100,000 British soldiers – a massive army in the annals of human history; that’s how many soldiers The United Kingdom sent to Palestine in order to quell the budding revolt of the Israeli nation. It didn’t work. Thousands died. Tens of thousands of Arab and Israeli soldiers clashed. Hundreds of thousands of people lost everything they owned – reduced to nothing – an illustration for the dictionary entry on “penury.” This is their story. It’s a story that tells of the hopes of hundreds of generations suddenly, unbelievably, finding fruition. And it’s also the story of a nation sinking low. As always: there’s blood, there’s pain, there’s insights for all of us – insights about politics, international law, man qua wolf and man qua angel. The truth is man is neither an angel or a wolf. He is both. And this is the story of his heavenly dirge, his dismal symphony. And it’s yours, too.

It’s all for free and it’s all on Battlecast – the world’s foremost podcast on war and its socio-political impact. This show is dedicated to Ricky from Omaha – who gave so that we could enjoy this show. I’m very thankful for Ricky and I’m thankful for you who are reading this.

Download episode 44 here: Download

Maps

Music Notes

Today’s show featured the song “Missing You” by At 1980. Check out the music here: https://newretrowave.bandcamp.com/album/a-thousand-lives

References

The Arab-Israeli Wars by Chaim Herzog

American Judaism by Nathan Glazer

A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to our Time, 3rd edition by Howard Sachar

A History of the Jews in the modern world by Howard Sachar

A History of the Jews in America by Howard Sachar

A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson

A History of the Jewish People by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson et al. 

1948: A history of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris

An introduction to Judaism by Nicholas Robert De Lange

The Israel/Palestine reader by Alan Dowty et al. 

Righteous victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab conflict by Benny Morris

The other Israel : voices of refusal and dissent by Jonathan Shainin, Roane Carey, et al.

The peace movement in Israel, 1967-87 by David Hall-Cathala

The Israel-Arab reader : a documentary history of the Middle East conflict by Walter Laqueur and Dan Schueftan (editors)

The Israel-Palestine conflict : one hundred years of war by James Gelvin

The war of atonement : the inside story of the Yom Kippur War by Chaim Herzog and Michael Herzog

Israel in search of a war : the Sinai Campaign, 1955-1956 by Mott Golani 

The two o’clock war : the 1973 Yom Kippur conflict and the airlift that saved Israel by Walter Boyne and Fred Smith

The Yom Kippur War : the epic encounter that transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich

The Yom Kippur War 1973 (two volumes) by Simon Dunstan

The Six Day War 1967: Jordan and Syria by Simon Dunstan

The Six day War 1967: Sinai by Simon Dunstan

A History of the Middle East by Peter Mansfield

Lebanon: A History, 600 – 2011 by William Harris

Syria From The Great War To Civil War by John McHugo

Syria: A Modern History by David Lesch

Egypt on the Brink: From the Rise of Nasser to the Fall of Mubarak by Tarek Osman

A History of Egypt: From the Earliest Times to the Present by Jason Thompson

A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel by Walter Laqueur

Why the Jews? by Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin, et al.

Making Israel by Benny Morris

The Arab-Israeli Conflict by Efraim Karsh

100 Hours to Suez by Robert Henriques

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe

The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War by Avraham Shapira

The Hope by Herman Wouk

“Into the Valley of Death” by Zen Read. Haaretz.com. https://www.haaretz.com/1.4962016