How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians Episode 6: From Israel’s Early Days to the Six Day War Presenter Jonny Dymond is joined by Mark Tessler, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, USA, and author of ‘A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’ and by the BBC’s International Editor Jeremy Bowen. Israel was a new state, poor and war-focussed. It was supported in Egypt by Nasser. The Palestinians spread into surrounding countries and important Palestinian families became prominent in diaspora families. There was a influx into Israel of Jews from Arab countries, but although some were welcomed, others felt disparaged. During the 1956 Suez campaign Israel was in league with Britain and France, but the United States disapproved of their intervention. During the late 1950s Fatah was formed in Kuwait by Arafat. They organized raids out of Lebanon, but ran into Israel’s new military doctrine of fighting on the territory of your enemy. The Palestinian raids from neighbouring countries meant that the governments of those countries suffered, not Israel. In 1967 Egypt closed shipping in the Straits of Tiran, a narrow sea passage between the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas that connect the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, and ordered the United Nations troops out. In June 1967 Israel struck at the Egyptian airforce – pre-emptive or aggressive? Israel didn’t actually want the territories it won so dramatically, but it wanted to use them as a lever for peace.
The History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs Episode 1: The Four Bombs In September 1999, just weeks after Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister, four bombs blew up four apartments buildings across Russia. The bombs exploded in the middle of the night, killing hundreds of people while they slept. Episode 2: Sugar There was a fifth bomb too, placed in Ryazan but this one didn’t explode. It was found to contain military-grade hexagen powder, like the other four bombs. There was an intercepted phone call between FSB agents, and then the FSB took the bomb away, saying that it was just a training exercise, using sugar- not hexagen.. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and vowed revenge; then sat back and enjoyed the huge rise in his popularity. Putin had come to prominence through Boris Yeltsin, who was fearful that he would be charged if he lost his position on account of a sex-tape provided to/by the KGB. On New Years Eve 1999 Yeltsin resigned and Putin (head of the KGB) was made Acting President.
The Rest is History The Fall of the Incas : The King in the North (Part 4) Now that Atahualpa was dead, Pizzaro was free to push south for Cusco. The land had been riven by civil war between Atahualpa and his brother Huáscar, and when there was this influx of fortune seekers, the Inca lacked the military technology to resist even this small number of Spaniards. The Spaniards had not come empty handed: they brought disease to which the Inca had no resistance at all. There was a power vacuum in the north, whereas the south greeted the Spaniards as liberators from Atahualpa. In 1543 Manco, Huáscar’s son emerged from the south as a potential puppet emperor. General Rumiñawi, an important warrior in Atahualpa’s retinue returned to Quito. A violent man, he ordered a former ally to be turned into a drum. Meanwhile, who should re-appear than Pedro De Almagro, returned from Chile empty-handed, not realizing that he had walked right past silver mines that would have made his fortune. He launched straight into a massacre, then raced to Quito to gather up riches there. He confronted Rumiñawi, and stripped out all the gold in Quito and left it in ruins. By now the Spanish victory was complete. Pizzarro was busy granting land and free (slave) labour to the treasure-seekers who were pouring in from Spain – an early example of settler-colonialism.
The Book Club Episode 5: Nineteen Eighty Four Dominic and Tabby take on George Orwell’s 1984. Tabby suggests that it’s a “boy book” largely because of its focus on structures rather than relationships, and what is now to us offensive treatment of women. They talk about Orwell himself, the influence of the Spanish Civil War in stimulating his anti-communism, and the influence of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s book ‘We’ which although written in 1920-1, was banned in Soviet Russia until 1988. The book is in three parts: the first describes Winston Smith and his world. It is drenched in the physical details of post WW2 England. Smith’s job is to ‘clean up’ history by making it conform with the present- after all, he who controls the past controls the future. Part 2 is aggressively sexual, depicting Julia as having no interior life, as Winston Smith reflects many of the views of our 21st century ‘incels’. Part 3 focusses on his interrogation in room 101, which contains each prisoner’s worst fears- in Smith’s case, rats. It closes with an epilogue which could perhaps? be interpreted as a happy ending? They discuss whether the book is a period piece or a warning, and conclude that it is both. What is incontrovertible is the book’s effect on our way of conceptualizing an increasingly dystopian world e.g. surveillance, government lying, ‘newspeak’. Even the division of the world into Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia reflects the multipolar world view that is becoming increasingly prominent today. Dominic gives it 10/10 while Tabby gives in 8/10, largely because of its sexism and because she dislikes George Orwell (!!) . Perhaps it really is a “boy book”.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 