and it took some time before he came to. Kukurs, 1700 01:34:19.220 --> 01:34:19.350 it 1701 01:34:19.400 --> 01:34:25.200 emerged, had burned alive some of Yarev's relatives and friends. 1702 01:34:25.620 --> 01:34:26.050 After the 1703 01:34:26.050 --> 01:34:27.310 conference, 1704 01:34:27.380 --> 01:34:32.220 Amit, Meyer Amit, he's the head of Masada at the time, 1705 01:34:32.360 --> 01:34:32.830 Amit, 1706 01:34:33.010 --> 01:34:40.740 who was very close to Yarev and was deeply affected by the incident, went to see Prime Minister Eshkol and received 1707 01:34:41.050 --> 01:34:48.780 permission to have Kukurs eliminated. Holocaust survivors called him the "Butcher of Riga," and his name came up frequently at the 1708 01:34:48.780 --> 01:34:57.220 Nuremberg war crimes trials as directly involved in the murder of some 15,000 Jews and indirectly in the killing of 20,000 1709 01:34:57.530 --> 01:34:57.700 more. 1710 01:34:57.760 --> 01:34:58.020 But 1711 01:34:58.300 --> 01:35:16.000 after the war, he had managed to escape and find refuge in Brazil, where he developed a tourism business, surrounding himself with security guards for fear of the same fate that befell Adolf Eichmann. Yaakov Medad, a Casaria operative who spoke Spanish and German, 1712 01:35:15.970 --> 01:35:28.880 Posed as an Austrian businessman, seeking openings in the tourism industry in South America, and managed to persuade Cucurs to go to Uruguay to meet a group of developers at a luxurious mansion outside Montevideo. At 1713 01:35:28.980 --> 01:35:30.040 the mansion, 1714 01:35:30.040 --> 01:35:33.070 three assassins would lie in wait. 1715 01:35:33.360 --> 01:35:33.790 The plan 1716 01:35:33.790 --> 01:35:38.360 was for Medad to enter first, followed by Cucurs. 1717 01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:38.670 One of 1718 01:35:38.750 --> 01:35:39.860 the assassins would 1719 01:35:39.860 --> 01:35:47.870 shove him inside and close the door behind him. Then, when the Mossad team was out of the line of fire, he would shoot him. The job, however, did 1720 01:35:47.870 --> 01:35:52.680 not go as smoothly as planned. Kukurs was alert and feared a 1721 01:35:52.680 --> 01:35:53.400 trap. 1722 01:35:53.400 --> 01:35:54.000 The moment 1723 01:35:54.000 --> 01:35:57.840 he entered, he grasped what was happening and made a break for it. 1724 01:35:57.840 --> 01:35:58.580 Yarev tried 1725 01:35:58.580 --> 01:36:03.300 to get a stranglehold on him as another Israeli dragged him inside. The 1726 01:36:03.470 --> 01:36:03.980 fact that 1727 01:36:03.980 --> 01:36:07.380 Kukurs was frightened to death, said Medad, 1728 01:36:07.570 --> 01:36:07.570 and 1729 01:36:07.660 --> 01:36:17.470 had lived in dread of this moment for 20 years gave him superhuman strength he managed to knock the guy down he grabbed the doorknob and had it not been for the three of us including 1730 01:36:18.100 --> 01:36:18.600 me holding the 1731 01:36:18.650 --> 01:36:20.760 door shut he would have been able 1732 01:36:20.760 --> 01:36:21.880 to get out kukors 1733 01:36:21.880 --> 01:36:28.060 bit hard into one of yarev's fingers cutting off the tip which remained in his mouth yarev 1734 01:36:28.070 --> 01:36:31.110 screamed in pain and had to loosen his grip 1735 01:36:31.110 --> 01:36:31.380 on kukors neck 1736 01:36:31.440 --> 01:36:31.500 He 1737 01:36:31.750 --> 01:36:34.860 almost broke free, but at the last moment one of 1738 01:36:35.220 --> 01:36:35.220 the 1739 01:36:35.230 --> 01:36:46.010 hitmen, Zaev Amit, a cousin of the Mossad director, who had not been able to fire because of the danger to his comrades, picked up a hammer and smashed it into Kukur's head again and again until he 1740 01:36:46.040 --> 01:36:46.830 passed out. 1741 01:36:47.230 --> 01:36:47.470 Then the 1742 01:36:47.470 --> 01:36:50.980 third assassin, Eleazar Sadiqsharon, formerly 1743 01:36:50.980 --> 01:36:51.180 the 1744 01:36:51.260 --> 01:36:58.080 chief hitman for the Irgun, fired two shots into the mass murderer, assuring that he was dead. 1745 01:36:58.740 --> 01:36:58.960 The 1746 01:36:59.270 --> 01:37:07.640 operatives put the body into a suitcase, which they left in the mansion, and added on top of Verdict, a sheet of paper inscribed with the words, In 1747 01:37:08.080 --> 01:37:17.200 consideration of his personal responsibility for the murder of 30,000 Jews, with horrible brutality, the condemned man has been executed. Signed, 1748 01:37:17.200 --> 01:37:20.840 Those Who Will Never Forget. End quote. 1749 01:37:21.070 --> 01:37:23.370 Now within Mossad, this 1750 01:37:23.370 --> 01:37:27.130 operation was considered a success. 1751 01:37:28.020 --> 01:37:28.260 They 1752 01:37:28.380 --> 01:37:30.650 had been told to kill a man, and the man was dead. 1753 01:37:30.960 --> 01:37:30.960 But 1754 01:37:31.030 --> 01:37:33.860 everybody else knew that it had been very 1755 01:37:34.160 --> 01:37:36.280 sloppy and could have led to disaster. 1756 01:37:36.620 --> 01:37:37.920 And finally, I'm 1757 01:37:38.030 --> 01:37:43.540 actually not done. I told you 1965 was a very rough year for the Mossad. 1758 01:37:43.900 --> 01:37:46.280 There was this. Israel had been 1759 01:37:46.280 --> 01:37:52.390 cultivating a relationship with Morocco, a relatively pro-Western Arab 1760 01:37:53.200 --> 01:37:56.080 regime with which Israel had no territorial disputes. 1761 01:37:56.750 --> 01:37:56.900 And 1762 01:37:57.050 --> 01:38:09.160 in the fall of 1965, the Moroccan king had allowed Mossad to bug all the meeting rooms and private suites of the Arab leaders and military commanders who were going to be attending a summit at Casablanca. 1763 01:38:09.460 --> 01:38:10.550 The subject of the 1764 01:38:10.550 --> 01:38:18.920 summit was what to do about Israel and how to proceed in doing it, so this was one of the great intelligence coups in history handed 1765 01:38:18.920 --> 01:38:19.230 to him 1766 01:38:19.230 --> 01:38:21.600 on a silver platter by the king of Morocco. 1767 01:38:21.960 --> 01:38:23.200 The catch was that the 1768 01:38:23.200 --> 01:38:26.070 Moroccans were not running a charity. 1769 01:38:26.510 --> 01:38:26.680 And 1770 01:38:26.840 --> 01:38:28.020 they had a little ask of their 1771 01:38:28.020 --> 01:38:37.030 own. A few years back, the king of Morocco had exiled his main political opponent, a man named Mehdi Ben Barca. 1772 01:38:37.360 --> 01:38:37.920 Ben Barca 1773 01:38:37.920 --> 01:38:46.870 was an intellectual and a political activist who had briefly been a professor teaching his future persecutor, 1774 01:38:46.950 --> 01:38:50.120 King Hassan II. But he was not a terrorist. He 1775 01:38:50.120 --> 01:38:50.700 was not a 1776 01:38:50.700 --> 01:38:52.430 militant of any kind. 1777 01:38:53.230 --> 01:38:53.800 He'd been 1778 01:38:53.920 --> 01:39:02.790 living in Europe since his exile, continuing to agitate for reforms in Morocco, and so the king marked him for death, and he wanted the Israelis to kill him, 1779 01:39:02.790 --> 01:39:03.130 or at 1780 01:39:03.480 --> 01:39:03.920 least help 1781 01:39:03.920 --> 01:39:05.470 his own men do it, and 1782 01:39:05.470 --> 01:39:05.890 so the 1783 01:39:05.900 --> 01:39:07.970 Israelis agreed. They 1784 01:39:08.220 --> 01:39:08.750 started 1785 01:39:08.750 --> 01:39:16.820 investigating Ben Barca, and before long discovered a kiosk in Geneva where he would have his magazines delivered. They 1786 01:39:17.200 --> 01:39:17.830 waited until he 1787 01:39:17.830 --> 01:39:21.460 showed up, and then placed him under surveillance. 1788 01:39:22.530 --> 01:39:23.240 Mossad 1789 01:39:23.400 --> 01:39:24.070 devised 1790 01:39:24.070 --> 01:39:25.880 a plan to lure Ben Barker 1791 01:39:25.880 --> 01:39:32.020 to Paris, supposedly to meet a documentary filmmaker who was interested in making a film about his life. The 1792 01:39:32.520 --> 01:39:33.020 Israelis 1793 01:39:33.020 --> 01:39:42.800 provided the Moroccans with safe houses and vehicles in Paris, as well as fake passports, poisons, and shovels and 1794 01:39:42.800 --> 01:39:45.790 other equipment to dispose of the body. Ben 1795 01:39:46.080 --> 01:39:46.900 Barker 1796 01:39:47.000 --> 01:39:49.090 took the bait, 1797 01:39:49.070 --> 01:39:52.610 And when he got to Paris, the Moroccans kidnapped him, took 1798 01:39:52.900 --> 01:39:53.330 him to 1799 01:39:53.440 --> 01:39:55.660 one of the Mossad safe houses, and 1800 01:39:55.740 --> 01:39:56.500 went to work 1801 01:39:56.530 --> 01:40:01.910 torturing him until he died from asphyxiation after being submerged again and again in 1802 01:40:02.040 --> 01:40:02.280 a tub 1803 01:40:02.350 --> 01:40:03.630 of filthy water. 1804 01:40:03.920 --> 01:40:06.360 Mossad claims its agents were not 1805 01:40:06.440 --> 01:40:14.120 present at their own safe house during the torture or killing. And who knows, it could be true that 1806 01:40:14.120 --> 01:40:15.180 they... 1807 01:40:15.420 --> 01:40:18.980 ...excused themselves temporarily while the actual deed was being done. 1808 01:40:19.230 --> 01:40:20.130 But it was Mossad 1809 01:40:20.130 --> 01:40:22.580 agents who took care of the body. 1810 01:40:22.860 --> 01:40:23.510 They took the 1811 01:40:23.520 --> 01:40:24.730 corpse to the San 1812 01:40:24.730 --> 01:40:31.040 Germain Forest......threw the body in a hole and covered it with chemical powder to dissolve the remains. 1813 01:40:31.320 --> 01:40:32.240 That disposal 1814 01:40:32.240 --> 01:40:41.440 site was chosen on the fly, so a short time later......Israeli agents moved the body, and according to some of the agents who were involved... 1815 01:40:41.620 --> 01:40:41.620 Ben 1816 01:40:41.670 --> 01:40:46.830 Barca's remains are still buried beneath the Louis Vuitton Foundation Art Museum in Paris. 1817 01:40:47.090 --> 01:40:48.930 Well, given his status 1818 01:40:49.200 --> 01:40:52.210 as an exiled foreign activist, 1819 01:40:52.410 --> 01:40:52.820 the French 1820 01:40:52.820 --> 01:40:58.510 had been keeping an eye on Ben Barca themselves, and it did not take them long to figure out what had happened. 1821 01:40:58.770 --> 01:40:59.980 The story exploded 1822 01:41:00.080 --> 01:41:01.020 like a bomb in 1823 01:41:01.020 --> 01:41:03.870 the French media and government. 1824 01:41:04.130 --> 01:41:04.680 President de 1825 01:41:04.740 --> 01:41:09.890 Gaulle actually disbanded his intelligence agencies for letting it happen. 1826 01:41:09.890 --> 01:41:10.080 and 1827 01:41:10.270 --> 01:41:12.930 prosecuted the corrupt French police officers who had 1828 01:41:12.930 --> 01:41:14.010 helped with the assassination. 1829 01:41:14.390 --> 01:41:15.520 France cut off all 1830 01:41:15.520 --> 01:41:17.470 diplomatic relations 1831 01:41:17.470 --> 01:41:25.450 with Morocco, and the incident left a shadow over relations between the two countries that really hasn't fully cleared to this day. The 1832 01:41:25.570 --> 01:41:26.680 Israelis denied 1833 01:41:26.680 --> 01:41:30.870 involvement and outwardly presented a united front. 1834 01:41:31.390 --> 01:41:31.600 But 1835 01:41:31.760 --> 01:41:33.140 behind the scenes, there 1836 01:41:33.150 --> 01:41:40.460 were severe recriminations, and opposing political factions within Israel tried to use the incident to damage and extort their opponents. 1837 01:41:40.770 --> 01:41:42.070 And so in the wake of 1838 01:41:42.070 --> 01:41:47.810 all this, when it came time to kill Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad, the 1839 01:41:47.940 --> 01:41:48.380 Israeli 1840 01:41:48.380 --> 01:41:52.460 government was not prepared to hand the operation to Mossad 1841 01:41:52.460 --> 01:41:54.230 assassination squads. 1842 01:41:54.590 --> 01:41:55.080 Instead, the 1843 01:41:55.080 --> 01:42:00.130 three-man committee recommended that the Israelis pull an old trick out of the hat, 1844 01:42:00.300 --> 01:42:00.300 and 1845 01:42:00.360 --> 01:42:02.960 use letter bombs. And so they tried, but 1846 01:42:02.960 --> 01:42:07.210 they didn't achieve much. A few Fatah operatives were injured, 1847 01:42:07.430 --> 01:42:08.430 but nobody important, and 1848 01:42:08.500 --> 01:42:09.630 nobody was killed. 1849 01:42:09.980 --> 01:42:10.800 This was the 1850 01:42:10.860 --> 01:42:16.640 first of many, many attempts on Arafat's life by the Israelis. And the 1851 01:42:16.640 --> 01:42:17.650 Israelis were 1852 01:42:18.060 --> 01:42:18.810 already feared 1853 01:42:18.950 --> 01:42:26.430 as legendary operators, with a carefully cultivated reputation of being able to find and kill anyone, anywhere in the world. 1854 01:42:26.740 --> 01:42:27.280 And the Israelis were already feared as legendary operators, 1855 01:42:27.230 --> 01:42:27.450 And 1856 01:42:27.690 --> 01:42:38.780 soon, the elimination of Yasser Arafat would be the focus of whole departments of Israeli military and intelligence services for many years. And yet, Arafat would die an old man in 1857 01:42:38.840 --> 01:42:40.510 2004. Not 1858 01:42:40.510 --> 01:42:41.030 an easy 1859 01:42:41.030 --> 01:42:45.520 thing to do without a state apparatus protecting you. In 1860 01:42:45.880 --> 01:42:48.260 1966, Fatah was 1861 01:42:48.260 --> 01:42:55.210 able to carry out dozens of attacks. They were becoming more sophisticated and audacious. 1862 01:42:56.270 --> 01:42:56.570 The 1863 01:42:56.570 --> 01:43:03.210 Syrians had set up training camps in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, very close to the Israeli border. Jordan, 1864 01:43:03.410 --> 01:43:03.420 the 1865 01:43:03.420 --> 01:43:13.850 government of Jordan, registered protests, but it was very difficult for them to do anything about it without alienating Jordan's Palestinian majority. Attacks were emanating 1866 01:43:13.850 --> 01:43:22.950 from those camps, and after three Israelis were killed in a Fatah attack, Israel attacked and destroyed two of those camps. 1867 01:43:23.230 --> 01:43:23.790 Thank you. 1868 01:43:23.780 --> 01:43:23.990 the 1869 01:43:23.990 --> 01:43:24.920 jordanians had 1870 01:43:24.920 --> 01:43:29.960 sent secret messages to the israelis saying look we're against these camps we're not responsible 1871 01:43:29.960 --> 01:43:30.800 they might have 1872 01:43:30.810 --> 01:43:33.460 even been happy that the israelis took them out 1873 01:43:33.460 --> 01:43:33.880 but the 1874 01:43:33.880 --> 01:43:41.780 jordanian government again was in a very tricky situation arabs everywhere supported the palestinian cause 1875 01:43:42.430 --> 01:43:42.620 The 1876 01:43:42.940 --> 01:43:46.710 Jordanian government was already looked at by many in the region as an archaic 1877 01:43:46.710 --> 01:43:48.130 monarchy, as a western 1878 01:43:48.130 --> 01:43:59.500 puppet weak on Zionism, and if enough of the Palestinian population got really riled up and started looking at the Hashemite regime as an obstacle that had to be cleared before their struggle could 1879 01:43:59.840 --> 01:44:00.850 move forward, then he 1880 01:44:01.040 --> 01:44:04.220 and his family could end up like his cousins in Iraq. 1881 01:44:05.260 --> 01:44:06.070 And so King 1882 01:44:06.170 --> 01:44:09.950 Hussein did his best to play both sides, doing what he 1883 01:44:09.950 --> 01:44:20.010 could to avoid provoking the Israelis, trying to keep the Palestinian militants under control, while still trying to maintain a pose of being down for the 1884 01:44:20.010 --> 01:44:20.680 cause. It 1885 01:44:20.680 --> 01:44:21.780 was always a 1886 01:44:21.780 --> 01:44:23.800 very hard line to walk, 1887 01:44:23.800 --> 01:44:24.110 and it 1888 01:44:24.110 --> 01:44:26.800 was only going to get harder as things heated up. 1889 01:44:26.800 --> 01:44:28.600 In the second half 1890 01:44:28.600 --> 01:44:31.220 of that year, again we're in 66, 1891 01:44:32.010 --> 01:44:38.110 Fatah got the gumption to start attacking Israeli military targets. And in November, three Israeli 1892 01:44:38.110 --> 01:44:42.340 soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a mine Fatah had planted on their patrol route. 1893 01:44:42.730 --> 01:44:43.740 This time, the 1894 01:44:43.740 --> 01:44:49.690 Israelis sent a strong force into a nearby Palestinian village for a punitive operation. 1895 01:44:50.060 --> 01:44:50.160 But a 1896 01:44:50.160 --> 01:44:54.630 Jordanian military unit happened to be in the area conducting exercises. 1897 01:44:54.970 --> 01:44:55.820 The two sides 1898 01:44:55.870 --> 01:44:56.700 got into a 1899 01:44:56.800 --> 01:44:57.810 firefight 1900 01:44:58.320 --> 01:44:58.510 but 1901 01:44:58.650 --> 01:45:03.730 the Jordanians were outnumbered and outgunned, and 16 of them were killed by the Israelis. 1902 01:45:04.210 --> 01:45:05.090 On one 1903 01:45:05.090 --> 01:45:14.320 hand, the incident bolstered King Hussein's reputation, because at least his forces had opposed the Israeli incursion. 1904 01:45:14.640 --> 01:45:15.200 But now the 1905 01:45:15.200 --> 01:45:19.420 Israelis were pissed, because one of their own had been killed and several wounded, 1906 01:45:19.720 --> 01:45:19.720 and 1907 01:45:19.760 --> 01:45:25.660 Jordanians were now looking to King Hussein to retaliate, to get one back. 1908 01:45:26.210 --> 01:45:26.590 And so 1909 01:45:26.800 --> 01:45:33.890 tensions increased between Israel and Jordan, between Jordan and the Palestinians, between Jordan and Syria and Egypt. 1910 01:45:34.010 --> 01:45:35.410 Well, this was to the 1911 01:45:35.470 --> 01:45:48.630 liking of the Syrian Ba'athists, and so they pushed Fatah to turn up the heat even more. In early 1967, Fatah launched over 100 attacks on Israeli soil, coming 1912 01:45:48.630 --> 01:45:53.530 across all four major borders from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. 1913 01:45:54.070 --> 01:45:54.630 Thank you. 1914 01:45:54.580 --> 01:45:55.160 Many of 1915 01:45:55.380 --> 01:45:56.130 the attacks 1916 01:45:56.180 --> 01:46:03.040 were inconsequential or only damaged property, but nine Israeli civilians and four soldiers were killed. Israel 1917 01:46:03.300 --> 01:46:04.110 retaliated in 1918 01:46:04.130 --> 01:46:15.980 the directions that the attacks came from, but these responses were necessarily imprecise, and more often than not came down on people not directly involved with the attacks. So 1919 01:46:15.990 --> 01:46:17.310 just imagine that 1920 01:46:17.310 --> 01:46:20.100 you're just a normal Palestinian. 1921 01:46:21.110 --> 01:46:27.100 trying to get by with your family and one day the Israelis show up and start shooting and a couple of your kids get killed. 1922 01:46:27.430 --> 01:46:27.870 You know 1923 01:46:27.870 --> 01:46:33.930 there's a conflict going on. You know that the Israeli raid has something to do with that. You 1924 01:46:34.060 --> 01:46:34.640 may have 1925 01:46:34.640 --> 01:46:40.300 even heard rumors that Abdul down the street had a cousin staying with him who was supposed to be fed a yin. 1926 01:46:40.670 --> 01:46:41.110 But your 1927 01:46:41.190 --> 01:46:49.500 kids are dead and you didn't do anything and the people who killed them are the same ones who put you in this refugee camp. 1928 01:46:50.610 --> 01:46:51.100 To 1929 01:46:51.660 --> 01:46:58.590 the innocent people Caught in the crossfire These attacks by the Israelis Just seemed like terrorist attacks They 1930 01:46:59.330 --> 01:47:12.200 experienced them the same way The Israelis experienced The things we traditionally call Terrorist attacks in their country And so The Arab governments were coming under 1931 01:47:12.230 --> 01:47:19.610 Increasing pressure To do something about this Tensions mounted And in May The 1932 01:47:19.610 --> 01:47:19.610 Arab government 1933 01:47:19.870 --> 01:47:29.360 1967, Israel released an official warning to Syria that if it did not get the insurgents under control, it would take large-scale military action against them. 1934 01:47:29.630 --> 01:47:30.160 Instead of 1935 01:47:30.240 --> 01:47:37.810 backing down, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan formed a joint military command and increased the concentration of 1936 01:47:37.810 --> 01:47:42.040 forces on their borders with Israel, and the Israelis did the same in response. 1937 01:47:42.300 --> 01:47:43.640 War seemed to 1938 01:47:43.650 --> 01:47:45.600 be in the air. 1939 01:47:46.350 --> 01:47:46.850 The UN 1940 01:47:47.020 --> 01:47:51.770 peacekeepers who had occupied the Sinai, standing between Egypt and Israel for the last 1941 01:47:51.910 --> 01:47:54.070 decade, got out of the way. We 1942 01:47:54.490 --> 01:47:56.260 know now that the Arab 1943 01:47:56.260 --> 01:48:01.350 states, as usual, were mostly posturing. The 1944 01:48:01.760 --> 01:48:02.040 Israelis 1945 01:48:02.040 --> 01:48:07.910 knew it at the time. They knew it from the recordings they'd gotten with the help of the Moroccans, on which they'd heard 1946 01:48:07.980 --> 01:48:12.790 the Arab heads of state discuss how unprepared they were for another war with Israel. 1947 01:48:14.520 --> 01:48:14.480 Israel's 1948 01:48:14.520 --> 01:48:20.790 own intelligence assessments estimated that they could win the war in less than two weeks if the Arabs attacked, and 1949 01:48:20.790 --> 01:48:21.250 in less 1950 01:48:21.360 --> 01:48:24.530 than one week if Israel attacked first. Nasser 1951 01:48:24.560 --> 01:48:25.460 and the others 1952 01:48:25.460 --> 01:48:29.830 moved forces up so they could beat their chests on the border, but 1953 01:48:29.830 --> 01:48:30.460 there were 1954 01:48:30.460 --> 01:48:30.960 nowhere 1955 01:48:30.960 --> 01:48:41.560 near enough forces for an invasion, and the ones that were present were still deployed in depth in a defensive posture. Unfortunately for them, 1956 01:48:41.560 --> 01:48:41.560 Israel, 1957 01:48:41.730 --> 01:48:45.970 the israelis were not just posturing they were not just beating their chests 1958 01:48:46.210 --> 01:48:46.930 and if the arabs 1959 01:48:47.100 --> 01:48:49.880 weren't prepared for war the israelis were not 1960 01:48:49.880 --> 01:48:52.060 going to wait around until they were 1961 01:48:52.060 --> 01:48:52.960 and so on the 1962 01:48:52.960 --> 01:48:59.060 morning of june 5th 1967 israel launched a massive surprise attack 1963 01:48:59.250 --> 01:49:03.910 and despite their deployments the arabs were caught completely off 1964 01:49:03.910 --> 01:49:04.420 guard and 1965 01:49:04.430 --> 01:49:04.660 The 1966 01:49:05.040 --> 01:49:13.340 Israeli Air Force destroyed virtually every combat aircraft the Egyptians and the Syrians had on the ground in a matter of hours. And 1967 01:49:13.340 --> 01:49:14.000 then with 1968 01:49:14.000 --> 01:49:14.660 total air 1969 01:49:14.660 --> 01:49:24.030 superiority, Israeli planes picked off targets at will while the IDF chased the enemy through the Gaza Strip across the Sinai Peninsula and into 1970 01:49:24.030 --> 01:49:28.670 the West Bank and the Golan Heights. And when the six-day war was over, 1971 01:49:29.170 --> 01:49:29.390 The 1972 01:49:29.550 --> 01:49:35.090 territory under the control of the Jewish state had increased more than 300%, 1973 01:49:35.520 --> 01:49:36.010 placing more 1974 01:49:36.040 --> 01:49:40.770 than a million Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. 1975 01:49:41.150 --> 01:49:42.110 There were 1976 01:49:42.120 --> 01:49:47.350 prominent Israelis, including right-wing hawks, 1977 01:49:47.670 --> 01:49:48.090 who were 1978 01:49:48.090 --> 01:49:54.890 warning at the time that it was a bad idea to bring a million Palestinians under Israeli jurisdiction. 1979 01:49:56.050 --> 01:49:56.730 even if 1980 01:49:56.990 --> 01:49:58.030 they weren't 1981 01:49:58.030 --> 01:50:05.430 Israeli citizens or technically within Israel's official borders they were going to be held responsible for these people 1982 01:50:05.430 --> 01:50:07.350 but other Israeli 1983 01:50:07.350 --> 01:50:14.160 officials were enthusiastic they pointed out that they would no longer have to rely on the Arab regimes to control 1984 01:50:14.160 --> 01:50:14.890 the Fedayeen 1985 01:50:14.890 --> 01:50:15.450 and that 1986 01:50:15.830 --> 01:50:20.040 their own forces would no longer have to make incursions into neighboring countries to go 1987 01:50:20.040 --> 01:50:23.250 attack the terrorists they were right here 1988 01:50:24.020 --> 01:50:24.910 Instead, they could place 1989 01:50:24.970 --> 01:50:32.860 garrisons in Palestinian areas. They could set up checkpoints and patrol Palestinian villages and towns and treat it like a proper counterinsurgency. 1990 01:50:33.200 --> 01:50:34.380 Others saw a 1991 01:50:34.380 --> 01:50:38.660 historic opportunity to forge a permanent 1992 01:50:38.660 --> 01:50:39.320 peace. 1993 01:50:39.660 --> 01:50:40.280 Israel at this 1994 01:50:40.280 --> 01:50:45.520 point looked completely unbeatable, and they held a mountain of bargaining chips. A 1995 01:50:45.760 --> 01:50:46.640 top military 1996 01:50:46.640 --> 01:50:52.720 intelligence official circulated a top-secret paper to other government and military leaders, saying, 1997 01:50:53.200 --> 01:50:53.340 We 1998 01:50:53.570 --> 01:50:58.580 should not look like braggarts, mocking a defeated enemy, debasing him and his leaders. 1999 01:50:59.050 --> 01:50:59.680 Instead, he 2000 01:50:59.680 --> 01:51:02.860 said, Israel should use the opportunity 2001 01:51:02.860 --> 01:51:08.820 to be magnanimous and call for negotiations with the Arab states from a position of strength 2002 01:51:08.820 --> 01:51:10.090 and offer to return 2003 01:51:10.090 --> 01:51:16.500 conquered territory in exchange for a lasting peace, which all sounds great. 2004 01:51:16.680 --> 01:51:16.850 But in 2005 01:51:17.010 --> 01:51:33.440 reality, that would be a tough sell in any country under the circumstances. It's very rare for nations to call for peace during the exhilaration of finding out that they're invincible. And instead of thinking about peace, many Israelis were looking forward to what victories they might score next. 2006 01:51:33.640 --> 01:51:35.220 One month after the 2007 01:51:35.220 --> 01:51:42.990 war, a coalition of Israeli politicians, activists, writers, poets... 2008 01:51:43.910 --> 01:51:47.860 created the movement for greater Israel and began pressuring the 2009 01:51:47.860 --> 01:51:54.760 government to take advantage of the smashing victory to support the establishment of Jewish settlements in newly conquered territories. 2010 01:51:55.120 --> 01:51:56.460 There are passages in the 2011 01:51:56.590 --> 01:52:04.660 Hebrew Bible in which God promises that the Jews will inherit all the territory from the Euphrates and Syria and Iraq 2012 01:52:04.660 --> 01:52:05.060 to the 2013 01:52:05.060 --> 01:52:07.060 Mediterranean coast and from 2014 01:52:07.060 --> 01:52:09.260 Lebanon all the way down to Egypt. 2015 01:52:09.850 --> 01:52:09.850 and 2016 01:52:09.890 --> 01:52:13.020 many Zionist romantics and religious zealots believed 2017 01:52:13.020 --> 01:52:18.740 that after 2,000 years of exile, the new state of Israel had an obligation to fulfill that prophecy. 2018 01:52:19.000 --> 01:52:19.620 In more 2019 01:52:19.620 --> 01:52:24.700 modern times, supporters of the Greater Israel Movement don't take 2020 01:52:24.700 --> 01:52:32.300 things quite that far, at least publicly, and mostly restrict their ambitions to annexing the West Bank and, to a lesser extent, Gaza. 2021 01:52:32.550 --> 01:52:33.870 The Movement for Greater 2022 01:52:33.970 --> 01:52:39.060 Israel had the support of many prominent Israelis and Diaspora Jews as well. 2023 01:52:39.490 --> 01:52:44.430 and the movement exerted influence on the rising right-wing in Israeli politics. 2024 01:52:44.740 --> 01:52:45.830 The head of the 2025 01:52:45.830 --> 01:52:48.130 Mossad, Mayra Amit, 2026 01:52:48.400 --> 01:52:48.810 was one of 2027 01:52:48.850 --> 01:52:53.710 those who was in favor of using the opportunity to make peace, 2028 01:52:53.970 --> 01:52:54.140 and he 2029 01:52:54.140 --> 01:52:55.010 wrote in his 2030 01:52:55.010 --> 01:52:59.320 diary, "'What's happening now is a disappointment, a painful 2031 01:52:59.320 --> 01:53:08.530 disappointment. I am apprehensive and worried at this fearful waste of a victory. When I see how matters are being conducted, 2032 01:53:09.180 --> 01:53:09.180 My 2033 01:53:09.220 --> 01:53:12.140 hands go limp, and I get a terrible feeling. 2034 01:53:12.370 --> 01:53:14.810 The leaders of the Arab 2035 01:53:14.810 --> 01:53:19.690 countries involved were completely humiliated, totally 2036 01:53:19.690 --> 01:53:20.980 delegitimized. 2037 01:53:21.200 --> 01:53:21.580 And those 2038 01:53:21.580 --> 01:53:26.790 who had placed their hopes with them were all now looking for alternatives. And 2039 01:53:26.790 --> 01:53:27.620 this was the 2040 01:53:27.620 --> 01:53:33.300 opportunity Fatah had been waiting for, and they were ready to take advantage of the opportunity. 2041 01:53:34.260 --> 01:53:34.720 They 2042 01:53:34.980 --> 01:53:50.000 realized that while the destruction of the Arab militaries made another full-scale military conflict unlikely in the near term, the new occupation regime in Gaza and the West Bank actually provided the perfect environment for guerrilla war. 2043 01:53:50.690 --> 01:53:51.360 Because now they 2044 01:53:51.360 --> 01:53:56.090 could attack the Israelis without even having to cross the border into Israel. So 2045 01:53:56.580 --> 01:53:57.250 while the Arab 2046 01:53:57.250 --> 01:53:57.850 states 2047 01:53:57.850 --> 01:54:01.560 licked their wounds, Fatah just kept doing its thing. 2048 01:54:02.260 --> 01:54:09.090 carried out dozens of attacks from Gaza and the West Bank in the second half of 1967. They bombed factories, 2049 01:54:09.090 --> 01:54:14.730 houses, movie theaters, infrastructure, reaching for targets of 2050 01:54:14.970 --> 01:54:20.060 symbolic importance when possible, but settling for targets of opportunity most of the time. 2051 01:54:20.440 --> 01:54:21.110 With Israeli 2052 01:54:21.110 --> 01:54:24.660 assassination squads constantly on his trail, 2053 01:54:25.270 --> 01:54:36.110 Missing him by moments on various occasions, Arafat continued to increase the frequency and intensity of attacks. Over the next 10 months, Fedayeen attacks killed 65 Israeli 2054 01:54:36.110 --> 01:54:36.960 soldiers and 2055 01:54:36.960 --> 01:54:37.420 50 2056 01:54:37.420 --> 01:54:42.900 civilians, wounding another 249 soldiers and 295 civilians. 2057 01:54:43.110 --> 01:54:44.330 The period from 2058 01:54:44.330 --> 01:54:51.090 1967 until Nasser's death in 1970 is known as the War of 2059 01:54:51.090 --> 01:54:52.240 Attrition. 2060 01:54:52.460 --> 01:54:53.140 There were no 2061 01:54:53.150 --> 01:55:02.720 pitched battles in the War of Attrition, only continual small-scale hit-and-run attacks to wear the Israelis down and stretch out their defensive commitments. 2062 01:55:03.440 --> 01:55:04.180 Remember, their 2063 01:55:04.300 --> 01:55:05.370 territory had 2064 01:55:05.370 --> 01:55:07.100 tripled in size after 2065 01:55:07.100 --> 01:55:09.130 the 1967 war. 2066 01:55:09.800 --> 01:55:09.810 And 2067 01:55:09.880 --> 01:55:16.800 the military and security forces that they had going into that war were not built to control or protect that much territory. So the 2068 01:55:16.800 --> 01:55:24.730 Israeli security apparatus had to expand and adapt on the fly as the Arabs were constantly probing, harassing, 2069 01:55:24.740 --> 01:55:25.740 attacking. 2070 01:55:26.020 --> 01:55:27.750 Because of the success 2071 01:55:27.750 --> 01:55:32.250 of the FLN in liberating Algeria from France, the 2072 01:55:32.250 --> 01:55:32.570 tactics 2073 01:55:32.680 --> 01:55:38.220 and strategy of the FLN were taken up by national liberation movements around the world. 2074 01:55:38.990 --> 01:55:39.530 In many 2075 01:55:39.630 --> 01:55:40.240 places, 2076 01:55:40.240 --> 01:55:41.900 given enough time, it 2077 01:55:41.980 --> 01:55:42.560 ended up 2078 01:55:42.590 --> 01:55:43.770 working. They 2079 01:55:44.010 --> 01:55:45.090 were able to make 2080 01:55:45.090 --> 01:55:50.970 things hard enough on the colonial regime and to score enough propaganda victories 2081 01:55:50.970 --> 01:55:54.380 to sap morale back in the colonial regime's homeland. Then 2082 01:55:54.690 --> 01:55:56.020 eventually they decided 2083 01:55:56.020 --> 01:55:59.510 that it wasn't worth the effort and they went home. 2084 01:55:59.510 --> 01:56:00.380 Arafat was 2085 01:56:00.380 --> 01:56:01.830 committed to this 2086 01:56:01.940 --> 01:56:02.990 strategy. 2087 01:56:03.840 --> 01:56:04.280 But for 2088 01:56:04.560 --> 01:56:07.970 some reason, he never accounted for a simple and pretty obvious 2089 01:56:07.970 --> 01:56:08.210 fact 2090 01:56:08.600 --> 01:56:16.800 that although Israel was a colonizing regime like French Algeria, the Israelis didn't have another country to go back to. They 2091 01:56:16.800 --> 01:56:17.180 had no 2092 01:56:17.240 --> 01:56:18.020 choice but to 2093 01:56:18.020 --> 01:56:19.450 keep fighting. And 2094 01:56:19.450 --> 01:56:20.970 in a way, it's hard to 2095 01:56:20.970 --> 01:56:23.570 blame the Palestinians for taking that 2096 01:56:23.960 --> 01:56:28.020 path. You know, the whole global left was going in that direction. 2097 01:56:28.800 --> 01:56:37.360 Militant groups that adopted that strategy got funding and recognition from the Soviets and from non-aligned countries, and again, they'd seen it work. 2098 01:56:37.760 --> 01:56:38.650 Plus, when you place 2099 01:56:38.720 --> 01:56:46.260 more than a million people under military occupation, the young men in that population are going to have something to say about it. 2100 01:56:46.640 --> 01:56:48.260 The task of protecting 2101 01:56:48.260 --> 01:56:54.470 Israeli Jews from terrorist attacks was becoming more complicated by the 2102 01:56:54.470 --> 01:56:55.110 day. 2103 01:56:55.290 --> 01:56:55.670 Israeli 2104 01:56:55.760 --> 01:57:01.750 soldiers patrolled the roads, towns, and villages of the West Bank in Gaza, which gave the 2105 01:57:01.750 --> 01:57:18.180 Israelis options that they hadn't had before, but also created risks that hadn't existed before. Also, Israeli civilians began making their way into both territories to establish heavily armed garrison communities in the heart of Palestinian territory. The 2106 01:57:18.480 --> 01:57:18.640 vast 2107 01:57:18.640 --> 01:57:22.900 majority of the Zionists who chose to do that 2108 01:57:23.070 --> 01:57:25.480 The settlers, as you can probably imagine, 2109 01:57:25.520 --> 01:57:26.600 were driven 2110 01:57:26.670 --> 01:57:34.040 strongly by religion and ideology. And many of them were real fanatics who saw themselves as soldiers in something like a holy 2111 01:57:34.050 --> 01:57:34.430 war. 2112 01:57:34.630 --> 01:57:36.180 Problems with their new 2113 01:57:36.180 --> 01:57:46.690 Palestinian neighbors began almost immediately. And when things escalated to violence, Israeli military forces were called in to reinforce the settlers. The Israelis 2114 01:57:46.690 --> 01:57:48.180 were having particularly 2115 01:57:49.340 --> 01:57:50.230 tough problems 2116 01:57:50.230 --> 01:57:52.000 in the Gaza Strip. 2117 01:57:52.180 --> 01:57:57.890 which today is one of the most densely populated urban zones in the world. One 2118 01:57:57.890 --> 01:58:10.980 Saturday morning, a 30-year-old advertising executive named Bob Arroyo and his family went for a hike in the hills overlooking the Mediterranean and the Sinai Peninsula, on the far side of Gaza from 2119 01:58:11.130 --> 01:58:13.040 Israel. Arroyo 2120 01:58:13.040 --> 01:58:19.840 and his wife and his two children, five and seven years old, finished their hike and they got into the car to 2121 01:58:19.840 --> 01:58:20.570 go home. 2122 01:58:20.530 --> 01:58:20.740 And 2123 01:58:20.740 --> 01:58:22.010 again, Arroyo was an 2124 01:58:22.010 --> 01:58:31.750 advertising executive, and his two kids were adorable, and their faces were very well-known in Israel because Arroyo had used both of them in popular ad campaigns. And 2125 01:58:31.750 --> 01:58:32.850 so as they were 2126 01:58:32.850 --> 01:58:37.290 driving home on a main highway, they passed Palestinian 2127 01:58:37.290 --> 01:58:40.020 villages and refugee camps. At a 2128 01:58:40.500 --> 01:58:40.970 certain point, 2129 01:58:40.970 --> 01:58:43.880 they were halted at a roadblock, and as soon as they 2130 01:58:43.880 --> 01:58:47.910 stopped, a teenager ran up into their car and threw in a grenade. 2131 01:58:48.850 --> 01:58:53.830 "'Arroyo was severely wounded, managed to crawl out of the car. "'There 2132 01:58:53.870 --> 01:58:54.170 were 2133 01:58:54.170 --> 01:58:59.130 two young men nearby, and Arroyo started begging them "'to call for help for his family, which 2134 01:58:59.130 --> 01:59:01.690 was trapped in the car, "'and the car was burning. "'He 2135 01:59:01.870 --> 01:59:03.340 said the boys just 2136 01:59:03.340 --> 01:59:05.030 laughed at him. 2137 01:59:05.030 --> 01:59:06.650 "'His five-year-old 2138 01:59:06.650 --> 01:59:16.010 daughter died in the car, "'and his seven-year-old son died soon after at the hospital, "'and his wife was severely handicapped for the rest of 2139 01:59:16.010 --> 01:59:16.720 her life.' 2140 01:59:18.030 --> 01:59:18.030 tens 2141 01:59:18.050 --> 01:59:22.140 of thousands of Israelis attended the children's funeral in Jerusalem. When 2142 01:59:22.780 --> 01:59:23.230 Israeli intel 2143 01:59:23.240 --> 01:59:29.610 caught the people who had done this, it turned out to be three boys acting on their own, 2144 01:59:29.610 --> 01:59:33.330 aged 15, 16, and 17. Many 2145 01:59:33.330 --> 01:59:35.060 of the attacks 2146 01:59:35.060 --> 01:59:41.010 originating in the West Bank seemed to be coming from a place called Karameh, 2147 01:59:41.010 --> 01:59:41.730 where the 2148 01:59:42.040 --> 01:59:45.870 Palestinians had set up a base in the southern region of the Jordan Valley. 2149 01:59:46.720 --> 01:59:47.370 Every time 2150 01:59:47.400 --> 01:59:52.940 there was an attack, the Israelis would retaliate, often attacking not only the Palestinians 2151 01:59:52.950 --> 01:59:56.760 but Jordanian forces, and their retaliations were taking a toll. In 2152 01:59:56.760 --> 01:59:57.320 March of 2153 01:59:57.320 --> 02:00:01.250 1968, an Israeli school bus ran over a landmine, 2154 02:00:01.250 --> 02:00:05.570 killing two adult chaperones and wounding ten children. I've 2155 02:00:05.570 --> 02:00:06.070 also seen 2156 02:00:06.070 --> 02:00:09.960 in another source that 28 people were wounded. I'm not really sure where 2157 02:00:09.960 --> 02:00:11.640 the two different figures come from. 2158 02:00:12.750 --> 02:00:13.520 The 2159 02:00:13.740 --> 02:00:19.750 IDF prepared a large-scale helicopter-borne daylight assault on the Fatah base in Karameh. 2160 02:00:19.750 --> 02:00:20.970 Arafat himself 2161 02:00:20.970 --> 02:00:26.150 was believed to be there at the time, and the Israeli soldiers had orders 2162 02:00:26.150 --> 02:00:28.700 to kill every young male they found. 2163 02:00:28.750 --> 02:00:29.480 But the Israeli 2164 02:00:29.740 --> 02:00:31.880 mechanized support units got bogged down in 2165 02:00:31.880 --> 02:00:36.900 thick foliage around the Jordan River, and poor coordination cost them 2166 02:00:36.950 --> 02:00:40.730 the element of surprise. Rather than try to run, 2167 02:00:40.940 --> 02:00:51.730 which is what Fedayeen always did when the Israelis came in force, Fatah prepared to dig in and repel the assault while Arafat was taken away to a safe location on a motorcycle. 2168 02:00:51.980 --> 02:00:53.180 Meanwhile, King 2169 02:00:53.180 --> 02:00:54.880 Hussein reluctantly 2170 02:00:55.050 --> 02:00:57.590 dispatched a contingent of the Jordanian army. 2171 02:00:57.840 --> 02:00:58.280 There was a 2172 02:00:58.320 --> 02:01:01.850 battle, and 33 Israeli soldiers were killed. 2173 02:01:02.100 --> 02:01:03.080 61 Jordanians 2174 02:01:03.080 --> 02:01:08.510 and over 100 Palestinians have been killed, but that did not matter. 2175 02:01:08.530 --> 02:01:08.730 The 2176 02:01:08.890 --> 02:01:15.290 Israelis had taken a lot of casualties, and they were forced to withdraw under conditions that they had not chosen. 2177 02:01:15.600 --> 02:01:16.440 And word went 2178 02:01:16.440 --> 02:01:23.110 out that for the first time, the Palestinians, Fatah to be specific, had 2179 02:01:23.330 --> 02:01:23.990 stood their 2180 02:01:23.990 --> 02:01:27.780 ground in direct combat with Zionist forces. The 2181 02:01:27.910 --> 02:01:28.990 word karameh means 2182 02:01:28.990 --> 02:01:30.210 dignity, which only 2183 02:01:30.840 --> 02:01:30.840 helped 2184 02:01:30.850 --> 02:01:33.710 propel the incident to mythical status. 2185 02:01:34.420 --> 02:01:34.800 There 2186 02:01:35.000 --> 02:01:37.930 were public celebrations in refugee camps around 2187 02:01:37.930 --> 02:01:44.630 the region. Arab leaders, including Nasser, came out in public support of the Fede Union. 2188 02:01:45.210 --> 02:01:46.060 Within two days 2189 02:01:46.060 --> 02:01:51.190 of the battle, thousands of recruits showed up to be trained as fighters, and 2190 02:01:51.190 --> 02:01:54.880 not only Palestinians, but Arabs from other countries as well. 2191 02:01:55.450 --> 02:01:57.340 After Karameh, 2192 02:01:57.400 --> 02:02:01.680 Arafat became a folk hero. 2193 02:02:02.140 --> 02:02:02.140 And 2194 02:02:02.210 --> 02:02:02.980 not just locally, 2195 02:02:02.980 --> 02:02:09.630 not just in Palestine, not just in the Arab world, but in the radical era of the 60s and 70s increasingly around the world. 2196 02:02:09.870 --> 02:02:11.150 His organization 2197 02:02:11.150 --> 02:02:13.860 had originally been set up to be a 2198 02:02:13.860 --> 02:02:19.060 rival of the PLO, but now Fatah managed to take control of the PLO, 2199 02:02:19.120 --> 02:02:19.260 and 2200 02:02:19.260 --> 02:02:23.940 before long virtually all Fedayeen groups had been brought under its control. 2201 02:02:25.070 --> 02:02:25.970 The charter 2202 02:02:26.130 --> 02:02:29.480 of the PLO was changed to match the mission of Fatah to 2203 02:02:29.600 --> 02:02:34.770 wage armed struggle against Israel until the Zionist entity was completely defeated. With 2204 02:02:34.770 --> 02:02:36.630 the Arab militaries in 2205 02:02:36.630 --> 02:02:46.090 shambles and Palestinian insurgents still causing trouble, the Israelis scrambled to reorient their focus in that direction. 2206 02:02:47.090 --> 02:02:47.350 The 2207 02:02:47.920 --> 02:02:53.740 military and intelligence agencies were furious at Arafat's narrow escapes, and they 2208 02:02:54.060 --> 02:02:59.800 wanted his blood so bad they were willing to try just about anything. In keeping with the times, 2209 02:02:59.890 --> 02:03:02.810 even a little MKUltra mind-control action. A 2210 02:03:03.540 --> 02:03:04.260 psychologist in 2211 02:03:04.260 --> 02:03:08.250 the Israeli military told his superiors that 2212 02:03:08.670 --> 02:03:08.830 He 2213 02:03:09.010 --> 02:03:10.910 had devised a series of methods 2214 02:03:10.910 --> 02:03:19.710 that would allow them to turn a captured Palestinian into a Manchurian candidate who could be released back into the wild with subconscious orders to kill Yasser 2215 02:03:19.710 --> 02:03:21.350 Arafat or do anything else. 2216 02:03:21.670 --> 02:03:22.870 Well, apparently the 2217 02:03:22.870 --> 02:03:32.800 Israelis were very desperate. Or maybe they just said, screw it, let's just give this quack a shot, because they actually approved this plan. The doctor provided an ideal profile, 2218 02:03:32.870 --> 02:03:35.170 the prisoner he was going to need... 2219 02:03:35.120 --> 02:03:39.850 and one was selected from among the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails. 2220 02:03:40.120 --> 02:03:41.090 The doctor and his 2221 02:03:41.090 --> 02:03:42.150 team were given 2222 02:03:42.160 --> 02:03:50.380 a building in which to conduct their work, and the doctor spent three months using various techniques designed to brainwash his guinea pig. 2223 02:03:50.690 --> 02:03:52.080 In the third 2224 02:03:52.080 --> 02:03:53.500 month, the 2225 02:03:53.500 --> 02:03:53.940 man was 2226 02:03:53.940 --> 02:03:57.340 placed in a room where pictures of Arafat would pop up, 2227 02:03:57.340 --> 02:03:57.960 and it appeared 2228 02:03:57.960 --> 02:04:00.550 that he had been programmed to shoot them immediately, without 2229 02:04:00.550 --> 02:04:00.590 a 2230 02:04:00.700 --> 02:04:01.180 thought. 2231 02:04:01.980 --> 02:04:02.470 A senior 2232 02:04:02.690 --> 02:04:04.670 military intelligence official told 2233 02:04:04.830 --> 02:04:11.890 Israeli journalist Ronan Bergman what he saw when he'd gone to observe, quote, Fatki, that's the 2234 02:04:11.950 --> 02:04:23.700 codename given to the Palestinian prisoner, Fatki stood there in the middle of the room, and Shalit, the doctor, spoke with him, as if they were just carrying out a normal conversation. Suddenly, Shalit 2235 02:04:23.790 --> 02:04:27.920 banged his hand on the table, and Fatki began to run around the table. 2236 02:04:28.380 --> 02:04:28.510 He 2237 02:04:28.710 --> 02:04:31.880 reacted automatically to all sorts of gestures by Shalit. 2238 02:04:32.270 --> 02:04:32.560 Then he 2239 02:04:32.560 --> 02:04:42.530 put him in a room and showed us how Fatki raised his pistol to a firing position every time Arafat's picture popped up from one of the pieces of furniture. It was impressive, 2240 02:04:42.630 --> 02:04:43.610 end quote. 2241 02:04:43.950 --> 02:04:45.720 When the doctor decided 2242 02:04:45.720 --> 02:04:49.170 Fatki was ready and in an ideal hypnotic 2243 02:04:49.570 --> 02:04:50.010 state, 2244 02:04:50.350 --> 02:04:50.710 they sent 2245 02:04:50.850 --> 02:04:56.450 him back across the Jordan River to rejoin his comrades in Fatah. 2246 02:04:56.460 --> 02:04:56.950 After 2247 02:04:57.260 --> 02:04:59.880 about five hours, Israeli intelligence got 2248 02:04:59.890 --> 02:05:09.770 word from one of their people in Jordan. Some Palestinian guy had shown up to a police station in Karameh saying that the Zionists had tried to brainwash me into killing Yasser Arafat. So 2249 02:05:10.280 --> 02:05:12.880 that didn't work. But, you know, 2250 02:05:12.970 --> 02:05:16.400 you gotta give them an A-plus for effort and creativity. 2251 02:05:17.180 --> 02:05:18.450 Israeli intelligence 2252 02:05:18.590 --> 02:05:22.580 drew up kill lists of wanted terrorists. 2253 02:05:23.270 --> 02:05:23.270 And 2254 02:05:23.320 --> 02:05:23.850 as the list 2255 02:05:23.900 --> 02:05:28.170 grew, it was obvious that Mossad assassination squads were not going to be enough. 2256 02:05:28.350 --> 02:05:28.830 And they were 2257 02:05:28.830 --> 02:05:30.550 going to need military support. 2258 02:05:30.840 --> 02:05:31.930 Ariel Sharon was 2259 02:05:32.030 --> 02:05:35.110 now a major general and commander of 2260 02:05:35.110 --> 02:05:37.330 IDF Southern Command. 2261 02:05:37.580 --> 02:05:38.040 And he was 2262 02:05:38.050 --> 02:05:39.350 happy to help. 2263 02:05:39.520 --> 02:05:40.380 As always, he 2264 02:05:40.380 --> 02:05:46.050 took an extremely aggressive approach, to the point that he drew criticism from others in the government. 2265 02:05:46.300 --> 02:05:47.290 Israel's military 2266 02:05:47.290 --> 02:05:51.710 governor, responsible for civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip. 2267 02:05:52.370 --> 02:05:54.790 complained that Sharon was making his job completely 2268 02:05:54.790 --> 02:05:55.350 impossible. 2269 02:05:55.570 --> 02:05:55.990 He said 2270 02:05:55.990 --> 02:06:09.400 that he was, quote, Moshe Dayan was the Minister of Defense, and he and Sharon did not see eye to eye on what had to be done in the Strip. From Bergman, quote, 2271 02:06:09.640 --> 02:06:10.310 Dayan wanted 2272 02:06:10.310 --> 02:06:19.080 contacts and connections with the population, whereas Sharon was hunting the terrorists and could only see them through the sights of his rifle. 2273 02:06:19.760 --> 02:06:20.240 and the 2274 02:06:20.290 --> 02:06:28.880 population did not interest him at all. I heard Sharon declare in front of all the officers, whoever kills a terrorist will get a bottle 2275 02:06:28.990 --> 02:06:31.120 of champagne, and anyone who takes 2276 02:06:31.120 --> 02:06:39.380 a prisoner will get a bottle of soda. I said, good Lord, what kind of policy is this? Who speaks like this? After 2277 02:06:39.570 --> 02:06:39.830 all, if 2278 02:06:39.830 --> 02:06:46.600 we do not give them a little assistance, a little prosperity, they'll all turn to the path of terror. End quote. 2279 02:06:47.980 --> 02:06:48.220 At 2280 02:06:48.220 --> 02:06:56.360 southern command, Chiron created a special assassination squad that reported directly to him, and only to him. The 2281 02:06:56.360 --> 02:06:57.490 unit had lists of 2282 02:06:57.490 --> 02:07:04.160 names, some terrorists, others suspected of knowing about or supporting terrorists. They 2283 02:07:04.160 --> 02:07:05.060 kidnapped and 2284 02:07:05.080 --> 02:07:05.960 interrogated 2285 02:07:05.960 --> 02:07:10.440 these people, and often tortured them if they failed to cooperate. 2286 02:07:11.500 --> 02:07:12.280 Sharon's 2287 02:07:12.370 --> 02:07:20.670 men infiltrated Gaza neighborhoods dressed as Arabs, and if they saw someone who fit the description of a wanted terrorist, they just 2288 02:07:20.690 --> 02:07:21.710 killed him on the 2289 02:07:21.710 --> 02:07:28.110 spot. The commander of the unit told a reporter, "We exploited the main weak point to these terror 2290 02:07:28.320 --> 02:07:40.170 cells. Because of their Marxist background, they practiced a very high level of need-to-know compartmentalization. Each man knew only the members of his own cell, and not those of other cells. 2291 02:07:40.140 --> 02:07:40.270 If 2292 02:07:40.450 --> 02:07:43.140 you appear as an armed local and you can speak the target's 2293 02:07:43.140 --> 02:07:48.530 language, he has no way of knowing that it is in fact a trick until it's too late." The 2294 02:07:48.530 --> 02:07:50.320 murder of the 2295 02:07:50.320 --> 02:07:57.040 Arroyo children marked a sea change in how the Israelis were going to respond to terrorist attacks. 2296 02:07:57.310 --> 02:07:58.120 Mayer Dagan, 2297 02:07:58.120 --> 02:08:03.380 the commander hand-picked by Sharon to lead his death squad, said, 2298 02:08:03.690 --> 02:08:04.180 After those 2299 02:08:04.180 --> 02:08:06.180 kids were murdered... 2300 02:08:06.370 --> 02:08:09.940 Ariel Sharon took the matter of terror in the Gaza Strip personally. 2301 02:08:10.130 --> 02:08:11.590 In the past, Sharon 2302 02:08:11.590 --> 02:08:19.360 would let the unit develop its own intelligence and come to him with suggested targets and operations when they were ready. 2303 02:08:19.570 --> 02:08:21.250 But now he started coming 2304 02:08:21.250 --> 02:08:29.500 down to the villa where they were based on the regular to participate directly in selecting targets and planning missions down to the small details. 2305 02:08:30.540 --> 02:08:31.200 The arroyo 2306 02:08:31.400 --> 02:08:32.860 killings also effectively 2307 02:08:32.980 --> 02:08:40.970 ended the debate inside the Israeli defense establishment about how to handle the Palestinian population in the conquered territories. The 2308 02:08:40.970 --> 02:08:42.260 Israeli politicians 2309 02:08:42.260 --> 02:08:55.440 and security officials who were interested in trying to win hearts and minds were shouted down as terrorist appeasers, and Sharon's approach triumphed. Massive forces poured into the Gaza Strip, 2310 02:08:55.900 --> 02:08:56.060 On 2311 02:08:56.320 --> 02:09:03.490 Sharon's orders, they demolished rows of houses in order to create wide-access roads through the crowded refugee camps. The 2312 02:09:03.720 --> 02:09:03.870 people 2313 02:09:03.870 --> 02:09:08.170 whose houses were destroyed were not compensated or provided with any alternate 2314 02:09:08.170 --> 02:09:12.040 accommodations. They were just thrown out and left with nothing. One 2315 02:09:12.200 --> 02:09:12.640 night in 2316 02:09:12.640 --> 02:09:15.830 January 1972, Sharon ordered the 2317 02:09:15.830 --> 02:09:21.000 expulsion of thousands of Bedouin from a 2,500-acre area south of Rafa. 2318 02:09:21.520 --> 02:09:21.740 Thank you. 2319 02:09:21.760 --> 02:09:21.950 The 2320 02:09:22.340 --> 02:09:23.100 Israeli general, in 2321 02:09:23.100 --> 02:09:29.740 charge of government activities in the occupied areas, was outraged by this. He even threatened to resign, but 2322 02:09:29.820 --> 02:09:30.250 he was 2323 02:09:30.550 --> 02:09:32.800 talked out of it and did nothing. Sharon 2324 02:09:32.920 --> 02:09:34.080 was given free reign 2325 02:09:34.120 --> 02:09:35.010 to use special 2326 02:09:35.010 --> 02:09:43.310 forces and other clandestine units virtually without restraint to find and kill terrorists before they could do any damage. 2327 02:09:44.970 --> 02:09:52.140 Meanwhile, Dagan and his assassination squad continually devised new methods for finding and disposing of wanted Palestinians. One 2328 02:09:52.590 --> 02:09:53.240 tactic was to 2329 02:09:53.250 --> 02:10:02.170 ambush them in brothels. Another was to hide in trees in the citrus groves when they knew that terrorists were planning to meet there. They'd 2330 02:10:02.350 --> 02:10:02.740 hide up 2331 02:10:02.740 --> 02:10:04.000 in the branches, 2332 02:10:04.670 --> 02:10:04.670 communicating 2333 02:10:04.750 --> 02:10:09.950 with each other by pulling on fishing cords stretched out between their trees to maintain silence. When 2334 02:10:10.170 --> 02:10:10.350 the 2335 02:10:10.350 --> 02:10:12.350 militants turned 2336 02:10:12.350 --> 02:10:12.640 up, 2337 02:10:12.620 --> 02:10:12.760 No 2338 02:10:13.050 --> 02:10:17.410 attempt was made to detain them. They were just shot and killed without warning. Of 2339 02:10:17.670 --> 02:10:18.550 course, these 2340 02:10:18.550 --> 02:10:21.170 methods often lead to mistakes. 2341 02:10:21.600 --> 02:10:22.220 When you're 2342 02:10:22.220 --> 02:10:27.710 targeting people before they can launch an attack, by definition, you're hitting 2343 02:10:28.210 --> 02:10:35.090 them before they've launched an actual attack. Sometimes random Palestinians would happen by and notice 2344 02:10:35.090 --> 02:10:36.560 the Israelis lying in ambush. 2345 02:10:37.360 --> 02:10:37.760 And the 2346 02:10:37.840 --> 02:10:45.060 Israelis were not about to let them run off and raise the alarm, and there were times when they simply murdered innocent people to prevent that. 2347 02:10:45.530 --> 02:10:46.880 Another thing they'd 2348 02:10:46.880 --> 02:10:52.220 do is use Arab collaborators to sell booby-trapped grenades to the Palestine Liberation 2349 02:10:52.220 --> 02:10:52.890 Army. The 2350 02:10:52.890 --> 02:10:53.970 fuses would be 2351 02:10:53.970 --> 02:10:58.680 clipped from the usual three-second delay to a half-second, 2352 02:10:59.150 --> 02:10:59.480 ensuring that 2353 02:10:59.480 --> 02:10:59.950 whoever 2354 02:10:59.950 --> 02:11:01.920 used them would blow himself up. 2355 02:11:02.720 --> 02:11:03.090 On one 2356 02:11:03.450 --> 02:11:09.660 occasion, they borrowed an idea from Britain's famous ploy before the invasion of Italy called Operation Mincemeat. 2357 02:11:09.680 --> 02:11:10.660 Meyer Dagan, 2358 02:11:10.660 --> 02:11:12.640 the commander of this unit, 2359 02:11:12.640 --> 02:11:24.000 pretended to be a corpse and was carried by his comrades, two of them Palestinian collaborators and the others disguised as Arabs, into a militant hideout. And once they were all 2360 02:11:24.000 --> 02:11:26.070 inside, Dagan rose from the dead and the team 2361 02:11:26.070 --> 02:11:29.140 threw down and killed everybody in the room. Pretty incredible. 2362 02:11:30.320 --> 02:11:31.330 About a month 2363 02:11:31.370 --> 02:11:37.870 after the Arroyo killings, two jeeps under Dagan's command were moving down a road that ran 2364 02:11:37.870 --> 02:11:40.360 between the Jabalia refugee 2365 02:11:40.530 --> 02:11:41.370 camp and 2366 02:11:41.540 --> 02:11:46.460 Gaza City. Jabalia refugee camp, by the way, is the one that was recently bombed. It was in the 2367 02:11:46.460 --> 02:11:47.210 news. 2368 02:11:47.520 --> 02:11:47.580 Along 2369 02:11:47.810 --> 02:11:49.900 the way, the Jeeps encountered a 2370 02:11:49.900 --> 02:11:58.980 local cab that was loaded with passengers driving in the opposite direction, and Dagan thought he recognized two targets among the passengers, and so he ordered the Jeeps to turn 2371 02:11:59.330 --> 02:12:08.790 around and chase the cab down. The Jeeps caught up and then passed the cab and then cut off the road, and Dagan's soldiers jumped out and surrounded the car. Dagan 2372 02:12:09.060 --> 02:12:09.520 approached 2373 02:12:09.520 --> 02:12:12.180 the vehicle with his pistol drawn. One 2374 02:12:12.180 --> 02:12:12.760 of the 2375 02:12:12.760 --> 02:12:16.410 targets, Abu Nimr, jumps out, 2376 02:12:17.070 --> 02:12:18.150 holding a hand grenade the 2377 02:12:18.150 --> 02:12:18.930 pin is 2378 02:12:19.090 --> 02:12:23.890 already drawn he says if you get any closer we all die 2379 02:12:24.260 --> 02:12:25.200 and so Dagan paused 2380 02:12:25.390 --> 02:12:28.880 for a second or two and then he yelled grenade and he 2381 02:12:29.150 --> 02:12:46.270 charged Abu Nimr and he grabs the hand holding the grenade to keep the guy from releasing the trigger and starts headbutting on Abu Nimr with his helmet until he went unconscious Dagan's men neutralized the rest of the passengers and Dagan kept hold of Abu Nimr's hand as he went to the ground. 2382 02:12:46.410 --> 02:12:46.410 and 2383 02:12:46.470 --> 02:12:48.900 found the grenade pin and put it back in its slot. 2384 02:12:49.160 --> 02:12:50.120 After the 2385 02:12:50.120 --> 02:12:55.700 operation, Sharon said of Dagan, his greatest expertise is separating an Arab 2386 02:12:55.800 --> 02:12:56.920 from his head. 2387 02:12:57.170 --> 02:12:58.640 Well, thanks to the 2388 02:12:58.720 --> 02:13:06.600 tactical leadership of Dagan, Yitzhak Pundak, the IDF military governor who had clashed with Sharon in the past, 2389 02:13:06.850 --> 02:13:07.220 could not 2390 02:13:07.220 --> 02:13:15.040 deny the effectiveness of Sharon's tactics. But he had other concerns than just military effectiveness. 2391 02:13:15.810 --> 02:13:16.300 He had to 2392 02:13:16.300 --> 02:13:25.970 worry about political implications and how these operations were affecting Israel's foreign relations and the long-term relationship with the local population. 2393 02:13:26.350 --> 02:13:27.320 And Sharon was 2394 02:13:27.650 --> 02:13:30.610 making those parts of his job 2395 02:13:30.610 --> 02:13:33.940 practically impossible. Bergman 2396 02:13:33.940 --> 02:13:36.090 again, quote, Pundak 2397 02:13:36.090 --> 02:13:36.870 later recalled 2398 02:13:37.260 --> 02:13:40.790 reading a report filed by the unit that read, 2399 02:13:41.250 --> 02:13:41.460 Our 2400 02:13:41.590 --> 02:13:53.200 detail is chasing a wanted terrorist in El Shati, a refugee camp in Gaza. He ran into one of the houses. The unit broke in after him, disarmed him, and killed him in the house. Pundak 2401 02:13:53.250 --> 02:13:53.690 says he 2402 02:13:53.690 --> 02:13:59.950 drew the attention of an intelligence officer to the possibility that if such a report reached the 2403 02:13:59.960 --> 02:14:08.870 UN or the Red Cross, it would cause an international scandal. So, what's the problem? said the officer, according to Pundak. Destroy the report. 2404 02:14:09.740 --> 02:14:10.280 pundak 2405 02:14:10.490 --> 02:14:25.730 took this story to sharon and when he refused to investigate further pundak recalled he told sharon you are a liar a crook and a knave sharon rose and raised his hand as if to slap pundak but pundak wasn't scared if 2406 02:14:25.730 --> 02:14:26.020 you do 2407 02:14:26.100 --> 02:14:30.190 that i'll break your bones right here in your office he said 2408 02:14:30.330 --> 02:14:31.110 sharon sat 2409 02:14:31.110 --> 02:14:38.640 down pundak says he saluted and declared now i know you're also a coward and left the room. 2410 02:14:39.420 --> 02:14:39.890 Several 2411 02:14:40.120 --> 02:15:00.120 journalists have collected accounts from Dagan's unnamed men saying they shot people after they surrendered, their hands in the air. One was quoted as saying that he and other soldiers had apprehended a Palestinian man who was wanted for murdering an IDF officer. A Shin Bet agent, who was with them, purportedly said that the man could never be brought to trial 2412 02:15:00.120 --> 02:15:06.140 because the Secret Service would be forced to name the collaborator who had provided the information that led to his capture. 2413 02:15:06.140 --> 02:15:06.360 the 2414 02:15:06.620 --> 02:15:11.020 soldiers let their captive escape and then shot him as he ran 2415 02:15:11.060 --> 02:15:19.460 another unit veteran said the captive would be led from the house he was captured in into a dark alley off to the side 2416 02:15:19.460 --> 02:15:24.790 where the soldiers would leave a pistol or a grenade in a way that made it very tempting for him to reach out for 2417 02:15:24.890 --> 02:15:25.280 it when 2418 02:15:25.280 --> 02:15:26.120 he did they'd 2419 02:15:26.180 --> 02:15:32.870 shoot him sometimes they'd tell him you have two minutes to run and then they'd shoot him on the grounds that he 2420 02:15:33.240 --> 02:15:33.980 tried to run away the 2421 02:15:33.940 --> 02:15:34.400 Other 2422 02:15:34.600 --> 02:15:43.770 former members said that when it came to the list of targets, Dagon had unilaterally annulled the IDF's rule that suspects be given a chance to surrender before being 2423 02:15:43.770 --> 02:15:46.280 killed. Under Dagon's command, 2424 02:15:46.280 --> 02:15:53.160 a target was assassinated on sight. All the complaints, rumors, testimonies, to say nothing 2425 02:15:53.160 --> 02:15:59.580 of the many dead bodies, were swept into a closet, locked tightly to prevent any outside inquiry. 2426 02:16:01.890 --> 02:16:02.230 The 2427 02:16:03.040 --> 02:16:08.380 aggressive Israeli tactics were making it harder to hit targets inside Israel, 2428 02:16:09.040 --> 02:16:15.490 and so the PLO reached out to new friends willing to help carry out operations elsewhere. Europe 2429 02:16:15.490 --> 02:16:15.990 was a 2430 02:16:16.120 --> 02:16:19.040 very juicy target. Israelis 2431 02:16:19.050 --> 02:16:19.350 came 2432 02:16:19.490 --> 02:16:26.430 and went often, and European security procedures were insufficient to say the least. 2433 02:16:27.220 --> 02:16:27.450 The 2434 02:16:27.900 --> 02:16:38.340 60s revolution was in full swing, and the PLO shaped its message to attract the support of left-wing and would-be revolutionary movements around the world, like this PLO statement, The 2435 02:16:38.830 --> 02:16:39.150 Palestinian 2436 02:16:39.240 --> 02:16:51.480 national struggle and the Arab national democratic struggle are an integral part of the militant movement against imperialism and racism and for national liberation throughout the world. 2437 02:16:51.470 --> 02:17:02.320 Mutual solidarity and support between the Arab national struggle and the world revolutionary struggle are a necessity and an objective condition for the success of our Arab struggle. The 2438 02:17:02.450 --> 02:17:10.320 Arab-Palestinian national struggle is decisively and firmly on the side of all world revolutionary forces. End quote. 2439 02:17:10.700 --> 02:17:12.760 Well, you 2440 02:17:12.760 --> 02:17:14.680 know. 2441 02:17:15.230 --> 02:17:15.680 That kind of 2442 02:17:15.740 --> 02:17:18.750 thing is catnip to Western radicals, of course, 2443 02:17:18.840 --> 02:17:23.570 and so militant left-wing movements in Germany and Italy and radical groups across the 2444 02:17:23.700 --> 02:17:26.970 continent adopted the Palestinian cause as their own. 2445 02:17:27.270 --> 02:17:28.130 The PLO brought 2446 02:17:28.130 --> 02:17:40.630 European radicals to Lebanon and Jordan for military training in the camps, and the Europeans helped the PLO with messaging and logistics and even operations in Europe. 2447 02:17:41.420 --> 02:17:42.050 On several 2448 02:17:42.110 --> 02:17:51.700 occasions throughout the 1970s, major PLO operations targeting Jews overseas turned out to have received direct support from European 2449 02:17:51.700 --> 02:17:52.610 leftists. In 2450 02:17:52.610 --> 02:17:53.640 the summer of 2451 02:17:53.640 --> 02:18:05.960 1968, as protests and revolutions rocked capitals around the world, Palestinian militants adopted a new tactic that would become one of the hallmarks of the era. 2452 02:18:07.200 --> 02:18:07.760 They 2453 02:18:07.760 --> 02:18:09.690 hijacked Flight 2454 02:18:09.840 --> 02:18:14.880 426 of the Israeli airline El Al. The 2455 02:18:14.880 --> 02:18:20.890 plane was on the way from Rome to Tel Aviv when three men took it over and ordered the pilot to divert to Algiers. 2456 02:18:20.920 --> 02:18:21.530 There were 2457 02:18:21.530 --> 02:18:24.690 38 people on board, including 12 Israelis and 2458 02:18:24.850 --> 02:18:31.080 another 12 Israeli crew members. Once the plane landed in Algeria, 2459 02:18:31.240 --> 02:18:32.680 all the non-Israelis 2460 02:18:32.790 --> 02:18:32.790 and 2461 02:18:32.880 --> 02:18:41.050 all the women, children, and elderly, regardless of whether they were Israeli, were all released, leaving seven crew members and five passengers as 2462 02:18:41.050 --> 02:18:43.070 hostages, all Israeli men. 2463 02:18:43.340 --> 02:18:44.470 They were moved to a 2464 02:18:44.470 --> 02:18:51.550 building where they were kept under guard by Algerian government security forces for three weeks when the Israeli 2465 02:18:51.640 --> 02:18:57.680 government finally agreed to free 24 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages' release. 2466 02:18:59.040 --> 02:18:59.840 The El Al 2467 02:19:00.220 --> 02:19:04.660 Flight 426 skyjacking was carried out by George Habash's outfit, 2468 02:19:04.710 --> 02:19:13.860 the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP Which was formed separately from Yasser Arafat's Fatah, but came under the PLO umbrella with 2469 02:19:13.860 --> 02:19:16.520 everyone else after Arafat took it over The 2470 02:19:16.520 --> 02:19:17.450 PFLP was 2471 02:19:17.450 --> 02:19:17.580 a 2472 02:19:17.580 --> 02:19:25.840 Marxist organization, popular with the educated middle class Which opened a lot of doors into the Eastern Bloc and 2473 02:19:25.880 --> 02:19:27.260 the West European Left 2474 02:19:27.260 --> 02:19:28.160 Thank you. 2475 02:19:28.110 --> 02:19:28.460 The 2476 02:19:28.880 --> 02:19:34.880 success of the El Al hijacking was pretty much total. No one had been 2477 02:19:34.880 --> 02:19:40.910 hurt. Leftists had no problem defending the operation since the hijackers had 2478 02:19:40.910 --> 02:19:48.520 wisely decided to let everybody but the men go. And 24 Palestinian militants had been freed from Israeli dungeons. What's 2479 02:19:48.780 --> 02:19:49.290 more, the 2480 02:19:49.290 --> 02:19:51.590 Israelis had been forced to negotiate 2481 02:19:52.070 --> 02:19:53.310 with a group 2482 02:19:53.600 --> 02:19:53.600 that 2483 02:19:53.660 --> 02:19:57.920 they officially refused to recognize, and said was a gang of criminal terrorists. 2484 02:19:58.230 --> 02:19:59.820 For years, the official 2485 02:19:59.900 --> 02:20:02.370 policy of the Israeli government 2486 02:20:02.370 --> 02:20:09.690 was to never negotiate prisoner exchanges with hostage-takers, since doing so would only encourage more hostage-taking operations. 2487 02:20:09.930 --> 02:20:10.460 But now that 2488 02:20:10.460 --> 02:20:13.740 policy had been put to the test, and the Israelis had 2489 02:20:13.800 --> 02:20:14.610 buckled. 2490 02:20:14.910 --> 02:20:15.880 And so hijacking 2491 02:20:16.020 --> 02:20:18.180 became a regular thing. 2492 02:20:18.820 --> 02:20:19.240 About a 2493 02:20:19.400 --> 02:20:23.240 year after Flight 426, a TWA flight from L.A. 2494 02:20:23.310 --> 02:20:26.240 to Tel Aviv was jacked by four Palestinians. Two of 2495 02:20:26.360 --> 02:20:27.040 them forced 2496 02:20:27.160 --> 02:20:28.170 a stewardess 2497 02:20:28.170 --> 02:20:36.440 at gunpoint to open the door to the cockpit, and when the pilots looked up to see what was the matter, they had gun barrels in their faces. To 2498 02:20:36.850 --> 02:20:37.670 their surprise, 2499 02:20:37.670 --> 02:20:37.950 one of 2500 02:20:38.070 --> 02:20:40.680 those guns was being held by a woman, 2501 02:20:41.200 --> 02:20:41.560 dressed all in 2502 02:20:41.560 --> 02:20:46.980 white, with a white floppy hat and a white tunic and white trousers. Wow. 2503 02:20:46.940 --> 02:20:47.570 Her name 2504 02:20:47.630 --> 02:20:54.590 was Layla Khaled, and for a time, she would become an international symbol of Palestinian resistance. Khaled 2505 02:20:54.730 --> 02:20:55.150 and the 2506 02:20:55.150 --> 02:21:02.090 others ordered the plane to land in Damascus, and Israeli air traffic control tracked the plane the 2507 02:21:02.340 --> 02:21:02.340 whole 2508 02:21:02.450 --> 02:21:02.640 way, 2509 02:21:02.640 --> 02:21:03.090 but they 2510 02:21:03.280 --> 02:21:03.280 had 2511 02:21:03.330 --> 02:21:10.070 no choice but to just watch as this aircraft made its way over Israeli airspace to land in the capital of their Syrian enemy. 2512 02:21:11.150 --> 02:21:12.050 Once the plane 2513 02:21:12.070 --> 02:21:17.530 was safely on the ground, all the hostages were released except for two Israelis who were held 2514 02:21:17.680 --> 02:21:21.550 for three months until another prisoner exchange was negotiated. The 2515 02:21:22.120 --> 02:21:23.020 thing about the 2516 02:21:23.100 --> 02:21:27.040 Palestinian movement is that, just like 2517 02:21:27.040 --> 02:21:30.350 today, it was a very mixed bag. 2518 02:21:30.350 --> 02:21:30.690 Most 2519 02:21:31.010 --> 02:21:39.970 groups fell under the banner of the PLO, but that didn't mean that the PLO had chartered those groups or handed out their missions. Most of these groups formed on their own 2520 02:21:39.970 --> 02:21:42.450 and then declared allegiance to the PLO, but 2521 02:21:42.480 --> 02:21:42.880 the PLO 2522 02:21:42.880 --> 02:21:45.140 leadership wasn't always exercising 2523 02:21:45.140 --> 02:21:46.950 operational control. And 2524 02:21:46.950 --> 02:21:47.680 so you had 2525 02:21:47.690 --> 02:21:52.950 some groups, usually the more educated, secular ones... 2526 02:21:52.910 --> 02:21:53.410 That had 2527 02:21:53.430 --> 02:21:56.190 a nose for the global propaganda environment, 2528 02:21:56.220 --> 02:21:56.380 and 2529 02:21:56.520 --> 02:22:02.090 they would do things like release women and children and try to negotiate prisoner exchanges without hurting anyone. 2530 02:22:02.520 --> 02:22:03.550 Other groups were not 2531 02:22:03.630 --> 02:22:05.350 like that at all, and were 2532 02:22:05.700 --> 02:22:06.060 just all 2533 02:22:06.100 --> 02:22:08.460 about violence and mayhem. As 2534 02:22:08.720 --> 02:22:09.420 the conflict 2535 02:22:09.420 --> 02:22:11.410 dragged on, and this is one 2536 02:22:11.410 --> 02:22:11.840 of the 2537 02:22:11.900 --> 02:22:14.810 things that happens as conflicts drag on 2538 02:22:14.810 --> 02:22:16.690 into real blood feuds, 2539 02:22:17.310 --> 02:22:17.560 The 2540 02:22:17.770 --> 02:22:23.710 mutual savagery of both sides allowed the ultra-violent extremists to pull pretty much everybody down to their level. 2541 02:22:24.090 --> 02:22:25.660 There was a palpable sense that 2542 02:22:25.660 --> 02:22:35.000 things were spinning out of control in the late 60s and early 70s. That sense existed even in Europe and the United States, and it was amplified in 2543 02:22:35.000 --> 02:22:40.250 a country where two peoples were fighting what each of them saw as an existential war for survival. 2544 02:22:40.730 --> 02:22:41.630 Wow. 2545 02:22:41.580 --> 02:22:42.140 in 2546 02:22:42.140 --> 02:22:45.250 rome a team of palestinian terrorists 2547 02:22:45.280 --> 02:22:47.760 went through an airport terminal shooting at people and 2548 02:22:47.760 --> 02:22:48.660 then they went out 2549 02:22:48.730 --> 02:22:54.970 onto the tarmac started shooting and throwing grenades into a taxiing airplane set it on fire and killed 30 people 2550 02:22:54.970 --> 02:23:07.340 and then they commandeered another aircraft with hostages and threatened to crash it into central athens before making their way to the middle east where after some wrangling they faced no punishment and got away 2551 02:23:08.500 --> 02:23:08.940 That 2552 02:23:09.550 --> 02:23:10.010 sounds like 2553 02:23:10.070 --> 02:23:15.880 a crazy, crazy, crazy incident But I'm dedicating just a few lines to it Because things like that 2554 02:23:15.880 --> 02:23:22.060 happened all the time back then Between 1968 and 1972 Okay, 2555 02:23:22.450 --> 02:23:22.540 just a 2556 02:23:22.540 --> 02:23:28.620 couple years, 68 to 72 Literally hundreds of passenger planes were hijacked 2557 02:23:28.620 --> 02:23:29.630 Only some of them 2558 02:23:29.670 --> 02:23:33.770 by Palestinians and other Arabs It was just a thing 2559 02:23:33.800 --> 02:23:34.420 to do 2560 02:23:34.370 --> 02:23:34.890 You had 2561 02:23:35.020 --> 02:23:39.400 French-Canadian separatists jacking planes and flying them to Cuba. Some 2562 02:23:39.740 --> 02:23:40.580 people were doing it just 2563 02:23:40.660 --> 02:23:43.520 because they were crazy and wanted to be famous. There 2564 02:23:43.680 --> 02:23:44.030 were 82 2565 02:23:44.520 --> 02:23:46.350 attempted hijackings 2566 02:23:46.350 --> 02:23:50.790 of American aircraft in 1969 alone. That's 2567 02:23:50.980 --> 02:23:53.990 like one every four days. Just imagine that. Most 2568 02:23:54.260 --> 02:23:55.310 were just taking 2569 02:23:55.390 --> 02:24:00.580 hostages and making demands. They weren't flying them into buildings or anything like 2570 02:24:00.580 --> 02:24:01.050 that. 2571 02:24:01.060 --> 02:24:01.520 But the 2572 02:24:01.600 --> 02:24:05.840 Israelis realized that they couldn't keep negotiating prisoner exchanges with these people. 2573 02:24:05.840 --> 02:24:06.910 Every time they 2574 02:24:06.910 --> 02:24:08.230 did, it validated 2575 02:24:08.230 --> 02:24:15.170 the tactic, practically guaranteed the next hijacking or hostage-taking. And so the decision was made at some 2576 02:24:15.170 --> 02:24:22.290 point that there would be no more negotiations, and instead they would use special forces or other operatives 2577 02:24:22.300 --> 02:24:29.190 to attempt assaults and rescue missions. As Israeli strategy changed, the terrorists 2578 02:24:29.190 --> 02:24:30.300 adapted to, 2579 02:24:30.260 --> 02:24:34.300 It became much quicker to start shooting hostages when things went sideways. The 2580 02:24:34.300 --> 02:24:35.480 next fall, 2581 02:24:35.540 --> 02:24:36.940 Khaled and one 2582 02:24:36.940 --> 02:24:45.280 comrade kicked off a string of what would be five attempted hijackings, each carried out by a separate team in very quick succession. 2583 02:24:45.520 --> 02:24:46.600 Khaled's group 2584 02:24:46.610 --> 02:24:49.130 failed when this badass pilot 2585 02:24:49.130 --> 02:24:55.780 purposely sent the plane into a nosedive, sending the hijackers tumbling onto the floor. 2586 02:24:56.420 --> 02:24:56.740 There 2587 02:24:56.900 --> 02:25:05.080 was an undercover Israeli agent on board, and he drew a concealed pistol, shot one of the hijackers, and a bunch of the other passengers piled on top of Khaled. 2588 02:25:05.100 --> 02:25:06.580 The plane finished 2589 02:25:06.580 --> 02:25:10.100 its scheduled trip to London, and Khaled was 2590 02:25:10.100 --> 02:25:13.260 detained by British authorities. But 2591 02:25:13.540 --> 02:25:13.870 three days 2592 02:25:13.870 --> 02:25:16.140 later, there was another skyjacking, 2593 02:25:16.140 --> 02:25:16.600 another 2594 02:25:16.610 --> 02:25:19.460 British flight coming in from the Middle East. 2595 02:25:20.290 --> 02:25:20.450 In 2596 02:25:20.450 --> 02:25:28.600 exchange for the hostages, the PFLP demanded the release of Khaled and three other prisoners being held in West Germany and Switzerland. And 2597 02:25:28.890 --> 02:25:29.460 so over 2598 02:25:29.460 --> 02:25:30.380 Israeli 2599 02:25:30.480 --> 02:25:37.760 protests, they were howling in protest, the British, the Germans, and the Swiss complied 2600 02:25:37.990 --> 02:25:37.990 and 2601 02:25:38.020 --> 02:25:41.490 released the hostages, including Leila Khaled. 2602 02:25:41.490 --> 02:25:42.740 This was followed 2603 02:25:42.740 --> 02:25:44.110 almost immediately 2604 02:25:44.210 --> 02:25:46.230 by three more skyjackings. 2605 02:25:46.720 --> 02:25:47.190 And then 2606 02:25:47.300 --> 02:25:52.020 all four of the commandeered aircraft were brought to Jordan. The passengers were 2607 02:25:52.020 --> 02:25:59.120 released, other than 55 Jews and one crew member, who were taken to a hideout in a Palestinian neighborhood of Amman. As 2608 02:25:59.500 --> 02:26:00.660 news cameras sent 2609 02:26:00.660 --> 02:26:01.530 the images 2610 02:26:01.950 --> 02:26:07.450 around the world, the four planes were blown up as the terrorists made their getaway. For 2611 02:26:07.570 --> 02:26:09.220 King Hussein 2612 02:26:09.220 --> 02:26:14.040 of Jordan, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. 2613 02:26:14.700 --> 02:26:14.940 The 2614 02:26:15.270 --> 02:26:17.980 Israelis were surely going to retaliate. And 2615 02:26:18.220 --> 02:26:18.820 what could 2616 02:26:18.950 --> 02:26:26.560 he really say, after it had been revealed in front of the whole world that he had no control over his Palestinian population? The 2617 02:26:26.560 --> 02:26:28.100 PLO had been treating 2618 02:26:28.100 --> 02:26:35.170 Jordan as if it had already owned the country, and even Hussein's supporters were starting to doubt his leadership. He 2619 02:26:35.190 --> 02:26:36.390 knew that he risked 2620 02:26:36.410 --> 02:26:42.280 backlash if he moved on the PLO, but at this point he really felt like he had no choice. 2621 02:26:43.070 --> 02:26:43.490 It was 2622 02:26:43.740 --> 02:26:48.210 September 1970. Becker writes, quote, The 2623 02:26:48.210 --> 02:26:48.910 Fedayeen 2624 02:26:49.060 --> 02:26:56.060 had defied King Hussein's authority beyond a point that was politically tolerable. For several reasons, the king 2625 02:26:56.060 --> 02:27:07.510 judged the time to be right to crush the organizations. Peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel were underway, initiated by the American Secretary of State, William Rogers. 2626 02:27:08.170 --> 02:27:08.360 The 2627 02:27:08.460 --> 02:27:13.680 Rogers plan proposed that Israel withdraw behind her pre-1967 boundaries and 2628 02:27:14.050 --> 02:27:19.780 that the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967 be implemented. 2629 02:27:19.970 --> 02:27:20.650 But the PLO 2630 02:27:20.650 --> 02:27:26.690 rejected Resolution 242 on the grounds that it referred to Palestinians as 2631 02:27:27.040 --> 02:27:33.380 refugees and not to the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland and because it required the recognition of Israel. 2632 02:27:33.420 --> 02:27:34.000 And so the 2633 02:27:34.000 --> 02:27:36.230 Rogers plan was also rejected. 2634 02:27:37.040 --> 02:27:37.040 But 2635 02:27:37.110 --> 02:27:38.910 Egypt and Israel did sign a 2636 02:27:38.910 --> 02:27:49.220 ceasefire agreement. Hussein wanted peace, too. The impediment was the PLO. Within Jordan, the Fedayeen groups had been encroaching even 2637 02:27:49.220 --> 02:28:00.050 further on the state's prerogatives. They had formed their own police force. They had initiated armed clashes with the army. They had started their own radio station. They had organized 2638 02:28:00.050 --> 02:28:05.500 mass demonstrations and a strike to stop the king receiving an envoy from the United States. 2639 02:28:05.970 --> 02:28:06.140 On 2640 02:28:06.310 --> 02:28:13.890 that day, every driver on the roads of Amman, even army drivers, had stopped their vehicles for an hour when the Fedayeen asked 2641 02:28:13.890 --> 02:28:20.780 them to. The Fedayeen were appealing to the people over the head of the government with alarming success. They had 2642 02:28:20.780 --> 02:28:23.080 even interfered successfully to 2643 02:28:23.080 --> 02:28:24.230 prevent the king 2644 02:28:24.230 --> 02:28:28.590 dismissing two officers and sending two others into exile. 2645 02:28:28.840 --> 02:28:29.580 Hussein had reason 2646 02:28:29.920 --> 02:28:32.890 to fear that his power was being usurped and 2647 02:28:32.890 --> 02:28:33.130 his 2648 02:28:33.590 --> 02:28:35.030 government destroyed, 2649 02:28:34.990 --> 02:28:35.140 It 2650 02:28:35.290 --> 02:28:39.470 seemed plain enough that the intention of the Fedayeen was to take over the country. 2651 02:28:39.780 --> 02:28:40.910 His mind was made up 2652 02:28:41.100 --> 02:28:42.920 for him after the Dawson's 2653 02:28:42.960 --> 02:28:45.670 Field episode, before skyjacking. He 2654 02:28:45.800 --> 02:28:46.550 was carrying 2655 02:28:46.550 --> 02:28:49.110 out a formal inspection of his Bedouin 2656 02:28:49.110 --> 02:28:56.770 troops. Hussein, remember, came from Arabia and was installed by the British and ruled over a majority Palestinian 2657 02:28:56.770 --> 02:29:03.230 population. The Bedouin were like his Cossacks, his most loyal troops and his regime's enforcers. 2658 02:29:03.890 --> 02:29:04.170 And so 2659 02:29:04.170 --> 02:29:07.090 he's carrying out a formal inspection of his Bedouin troops. 2660 02:29:07.090 --> 02:29:08.480 When he noticed, 2661 02:29:08.610 --> 02:29:15.800 as he was intended to, that one of the soldiers was flying a brassiere from the antenna of his radio. The 2662 02:29:16.000 --> 02:29:16.530 hint was 2663 02:29:16.530 --> 02:29:17.050 not to 2664 02:29:17.050 --> 02:29:22.670 be mistaken. The Bedouin were telling the king that he had turned them into women, keeping 2665 02:29:22.670 --> 02:29:22.960 them 2666 02:29:23.100 --> 02:29:26.930 passive in the face of Palestinian provocation, end quote. 2667 02:29:28.370 --> 02:29:29.590 Hussein 2668 02:29:29.740 --> 02:29:33.600 knew that he risked an uprising If he attacked Arafat and his people If 2669 02:29:33.600 --> 02:29:34.130 he was 2670 02:29:34.650 --> 02:29:54.920 going to go in He knew he had to go in heavy With the element of surprise And not surrender the initiative He had to keep the PLO on its heels And destroy them Before they had a chance to organize a resistance In September 1970 He ordered his police, military, and intelligence forces To 2671 02:29:54.920 --> 02:29:55.670 attack 2672 02:29:55.670 --> 02:29:58.070 Arafat's people Thank 2673 02:29:58.070 --> 02:29:58.450 you. 2674 02:29:58.300 --> 02:29:58.950 which was a 2675 02:29:58.990 --> 02:30:01.780 more complicated operation than it might sound like. 2676 02:30:01.800 --> 02:30:02.370 The PLO 2677 02:30:02.490 --> 02:30:07.000 was not located in any one place. It was distributed in communities 2678 02:30:07.000 --> 02:30:13.560 throughout the population. Hussein's forces massacred people indiscriminately. 2679 02:30:13.580 --> 02:30:19.920 They killed thousands of Palestinians. PLO groups, especially the PFLP, 2680 02:30:20.370 --> 02:30:23.300 responded as well as they could, but they were being 2681 02:30:23.300 --> 02:30:24.390 slaughtered. 2682 02:30:24.400 --> 02:30:24.630 The 2683 02:30:24.630 --> 02:30:30.810 Syrians sent a small contingent of tanks into northern Jordan to support the Fedayeen, but they were pushed back. 2684 02:30:30.880 --> 02:30:31.370 Jordan 2685 02:30:31.540 --> 02:30:35.060 requested Israeli air support against the Syrians, 2686 02:30:35.060 --> 02:30:35.440 and the 2687 02:30:35.440 --> 02:30:36.760 Israeli cabinet debated 2688 02:30:36.760 --> 02:30:41.280 whether to intervene and ensure that the Palestinians were crushed once and for all. When 2689 02:30:41.530 --> 02:30:42.050 Syria massed 2690 02:30:42.050 --> 02:30:43.030 more tanks on the 2691 02:30:43.030 --> 02:30:49.260 border, Israel massed forces on its side of the northern Jordanian border, and Syria backed down. 2692 02:30:50.420 --> 02:30:50.830 Now, 2693 02:30:51.460 --> 02:30:55.850 naturally, these massacres did not play well in the Arab press, to the point 2694 02:30:55.850 --> 02:31:06.850 that King Hussein was actually hemorrhaging senior military and government officials who were defecting to the other side or resigning in disgust. The Jordanian Prime Minister 2695 02:31:06.850 --> 02:31:11.890 went to Egypt for an emergency meeting between the Arab states about what to do. And 2696 02:31:11.890 --> 02:31:12.660 while he was 2697 02:31:12.710 --> 02:31:16.920 there, he had a discussion with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, 2698 02:31:17.150 --> 02:31:19.620 after which he resigned his post and defected to Libya. 2699 02:31:19.940 --> 02:31:20.840 His fight 2700 02:31:20.840 --> 02:31:27.030 could not go on if Hussein wanted to keep his head on his shoulders. But fortunately for him, the 2701 02:31:27.030 --> 02:31:35.910 PLO had already been dealt a devastating blow by the end of the month, a month that would come to be called by Palestinians Black September. Arafat 2702 02:31:35.910 --> 02:31:37.060 and the rest of 2703 02:31:37.060 --> 02:31:42.660 the remaining PLO leadership left Jordan through Syria and eventually 2704 02:31:42.660 --> 02:31:45.440 relocated to Lebanon to try and rebuild. 2705 02:31:46.350 --> 02:31:46.700 And it 2706 02:31:46.700 --> 02:31:48.490 didn't take them long to do it. 2707 02:31:48.590 --> 02:31:49.400 Despite the 2708 02:31:49.400 --> 02:31:49.830 damage 2709 02:31:49.950 --> 02:31:56.630 they'd taken, the PLO launched a new wave of attacks, not only in and around Israel, but in Europe as well. 2710 02:31:56.630 --> 02:32:00.180 In November 1971, the 2711 02:32:00.240 --> 02:32:03.710 Jordanian Prime Minister who had 2712 02:32:03.950 --> 02:32:10.610 ordered the assault on the PLO was assassinated in Cairo. 2713 02:32:10.590 --> 02:32:10.880 Two 2714 02:32:11.280 --> 02:32:12.850 weeks later, gunmen nearly 2715 02:32:12.850 --> 02:32:15.840 assassinated the Jordanian ambassador to Great Britain. 2716 02:32:15.850 --> 02:32:16.950 Two months after 2717 02:32:16.980 --> 02:32:22.810 that, Palestinian militants executed five Jordanians in Germany, then bombed the 2718 02:32:22.810 --> 02:32:28.060 offices of a Dutch gas company and a German electronics firm that was engaged in trade with 2719 02:32:28.410 --> 02:32:28.650 Israel. 2720 02:32:28.650 --> 02:32:30.440 These attacks were all 2721 02:32:30.440 --> 02:32:37.850 carried out by a group no one had ever heard from before, though it went by a name that had become very 2722 02:32:37.850 --> 02:32:38.780 familiar. 2723 02:32:39.620 --> 02:32:39.780 A 2724 02:32:39.780 --> 02:32:50.860 Lul al-Aswad, or Black September. Black September was a faction of Fatah led by a former PLO intelligence boss, and 2725 02:32:50.860 --> 02:32:51.670 it redefined 2726 02:32:51.760 --> 02:32:54.550 and widened the war being fought by the Palestinian 2727 02:32:54.730 --> 02:32:56.290 resistance. The 2728 02:32:56.520 --> 02:32:57.700 center of focus 2729 02:32:57.700 --> 02:32:59.870 was no longer Israel. 2730 02:33:00.960 --> 02:33:03.300 Israel was to be seen merely as the forward 2731 02:33:03.300 --> 02:33:10.360 operating base of U.S. imperialism passing through the Arab regimes tied to it and ending with Israel. In 2732 02:33:10.620 --> 02:33:12.870 May 1972, a group of 2733 02:33:12.870 --> 02:33:22.900 Black September terrorists jacked an airliner with 94 passengers and 7 crew members. The plane landed in 2734 02:33:22.900 --> 02:33:24.140 Tel Aviv. 2735 02:33:24.660 --> 02:33:25.020 and the 2736 02:33:25.030 --> 02:33:29.110 hijackers demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Now, I don't know 2737 02:33:29.110 --> 02:33:32.590 what possessed them to try to pull this off on Israel's home turf, but 2738 02:33:32.690 --> 02:33:33.450 that's what 2739 02:33:33.540 --> 02:33:41.070 they did. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan approved a plan devised by future Prime Minister Ehud 2740 02:33:41.070 --> 02:33:41.480 Barak, 2741 02:33:41.480 --> 02:33:41.860 who was 2742 02:33:41.860 --> 02:33:44.950 commanding an Israeli special operations unit. His 2743 02:33:45.050 --> 02:33:46.030 team got close 2744 02:33:46.030 --> 02:33:49.280 to the aircraft by donning white overalls 2745 02:33:49.280 --> 02:33:51.100 and posing as an airport ground crew. 2746 02:33:51.840 --> 02:33:51.840 Each 2747 02:33:51.910 --> 02:34:03.780 man was carrying concealed.22 Beretta, and when they were close enough, they rushed into the plane and eliminated all the terrorists. Only one female passenger was killed in the firefight. Two more were injured. 2748 02:34:04.080 --> 02:34:05.180 The only Israeli 2749 02:34:05.240 --> 02:34:13.680 commando hurt was a young man named Benjamin Netanyahu, lightly wounded in the hand by an errant bullet from his own side. 2750 02:34:14.010 --> 02:34:15.000 Well, now it was the 2751 02:34:15.000 --> 02:34:17.200 Israelis' turn to celebrate. 2752 02:34:18.020 --> 02:34:21.960 Because instead of capitulating, they had shown potential hijackers around 2753 02:34:21.960 --> 02:34:25.290 the world what could be waiting for them if they tried it again. 2754 02:34:25.600 --> 02:34:27.210 But again, this was 2755 02:34:27.210 --> 02:34:32.830 a new kind of war, and the militants still considered the operation a success, 2756 02:34:33.140 --> 02:34:33.140 since 2757 02:34:33.150 --> 02:34:39.030 it had brought the attention of revolutionaries from all over the world to focus on Palestine for an entire day. 2758 02:34:39.420 --> 02:34:40.670 Applications to 2759 02:34:40.670 --> 02:34:43.840 join the resistance flooded in. 2760 02:34:44.740 --> 02:34:45.180 And one 2761 02:34:45.410 --> 02:34:48.110 member of Black September said that nearly every 2762 02:34:48.110 --> 02:34:54.620 one of them said something like, At last you have found a way of making our voice heard in the world. 2763 02:34:54.620 --> 02:34:56.940 Recruits came from all 2764 02:34:56.940 --> 02:34:58.640 over the world. 2765 02:34:58.820 --> 02:34:59.760 The PFLP made 2766 02:34:59.760 --> 02:35:02.860 contact with a band of revolutionaries out 2767 02:35:02.910 --> 02:35:06.320 of Japan, led by a woman named Fusako Shigenobu, 2768 02:35:06.320 --> 02:35:06.840 calling 2769 02:35:06.840 --> 02:35:09.560 themselves the Japanese Red Army. The 2770 02:35:09.560 --> 02:35:10.560 JRA was an 2771 02:35:10.560 --> 02:35:13.880 avowed Maoist organization, 2772 02:35:14.750 --> 02:35:17.150 which took things a bit too far, ideologically 2773 02:35:17.190 --> 02:35:20.760 speaking, for the merely Marxist-Socialist PFLP. 2774 02:35:20.970 --> 02:35:21.200 But the 2775 02:35:21.330 --> 02:35:26.890 Japanese radicals were committed, and apparently willing, and some said 2776 02:35:26.890 --> 02:35:35.980 eager, to give their lives for the cause. Fusako's cadre was trained by the PFLP, first in North Korea and then in Lebanon. 2777 02:35:36.190 --> 02:35:37.130 According to a 2778 02:35:37.130 --> 02:35:43.460 few sources, the Japanese militants were actually the first ones to raise the 2779 02:35:43.460 --> 02:35:43.920 idea... 2780 02:35:43.890 --> 02:35:44.210 that 2781 02:35:44.380 --> 02:35:47.060 rushing to a certain death in battle was not 2782 02:35:47.210 --> 02:35:49.350 suicide in the regular sense of the term. 2783 02:35:49.350 --> 02:35:50.970 The Japanese kamikazes 2784 02:35:50.970 --> 02:36:01.810 who flew their planes into American ships were not suicidal. They gave their lives heroically for their country, and a soldier who rushes into a hopeless situation to 2785 02:36:01.940 --> 02:36:03.500 do damage to the enemy is no 2786 02:36:03.500 --> 02:36:04.080 different. 2787 02:36:04.170 --> 02:36:05.190 This was the case 2788 02:36:05.190 --> 02:36:06.470 they were making. 2789 02:36:06.470 --> 02:36:07.130 Their Arab 2790 02:36:07.140 --> 02:36:12.690 compatriots were skeptical. Suicide is strictly forbidden in Islam. 2791 02:36:13.200 --> 02:36:13.410 And 2792 02:36:13.600 --> 02:36:13.910 even the 2793 02:36:13.910 --> 02:36:20.010 more secular militants wondered how they would ever recruit fighters if they thought that they'd be sent off on suicide missions. And 2794 02:36:20.160 --> 02:36:21.330 so the Japanese Red 2795 02:36:21.330 --> 02:36:30.500 Army decided to provide a demonstration of how effective a few militants could be when they acted without concern for their own lives. On 2796 02:36:30.720 --> 02:36:31.480 May 30, 2797 02:36:31.490 --> 02:36:42.380 1972, three JRA men pulled AKs and hand grenades from their bags in the main airport of Tel Aviv and began firing indiscriminately. 2798 02:36:43.020 --> 02:36:43.320 one 2799 02:36:43.510 --> 02:36:49.770 witness said i saw 25 people piled up in a pool of blood near conveyor belt number three one 2800 02:36:50.010 --> 02:36:50.010 man 2801 02:36:50.030 --> 02:36:59.110 stood near the belt with a submachine gun and fired across the entire length of the room another lobbed hand grenades whenever he saw people in large 2802 02:36:59.110 --> 02:37:00.010 groups two 2803 02:37:00.090 --> 02:37:00.830 of the 2804 02:37:00.830 --> 02:37:06.090 attackers fought to the death and another was badly wounded 2805 02:37:06.090 --> 02:37:06.360 and 2806 02:37:06.370 --> 02:37:09.370 captured 26 innocent people were 2807 02:37:09.490 --> 02:37:09.890 dead 2808 02:37:10.280 --> 02:37:13.660 Another 78 lay bleeding with shrapnel and bullet wounds. 2809 02:37:14.100 --> 02:37:14.660 17 of the 2810 02:37:14.660 --> 02:37:18.040 dead were Christian pilgrims who were visiting the 2811 02:37:18.040 --> 02:37:19.830 Holy Land from Puerto Rico. At 2812 02:37:19.960 --> 02:37:21.450 a Beirut press 2813 02:37:21.450 --> 02:37:27.290 conference, the PFLP spokesman, who was actually married to 2814 02:37:27.290 --> 02:37:27.950 Fusako 2815 02:37:27.950 --> 02:37:36.440 Shigenobu and fathered a daughter with her, openly defended the massacre, made no apologies for the non-Israelis who were murdered even. 2816 02:37:37.090 --> 02:37:37.550 He said 2817 02:37:37.600 --> 02:37:39.070 not one of those people 2818 02:37:39.070 --> 02:37:47.350 in the airport that day were innocent, since not one of them had cared or lifted a finger to object to the brutalization of the Palestinian people. The 2819 02:37:47.540 --> 02:37:48.870 sight of Japanese 2820 02:37:48.960 --> 02:37:54.920 Marxists killing Puerto Rican Christians in support of Palestinians in 2821 02:37:54.980 --> 02:38:03.950 their fight against Jews was as shocking as it was strange, and both Israelis and Palestinians understood that the war had just escalated to a new 2822 02:38:03.950 --> 02:38:04.450 level. 2823 02:38:05.660 --> 02:38:06.500 Within a 2824 02:38:06.750 --> 02:38:09.270 few months, the whole world would know it. 2825 02:38:09.380 --> 02:38:11.080 Eight Black 2826 02:38:11.080 --> 02:38:12.620 September 2827 02:38:12.620 --> 02:38:17.680 militants had been training at a camp in Libya for months. Arafat's 2828 02:38:17.800 --> 02:38:17.940 old 2829 02:38:18.050 --> 02:38:22.000 friend, Salah Khalaf, met them there, along with the 2830 02:38:22.000 --> 02:38:27.990 founder of Black September, and the group were told that they had been chosen for a very important mission. In 2831 02:38:27.990 --> 02:38:29.090 Libya, they 2832 02:38:29.210 --> 02:38:32.070 were trained to proficiency with 2833 02:38:32.070 --> 02:38:35.160 handguns, submachine guns, and grenades. 2834 02:38:35.660 --> 02:38:39.750 and they underwent training and hand-to-hand combat and physical fitness. 2835 02:38:40.010 --> 02:38:41.160 They were also 2836 02:38:41.160 --> 02:38:43.170 trained in disguise, 2837 02:38:43.430 --> 02:38:47.170 with a focus on how to pass unnoticed in a foreign country. A 2838 02:38:47.310 --> 02:38:48.180 few of the 2839 02:38:48.180 --> 02:38:50.830 trainees spoke German and 2840 02:38:50.830 --> 02:38:51.060 were 2841 02:38:51.060 --> 02:38:56.240 familiar with major German cities, which might have given the militants some hint of where they were headed. 2842 02:38:56.590 --> 02:38:57.150 It was 2843 02:38:57.150 --> 02:38:59.930 1972, and the 2844 02:38:59.930 --> 02:39:00.400 Summer 2845 02:39:00.400 --> 02:39:02.890 Olympics were underway in Munich. 2846 02:39:03.730 --> 02:39:04.360 On July 2847 02:39:04.550 --> 02:39:05.070 7th, 2848 02:39:05.070 --> 02:39:05.820 a Mossad 2849 02:39:05.830 --> 02:39:11.080 agent filed a report warning that Black September is planning an attack in Europe. 2850 02:39:11.170 --> 02:39:11.870 And again on 2851 02:39:11.990 --> 02:39:17.700 August 5th, Black September is preparing an operation of an international nature. But 2852 02:39:18.090 --> 02:39:18.130 the 2853 02:39:18.130 --> 02:39:19.710 reports were 2854 02:39:19.710 --> 02:39:24.610 ignored. They were lost amid the flood of other reports just 2855 02:39:24.650 --> 02:39:25.490 like it. 2856 02:39:25.460 --> 02:39:25.660 On 2857 02:39:25.690 --> 02:39:33.530 September 3rd and 4th, the eight Fedayeen flew separately into West Germany and made their way separately to Munich. The 2858 02:39:33.540 --> 02:39:34.750 PLO had asked for 2859 02:39:34.900 --> 02:39:42.810 permission to send a Palestinian team to participate at the Olympic Games, but the Olympic Committee had said no. And 2860 02:39:42.810 --> 02:39:43.290 Salih 2861 02:39:43.430 --> 02:39:47.940 Halaf later said, Apparently from the point of view of this reputable 2862 02:39:47.940 --> 02:39:51.690 body, which pretends to be apolitical, we didn't exist. 2863 02:39:51.840 --> 02:39:51.840 the 2864 02:39:51.930 --> 02:39:55.910 leadership of Black September decided to take things into its own hands. 2865 02:39:56.190 --> 02:39:58.560 Now, although the group might 2866 02:39:58.620 --> 02:40:02.070 have put two and two together by now, it 2867 02:40:02.190 --> 02:40:02.320 was 2868 02:40:02.320 --> 02:40:06.710 not until the night before the operation that they were informed of the plan. 2869 02:40:06.970 --> 02:40:08.280 All eight of them drew 2870 02:40:08.280 --> 02:40:14.100 up their last will and testament, they picked up their weapons, and they made their way to 2871 02:40:14.100 --> 02:40:19.550 the Olympic Village. Aided by left-wing German militants, 2872 02:40:19.980 --> 02:40:22.080 They climbed the fence and made straight for the 2873 02:40:22.080 --> 02:40:24.740 building where the Israeli Olympic team was staying. At 2874 02:40:24.880 --> 02:40:25.650 about 4 2875 02:40:25.650 --> 02:40:31.900 a.m. on September 5th, the eight men stormed the Israeli dorms. The team's 2876 02:40:31.900 --> 02:40:36.780 wrestling coach and one of their weightlifters put up a fight, but they were shot and killed. The rest 2877 02:40:36.830 --> 02:40:40.170 of the team was held hostage in the same room with the two bodies. 2878 02:40:40.540 --> 02:40:42.020 Anyone, anywhere in the 2879 02:40:42.020 --> 02:40:46.280 world, who was not already watching the Olympics... 2880 02:40:46.470 --> 02:40:46.470 was 2881 02:40:46.530 --> 02:40:50.090 now watching the most audacious and high-profile terrorist 2882 02:40:50.110 --> 02:40:53.530 attack in history unfold on live television. 2883 02:40:53.800 --> 02:40:55.370 The terrorists demanded 2884 02:40:55.370 --> 02:40:58.150 the release of 200 Palestinian 2885 02:40:58.150 --> 02:40:59.190 prisoners. 2886 02:40:59.510 --> 02:41:00.410 Israeli Prime 2887 02:41:00.410 --> 02:41:07.050 Minister Golda Meir made the decision early on that there would be no negotiation with Black September or 2888 02:41:07.210 --> 02:41:09.690 else Israel would never see the end of these attacks. 2889 02:41:10.050 --> 02:41:11.060 Israeli Special 2890 02:41:11.060 --> 02:41:13.540 Forces began preparing a rescue 2891 02:41:13.540 --> 02:41:14.680 operation. 2892 02:41:15.120 --> 02:41:15.290 but 2893 02:41:15.400 --> 02:41:17.830 the West Germans refused to let them carry it out. 2894 02:41:18.180 --> 02:41:18.430 This was 2895 02:41:18.430 --> 02:41:21.380 Germany, so the Germans called the shots. 2896 02:41:21.660 --> 02:41:22.960 The Germans were 2897 02:41:22.960 --> 02:41:26.440 so adamantly pacifist in the post-war era 2898 02:41:26.640 --> 02:41:27.000 that they 2899 02:41:27.000 --> 02:41:29.030 hadn't even armed the guards at the 2900 02:41:29.030 --> 02:41:33.900 Olympics because they didn't want the world to see uniformed Germans walking around with guns. 2901 02:41:34.180 --> 02:41:34.930 The 72 2902 02:41:34.930 --> 02:41:36.190 Olympics was 2903 02:41:36.190 --> 02:41:40.400 supposed to be Germany's big coming-out party. 2904 02:41:40.810 --> 02:41:41.870 27 years after 2905 02:41:41.870 --> 02:41:49.950 World War II, a giant show to demonstrate to the world that Hitler and the National Socialists, all that was part of the distant past. And 2906 02:41:50.100 --> 02:41:50.660 now Jews 2907 02:41:50.660 --> 02:41:52.360 were dead, and more 2908 02:41:52.360 --> 02:41:52.960 were in 2909 02:41:52.960 --> 02:42:03.080 danger of being massacred. And worse, they'd been helped by German radicals, who ironically were convinced that they were acting in the name of anti-Nazism. 2910 02:42:04.270 --> 02:42:04.690 The 2911 02:42:05.370 --> 02:42:06.990 German state would not let 2912 02:42:07.100 --> 02:42:15.030 the Israelis run the operation. They feared a televised bloodbath. But the Germans themselves had no experience with this kind of thing, and 2913 02:42:15.030 --> 02:42:17.000 they were completely unequal to the 2914 02:42:17.000 --> 02:42:17.750 task. The 2915 02:42:17.750 --> 02:42:18.560 two Israeli 2916 02:42:18.610 --> 02:42:25.690 agents who were allowed to observe from a distance had to watch helplessly with the rest of the world, while 2917 02:42:25.690 --> 02:42:26.920 the rest of the 2918 02:42:26.920 --> 02:42:29.040 Israeli Olympic team was 2919 02:42:29.050 --> 02:42:31.990 led at gunpoint to two German military helicopters. 2920 02:42:33.010 --> 02:42:33.590 One of the 2921 02:42:33.660 --> 02:42:35.230 Israeli observers said, 2922 02:42:35.250 --> 02:42:41.160 "'The sight of the athletes being led to the helicopters I will never forget until the 2923 02:42:41.160 --> 02:42:54.220 day I die. On both sides of the pathway, which was a kind of lawn, stood tens of thousands of people from innumerable countries. Deathly silence. I stood alongside German 2924 02:42:54.220 --> 02:42:59.480 Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Gensher and Franz Josef Strauss, Victor 2925 02:42:59.980 --> 02:43:01.430 at my side, 2926 02:43:01.380 --> 02:43:01.700 And we 2927 02:43:01.750 --> 02:43:02.790 watched the Israeli 2928 02:43:02.790 --> 02:43:08.590 athletes, with their hands tied, flanked by the terrorists, and all in step, they marched toward the 2929 02:43:08.840 --> 02:43:09.740 helicopters. It 2930 02:43:09.900 --> 02:43:10.250 was an 2931 02:43:10.250 --> 02:43:15.180 appalling sight, especially to a Jew on German soil, in 2932 02:43:15.180 --> 02:43:16.060 Munich. 2933 02:43:16.580 --> 02:43:18.010 Bergman picks it up 2934 02:43:18.010 --> 02:43:19.290 from here. 2935 02:43:19.600 --> 02:43:21.400 The helicopters took the 2936 02:43:21.400 --> 02:43:22.730 hostages to a nearby 2937 02:43:23.250 --> 02:43:24.980 military airport. 2938 02:43:25.490 --> 02:43:31.180 where a plane was supposed to fly them out of Germany as soon as the deal for the release of the Palestinian prisoners had concluded. 2939 02:43:31.390 --> 02:43:32.180 The terrorists 2940 02:43:32.180 --> 02:43:37.930 and the hostages were followed by additional helicopters with the Israeli observers and the German 2941 02:43:38.210 --> 02:43:38.910 officials on board. 2942 02:43:39.260 --> 02:43:40.260 Germany devised 2943 02:43:40.260 --> 02:43:43.550 a rescue operation at the military airport, 2944 02:43:43.630 --> 02:43:44.060 but the 2945 02:43:44.060 --> 02:43:45.070 forces they deployed 2946 02:43:45.420 --> 02:43:53.240 were untrained and disorganized, and they lacked the required intelligence on the terrorists, sniper equipment, and support for such a mission. 2947 02:43:53.780 --> 02:43:54.060 They 2948 02:43:54.230 --> 02:44:00.470 opened fire in an uncoordinated manner and did not hit or kill enough terrorists to neutralize the squad. The 2949 02:44:00.470 --> 02:44:01.450 terrorists fired 2950 02:44:01.550 --> 02:44:03.670 at the building where we were, Zamir 2951 02:44:03.850 --> 02:44:13.570 said. He's one of the observers. Victor and I ran down the stairs, groping in the dark, looking for the commanders of the operation, with firing going on all the time. 2952 02:44:13.570 --> 02:44:13.850 We saw 2953 02:44:13.960 --> 02:44:18.500 that the terrorists had shot the helicopter pilots, and they fell on their faces. 2954 02:44:19.140 --> 02:44:19.420 When we 2955 02:44:19.420 --> 02:44:34.640 located the German commanders of the operation, I demanded to go up onto the roof to speak to the terrorists and warn them that if firing continued, they would not get out alive. The officers refused, and we insisted until they agreed on condition that we speak Arabic and not German. 2956 02:44:35.020 --> 02:44:35.790 Cohen took 2957 02:44:35.810 --> 02:44:40.010 the megaphone and began trying to persuade the terrorists to surrender. 2958 02:44:40.260 --> 02:44:40.680 But it was 2959 02:44:40.680 --> 02:44:44.950 too little too late, and all I got was a burst of fire that nearly killed 2960 02:44:44.950 --> 02:44:45.610 us both. 2961 02:44:46.420 --> 02:44:46.840 Zemir 2962 02:44:47.160 --> 02:44:49.840 asked the Germans why there wasn't a force 2963 02:44:50.010 --> 02:44:59.080 storming the terrorists. He was told that the police were waiting for armored vehicles that were stuck on the way to the airport in a traffic jam created 2964 02:44:59.080 --> 02:45:08.800 by all the curious onlookers. Zemir watched the terrorists lob grenades into the helicopters where the Israelis were being held. He saw them go up in flames after the 2965 02:45:08.890 --> 02:45:10.220 grenades exploded. 2966 02:45:10.460 --> 02:45:10.460 When 2967 02:45:10.510 --> 02:45:19.280 he ran to the smoldering aircraft, he found only the nine Israelis' bodies, handcuffed to one another, charred, and some still burning. To 2968 02:45:19.410 --> 02:45:20.140 Zamir, the 2969 02:45:20.140 --> 02:45:24.430 Germans' conduct in the hostage situation was telling. 2970 02:45:24.730 --> 02:45:25.040 They did 2971 02:45:25.040 --> 02:45:30.690 not make even a minimal effort to save lives, or take minimal risks to rescue people. 2972 02:45:30.990 --> 02:45:32.730 Neither our people nor their own. He 2973 02:45:32.850 --> 02:45:33.530 said he had 2974 02:45:33.540 --> 02:45:37.150 seen one of the German pilots crying out for help. 2975 02:45:37.150 --> 02:45:40.790 I told the German police, for God's sake, there are people bleeding in the 2976 02:45:40.790 --> 02:45:50.250 helicopter. A wounded crewman has crawled 200 meters. Get him out of there. He crawled on all fours, wounded, and no one made a move to rescue him. 2977 02:45:50.510 --> 02:45:51.180 Just after 3 2978 02:45:51.180 --> 02:45:59.130 a.m., barely 23 hours after the initial terrorist assault, Zemir phoned Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, 2979 02:45:59.130 --> 02:46:01.660 who congratulated him on his success. He 2980 02:46:01.770 --> 02:46:02.110 said, 2981 02:46:02.100 --> 02:46:02.370 she 2982 02:46:02.550 --> 02:46:02.970 had been 2983 02:46:03.010 --> 02:46:10.870 misinformed by a german source that all the israelis were safe i'm sorry to tell you this golda he told her but 2984 02:46:11.070 --> 02:46:16.260 the athletes were not rescued i have seen them all not one of them 2985 02:46:16.360 --> 02:46:17.500 survived 2986 02:46:18.040 --> 02:46:22.950 the palestinians saw the operation as a success as their cause had taken center 2987 02:46:22.950 --> 02:46:23.940 stage in world opinion 2988 02:46:24.530 --> 02:46:24.880 one 2989 02:46:25.000 --> 02:46:26.510 PLO organ wrote 2990 02:46:26.620 --> 02:46:26.970 a bomb 2991 02:46:26.980 --> 02:46:34.050 in the White House a landmine in the Vatican the death of Mao Zedong an earthquake in Paris could not have had 2992 02:46:34.510 --> 02:46:40.400 greater resonance with every person in the world than that caused by the Black September operation in Munich 2993 02:46:40.400 --> 02:46:40.750 it was 2994 02:46:40.750 --> 02:46:47.560 like painting the name Palestine on a mountain visible from all corners of the globe end quote 2995 02:46:49.040 --> 02:46:49.960 Well, the 2996 02:46:50.300 --> 02:46:54.780 Israelis, as you can imagine, went absolutely ham on the 2997 02:46:54.780 --> 02:47:00.990 PLO. The Mossad sent teams around the world hunting everyone they could find with any 2998 02:47:00.990 --> 02:47:02.170 connection to the attack. 2999 02:47:02.180 --> 02:47:03.090 They bombed a 3000 02:47:03.440 --> 02:47:10.160 dozen bases, they attacked villages, they assassinated people across Europe and the Middle East. This 3001 02:47:10.170 --> 02:47:10.170 revenge 3002 02:47:10.980 --> 02:47:14.570 operation eventually wound down, but 3003 02:47:14.570 --> 02:47:15.320 the lesson 3004 02:47:15.320 --> 02:47:18.220 that the Israelis took from Munich... 3005 02:47:18.190 --> 02:47:18.360 Was 3006 02:47:18.520 --> 02:47:22.190 that they could no longer restrict their operations to Middle Eastern countries. 3007 02:47:22.530 --> 02:47:24.080 Operation Spring of 3008 02:47:24.080 --> 02:47:29.780 Youth, as it was called, had also shown the Israeli government how much their intelligence and 3009 02:47:29.920 --> 02:47:34.890 special operations capabilities had improved since the disasters in 1965. 3010 02:47:35.210 --> 02:47:36.690 Showed them that they had the 3011 02:47:36.790 --> 02:47:40.590 capability to strike anyone, anywhere in the world, with or 3012 02:47:41.110 --> 02:47:41.110 without 3013 02:47:41.180 --> 02:47:43.880 the permission of local government. It 3014 02:47:44.010 --> 02:47:45.180 also hardened 3015 02:47:45.180 --> 02:47:46.850 their outlook. 3016 02:47:47.820 --> 02:48:07.000 radicalized them, instilled a certain cavalierness to the operations they chose and how they were executed. One time, when they were hunting a suspected terrorist in Lillehammer, Norway, Mossad agents identified the wrong man and just straight-up murdered an innocent Moroccan 3017 02:48:07.150 --> 02:48:11.150 in front of his pregnant Norwegian wife. Quote, All 3018 02:48:11.300 --> 02:48:11.480 of a 3019 02:48:11.480 --> 02:48:13.630 sudden, my husband fell. I 3020 02:48:13.670 --> 02:48:14.250 did not 3021 02:48:14.250 --> 02:48:16.030 understand what had happened. 3022 02:48:16.460 --> 02:48:16.640 And 3023 02:48:16.780 --> 02:48:17.910 then I saw those two men. 3024 02:48:18.300 --> 02:48:18.790 They were 3025 02:48:18.800 --> 02:48:21.510 three, four meters away from us. One 3026 02:48:21.620 --> 02:48:24.620 of them was the driver of the car, and the second was his passenger. 3027 02:48:24.940 --> 02:48:25.340 They stood 3028 02:48:25.340 --> 02:48:28.980 outside the car, on both sides, firing pistols. I 3029 02:48:29.220 --> 02:48:29.720 fell flat 3030 02:48:29.720 --> 02:48:32.920 on the ground. Sure, they wanted to kill me, too, and 3031 02:48:32.920 --> 02:48:34.380 that I would die in a moment. 3032 02:48:34.530 --> 02:48:35.320 But then I heard 3033 02:48:35.320 --> 02:48:36.770 the car doors slam, and 3034 02:48:36.910 --> 02:48:36.910 it 3035 02:48:37.000 --> 02:48:39.900 drove away. My husband didn't shout. I 3036 02:48:40.140 --> 02:48:40.570 got up and 3037 02:48:40.570 --> 02:48:45.500 ran as fast as I could to the nearest house and told them to call the police and an ambulance. 3038 02:48:46.460 --> 02:48:46.460 When 3039 02:48:46.470 --> 02:48:49.020 I got back, there were already people around 3040 02:48:49.020 --> 02:48:50.060 my husband trying to 3041 02:48:50.070 --> 02:48:54.090 help him. An ambulance came, and I drove with my husband to the hospital. 3042 02:48:54.350 --> 02:48:54.740 And there 3043 02:48:54.860 --> 02:48:56.090 they told me he was 3044 02:48:56.090 --> 02:48:57.900 dead." The Mossad 3045 02:48:58.350 --> 02:48:59.760 chief at the time 3046 02:48:59.760 --> 02:49:06.030 just waved this incident off. He said, Not one of us has the means 3047 02:49:06.030 --> 02:49:13.760 of only making correct decisions. Wrong identification of a target is not a failure. It's a mistake. 3048 02:49:14.300 --> 02:49:14.530 The 3049 02:49:14.650 --> 02:49:18.970 man behaved in a manner that seemed suspicious to our people who were following him. 3050 02:49:19.080 --> 02:49:19.560 He made a 3051 02:49:19.560 --> 02:49:21.100 lot of journeys, the aim of 3052 02:49:21.170 --> 02:49:22.860 which was difficult to know. 3053 02:49:23.210 --> 02:49:24.770 But as Bergman 3054 02:49:24.780 --> 02:49:32.070 writes, quote, In truth, the man had no connection at all to terrorism, and the Lillehammer 3055 02:49:32.070 --> 02:49:37.410 affair was nothing but the cold-blooded murder of an innocent pool attendant, end quote. 3056 02:49:38.660 --> 02:49:39.130 Even 3057 02:49:39.690 --> 02:49:48.910 worse than that, as far as the Israelis were concerned, several members of the hit squad were caught by the Norwegian police, who quickly figured out what had happened. Documents 3058 02:49:49.250 --> 02:49:49.670 found on the 3059 02:49:49.670 --> 02:49:56.850 agents revealed the locations of safe houses and collaborators, communications channels, and operational 3060 02:49:56.850 --> 02:50:00.180 methods that the Israelis used all over Europe. 3061 02:50:00.910 --> 02:50:01.320 The men 3062 02:50:01.550 --> 02:50:09.330 were sentenced to short prison terms for the murder, but they were released after a secret agreement was reached between Israel and Norway. When 3063 02:50:09.610 --> 02:50:10.500 they got off the 3064 02:50:10.500 --> 02:50:11.760 plane back home, 3065 02:50:11.890 --> 02:50:18.910 the murderers were greeted as returning heroes by a crowd of cheering Israelis. Nasser 3066 02:50:18.910 --> 02:50:21.800 died in 1970, and 3067 02:50:22.200 --> 02:50:27.450 he was replaced as Egypt's president by Anwar 3068 02:50:27.780 --> 02:50:28.590 Sadat. 3069 02:50:29.460 --> 02:50:29.770 The 3070 02:50:30.130 --> 02:50:35.810 first years of Sadat's rule were very bad ones in Egypt. The country was 3071 02:50:35.810 --> 02:50:39.860 demoralized after its defeat in '67, and now the death 3072 02:50:40.030 --> 02:50:40.030 of 3073 02:50:40.050 --> 02:50:42.550 Nasser. The economy was 3074 02:50:42.550 --> 02:50:42.940 in a 3075 02:50:42.940 --> 02:50:50.340 toilet. Sadat had been making noises in global media and through diplomatic channels that he was willing to recognize his real sovereignty, 3076 02:50:50.340 --> 02:50:50.650 which 3077 02:50:50.650 --> 02:50:53.900 would have made Egypt the first Arab state to do that. 3078 02:50:53.860 --> 02:50:59.450 in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Sinai, but so far he hadn't gotten anywhere. 3079 02:50:59.710 --> 02:51:00.280 And so in 3080 02:51:00.280 --> 02:51:05.560 1972, with Egypt in a bad place and his rule unstable, 3081 02:51:05.740 --> 02:51:06.490 he decided to 3082 02:51:06.580 --> 02:51:07.990 take bold action to 3083 02:51:07.990 --> 02:51:09.480 shake things up. 3084 02:51:09.710 --> 02:51:11.340 The 1967 war 3085 02:51:11.340 --> 02:51:13.070 had left the Israeli 3086 02:51:13.090 --> 02:51:16.760 security forces stretched to their limit. 3087 02:51:17.360 --> 02:51:17.360 while 3088 02:51:17.750 --> 02:51:24.590 at the same time instilling a sense of arrogant invincibility that led them to underestimate what the Arabs were capable of. 3089 02:51:25.070 --> 02:51:26.460 After making a final offer 3090 02:51:26.460 --> 02:51:31.950 for a lasting peace treaty delivered to the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir by 3091 02:51:31.980 --> 02:51:39.560 U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger and being flatly rejected, Sadat began making preparations for another war. 3092 02:51:40.590 --> 02:51:41.410 With the help 3093 02:51:41.530 --> 02:51:44.300 of the Soviet Union, he began a massive rearmament 3094 02:51:44.440 --> 02:51:56.890 program, stocking up on MiG fighters and air defense systems, tanks and anti-tank weapons, and bringing Egypt's recruiting and training of its soldiers up to modern standards, or something close 3095 02:51:56.890 --> 02:51:57.680 to it. Sadat 3096 02:51:58.190 --> 02:51:58.380 ordered a 3097 02:51:58.380 --> 02:51:59.790 series of military 3098 02:51:59.790 --> 02:52:06.590 exercises on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal, with Israeli forces watching from the other side. 3099 02:52:07.390 --> 02:52:07.980 He kept 3100 02:52:08.100 --> 02:52:09.950 doing this, and each time the 3101 02:52:09.950 --> 02:52:17.030 Egyptians got moving, the Israelis had to respond, but eventually they got tired of it, and their responses started to slacken 3102 02:52:17.030 --> 02:52:20.510 each time the Egyptians launched another exercise. They 3103 02:52:20.530 --> 02:52:20.800 were 3104 02:52:20.920 --> 02:52:27.610 convinced that the Egyptians, who had been beaten so badly in 1967, would not dare try again, especially 3105 02:52:28.140 --> 02:52:30.720 since now it would involve problems. 3106 02:52:30.750 --> 02:52:30.920 an 3107 02:52:31.070 --> 02:52:38.130 opposed amphibious attack across the Suez Canal, something they did not think the Egyptian army was remotely capable of. 3108 02:52:38.440 --> 02:52:38.820 As a 3109 02:52:38.820 --> 02:52:50.390 result, the Egyptians were essentially making war preparations within visual range of the Israeli military, and the Israelis weren't really doing anything to prepare for it. 3110 02:52:50.700 --> 02:52:52.140 Sadat called on 3111 02:52:52.140 --> 02:52:58.780 Syrian President Hafez Assad to join the upcoming war with Israel. Jordan refused to 3112 02:52:58.780 --> 02:52:59.890 participate. 3113 02:53:00.620 --> 02:53:01.040 Other 3114 02:53:01.200 --> 02:53:05.960 Arab countries sent small expeditionary forces, mostly as a symbolic gesture. In 3115 02:53:06.290 --> 02:53:07.290 the first days 3116 02:53:07.290 --> 02:53:08.310 of October 3117 02:53:08.310 --> 02:53:13.450 1973, General Ariel Sharon was shown photographs 3118 02:53:13.470 --> 02:53:21.090 of Egyptian forces massing on the far side of Suez in much larger numbers than in any of the previous exercises. 3119 02:53:21.100 --> 02:53:24.370 And so he called up the CO of IDF Southern Command and 3120 02:53:24.380 --> 02:53:24.910 told him 3121 02:53:24.920 --> 02:53:28.230 that he thought that the Egyptians were planning to 3122 02:53:28.230 --> 02:53:28.980 attack. 3123 02:53:28.990 --> 02:53:29.420 Prime 3124 02:53:29.720 --> 02:53:32.060 Minister Maier also got word from separate 3125 02:53:32.110 --> 02:53:34.640 sources that a Syrian attack may have been imminent. All 3126 02:53:34.640 --> 02:53:35.280 of these 3127 02:53:35.280 --> 02:53:39.590 warnings and many others actually were ignored. On 3128 02:53:40.030 --> 02:53:40.660 October 3129 02:53:40.660 --> 02:53:55.670 4th and 5th, Soviet advisors and their families began leaving Egypt and Syria at the same time that fleets of Soviet transport aircraft laden with military equipment started landing in Cairo and Damascus. 3130 02:53:56.660 --> 02:53:56.860 On 3131 02:53:57.510 --> 02:54:11.110 October 6, 1973, the Egyptians sent five divisions, comprising 100,000 soldiers, 1,400 tanks, and 2,000 pieces of heavy artillery and mortars, across the Suez Canal on a massive 3132 02:54:11.110 --> 02:54:12.280 surprise attack. 3133 02:54:12.400 --> 02:54:13.230 And despite all 3134 02:54:13.250 --> 02:54:16.820 the warning signs, they caught the Israelis mostly off guard. 3135 02:54:16.820 --> 02:54:18.240 Israeli forces tried to 3136 02:54:18.240 --> 02:54:20.100 counterattack the bridgeheads 3137 02:54:20.830 --> 02:54:23.800 established by the Egyptians, but they were repulsed. 3138 02:54:24.070 --> 02:54:25.930 Israeli forces looked for a time like 3139 02:54:26.020 --> 02:54:27.300 they were about to be overwhelmed. 3140 02:54:27.560 --> 02:54:28.260 And the Prime 3141 02:54:28.260 --> 02:54:32.590 Minister ordered nuclear bombs and missiles prepared in case they were. 3142 02:54:32.930 --> 02:54:34.610 There were real concerns 3143 02:54:34.610 --> 02:54:36.040 at the time that if 3144 02:54:36.040 --> 02:54:41.980 Israel did start nuking Arab cities, the Soviets might nuke Israel. Leading 3145 02:54:41.980 --> 02:54:42.660 to the very 3146 02:54:42.660 --> 02:54:43.980 real possibility of 3147 02:54:44.010 --> 02:54:46.620 nuclear war with the United States. 3148 02:54:46.910 --> 02:54:48.280 But none of that would 3149 02:54:48.350 --> 02:54:49.720 be necessary. 3150 02:54:50.360 --> 02:54:50.360 The 3151 02:54:50.440 --> 02:54:58.300 Egyptians didn't try to move out much from the narrow strip surrounding their bridgeheads for fear of leaving the protection of their air defense systems 3152 02:54:58.520 --> 02:54:58.520 and 3153 02:54:58.600 --> 02:55:01.540 becoming vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes. 3154 02:55:01.840 --> 02:55:02.890 By October 3155 02:55:02.900 --> 02:55:09.870 13th, IDF Northern Command had successfully driven the Syrians back and fortified the Northern Front 3156 02:55:09.880 --> 02:55:10.400 so that 3157 02:55:10.400 --> 02:55:16.770 Israeli artillery was now only three to five miles from being within range to target Damascus itself. 3158 02:55:18.080 --> 02:55:19.160 knowing that 3159 02:55:19.210 --> 02:55:25.060 the U.S. and the U.N. were going to be forcing a ceasefire within the next 48 hours or so, there 3160 02:55:25.060 --> 02:55:30.930 was a lot of pressure within the Israeli government to do something now, drastic now, against 3161 02:55:30.930 --> 02:55:37.400 Egypt before that, before the ceasefire, in order to secure a better negotiating position in the aftermath. There 3162 02:55:37.400 --> 02:55:38.360 were calls to 3163 02:55:38.360 --> 02:55:40.020 make a bold push across 3164 02:55:40.020 --> 02:55:45.100 the Suez Canal to the Egyptian side to threaten Cairo, 3165 02:55:45.070 --> 02:55:45.410 But the 3166 02:55:45.510 --> 02:55:47.240 Egyptians were too well-prepared, 3167 02:55:47.240 --> 02:55:50.500 and no one saw a way to do that that would guarantee success. The 3168 02:55:50.640 --> 02:55:51.630 Israelis had 3169 02:55:51.630 --> 02:55:55.050 lost over 400 combat aircraft, 3170 02:55:55.050 --> 02:55:55.390 and the 3171 02:55:55.490 --> 02:55:57.000 defense minister informed the 3172 02:55:57.000 --> 02:56:01.730 cabinet that the Air Force only had enough resources to support one more major attack. 3173 02:56:02.070 --> 02:56:03.000 With Israeli 3174 02:56:03.000 --> 02:56:05.380 artillery almost within 3175 02:56:05.580 --> 02:56:13.060 range of Damascus, Assad panicked and begged Sadat to order an Egyptian attack eastward 3176 02:56:13.140 --> 02:56:13.270 to 3177 02:56:13.440 --> 02:56:15.240 take pressure off the Syrian front. 3178 02:56:15.480 --> 02:56:15.820 Now, the 3179 02:56:15.940 --> 02:56:17.000 Egyptians were in 3180 02:56:17.070 --> 02:56:18.600 a very strong position, 3181 02:56:18.870 --> 02:56:19.370 and they 3182 02:56:19.370 --> 02:56:26.060 knew it was a bad idea to push out, but Sadat felt that he had no choice but to support Assad, lest 3183 02:56:26.120 --> 02:56:30.580 Syria pull out of the war and leave Egypt one-on-one against the Israelis. 3184 02:56:30.820 --> 02:56:31.680 On October 3185 02:56:31.680 --> 02:56:34.230 13th and 14th, 3186 02:56:34.280 --> 02:56:38.600 the Egyptian tanks began trying to push out from their secure positions. 3187 02:56:39.300 --> 02:56:42.230 inviting a head-on confrontation with Israeli forces. 3188 02:56:42.430 --> 02:56:43.550 IDF's southern 3189 02:56:43.550 --> 02:56:50.710 command was ordered to take up defensive positions and prepare for a fight, but Ariel Sharon had his own ideas. 3190 02:56:50.940 --> 02:56:54.610 Disregarding orders, he took 750 troops, 3191 02:56:54.610 --> 02:57:01.630 20 tanks, and 7 APCs across the Suez Canal into Egyptian territory on ferries. 3192 02:57:02.460 --> 02:57:03.070 He caught 3193 02:57:03.190 --> 02:57:10.600 the Egyptians completely off guard, and some units broke and ran, thinking that this must be a larger Israeli invasion that was imminent. The 3194 02:57:11.070 --> 02:57:11.420 disorder in the 3195 02:57:11.510 --> 02:57:17.100 Egyptian forces caused by Sharon's maneuver opened up opportunities for air and artillery strikes 3196 02:57:17.100 --> 02:57:25.620 against their exposed positions and left Egyptian tank forces vulnerable to counterattack. Sharon's maneuvers had cut off the 3197 02:57:25.620 --> 02:57:31.040 Egyptian 3rd Army from resupply or reinforcement. It was basically trapped. 3198 02:57:31.780 --> 02:57:32.130 Some 3199 02:57:32.460 --> 02:57:39.480 Israeli officials wanted to destroy the entire force, but others thought that it was best to preserve as a bargaining chip. The 3200 02:57:39.910 --> 02:57:40.140 Americans 3201 02:57:40.140 --> 02:57:45.380 supported the latter idea, and the Americans had a lot of influence by this point. 3202 02:57:45.380 --> 02:57:46.690 The 73 war was 3203 02:57:46.690 --> 02:57:51.840 in part a proxy war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Nixon 3204 02:57:51.840 --> 02:57:52.600 at first had 3205 02:57:52.600 --> 02:57:55.930 refrained from throwing total U.S. support behind 3206 02:57:56.260 --> 02:57:58.850 the Israelis when the war started, 3207 02:57:58.930 --> 02:57:59.100 But 3208 02:57:59.320 --> 02:57:59.900 once it was clear 3209 02:57:59.950 --> 02:58:10.050 that the Soviets were committed to helping the Arabs win, the U.S. decided that it couldn't let Soviet support be the determining factor in such a high-profile conflict, and so the U.S. 3210 02:58:10.050 --> 02:58:10.430 got fully 3211 02:58:10.430 --> 02:58:11.270 involved. The 3212 02:58:11.440 --> 02:58:12.390 Israelis had been 3213 02:58:12.390 --> 02:58:13.890 running out of supplies 3214 02:58:13.890 --> 02:58:21.380 and equipment, and the American support was desperately needed, so what the Americans wanted was not something that could be ignored. And 3215 02:58:21.500 --> 02:58:21.980 what the 3216 02:58:22.050 --> 02:58:23.720 Americans wanted was a 3217 02:58:23.720 --> 02:58:24.810 ceasefire. 3218 02:58:24.810 --> 02:58:25.480 What the Americans wanted was a ceasefire. 3219 02:58:25.470 --> 02:58:25.920 NATO 3220 02:58:26.030 --> 02:58:29.980 and Warsaw Pact military forces had come nose-to-nose for 3221 02:58:29.980 --> 02:58:37.210 the first time in a decade, and neither side wanted to test the sensitivity of the other's trigger finger. So, in fact, pressure 3222 02:58:37.230 --> 02:58:40.030 was coming from both the U.S. and the Soviet 3223 02:58:40.030 --> 02:58:43.160 Union to their respective proxies to wrap this up. By 3224 02:58:43.440 --> 02:58:44.390 the last week of 3225 02:58:44.390 --> 02:58:46.160 October, a ceasefire 3226 02:58:46.200 --> 02:58:51.670 was in place, although fighting would continue sporadically until the following January. 3227 02:58:53.110 --> 02:58:53.360 The 3228 02:58:53.670 --> 02:58:55.050 1973 war. 3229 02:58:55.560 --> 02:58:58.850 The fourth Arab-Israeli war, or the Yom Kippur War, ended 3230 02:58:59.260 --> 02:58:59.470 up 3231 02:59:00.110 --> 02:59:06.540 signaling a sea change in Arab-Israeli relations. It was in fact the last time, even to this day, that 3232 02:59:06.540 --> 02:59:10.290 Israel was in direct combat with Arab military forces. 3233 02:59:10.520 --> 02:59:11.930 Although Israel had 3234 02:59:11.930 --> 02:59:17.130 managed to gain the upper hand by the end, everybody knew that it had been 3235 02:59:17.140 --> 02:59:18.810 by the skin of their teeth. 3236 02:59:19.580 --> 02:59:20.030 If the 3237 02:59:20.300 --> 02:59:22.980 Egyptians had improved this much in six 3238 02:59:22.980 --> 02:59:26.580 short years after their devastating defeat in the Six-Day War, what 3239 02:59:26.580 --> 02:59:27.230 were things 3240 02:59:27.230 --> 02:59:28.850 going to be like in another six 3241 02:59:28.850 --> 02:59:29.750 years? The 3242 02:59:30.080 --> 02:59:30.520 sheen of 3243 02:59:30.520 --> 02:59:33.080 Israeli invincibility was 3244 02:59:33.080 --> 02:59:33.900 gone. 3245 02:59:33.900 --> 02:59:34.920 From the 3246 02:59:34.920 --> 02:59:46.420 Arab side, the 73 War actually opened doors to peace that had been slammed shut by the 67 War. That earlier war had left the Arabs so humiliated 3247 02:59:47.050 --> 02:59:47.050 That 3248 02:59:47.130 --> 02:59:51.930 it was basically impossible for any leader to make a lasting peace with Israel without looking cowardly. 3249 02:59:52.210 --> 02:59:52.450 But now 3250 02:59:52.450 --> 02:59:57.750 that Egypt could say that it really had dealt a serious blow to the Israelis and 3251 02:59:57.880 --> 02:59:58.770 shown that 3252 02:59:58.780 --> 03:00:07.210 they mean business and were no longer to be taken lightly, that actually gave Sadat the confidence and the room to start working toward 3253 03:00:07.250 --> 03:00:07.790 peace. 3254 03:00:08.160 --> 03:00:09.500 The Israelis suffered 3255 03:00:09.590 --> 03:00:13.410 almost 11,000 casualties in this war. 3256 03:00:14.530 --> 03:00:14.560 They 3257 03:00:14.560 --> 03:00:16.870 lost 400 tanks, 3258 03:00:17.200 --> 03:00:22.850 Another 700 damaged or captured, as well as over 400 armored vehicles and 3259 03:00:22.980 --> 03:00:24.760 400 aircraft destroyed. The 3260 03:00:24.890 --> 03:00:26.310 Jewish population of 3261 03:00:26.310 --> 03:00:33.030 Israel at the time was only about 2.7 million. You always have to keep that in mind when you hear casualty numbers 3262 03:00:33.220 --> 03:00:45.170 like this. 11,000 casualties in a society with 2.7 million people is the equivalent of the U.S. taking 1.2, 1.3 million casualties 3263 03:00:45.740 --> 03:00:45.960 in a 3264 03:00:46.020 --> 03:00:48.400 war that lasted just over two weeks. 3265 03:00:48.680 --> 03:00:48.990 The 3266 03:00:48.990 --> 03:00:55.330 1973 war might have been good for Sadat's popularity, and it was 3267 03:00:55.330 --> 03:00:55.620 good 3268 03:00:55.670 --> 03:01:04.050 for Egypt's position in the region, but it had accomplished nothing for the Palestinians. While the Egyptians got to rest once 3269 03:01:04.050 --> 03:01:08.860 the fighting came to a halt in early 1974, there would be no rest for the Israelis. 3270 03:01:09.810 --> 03:01:10.010 The 3271 03:01:10.250 --> 03:01:16.420 fourth Arab-Israeli war might have been over, but the long war with the PLO only intensified. In 3272 03:01:16.720 --> 03:01:18.010 May of 74, 3273 03:01:18.020 --> 03:01:25.530 three Fedeyin who were part of a PLO splinter group sneaked into northern Israel from Lebanon. At 3274 03:01:25.900 --> 03:01:26.640 night, they 3275 03:01:26.640 --> 03:01:30.650 started toward a border town called Malot, and 3276 03:01:30.650 --> 03:01:31.460 on their way they 3277 03:01:31.620 --> 03:01:35.690 ambushed a vehicle carrying several women returning home from work. 3278 03:01:37.040 --> 03:01:37.380 The 3279 03:01:38.280 --> 03:01:45.290 terrorists killed one of the women and shot and wounded another, and then in the early morning they arrived at Malot, 3280 03:01:45.290 --> 03:01:53.990 and two of them spoke Hebrew, so they knocked on the door of a house and announced that they were there looking for terrorists. When the door opened, 3281 03:01:53.990 --> 03:02:02.200 the three men crashed through it. Inside was Yosef and Fortuna Cohen, and their four-year-old son Moshe, and their 3282 03:02:02.340 --> 03:02:05.820 daughter Bibi, and a 16-month-old 3283 03:02:05.820 --> 03:02:06.620 baby. 3284 03:02:06.590 --> 03:02:06.850 The 3285 03:02:07.410 --> 03:02:07.720 terrorists 3286 03:02:07.720 --> 03:02:09.290 murdered the parents 3287 03:02:09.290 --> 03:02:15.020 and the four-year-old and shot and wounded the little girl. They didn't notice the baby. As 3288 03:02:15.020 --> 03:02:16.410 they left the house, 3289 03:02:16.410 --> 03:02:22.210 they came across a local man and asked him in Hebrew for directions to the school. The 3290 03:02:22.220 --> 03:02:22.940 man told 3291 03:02:22.940 --> 03:02:25.230 him, and they shot him. 3292 03:02:25.230 --> 03:02:26.580 They got to the school with 3293 03:02:26.760 --> 03:02:31.370 the intention of hiding out and waiting for the children to arrive in the morning. 3294 03:02:32.220 --> 03:02:32.780 But when 3295 03:02:32.920 --> 03:02:33.920 they broke in, they 3296 03:02:34.170 --> 03:02:39.960 found that there was already a large group of teenagers and ten adult chaperones who were already there, sleeping. It 3297 03:02:39.960 --> 03:02:41.000 was a group from 3298 03:02:41.000 --> 03:02:43.000 another part of the country on 3299 03:02:43.010 --> 03:02:54.820 an overnight field trip to Malou. When Israeli security forces arrived, the men announced that they would kill all their hostages at 6 a.m. if 20 Palestinian prisoners were not released. And 3300 03:02:54.820 --> 03:02:56.230 so a rescue operation 3301 03:02:56.490 --> 03:03:00.700 was quickly thrown together, but it was botched and 3302 03:03:00.840 --> 03:03:00.840 and 3303 03:03:00.860 --> 03:03:04.470 the terrorists began shooting and throwing grenades at the hostages. 3304 03:03:04.640 --> 03:03:05.480 It only took the 3305 03:03:05.640 --> 03:03:15.850 Israeli force about 30 seconds to correct their early errors and kill the terrorists, but in those 30 seconds, 22 children and 4 adults were killed. 3306 03:03:16.040 --> 03:03:16.270 Every 3307 03:03:16.270 --> 03:03:19.280 surviving hostage was at least wounded. 3308 03:03:19.530 --> 03:03:21.270 Another attack, this 3309 03:03:21.270 --> 03:03:21.990 one also 3310 03:03:21.990 --> 03:03:24.390 originating in Lebanon. 3311 03:03:25.100 --> 03:03:25.350 led 3312 03:03:25.490 --> 03:03:30.080 to a hostage situation in a hotel right in Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital. The 3313 03:03:30.220 --> 03:03:30.690 Israeli 3314 03:03:30.690 --> 03:03:42.810 security forces again tried a rescue mission, but the militants had adjusted their tactics to the Israelis' more aggressive posture. They were always ready to just start killing hostages at a moment's notice. 3315 03:03:43.230 --> 03:03:43.930 Before all the 3316 03:03:43.930 --> 03:03:48.860 terrorists were neutralized, eight civilians and three soldiers had been killed. 3317 03:03:50.190 --> 03:03:51.170 One of the 3318 03:03:51.390 --> 03:03:55.690 Israeli Special Forces soldiers, assigned to that hostage rescue team, 3319 03:03:55.690 --> 03:03:57.220 later you'd be the 3320 03:03:57.220 --> 03:04:03.890 commander of the unit, he said, It was a terrible time. Every few weeks we scrambled to 3321 03:04:03.890 --> 03:04:06.350 the scene of another terror attack. 3322 03:04:06.350 --> 03:04:07.540 You know that in the 3323 03:04:07.550 --> 03:04:12.360 few hours you had before dawn, you had to eliminate the problem. Although 3324 03:04:12.360 --> 03:04:12.500 it 3325 03:04:12.510 --> 03:04:18.610 was all happening inside Israel, the nature of the operations was different from what the unit was used to. 3326 03:04:19.010 --> 03:04:19.200 All 3327 03:04:19.370 --> 03:04:24.130 the initiative, all the element of surprise, all the planning was the other sides. 3328 03:04:24.380 --> 03:04:26.800 Terribly scary. This went on 3329 03:04:27.300 --> 03:04:30.320 throughout the 1970s. 3330 03:04:30.330 --> 03:04:30.530 And 3331 03:04:30.690 --> 03:04:31.940 that is very important to 3332 03:04:32.020 --> 03:04:34.050 understand about this conflict. 3333 03:04:34.380 --> 03:04:34.930 The kinds 3334 03:04:34.930 --> 03:04:36.810 of attacks that were 3335 03:04:36.810 --> 03:04:41.870 introduced to most Western countries after 9-11 and with the rise of ISIS, 3336 03:04:42.230 --> 03:04:42.990 Israel had already 3337 03:04:42.990 --> 03:04:44.750 been dealing with that for 3338 03:04:44.750 --> 03:04:45.570 decades. 3339 03:04:46.620 --> 03:04:46.980 The 3340 03:04:47.460 --> 03:04:53.020 long-time mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kolek, was once asked by a reporter what he thought should 3341 03:04:53.070 --> 03:05:04.080 be done about the problem of terrorism. He said, problem? We don't have a problem. Problems have solutions. We have a condition, and conditions can only be managed. 3342 03:05:04.160 --> 03:05:05.330 That's not an 3343 03:05:05.330 --> 03:05:10.520 exact quote. I have never been able to find it again after I read it, but that was the gist of it. 3344 03:05:11.430 --> 03:05:12.800 Regular acts 3345 03:05:12.800 --> 03:05:15.100 of... 3346 03:05:15.710 --> 03:05:15.740 This 3347 03:05:15.740 --> 03:05:20.230 appalling savagery, followed by savage Israeli 3348 03:05:20.230 --> 03:05:24.870 reprisals, became part of the background noise of the 1970s. 3349 03:05:25.430 --> 03:05:25.880 Things would 3350 03:05:25.880 --> 03:05:26.970 go at a certain 3351 03:05:26.970 --> 03:05:34.000 pace and intensity for a while, and then something would happen that captured the public's attention, like the killing of the Arroyo 3352 03:05:34.000 --> 03:05:36.680 children, and things would go up a level, to 3353 03:05:36.680 --> 03:05:38.010 a new intensity, and 3354 03:05:38.030 --> 03:05:39.200 stay there. As 3355 03:05:39.530 --> 03:05:40.960 the attacks became 3356 03:05:40.960 --> 03:05:43.810 more savage and nihilistic, 3357 03:05:44.340 --> 03:05:44.550 The 3358 03:05:44.740 --> 03:05:48.040 Israelis were becoming a more hardened people under 3359 03:05:48.280 --> 03:05:55.770 the pressure. From Bergman, quote, On March 11, 1978, at 2.30 p.m., 3360 03:05:55.950 --> 03:06:01.220 11 Fatah men landed on the beach near Kibbutz Magan Michael, south of Haifa, 3361 03:06:01.220 --> 03:06:07.430 in a nature preserve bounded by fish-breeding ponds where flocks of migrant birds stop on their way to and from Africa. 3362 03:06:08.320 --> 03:06:08.480 An 3363 03:06:09.000 --> 03:06:13.010 American nature photographer named Gail Rubin was taking pictures 3364 03:06:13.010 --> 03:06:21.150 of the birds when the raiding party stumbled upon her. The Palestinians were close to despair after the three exhausting and hazardous 3365 03:06:21.170 --> 03:06:31.100 days at sea, during which two of their number had drowned. Because the waters were so stormy and they had been washed miles out to sea, they had lost their bearings and 3366 03:06:31.100 --> 03:06:33.090 thought they had landed in Cyprus. 3367 03:06:33.040 --> 03:06:33.360 They 3368 03:06:33.520 --> 03:06:41.800 were relieved when Ruben told them that they were in Israel, halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They thanked her and shot her dead. 3369 03:06:41.910 --> 03:06:43.260 Then the attackers 3370 03:06:43.260 --> 03:06:44.820 made for the coastal 3371 03:06:44.820 --> 03:06:50.870 highway, the road between Haifa and Tel Aviv. At gunpoint, they hijacked a taxi and 3372 03:06:50.870 --> 03:07:01.840 then a bus and took the drivers and the passengers hostage. They ordered the driver of the bus to head south toward Tel Aviv. Abu Jihad, that's Khalil al-Wazir, 3373 03:07:01.990 --> 03:07:01.990 had 3374 03:07:02.060 --> 03:07:11.670 instructed them to seize a hotel, but the raiders, now in bold high spirits because of the dozens of hostages in their hands, decided to change the nature of the operation. 3375 03:07:11.940 --> 03:07:12.580 The IDF's 3376 03:07:12.580 --> 03:07:14.870 classified report on what followed 3377 03:07:15.210 --> 03:07:28.870 noted, The terrorist's improvisation led to a new method of assault, an attack on the move, along a route of over 50 kilometers, which was a surprise and against which there was no deployment at all on the part of the security forces. 3378 03:07:30.030 --> 03:07:30.250 The 3379 03:07:30.690 --> 03:07:33.950 terrorists fired from the bus windows at vehicles on the road 3380 03:07:34.020 --> 03:07:41.240 and stopped another bus, taking its passengers hostage as well. Because of the novel nature of the attack, security forces 3381 03:07:41.240 --> 03:07:51.620 found it difficult to read the situation, to maintain an updated evaluation, and to take the initiative, which affected the course of the incident and its results. 3382 03:07:52.720 --> 03:07:53.320 Although 3383 03:07:53.420 --> 03:08:03.130 the police managed to stop the bus at the northern outskirts of Tel Aviv, the confusion led to utter chaos. The predominant factor was the lack of central 3384 03:08:03.130 --> 03:08:11.510 control, both among the terrorists who were trying to defend themselves by firing in all possible directions, and among the security forces. One 3385 03:08:11.550 --> 03:08:12.020 of the 3386 03:08:12.030 --> 03:08:17.860 terrorists rested the hand holding his pistol upon the head of the daughter 3387 03:08:17.980 --> 03:08:20.790 of one of the hostages, Avraham Shamir. 3388 03:08:21.250 --> 03:08:24.000 shamir saw the man was wounded and he charged at him 3389 03:08:24.170 --> 03:08:30.340 grabbed his gun and shot a terrorist in the front of the bus then he fired three shots at another terrorist 3390 03:08:30.340 --> 03:08:35.840 behind you warned a female hostage and shamir turned to see one of the arabs aiming his weapon 3391 03:08:35.950 --> 03:08:36.260 at him 3392 03:08:36.330 --> 03:08:39.160 they both fired at the same time and wounded each 3393 03:08:39.160 --> 03:08:39.630 other the 3394 03:08:39.840 --> 03:08:48.020 courageous shamir still functioning saw that the man whose gun he had grabbed was lying on the floor muttering his face covered in blood 3395 03:08:48.110 --> 03:08:48.420 he had 3396 03:08:48.420 --> 03:08:50.200 a grenade in his hand. 3397 03:08:50.450 --> 03:08:50.450 the 3398 03:08:50.530 --> 03:08:54.590 safety pin removed. Shamir tried to stop him from dropping it, 3399 03:08:54.670 --> 03:08:55.200 but he 3400 03:08:55.460 --> 03:08:56.870 failed, and the grenade 3401 03:08:57.190 --> 03:09:03.240 rolled onto the floor. He tried to use the terrorist's body to block the blast, but that didn't work either. The 3402 03:09:03.240 --> 03:09:09.530 grenade exploded, seriously wounding Shamir's eyes and killing the terrorist and five hostages. 3403 03:09:09.680 --> 03:09:09.760 The 3404 03:09:09.760 --> 03:09:16.990 blast set the bus on fire. Some of the terrorists and hostages managed to escape, but most were burned alive. 3405 03:09:17.550 --> 03:09:19.050 "'In all, 35 3406 03:09:19.050 --> 03:09:33.110 Israelis, 13 of them children, were killed, and 71 wounded. "'Nine of the terrorists died. "'One was captured at the scene, and another was found in a hospital "'where the casualties had been taken. "'I 3407 03:09:33.250 --> 03:09:33.680 see him 3408 03:09:34.180 --> 03:09:41.590 lying there,' said Aryeh Hadar, the top Shinbet interrogator, "'lightly wounded, but with a feeding tube and 3409 03:09:41.930 --> 03:09:41.930 IV 3410 03:09:41.930 --> 03:09:45.350 infusion, "'mocking us right in our face.' 3411 03:09:45.360 --> 03:09:45.570 The 3412 03:09:45.840 --> 03:09:47.570 doctor understood what was up, 3413 03:09:47.570 --> 03:09:47.800 and 3414 03:09:48.240 --> 03:09:57.590 turned his back to us and said, You'll do what you do, and I'll do what I do. We pulled out the tubes. End quote. 3415 03:09:57.780 --> 03:10:00.760 The coastal highway attack 3416 03:10:00.760 --> 03:10:08.070 was one of those attacks, among the thousands that the Israelis have experienced, that really stuck in the collective 3417 03:10:08.070 --> 03:10:08.830 memory. And 3418 03:10:09.060 --> 03:10:09.660 the nature of 3419 03:10:09.660 --> 03:10:10.630 Israeli responses 3420 03:10:10.840 --> 03:10:12.650 would change afterward. 3421 03:10:13.140 --> 03:10:13.770 Yeah. 3422 03:10:13.740 --> 03:10:14.320 The year 3423 03:10:14.590 --> 03:10:20.920 before it happened, the Labour Party, which was born out of the mainstream Zionist movement 3424 03:10:20.920 --> 03:10:22.830 before the state of Israel was founded, had 3425 03:10:22.890 --> 03:10:23.390 lost an 3426 03:10:23.390 --> 03:10:25.760 election for the first time to 3427 03:10:25.760 --> 03:10:26.360 a newly 3428 03:10:26.410 --> 03:10:31.890 formed right-wing party called Likud, which was descended from the Zionist 3429 03:10:31.890 --> 03:10:33.680 revisionist movement. The 3430 03:10:33.680 --> 03:10:34.580 first Likud 3431 03:10:34.590 --> 03:10:37.420 prime minister, Menachem Begin, 3432 03:10:38.100 --> 03:10:38.100 was 3433 03:10:38.140 --> 03:10:41.920 the leader of the Irgun terrorist group that targeted Palestinian 3434 03:10:41.920 --> 03:10:45.140 civilians with bombs and shootings in the 1940s. A 3435 03:10:45.300 --> 03:10:45.890 few years 3436 03:10:45.890 --> 03:10:51.990 later, the Israelis would elect Yitzhak Shamir, a former leader of the Stern 3437 03:10:51.990 --> 03:11:02.270 Gang, a terrorist organization that had perpetrated dozens of massacres against Palestinian civilians, including probably the most famous at Deir Yassin. 3438 03:11:04.070 --> 03:11:04.360 It's another 3439 03:11:04.360 --> 03:11:10.910 one of those situations where I try to step outside myself and imagine this from the perspective of the Palestinians. I'm 3440 03:11:10.910 --> 03:11:11.870 not a Fedayeen 3441 03:11:11.870 --> 03:11:13.070 fighter, forget 3442 03:11:13.070 --> 03:11:25.880 about them, but an average Palestinian who maybe isn't particularly comfortable with the behavior of the Fedayeen, and isn't sure if the Israelis are really as bad as they say they are, that terrible things happened in the 3443 03:11:25.880 --> 03:11:32.370 previous generation, but that these were their children, and maybe it was possible to come to some sort of agreement. 3444 03:11:33.220 --> 03:11:33.690 Then the 3445 03:11:33.910 --> 03:11:41.900 Israelis start electing governments run by literal terrorists, people who have committed mass murder against Arab civilians, 3446 03:11:41.900 --> 03:11:42.520 to the point 3447 03:11:42.630 --> 03:11:48.160 that even the mainstream labor Zionist movement had outlawed and attacked those groups, those terrorist 3448 03:11:48.160 --> 03:11:49.040 groups. But 3449 03:11:49.040 --> 03:11:50.770 now the Israelis are putting 3450 03:11:50.860 --> 03:11:53.080 them in charge of the country. Of 3451 03:11:53.080 --> 03:11:54.270 course, if I'm born 3452 03:11:54.270 --> 03:11:57.270 in Israel and I'm an Israeli politician and something 3453 03:11:57.340 --> 03:12:00.590 like that coastal highway attack happens... 3454 03:12:00.620 --> 03:12:00.670 I 3455 03:12:00.860 --> 03:12:06.460 know for sure I wouldn't be getting all historically philosophical about it. I would be looking for somebody to kill. 3456 03:12:06.760 --> 03:12:07.740 Under 3457 03:12:07.740 --> 03:12:14.980 Likud, the security forces began to move away from focusing on clandestine raids and assassinations 3458 03:12:15.170 --> 03:12:15.170 in 3459 03:12:15.270 --> 03:12:18.190 Palestinian areas and border countries. 3460 03:12:18.360 --> 03:12:18.940 It began to 3461 03:12:18.940 --> 03:12:21.160 turn to the military itself. 3462 03:12:21.330 --> 03:12:22.540 No more ducking and 3463 03:12:22.550 --> 03:12:27.880 weaving in the shadows at night. Now heavily armed soldiers... 3464 03:12:28.090 --> 03:12:29.980 would march in and lay down the law. 3465 03:12:30.230 --> 03:12:31.610 After the coastal 3466 03:12:31.610 --> 03:12:39.100 highway attack, they launched Operation Litani, sending armored forces and paratroopers into southern Lebanon to 3467 03:12:39.250 --> 03:12:40.640 take revenge on the PLO. 3468 03:12:40.870 --> 03:12:41.590 They killed 3469 03:12:41.590 --> 03:12:44.770 some 300 Fedeyin, destroyed many of 3470 03:12:44.830 --> 03:12:50.040 their bases, but there were also murders and looting by Israeli soldiers. 3471 03:12:52.100 --> 03:12:52.100 Military 3472 03:12:53.020 --> 03:12:56.970 intelligence cultivated ties with Lebanon's Maronite Christians, who hated the 3473 03:12:57.120 --> 03:13:00.450 Palestinians and were their most bitter enemies in Lebanon. I 3474 03:13:01.280 --> 03:13:01.750 mentioned at the 3475 03:13:01.750 --> 03:13:06.950 beginning of the show that the influx of Palestinians was tough on every country that absorbed them. 3476 03:13:07.000 --> 03:13:07.690 We saw what 3477 03:13:07.920 --> 03:13:09.200 happened in Jordan. 3478 03:13:09.200 --> 03:13:10.590 Well, of all the 3479 03:13:10.590 --> 03:13:15.990 countries, Lebanon was the smallest and the least able to deal with the fallout. It 3480 03:13:15.990 --> 03:13:16.760 was a very 3481 03:13:16.760 --> 03:13:20.420 diverse and fractious society to begin with, 3482 03:13:21.090 --> 03:13:21.090 with 3483 03:13:21.120 --> 03:13:24.120 a very slight Christian majority that was held together 3484 03:13:24.120 --> 03:13:25.400 with string and bubble gum. 3485 03:13:25.700 --> 03:13:26.420 There'd been a 3486 03:13:26.420 --> 03:13:34.790 brief civil war in 1958 when Nasserite elements got worked up and began agitating for union with Syria and Egypt in the UAR. After 3487 03:13:34.790 --> 03:13:36.030 the PLO got run 3488 03:13:36.030 --> 03:13:42.980 out of Jordan in 1970, they set up shop in southern Lebanon and essentially turned the place into their 3489 03:13:42.980 --> 03:13:46.140 own little fiefdom. People even called it Fatah Land. 3490 03:13:47.250 --> 03:13:47.810 The PLO 3491 03:13:48.270 --> 03:13:56.810 started staging most of its operations from Lebanon, inviting Israeli retaliations and pissing off the people of Lebanon. The 3492 03:13:56.810 --> 03:13:57.550 Lebanese 3493 03:13:57.560 --> 03:14:05.830 Christians, who were again around half the population, very slightly more, they were largely urban and a 3494 03:14:05.830 --> 03:14:11.890 relatively prosperous population, and they demanded that the government get these PLO people under control. 3495 03:14:12.660 --> 03:14:13.090 Well, 3496 03:14:13.290 --> 03:14:20.620 the PLO warned the government that if it interfered with its operations, it would declare itself an enemy of the people and be targeted as well. 3497 03:14:20.620 --> 03:14:21.060 And so the 3498 03:14:21.250 --> 03:14:24.240 government was in an impossible situation. If 3499 03:14:24.310 --> 03:14:25.250 they allowed 3500 03:14:25.250 --> 03:14:28.170 the PLO to continue what it was doing, 3501 03:14:28.170 --> 03:14:28.810 it would 3502 03:14:28.810 --> 03:14:33.100 show itself as a false government and risk an Israeli invasion. If 3503 03:14:33.100 --> 03:14:34.000 they tried to 3504 03:14:34.000 --> 03:14:40.020 intervene, they risked an uprising among Lebanon's Muslims in a civil war with the PLO. 3505 03:14:40.540 --> 03:14:41.910 which might give neighboring Arab 3506 03:14:41.910 --> 03:14:48.580 countries like Syria and Iraq an excuse to invade in order to keep the peace, a 3507 03:14:48.740 --> 03:14:56.930 prospect that was particularly daunting because the Syrians in particular had never accepted Lebanon's independence in the first place. 3508 03:14:57.180 --> 03:14:58.840 The situation continued 3509 03:14:58.900 --> 03:15:03.600 to escalate throughout the first half of the 1970s, 3510 03:15:03.980 --> 03:15:09.070 Until in 1975, everything fell apart and the country descended into one 3511 03:15:09.070 --> 03:15:11.900 of the most savage civil wars of the 20th century. 3512 03:15:12.300 --> 03:15:12.810 Lebanese 3513 03:15:12.810 --> 03:15:17.760 Christians and the government fought PLO forces and 3514 03:15:17.760 --> 03:15:21.220 other fedayin being shipped in from other Arab countries. 3515 03:15:21.580 --> 03:15:22.130 This was not a 3516 03:15:22.210 --> 03:15:24.050 civil war like we're used 3517 03:15:24.120 --> 03:15:26.520 to hearing about in America. 3518 03:15:26.840 --> 03:15:27.240 What we had 3519 03:15:27.240 --> 03:15:31.380 in America in the 1860s was not really a civil war. 3520 03:15:31.890 --> 03:15:32.190 That 3521 03:15:32.310 --> 03:15:36.470 was a situation where we broke up into two countries and then had a regular old war. 3522 03:15:36.820 --> 03:15:37.090 There was a 3523 03:15:37.100 --> 03:15:40.250 bit of civil war out in the West in a few places, but 3524 03:15:40.250 --> 03:15:42.000 civil wars 3525 03:15:42.000 --> 03:15:46.770 like the ones in Lebanon or the Balkans or Northern 3526 03:15:46.770 --> 03:15:47.490 Ireland 3527 03:15:47.490 --> 03:15:48.930 are not fought by 3528 03:15:48.960 --> 03:15:56.820 armies on battlefields. They're fought by gangs and militias in neighborhoods and villages, 3529 03:15:56.820 --> 03:15:57.170 and 3530 03:15:57.890 --> 03:16:10.170 captured enemy when they're allowed to surrender at all. They don't go to POW camps. They don't benefit from the Geneva Conventions. They go to some basement in the enemy's neighborhood where they're tied to a chair and someone 3531 03:16:10.330 --> 03:16:18.270 who's lost a friend or a relative in the war goes to work on them for as long as they want. From Becker, quote, In 3532 03:16:18.390 --> 03:16:21.950 the first week of the Civil War, some hundreds 3533 03:16:22.090 --> 03:16:22.090 of 3534 03:16:22.170 --> 03:16:25.550 motorists, halted in a traffic jam in Beirut, 3535 03:16:25.510 --> 03:16:37.030 witnessed the execution of a man by the PLO. The captors and their victims stood on a piece of open ground at the side of the avenue Sami al-Soul. Some Lebanese, probably 3536 03:16:37.130 --> 03:16:42.090 Maronite, were guarded by Fedayin. The captives' hands were tied behind 3537 03:16:42.090 --> 03:16:49.830 their backs. One was singled out for special attention. Round his neck, the PLO militiamen tied sticks of explosives. 3538 03:16:50.930 --> 03:16:53.050 People in their cars looked and waited 3539 03:16:53.060 --> 03:17:18.850 uneasily for the arrival of the special police and Red Berets whose business it was to deal with violent incidents in the streets, but they did not appear. The victim stood still, with strange quietness and dignity, as one witness said, while the Fedein literally prepared to blow his head off. They set a fuse and ran back from the man, who continued to stand where he was, quite still, until the explosion came. 3540 03:17:19.370 --> 03:17:19.590 Not 3541 03:17:19.800 --> 03:17:21.980 only was he decapitated, but the rest of 3542 03:17:22.070 --> 03:17:33.310 his body was blown to pieces. The nationalist movement was openly joined by Fatah. The carnage was massive. Deaths from the fighting averaged about 50 a day. 3543 03:17:33.760 --> 03:17:33.920 National 3544 03:17:33.920 --> 03:17:38.890 movement fighters and youths from the camps looted and destroyed stores in the heart of 3545 03:17:38.890 --> 03:17:39.390 Beirut. 3546 03:17:39.550 --> 03:17:39.990 Dead and 3547 03:17:39.990 --> 03:17:43.710 mutilated bodies lay everywhere in public places. 3548 03:17:44.330 --> 03:17:50.730 corpses of sexually violated women and children and of men with their genitals cut off and stuffed into their 3549 03:17:50.790 --> 03:18:10.100 mouths shop windows were shattered and their contents looted by a multitude of beggars many of them small ragged boys out of the camps who would offer the goods for sale on the streets wildly setting their own prices on items whose value they could not imagine garbage piled up in the streets piped water and electric power 3550 03:18:10.100 --> 03:18:12.160 were cut off more often than 3551 03:18:12.160 --> 03:18:12.490 not 3552 03:18:12.620 --> 03:18:12.780 People 3553 03:18:12.900 --> 03:18:23.190 were afraid to leave their apartments and seek safety elsewhere, knowing that they would lose everything to the looters, who would even tear down window frames and plumbing fixtures out of the walls. To 3554 03:18:23.440 --> 03:18:24.400 add to the terror 3555 03:18:24.400 --> 03:18:33.490 and destruction, the Syrian PLO group Saika began its own campaign of bomb explosions in the commercial center of the city. 3556 03:18:33.720 --> 03:18:34.290 As this was 3557 03:18:34.290 --> 03:18:35.200 a mixed area, 3558 03:18:35.210 --> 03:18:40.620 its targets were indiscriminate. PLO offices and men were hit. 3559 03:18:40.630 --> 03:18:40.650 It 3560 03:18:40.850 --> 03:18:45.300 was the covert beginning of a direct Syrian assault on the weakening Lebanese state. 3561 03:18:45.570 --> 03:18:46.390 Snipers on 3562 03:18:46.390 --> 03:18:54.980 roofs or at high windows picked off unidentifiable victims in the streets, in their rooms, in shops and offices. Everywhere 3563 03:18:54.980 --> 03:19:05.660 in the city, armed elements sauntered in public wearing masks, balaclavas, or squares of cloth covering all their features, or carnival papier-mâché faces, 3564 03:19:06.150 --> 03:19:10.640 comic or grotesque, under cowboy Stetson hats, helmets, any kind of headspace. 3565 03:19:10.620 --> 03:19:24.920 headgear. Feather boas were seen draped around necks and shoulders under masked faces, and bits and pieces of all kinds of uniforms were worn. Jungle camouflage fatigues, jeans and t-shirts. Guns were carried as an indispensable 3566 03:19:24.920 --> 03:19:30.120 necessity, even in restaurants and on beaches, by women as well as men. 3567 03:19:30.200 --> 03:19:30.510 Many a 3568 03:19:30.570 --> 03:19:36.260 franc-tireur toted his gun in the ranks of the fedellin and the Marxists. 3569 03:19:36.920 --> 03:19:53.060 Also, bourgeois idealists, youths from Europe, most of them diehards of the new left's militant peace movements of the late 1960s and now playing at revolution, and some of them neo-Nazis were drawn here from the safe societies of the West to revel in the real thing. 3570 03:19:53.340 --> 03:19:53.620 The PLO 3571 03:19:53.620 --> 03:20:04.110 peristate in Lebanon was a subversive's honeypot. Here they had a license to shoot and kill in an alien world with no consequences to themselves. 3572 03:20:04.940 --> 03:20:20.950 Would-be heroes of the revolution, playboys and playgirls of terrorism from West Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, came to dress up, strut, blow up, gun down. It was a masquerade with a cruelty all too real. The adventure 3573 03:20:21.040 --> 03:20:28.550 required the suffering and dying of multitudes of helpless people. It was a carnival of death. End quote. 3574 03:20:29.970 --> 03:20:32.150 Weapons flowed 3575 03:20:32.150 --> 03:20:39.770 into Lebanon from all over the world Supposedly people could get RPGs for $25 According to 3576 03:20:39.770 --> 03:20:42.080 one Maronite militia leader The 3577 03:20:42.080 --> 03:20:43.170 main Maronite 3578 03:20:43.170 --> 03:20:50.010 militia was called the Falange Its fighters were called the Falangists And they viewed the fight as a 3579 03:20:50.010 --> 03:20:58.130 war for their existence And so they acted with a savagery that matched that of the Palestinians and their backers 3580 03:20:58.100 --> 03:20:58.760 After one 3581 03:20:58.800 --> 03:21:01.330 Falange leader's son was killed, he 3582 03:21:01.510 --> 03:21:09.400 led a force that massacred some two or three hundred Muslims and Druze in Beirut in an incident that became known as Black Saturday. 3583 03:21:10.020 --> 03:21:10.970 Earlier in the year, 3584 03:21:10.970 --> 03:21:15.910 27 Palestinians traveling by bus from Beirut were attacked and 3585 03:21:16.170 --> 03:21:18.420 massacred by a Falange unit. About 3586 03:21:18.420 --> 03:21:19.380 a month after 3587 03:21:19.380 --> 03:21:22.220 that, Muslims kidnapped and murdered 3588 03:21:22.330 --> 03:21:25.300 between 30 and 50 Christians, 3589 03:21:25.250 --> 03:21:25.630 For 3590 03:21:25.850 --> 03:21:31.960 months in 1975 and 76, Muslims and Christians based out of hotels and 3591 03:21:32.090 --> 03:21:32.930 fought it 3592 03:21:33.030 --> 03:21:34.760 out in central Beirut. 3593 03:21:34.810 --> 03:21:40.870 If you were on the street, which few people ever dared to be because there was a good chance of being picked off by a sniper from one side or the 3594 03:21:40.970 --> 03:21:47.150 other, you could literally look up at these high-rise hotels and see rockets and mortars 3595 03:21:47.150 --> 03:21:50.110 flying overhead between the hotels. 3596 03:21:51.060 --> 03:21:58.520 Mounted machine guns firing into the buildings from rooftops It was absolute chaos No distinction whatsoever 3597 03:21:58.600 --> 03:22:01.660 Between combatants and civilians Zero distinction 3598 03:22:02.220 --> 03:22:03.810 About a month 3599 03:22:03.810 --> 03:22:11.700 after that Black Saturday massacre Falangis attacked a Muslim district in West Beirut And killed 1,500 people 3600 03:22:11.790 --> 03:22:12.800 Two days 3601 03:22:12.800 --> 03:22:17.820 after that PLO forces targeted the Christian town of Damor for destruction 3602 03:22:18.380 --> 03:22:19.140 And 3603 03:22:19.100 --> 03:22:20.100 as the 3604 03:22:20.210 --> 03:22:22.120 PLO force approached 3605 03:22:22.120 --> 03:22:30.580 the outskirts of the town the local Christian priest, Father Labaki called the Muslim sheik in the district and asked him as one 3606 03:22:30.730 --> 03:22:36.190 religious leader to another to intervene and tell these people that Damor was a peaceful town the 3607 03:22:36.730 --> 03:22:37.100 sheik 3608 03:22:37.100 --> 03:22:44.060 told him that this is the Palestinians and there's nothing I can do and so Labaki 3609 03:22:44.130 --> 03:22:47.480 managed to get hold of one of Arafat's aides 3610 03:22:47.500 --> 03:22:47.740 and 3611 03:22:47.860 --> 03:22:50.040 pled with him to call off the attack. 3612 03:22:50.400 --> 03:22:50.400 The 3613 03:22:50.400 --> 03:22:58.720 Palestinians are shelling and shooting at my town. I can assure you as a religious leader, we do not want the war. We do not believe in 3614 03:22:58.720 --> 03:22:59.440 violence. 3615 03:22:59.710 --> 03:23:00.600 The voice on the 3616 03:23:00.600 --> 03:23:04.560 other end replied, Father, don't worry. We 3617 03:23:04.720 --> 03:23:05.060 don't 3618 03:23:05.060 --> 03:23:06.870 want to harm you. If 3619 03:23:07.040 --> 03:23:07.350 we are 3620 03:23:07.350 --> 03:23:11.140 destroying you, it is for strategical reasons. 3621 03:23:11.450 --> 03:23:12.320 PLO forces 3622 03:23:12.580 --> 03:23:15.800 invaded the town just after midnight. 3623 03:23:16.940 --> 03:23:27.820 The Saika men stormed into the houses. They massacred some 50 people in one night. Father Labaki heard screaming and went out into the street. Women came running 3624 03:23:28.020 --> 03:23:35.130 to him in their nightdresses, tearing their hair and shouting, They were slaughtering us! The survivors, deserting that 3625 03:23:35.130 --> 03:23:44.940 end of town, moved into the area around the next church. The invaders then occupied part of the town that had been taken. In the morning, the priest... 3626 03:23:44.940 --> 03:23:46.110 "'Managed to get 3627 03:23:46.110 --> 03:23:46.150 one 3628 03:23:46.930 --> 03:23:54.640 house despite the shelling "'to bring out some of the corpses. "'And I remember something that still frightens me. "'An entire family had been 3629 03:23:54.850 --> 03:24:01.770 killed, the Kanan family, "'four children all dead, and the mother, the father, the grandfather. "'The 3630 03:24:01.890 --> 03:24:02.440 mother was 3631 03:24:02.440 --> 03:24:04.650 still hugging one of the children, 3632 03:24:04.650 --> 03:24:05.170 and she was 3633 03:24:05.250 --> 03:24:06.500 pregnant. "'The 3634 03:24:06.500 --> 03:24:07.080 eyes of 3635 03:24:07.080 --> 03:24:12.610 the children were gone, and their limbs were cut off. "'No arms and no 3636 03:24:12.830 --> 03:24:13.740 legs.' 3637 03:24:13.730 --> 03:24:15.170 "'It was awful. "'We 3638 03:24:15.170 --> 03:24:15.760 took them 3639 03:24:15.980 --> 03:24:18.070 away in a banana truck. "'And 3640 03:24:18.070 --> 03:24:19.770 who carried the corpses 3641 03:24:19.780 --> 03:24:21.060 with me? "'The 3642 03:24:21.220 --> 03:24:22.650 only survivor, the 3643 03:24:22.720 --> 03:24:23.910 brother of the man. 3644 03:24:23.990 --> 03:24:24.780 "'His name 3645 03:24:24.780 --> 03:24:30.040 is Samir Kanan. "'He carried with me the remains of his brother, "'his 3646 03:24:30.040 --> 03:24:34.890 father, his sister-in-law, and their poor children. "'We buried them in 3647 03:24:34.890 --> 03:24:36.980 the cemetery under the shells of 3648 03:24:37.040 --> 03:24:37.710 the PLO. 3649 03:24:37.950 --> 03:24:39.370 "'The town tried 3650 03:24:39.380 --> 03:24:41.540 to defend itself.' 3651 03:24:41.870 --> 03:24:54.220 225 young men, most of them about 16 years old, armed with hunting guns and none with military training, held out for 12 days. The citizens huddled in basements, with sandbags 3652 03:24:54.220 --> 03:25:00.170 piled in front of their doors and ground floor windows. Father Labaki moved from shelter to shelter 3653 03:25:00.170 --> 03:25:07.370 to visit the families and take them bread and milk. He went often to encourage the young men defending the town. 3654 03:25:07.310 --> 03:25:07.600 Only 3655 03:25:07.760 --> 03:25:10.980 three more townspeople were killed between the first night and 3656 03:25:11.320 --> 03:25:19.510 the last day, January 23rd. But on that day, when the final onslaught came, hundreds of Christians were killed. The 3657 03:25:19.720 --> 03:25:20.310 attack took 3658 03:25:20.310 --> 03:25:22.820 place from the mountain behind. It 3659 03:25:23.080 --> 03:25:23.250 was an 3660 03:25:23.250 --> 03:25:30.910 apocalypse. They were coming, thousands and thousands, shouting, Allahu Akbar, God is great, let them attack for the 3661 03:25:30.910 --> 03:25:31.440 Arabs, 3662 03:25:31.480 --> 03:25:31.770 let us 3663 03:25:31.820 --> 03:25:33.510 offer a holocaust to Muhammad. 3664 03:25:33.960 --> 03:25:34.190 Muhammad. 3665 03:25:34.180 --> 03:25:34.530 and they 3666 03:25:34.690 --> 03:25:36.990 were slaughtering everyone in their path, men, 3667 03:25:36.990 --> 03:25:38.210 women, and children. 3668 03:25:38.690 --> 03:25:39.810 Whole families were 3669 03:25:39.810 --> 03:25:50.090 killed in their homes. Many women were gang-raped, and a few of them left alive afterwards. One woman saved her adolescent daughter from rape by smearing 3670 03:25:50.090 --> 03:25:58.010 her face with washing blue to make her look repulsive. As the atrocities were perpetrated, the invaders themselves took photographs and 3671 03:25:58.310 --> 03:26:01.870 later offered the pictures for sale to European newspapers. 3672 03:26:03.000 --> 03:26:16.160 survivors testify to what happened a young girl of 16 sumaya ganame witnessed the shooting of her father and brother by two of the invaders and watched her own home and the other houses in her street being looted 3673 03:26:16.160 --> 03:26:16.810 and burned 3674 03:26:16.810 --> 03:26:17.540 as they were 3675 03:26:17.540 --> 03:26:20.110 bringing me through the street the houses 3676 03:26:20.110 --> 03:26:21.820 were all burning around me they 3677 03:26:21.820 --> 03:26:22.300 had about 3678 03:26:22.300 --> 03:26:26.180 10 trucks standing in front of the houses and were piling things into 3679 03:26:26.180 --> 03:26:26.540 them i 3680 03:26:26.550 --> 03:26:27.690 remember how frightened 3681 03:26:28.210 --> 03:26:29.120 i was of the fire 3682 03:26:29.120 --> 03:26:29.430 i was 3683 03:26:29.430 --> 03:26:30.360 screaming i 3684 03:26:30.360 --> 03:26:30.860 was screaming 3685 03:26:30.830 --> 03:26:31.180 And for 3686 03:26:31.290 --> 03:26:36.970 months afterward, I couldn't bear for anyone to strike a match near me. I couldn't bear the smell of it. 3687 03:26:36.970 --> 03:26:37.830 She and her 3688 03:26:37.920 --> 03:26:38.790 mother, 3689 03:26:38.790 --> 03:26:49.250 Mariam, and a younger sister and infant brother had been saved from being shot in their house when she ran behind one Palestinian for protection from the pointing gun of the other and cried out, 3690 03:26:49.250 --> 03:26:50.710 "'Don't let them kill 3691 03:26:50.710 --> 03:26:51.430 us!' And the 3692 03:26:51.690 --> 03:26:53.920 man accepted the role of protector, which 3693 03:26:54.080 --> 03:26:54.080 the 3694 03:26:54.110 --> 03:26:56.090 girl had suddenly assigned to him. "'If 3695 03:26:56.230 --> 03:26:56.630 you kill 3696 03:26:56.710 --> 03:26:59.110 them, you'll have to kill me too,' 3697 03:26:59.070 --> 03:27:00.310 "'he told his comrade. 3698 03:27:00.470 --> 03:27:01.190 "'So the four 3699 03:27:01.190 --> 03:27:02.650 of them were spared, 3700 03:27:02.650 --> 03:27:09.510 "'herded along the streets between the burning houses "'to be put into a truck "'and transported to Sabra camp in Beirut. 3701 03:27:09.690 --> 03:27:11.780 "'Some 500 gathered in 3702 03:27:11.810 --> 03:27:22.310 the church of St. Elias. "'Father Labaki went there at six in the morning "'when the tumult of the attack awakened him. "'He preached a sermon on the meaning "'of the slaughter of innocents, 3703 03:27:22.470 --> 03:27:26.960 "'and he told them candidly "'that he did not know what to tell them to do.' 3704 03:27:26.980 --> 03:27:27.180 if 3705 03:27:27.180 --> 03:27:30.090 i say flee to the sea you may be killed 3706 03:27:30.190 --> 03:27:30.800 if i say 3707 03:27:30.820 --> 03:27:33.350 stay here you may be killed an 3708 03:27:33.580 --> 03:27:33.990 old man 3709 03:27:33.990 --> 03:27:37.050 suggested they raise a white flag 3710 03:27:37.080 --> 03:27:37.620 perhaps if 3711 03:27:37.620 --> 03:27:42.630 they surrender if we surrender they will spare us father labaki gave him his 3712 03:27:43.340 --> 03:27:44.840 surplus he put it on the 3713 03:27:44.900 --> 03:27:53.990 processional cross and stood it in front of the church ten minutes later there was a knock on the door three quick raps then three lots 3714 03:27:53.990 --> 03:27:56.680 of three they were petrified 3715 03:27:56.980 --> 03:27:59.600 father lebaki said he would go and see who was there if 3716 03:27:59.710 --> 03:28:00.140 it was 3717 03:28:00.250 --> 03:28:02.240 the enemy they might spare them 3718 03:28:02.540 --> 03:28:02.970 but if they 3719 03:28:02.990 --> 03:28:05.230 kill us at least we shall all die together 3720 03:28:05.860 --> 03:28:05.860 and 3721 03:28:05.890 --> 03:28:11.080 we'll have a nice parish in heaven five hundred persons and no checkpoints 3722 03:28:11.750 --> 03:28:11.850 they 3723 03:28:11.860 --> 03:28:15.360 laughed and the priest went to the door it 3724 03:28:16.210 --> 03:28:16.450 was not 3725 03:28:16.520 --> 03:28:22.260 the enemy but two men of demur who had fled the town and had seen the white flag from the 3726 03:28:22.260 --> 03:28:22.270 seashore 3727 03:28:22.520 --> 03:28:22.520 They 3728 03:28:22.570 --> 03:28:24.930 had come back to warn them that it would not help 3729 03:28:25.080 --> 03:28:30.130 to raise a white flag. We raised a flag in front of Our Lady, and they shot at us. 3730 03:28:30.550 --> 03:28:34.250 End quote. The two men and Father 3731 03:28:34.250 --> 03:28:40.860 Labaki then led the whole group of 500 people down to the seashore while their teenage 3732 03:28:41.020 --> 03:28:43.080 defenders held off the attackers. 3733 03:28:43.410 --> 03:28:44.510 They made it to the 3734 03:28:44.510 --> 03:28:49.960 beach and moved along the shore until they reached the palace estate of a wealthy Muslim. 3735 03:28:51.020 --> 03:28:51.520 As it 3736 03:28:51.950 --> 03:28:54.660 happened, he was not a supporter of the PLO. And 3737 03:28:54.660 --> 03:28:58.080 so he took the people in and he gave them shelter. Approximately 3738 03:28:58.080 --> 03:29:01.790 500 civilians had been massacred. The 3739 03:29:01.840 --> 03:29:02.540 name of 3740 03:29:02.540 --> 03:29:04.860 the town, Damore, it 3741 03:29:05.170 --> 03:29:05.300 means 3742 03:29:05.310 --> 03:29:06.820 destruction. And 3743 03:29:06.820 --> 03:29:07.290 it was 3744 03:29:07.470 --> 03:29:08.040 probably 3745 03:29:08.040 --> 03:29:11.020 that that has caused it to be remembered as well as 3746 03:29:11.020 --> 03:29:14.120 it has because there were a lot of massacres around this time. After 3747 03:29:14.520 --> 03:29:16.110 about 18 months, 3748 03:29:16.110 --> 03:29:19.000 there was a pause in the fighting. 3749 03:29:19.650 --> 03:29:19.940 and 3750 03:29:20.050 --> 03:29:23.940 an uneasy quiet fell while all sides caught their breath. The 3751 03:29:24.020 --> 03:29:25.090 country was 3752 03:29:25.090 --> 03:29:35.150 informally divided up into four zones, with the PLO controlling the south of the country, which was very poor and where most of the Shiites lived. The 3753 03:29:35.280 --> 03:29:35.990 people who 3754 03:29:35.990 --> 03:29:44.460 had been through the inhumanity of the war were in a very dark place, and PLO gunmen oppressed and terrorized 3755 03:29:44.460 --> 03:29:47.180 the locals, including Palestinian civilians. 3756 03:29:48.320 --> 03:29:48.850 these 3757 03:29:49.120 --> 03:30:01.080 were young men who had been born and brought up in refugee camps taking in with their mother's milk nightmare stories about the evil people who put them there they've been given a gun early and 3758 03:30:01.080 --> 03:30:07.200 raised as fighters and now they're 17 18 20 25 3759 03:30:07.200 --> 03:30:10.340 years old and that has been their whole 3760 03:30:10.340 --> 03:30:11.230 life in most 3761 03:30:11.230 --> 03:30:13.360 of their adult lives they've 3762 03:30:13.360 --> 03:30:13.360 been 3763 03:30:13.600 --> 03:30:20.220 They have been spent in an environment of escalating violence and then absolutely unrestrained civil war. 3764 03:30:20.500 --> 03:30:22.270 You saw something similar in 3765 03:30:22.270 --> 03:30:32.200 the reversion to savagery in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, where child soldiers were put to use heavily in their civil wars. 3766 03:30:33.180 --> 03:30:33.910 As the 3767 03:30:33.980 --> 03:30:52.400 wars dragged on, those child soldiers became young men They became the commanders and local chiefs and warlords It's like a writer for the New Yorker I can't remember his name at the top of my head Who was reporting in Liberia at the time of their war He said it was as if the whole country had been taken over by a serial killer He 3768 03:30:52.820 --> 03:30:55.060 tells... 3769 03:30:55.420 --> 03:30:56.180 of stories 3770 03:30:56.180 --> 03:31:07.170 about groups of armed children taking bets on the sex of a baby in the belly of a pregnant woman walking by and then just cutting her open to see who won and laughing and feeling nothing 3771 03:31:07.240 --> 03:31:09.000 you know humans are 3772 03:31:09.000 --> 03:31:11.250 very pliable creatures 3773 03:31:11.250 --> 03:31:12.590 a lot of what we 3774 03:31:12.590 --> 03:31:19.190 talk about on martyr made is all the different directions that people can go in extreme circumstances 3775 03:31:20.480 --> 03:31:21.200 when you 3776 03:31:21.410 --> 03:31:28.200 raise children in an environment of unstructured barbarism, you're going to get barbarians. 3777 03:31:28.200 --> 03:31:28.590 And 3778 03:31:28.590 --> 03:31:30.020 the truth was 3779 03:31:30.020 --> 03:31:32.530 that even Arafat, world 3780 03:31:32.530 --> 03:31:40.990 famous as he was by now, was only able to exercise occasional and temporary control over these people. 3781 03:31:41.020 --> 03:31:42.040 Becker 3782 03:31:42.040 --> 03:31:44.100 writes, quote, In 3783 03:31:44.700 --> 03:31:44.740 this 3784 03:31:44.740 --> 03:31:46.340 gunarchy, 3785 03:31:47.110 --> 03:32:06.500 Every individual group member in possession of his own kleshin, that's an AK, was a danger to the civilians. If, in addition, he was intoxicated by drugs, and the fedayeen were notorious for their hashish smoking, he was even more likely to shoot and kill for the pleasure of it, as many stories in the camp confirm. 3786 03:32:06.730 --> 03:32:07.110 Typical of 3787 03:32:07.150 --> 03:32:09.410 these stories are the following. 3788 03:32:09.620 --> 03:32:09.890 Thank you. 3789 03:32:09.900 --> 03:32:10.010 An 3790 03:32:10.200 --> 03:32:16.030 illiterate Palestinian hospital reporter, Waleed A., who lived in the Sidon camp of Ain 3791 03:32:16.030 --> 03:32:22.180 Hilwe, told the story, weeping as he told it, of how his little sister, age 10, was killed. She 3792 03:32:22.330 --> 03:32:23.050 came home from 3793 03:32:23.050 --> 03:32:28.960 school, she put her bag in the house, took a sandwich, and went out to play one afternoon. And 3794 03:32:28.960 --> 03:32:29.210 a few 3795 03:32:29.210 --> 03:32:35.830 hundred meters from the house, walked past a little hill, where stood a band of PLO people who were completely drugged, 3796 03:32:35.830 --> 03:32:36.870 and were known to 3797 03:32:36.920 --> 03:32:38.680 be very dangerous people. 3798 03:32:38.820 --> 03:32:50.580 They used to break into offices, banks, businesses, and take whatever they wanted and frighten people. And if anyone tried to stop them, they used to shoot him and go away. And nobody dared to do anything or complain. As 3799 03:32:50.700 --> 03:32:52.130 the little girl 3800 03:32:52.140 --> 03:33:00.420 passed them, "'These PLO people just shot all over the place, just as a game, into the camp where people were walking. And 3801 03:33:00.580 --> 03:33:00.950 one of the 3802 03:33:00.950 --> 03:33:02.820 bullets hit my little sister. 3803 03:33:03.180 --> 03:33:03.460 They hit 3804 03:33:03.460 --> 03:33:05.860 her in the kidney, and she died at 3805 03:33:06.370 --> 03:33:06.820 once.' 3806 03:33:06.780 --> 03:33:06.920 a 3807 03:33:07.620 --> 03:33:17.470 member of fatah also from ein hillway tells a similar story a boy aged 12 abdullah hussein ayood went up the hill to play with 3808 03:33:17.720 --> 03:33:17.720 the 3809 03:33:18.060 --> 03:33:24.070 other boys and they met a group of plo people these people were drugged and they just shot him dead 3810 03:33:24.080 --> 03:33:24.650 they put 3811 03:33:24.660 --> 03:33:26.860 him in a truck and took him to the plo 3812 03:33:26.980 --> 03:33:28.130 hospital at sidon 3813 03:33:28.400 --> 03:33:28.940 on the way 3814 03:33:28.940 --> 03:33:31.680 one of his sandals fell off his foot 3815 03:33:31.650 --> 03:33:38.120 "'The PLO washed a car to remove all traces of what had happened, "'but the family found the sandal stained with blood 3816 03:33:38.130 --> 03:33:43.820 "'so they knew their son had been hurt. "'They went to the hospital and found him there, dead. "'There 3817 03:33:43.920 --> 03:33:44.010 was 3818 03:33:44.010 --> 03:33:49.580 nothing they could do. "'None of us could ever do anything. "'There was no one we could go to. "'I 3819 03:33:49.740 --> 03:33:54.370 couldn't go to my superiors in the organization "'because they wouldn't listen to me. 3820 03:33:54.410 --> 03:33:55.110 "'And we're 3821 03:33:55.110 --> 03:33:58.530 afraid that if we complain, they'll shoot us.' 3822 03:33:58.530 --> 03:34:01.250 There's nobody but Allah who's looking after us. 3823 03:34:01.340 --> 03:34:02.790 The Fedayeen did 3824 03:34:02.870 --> 03:34:14.630 not have to be drugged to kill at whim, or to avenge some slight, or to make sure that even their most trivial and unreasonable demands were obeyed. A laborer told this story. 3825 03:34:14.630 --> 03:34:15.440 My sister is 3826 03:34:15.440 --> 03:34:25.570 the mother of five children. She was on her way home from the market in Einhilweh one week before this last war started, when she was stopped by the people of the Muslim Brotherhood. 3827 03:34:26.290 --> 03:34:26.290 And 3828 03:34:26.320 --> 03:34:31.330 with them was Sheikh Ibrahim, who was the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Einhilweh. 3829 03:34:31.540 --> 03:34:32.440 They told her that 3830 03:34:32.560 --> 03:34:34.000 she could not pass. 3831 03:34:34.210 --> 03:34:34.460 She said 3832 03:34:34.600 --> 03:34:39.110 she would go anyway and walked on. They threw a hand grenade after her. 3833 03:34:39.310 --> 03:34:39.320 Her 3834 03:34:39.320 --> 03:34:49.590 little boy, Ahmad, two years old, was killed immediately. Another boy, Hussein, seven years old, lost a leg. And so did Fatima, a girl aged six. 3835 03:34:49.800 --> 03:34:50.200 End 3836 03:34:50.200 --> 03:34:51.830 quote. 3837 03:34:53.360 --> 03:34:54.420 It got to 3838 03:34:54.790 --> 03:35:01.700 the point that the Shiites, and even many Palestinians, began to turn on the PLO hard. But 3839 03:35:01.700 --> 03:35:02.920 there was very little 3840 03:35:02.930 --> 03:35:08.080 they could do, because the PLO was the only organized armed force in that southern part of the country. 3841 03:35:08.080 --> 03:35:10.130 One sliver of the south, and a 3842 03:35:10.130 --> 03:35:20.990 chunk of the east were under the control of the Christians, who were able to keep the PLO out of their areas. The north was under Syrian military occupation 3843 03:35:20.990 --> 03:35:21.720 by now. 3844 03:35:21.730 --> 03:35:22.340 There were 3845 03:35:22.480 --> 03:35:28.720 intermittent atrocities in battles, but the intensity of the first stage of the war started to die down. And 3846 03:35:28.720 --> 03:35:29.800 it was right at this 3847 03:35:29.880 --> 03:35:33.250 time that that coastal highway attack occurred. And 3848 03:35:33.260 --> 03:35:33.940 the Israeli 3849 03:35:34.000 --> 03:35:38.170 military began to involve itself directly in the conflict. As 3850 03:35:38.170 --> 03:35:39.510 I said, they made 3851 03:35:39.520 --> 03:35:40.070 common 3852 03:35:40.070 --> 03:35:47.370 cause with the phalangists, who hated the PLO, but whose hands were caked with innocent blood. Bergman 3853 03:35:47.370 --> 03:35:49.300 writes, quote, 3854 03:35:49.570 --> 03:35:49.890 This 3855 03:35:50.140 --> 03:35:56.980 partnership came at a moral price. The phalangists were exceptionally brutal. A fundamentally corrupt 3856 03:35:56.980 --> 03:36:01.800 gang of murderers that reminded me of a pack of wild dogs, said Uzidayan, 3857 03:36:01.930 --> 03:36:06.120 Moshe Dayan's nephew and commander of Sayeret Matkal at the time. They 3858 03:36:06.280 --> 03:36:06.680 adorned 3859 03:36:06.680 --> 03:36:11.940 their belts with ears severed from the people they killed, gruesome trophies 3860 03:36:12.170 --> 03:36:12.870 of war. 3861 03:36:12.950 --> 03:36:13.010 They 3862 03:36:13.160 --> 03:36:19.870 boasted of the massacres they had carried out in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel Azatar, the Hill of Time, in August 3863 03:36:19.930 --> 03:36:31.530 1976. 1,000 Palestinians in the ocean is pollution, the phalangists said, almost as a war slogan. But 5 million Palestinians in the ocean is the 3864 03:36:31.640 --> 03:36:32.460 solution. 3865 03:36:32.740 --> 03:36:34.720 The phalangists didn't limit 3866 03:36:34.720 --> 03:36:37.610 their brutality to Palestinians. 3867 03:36:38.460 --> 03:36:39.760 Their chief executioner, an 3868 03:36:40.050 --> 03:36:50.890 Israeli-trained Maronite militant named Robert Hatem, said he personally killed or oversaw the killing of some 3,000 people. The phalangists had commandeered an 3869 03:36:50.890 --> 03:36:55.800 old cow slaughterhouse in Beirut's Carantina quarter, where prisoners were taken. 3870 03:36:56.120 --> 03:36:56.490 Almost no 3871 03:36:56.570 --> 03:37:03.920 one who came there to be questioned left alive, Hatem said. We used to shoot them in the head and dump their bodies into 3872 03:37:03.920 --> 03:37:04.770 lime pits. 3873 03:37:04.920 --> 03:37:13.600 Syrians and Shiites and Palestinians and son-of-a-bitch officers in the Lebanese army. Everyone who wanted to kill us, we killed them first. 3874 03:37:13.800 --> 03:37:14.590 Hatem said that 3875 03:37:14.620 --> 03:37:29.560 Mossad officers approved the killing of a few prisoners, including four Iranian diplomats who were tortured before being shot and dumped into the pits. The phalangist's wider rampage was carried out with the strong backing of the Israelis. At the 3876 03:37:29.560 --> 03:37:30.240 outset of 3877 03:37:30.240 --> 03:37:32.420 our relationship with them, 3878 03:37:32.750 --> 03:37:36.940 I took a pill against nausea and carried on, said Reuven Merhav, a 3879 03:37:37.360 --> 03:37:46.010 Mossad official heading the unit that liaised with the Falange. Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and they really helped us against the PLO. 3880 03:37:46.080 --> 03:37:46.920 But the more the 3881 03:37:46.920 --> 03:37:47.830 days went by, I 3882 03:37:47.830 --> 03:37:53.330 reached the conclusion that linking up with people like these could only lead to disaster. 3883 03:37:54.080 --> 03:37:57.010 Merhav left the Mossad as a protest against 3884 03:37:57.010 --> 03:38:03.570 the continued relationship, but the agency's strategic alliance with the Maronites only deepened, end quote, as 3885 03:38:03.570 --> 03:38:04.570 would the 3886 03:38:04.930 --> 03:38:08.410 Israelis' involvement in Lebanon. One 3887 03:38:08.530 --> 03:38:09.820 night in April 3888 03:38:09.820 --> 03:38:20.820 1979, a PLO squad landed a rubber boat near the town of Naharia, a few miles south of the Israeli border 3889 03:38:20.830 --> 03:38:22.620 with Lebanon. 3890 03:38:23.980 --> 03:38:24.860 one of the 3891 03:38:25.120 --> 03:38:28.480 terrorists was just 16 years old they 3892 03:38:29.090 --> 03:38:29.950 tried to break 3893 03:38:29.990 --> 03:38:38.010 into a house but they were shot at and they ran away when a policeman came for them they killed him and then they broke into the apartment of a 3894 03:38:38.010 --> 03:38:44.810 sleeping family they took the father Danny Haran and his four-year-old 3895 03:38:44.810 --> 03:38:49.260 daughter hostage and dragged them to the beach at gunpoint 3896 03:38:49.230 --> 03:38:57.090 Soldiers and police were already waiting for them there So as soon as they realized that they were trapped The 16 year old shot Danny Hadar 3897 03:38:57.090 --> 03:38:57.670 And then 3898 03:38:57.850 --> 03:39:05.310 grabbed the 4 year old girl And started smashing her face against a rock Over and over and over Until her head broke and he killed her 3899 03:39:05.310 --> 03:39:06.920 The mother of 3900 03:39:06.920 --> 03:39:14.730 the family was back in the apartment Danny had managed to hide her And their 2 year old daughter in a crawl space Before he was taken 3901 03:39:15.470 --> 03:39:17.910 The child The child 3902 03:39:18.190 --> 03:39:20.950 didn't know that their lives depended on her being quiet and 3903 03:39:21.200 --> 03:39:33.140 her mother was terrified that the noise of the crying child would give them away so she covered her mouth the baby's mouth with her hand and in her frantic state she accidentally smothered her own little girl to death 3904 03:39:33.520 --> 03:39:35.550 from infrastructure 3905 03:39:35.550 --> 03:39:40.940 sabotage and roadside mines and occupied areas 3906 03:39:41.230 --> 03:39:41.890 the shape of 3907 03:39:41.960 --> 03:39:47.620 palestinian terror had transformed into something unrecognizable 3908 03:39:47.580 --> 03:39:47.760 It 3909 03:39:48.280 --> 03:39:51.100 seemed to have no point except venting their hatred and 3910 03:39:51.100 --> 03:40:01.350 frustration on the closest and easiest target they could find. The horror was the point. The pain was the point. Incidents 3911 03:40:01.350 --> 03:40:02.180 like this 3912 03:40:02.230 --> 03:40:02.560 one 3913 03:40:02.560 --> 03:40:03.320 against 3914 03:40:03.320 --> 03:40:12.280 the Hadar family seemed less like a traditional terrorist attack than having Michael Myers or some serial killer come into your house while you slept. 3915 03:40:12.980 --> 03:40:15.040 From Bergman Yeah. 3916 03:40:15.020 --> 03:40:15.550 The head 3917 03:40:15.580 --> 03:40:22.030 of IDF's Northern Command, Major General Avigdor Yanosh Bengal, arrived at the scene shortly 3918 03:40:22.030 --> 03:40:23.120 after the incident. He 3919 03:40:23.120 --> 03:40:24.080 saw the little 3920 03:40:24.080 --> 03:40:28.230 girl's shattered head, the two-year-old's lifeless body, 3921 03:40:28.460 --> 03:40:28.460 and 3922 03:40:28.530 --> 03:40:37.940 their mother screaming with anguish after realizing she had lost everything dear to her. "'You cannot imagine the dimensions of the atrocity,' Bengal said." 3923 03:40:38.060 --> 03:40:38.410 At the 3924 03:40:38.540 --> 03:40:39.110 funeral for 3925 03:40:39.110 --> 03:40:46.220 Danny and his two children, Prime Minister Begin quoted a line from Israel's national poet, Chaim Nahman Bialik, 3926 03:40:46.520 --> 03:40:46.810 Satan 3927 03:40:46.850 --> 03:40:57.850 has not yet created vengeance for the blood of a little child. The horrendous murder in Nehariya was to become yet another milestone in the degeneration of the 3928 03:40:57.850 --> 03:41:01.480 conflict between Israel and the PLO into total warfare. 3929 03:41:01.740 --> 03:41:02.250 Chief of 3930 03:41:02.250 --> 03:41:05.230 Staff Aitan gave Bengal a simple 3931 03:41:05.240 --> 03:41:05.840 order, 3932 03:41:06.080 --> 03:41:12.260 Kill them all, meaning all members of the PLO and anyone connected to the organization in Lebanon. 3933 03:41:12.510 --> 03:41:13.270 Mayer Dagan, 3934 03:41:13.270 --> 03:41:19.260 the operational commander when Ariel Sharon had pacified Gaza a decade earlier, 3935 03:41:19.510 --> 03:41:19.510 was 3936 03:41:19.520 --> 03:41:25.220 brought in and told, From now on, you are emperor here. Do whatever you want to. 3937 03:41:25.870 --> 03:41:26.250 He was 3938 03:41:26.430 --> 03:41:27.710 given free reign by IDF 3939 03:41:27.710 --> 03:41:47.900 Northern Command, not only to hit PLO operatives and bases, but to intimidate and attack anyone who gave aid or support to the organization. David Agnon, head of Northern Command staff, said, The aim was to cause chaos amongst the Palestinians and Syrians in Lebanon, without leaving an Israeli fingerprint, 3940 03:41:48.040 --> 03:41:48.040 to 3941 03:41:48.040 --> 03:41:53.270 give them the feeling they were constantly under attack and to instill them with a sense of insecurity. 3942 03:41:54.880 --> 03:42:02.850 General Bengal said, "I used to do OK missions with a wink. I used to tell Aitan, 'We've got an op to do.' He'd say, 3943 03:42:02.850 --> 03:42:08.290 'OK, but nothing in writing. It's between you and me, personal. I don't want it to become known.' 3944 03:42:08.350 --> 03:42:09.220 We didn't act 3945 03:42:09.220 --> 03:42:15.230 through the military bureaucracy, because we both did and did not carry out these actions. 3946 03:42:15.230 --> 03:42:15.750 We used 3947 03:42:15.930 --> 03:42:18.570 locals as proxies and mercenaries. 3948 03:42:18.580 --> 03:42:18.730 We 3949 03:42:18.940 --> 03:42:20.010 put motivation into 3950 03:42:20.010 --> 03:42:20.500 them, 3951 03:42:20.870 --> 03:42:24.700 Christians and Shiites and Sunnis, and we played them against one another. 3952 03:42:25.060 --> 03:42:25.690 They began to 3953 03:42:25.690 --> 03:42:34.910 manufacture bombs, some smaller IEDs, but many larger devices as well, in oil drums, barrels, and other nondescript packages. 3954 03:42:35.280 --> 03:42:35.880 They used them 3955 03:42:35.880 --> 03:42:37.700 to blow up the homes of people 3956 03:42:37.700 --> 03:42:42.550 suspected of collaborating with the PLO, and in Palestinian neighborhoods, 3957 03:42:42.670 --> 03:42:42.670 in 3958 03:42:42.690 --> 03:42:47.440 Lebanese towns and cities, killing many people and causing massive damage. 3959 03:42:48.180 --> 03:42:48.340 Other 3960 03:42:48.510 --> 03:42:48.960 elements in 3961 03:42:48.960 --> 03:42:55.370 the security establishment complained that Northern Command had launched an unsanctioned campaign of violence on foreign soil. 3962 03:42:55.560 --> 03:42:56.130 The head of 3963 03:42:56.130 --> 03:42:58.490 military intelligence said, There 3964 03:42:58.650 --> 03:42:58.690 was a 3965 03:42:58.700 --> 03:42:59.800 constant struggle with 3966 03:42:59.800 --> 03:43:16.490 Northern Command. They bypassed us, worked behind our back. Bengal lied to us all the time. We did not believe any of their reports. What made it even more grave was that it was being done with the approval of the chief of staff, who kept the activity a secret from the general staff. 3967 03:43:16.500 --> 03:43:16.900 This was 3968 03:43:16.900 --> 03:43:19.450 one of the ugliest periods in the history of the country. 3969 03:43:19.820 --> 03:43:20.050 And so 3970 03:43:20.100 --> 03:43:21.880 Northern Command 3971 03:43:21.880 --> 03:43:22.240 had 3972 03:43:22.240 --> 03:43:32.320 essentially just gone rogue. It was fighting a covert war in Lebanon without the permission or the involvement of the Israeli government. 3973 03:43:32.690 --> 03:43:33.840 Military intelligence 3974 03:43:33.840 --> 03:43:39.160 tapped Northern Command's phones to try to get a read on what they were doing. 3975 03:43:39.100 --> 03:43:39.260 But 3976 03:43:39.380 --> 03:43:45.720 Northern Command caught on to that and they set up a separate encrypted system to protect their communications from their own government. 3977 03:43:46.000 --> 03:43:47.310 Not long after that, 3978 03:43:47.310 --> 03:43:54.240 military intelligence went to Prime Minister Begin to complain that Bengal had told Dagan 3979 03:43:54.240 --> 03:43:58.060 to start booby-trapping the corpses of dead terrorists to kill their friends 3980 03:43:58.240 --> 03:43:58.490 and family 3981 03:43:58.610 --> 03:43:59.900 who came to retrieve the body. 3982 03:44:00.930 --> 03:44:01.450 And when 3983 03:44:01.810 --> 03:44:04.090 Begin confronted him about it, this clued 3984 03:44:04.090 --> 03:44:08.810 Bengal in that military intelligence had managed to tap his encrypted system too. Bergman, 3985 03:44:09.110 --> 03:44:22.990 quote, Early in 1980, various elements in the IDF, headed by Sagoy, the head of military intelligence, began informing Deputy Defense Minister Zipori that Bengal was conducting rogue ops inside Lebanon. They 3986 03:44:22.990 --> 03:44:23.550 turned to 3987 03:44:23.600 --> 03:44:29.370 him because they knew that he was the only politician who dared to speak out about what was going on there. 3988 03:44:29.860 --> 03:44:30.120 They 3989 03:44:30.290 --> 03:44:31.810 tell me about the explosions in 3990 03:44:31.810 --> 03:44:39.170 Lebanon, and even that Yanosh was mining roads taken by IDF troops to make it look as if the PLO was behind it. 3991 03:44:39.200 --> 03:44:40.290 In June, Zippori 3992 03:44:40.370 --> 03:44:43.140 heard that women and children had been killed 3993 03:44:43.220 --> 03:44:52.460 in an operation two months earlier, when a car bomb was exploded on a main road in the western sector of southern Lebanon, with the aim of hitting PLO personnel. 3994 03:44:53.310 --> 03:44:53.440 The 3995 03:44:53.830 --> 03:45:05.090 operation had not been submitted upstairs for approval because we feared that we wouldn't get authorization for a thing like that, said Bengal. Both in internal army reports and publicly, the 3996 03:45:05.520 --> 03:45:13.730 Northern Command claimed that the operation had been carried out by one of the local South Lebanese militias, something that was feasible but was in fact 3997 03:45:13.740 --> 03:45:16.510 totally untrue, end quote. 3998 03:45:16.700 --> 03:45:18.440 The defense minister 3999 03:45:18.440 --> 03:45:21.490 called Bengal into his office. 4000 03:45:22.120 --> 03:45:22.120 and 4001 03:45:22.190 --> 03:45:26.550 accused him to his face of killing women and children in an unauthorized operation. 4002 03:45:26.850 --> 03:45:27.850 Bengal just 4003 03:45:27.970 --> 03:45:29.810 blew him off. 4004 03:45:29.820 --> 03:45:30.220 He said that 4005 03:45:30.380 --> 03:45:34.430 those people had been out at 2 o'clock in the morning. They were probably terrorists anyway. 4006 03:45:34.750 --> 03:45:35.670 And so the defense 4007 03:45:35.670 --> 03:45:37.070 minister Zappori went 4008 03:45:37.120 --> 03:45:41.800 to the prime minister and demanded that Bengal be dismissed immediately. 4009 03:45:42.050 --> 03:45:42.800 But a few months 4010 03:45:42.840 --> 03:45:48.420 later, instead of replacing Bengal, the prime minister replaced the defense minister 4011 03:45:48.700 --> 03:45:49.190 with, of 4012 03:45:49.270 --> 03:45:50.700 all people, Zappori. 4013 03:45:51.020 --> 03:45:52.290 Ariel Sharon. Sharon 4014 03:45:53.970 --> 03:45:56.290 did not accept Teddy Kolek's 4015 03:45:56.290 --> 03:46:06.830 assessment that the Palestinian situation had no permanent solution. There was a solution. He would just take an iron will and ruthlessness to see it through. 4016 03:46:06.830 --> 03:46:08.090 Once in office, 4017 03:46:08.090 --> 03:46:12.860 Sharon had his officers draw up plans for an invasion of Lebanon 4018 03:46:12.860 --> 03:46:14.370 all the way up to Beirut. 4019 03:46:15.200 --> 03:46:15.810 Then he had 4020 03:46:15.990 --> 03:46:20.190 them extend the plans to occupy all of Lebanon and parts of Syria. But 4021 03:46:20.340 --> 03:46:21.720 despite the free hand 4022 03:46:21.720 --> 03:46:24.440 Begin was giving Northern Command, 4023 03:46:24.440 --> 03:46:29.920 which now reported to Sharon, international events made it so that he wouldn't be able to 4024 03:46:29.930 --> 03:46:42.280 simply start a war without a pretext. The U.S. had recently brokered a ceasefire with the PLO, and made it clear that it would not support an Israeli attack except in the event of some extreme provocation. 4025 03:46:42.940 --> 03:46:43.320 And 4026 03:46:43.460 --> 03:46:47.240 so Sharon decided that he had to create that provocation. 4027 03:46:47.800 --> 03:46:48.520 Bergman 4028 03:46:48.770 --> 03:46:55.260 quote, By mid-September 1981, car bombs were exploding regularly 4029 03:46:55.260 --> 03:46:59.070 in Palestinian neighborhoods of Beirut and other Lebanese cities. One 4030 03:46:59.340 --> 03:47:09.860 went off in the Fakhani quarter of Beirut on October 1st, killing 83 people and wounding 300, including many women who were trapped in a fire in a clothing factory 4031 03:47:09.860 --> 03:47:11.650 owned by the PLO. 4032 03:47:12.120 --> 03:47:16.680 Another one exploded next to the PLO headquarters in Sidon, killing 23. In 4033 03:47:16.940 --> 03:47:17.500 December 4034 03:47:17.580 --> 03:47:22.670 1981 alone, 18 bombs in cars or on motorcycles, 4035 03:47:22.670 --> 03:47:31.690 bicycles, or donkeys blew up near PLO offices or Palestinian population concentrations, causing many scores of deaths. A new 4036 03:47:31.820 --> 03:47:32.530 and unknown 4037 03:47:32.630 --> 03:47:33.760 organization, 4038 03:47:33.760 --> 03:47:38.990 calling itself the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from foreigners, 4039 03:47:39.650 --> 03:47:39.660 took 4040 03:47:39.870 --> 03:47:45.040 responsibility for all these incidents. The explosives were now packed in aerial 4041 03:47:45.220 --> 03:47:58.870 laundry powder bags so that if the cars were stopped at roadblocks, the cargo would look like innocent goods. The Israelis in some cases enlisted women to drive to reduce the likelihood of the cars being caught on the way to the target zone. 4042 03:47:59.010 --> 03:47:59.760 The car bombs 4043 03:47:59.800 --> 03:48:03.840 were developed in the IDF's Special Operations Executive. 4044 03:48:04.660 --> 03:48:19.840 Sharon hoped that these operations would provoke Arafat into attacking Israel, which could then respond by invading Lebanon, or at least make the PLO retaliate against the Falange, whereupon Israel would be able to leap in great force to the defense of the Christians. The 4045 03:48:19.950 --> 03:48:20.610 Front for the 4046 03:48:20.610 --> 03:48:28.300 Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners also began attacking Syrian installations in Lebanon, and it even claimed responsibility 4047 03:48:28.420 --> 03:48:30.610 for operations against IDF units. 4048 03:48:31.150 --> 03:48:35.890 Yasser Arafat was not hoodwinked by this ploy. He accused the Mossad of 4049 03:48:35.910 --> 03:48:44.810 being behind the blasts and the front. With Sharon's backing, one Mossad officer of the time said, terrible things were done. 4050 03:48:44.810 --> 03:48:45.210 I'm no 4051 03:48:45.210 --> 03:48:46.500 vegetarian, and I 4052 03:48:46.660 --> 03:48:52.430 supported and even participated in some of the assassination operations that Israel carried 4053 03:48:52.430 --> 03:48:53.160 out. But we 4054 03:48:53.220 --> 03:48:57.780 are speaking here about mass killing for killing's sake, to sow chaos 4055 03:48:58.030 --> 03:49:00.290 and alarm among civilians. 4056 03:49:01.120 --> 03:49:06.480 "'Since when do we send donkeys carrying bombs to blow up in marketplaces?' 4057 03:49:06.480 --> 03:49:07.700 "'Another Mossad 4058 03:49:07.700 --> 03:49:18.250 man who was in Lebanon at the time, "'I saw from a distance one of the cars blowing up and demolishing an entire street. "'We were teaching the Lebanese how effective 4059 03:49:18.250 --> 03:49:27.300 a car bomb could be. "'Everything that we saw later with Hezbollah "'sprang from what they saw had happened after these operations.' 4060 03:49:27.250 --> 03:49:27.750 Arafat 4061 03:49:27.880 --> 03:49:42.390 realized that Sharon was trying to goad the Palestinians into breaching the ceasefire so that he could launch his invasion, and Arafat made a genuine effort not to oblige him, including a partly successful attempt to stop violence in the occupied territories. 4062 03:49:47.340 --> 03:49:52.980 Unfortunately for Arafat, one of the downsides of having a decentralized organization is that it 4063 03:49:52.980 --> 03:49:56.860 can be difficult to exercise control over everyone operating 4064 03:49:56.860 --> 03:49:57.520 under your 4065 03:49:57.580 --> 03:49:59.570 banner. But you still have to 4066 03:49:59.570 --> 03:49:59.570 take 4067 03:49:59.980 --> 03:50:01.900 responsibility for anything 4068 03:50:01.900 --> 03:50:02.690 done in your 4069 03:50:02.700 --> 03:50:13.250 name. In June 1982, in London, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom was leaving a black tie dinner event for ambassadors and business 4070 03:50:13.590 --> 03:50:14.190 leaders. 4071 03:50:14.180 --> 03:50:18.880 israel's security services weren't permitted to work in the uk and so he was 4072 03:50:18.880 --> 03:50:26.960 assigned a british bodyguard who shepherded the diplomat outside to a waiting armored car he didn't see the assassin 4073 03:50:26.960 --> 03:50:28.190 until it was too late 4074 03:50:28.190 --> 03:50:28.650 and as the 4075 03:50:28.770 --> 03:50:34.530 bodyguard opened the door a palestinian approached and opened fire with a submachine 4076 03:50:34.530 --> 03:50:35.210 gun the 4077 03:50:35.210 --> 03:50:41.370 ambassador was not killed but he was paralyzed and suffered from 4078 03:50:41.590 --> 03:50:41.590 That 4079 03:50:41.630 --> 03:50:43.690 led to an early death in 2003. 4080 03:50:43.990 --> 03:50:45.490 The Israelis 4081 03:50:45.490 --> 03:50:54.170 soon learned that the assassination attempt had been ordered by Abu Nidal, a terrorist leader who was a sworn enemy of Yasser 4082 03:50:54.170 --> 03:50:55.010 Arafat. 4083 03:50:55.010 --> 03:50:56.270 It was done at the 4084 03:50:56.270 --> 03:51:01.990 urging of Iraqi intelligence. Saddam Hussein had ordered the operation in the hope 4085 03:51:01.990 --> 03:51:06.180 that it would ignite a major war between Israel, the PLO, and Syria, and 4086 03:51:06.200 --> 03:51:06.510 if he 4087 03:51:06.510 --> 03:51:08.490 was lucky, maybe even Iran. 4088 03:51:09.360 --> 03:51:10.030 Well, as 4089 03:51:10.190 --> 03:51:12.890 it happened, Sharon and his loyalists in the Israeli 4090 03:51:12.890 --> 03:51:19.500 government wanted the same thing. The Mossad and other intelligence personnel tried to explain 4091 03:51:20.010 --> 03:51:20.770 to Prime 4092 03:51:20.770 --> 03:51:22.580 Minister Begin that 4093 03:51:22.580 --> 03:51:23.300 Arafat had 4094 03:51:23.300 --> 03:51:25.480 nothing to do with this attack, 4095 03:51:25.480 --> 03:51:25.880 that it 4096 03:51:25.880 --> 03:51:31.100 was carried out by a fringe terrorist cell that had Arafat himself marked for death. And 4097 03:51:31.100 --> 03:51:31.690 the PLO had 4098 03:51:31.730 --> 03:51:32.220 actually 4099 03:51:32.220 --> 03:51:35.330 been behaving itself for the entire last year. But 4100 03:51:35.830 --> 03:51:36.540 Begin was not 4101 03:51:36.540 --> 03:51:37.880 listening. 4102 03:51:38.690 --> 03:51:39.360 And so the 4103 03:51:39.430 --> 03:51:44.480 Israeli Air Force began bombing Beirut and PLO bases elsewhere. Arafat 4104 03:51:44.530 --> 03:51:45.090 had no 4105 03:51:45.090 --> 03:51:47.830 choice now but to respond, and 4106 03:51:47.830 --> 03:51:51.570 soon communities in northern Israel came under PLO bombardment. 4107 03:51:51.570 --> 03:51:52.960 This wasn't the way 4108 03:51:52.960 --> 03:51:57.820 that he had planned, but Ariel Sharon now had his war. Sharon 4109 03:51:57.970 --> 03:51:59.080 had big plans in 4110 03:51:59.080 --> 03:52:03.270 Lebanon, but he didn't reveal them right away. 4111 03:52:03.980 --> 03:52:04.140 At 4112 03:52:04.550 --> 03:52:11.260 first, he presented a plan to make a limited incursion to eliminate the artillery threat to Israeli communities on the border. The 4113 03:52:11.260 --> 03:52:12.550 PLO's longest-range 4114 03:52:12.550 --> 03:52:18.370 guns could reach about 40 kilometers, so that's how far the IDF would penetrate. But 4115 03:52:18.720 --> 03:52:19.790 there were Syrian 4116 03:52:19.860 --> 03:52:26.980 forces in Lebanon, and others in the government worried about the possibility that the Israelis would come into conflict with them. 4117 03:52:26.980 --> 03:52:27.700 Sharon was 4118 03:52:27.810 --> 03:52:29.500 not worried about that. 4119 03:52:30.030 --> 03:52:30.170 In 4120 03:52:30.450 --> 03:52:36.490 fact, he was counting on it for the excuse to begin his much more ambitious plan. Along with 4121 03:52:36.490 --> 03:52:36.810 his 4122 03:52:37.200 --> 03:52:55.830 chief of staff, Sharon had a secret agenda that was far more grandiose. He intended to use the IDF's tanks to remake the whole of the Middle East. In his vision, Israeli forces and their phalange allies would conquer Lebanon from the border to Beirut, 4123 03:52:56.110 --> 03:53:01.110 destroying all PLO forces and inflicting serious damage on Syrian units deployed there. 4124 03:53:01.470 --> 03:53:01.860 With the 4125 03:53:01.860 --> 03:53:08.030 capital secure, the Israelis would install the phalange's leader, Bashir Gamayal, as president, 4126 03:53:08.390 --> 03:53:08.410 thus 4127 03:53:08.410 --> 03:53:15.680 transforming Lebanon into a reliable ally. Next, Gamayal would expel the Palestinians to Jordan, 4128 03:53:15.990 --> 03:53:21.380 where they would be a majority able to establish a Palestinian state in place of the Hashemite kingdom. 4129 03:53:22.010 --> 03:53:27.850 This, Sharon reckoned, would eliminate the Palestinian demand for a state in Judea and Samaria, 4130 03:53:28.070 --> 03:53:28.070 the 4131 03:53:28.070 --> 03:53:32.770 West Bank, which would thus become part of Israel. End quote. 4132 03:53:33.200 --> 03:53:35.090 His actual 4133 03:53:35.090 --> 03:53:44.080 plan, just to repeat what I just read, his actual plan was to use the Christian militias in Lebanon to ethnically cleanse the 4134 03:53:44.080 --> 03:53:45.190 Palestinians, 4135 03:53:45.640 --> 03:53:45.950 driving them 4136 03:53:46.210 --> 03:53:47.650 into Jordan with the 4137 03:53:47.650 --> 03:53:48.630 expectation 4138 03:53:49.470 --> 03:53:50.030 That they 4139 03:53:50.050 --> 03:53:55.850 would spark a revolution in Jordan, overthrow the Jordanian government, create a Palestinian state, 4140 03:53:55.940 --> 03:53:56.610 and then they 4141 03:53:56.690 --> 03:53:56.910 could 4142 03:53:56.910 --> 03:53:58.760 stop bothering about Israel. And 4143 03:53:58.760 --> 03:54:00.030 that's why his forces had 4144 03:54:00.110 --> 03:54:08.500 been doing everything they could to increase tensions between Palestinians and other groups in Lebanon by executing, again, plain and simple 4145 03:54:09.190 --> 03:54:09.190 terrorist 4146 03:54:09.240 --> 03:54:12.550 attacks against civilians on all sides. That's 4147 03:54:12.590 --> 03:54:13.000 why he 4148 03:54:13.000 --> 03:54:14.990 needed a war in Lebanon. 4149 03:54:15.900 --> 03:54:16.540 He knew, of 4150 03:54:16.660 --> 03:54:22.400 course, that nobody in the government would ever approve such a thing, and so he just did it himself, 4151 03:54:22.400 --> 03:54:23.000 from his 4152 03:54:23.000 --> 03:54:33.640 post as defense minister. And now almost 80,000 Israeli troops and thousands of tanks and armored vehicles were on the march into Lebanon. Sharon's 4153 03:54:33.640 --> 03:54:34.710 chief of staff 4154 03:54:34.780 --> 03:54:38.160 led a portion of the Israeli force directly 4155 03:54:38.160 --> 03:54:40.220 toward Syrian positions, 4156 03:54:40.450 --> 03:54:48.150 drawing the Syrians' fire and giving them an excuse to launch a massive counterattack against the Syrians. Almost immediately, Sharon 4157 03:54:48.270 --> 03:54:56.150 unilaterally overrode the commitment to a 40-kilometer incursion, ordered his forces to keep going. 4158 03:54:56.410 --> 03:54:57.640 Prime Minister 4159 03:54:57.640 --> 03:55:00.390 Begin's military secretary 4160 03:55:00.390 --> 03:55:07.980 said, I very quickly saw that the 40-kilometer plan was melting away, and the IDF was penetrating deeper into 4161 03:55:07.980 --> 03:55:08.610 Lebanon. 4162 03:55:09.550 --> 03:55:15.080 Sharon lied and misled Begin and the cabinet. Sharon's greatness was that he knew 4163 03:55:15.080 --> 03:55:25.840 how to describe, in the most vivid way, why it was necessary to advance another few kilometers, because otherwise, tomorrow morning, the Syrian army would be sitting on some hill and endanger our troops. 4164 03:55:26.180 --> 03:55:26.620 That's how he 4165 03:55:26.620 --> 03:55:31.000 managed to extract authorization from the cabinet for the creeping invasion. 4166 03:55:31.340 --> 03:55:33.300 By the end of June, 4167 03:55:33.300 --> 03:55:37.180 the IDF had encircled Beirut. 4168 03:55:37.540 --> 03:55:41.250 closed it off under siege and began shelling the city's western districts. 4169 03:55:41.360 --> 03:55:42.270 The Israeli 4170 03:55:42.410 --> 03:55:52.640 government did not plan on taking and occupying Beirut, but Sharon and the Falange were secretly planning how to do it anyway. Israel's cabinet 4171 03:55:52.640 --> 03:55:57.940 ministers heard only afterward about Sharon's orders to conquer, for 4172 03:55:58.130 --> 03:55:58.130 the 4173 03:55:58.140 --> 03:56:02.470 first time in Israel's history, the capital of another sovereign state. 4174 03:56:03.330 --> 03:56:09.140 Indeed, all throughout the war, Sharon never stopped assuring the cabinet, the Knesset, and the nation 4175 03:56:09.140 --> 03:56:14.220 that there is no intention to enter Beirut, repeating this promise many times. 4176 03:56:14.330 --> 03:56:20.820 But the command Sharon gave to the IDF was perfectly clear. We have to finish off the southern part of 4177 03:56:20.820 --> 03:56:28.690 Beirut, where the refugee camps and PLO bases are located, he said at a meeting in his office, to destroy whatever can be 4178 03:56:28.690 --> 03:56:31.350 destroyed, to raze it to the ground. 4179 03:56:33.090 --> 03:56:41.860 The war in Lebanon turned into a disaster for Israel. The insurgency created a 4180 03:56:41.860 --> 03:56:49.290 quagmire and led to an ugly occupation of the southern part of the country that lasted for 18 years. It turned 4181 03:56:49.550 --> 03:56:50.330 out that while 4182 03:56:50.330 --> 03:56:51.800 Sharon's plan was to 4183 03:56:51.800 --> 03:56:55.570 move in and let the Falange do a lot of the dirty work, 4184 03:56:56.350 --> 03:56:56.350 The 4185 03:56:56.420 --> 03:56:58.030 Falange had similar ideas in 4186 03:56:58.030 --> 03:57:02.370 the opposite direction, and they were content to let Israel conquer territory for them. 4187 03:57:02.680 --> 03:57:03.600 Images and 4188 03:57:03.600 --> 03:57:10.760 stories began emerging that brought the whole world, even the United States, out against Israel. 4189 03:57:11.040 --> 03:57:11.690 Ronald 4190 03:57:11.690 --> 03:57:17.790 Reagan, outraged, told Begin that you were causing a holocaust in Beirut. 4191 03:57:18.080 --> 03:57:19.200 Bergman 4192 03:57:19.200 --> 03:57:21.740 again, quote, 4193 03:57:21.730 --> 03:57:22.250 The full 4194 03:57:22.400 --> 03:57:29.310 extent of the deception that Sharon perpetrated against the government and the public of Israel emerged only gradually, 4195 03:57:29.310 --> 03:57:37.830 but the steadily increasing Israeli casualty count, the indistinct and fluctuating goals, and the stories of destruction and suffering in 4196 03:57:37.830 --> 03:57:39.160 Lebanon. Sharon's 4197 03:57:39.180 --> 03:57:39.710 chief of 4198 03:57:39.780 --> 03:57:41.820 staff, Aitan, realized that 4199 03:57:41.870 --> 03:57:42.350 most of 4200 03:57:42.350 --> 03:57:47.970 the IDF's moves in Lebanon were being made without the approval of the cabinet, 4201 03:57:47.950 --> 03:57:54.970 so he deliberately absented himself from the meetings of that body, claiming that he was with the fighting forces. He left the job 4202 03:57:54.980 --> 03:58:09.370 of compartmentalization and concealment to Sharon, who simply ignored all the opposition and pressed ahead. He doesn't stop on red was a song written about him by Israel's leading rock musician, Shalom Hanok. 4203 03:58:09.590 --> 03:58:10.570 It is unclear 4204 03:58:10.570 --> 03:58:14.890 exactly how much Begin knew about Sharon's complicated plan. 4205 03:58:15.330 --> 03:58:15.500 In 4206 03:58:15.670 --> 03:58:16.960 time, Sharon would 4207 03:58:16.960 --> 03:58:24.940 sue a journalist who wrote that he had lied to Begin and concealed information from him. Sharon lost the case, end quote. 4208 03:58:24.990 --> 03:58:27.390 So with Israeli forces in 4209 03:58:27.440 --> 03:58:30.990 control of half of Lebanon, the leader 4210 03:58:30.990 --> 03:58:31.340 of the 4211 03:58:31.340 --> 03:58:32.820 Falange was installed as 4212 03:58:32.820 --> 03:58:34.530 president of the country. 4213 03:58:36.010 --> 03:58:48.940 Sharon expected him to hold up his end of the bargain And expel the Palestinians from the country But he knew that time was of the essence Because already there were talks about a UN peacekeeping force being deployed in Lebanon And once that happened, 4214 03:58:48.940 --> 03:58:49.530 no ethnic 4215 03:58:49.530 --> 03:58:52.320 cleansing operation would be possible But 4216 03:58:52.670 --> 03:58:53.300 three weeks 4217 03:58:53.370 --> 03:59:04.230 after taking office The Falange leader was killed by the Syrians In a bomb blast that demolished the Falange headquarters building The Falange wanted revenge for that 4218 03:59:04.450 --> 03:59:09.100 and they looked to the Israelis to give him the green light. An Israeli commander present 4219 03:59:09.150 --> 03:59:15.070 at the new Falange headquarters said that, on the morning of September 16th, quote, 4220 03:59:15.380 --> 03:59:15.700 All of a 4221 03:59:15.700 --> 03:59:32.450 sudden, I saw the boys of Eli Hobeka, the Falange military chief, sharpening their knives, and they tell me, Today it is the turn of Silla al-Abiad, the white weapons, which is what the Lebanese call slaughtering with knives. 4222 03:59:33.060 --> 03:59:33.340 They 4223 03:59:33.510 --> 03:59:35.380 didn't say against whom exactly, 4224 03:59:35.460 --> 03:59:35.900 but it 4225 03:59:36.070 --> 03:59:42.100 was clear to me they were going to cut throats. I didn't inquire any deeper. I was just a guest of 4226 03:59:42.100 --> 03:59:42.900 theirs. 4227 03:59:43.310 --> 03:59:44.130 When they were 4228 03:59:44.130 --> 03:59:50.500 prepared, and with Sharon's blessing, the Falange force set out for two 4229 03:59:50.820 --> 03:59:55.160 Palestinian refugee camps, known as Sabra and Shatila. 4230 03:59:55.610 --> 03:59:55.970 Robert 4231 03:59:55.980 --> 03:59:58.010 Hatem, Hobeka's 4232 03:59:58.180 --> 03:59:59.540 executioner. 4233 04:00:00.350 --> 04:00:03.130 recalled that when the phalanges set out on their mission, 4234 04:00:03.510 --> 04:00:04.610 that Hobaca had 4235 04:00:04.720 --> 04:00:09.820 told them, fuck everybody there. Erase the camp. He 4236 04:00:09.990 --> 04:00:10.680 said they 4237 04:00:10.680 --> 04:00:14.200 took a D9 bulldozer to demolish the entire thing. 4238 04:00:14.210 --> 04:00:15.900 He said the camp was 4239 04:00:15.900 --> 04:00:26.790 made up of shacks and tin shanties, and they went in and just started firing in all directions, and things were so unstable they just started coming down. He said we didn't check to see who was behind those walls. 4240 04:00:27.660 --> 04:00:28.310 Many of the 4241 04:00:28.370 --> 04:00:31.890 phalanche partisans took a lot of drugs before going in to get hopped 4242 04:00:31.980 --> 04:00:32.070 up to 4243 04:00:32.090 --> 04:00:37.130 get through the night. Journalist Robert Fisk, who lived in Lebanon 4244 04:00:37.130 --> 04:00:43.240 for many years and reported on scene during this incident and throughout the war, writes, quote, There 4245 04:00:43.410 --> 04:00:44.430 was shooting 4246 04:00:44.430 --> 04:00:51.750 in the camps. In the Commodore Hotel, I found Lauren Jenkins of the Washington Post, a bearded man with a huge 4247 04:00:51.880 --> 04:00:56.480 head of black hair and an even fiercer temper at the Randalls. 4248 04:00:57.000 --> 04:00:57.360 He was 4249 04:00:57.370 --> 04:01:01.970 a hard, tough man from Colorado, who believed all politicians were liars. He 4250 04:01:02.160 --> 04:01:02.880 was leaning across 4251 04:01:03.090 --> 04:01:06.060 the reception desk, talking on the telephone. When 4252 04:01:06.170 --> 04:01:06.620 he put the 4253 04:01:06.620 --> 04:01:10.190 phone down, he turned to me without a word of greeting. It 4254 04:01:10.410 --> 04:01:10.950 was 17 4255 04:01:10.950 --> 04:01:20.100 September, and not seen him for weeks. Fisky, we got something going on in the camps. The Israelis had brought the fucking phalanges with them. 4256 04:01:20.460 --> 04:01:28.300 I've just been down to Saib Salam's place, and this woman turned up and said she saw some fucker cut her husband's throat in Shatila. Want to come with me in the morning? 4257 04:01:28.580 --> 04:01:30.780 Well, Fist needed sleep, and so 4258 04:01:30.870 --> 04:01:34.300 he went back to the hotel room for the night. 4259 04:01:34.570 --> 04:01:34.760 But he 4260 04:01:34.760 --> 04:01:36.200 couldn't sleep. 4261 04:01:36.540 --> 04:01:36.880 There was 4262 04:01:36.880 --> 04:01:40.400 commotion down in the two refugee camps all night. 4263 04:01:41.380 --> 04:01:42.120 He didn't know 4264 04:01:42.210 --> 04:01:43.320 what was happening, 4265 04:01:43.320 --> 04:01:49.720 but all night he saw Israeli jets flying over the area lighting off flares to provide light for whoever was doing it. 4266 04:01:49.820 --> 04:01:51.570 The next morning, he and 4267 04:01:51.600 --> 04:01:57.190 Jenkins went down to the camps to see what had happened. It was the 4268 04:01:57.190 --> 04:01:58.080 flies 4269 04:01:58.150 --> 04:02:04.100 that told us. There were millions of them, their hum almost as eloquent 4270 04:02:04.300 --> 04:02:05.220 as a smell. 4271 04:02:05.740 --> 04:02:06.000 Big 4272 04:02:06.150 --> 04:02:11.480 as blue bottles, they covered us, unaware at first of the difference between the living and the dead. If 4273 04:02:11.480 --> 04:02:11.980 we stood 4274 04:02:11.980 --> 04:02:16.100 still, writing in our notebooks, they would settle like an army, 4275 04:02:16.100 --> 04:02:29.040 legions of them, on the white surface of our notebooks, hands, arms, faces, always congregating around our eyes and mouths. Moving from body to body, from the many dead to the few living, 4276 04:02:29.220 --> 04:02:36.060 from corpse to reporter, their small green bodies panting with excitement as they found new flesh upon which to settle and feast. 4277 04:02:36.260 --> 04:02:37.580 At first, we did not 4278 04:02:37.960 --> 04:02:49.990 use the word massacre. They were everywhere, in the road, in laneways, in backyards, in broken rooms, beneath crumpled masonry and across the top of garbage 4279 04:02:49.990 --> 04:02:50.540 tips. 4280 04:02:50.740 --> 04:02:51.630 The murderers, 4281 04:02:51.690 --> 04:02:55.030 the Christian militiamen whom Israel had led into 4282 04:02:55.030 --> 04:02:57.380 the camps to flush out the terrorists, 4283 04:02:58.060 --> 04:02:58.060 had 4284 04:02:58.060 --> 04:02:59.060 only just left. 4285 04:02:59.300 --> 04:02:59.840 When we 4286 04:02:59.860 --> 04:03:03.210 had seen a hundred bodies, we stopped counting. 4287 04:03:03.540 --> 04:03:04.000 Down every 4288 04:03:04.000 --> 04:03:10.320 alleyway, there were corpses. Women, young men, babies, grandparents, 4289 04:03:10.560 --> 04:03:15.950 lying together in lazy and terrible profusion where they had been knifed or machine-gunned to death. 4290 04:03:16.200 --> 04:03:17.090 Each corridor through 4291 04:03:17.370 --> 04:03:25.070 the rubble produced more bodies. The patients at a Palestinian hospital had disappeared after gunmen ordered the doctors to 4292 04:03:25.410 --> 04:03:25.660 leave. 4293 04:03:26.030 --> 04:03:31.400 everywhere we found signs of hastily dug mass graves even while we were there 4294 04:03:31.920 --> 04:03:46.440 amid the evidence of such savagery we could see the israelis watching us jenkins immediately realized that the israeli defense minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror sharon he shouted that fucker sharon 4295 04:03:47.070 --> 04:03:48.400 what we found inside 4296 04:03:48.400 --> 04:03:53.810 the palestinian shatila camp did not quite beggar description 4297 04:03:53.810 --> 04:03:53.810 but 4298 04:03:54.110 --> 04:03:55.160 Although it would have been easier 4299 04:03:55.160 --> 04:03:58.230 to retell in the cold prose of a medical examination. 4300 04:03:58.590 --> 04:03:59.090 There had 4301 04:03:59.090 --> 04:04:01.540 been massacres before in Lebanon, 4302 04:04:01.860 --> 04:04:01.860 but 4303 04:04:01.890 --> 04:04:08.410 rarely on this scale and never overseen by a regular, supposedly disciplined army. In 4304 04:04:08.550 --> 04:04:09.230 the panic 4305 04:04:09.240 --> 04:04:15.340 and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people, 4306 04:04:15.340 --> 04:04:18.500 hundreds of them, had been shot down unarmed. 4307 04:04:18.890 --> 04:04:19.400 This was a 4308 04:04:19.440 --> 04:04:22.130 mass killing, an incident 4309 04:04:22.140 --> 04:04:22.620 that, 4310 04:04:22.850 --> 04:04:22.850 How 4311 04:04:22.950 --> 04:04:25.420 easily we used the word incident in Lebanon. 4312 04:04:25.750 --> 04:04:26.190 There was 4313 04:04:26.190 --> 04:04:28.010 also an atrocity. It 4314 04:04:28.170 --> 04:04:28.350 went 4315 04:04:28.350 --> 04:04:33.900 beyond even what the Israelis would have in other circumstances called a terrorist atrocity. It 4316 04:04:34.030 --> 04:04:34.310 was a 4317 04:04:34.310 --> 04:04:35.420 war crime. 4318 04:04:35.790 --> 04:04:36.550 There were women 4319 04:04:36.550 --> 04:04:42.830 lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waist and their legs wide apart. Children with their 4320 04:04:42.830 --> 04:04:48.410 throats cut. Rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. 4321 04:04:48.770 --> 04:04:49.150 There were 4322 04:04:49.160 --> 04:04:50.400 babies... 4323 04:04:50.570 --> 04:05:03.080 blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded u.s army ration tins israeli army 4324 04:05:03.080 --> 04:05:06.970 medical equipment and empty bottles of whiskey 4325 04:05:06.970 --> 04:05:07.410 down a 4326 04:05:07.450 --> 04:05:09.770 laneway to our right no more than 4327 04:05:09.840 --> 04:05:15.530 50 yards from the entrance there lay a pile of corpses there were more than a dozen of them 4328 04:05:15.640 --> 04:05:20.010 "'young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. 4329 04:05:20.250 --> 04:05:21.010 "'All had been 4330 04:05:21.140 --> 04:05:33.930 shot at point-blank range through the cheek, "'the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. "'Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. 4331 04:05:34.100 --> 04:05:41.460 "'One had been castrated, his trousers torn open, "'and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines. "'The 4332 04:05:41.460 --> 04:05:42.060 eyes of 4333 04:05:42.060 --> 04:05:44.870 these young men were all open.' 4334 04:05:44.860 --> 04:05:47.800 the youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. 4335 04:05:47.840 --> 04:05:48.700 On the other 4336 04:05:48.800 --> 04:05:50.920 side of the main road, up a 4337 04:05:50.920 --> 04:05:54.910 track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and seven 4338 04:05:55.460 --> 04:05:55.830 children. The 4339 04:05:55.910 --> 04:05:59.040 women were middle-aged and their corpses lay 4340 04:05:59.120 --> 04:06:11.070 draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short, dark, curly hair. Her 4341 04:06:11.250 --> 04:06:14.760 eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. 4342 04:06:14.740 --> 04:06:14.970 She 4343 04:06:15.110 --> 04:06:16.310 was dead. Another 4344 04:06:16.310 --> 04:06:16.730 child 4345 04:06:16.870 --> 04:06:21.930 lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud 4346 04:06:21.930 --> 04:06:25.400 and dust. She could have been no more than three years 4347 04:06:25.400 --> 04:06:26.860 old. The back of her 4348 04:06:26.900 --> 04:06:29.830 head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her 4349 04:06:29.830 --> 04:06:30.830 brain. One of 4350 04:06:30.830 --> 04:06:33.560 the women also held a tiny baby to her body. 4351 04:06:33.560 --> 04:06:34.100 The bullet 4352 04:06:34.100 --> 04:06:37.220 that had passed through her breast had killed the baby too. 4353 04:06:37.590 --> 04:06:38.490 Someone had slid 4354 04:06:38.490 --> 04:06:41.120 open the woman's stomach. She was dead. 4355 04:06:41.260 --> 04:06:45.570 Cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. 4356 04:06:45.830 --> 04:06:45.930 Her 4357 04:06:45.930 --> 04:06:51.390 eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror." 4358 04:06:51.400 --> 04:06:52.260 Fisk's 4359 04:06:52.260 --> 04:06:54.120 account goes on 4360 04:06:54.200 --> 04:06:56.520 for many pages like 4361 04:06:56.690 --> 04:06:57.610 this. 4362 04:06:57.850 --> 04:06:58.280 When he 4363 04:06:58.280 --> 04:07:02.070 returned from surveying the camps to the 4364 04:07:02.070 --> 04:07:08.490 Israeli positions a short distance away, he found Falange militiamen there with the Israelis working together. 4365 04:07:09.600 --> 04:07:10.490 of course not 4366 04:07:10.550 --> 04:07:15.110 every israeli was who was present was okay with what had happened and 4367 04:07:15.220 --> 04:07:15.970 some of 4368 04:07:16.020 --> 04:07:22.040 them were soon speaking anonymously to the press saying that everyone knew what was happening in sabra and shatila 4369 04:07:22.060 --> 04:07:23.590 the labor party was in 4370 04:07:23.590 --> 04:07:26.340 opposition at the time and tried to use 4371 04:07:26.340 --> 04:07:34.250 the massacres against sharon but he warned them that if they tried then he was going to tell the world about the actions of 4372 04:07:34.250 --> 04:07:34.560 the 4373 04:07:34.820 --> 04:07:39.110 During another massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon just a few years earlier, and 4374 04:07:39.230 --> 04:07:40.730 so the Labor Party backed down. 4375 04:07:41.020 --> 04:07:42.100 But world opinion 4376 04:07:42.100 --> 04:07:45.190 came down hard on Israel at this point. 4377 04:07:45.410 --> 04:07:45.710 And even 4378 04:07:45.710 --> 04:07:49.680 within the country, politicians turned against the war, and 4379 04:07:49.910 --> 04:07:52.310 public protests started to break out. 4380 04:07:52.550 --> 04:07:52.960 And Begin 4381 04:07:52.960 --> 04:07:56.330 realized that Ariel Sharon had hoodwinked him. 4382 04:07:56.410 --> 04:07:57.830 He sank into a deep 4383 04:07:57.830 --> 04:08:02.210 depression, and his health began failing rapidly. 4384 04:08:03.580 --> 04:08:03.950 Thank you. 4385 04:08:03.900 --> 04:08:05.040 And you 4386 04:08:05.410 --> 04:08:09.060 know, I remember back in 2001, a 4387 04:08:09.110 --> 04:08:09.490 few 4388 04:08:09.860 --> 04:08:17.290 months before 9-11, during the Second Intifada, when Ariel Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel. I 4389 04:08:17.290 --> 04:08:19.470 was up in Montana at 4390 04:08:19.540 --> 04:08:19.880 the 4391 04:08:19.880 --> 04:08:26.060 time, and my grandpa was in his fundamentalist phase of his Christian journey. 4392 04:08:26.060 --> 04:08:31.020 And he and all his friends, they loved Israel. They loved Ariel Sharon. 4393 04:08:32.160 --> 04:08:32.880 On one 4394 04:08:33.040 --> 04:08:40.440 hand, it's easy enough to understand. You know, by then, Hamas was suicide bombing buses in Tel Aviv. 4395 04:08:40.440 --> 04:08:41.260 And as crazy 4396 04:08:41.320 --> 04:08:42.070 as hostage taking 4397 04:08:42.500 --> 04:08:50.160 and car bombs are, there's something foreign to an American about blowing yourself up to kill a bunch of civilians. But when 4398 04:08:50.160 --> 04:08:52.290 I think back on it now, neither 4399 04:08:52.290 --> 04:08:53.320 my grandfather 4400 04:08:53.380 --> 04:08:53.950 nor any of 4401 04:08:54.120 --> 04:08:59.320 his friends really had the first clue about the history of the conflict. 4402 04:09:00.500 --> 04:09:01.480 When they 4403 04:09:01.530 --> 04:09:02.880 heard that the Palestinians 4404 04:09:02.880 --> 04:09:12.700 called Ariel Sharon the butcher of Beirut, it just sounded to them like left-wing propaganda calling American soldiers baby killers in Vietnam. They 4405 04:09:13.180 --> 04:09:14.140 were very much 4406 04:09:14.140 --> 04:09:24.620 your typical, normie, conservative American old guys. Most of them alive, some of them serving in World War II. And 4407 04:09:24.630 --> 04:09:25.210 they saw 4408 04:09:25.410 --> 04:09:29.360 history as a battle between good and evil. Order. 4409 04:09:30.110 --> 04:09:30.780 and chaos. 4410 04:09:31.070 --> 04:09:32.450 Sometimes the 4411 04:09:32.450 --> 04:09:43.880 good guys get carried away. Sometimes they hit the wrong targets. Sometimes a few of them even cross over to the dark side, but those are aberrations. And when they happen, we hold people 4412 04:09:43.880 --> 04:09:44.810 responsible. At 4413 04:09:44.930 --> 04:09:45.700 least we have 4414 04:09:45.810 --> 04:09:48.540 enough shame to try to cover it up. 4415 04:09:48.790 --> 04:09:50.560 We don't celebrate 4416 04:09:50.560 --> 04:09:53.020 in the streets when one of our units 4417 04:09:53.020 --> 04:09:58.160 goes off the reservation and kills a bunch of villagers. And the Israelis, well, they're like 4418 04:09:58.360 --> 04:09:58.360 us. 4419 04:09:58.990 --> 04:09:59.230 and 4420 04:09:59.230 --> 04:10:05.180 we've been attacked by terrorists too the Israelis wear uniforms bad soldiers 4421 04:10:05.270 --> 04:10:24.770 can be court-martialed sure they might get carried away a little more often than our troops my grandpa and his friends would have said but considering what they're facing they've shown far more forbearance than anybody has a right to expect the other side's blowing up random people shooting up schools flying airplanes into buildings now 4422 04:10:25.290 --> 04:10:26.260 that's all 4423 04:10:26.340 --> 04:10:28.050 true enough 4424 04:10:28.290 --> 04:10:29.160 ...as far as it goes. 4425 04:10:29.390 --> 04:10:30.410 But what do you do with 4426 04:10:30.540 --> 04:10:32.520 someone like Ariel Sharon? 4427 04:10:32.800 --> 04:10:33.780 The term war criminal 4428 04:10:34.380 --> 04:10:43.240 gets tossed around a lot. But with Sharon, we are talking about the real deal. A war criminal even by his own country's laws. 4429 04:10:43.530 --> 04:10:44.500 His people were 4430 04:10:44.790 --> 04:10:56.480 lighting off car bombs......in civilian areas of a foreign country......that had just been through an insane civil war......in order to reignite the conflict... 4431 04:10:56.450 --> 04:10:56.740 and 4432 04:10:57.070 --> 04:10:58.850 hopefully see the whole Palestinian 4433 04:10:58.850 --> 04:11:06.260 population ethnically cleansed. And he was doing it on his own, without the knowledge of his superiors in the Israeli government. And 4434 04:11:06.520 --> 04:11:06.960 when he 4435 04:11:06.960 --> 04:11:10.020 got his war, he dragged his country further 4436 04:11:10.020 --> 04:11:16.220 and further into it, by design and through deception, all while hiding it from his political leaders, 4437 04:11:16.880 --> 04:11:18.190 hiding from them what he 4438 04:11:18.250 --> 04:11:19.120 was really 4439 04:11:19.120 --> 04:11:20.160 up to. And 4440 04:11:20.350 --> 04:11:21.320 he conducted 4441 04:11:21.320 --> 04:11:23.530 the war barbarically. 4442 04:11:24.530 --> 04:11:27.070 Israeli soldiers were not shooting and cutting the 4443 04:11:27.070 --> 04:11:29.770 throats of the people in Sabra and Shatila. But 4444 04:11:30.010 --> 04:11:30.820 they knew the deal 4445 04:11:30.840 --> 04:11:34.470 when they sent a bunch of phalanges into that place. They 4446 04:11:34.620 --> 04:11:35.010 knew the 4447 04:11:35.010 --> 04:11:38.810 deal when they were providing flares overhead all night to 4448 04:11:38.810 --> 04:11:40.230 provide light for them. It 4449 04:11:40.510 --> 04:11:41.170 would be like 4450 04:11:41.170 --> 04:11:48.940 sending ISIS into a refugee camp full of Jews and then saying, Well, we didn't know what was going to happen. It's not like 4451 04:11:48.950 --> 04:11:50.260 we shot them. 4452 04:11:50.220 --> 04:11:55.660 No, but your jets lit off flares all night to provide light for the killers during the massacre. 4453 04:11:55.730 --> 04:11:57.910 And not only is Ariel 4454 04:11:57.910 --> 04:11:58.700 Sharon 4455 04:11:58.700 --> 04:12:00.960 never punished, but 4456 04:12:00.960 --> 04:12:01.860 20 years 4457 04:12:01.860 --> 04:12:04.960 later, he's elected prime minister. And 4458 04:12:05.140 --> 04:12:05.970 so if you're a 4459 04:12:05.970 --> 04:12:11.980 Palestinian, you're thinking, these people are crazy. They're as crazy as 4460 04:12:11.980 --> 04:12:19.820 our craziest terrorists. They drove us out of our homes in 1948. They terrorized us for fighting back. 4461 04:12:20.520 --> 04:12:20.520 They 4462 04:12:20.550 --> 04:12:23.040 invaded even the lands we ran away to. 4463 04:12:23.280 --> 04:12:23.970 And we've been 4464 04:12:24.000 --> 04:12:27.790 under military occupation for decades now. It looks permanent. 4465 04:12:28.120 --> 04:12:28.770 They elect 4466 04:12:28.770 --> 04:12:34.860 terrorists. People who massacred villages and bombed civilian areas as their prime 4467 04:12:34.860 --> 04:12:41.500 ministers. And now they've elected the butcher of Beirut to run their country. They're never going to stop. 4468 04:12:41.780 --> 04:12:43.350 And if you're an Israeli 4469 04:12:43.350 --> 04:12:46.660 Likudnik, of course, you say... 4470 04:12:46.810 --> 04:12:46.810 Who 4471 04:12:46.870 --> 04:12:50.850 but someone like Ariel Sharon should we elect when these animals are murdering 4472 04:12:50.850 --> 04:12:53.170 families and blowing up school buses? And 4473 04:12:53.170 --> 04:12:54.410 around and 4474 04:12:54.470 --> 04:12:56.290 around we go. 4475 04:12:56.550 --> 04:12:59.630 Well, I'm going to stop there 4476 04:12:59.630 --> 04:13:00.820 for now. 4477 04:13:01.150 --> 04:13:01.910 Israel 4478 04:13:01.910 --> 04:13:09.050 would get bogged down in Lebanon for years, but the conflict marked a transition to a new phase of the 4479 04:13:09.050 --> 04:13:13.740 Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 83... 4480 04:13:13.740 --> 04:13:13.960 The 4481 04:13:14.090 --> 04:13:20.650 year after the massacres at Sabran Shatila, Iran, now the revolutionary Islamic Republic, 4482 04:13:21.080 --> 04:13:21.530 would give 4483 04:13:21.530 --> 04:13:28.730 Hezbollah its start in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has replaced the Palestinian groups probably as Israel's most fearsome 4484 04:13:28.730 --> 04:13:34.560 enemy. In 2006, actually defeating an IDF ground invasion in their country. In 4485 04:13:34.690 --> 04:13:35.380 the late 4486 04:13:35.380 --> 04:13:37.260 80s, the first 4487 04:13:37.730 --> 04:13:40.040 intifada, the first... 4488 04:13:40.330 --> 04:13:43.390 Truly popular uprising of the Palestinians occurred, 4489 04:13:43.530 --> 04:13:45.500 and it was put down with extreme force. 4490 04:13:45.810 --> 04:13:46.770 But out of that 4491 04:13:46.770 --> 04:13:52.860 conflict was born Hamas, a Palestinian group in Gaza aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood 4492 04:13:53.140 --> 04:13:53.440 and that 4493 04:13:53.510 --> 04:13:54.160 has gone 4494 04:13:54.160 --> 04:13:56.500 to war at times with the PLO. 4495 04:13:56.730 --> 04:13:58.820 By the 1990s, 4496 04:13:58.820 --> 04:14:05.260 Yasser Arafat was ready to talk peace and absurdly got a Nobel Prize for it. 4497 04:14:05.920 --> 04:14:05.920 but 4498 04:14:06.000 --> 04:14:11.180 his health and influence were being degraded, and Hamas, as well as right-wing elements within 4499 04:14:11.180 --> 04:14:13.670 Israel, made sure that the peace came to very little. 4500 04:14:13.970 --> 04:14:14.920 Under Benjamin 4501 04:14:15.060 --> 04:14:24.870 Netanyahu's governments, Israel began launching full-scale air and land military operations against Palestinian areas to 4502 04:14:24.940 --> 04:14:26.710 deter terrorist attacks. 4503 04:14:26.960 --> 04:14:27.080 In a 4504 04:14:27.080 --> 04:14:34.120 2014 attack on Gaza, Israeli planes and artillery killed thousands of Palestinians. 4505 04:14:35.040 --> 04:14:35.490 At least 4506 04:14:35.690 --> 04:14:38.960 half of them, probably more like 70% of them civilians. 4507 04:14:39.290 --> 04:14:39.980 There are 4508 04:14:39.980 --> 04:14:45.070 pictures and videos of Israeli civilians setting up 4509 04:14:45.070 --> 04:14:47.260 picnics on the heights above Gaza City, 4510 04:14:47.530 --> 04:14:48.000 cheering as 4511 04:14:48.000 --> 04:14:52.060 their jets launch missiles into civilian neighborhoods. And 4512 04:14:52.180 --> 04:14:53.340 there are videos of 4513 04:14:53.350 --> 04:14:54.690 Palestinian street 4514 04:14:54.690 --> 04:14:58.660 celebrations after another massacre of Jews in Israel. 4515 04:14:59.920 --> 04:15:00.360 The 4516 04:15:01.040 --> 04:15:06.990 situation has fallen into a very dark place. And right now, it's perhaps 4517 04:15:06.990 --> 04:15:10.160 at its darkest place it's been, maybe ever. A few 4518 04:15:10.160 --> 04:15:11.380 years back, 4519 04:15:11.380 --> 04:15:28.920 in 2015 and 16, there was the brief knife intifada, where Palestinians, who have been pretty successfully disarmed by now, regular Palestinian civilians would just attack random Israelis with kitchen knives, and screwdrivers, and even shards of glass. 4520 04:15:30.100 --> 04:15:30.960 Israeli civilians 4521 04:15:30.960 --> 04:15:34.380 were all encouraged to carry guns to shoot these attackers on the streets. 4522 04:15:34.860 --> 04:15:35.580 Some of them 4523 04:15:35.580 --> 04:15:36.870 were kids. 4524 04:15:36.900 --> 04:15:44.240 I remember one story of a little girl who was on her way to school, and apparently on her way because she had her backpack with her school supplies 4525 04:15:44.240 --> 04:15:44.670 in it. 4526 04:15:44.740 --> 04:15:45.780 But on the way, 4527 04:15:45.780 --> 04:15:52.240 she took a screwdriver and stuck it into the side of an Israeli on the street, and she was gunned down by another Israeli. And 4528 04:15:52.530 --> 04:15:53.120 this happened 4529 04:15:53.120 --> 04:15:53.850 hundreds of 4530 04:15:53.850 --> 04:15:54.480 times. 4531 04:15:55.950 --> 04:15:57.100 So I don't have 4532 04:15:57.250 --> 04:15:59.220 a lot of hope to leave you with I 4533 04:15:59.220 --> 04:16:00.490 don't really 4534 04:16:00.530 --> 04:16:07.130 see a solution I don't really think That either the one state or two 4535 04:16:07.130 --> 04:16:14.500 state solutions That have been talked about for decades Are remotely plausible anymore If they ever were At 4536 04:16:15.340 --> 04:16:15.400 this 4537 04:16:15.400 --> 04:16:19.940 point I just worry for the souls of everybody involved 4538 04:16:19.950 --> 04:16:20.520 Thanks for 4539 04:16:20.640 --> 04:16:21.310 listening. 4540 04:16:49.950 --> 04:16:50.320 This 4541 04:16:50.320 --> 04:16:51.950 meets in your makeup, 4542 04:16:51.950 --> 04:16:53.650 this flashes 4543 04:16:53.650 --> 04:16:59.950 on your lips, as a nuclear warhead explodes 4544 04:16:59.950 --> 04:17:02.010 in his hips. 4545 04:17:02.010 --> 04:17:03.890 The scientists are 4546 04:17:03.890 --> 04:17:06.330 saying that I've got to do 4547 04:17:06.330 --> 04:17:09.410 something to the moon, but 4548 04:17:09.510 --> 04:17:10.090 sit 4549 04:17:10.090 --> 04:17:16.130 around and talk about it ain't gonna stop that hot moon. Where 4550 04:17:16.130 --> 04:17:19.970 will we get? 4551 04:17:19.950 --> 04:17:20.650 When 4552 04:17:20.650 --> 04:17:22.230 will it end? 4553 04:17:22.230 --> 04:17:23.790 Not till 4554 04:17:23.790 --> 04:17:28.090 everything is dead. 4555 04:17:28.090 --> 04:17:46.870 The woman's in labor, she 4556 04:17:46.870 --> 04:17:49.570 screams at the sky. 4557 04:17:49.950 --> 04:17:51.460 Somebody 4558 04:17:51.460 --> 04:17:55.480 take a tan where I'm going Lay here and 4559 04:17:55.480 --> 04:17:57.950 die The doctor 4560 04:17:57.950 --> 04:18:04.220 rushes in Puts a needle in her skin And 4561 04:18:04.220 --> 04:18:10.930 says, oh, come on now, you really must cry Hey, you need 4562 04:18:10.930 --> 04:18:11.170 to 4563 04:18:11.170 --> 04:18:19.970 go slowly And you won't be alone yet But everybody keeps on worship 4564 04:18:19.950 --> 04:18:29.300 We'll 4565 04:18:29.300 --> 04:18:49.930 be right back. 4566 04:19:19.950 --> 04:19:20.110 So 4567 04:19:20.110 --> 04:19:20.990 while you're 4568 04:19:20.990 --> 04:19:22.390 talking in your 4569 04:19:22.390 --> 04:19:25.550 Expressive clothes 4570 04:19:25.550 --> 04:19:26.630 I think 4571 04:19:26.630 --> 04:19:28.990 somebody might 4572 04:19:28.990 --> 04:19:37.210 just say something About the nose Where the boys are saying Tonight they'll 4573 04:19:37.210 --> 04:19:42.830 be waiting For you right here 4574 04:19:42.830 --> 04:19:49.970 tonight I think somebody might just say something 4575 04:19:49.950 --> 04:20:19.970 Woo! Woo! Yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! Where I'm going? Do something now! Oh! I'm sorry. 4576 04:20:19.950 --> 04:20:48.170 We'll see you next time.