The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

The Rest is History We were watching The Irish Civil War 3-part series on SBS before it disappeared, I realized that I hadn’t finished listening to the Rest is History series on the Irish Civil War. Episode 581 The Irish Civil War: The Killing of Michael Collins (Part 2) features historian and friend of the podcast Ronan McGreevy. The fighting in Four Courts lasted three days, culminating in the Public Record Office being blown up, thus destroying records going back centuries. The fight moved into the streets outside the GPO. There were more anti-Treaty supporters than Free-State supporters in the IRA, but the Free State had the support and the weaponry of the British government. At the June election in 1922 the anti-Treatys only got 20% of the votes. People just wanted peace. The National army began recruiting heavily, and the Irregulars (i.e. the anti-Treaty IRA) were beaten, so they decided to embark on a guerilla campaign. Collins travelled to Cork, his home county, and visited friends and his brother and spent some time at the pub. Returning back from the pub, they traversed the same route – something you never do in a guerilla war. Did it matter that Michael Collins was killed? He was young, and would have brought dynamism to the Free State. Now it turns nasty with tit-for-tat killings, the expulsion of Protestants, and the sacking of the Big Houses. The Irish Civil War only lasted 11 months and 1400 were killed- and was less damaging that the other civil wars in Europe at the time. It the end, it just petered out, but the IRA didn’t go away- as we know.

How Did We Get Here? (BBC) Israel and the Palestinians 1: From Earliest Times to the Romans This is a 10 part series presented by Jonny Dymond. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor in Ancient History at Cardiff University, and historian and author Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’. I was expecting rather more divergence between them, but they tended to agree. The first five books of the Old Testament were set in the Bronze Age around 3000 BCE. ‘The Land’ comprised Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, west of the River Jordan, up to Egypt. They were a People, rather than a Place, and there were other Semitic people there too. The first five books do contain history, but the history serves a theological purpose. By the time we reach the Iron Age, history and archaeology are coming together. King David ruled in 1000 BCE, but there is little archaelogical evidence of a huge temple. There were mixed tribes there, but there was no stark difference between the Jews and others. The Biblical texts talking about Yahweh having a wife were expunged. During Roman times, the right to rule over ‘the land’ was farmed out to client Kings e.g. Herod. In 66CE there was a Jewish riot, and Jerusalem was besieged. In 70CE Titus invaded and destroyed the temple and enslaved the Jewish people. The Siege of Masada in 72 and 73CE was the last gasp of the first Jewish-Roman wars. Now that there was no temple, the Torah became a type of portable temple, and by now they were ‘Jews’ rather ‘Judeans’ (i.e. a geographical identity). However, the early Christians escaped and the Christian community split into two streams, the first headed by James and dominated by Jesus’ family, and the second headed by Paul. In 130-135 CE there was another rebellion against Hadrian, and Judea was renamed Palestine.

Israel and the Palestinians 2: From the Muslim Conquest to the Nineteenth Century. This episode spans the 7th-19th centuries, with historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’, and Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Oxford University. By 7th century and the spread of Christendom , Jerusalem had become a pilgrimage site by Christian tourists. Early Islam turned to Jerusalem (in fact, during prayer they literally turned to Jerusalem rather than Mecca) and Muhammed was said to have ascended from the Temple Mount, but actually he never physically went there. Jerusalem fell to the Arabs in 638 and they were welcomed by both Jews and Christians as they brought relief from the taxation and oppression of the Byzantium rulers. There was no sense of contradiction in embracing the Arabs, because the Arabs did not attempt to suppress the Jewish or Christian religions. Meanwhile, back in Europe, in 1095 Pope Ruban believed that the Christian shrines were in danger. 100,000 men answered the call and although Muslims were the target, there was a massacre of ‘infidels’ including Jews. The Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099 and killed everyone, but by this time there were only 12,000 crusaders. Saladin fought back and established rule over Greater Syria. The Jews always wanted to return to Zion, but they were in no position to do so because of persecution in Christian countries. In 1517 Selim the Grim conquered the Mamluk Sultanate. Originally Selim was going after the Persians, but then he changed direction and went for the Mamluks instead. There was no sense of ‘Palestine’ at the moment – clan, or city, or religious identity- but not a nation. The Ottomans saw Palestine as being part of Syria, and the ‘Holy Land’ contained Jews and different Christian sects. Suleiman the Magnificent specified that the Jews had to pray in a specified area, and this became the ‘Wall’.

Rear Vision (ABC) Pete Hegseth- war monger or true believer? (broadcast 28 March 2026) Almost as bad as seeing Donald Trump on the war is to see his Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth. I refuse to call him ‘Secretary of War’ because only Congress can change the name of a department. Hegseth was raised in Minnesota and attended Princeton university where he signed up for the Reserve Officers Training Corp. After graduating he worked briefly on Wall Street, before being deployed by the National Guard to Cuba, then Iraq. He was highly critical of the army and the ‘restrictions’ that were imposed on them in both deployments. He returned to New York, and feeling disoriented and lost, he began working with veterans’ organizations: Vets for Freedom and later Concerned Veterans for America, but in both positions there were reports of bullying, rorting and drunkenness. He then worked for Fox News. But then he found God and joined an extreme evangelical group the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – I’m not sure which is worse really. The guests on this program include Dave Philipps, Military reporter for the New York Times; Jane Mayer, investigative journalist at The New Yorker Magazine; Missy Ryan, Staff Writer at The Atlantic covering national security, foreign policy and defence and Logan Davis, investigative journalist who grew up in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.

The Book Club Episode 2 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Cloning, Free Will, and Soulmates I read this book many years ago, and absolutely loved it, and so too did Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett in this episode. They comment on Cathy’s flat narrative voice, and her not quite understanding her own story: a feature of many of Ishiguro’s other books. I’d forgotten that it is a story in three parts: their schooling at Hailsham, their post-schooling hiatus in the Cottages, a type of half-way house, and then their adulthood where they are either Carers or Donors. Dominic and Tabitha do not divulge the central heartbreak of the book until after the first break in the podcast, and they give plenty of warning that it is coming. Nonetheless, I’d avoid listening to this podcast until you’d read the book, even though they advertise their podcast as one where you can listen and then pretend that you’ve read the book. Dominic gives it a score of 10/10, while Tabitha gives it 9.

The Rest is History Episode 408 The Nazis in Power: Hitler’s Dream (Part 5) Tom Holland takes the running on this episode (mercifully, he doesn’t introduce it with a song) where he looks at Hitler’s ideology. Were the Nazis idealists? Were they even aware that they are the baddies? They embraced the concept of ‘true law’, a song in the blood of the Nordic race, encompassing the Greeks, Romans and Aryans – including the Indians and Chinese. They framed life in biological terms, with the need to ‘preserve the race’ in the face of collapse caused by miscegenation, especially with Jews. They were not religious: they were particularly critical of St Paul, and rejected the egalitarianism of Christianity. However, Tom warns, the language of ‘race’ was everywhere at this stage in US, Britain and France. There was a fear that Germany would disappear, hence the disapproval of homosexuality which did not produce children. As part of race hygiene, there was widespread compulsory and involuntary sterilization, and then later euthanasia, all presented as part of science and health. The churches began to distance themselves from the Nazis, but doctors and the medical profession remained on-side.

The Rest is Classified Episode 124 Kim Philby: Britain’s Most Notorious Traitor (Episode 4) This is the final in this series of episodes which look at the rise of Kim Philby- they’ll deal with the fall of Kim Philby in later episodes (I hope). 1944 and the end of the war was the most dangerous time on the tightrope for Philby, especially when people began defecting because they might have implicated him. Igor Gouzenko defected in Canada in 1945 and Konstantin Volkov threatened to defect in Istanbul, offering up a huge list of names in exchange for 50,000 pounds. Philby warned the Russians that Volkov was likely to defect, and Volkov was duly ‘disappeared’, tortured and executed. Philby married his long-term mistress Aileen and they went together to Istanbul, but she was desperately lonely and began self-harming. And of course, Philby embarked on yet another affair. By now the Cold War was starting, and there was a new UK policy of sending exiled dissident agents into Soviet area. Philby got his hands dirty by killing two young men who were about to be sent into Georgia and ironically ended up getting promoted to MI6 branch in Washington where he liaised with the CIA- all this “success” at only 37 years of age.

Unholy. Unholy is a podcast hosted by Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, so it has a strong Jewish emphasis. Why History Explains Everything Happening Right Now. You can see this as a YouTube video, but it’s actually just talking heads. He points out that Judaism as we know it today is a post-Temple concept. The Romans assumed that if you got rid of the cult temple, you’d get rid of the people- after all, it had worked with other peoples. But it didn’t work with the Jews because they had texts and so they were were able to reinvent themselves. He argues that you cannot deny a link between the Jews and Israel, but they are not ‘indigenous’ as such. However, the scriptures do link the Jews with specific lands, and there is nothing else comparable to this. In relation to Iran, in 538 BCE Cyrus saved the Jews, and Holland is impressed by the continuity that is now on the Iranian national stage which still retains its pre-Islam identity. He suggests that America is haunted by the rise/fall/decline trajectory of the Roman Empire, which they have chosen as a model. He then talks about the West and secularism, arguing that the West’s rise coincided with the withdrawal from religion by the elites e.g. the influence of Darwinism, and philosophers like Nietzsche. The notion of a secular/religious divide is a Western perspective, compared with Judaism and Islam where religion is seen as part of the polity.

Global Story (BBC) Are We Heading for World War III? An excellent interview with historian Margaret Macmillan, who has done a lot of work on wars and peace, particularly related to World War I. Drawing from history, she explains that wars are often influenced by emotions of leaders – pride, ego, fear etc. and sometimes they start by accident e.g. the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was surrounded by contingencies and ‘what ifs’. A war can spread quickly across continents because of treaties and agreements. In the context of the current US/Israeli/Iranian war, the economic effects will involve countries across the world, but she doubts that China will become involved in a military action. She notes that there is a problem of sunk costs- that once there has been loss of life, it is hard to stop fighting (I’m thinking here of Ukraine). She describes situations when war didn‘t happen- e.g. in the 1983 when Russia shot down Korean Airlines 007 by accident, and another situation where Russia thought that 1983 US-UK war games were the real thing. In this case, the protagonists picked up the phones and gave reassurance. She hopes that we haven’t already embarked on WWIII, although Ukraine thinks that it has. She reminds us that since 1945 there has been a war every year, and she reminds us that because we have become smug about peace, we have not spent enough money keeping our defences up. Really interesting.

The Rest is History Episode 407 The Nazis in Power: The Conquest of Austria (Part 4). From their website:

By 1937, Hitler’s ever-growing ambitions were driving Europe to the brink of war. Ever restless, he knew that Germany must conquer the world, or be destroyed. His first target was Austria, his homeland, whose annexation to Germany would unite German blood under one indomitable Reich. However, in an effort to avoid Nazi rule, the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, called a referendum on annexation, to show the Austrian people’s will against it. Hitler’s reaction was one of rage, and on the morning of Friday, the 11th of March, 1938, he sent an ultimatum to Vienna. At 5.30am the next day, the German army crossed into Austria. It was met by great cheering crowds, and Hitler’s arrival in Vienna was one of true apotheosis… Yet the darkness at the heart of Hitler’s European dream was also emerging, as the Nazis began to detain and repress Austrian minorities, particularly the Jewish population, on an unprecedented scale.

This episode starts with one of Tom’s musical “renditions”, this time of ‘Edelweiss’ from The Sound of Music, although as they point out at the end of the episode, the Von Trapps didn’t actually escape by climbing the Alps, but went to Italy by train, thanks largely to the fact to that they were rich and not Jewish. By now Hitler was animated by a sense of mission, and he saw 1943-5 as the window of action. However, the generals were less enthusiastic about Hitler’s plans for Austria and Czechoslovakia, uneasy about the recklessness of his action and their lack of preparation. But the top generals were sacked for various reasons, and replaced by yes-men. Hitler had attempted to foment a coup earlier in 1933, but he was warned off by Mussolini. But by 1937 Mussolini was more ambivalent, and so Hitler went into action. Hitler’s arrival in Austria was a very emotional occasion for him- we forget Hitler’s emotional, sentimental side- as it was his home country. We are reminded that Austria had always been anti-Semitic, and the round up of the Jews began very quickly.

Empire Episode 343 Lebanon: Hezbollah, Israel and Fifty Years as a Battleground. In this episode Lebanese historian and author of Black Wave, Kim Ghattas talks about the past fifty years of Lebanon’s history. She reminds us that, as a nation, Lebanon is only young, having been created in the breakup of the Ottoman empire after WWI. It was under the French mandate until 1943, and the decision was made to add Sunni and Shia populations within its borders. Lebanon has always looked to outside influences: the Sunnis looked to Saudi Arabia, the Shia to Iran and the Christians to France and the US. In 1982 the Maronite Christians invited Israel in, but Israel went much further than their supposed 40 km incursion. Arafat left and went into exile. Israel got a taste for expansion and developed a doctrine of Greater Israel, overturning the Sykes-Picot agreement, something that Iran was always going to oppose. And we’re seeing the fruits of this today.