1 00:00:02,180 --> 00:00:11,300 Good evening and welcome everybody. My name is Yaakov Jago and I am especially delighted to be opening this book launch event. 2 00:00:11,780 --> 00:00:20,239 It's always a delight to present to the Oxford Community Works that deal with topics we are dealing with that have been written 3 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:27,260 here and have been produced and are part of the intellectual community that is Oxford and Middle East studies at Oxford. 4 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:34,240 And obviously we are all here today to celebrate the launching of the book by Peter Peter Bergamo. 5 00:00:35,570 --> 00:00:38,750 And I'll say just a few words on Peter, and [INAUDIBLE] present the book. 6 00:00:38,750 --> 00:00:41,420 So then I don't need to present the work itself. 7 00:00:42,470 --> 00:00:50,020 Peter completed is defined in a range of studies here at Oxford in 2016, under the supervision of Derek Penzler. 8 00:00:50,060 --> 00:00:59,290 Some of you may know my predecessor. His thesis traced the ideological development of the Pro-fascist revisionist Zionist ideologue ABBA. 9 00:00:59,840 --> 00:01:06,440 And obviously the book being presented this evening is a monograph based on this thesis. 10 00:01:07,130 --> 00:01:12,020 Peter's research focuses on maximalist revisionist Zionism and Jewish anti-British 11 00:01:12,020 --> 00:01:16,850 resistance during the period of the mandate the British managed in Palestine. 12 00:01:17,330 --> 00:01:22,309 He is currently finishing a monograph for a new project that examines British decision. 13 00:01:22,310 --> 00:01:28,910 Britain's decision, I'm sorry, in 1947 to appeal to the United Nations to be released from the mandate. 14 00:01:29,810 --> 00:01:36,830 And in the future, he hopes to combine his previous experience as a musician with his current research 15 00:01:36,830 --> 00:01:43,040 interests in in projects that will examine the effects of anti-Semitism on Gustav, 16 00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:50,720 Mahler's directorship of the Vienna Court Opera anti-Semitic characterisations in the operas of Richard Wagner. 17 00:01:51,410 --> 00:01:59,750 In addition, he is a visiting scholar with the Oxford Centre for Hebrew, enjoys studies and lecturer in Oriental Studies at Mansfield College. 18 00:01:59,750 --> 00:02:03,590 And he's a dear friend and member of the many communities we are part of. 19 00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:07,610 Peter, welcome. Thank you, sir. Thank you. 20 00:02:13,120 --> 00:02:16,500 Thank you all very much indeed for coming out this afternoon. 21 00:02:17,620 --> 00:02:24,700 I mean, I see people here from the I, the Clairton Institute, the history faculty, the AJC and certainly Mansfield College. 22 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:28,570 You all represented here rather robustly. So I really can't thank you enough. 23 00:02:31,300 --> 00:02:36,980 I really easily fill the next 45 minutes or so, naming and shaming, but thanking all the others, 24 00:02:37,510 --> 00:02:43,809 those of you here who really lent me your very considerable help, expertise, time, etc., during the course of my doctoral studies. 25 00:02:43,810 --> 00:02:45,700 But I think I should probably say something about the book. 26 00:02:46,150 --> 00:02:53,640 Yaakov in particular, I'd like to thank you for facilitating very easily and very effortlessly for me at least the organisation of this evening, 27 00:02:53,650 --> 00:02:57,190 and to Eugene for agreeing to host it here at the Middle East Centre, 28 00:02:57,190 --> 00:03:02,769 which is rather fitting, as we've just discussed, not only because of the book's subject matter, but also because, 29 00:03:02,770 --> 00:03:08,410 in fact, Eugene was the first person ever to refer to me as Dr. Bergman, albeit in a rejection email. 30 00:03:08,500 --> 00:03:15,129 Thanks a lot on the talk we'll be in. 31 00:03:15,130 --> 00:03:17,770 I think for parts I haven't really added a mouth is not my skill. 32 00:03:18,310 --> 00:03:22,390 But I'm going to give you a little, very little biographical introduction to the figure of Ahmer, 33 00:03:23,020 --> 00:03:28,480 then some background into the genesis of this study, a few of the thematic and research highlights of the book. 34 00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:36,100 And finally, I'll read from the book's conclusion, says, But 20 minutes and 20 minutes, if you can time your eggs anyway. 35 00:03:37,750 --> 00:03:45,360 Yes. So. About, Mayer stood at the vanguard of Zionist anti-British resistance. 36 00:03:45,690 --> 00:03:49,500 He referred to the British mandatory government as both perfidious Albion. 37 00:03:50,070 --> 00:03:52,350 Kind of an old trope and a foreign occupier in print. 38 00:03:52,620 --> 00:04:00,360 Already in 1929, the following year, 1930, he founded the first anti-British Resistance Group in the Jewish community in Palestine. 39 00:04:00,390 --> 00:04:04,470 It's called The Issue, and I refer to it under that name. For the next few minutes. 40 00:04:04,860 --> 00:04:10,530 And he eventually went to prison in 1934. I think we got a picture of him going to prison somewhere there. 41 00:04:10,620 --> 00:04:15,510 That's not him there. He is going to prison for his involvement with this group. 42 00:04:17,310 --> 00:04:22,950 Let's go back there. He was born advertising a [INAUDIBLE] on the 2nd of November 1897, 43 00:04:23,190 --> 00:04:28,950 a fact that would allow future historians to note that he was born 30 years to the day before the Balfour Declaration was issued. 44 00:04:29,610 --> 00:04:33,659 He grew up in Baba esque in Belarus, where his father was an affluent timber merchant, 45 00:04:33,660 --> 00:04:36,960 and he attended a Russian school by day and a Hebrew school in the evening. 46 00:04:37,740 --> 00:04:45,690 In 1912, accompanied by his older sister, the 14 year old youth travelled to Ottoman Palestine to study at the Herzliya Gymnasium, 47 00:04:45,690 --> 00:04:49,760 which it opened in 1905 as the first Hebrew high school in the issue. 48 00:04:49,950 --> 00:04:54,959 I mean, think about that. 14 years old in 1912. It wasn't like going to Stanstead and getting on easyJet. 49 00:04:54,960 --> 00:04:58,320 I mean, it was a big deal, right? This 14 year old kid by his own initiative. 50 00:04:58,440 --> 00:05:04,770 So he's pretty committed from the very beginning. He returned to barbarism in the summer of 1914 for a school vacation. 51 00:05:04,980 --> 00:05:11,460 But obviously the outbreak of the First World War forced him to remain there for an extended sojourn, which turned out to be ten years. 52 00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:17,099 He was thus in Russia for the duration of the war, and perhaps more importantly, the Bolshevik Revolution, 53 00:05:17,100 --> 00:05:21,420 which eventually claimed the life of his brother Mare, a trauma from which she never recovered. 54 00:05:21,690 --> 00:05:27,690 And indeed it affected his name change in 1919 from his lineage to Ahmad, which means my brother Maher in Hebrew. 55 00:05:29,860 --> 00:05:34,000 In 1921, after stints at the University of Kiev and The Age, 56 00:05:34,300 --> 00:05:39,310 he began doctoral studies at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate there in 1924. 57 00:05:39,340 --> 00:05:43,899 Having written on the conception of Russia and Oswald Spengler's student like undisturbed lands 58 00:05:43,900 --> 00:05:48,580 landers the decline of the West since Magnum Opus two rather misguided but kind of cool. 59 00:05:49,030 --> 00:05:53,620 He finally returned to what was now British Mandate Palestine in the summer of 1914, 60 00:05:53,620 --> 00:05:58,360 and now as Abbot Ahmer began to make a name for himself as a teacher and a journalist. 61 00:05:59,200 --> 00:06:04,420 From 1924 to 1928, he was a member of the moderate Socialist Party, Hapoel Haslemere, 62 00:06:04,720 --> 00:06:10,000 and a regular contributor to the Party Journal and the newspapers Davar and Haaretz. 63 00:06:11,080 --> 00:06:18,060 However, his increasing disillusionment with both the party and socialism in general had become clear to him by the May. 64 00:06:18,070 --> 00:06:25,510 By May of 1926 and Ahmer, along with his colleagues, the poet Audrey Greenberg and writer Yehoshua Yavin, 65 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:30,090 eventually jumped ship and joined several of its Minsky's revisionist Zionist party. 66 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:38,229 In February 1928, Zvi opportunity there is formed the Revisionists Party after he resigned from the Zionist 67 00:06:38,230 --> 00:06:45,160 organisation executive in 1923 in protest to its acceptance of Britain's creation of Transjordan, 68 00:06:45,580 --> 00:06:52,180 which he and his adherents considered to be part of the biblical land of Israel and therefore non-negotiable and integral to any future Jewish state. 69 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:57,490 The revisionist were further dissatisfied with the current policy in Palestine of practical Zionism. 70 00:06:57,490 --> 00:07:03,190 That said, in a nutshell, that was settlement before statehood and instead called for a revision, hence the name of the party. 71 00:07:03,430 --> 00:07:10,510 Back to the ideology and practice of political Zionism, statehood before settlement, as had been preached by its father. 72 00:07:10,630 --> 00:07:18,520 I'm sure you all heard of Theodor Herzl in the wake of Arab riots at Arab anti-Jewish riots in August 1929. 73 00:07:18,970 --> 00:07:21,550 Cameron, two colleagues, Greenberg and Yavin. 74 00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:29,320 So there they are, established the maximalist arm of the revisionist party in the issue of great pictures. 75 00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:30,399 And they don't look all that tough. 76 00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:35,950 And I said to the Yaacov before, you've been on the right, kind of looks like the lovechild between Dustin Hoffman and Mrs. Doubtfire. 77 00:07:35,950 --> 00:07:40,840 But anyway, there you go. He said they didn't know how to party. 78 00:07:43,090 --> 00:07:50,290 Unlike Jarvis Minsky and the more mainstream revisionists, the Maximalists fought specifically against the British government in Palestine. 79 00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:55,690 They rejected Jabotinsky's policy of what he called half legal or defensive restraint when 80 00:07:55,690 --> 00:08:00,190 dealing with both Arab and British antagonism and called instead for active paramilitary, 81 00:08:00,580 --> 00:08:02,830 active paramilitary resistance to both groups. 82 00:08:03,820 --> 00:08:10,390 Finally, in addition to advocating fascism as the ideological modus operandi for the revisionists, and if that was enough, 83 00:08:10,660 --> 00:08:18,490 the maximalists rather singularly enjoyed employed, pointed, quasi messianic imagery as a rhetorical device in their articles and speeches. 84 00:08:19,100 --> 00:08:23,380 The maximalist revisionism enjoyed a short but intense period of relative popularity. 85 00:08:23,410 --> 00:08:28,960 So from 1929 to 1934, it was in fact the dominant stream of revisionist scientism in the show. 86 00:08:29,590 --> 00:08:34,780 But it was dealt a death blow in the wake of the murder of the Labour leader Kamer Lazaroff in 1933, 87 00:08:34,780 --> 00:08:41,020 for which for which Oscar Mayer was arrested as having plotted the murder and but later acquitted and more on that later. 88 00:08:41,980 --> 00:08:51,330 So the passage of time and the particular unfolding of world events since 1934 have led to a perhaps undue amount of focus on Akuma as a fascist. 89 00:08:52,210 --> 00:08:56,440 Hang on. So indeed, within a year of him joining Jabotinsky's revisionist party, 90 00:08:56,590 --> 00:09:02,080 PINSKY himself had returned, referred to his younger colleague as talented but too much a fascist. 91 00:09:02,290 --> 00:09:06,760 And this is perhaps the way in which A is most often remembered to this day, certainly in Israel. 92 00:09:07,800 --> 00:09:13,050 He was undoubtedly a controversial figure who who espoused at times some highly controversial ideas. 93 00:09:13,770 --> 00:09:17,790 So why why they all want to write about how did this start? 94 00:09:18,390 --> 00:09:22,440 I was first introduced to Ahmer during the course of study with us years ago. 95 00:09:22,470 --> 00:09:28,290 So us when Colin Shindler, professor of Israel studies in his history of Zionism course, posed this essay question. 96 00:09:28,710 --> 00:09:33,660 Why were the writings of Abu Ahmer worried? Greenberg just done something to the computer. 97 00:09:34,890 --> 00:09:41,970 Well, anyway. And Yonatan Tosh is not pictured here, influential on the young Menachem Begin. 98 00:09:42,780 --> 00:09:45,330 I think I'd only heard of Baig. And so that's why I chose the question. 99 00:09:46,620 --> 00:09:51,360 But while reading up on the trio, especially in Colin's book, The The Triumph of Military Zionism, 100 00:09:51,870 --> 00:09:56,070 the name of the armourer kept popping up more than the others and seemed to be a little more important. 101 00:09:56,490 --> 00:09:59,970 And I thought already at this time that it would be interesting to look more into this figure. 102 00:10:01,420 --> 00:10:08,440 His group, Brit Abiri, a name which has been translated in so many different ways, depending on person's particular political position, 103 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:14,680 but anything from the Covenant of Thugs to the Union of Zionist rebels, to the Praetorian Guard, to the defenders of the capital. 104 00:10:15,250 --> 00:10:22,930 The Deraa right had a sort of exotic messianic ring to it, as did such texts as the scroll of Zachary, 105 00:10:22,930 --> 00:10:29,829 the megalitre secretly and dedicated no, no less to the memories of Dor Kaplan and Charlotte Corday, but which had no English translation. 106 00:10:29,830 --> 00:10:34,540 So when I wanted to look further into these works, I found that there was nothing except kind of descriptions about them. 107 00:10:35,860 --> 00:10:40,290 So Ahmer came across to me, at least as a romantic, in this kind of cynical, nihilistic way. 108 00:10:41,080 --> 00:10:45,670 At this stage in my life, I was not lost on me. But also, 109 00:10:45,670 --> 00:10:49,000 perhaps as someone who'd originally trained as an orchestral conductors myself 110 00:10:49,750 --> 00:10:52,690 and stood in front of various ensembles for years telling them what to do. 111 00:10:52,750 --> 00:10:59,110 The irony was also not lost on me that there was a certain transfer of skills when dealing with topics such as dictatorship and fascism. 112 00:10:59,500 --> 00:11:09,910 I kind of felt that was a little bit in my element. Yes, I continued studying at the Hebrew University for a year and with with Don Simone, 113 00:11:10,180 --> 00:11:14,260 who quite literally wrote the book on Zionist ideology, a book called The Zionist Ideology. 114 00:11:15,160 --> 00:11:18,819 And I did an independent paper with him that looked at the aesthetics and ideology 115 00:11:18,820 --> 00:11:22,600 of revisionist Zionism that was quite influential for me as a wonderful, wonderful man. 116 00:11:23,800 --> 00:11:29,740 During that same time, and kind of completely coincidentally, I've been going to a local synagogue. 117 00:11:29,870 --> 00:11:33,280 I lived in a place called Not Lot in Jerusalem if you've ever been there. 118 00:11:33,580 --> 00:11:40,540 It's kind of full of people who did I think too much us in the sixties and became religious and now flashback to the second temple period. 119 00:11:40,540 --> 00:11:46,869 But anyway, there's a reformed synagogue called Harel and I was getting to know the community a little, 120 00:11:46,870 --> 00:11:50,559 including the rather dynamic Rabbi Davidoff, who was at the time, 121 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:55,810 and I think still the only woman to have a congregation injuries, first of all, and certainly to have a congregation in Jerusalem, if not the only. 122 00:11:56,830 --> 00:12:03,370 And we became really good friends sometime in that January, February, I receive the quarterly newsletter of the synagogue, 123 00:12:04,210 --> 00:12:09,880 and there are pictures of at his 50th birthday party that had happened before I started going there. 124 00:12:09,880 --> 00:12:12,850 So because it was a quarterly newsletter and in particular, 125 00:12:12,850 --> 00:12:18,190 there was a picture of the well-known Israeli TV news presenter Yaakov Nakamura, who's often our son. 126 00:12:18,580 --> 00:12:24,430 And the caption underneath the photo said Uncle Yaakov, bringing birthday greetings from the family. 127 00:12:24,430 --> 00:12:30,370 And I thought, Hang on, I tried to do the math, but it was not my strong point. 128 00:12:30,370 --> 00:12:34,350 So the next time I saw her, I said, other, are you related to Obama? 129 00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:37,240 And she said, Well, he's my grandfather. I was like, Wow. 130 00:12:37,540 --> 00:12:43,840 I explained that I was already working on a paper with Gideon Shimoni about this, and she said to me, Well, you must meet my uncle Yossi. 131 00:12:45,380 --> 00:12:53,420 So about a week or two weeks later we arranged through emails and introductions in Yokohama in Ramat Gan to Tel Aviv, 132 00:12:53,900 --> 00:12:58,760 and I was really terrified and very rarely terrified of things, but I was terrified to meet Yossi Akoma. 133 00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:02,630 I mean, he was a prominent journalist. He was actually a member of Knesset. 134 00:13:02,900 --> 00:13:10,040 He was the chief of staff to Yitzhak Rabin, Yitzhak Shamir, excuse me, the Stern Gang, Prime Minister of Israel, 83, 84 and 86, 92. 135 00:13:10,220 --> 00:13:14,000 And he was now director of the Japan Minsky Institute. Quite a formidable figure indeed. 136 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,530 So I was pretty terrified going to that first meeting. I remember it was on a Tuesday night in Ramat Gan. 137 00:13:19,490 --> 00:13:23,540 It was Tel Aviv. You know, March was kind of about 10,000% humidity. 138 00:13:23,540 --> 00:13:26,570 And I arrived just kind of not sure where I was and what I was doing. 139 00:13:27,020 --> 00:13:32,749 And the archive that he calls the bet about means this kind of a play on words. 140 00:13:32,750 --> 00:13:40,340 There is enormous house. So the same house that Ahmer lived in, in fact died in, and his study is preserved as on the day he died. 141 00:13:40,340 --> 00:13:46,190 We have huts there and it's postcards and it's quite, quite interesting. Little museum after a kind of a very awkward hello. 142 00:13:46,190 --> 00:13:48,650 And would you like a coffee? Not me, but him. 143 00:13:49,130 --> 00:13:55,760 I noticed a CD box set of the ten Mahler symphonies and I mentioned to him that I was a musician and Mahler was my favourite composer. 144 00:13:55,820 --> 00:13:59,120 And I've got to be honest, we've never looked back from that moment. That's quite interesting to me. 145 00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:04,700 We hit it off from that very first day. We share a rather robust and certainly very cynical sense of humour. 146 00:14:05,020 --> 00:14:08,059 He's a really genuinely warm and funny person. 147 00:14:08,060 --> 00:14:14,450 I mean, really, really wonderful person. We've never, ever discussed politics, and I think that's probably not such a bad idea. 148 00:14:14,450 --> 00:14:18,800 It's kind of this unspoken rule with us. He knows where I stand, I know where he stands. 149 00:14:19,160 --> 00:14:23,149 And I would say it just goes to show you that true ideological consistency doesn't necessarily exist. 150 00:14:23,150 --> 00:14:26,879 Right. Really wonderful people can hold some perhaps uncomfortable positions. 151 00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:30,920 And I think that's very interesting going to this whole study, which is why we count it now. 152 00:14:31,580 --> 00:14:36,020 While a staunch defender of his father's legacy, which is not surprising since Yossi was 19, 153 00:14:36,020 --> 00:14:41,030 when Amir died suddenly of a heart attack, he always said to me, I remember this over and over again. 154 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:46,040 You must write what I what you find in in spite of what I don't read, but what I think what I want you to say. 155 00:14:46,550 --> 00:14:49,910 But this is what I want you to say nonetheless. You must write what you find. And I did. 156 00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:57,230 It's certainly not always an easy position for him to maintain, but his assistance along the whole road of this research has really been invaluable. 157 00:14:57,980 --> 00:15:01,760 You know, he let me quite literally into his house where all of this stuff is, 158 00:15:02,750 --> 00:15:06,710 and he had hoped to come this evening, but it's been prevented due to illness. It's kind of a shame that he's not here. 159 00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:14,570 But anyway, it became clear to me that there was a hole in the body of scholarship surrounding Amir and that a rigorous study 160 00:15:14,930 --> 00:15:21,200 of his ideological genesis and trajectory trajectory would be most useful with regard to archival material. 161 00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:22,670 I thought, I'll just touch on that very quickly. 162 00:15:22,730 --> 00:15:27,710 The bit about this little this is not I can't even really call it an archive because it's not archive properly. 163 00:15:27,890 --> 00:15:33,260 He's not an archivist. He's the you know, he's his son. But but he knows where everything is when he goes. 164 00:15:33,620 --> 00:15:39,620 We need really someone to archive this stuff. But it's a treasure trove of published and unpublished essays, 165 00:15:39,830 --> 00:15:44,660 articles and even a book and an unpublished book by Oscar Mayer on the Russian Revolution. 166 00:15:44,780 --> 00:15:53,000 And I really only scratched the surface. I first approached Eric Penzler in Toronto when he was still in Toronto, actually, which is also my hometown. 167 00:15:55,460 --> 00:15:59,940 Ten, 12 years ago maybe about this. And he cautioned me against writing about second rate philosophers. 168 00:15:59,940 --> 00:16:02,530 I remember that discussion at Starbucks at Young Lawrence and I. 169 00:16:02,540 --> 00:16:06,049 My reply, of course, as a musician, I was like, Look at the Puccini operas or any Italian operas. 170 00:16:06,050 --> 00:16:09,590 I mean, the texts are terrible. It doesn't mean but doesn't mean they're not influential. 171 00:16:10,100 --> 00:16:16,130 Right. And I would say that even Derek agrees today that Ahmir was an important figure, regardless of what he thinks, the quality of his work. 172 00:16:17,180 --> 00:16:24,270 So what's interesting about this study, let me just have you get a picture of just off the map here and not going to jail, perhaps. 173 00:16:24,270 --> 00:16:28,520 There we go. Okay. Those are his kids, Yossi and Yaacov, more or less how they look today. 174 00:16:28,850 --> 00:16:37,940 That's not much 70 years later. This is, in fact, the first biography at all in English and the first academic study dedicated solely to Ahmir, 175 00:16:38,300 --> 00:16:44,180 whom no less I call it a historian, as Colin Shindler said, should share the title The Father of the Revolt with Robert PINSKY. 176 00:16:44,180 --> 00:16:46,910 So not a not a meaningless compliment. 177 00:16:47,810 --> 00:16:52,550 The attraction for me, besides the fact that there was a need for further contribution to the body of scholarship, 178 00:16:52,760 --> 00:16:55,610 was that I would say I wouldn't say maybe not a soft spot, 179 00:16:55,610 --> 00:17:01,100 but certainly an interest in these kind of unsung heroes, even if I don't necessarily like the tune they're singing, as it were. 180 00:17:01,400 --> 00:17:06,410 Right. And I've got to say, having read some of his stuff I liked, it's a service, cynical writing style. 181 00:17:06,470 --> 00:17:09,530 Even again, even if I didn't necessarily agree with it. It was always really interesting to read. 182 00:17:10,580 --> 00:17:14,149 More generally, I would say I like to confront difficult history, difficult things, 183 00:17:14,150 --> 00:17:17,260 difficult themes in general, and I'd revise them accordingly if need be. 184 00:17:17,750 --> 00:17:23,989 And in a way, I think this this book I challenged, 185 00:17:23,990 --> 00:17:30,230 I'd like to challenge traditional Israeli historiography much in the way the savvy does, but in a different way. 186 00:17:30,530 --> 00:17:35,389 We challenge the same tradition that this kind of the one that glorifies the labour Zionist 187 00:17:35,390 --> 00:17:38,990 Mapai David Ben-Gurion myth although I try to do this from the opposite end of the mountain, 188 00:17:38,990 --> 00:17:46,080 obviously. So I think and more of that in a minute. Methodological approach was it was pretty easy. 189 00:17:46,090 --> 00:17:50,590 There was so much stuff there. I was just trying to figure out how to organise it more than how I was going to do it. 190 00:17:51,970 --> 00:17:55,870 But I like doing this. Three. Get rid of that. 191 00:17:57,490 --> 00:18:01,570 I decided fairly early on to try and vary my sources for each chapter just to mix it up a bit. 192 00:18:01,600 --> 00:18:03,880 It was no particular reason. Well, there's a little bit of a reason. 193 00:18:04,140 --> 00:18:11,860 So the first chapter kind of privileges academic stuff, like his dissertation second chapter looks at newspaper articles, 194 00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:16,030 the third looks at how can a broader discussion of a whole bunch of different things. 195 00:18:16,210 --> 00:18:20,740 The fourth looks at trading manuals, which I'll talk a little bit about, and the fifth looks at court documents. 196 00:18:20,740 --> 00:18:25,750 So just mix it up a little bit. A very, very brief overview of the book's contents. 197 00:18:25,750 --> 00:18:31,930 Don't worry. The first chapter really does give a proper concentration on Ahmad's Vienna years, 198 00:18:32,260 --> 00:18:36,069 which are completely overlooked, I would say, except kind of in a sentence. 199 00:18:36,070 --> 00:18:40,900 He went to Vienna. He did his doctorate on Spangler, and that's it. I stretch out in 250 pages. 200 00:18:41,230 --> 00:18:46,240 I'm sorry, but. And it really looks at his dissertation on Spanglish Decline of the West, 201 00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:49,300 which led to some rather interesting conclusions, which I'll talk to you about later. 202 00:18:50,950 --> 00:18:53,079 Furthermore, a discussion, a proper discussion. 203 00:18:53,080 --> 00:18:58,380 I would like to say I would like to think on the concepts of fascism and revolution and an assessment of Obama's embrace, 204 00:18:58,390 --> 00:19:04,270 which allowed me to note that this kind of self styled fascist really only saw fascism as a modus operandi, 205 00:19:05,050 --> 00:19:08,200 as the means to an end, which was a Jewish nation state in Palestine. 206 00:19:09,040 --> 00:19:14,450 Furthermore, I thought that Ahmad's embrace of fascism should be understood in its historical context as a no brainer when you consider 207 00:19:14,480 --> 00:19:20,230 writing about somebody between 29 and 34 and not be analysed with a disproportionate degree of historical hindsight, 208 00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:25,860 which doesn't excuse it. But indeed, one of my primary contentions in the book is that we should look at Army are 209 00:19:25,880 --> 00:19:30,280 not as a fascist who coined a rather innocuous term revolutionary Zionism, 210 00:19:30,490 --> 00:19:36,520 but rather as a Zionist revolutionary who saw fascism as the most viable modus operandi for effecting its revolution. 211 00:19:36,640 --> 00:19:42,580 I thought the revolutionary side of army was much more interesting. And much more fleshed out from an ideological point of view. 212 00:19:42,590 --> 00:19:45,680 He says nothing really about fascism, except he was one, right? 213 00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:51,920 A fascist. I further contend that this revision then allows us to ask two deeper questions. 214 00:19:52,190 --> 00:19:58,300 Specifically, what was the ideological nature and trajectory of Obama's concept of revolutionary Zionism? 215 00:19:58,310 --> 00:20:04,750 And more generally, did anything resembling a de facto revolution actually occur in the yishuv on its way to Jewish statehood? 216 00:20:04,760 --> 00:20:09,530 And I would maintain that it does a bit more about that later. Finally or not, finally. 217 00:20:09,560 --> 00:20:17,000 Thirdly. Fourthly, it offers a first real presentation of the workings of the better leadership training school, better with the youth group, 218 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:23,149 the revisionist youth group and the Baiter on Leadership Training School was a kind of niche training school for future commanders of beta, 219 00:20:23,150 --> 00:20:26,330 for potential future commanders. DEBATER Because it wasn't 100% affiliated. 220 00:20:27,800 --> 00:20:31,340 It was founded in 1930 by someone called you or me. You're me who? 221 00:20:31,340 --> 00:20:37,459 Halperin and Ahmer taught Jewish history and culture there and it was really interesting looking at the archival material for this. 222 00:20:37,460 --> 00:20:43,730 I found all training manuals from the school and kind of outlines for meetings like thematic outlines for four lectures. 223 00:20:44,570 --> 00:20:48,590 I would say it's fascinating cultural historical contribution if I do say so myself. 224 00:20:48,590 --> 00:20:51,710 It's really, really interesting this I think for me that was a really interesting chapter. Right? 225 00:20:53,300 --> 00:20:55,430 It continues the discussion, the book sorry, 226 00:20:55,430 --> 00:21:02,150 the book continues this discretion discussion of Obama's underground resistance group Bring to bear your name and the group's trial. 227 00:21:02,840 --> 00:21:05,979 And the Colin Schindler began in his book, The Triumph of Military Zionism. 228 00:21:05,980 --> 00:21:09,160 I'm to try and stop touching the keyboard. In a minute, I will just hold this. 229 00:21:09,170 --> 00:21:18,319 There we go. And tied to this wardrobe malfunction, I'm not very good with technology and tied to this, 230 00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:21,080 I think, and more interesting was a discussion on climate loss. 231 00:21:21,080 --> 00:21:29,690 After that I undertook and I and I, it could allow me to compare his doctoral work, the Yiddish of folk socialism as the Jewish people socialism, 232 00:21:29,690 --> 00:21:34,429 which is not a great track, but it's I guess it's not as deep in translation as it as it is. 233 00:21:34,430 --> 00:21:37,670 It is it could be with Obama's dissertation, 234 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,629 and it allowed me to challenge the traditional Labour left historiography by noting 235 00:21:41,630 --> 00:21:46,580 much more by way of commonality between and a loss off than many would care to admit, 236 00:21:47,010 --> 00:21:50,150 certainly on the left. Okay. 237 00:21:50,390 --> 00:21:54,379 I think that that's what I was going to that's a that's enough context. 238 00:21:54,380 --> 00:22:01,280 I think I'd like to read you from the conclusion, not the whole conclusion. I figure I'll save you 80 quid or in a 50 with a coupon. 239 00:22:03,350 --> 00:22:07,549 I think this was really hard for me to approach, I say. So I was like, Oh, I don't know. 240 00:22:07,550 --> 00:22:09,560 How do you think it in a conclusion? I mean, I think no. 241 00:22:09,830 --> 00:22:17,930 And I remember Derek saying to me at the very beginning of the project, I said, you know, what's a really great intellectual biography? 242 00:22:17,930 --> 00:22:21,200 The only one I know is kind of Keith Richards life. Right? Guess I can't really do that. 243 00:22:21,470 --> 00:22:24,590 And he said, look at Martin, mainly his biography on Alexander Hertz. 244 00:22:24,590 --> 00:22:27,799 And he said, it's almost almost forgotten today. That's a great book. 245 00:22:27,800 --> 00:22:33,110 So I looked at it, I'd looked at it from the beginning of the project, but when I went to write the conclusion, I kind of looked at it again. 246 00:22:34,030 --> 00:22:40,430 I was like, okay, to see how merely I start to tie these very these strands together. 247 00:22:41,270 --> 00:22:46,430 And I looked at the opening paragraph. I thought, You know what? I'm gonna lift this and, and go from there. 248 00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:50,340 So I did. And this is what Malia writes. And I thought, which is quite it's quite interesting. 249 00:22:50,360 --> 00:22:55,729 There's kind of a bit of method, not much in my madness, but it says as of 1855, 250 00:22:55,730 --> 00:23:00,440 in the death of Nicholas the first, the modern Russian political tradition was scarcely 50 years old. 251 00:23:00,620 --> 00:23:06,530 Yet in that relatively short space of time, it had undergone a remarkably swift, swift process of radicalisation. 252 00:23:06,710 --> 00:23:12,810 The board would come clear in a minute, become clear in a minute. In the 30 years of repression under Nicholas, the idea of revolt. 253 00:23:12,830 --> 00:23:20,450 Revolt became the ideal of revolution, and the goal was no longer a change in the political regime or legal status of the citizenry, 254 00:23:20,450 --> 00:23:23,270 but a total social and moral renovation of the nation. 255 00:23:23,690 --> 00:23:31,250 Indeed, this socialist goal had assumed the most seemed the form of the most extreme and uncompromising theory of revolutionary liberation, anarchism. 256 00:23:32,210 --> 00:23:34,670 And throughout this whole process of radicalisation, however, 257 00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:40,580 there is one remarkable element of continuity with each should be capital shift first mistake 258 00:23:40,790 --> 00:23:44,689 with each shift left where the impetus came predominantly from men of the same social group, 259 00:23:44,690 --> 00:23:47,400 the gentry. So that's how I began my conclusion. 260 00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:54,760 And I need these gentlemen from reading from this, and fortunately they didn't print this in maximalist font anyways. 261 00:23:55,130 --> 00:24:02,570 So, so this is how Mallya began his conclusion on his biography of Alexander Herzen in a chapter that he called the Gentry Revolutionary. 262 00:24:02,660 --> 00:24:06,860 I'm going to actually put this bunk and some of the parallels with my own study were rather striking. 263 00:24:06,860 --> 00:24:09,800 So which is why I lifted it shamelessly. 264 00:24:10,190 --> 00:24:18,079 So by 1933, and with the murder of a lawyer of the modern Jewish political tradition, which Zionism was also scarcely 50 years old, 265 00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:22,070 and in its somewhat younger head solely in political ideological form, had also, 266 00:24:22,220 --> 00:24:27,110 in a relatively short space of time, undergone a remarkably swift process of radicalisation. 267 00:24:28,220 --> 00:24:33,650 In the 30 years since Herzl's death, the gradual repression of political Zionism, 268 00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:38,640 a political Zionist ideology by practical Zionist settlement that was willing to compromise its terms. 269 00:24:39,370 --> 00:24:47,470 Led to a situation where Jeb Atkins, his idea of revolt as embodied in the foundation of revisionist Zionism, became Amir's ideal of revolution. 270 00:24:48,340 --> 00:24:52,330 Of course, in this case, in a movement that was nationalistic, political, 271 00:24:52,810 --> 00:25:01,420 a change in the political regime or legal status of the citizenry absolutely superseded any social and moral renovation of the nation. 272 00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:02,710 Indeed, 273 00:25:03,010 --> 00:25:11,080 this nationalist political goal had assumed the form of the most extreme and uncompromising theory of revolutionary nationalist liberation fascism. 274 00:25:11,860 --> 00:25:15,370 And again, as was the case with the modern Russian political tradition, 275 00:25:15,730 --> 00:25:23,470 the modern Zionist political tradition was likewise characterised by one remarkable element of continuity with each shift to the right. 276 00:25:23,950 --> 00:25:29,620 The impetus came also predominantly from men of the same social group, in this case the bourgeois intelligentsia. 277 00:25:30,490 --> 00:25:36,970 What are you supposed to terms? I'll make that clear in a sec. So from Herzl through no doubt, to Javits, Minsky, Nakamura, 278 00:25:37,420 --> 00:25:42,040 the gradual radicalisation of political Zionism was not only led by the bourgeois intelligentsia, 279 00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:48,340 but furthermore, one that had in character and orientation shifted gradually from Western to Eastern Europe, 280 00:25:48,880 --> 00:25:52,600 from more bourgeois to more intelligent, as it were. Which is why his best friends. 281 00:25:54,590 --> 00:25:59,750 Indeed the very concept of of intelligentsia and the intelligent are themselves Russian in origin. 282 00:26:00,260 --> 00:26:08,960 Moreover, for an Eastern European Jew of Java Minsky's infamous generation, the intelligentsia whose members had in fact first come from the gentry, 283 00:26:09,110 --> 00:26:11,720 had become the gentry of the bourgeoisie, 284 00:26:11,870 --> 00:26:18,650 albeit one that was landed with building and was thus a group to which a young Jew could realistically aspire to and attain membership in. 285 00:26:20,650 --> 00:26:23,770 The fact that both Putin's skin armour I've lost my spot. 286 00:26:23,770 --> 00:26:28,420 There were cosmopolitan products of both realms Eastern European by birth and upbringing. 287 00:26:28,570 --> 00:26:32,860 Western European by education only buttresses the argument, I would say, 288 00:26:33,100 --> 00:26:37,929 and in this very important respect, both men had followed in the long ideological, 289 00:26:37,930 --> 00:26:45,370 historical trajectory that had that had its origins in the Westernisation program of Peter, the great one that saw selected few. 290 00:26:45,370 --> 00:26:45,969 And at this point, 291 00:26:45,970 --> 00:26:53,380 still members of the gentry go to Western Europe for a higher education before returning to Russia to assume some sort of civic leadership role. 292 00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,600 Not only did Armour recognise and place a high value upon Peter the Great as a moderniser 293 00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:03,130 specifically through his Westernisation program as he discusses in his dissertation on Spengler. 294 00:27:03,250 --> 00:27:09,610 But Ahmer himself represented at once the pinnacle and the terminus of its ideological and historical development. 295 00:27:10,450 --> 00:27:19,509 In contrast to Ahmer, Jabotinsky had in 1901, after his studies in Rome, we turned to Russia and and he did, in fact, 296 00:27:19,510 --> 00:27:26,590 is both a prominent journalist and eventually also Zionist politician assume a leadership role, albeit one within a smaller Russian. 297 00:27:26,860 --> 00:27:33,310 In this case, a Russian Jewish community. So of course, there was no question of Ahmad returning to Russia at the end of his education, 298 00:27:33,550 --> 00:27:40,480 a fact due not only to his ardent Zionism, but equally as important to the reality that in post-revolutionary Russia, 299 00:27:40,750 --> 00:27:47,920 the anti-Western character of the new communist intelligentsia had now rendered the classic Western educated, Russian intelligent, undesirable. 300 00:27:49,010 --> 00:27:52,580 Nevertheless, Akuma is both a Russian and a Zionist. 301 00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:57,230 Certainly upheld the ideals of the traditional Russian intelligentsia, one that has, 302 00:27:57,230 --> 00:28:03,770 in the words of the teaching of the distinguished intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin, that was founded, 303 00:28:03,770 --> 00:28:12,350 broadly speaking, on the idea of a permanent, rational opposition to a status quo which was regarded as in constant danger of becoming ossified, 304 00:28:12,590 --> 00:28:19,220 a block to human thought and human progress. This is the historical role of the intelligentsia, as seen by itself. 305 00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:20,540 Then and now. Sorry. 306 00:28:22,740 --> 00:28:29,850 This elitist and we might even say messianic attitude informed the mayor's role not only as a member of a traditional Russian intelligentsia, 307 00:28:29,850 --> 00:28:35,280 but more important as a modern political Zionist who stood in permanent opposition to a Jewish national 308 00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:40,019 movement that was through its lack of forward motion in constant danger of becoming ossified, 309 00:28:40,020 --> 00:28:47,430 to quote Berlin again. Indeed, in this latter more pronounced role, Armia embodied Berlin's quintessential real member of the intelligentsia, 310 00:28:47,610 --> 00:28:51,210 whom he characterised as an, I quote, the political pamphleteers, 311 00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:55,020 the civic minded poets, the forerunners of the Russian Russian revolution, 312 00:28:55,320 --> 00:29:00,059 mainly journalists, journalists and political thinkers who quite consciously use literature. 313 00:29:00,060 --> 00:29:05,580 Sometimes very poor examples. Take note Piccini decried that as vehicles for social protest. 314 00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:11,910 The only difference in a famous case was that he no longer look to Russia but to Zion for his revolution. 315 00:29:13,310 --> 00:29:17,600 In the issue of Akuma, now no longer a member, neither geographically nationalistic, 316 00:29:17,900 --> 00:29:25,280 ideologically of a bourgeois and Russian intelligentsia, and catalysed in no small way by what he saw as a truly repressive regime. 317 00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:31,940 To quote, Berlin again became instead the leading figure of a new Zionist nationalist intelligentsia militants. 318 00:29:33,620 --> 00:29:39,980 Perhaps the recognition, the simple recognition, the job of Nijinsky was living in London during the period of the October revolution. 319 00:29:40,220 --> 00:29:45,530 Well, a camera experienced at first hand and Bob Risk may provide a further telling explanation for both this 320 00:29:45,530 --> 00:29:51,620 geographically eastward shift as a key element in the radicalisation of the ideology of political Zionism. 321 00:29:53,490 --> 00:29:58,229 And the fact that it was armia and not indeed could not be Jabotinsky who was able to effect 322 00:29:58,230 --> 00:30:04,410 it the year 1917 had for job Burtynsky with the formation of the Zionist Mule Corps, 323 00:30:04,410 --> 00:30:08,970 which was a kind of a meal corps that helped the British out in the fight against the Ottomans. 324 00:30:10,350 --> 00:30:14,040 This sowed the seeds for Abbott Minsky for Jewish military organisation. 325 00:30:16,580 --> 00:30:23,600 For a man who experienced the Bolshevik Revolution firsthand, 1917 sowed the seeds for Jewish revolutionary organisation. 326 00:30:24,140 --> 00:30:29,870 One gesture recognised and advocated the utility of European Jewry in the service of modern European politics. 327 00:30:30,860 --> 00:30:35,660 The other decried the uselessness of Europe in the service of modern European Jewish politics. 328 00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:45,080 Thus, by 1933, Japan's key Zionist bourgeois gentleman had been transformed into a Zionist bourgeois revolutionary. 329 00:30:46,050 --> 00:30:51,990 Joe since he's Iron Wall, which refers to an article he wrote in the 1920s into Marazion Bridge. 330 00:30:52,020 --> 00:30:56,880 Another article that I admire, Sir Keir Boswell versus Gesher Vasa. 331 00:30:57,390 --> 00:31:04,400 If you are speaking Hebrew. Yet only an ideology. So Joe Biden's going Nakamura could both trace their ideological positions back to the and 332 00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:11,220 concept of market power as understood as understood and expanded upon by Marx gnawed out. 333 00:31:13,030 --> 00:31:16,600 Need to distinguish between positive, authentic and negative inauthentic power. 334 00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:21,460 The former was symptomatic of a strong, confident personality, the latter of a weak, 335 00:31:21,460 --> 00:31:26,740 insecure what Nadal called the generative rate in his well-known book to generation personality. 336 00:31:27,460 --> 00:31:31,630 Hence, nor does concept of Musk alluding to more muscular jewellery in which the negative 337 00:31:31,630 --> 00:31:38,050 degenerative manifestation of power so that he believed prevailed amongst Europeans, 338 00:31:38,230 --> 00:31:43,450 Europe's Jews. By the end of the 19th century would be transformed into a positive, authentic form. 339 00:31:44,140 --> 00:31:49,870 Nonetheless, as the Israeli historian Jacob Golomb notes, Burtynsky, in his personality and ideology, 340 00:31:50,380 --> 00:31:54,370 embodied elements of both positive and negative degenerative manifestations of power. 341 00:31:54,520 --> 00:32:00,190 He was equally a child of fin de siecle, liberal decadence and a more tempered liberal politics altogether. 342 00:32:01,260 --> 00:32:05,219 Ahmer through his radicalisation of Java Lewinsky in politics and the concept of 343 00:32:05,220 --> 00:32:09,630 mocked that saw him solidly embrace fascism or fascist ideology and aesthetic. 344 00:32:10,630 --> 00:32:16,330 Shifted yet further towards what he believed to be Nietzsche's concept of a positive manifestation of power. 345 00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:22,240 The paradox, of course, is that if we accept Nietzsche and no doubt this fetishisation of power, 346 00:32:22,390 --> 00:32:29,080 certainly in a fascist sense, represented in reality a far greater insecurity and degeneration than it purported to negate. 347 00:32:29,380 --> 00:32:33,670 And it was thus ultimately a shift further towards a Nietzsche and negative manifestation of power. 348 00:32:37,070 --> 00:32:41,550 The difference between job betting skills and armours degeneration, if you want to put it that way, 349 00:32:41,750 --> 00:32:45,350 is that of a bourgeois, indulgent versus a bourgeois, just an existential decadence. 350 00:32:45,350 --> 00:32:49,819 I would say so much in the way that Spengler in philosophy was a more desperately existential 351 00:32:49,820 --> 00:32:55,370 manifestation and therefore a necessary consequence of a more indulgently bourgeois nature in philosophy. 352 00:32:55,820 --> 00:33:01,160 So as our comers embrace of degenerative power a more desperately existential manifestation, 353 00:33:01,160 --> 00:33:04,760 and therefore a necessary consequence of Japanese kinski's more indulgently 354 00:33:04,760 --> 00:33:08,809 bourgeois mixture of Nietzsche and positive and negative concepts of marked more. 355 00:33:08,810 --> 00:33:17,270 Simply put, I hear you breathe a sigh of relief. Javier Kinski, and indeed hurts Leonardo after him with decadently illiberal. 356 00:33:17,510 --> 00:33:22,780 Right. And. While Ahmer and stern and beg. 357 00:33:22,780 --> 00:33:30,260 And after him, I would say we're decadently illiberal. Indeed, the fact that is often so difficult to unequivocally explain. 358 00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:34,400 Pinsky's political position can almost always be attributed to his liberal leanings. 359 00:33:34,670 --> 00:33:38,170 We have no such difficulty with America in this respect. 360 00:33:38,170 --> 00:33:43,790 Javid PINSKY was still more a child of a Western European, a nakamura of an Eastern European bourgeois intelligentsia. 361 00:33:44,570 --> 00:33:51,200 This argument is buttressed by Britain's contention that, and I quote, The bourgeoisie does not have a great past and has no future. 362 00:33:51,740 --> 00:33:54,890 It was good only for a moment as a negation, as a transition. 363 00:33:55,820 --> 00:34:00,440 So we to shoot, we should assume that Harrison was speaking of a Russian bourgeois intelligentsia, and to a certain degree, 364 00:34:00,650 --> 00:34:06,610 Ahmer must also have understood his own Russian bourgeois, intelligent roots in such a manner, perhaps only subconsciously. 365 00:34:06,620 --> 00:34:12,530 So indeed, a camera fits Martin merely as definition of the Russian intelligent intelligence. 366 00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:16,010 Scuse me to a tee and merely defined him as such as any able, 367 00:34:16,010 --> 00:34:22,370 sensitive and ambitious individual from a more or less privileged group who lives under an inflexible and closed old regime, 368 00:34:22,700 --> 00:34:25,279 which does not offer adequate scope for his energies, 369 00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:30,230 and who consequently goes over to integral as well as highly ideological opposition to that regime. 370 00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:39,070 In Ahmad's case, the inflexible and closed old regime was less the British mandatory government than it was the Zionist leadership of the ship. 371 00:34:40,270 --> 00:34:48,100 Such an analysis would explain Nakamura's permanent sense of what might be called desperate transience and which which be it as a rootless Jew, 372 00:34:48,460 --> 00:34:51,730 a state in the Zionist, or an anachronistic Russian bourgeois intellectual. 373 00:34:51,970 --> 00:34:56,030 Led to his frustrated cynicism and eventual emergence as a bourgeois terrorist. 374 00:34:56,050 --> 00:35:01,980 I would say the spiritual leader and ideologue of the new Zionist intelligentsia, militants, bourgeois terrorist. 375 00:35:02,170 --> 00:35:05,530 I think that term is is it is in search of violence, a great term. 376 00:35:06,790 --> 00:35:07,780 That's actually a profession. 377 00:35:08,110 --> 00:35:16,690 But on the 1st of February, 1944, a few days later, Menachem Begin, who that previous December had taken over the commander ship of the Irgun, 378 00:35:16,870 --> 00:35:19,780 the revisionist underground pirate paramilitary group, 379 00:35:20,290 --> 00:35:26,110 proclaimed a revolt against the British mandatory government in Palestine with his proclamation. 380 00:35:26,140 --> 00:35:29,770 The long trajectory of revolutionary Zionist ideology, ideology, 381 00:35:30,460 --> 00:35:37,510 ideology can't even say it anymore that Ahmari had first broached in November 1927, now matured into practical application. 382 00:35:38,650 --> 00:35:46,510 Both of your goon and the Stern Gang, notorious underground anti-British groups had already carried out various attacks, 383 00:35:46,690 --> 00:35:49,570 mainly against Arabs and British policemen over the past six years, 384 00:35:49,750 --> 00:35:53,980 attacks that had only increased in the wake of the British government's 1939 white paper. 385 00:35:55,270 --> 00:36:02,110 This latter highly contentious documents, certainly for the Zionists, issued with the aim to end three years of Arab revolt and the issue of limited 386 00:36:02,110 --> 00:36:06,250 Jewish immigration to Palestine to 75,000 people over the next five years, 387 00:36:06,490 --> 00:36:11,920 after which no more Jews would be allowed into Palestine without Arab agreement. 388 00:36:12,580 --> 00:36:18,640 In a rare moment of unity, all of the various political factions in the issue have condemned the paper outright, 389 00:36:18,670 --> 00:36:23,820 although they put their feelings on hold for the duration for the for the majority of the war. 390 00:36:23,830 --> 00:36:33,459 But by 1944, Bagan had lost patience. His lengthy declaration of revolt, which was posted throughout the issue of on the 1st of February 1944, 391 00:36:33,460 --> 00:36:37,720 addressed not the British administration, but the Hebrew nation in Zion. 392 00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:42,010 And it quote directly, and I'm just going to be a little quote. It says, Jews are fighting. 393 00:36:42,010 --> 00:36:49,960 Youth will not be deterred by victims, blood and suffering. They will not surrender, will not rest until the restore our past glory, 394 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:55,280 until they ensure our people of a homeland, freedom, honour, bread, justice and law. 395 00:36:55,730 --> 00:37:01,550 And if you help them, then your own eyes will soon behold the return to Zion and the rebirth of Israel. 396 00:37:01,970 --> 00:37:05,000 May God be with us and aid us. 397 00:37:06,140 --> 00:37:16,070 It's a much longer than that. But that was kind of enough in its imagery and tone biblical, messianic, proud, unapologetic and indeed unforgiving. 398 00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:21,079 The proclamation evoked a British Syrian pamphlet from April 1932. 399 00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:25,159 For it to be a name again was Armagh's Underground Group, the pamphlet from 1932 says, 400 00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:28,370 and again, a few just a few sentences at these moments of hatred, 401 00:37:28,700 --> 00:37:34,190 throw away modern doctrines and remember those of the ancient legislator an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. 402 00:37:34,700 --> 00:37:38,270 And you shall then be safe in your life, honour, property and land. 403 00:37:39,710 --> 00:37:47,360 The revolution that Arkema had foreseen 17 years earlier now began in earnest, although he himself would not play a leading role in its execution. 404 00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:55,400 Nonetheless, Ahmer considered this Both the Stern Gang in the year going to be the ideological successors of his group with a bigger name. 405 00:37:56,240 --> 00:38:02,809 The group's most well-known leaders, Avraham Stern and Malcolm Bacon, respectively, were themselves strongly influenced by both Ahmer, 406 00:38:02,810 --> 00:38:06,830 the ideologue and person, although those relationships could at times be strained. 407 00:38:07,310 --> 00:38:11,870 Menachem Begin, for his part, completely whitewashed Islam out of his two biographical accounts. 408 00:38:12,350 --> 00:38:18,110 And although the two men remained friends until Lama's death, Bagan kept in it, kept him at bay politically. 409 00:38:19,850 --> 00:38:24,950 For Bagan, the politician, it was doubtless seen as bad public relations to be associated with a man who 410 00:38:24,950 --> 00:38:28,640 would represent who had once represented such a controversial figure as Ahmer. 411 00:38:28,970 --> 00:38:31,220 Bacon's own controversial past notwithstanding. 412 00:38:32,150 --> 00:38:41,210 Nonetheless, Bacon aligned himself spiritually with Ahmer and British beginning already in 1933 when he joined the Betar head command in Warsaw. 413 00:38:41,510 --> 00:38:48,470 As Colin Childers also noted there, clearly bacon and not just bacon, I suppose had a psychological need to remember and reshape the past. 414 00:38:50,670 --> 00:38:54,360 Nonetheless, it is clear that Bacon was influenced by farmers ideology. 415 00:38:54,630 --> 00:38:55,050 Indeed, 416 00:38:55,050 --> 00:39:03,630 the cynic would certainly see Bacon's call at the Third World Convention Convention of Beethoven 1938 to usher in a new period of military Zionism. 417 00:39:04,050 --> 00:39:09,680 And even more pointedly, David Ben-gurion's call for fighting Zionism only two months later as nothing more than an 418 00:39:09,690 --> 00:39:14,700 opportunistic repackaging of Obama's concept of revolutionary Zionism from ten years earlier. 419 00:39:16,510 --> 00:39:20,169 The historian Eric Hobsbawm cites the relevance of, and I quote, 420 00:39:20,170 --> 00:39:25,090 the date when the first adult generation of children of the revolution emerged on the public scene. 421 00:39:25,780 --> 00:39:29,410 Those whose education and careers belong entirely to the new era. 422 00:39:30,550 --> 00:39:37,120 The original Children of Alzheimer's Revolution came of age with the eventual election of Bacon as prime minister in 1977. 423 00:39:37,870 --> 00:39:44,760 Yet by the time of Bacon's speech, 40 years before Army, his political revolution had been gaining ground for almost a decade. 424 00:39:46,410 --> 00:39:53,540 And certainly Avraham Stern, the leader of the Stern Gang, one of a very named sympathisers, likewise fell under his influential spell, 425 00:39:53,550 --> 00:39:57,120 although perhaps more than that, more that of Ahmir, the man of action, 426 00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:04,139 and Ahmir the actual ideologue and indeed those looking for perfect ideological consistency. 427 00:40:04,140 --> 00:40:09,120 And Ahmer will be disappointed. This fact is perhaps not surprising. 428 00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:14,999 And we need we not only need only to take a cursory glance at John Bolton's skills of ben-gurion's or indeed a myriad of public figures, 429 00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:19,590 respective respective moves to realise that Ahmir is certainly not alone in this respect. 430 00:40:20,340 --> 00:40:25,950 He once described himself as an ancient pessimist who sometimes walked westward, sometimes eastward, 431 00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:34,320 taking no notice of the opinion of the crowd that alcohol being interested only in sharing his own sometimes idiosyncratic Zionist morality. 432 00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:39,330 Thus, for example, he could accept Vladimir Lenin as a revolutionary, but not Leninism as a doctrine, 433 00:40:39,420 --> 00:40:44,790 and for a time at least, the anti Marxist kernel of Nazi ism while rejecting its anti-Semitic show. 434 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:54,760 And in spite of the fact that he distanced himself from even Italian fascism once its racial laws were introduced in 1938, 435 00:40:55,270 --> 00:40:59,950 America could in 1953 blame part of the failure of bitter bear you name on the 436 00:40:59,950 --> 00:41:03,580 fact that they had been unsuccessful in adopting a fascist modus operandi. 437 00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:11,740 Quite an amazing pamphlet to read. It is an astonishing claim to say the least, but one which nonetheless points to the fact that if a to a clear, 438 00:41:11,770 --> 00:41:15,520 flawed distinction between Italian fascism and Nazism. 439 00:41:16,630 --> 00:41:21,040 Likewise, he could use Spengler in theory to explain away any sort of universal aspect to Judaism, 440 00:41:21,220 --> 00:41:27,790 but could just as easily ignore the universalist message in much of Jewish prophetic writing, especially Germany. 441 00:41:28,810 --> 00:41:32,139 And not least, he could be at once a revolutionary and a counterrevolutionary. 442 00:41:32,140 --> 00:41:35,470 And this is kind of going back to one of my chapters, but I would say in the final analysis, 443 00:41:35,620 --> 00:41:43,240 I would say that Armour's counter-revolution took the form of a de facto political insurrectionary revolution, 444 00:41:43,570 --> 00:41:47,200 one which opposed not only the very real British mandatory government, 445 00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:52,030 but also the more conceptual social revolution that was embodied in the certainly Labour left Zionist project. 446 00:41:54,340 --> 00:42:00,310 I talked a little bit about before my the comparison I did between Miller's RAF doctoral dissertation 447 00:42:00,430 --> 00:42:04,900 armchair doctoral dissertation and I would say that it did lead to a couple of interesting conclusions, 448 00:42:05,020 --> 00:42:10,270 perhaps owing to each man's bourgeois intellectual upbringing. 449 00:42:10,540 --> 00:42:16,749 I would say both a lot of an armchair had more or less formulated their particular ideological positions already by the end of their doctoral 450 00:42:16,750 --> 00:42:25,840 studies in a case practically every one of his future ideological cornerstones the power of youth or just less than the preference of men, 451 00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:33,190 of action over word, the concept of act, of heroism, the importance of drawing upon a rich historical past, the acceptance of violence, 452 00:42:33,820 --> 00:42:38,320 indeed the readiness for self-sacrifice in the service of the national cause, the rejection of Marxism, 453 00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:42,790 Bolshevism, socialism and liberalism, and not least a preoccupation with revolution. 454 00:42:42,790 --> 00:42:49,000 And the messianic element that was implicit in all of this is addressed already in his dissertation on Spengler in 1924. 455 00:42:50,250 --> 00:42:56,010 This fact is is surprising in its revelation or it was at the time, as it is frustrating in the recognition inherent there, 456 00:42:56,010 --> 00:43:00,209 in that the lack of scholarly engagement with armchair student work has allowed 457 00:43:00,210 --> 00:43:04,240 this key observation in his ideological development to be overlooked until now. 458 00:43:04,260 --> 00:43:13,139 And the further fact that Ahmir was, as I as kind of quote it in an earlier chapter already by 1933, 459 00:43:13,140 --> 00:43:21,240 enamoured with Mussolini and fascism in 1923, 1923, excuse me, already with Mussolini and fascism in a less than superficial way. 460 00:43:21,450 --> 00:43:26,609 What this superficial way led me to the conclusion that Rama's complete ideological 461 00:43:26,610 --> 00:43:30,450 path was set already at the time of his emigration to Palestine in 1924, 462 00:43:31,140 --> 00:43:36,750 a conclusion as unexpected at the time for me, as it was critical to our understanding of his ideological development, 463 00:43:37,380 --> 00:43:41,130 Armada would return time and again to these various ideological ideological 464 00:43:41,130 --> 00:43:45,300 markers and would certainly develop and refine his position on all of them. 465 00:43:45,510 --> 00:43:50,729 But rarely would he introduce any serious new themes into his ideological admixture during that, 466 00:43:50,730 --> 00:43:53,100 certainly during the period under discussion, I would say throughout his whole life. 467 00:43:53,610 --> 00:43:57,270 His practical path, however, would require almost ten years to catch up. 468 00:43:59,370 --> 00:44:06,210 Thus in no small way. And this is I would say my most interesting discovery is this whole research project. 469 00:44:06,570 --> 00:44:10,110 All roads lead to Spangler, for whatever reason. 470 00:44:10,260 --> 00:44:15,270 And like many of his contemporaries, Ahmer became enamoured with the decline of the West and Spengler. 471 00:44:15,270 --> 00:44:21,510 In theory, in spite of and is sorry, in spite of the exceptions that he takes for spengler's conceptions of Russia and Jewish history. 472 00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:27,510 Ahmad remained ideologically, intellectually and methodologically loyal to Spengler on some level. 473 00:44:27,690 --> 00:44:36,120 Throughout his life, Spangler provided an intellectual fascination and methodological framework that enabled Armenia's continued ideological growth. 474 00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:44,530 The fact that Spangler ideology was so easily misappropriated by Fascism's most extreme and calamitous incarnation, 475 00:44:44,530 --> 00:44:50,590 Hitler's National Socialists points to just how thick an ideological quagmire Spengler himself had wandered into, 476 00:44:50,710 --> 00:44:55,330 and the Austrian satirist Karl Rove's called the Nazis that want a gangster to survive. 477 00:44:55,340 --> 00:45:04,690 Not necessarily. If you get Germans a great job. Likewise, as a mayor, his initial inability to see past his love for fascist ideology, 478 00:45:04,690 --> 00:45:09,020 which culminated in his appeal, could rather perverse appeal in print. 479 00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:13,420 To learn from the success of Nazi ism underscores the danger of such blind faith. 480 00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:20,460 If the years 1924 to 1934, Samara's practical path catch up with his ideological path. 481 00:45:20,820 --> 00:45:28,680 The ten years previous 1914 to 1924 saw events unfold that would steer armagh's ideological path in promise. 482 00:45:29,500 --> 00:45:33,180 First, his time at the Heritage League come nauseum from 1912 to 1914, 483 00:45:33,660 --> 00:45:38,520 strengthened Ahmad's love for the land and further reinforced his already strong Zionist leanings. 484 00:45:39,300 --> 00:45:45,780 Similarly, and second, the outbreak of the of war that present prevented his immediate return to Palestine, 485 00:45:46,170 --> 00:45:50,880 instilled in armchair an even deeper longing and nostalgia for the land to which he could not return. 486 00:45:51,930 --> 00:46:00,320 Third, the Bolshevik Revolution simultaneously reinforced both his Zionist and anti Marxist leanings, as did the death of the brother of his brother. 487 00:46:00,330 --> 00:46:03,660 That was the result of that revolution in nonetheless. 488 00:46:03,990 --> 00:46:13,709 Also planted in Armenia. The idea of the utility of revolution and perhaps even the question of the permissibility of killing in that in that day, 489 00:46:13,710 --> 00:46:21,030 that goal and both events numbed Akuma to an existence, to an existential altas of violence, bloodshed and death. 490 00:46:22,180 --> 00:46:29,379 Finally, his stint at university and his introduction to Spangler in two Spangler Sari gave Ahmad both the intellectual clout that 491 00:46:29,380 --> 00:46:34,840 he needed to become a member of the bourgeois intelligentsia and the methodological tools to develop further as such. 492 00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:43,980 In short, Zine nursed his Soul War Revolution and his brother's death informed his body, heart and psyche and Spangler his brain. 493 00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:49,390 The rest, as it were. A details. There are two broad underlying theses in the book. 494 00:46:50,380 --> 00:46:55,270 One has to do with the proverbial proverbial throwing of the baby out with the bathwater. 495 00:46:55,330 --> 00:46:58,840 Or perhaps better put the danger of taking it all too easy dismissively. 496 00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:06,040 Okrent Methodological approach. The fact that Spangler is now considered rather outmoded has in the past perhaps prevented a 497 00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:10,660 deeper engagement with both sprinkler in theory and his profound and lasting influence in Ahmer. 498 00:47:10,990 --> 00:47:15,370 I believe that I demonstrated that the danger that such a methodological shortcut may pose. 499 00:47:16,650 --> 00:47:22,320 Furthermore, Ahmad's own claim that he was a bona fide fascist has perhaps perhaps led to a scholarly 500 00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:27,420 complacency that is now that has until now taken off famous claim at face value. 501 00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:34,059 Thus is two importance as a revolutionary figure has been overshadowed by a superficially 502 00:47:34,060 --> 00:47:37,780 raised arm towards the unquestioned acceptance of Obama's as a mere fascist. 503 00:47:39,310 --> 00:47:45,070 I would like to think that the book has provided a more sophisticated analysis of his embrace of both phenomena. 504 00:47:45,820 --> 00:47:53,590 And finally, Zionist historiography has until now and with few exceptions, been dismissive of the historical role that Obama himself played. 505 00:47:54,430 --> 00:47:59,170 This study, I think, with its focus on ideology, has not only not only confirmed in my opinion, 506 00:48:00,100 --> 00:48:06,129 that often there was a key figure in the development of the ideological ideology of revisionist Zionism and its legacy, 507 00:48:06,130 --> 00:48:08,890 but also demonstrated how and why that is the case. 508 00:48:10,300 --> 00:48:15,880 The second underlying thesis is tied to the first and concerns the writing of what was a difficult history. 509 00:48:17,470 --> 00:48:25,120 Even today, more than 50 years after his death, Ahmad's name and legacy are still able to provoke polarised reactions and heated debate. 510 00:48:25,810 --> 00:48:30,470 Nonetheless, I tried very hard to approach the study with neither preconceived outcome nor a political agenda. 511 00:48:30,490 --> 00:48:33,940 I wasn't related to anybody. I was, you know, it was just it just all kind of happened. 512 00:48:37,270 --> 00:48:43,060 Of course, there's always limitations and we decide what to put in, not what to put in. But I think I would like to say definitely. 513 00:48:44,410 --> 00:48:49,930 Yeah, there were there is no position before going in and certainly even no position now if from honest. 514 00:48:51,930 --> 00:48:56,440 Indeed. There's a third underlying thesis in the study, although I'm hesitant to kind of name it as such, 515 00:48:56,950 --> 00:49:01,240 if only because of my incapacity for doing any more than hinting at its presence. 516 00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,899 But its presence was all pervading for me. And the ability to, 517 00:49:04,900 --> 00:49:12,370 in the inability sorry to introduce empirically the psychological element into this study represents at once the major weakness 518 00:49:12,370 --> 00:49:19,000 in and also very likely the key to a completely comprehensive understanding of Ahmad's ideological and practical development. 519 00:49:19,530 --> 00:49:23,950 Right. Thus, at the end of a study that is offered a more ideologically focussed intellectual 520 00:49:23,950 --> 00:49:27,850 biography of Ahmad during the years when he was most politically active, 521 00:49:28,420 --> 00:49:32,799 I likewise admit my frustration at being unable to more successfully delineate the human 522 00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:38,230 aspect that most certainly also informed Ahmad's ideology and practice during that time. 523 00:49:38,770 --> 00:49:45,330 But it's there. Whether in his enormous longing for Zion or the heartbreak in the death of his brother, 524 00:49:45,570 --> 00:49:48,990 or indeed the loss of his first wife, or temporary loss of his daughter, 525 00:49:48,990 --> 00:49:53,639 who was raised by his sister because he was always in jail and she was raised believing that he was, 526 00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:58,950 in fact your uncle and found out a need for reading a hidden letter when she was 15 or 16 that he was, in fact, your father. 527 00:50:00,810 --> 00:50:04,770 How come he was not a journalist and political activist who happened to have a few close relationships, 528 00:50:05,010 --> 00:50:10,080 but rather a brother, a husband, a father who happened to be a tutorial journalist and political activist. 529 00:50:10,470 --> 00:50:17,250 And the fact that Ahmad's love for Zion was perhaps as strong as his love for those close to him does not nonetheless mitigate the latter 530 00:50:17,250 --> 00:50:26,280 observation and the fact that the consequences of his political activism in the service of Zionism would come to overshadow his reputation. 531 00:50:26,460 --> 00:50:31,410 Historical legacy and reception should not mitigate the observation that Obama 532 00:50:31,710 --> 00:50:36,060 occupied an integral ideological position in the history of the Zionist right. 533 00:50:36,450 --> 00:50:36,840 Thank you.