1 00:00:00,690 --> 00:00:06,250 All right. Thank you. Good afternoon, welcome, everybody. 2 00:00:06,250 --> 00:00:11,440 It's nice to see names appearing on the screen, but it's a little bit sad that we're not doing it face to face. 3 00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:19,120 I'm very happy. I'm delighted to have the honour to present Guy this afternoon. 4 00:00:19,120 --> 00:00:23,410 But I can only wish we had the chance to sit together for lunch before and maybe afterwards. 5 00:00:23,410 --> 00:00:28,300 Hagai. So keep that promise for me for later. 6 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:35,890 A speaker Professor Hagai Raam is a historian of the Middle East at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev in Israel. 7 00:00:35,890 --> 00:00:43,900 His area of research areas of research include the social and cultural histories of Iran and the Levant, 8 00:00:43,900 --> 00:00:50,740 and amongst his publications are the books, myth and mobilisation in Revolutionary Iran. 9 00:00:50,740 --> 00:00:56,230 Reading Iran and Israel came out in Hebrew in 2006 and Iran a phobia. 10 00:00:56,230 --> 00:01:04,840 The logic of an Israeli obsession came out with Stanford University pressing 20 09, and his latest book, 11 00:01:04,840 --> 00:01:15,550 which is the topic of the talk today, is intoxicating Zion, a social history of hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel. 12 00:01:15,550 --> 00:01:19,930 And the title of his stock today is the social life of hashish in monetary policy and in Israel. 13 00:01:19,930 --> 00:01:24,970 A global history, I think is so much for joining this seminar. 14 00:01:24,970 --> 00:01:31,780 Thank you, Yaakov, for this very generous introduction and my my. 15 00:01:31,780 --> 00:01:36,890 The only thing which is a bit regretful is that I couldn't make it best. 16 00:01:36,890 --> 00:01:46,310 Thank God there is Zoom, although I'm sure that most of us who have been teaching and using it in the past two years, I've grown quite tired of it. 17 00:01:46,310 --> 00:01:52,670 But I'll try to make the best of it. I'm going to share a PowerPoint presentation. 18 00:01:52,670 --> 00:01:58,070 Please let me. Are you seeing it? Do you see it? 19 00:01:58,070 --> 00:02:03,050 Yes, working against it. OK. 20 00:02:03,050 --> 00:02:08,960 So my can you hear me well? 21 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:15,980 So everything is fantastic. OK, the social life of cannabis or hashish in Palestine, Israel a global history. 22 00:02:15,980 --> 00:02:30,230 So my presentation here is based, as Yaakov just mentioned, is based on my book Intoxicating Zion Social History, 23 00:02:30,230 --> 00:02:38,420 Obfuscation, Mandatory Palestine and Israel, which was published earlier this year with Stanford University Press. 24 00:02:38,420 --> 00:02:49,790 The the overall study is concerned with the previously untold social history of hashish in Palestine, 25 00:02:49,790 --> 00:02:54,830 Israel, the drug which is made from the cannabis resin. 26 00:02:54,830 --> 00:03:04,880 And my story begins in the 1920s, the mandatory period in Palestine and in the Levant in general, 27 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:15,500 which coincided with the criminalisation of cannabis and other drugs in the international arena. 28 00:03:15,500 --> 00:03:31,520 And the story ends in nineteen sixty seven, specifically with the 1967 war, which, together with other local and global trends and circumstances, 29 00:03:31,520 --> 00:03:43,310 dramatically transformed patterns of hashish policy and drug culture in the Levant region for years to come. 30 00:03:43,310 --> 00:03:57,250 It is. A transnational, perhaps even global study that examines the transition from mandatory Palestine to the State of Israel in the 1950s and the 31 00:03:57,250 --> 00:04:09,340 1960s through the perspective of hashish cannabis as an illicit commodity that is smuggled across borders that is traded, 32 00:04:09,340 --> 00:04:21,460 consumed, regulated and endlessly debated, and as a screen on which human beings project their class, 33 00:04:21,460 --> 00:04:27,400 ethnic [INAUDIBLE] racial and gender desires and excited. 34 00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:33,370 So just to give a short introduction starting in the 1990s. 35 00:04:33,370 --> 00:04:43,270 Trained historians began to forge what historian Paul Guttenberg termed the new drug history. 36 00:04:43,270 --> 00:04:58,660 So until that point in time, academic interest in criminalised drugs was largely limited to those in the biomedical or legal criminological fields. 37 00:04:58,660 --> 00:05:07,030 So when historians began to demonstrate an interest in the subject, they mobilised the tools of their profession. 38 00:05:07,030 --> 00:05:16,900 They delved into previously untapped archives and analysed a wide array of sources using cross-disciplinary, 39 00:05:16,900 --> 00:05:24,250 cultural and sociological methods in order to understand such things as the 40 00:05:24,250 --> 00:05:31,030 modern origins of a variety of intoxicants that have rich and complex social, 41 00:05:31,030 --> 00:05:37,270 cultural, economic and political histories. In the process, 42 00:05:37,270 --> 00:05:43,270 they have shed light on an immense and fascinating field of study that includes new 43 00:05:43,270 --> 00:05:52,510 understandings of the political and cultural context within which substances became drugs. 44 00:05:52,510 --> 00:05:59,680 The underworld of users and traffickers, the complex role of race, 45 00:05:59,680 --> 00:06:06,220 gender and class in the construction of addiction and the place of colonialism and 46 00:06:06,220 --> 00:06:14,530 nation building projects in dispersing drug use and enforcing drug restrictions. 47 00:06:14,530 --> 00:06:18,150 Historical research on these topics has offered. 48 00:06:18,150 --> 00:06:32,340 Exciting observations about a variety of societies in the Americas and Europe, in Asia and Africa, and perhaps more excitingly, at least to my mind. 49 00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:42,180 These studies also demonstrate the links between criminalised drugs and broader political, social and economic histories. 50 00:06:42,180 --> 00:06:49,160 So as of late? There has been, I would say, a trickle of monographs, 51 00:06:49,160 --> 00:06:57,260 articles and dissertations on the history of drugs in the pre-modern early modern and modern Middle East, 52 00:06:57,260 --> 00:07:06,870 specifically Egypt, Morocco, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, Lebanon and Iran. 53 00:07:06,870 --> 00:07:19,410 With regard to Palestine, Israel specifically, no historical study of drugs in Palestine has ever been undertaken, 54 00:07:19,410 --> 00:07:25,860 and no academic attention has been paid to the links between criminalised drugs and broader 55 00:07:25,860 --> 00:07:31,260 historical issues in the State of Israel from its establishment until the present, 56 00:07:31,260 --> 00:07:44,250 intoxicating Zion is the first study that addresses these the corner, and it focuses on cannabis, which was and remains the main criminalised, 57 00:07:44,250 --> 00:07:52,320 mind altering substance that circulated in the Levant in the region's most popular recreational drug. 58 00:07:52,320 --> 00:08:07,560 So in my talk now, I would like to discuss three interrelated aspects of the social history of hashish in Mandatory Palestine in the State of Israel. 59 00:08:07,560 --> 00:08:13,240 The first is hashish commodity chains. 60 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:19,880 And the movement of hashish traffickers across the Levant region, including Palestine. 61 00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:37,650 The second is the evolution of hashish culture in mandatory Palestine, and the third is the attitude of Jews in pre and post 1948. 62 00:08:37,650 --> 00:08:42,240 Periods to cannabis and cannabis intoxication in the process, 63 00:08:42,240 --> 00:08:53,830 what I hope would come through is the porous nature of the Levant states and the interdependence between them. 64 00:08:53,830 --> 00:09:01,510 Not only in matters relating to live in time, culture and political horizons, 65 00:09:01,510 --> 00:09:13,120 which have been sufficiently addressed in previous scholarship, but also in matters pertaining to criminal activity and leisure culture. 66 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:26,670 So let us begin. Contrary to 19th and 20th century Orientalist discourses, she's consumption in late Ottoman Palestine. 67 00:09:26,670 --> 00:09:38,930 Appears to have been very negligible. It is indeed likely that hashish was consumed in Palestine in moderation. 68 00:09:38,930 --> 00:09:49,870 In much of the same way that opium was used in 19th century England without any fatal loss of control as it were. 69 00:09:49,870 --> 00:10:00,220 This, however, began to change with the establishment of unprecedented global controls over opiates before and during the interwar years. 70 00:10:00,220 --> 00:10:08,230 And over cannabis in the 1925 League of Nations 2nd Opium Convention. 71 00:10:08,230 --> 00:10:21,010 So before the emergence of these incipient drug drug control regimes, Greece was the main supply source of Egypt, of hashish to Egypt. 72 00:10:21,010 --> 00:10:33,460 Egypt being one of the having one of the longest histories with hashish in the Arab Middle East, the history that dates back to the Middle Ages. 73 00:10:33,460 --> 00:10:45,280 Indeed, as Philip Robins suggests, and here I quote, I hope verbatim with a mix of affection and mild contempt to this day, 74 00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:52,990 Egyptians are widely referred to as the hashish scene that is hashish users across the rest of the Arab world. 75 00:10:52,990 --> 00:11:01,100 In recognition of their fondness for their drug. At any rate, without supplies from Greece. 76 00:11:01,100 --> 00:11:09,220 Egyptians turned for the first time to hashish supplies from Lebanon and Syria. 77 00:11:09,220 --> 00:11:22,980 As a result, Palestine emerged as a new junction and a transit route in the Levant three Strait that extended between Lebanon in the North. 78 00:11:22,980 --> 00:11:26,040 And Egypt in the South, in short, 79 00:11:26,040 --> 00:11:44,150 Palestine's geographical position ensured that vast quantities of illicit hashish supplies would be smuggled across its territory and route to Egypt. 80 00:11:44,150 --> 00:11:51,380 How should I proceed? OK? According to our upward ride, I had the ride. 81 00:11:51,380 --> 00:11:55,340 It is classic the social life of things, 82 00:11:55,340 --> 00:12:04,970 and I quote the diversion of commodities from specific from specified pets is always a sign of creativity or crisis. 83 00:12:04,970 --> 00:12:15,590 Whether static or economic, so arguably the diversion of hashish smuggling routes from Egypt to Greece. 84 00:12:15,590 --> 00:12:24,140 Sorry, the the the the diversion of hashish smuggling routes to Egypt from Greece to the Levant was a 85 00:12:24,140 --> 00:12:32,990 sign of crisis for the British in Palestine and a sign of creativity for hashish traffickers 86 00:12:32,990 --> 00:12:40,130 lacking the infrastructure to build the economic capacity and sometimes the willpower to enforce 87 00:12:40,130 --> 00:12:46,880 the ban on the drug trade border crossing illicit hashish flows demonstrated to the British, 88 00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:53,370 the porous and perforated nature of the mandate states border. 89 00:12:53,370 --> 00:12:59,490 And by extension, they also question the very legitimacy of these states. 90 00:12:59,490 --> 00:13:01,080 Let me just give you one example. 91 00:13:01,080 --> 00:13:12,810 Claude Scudamore Jarvis, a British major who served in the English Army Egypt and Palestine, conveyed this sentiment most succinctly, 92 00:13:12,810 --> 00:13:20,070 as such as as as follows he complaining about the menace of hashish traffickers in the Levant region. 93 00:13:20,070 --> 00:13:30,660 He mused as she smuggling is rather like an attempt to dam a stream with the clay barrier directly, you have plug up one hole. 94 00:13:30,660 --> 00:13:35,040 The water comes through in another place. 95 00:13:35,040 --> 00:13:41,550 On the other hand, as I mentioned, the diversion of smuggling routes to the Levant compound or, I read and say, 96 00:13:41,550 --> 00:13:51,240 inspired hashish traffickers to come up with the most creative and ingenious rouses and 97 00:13:51,240 --> 00:14:00,310 subterfuges in order to transport their cargoes safely from Lebanon to Egypt safely. 98 00:14:00,310 --> 00:14:07,510 Now, to be remembered that the interwar period presented these hashish traffickers with serious challenges, 99 00:14:07,510 --> 00:14:13,830 firstly, incipient, international and local control efforts had criminalised them. 100 00:14:13,830 --> 00:14:23,640 But perhaps even most more importantly, as people who were previously that is the late Ottoman period crossed territories in relative ease, 101 00:14:23,640 --> 00:14:30,450 the creation of good advanced mandate states with customs and police outposts created along these states, 102 00:14:30,450 --> 00:14:41,940 borders restricted their movement and they could no longer expect their now illicit cargoes to go undetected. 103 00:14:41,940 --> 00:14:47,100 These, in a special circumstances, required our traffickers. 104 00:14:47,100 --> 00:14:54,750 I mean, I'm sorry, I should have said that before, because when I say traffickers, I mean ordinary Palestinians. 105 00:14:54,750 --> 00:15:01,620 Arabs from adjacent countries. International gangs from different countries in Europe and the Middle East. 106 00:15:01,620 --> 00:15:11,730 British soldiers stationed in Palestine, Egypt. And significantly also Zionist paramilitary organisations that fought the British. 107 00:15:11,730 --> 00:15:20,730 So these circumstances of erecting borders in the Levant states required all of these 108 00:15:20,730 --> 00:15:29,820 people to come up with a variety of ploys and deceptions to transport their cargos safely. 109 00:15:29,820 --> 00:15:39,420 So smugglers conceal hashish in shoes with thick, hollow soles and heels inside wheels in hollow, 110 00:15:39,420 --> 00:15:50,790 a slab of chocolate on the bodies of men falsely dressed as monks and priests in stairwells and secret compartments built in automobiles, 111 00:15:50,790 --> 00:15:57,690 buses, lorries and trains in false bottom suitcases in musical instruments. 112 00:15:57,690 --> 00:16:02,220 And the list goes on and on and on and on. 113 00:16:02,220 --> 00:16:06,750 But significantly, in these ploys for free, 114 00:16:06,750 --> 00:16:15,270 smugglers took advantage and were also empowered by what historian Paul Mecca described in the context 115 00:16:15,270 --> 00:16:22,650 of criminal activity in interwar Europe as world shrinking technologies or speed technologies. 116 00:16:22,650 --> 00:16:34,890 Part of the long 19th century art smugglers used cars, ships and even aeroplanes to ferry their illicit merchandise across borders. 117 00:16:34,890 --> 00:16:49,770 But significantly, these these were employed alongside more traditional transportation means, such as camels and other beasts or burden smugglers. 118 00:16:49,770 --> 00:16:58,290 For instance, wood glue hashish cylinders underneath the hair of camels, humps or alternate Leon. 119 00:16:58,290 --> 00:17:06,870 Please don't try this at home. They would force these hashish cylinders down their throats. 120 00:17:06,870 --> 00:17:17,880 Once crossing the border into Egypt, the unfortunate beasts would then be slaughtered and the valuable cargo recovered. 121 00:17:17,880 --> 00:17:32,250 Another illuminating example of such ploys is transmitted in the 1994 novella Majima a hour bundle of secrets by the celebrated Lebanese novelist, 122 00:17:32,250 --> 00:17:42,450 playwright and critic. Elias, who was one of the novellas protagonist, is a certain Ulsterman, 123 00:17:42,450 --> 00:17:52,980 a convict in a Beirut prison in the 1940s who's awaiting his verdict execution by hanging for the killing of two prostitutes. 124 00:17:52,980 --> 00:18:02,800 Listens. It tend to. Two stories disclosed to him by Ahmad and Munir is to cellmates. 125 00:18:02,800 --> 00:18:09,340 He's fascinated by their tales about the exploits of a certain Sami Al. 126 00:18:09,340 --> 00:18:12,340 Try not to be confused, of course, with the author Elias, 127 00:18:12,340 --> 00:18:21,040 who who is described in novella and I quote as one of the most dangerous smugglers in the world of drugs. 128 00:18:21,040 --> 00:18:26,380 AK A The boss wondered the following Kabbage story, 129 00:18:26,380 --> 00:18:35,410 which illustrates the boss's ingenuity and his quote Amazing ability to escape police networks that pursued him. 130 00:18:35,410 --> 00:18:39,820 Impressed Hunter the most and steered up his emotions. 131 00:18:39,820 --> 00:18:50,390 And the story goes like this. The boss instructed us that is Ahmad Amir to saw cabbage. 132 00:18:50,390 --> 00:18:57,440 We thought he lost his mind. He said obtain a plot and land and saw cabbage. 133 00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:02,060 We said bus, we came here to eat bread. We're not farmers, he said. 134 00:19:02,060 --> 00:19:09,020 Stop cabbages and the rest is on me. So we saw, you know, when the cabbage starts growing. 135 00:19:09,020 --> 00:19:15,710 They explained to to find out a solution. When the cabbage starts growing, it's open. 136 00:19:15,710 --> 00:19:25,910 We kept watering the cabbage looking around us, not understanding. We were instructed to see to it that the cabbage would open one moonless night. 137 00:19:25,910 --> 00:19:33,380 The bus arrived with 10 young men equipped with magnum revolvers and tent trucks loaded with hashish. 138 00:19:33,380 --> 00:19:37,700 We took the hashish and planted it inside the open cabbages. 139 00:19:37,700 --> 00:19:42,950 We worked all night, drahi Sammy insisted on rolling up his sleeves. 140 00:19:42,950 --> 00:19:51,500 This wasn't a smuggling operation. It was a hobby. He planted hashish in between the cabbage leaves as though he were a physician, 141 00:19:51,500 --> 00:19:57,830 giving giving medicine to a patient after 10 days, which lasted like 100 years. 142 00:19:57,830 --> 00:20:04,520 The cabbage leaves had sharp, covering the hashish and swallowing it up, I swear to Allah. 143 00:20:04,520 --> 00:20:12,800 After that, we collected the cabbage and sent it in cargo planes to Egypt under the pretence of a cabbage export deal. 144 00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:18,500 So to be clear, the novella is primarily a work of fiction. 145 00:20:18,500 --> 00:20:30,230 However, like most fictional, work it or it also echoes a credible historical reality and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of the Levant 146 00:20:30,230 --> 00:20:40,430 hashish trade stretching from Lebanon to Egypt with Palestine in between provided a bonanza for many hashish traffickers, 147 00:20:40,430 --> 00:20:49,640 Lebanese and many others as well. The credibility of this tale is reinforced by the fact that Sami, a hoodie, 148 00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:58,280 was indeed a real Lebanese drug baron, both during the interwar period in and afterwards in 1952. 149 00:20:58,280 --> 00:21:07,850 He was described and I quote as the most powerful and victorious drug trafficker in Lebanon's young history at an early stage of his career. 150 00:21:07,850 --> 00:21:15,500 He indeed may have run hashish trafficking operations from Lebanon to Egypt, along the lines recounted in bundle of secrets. 151 00:21:15,500 --> 00:21:25,760 As a matter of fact, as I found out later in 1947 and who was imprisoned in Egypt for three years after attempting to smuggle two hundred and sixty 152 00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:36,050 six kilograms of hashish and 47 kilograms of opium on board of an aeroplane which stopped over in Palestine for refuelling. 153 00:21:36,050 --> 00:21:48,500 Anyway, it was under these circumstances. In 1936, Joseph Broadhurst, a senior officer at the Palestine Police, recalled with exasperation, 154 00:21:48,500 --> 00:21:58,100 and I quote the immensity of the smuggling problem that faced the Palestine police and the so numerous what he called smugglers of originality, 155 00:21:58,100 --> 00:22:03,230 who, by virtue of having been born with great natural cunning, 156 00:22:03,230 --> 00:22:10,970 had played so many tricks on the police and gave us endless trouble, Broadhurst went on to say. 157 00:22:10,970 --> 00:22:20,270 And I quote again by every manner of the trick of trick hashish is smuggled over the Syrian Palestinian frontier through Palestine, 158 00:22:20,270 --> 00:22:28,130 across the burning Sinai desert, over a lonely part of the Suez Canal and up to Cairo. 159 00:22:28,130 --> 00:22:35,300 So let me move to the second theme of my lecture the the emergence of Hashish Culture in Palestine, 160 00:22:35,300 --> 00:22:42,290 which, as you will see, is closely related to my previous discussion. 161 00:22:42,290 --> 00:22:44,930 And I'll start with Sebastian Conradt, 162 00:22:44,930 --> 00:22:53,720 who in his book What Is History Suggests follows and I quote the history of commodities traces particular items, 163 00:22:53,720 --> 00:23:01,130 most famously sugar in the classic study by Sidney Mintz, but also cotton sold porcelain and glass. 164 00:23:01,130 --> 00:23:07,850 And I may add hashish as well across distinct geographies and across time. 165 00:23:07,850 --> 00:23:15,020 These are studies of interconnectedness that link sites of production and consumption 166 00:23:15,020 --> 00:23:21,950 in different locations and show how these commodities impacted individual households, 167 00:23:21,950 --> 00:23:27,800 as well as larger groups and social formations accordingly. 168 00:23:27,800 --> 00:23:32,980 What I would like to argue now is that the novel links. 169 00:23:32,980 --> 00:23:38,170 That develop between the sides of hashish production in Lebanon, 170 00:23:38,170 --> 00:23:44,860 on the one hand and the sides of hashish consumption in Egypt on the other led 171 00:23:44,860 --> 00:23:52,750 to a dramatic change in the leisure culture practises of Palestinian Arabs, 172 00:23:52,750 --> 00:24:02,590 while Palestinian Arabs, as I previously mentioned, were not known to be avid hashish consumers in the late Ottoman period. 173 00:24:02,590 --> 00:24:12,310 The emergence of Palestine as the largest hashish depot in the Levant during the interwar years led to a surge in hashish, 174 00:24:12,310 --> 00:24:20,970 smoking, smoking amongst them. My sources provide ample evidence that by the early 1930s, 175 00:24:20,970 --> 00:24:30,390 hashish smoking spread throughout Palestine's urban centres of Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem, A. Nablus, 176 00:24:30,390 --> 00:24:47,950 Tiberius, Ramallah leader and even convene the first Hebrew city, and many persons could be seen wandering the streets of these towns utterly stunned. 177 00:24:47,950 --> 00:24:52,540 Venues of hashish consumption were primarily of two kinds. 178 00:24:52,540 --> 00:25:03,490 Makeshift hashish dens, which the Hebrew and Arabic press at the time described as hashish, smoking clubs and coffee houses. 179 00:25:03,490 --> 00:25:13,810 What went on inside these discussions with contemporary Jewish observer describe what transpired in one such club, 180 00:25:13,810 --> 00:25:18,190 which was located in an Arab quarter of Haifa's lower city. 181 00:25:18,190 --> 00:25:23,950 And he describes it as follows Various people were either sitting down or lying down. 182 00:25:23,950 --> 00:25:30,070 Others were smoking glucans, water pipes and the rest were lying motions. 183 00:25:30,070 --> 00:25:33,850 The motionless as if dead, their lips mumbled. 184 00:25:33,850 --> 00:25:41,050 Meaningless, meaningless, broken words and syllables. Their face glowing with silly smiles. 185 00:25:41,050 --> 00:25:44,320 Within two hours, all the guests were fast asleep. 186 00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:53,830 The only sounds were fleeting words and unintelligible roars coming out of the sleeping man's mouths. 187 00:25:53,830 --> 00:26:00,550 Be that as it made, decisions were not the main main venues of hashish. 188 00:26:00,550 --> 00:26:10,600 Smoking in Asia or Palestine, like elsewhere in the Arab, Ottoman, Turkish and Iranian Middle East coffeehouses were now. 189 00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:21,790 This is not surprising. A Middle Eastern invention coffeehouse first appeared in the Ottoman Empire and in Safavi Iran in the 16th and 17th century. 190 00:26:21,790 --> 00:26:31,870 Soon, emerging oops. Sorry, so emerging as as urban venues where new kinds of sociability and new patrons 191 00:26:31,870 --> 00:26:39,160 of public conviviality came into play from the perspective of drug history. 192 00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:46,870 One of the reasons why these institutions reached such such a paramount social position, I argue, 193 00:26:46,870 --> 00:26:56,560 is that they became a point of convergence of consumable drugs such as coffee, tobacco, opium and cannabis. 194 00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:03,640 The combination of all of these enabled coffeehouses patrons to sip coffee leisurely, 195 00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:11,530 but also pursuing collective pleasure in ingesting opium and hashish and beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries, 196 00:27:11,530 --> 00:27:16,750 also smoking each of them mixed with tobacco. 197 00:27:16,750 --> 00:27:26,110 Now it is a known fact amongst historians of Palestine that coffeehouse culture had expanded dramatically in the interwar years. 198 00:27:26,110 --> 00:27:31,840 It is my contention that this expansion may have led may have been linked to the 199 00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:37,390 emergence of Palestine as a major depot of hashish commodities in the Levant. 200 00:27:37,390 --> 00:27:46,840 As I discussed earlier. Indeed, it may not have been a coincidence that the record recreational activities that were soon 201 00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:54,070 hosted in coffeehouses in Palestine included in addition to two small scale gambling. 202 00:27:54,070 --> 00:28:00,400 The performance of music and prostitution. It also included the sale and consumption of tobacco and hashish. 203 00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:08,260 Now it is certain that hashish serving cafes were a thorn in the side of the British authorities in Palestine. 204 00:28:08,260 --> 00:28:17,260 And that is why café patrons and café owners were regularly arrested due to hashish smoking and or hashish possession 205 00:28:17,260 --> 00:28:26,800 and wine from the 1930s onward that police conducted repeated and coordinated raids on cafes in various towns. 206 00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:31,750 At the same time that these hashish smoking venues concern, 207 00:28:31,750 --> 00:28:38,380 the British authorities can also be gleaned from the dangerous from the Dangerous 208 00:28:38,380 --> 00:28:44,590 Drugs Ordinance issued by the Government of Palestine in nineteen thirty six. 209 00:28:44,590 --> 00:28:57,670 Article 14 of the ordinance, which did not appear in the previous British ordinance is of 1925 1928 to 1932, 210 00:28:57,670 --> 00:29:08,690 was designed to contend with the situation previously not known right as it shows on the on the upper red right side of the slide. 211 00:29:08,690 --> 00:29:16,570 The offences in connexion with premises used for sale or smoking or hashish, or, in other words, 212 00:29:16,570 --> 00:29:25,330 recreational fishers, smoking in cafes and other spaces designated for the same illicit activity. 213 00:29:25,330 --> 00:29:32,190 Conspicuously missing from drug smoking activities were Palestine's Jews. 214 00:29:32,190 --> 00:29:40,560 Was number had risen from fifty six thousand in the wake of World War one to around six hundred and fifty thousand. 215 00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:49,200 Toward the end of the mandate period, first, of course, there were Zionist values to be considered as intoxication. 216 00:29:49,200 --> 00:30:01,050 To put it mildly, did not sit well with a movement, then rising the virtues of abstemious frontier pioneering and Hebrew labour. 217 00:30:01,050 --> 00:30:10,320 Now augmenting Jewish aversion to hashish was fear of over assimilation into the area to into the Orient. 218 00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:20,700 Now I see over assimilation because Zionist attitudes towards the Orient, as I'm sure we all know, were never free of tensions and contradictions. 219 00:30:20,700 --> 00:30:28,430 Alongside the rejection of the Orient Pre 1948 Zionists were attracted to, for instance. 220 00:30:28,430 --> 00:30:37,460 They were fascinated with the image of the Bedouin, its noble warriors, and sought to emulate them, 221 00:30:37,460 --> 00:30:48,020 and they contemplated the life of Arab peasants Philippine as a window onto a biblical times shortly before 1948. 222 00:30:48,020 --> 00:30:58,580 Many Zionists viewed the Orient not just as an enemy territory, but also as a token space of possibility for Jewish renewal. 223 00:30:58,580 --> 00:31:07,010 The same goes incidentally for more mundane concerns, such as culinary preferences, right? 224 00:31:07,010 --> 00:31:14,450 As anthropologist Duff Mekere vividly demonstrated, Jewish Zionist settlers discovered clueless, 225 00:31:14,450 --> 00:31:23,660 the popular leavened time dip and spread in the late in the late mandate period and began to consume it because they 226 00:31:23,660 --> 00:31:33,050 believed it to be part of a repertoire of Arab food whose effect was the consolidation of an authentic tied to the land. 227 00:31:33,050 --> 00:31:43,280 Moreover, and since the late 1950s, hummus was gradually nationalised by Israeli Jews and its Arab identity 228 00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:49,820 suppressed with Jewish immigrants from the Middle East acting as intermediaries. 229 00:31:49,820 --> 00:31:59,510 However. Or the Jews of Palestine are she's smoking was a wholly different matter. 230 00:31:59,510 --> 00:32:11,990 It amounted to an extreme act of border crossing between Jews and Arabs and one that would take them far too down the road of Oriental ization, 231 00:32:11,990 --> 00:32:23,150 thereby exposing Jewish bodies most perilously to the temptation of an alien space, virtually turning them into Arabs. 232 00:32:23,150 --> 00:32:31,140 By the way, much of the same way that English opium smokers in the late 19th century were deemed as being Orientalist. 233 00:32:31,140 --> 00:32:35,690 But I don't have time to go into that right now. 234 00:32:35,690 --> 00:32:44,350 Be that, as me historian or a free lunch has recently shown that during the mandatory period, so-called contraction. 235 00:32:44,350 --> 00:32:51,340 Of sodomy by Jews and particularly by European Zionists was described as an especially 236 00:32:51,340 --> 00:32:59,220 severe symptom of ideological laxity and the harming effect of the Arab environment. 237 00:32:59,220 --> 00:33:02,280 I argue that perhaps second only to sodomy, hashish, 238 00:33:02,280 --> 00:33:12,750 smoking in mandatory Palestine was seen as a form of backwardness and barbarism linked to realities of living amongst Arabs in the Middle East. 239 00:33:12,750 --> 00:33:14,760 That is why such venues as hashish dens, 240 00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:27,090 coffee houses and brothels in which Arabs and Jews could co-mingle and assimilate while sharing a fish filled hookah were construed as a national 241 00:33:27,090 --> 00:33:40,410 political threat that these venues were also signal out is as disreputable places of sexual and homosexual encounters is not coincidental. 242 00:33:40,410 --> 00:33:50,370 Both represented an oriental advice not to be transgress to further dissuade. 243 00:33:50,370 --> 00:33:56,660 Juice from joining Eric's. To become hashish smokers, 244 00:33:56,660 --> 00:34:09,260 Zionist public discourse relied on interwar quality colonial knowledge with a view to asserting that cannabis was specifically oriental substance. 245 00:34:09,260 --> 00:34:17,030 It's special kinds of situation being racially compatible with the mentality of Arabs, 246 00:34:17,030 --> 00:34:26,270 and there's only this knowledge it is important to stress arrived in Palestine from three main sites. 247 00:34:26,270 --> 00:34:30,020 As I show in my book India and Egypt, 248 00:34:30,020 --> 00:34:40,430 where the British had contended with cannabis oriented cultures long before arriving in Palestine and from the Geneva based League of Nations, 249 00:34:40,430 --> 00:34:52,220 which was one of the of the forums in which colonial knowledge about cannabis was produced and exchanged within and across imperial centres. 250 00:34:52,220 --> 00:35:02,480 Take, for example, Dr. Zul Book Inspector of pharmacies in Tunis hospitals and a member of the Subcommittee on Cannabis Cannabis, 251 00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:05,480 appointed by the League of Nations in 1934, 252 00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:14,750 who proclaimed and I quote repeated prohibition from imams edicts and penalties from the emirs and Sultans. 253 00:35:14,750 --> 00:35:18,300 All were in vain. Hashish triumphed and triumph. 254 00:35:18,300 --> 00:35:28,310 Still, for it is precisely owing to their special mentality that Muslims became and remain devotees of the drug. 255 00:35:28,310 --> 00:35:32,930 On another occasion, the same expert also asserted, 256 00:35:32,930 --> 00:35:41,570 and this is important that cannabis for Orientals increased sexual arousal and caused violent frenzy. 257 00:35:41,570 --> 00:35:52,890 On the one hand and indolence and managerial ability on the other, he concluded by saying that Europeans in North Africa. 258 00:35:52,890 --> 00:36:02,340 We've had the fencing to try hashish did not experience these particular effects because cannabis intoxication was 259 00:36:02,340 --> 00:36:16,770 quote a question of racial sensibility or a question of race receptiveness right there by rationalising the substance. 260 00:36:16,770 --> 00:36:22,320 What I'd like to show you, and very briefly, is that into war zones discourse. 261 00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:29,190 Reproduce these ideas and at the same time, adapted them to local circumstances. 262 00:36:29,190 --> 00:36:37,290 A 1938 commentary in the daily newspapers defied the mouthpiece of the mainstream Zionism's labour movement and the 263 00:36:37,290 --> 00:36:44,430 most popular Hebrew language newspaper and talk honestly should should demonstrate this to demonstrate this point. 264 00:36:44,430 --> 00:36:52,410 The commentary was the commentary was published during the 1936 1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine, 265 00:36:52,410 --> 00:37:00,630 which is rightly considered the most significant anti-colonial insurgency in the Arab East during the interwar period. 266 00:37:00,630 --> 00:37:11,820 The writer's primary objective, however, was to repudiate the revolt by reducing its causes and motivations to one overarching cause. 267 00:37:11,820 --> 00:37:21,180 And I quote oriental intoxication or poisoning, which is carried out, which is carried on for generations and on a massive, 268 00:37:21,180 --> 00:37:30,450 massive scale by means of oriental drugs by which he meant hashish in order to substantiate this point. 269 00:37:30,450 --> 00:37:36,470 The writer begins by enumerating the effects of hashish intoxication. 270 00:37:36,470 --> 00:37:46,160 Which, as you will see, echoes the arguments of you care of the of the League of Nations first. 271 00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:56,690 The writer claims hashish and I quote, begets powerful erotic feelings and generally speaking, it increases sexual drives and sexual activity. 272 00:37:56,690 --> 00:38:02,930 Second, as the writer goes on to say hashish induces violent insanity, 273 00:38:02,930 --> 00:38:10,370 it begets angry behaviour which can easily reach brutal and fearless aggression. 274 00:38:10,370 --> 00:38:19,070 The hashish user, he claims, is easily given to boiling rage or homicide with remarkable, cold hearted. 275 00:38:19,070 --> 00:38:31,280 That is because hashish quote starts, his mind weakens or destroys his recognition of reality and neutralises his natural and social inhibitions. 276 00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:38,340 By the way. Compare this. 277 00:38:38,340 --> 00:38:46,900 To the moral panic of reefer madness and killer weed in the U.S. at the very same time. 278 00:38:46,900 --> 00:38:54,280 Which demonstrates the global reverberations of these attitudes. 279 00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:59,680 So let me have much more time, do I have? We'll have some more time. 280 00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:10,600 You have plenty have got fantastic. OK, good. So I'll move on quickly to the Post 1948 era and discuss Jewish attitudes to hashish 281 00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:14,440 and end the social history of hashish in the first two decades of the State of Israel. 282 00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:23,670 Now what? I would like to argue that these attitudes that I've just described to you. 283 00:39:23,670 --> 00:39:32,820 In the post, 1948 era represented a continuation of pre 1948 notions of the grass. 284 00:39:32,820 --> 00:39:41,070 But responding to new demographic and political realities and when I say new demographic and political realities, 285 00:39:41,070 --> 00:39:46,740 I am specifically referring to the explosion and flight of the Arab population of Palestine 286 00:39:46,740 --> 00:39:52,230 on the one hand and the country's recognition by Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, 287 00:39:52,230 --> 00:39:58,620 collectively known as Mr. Rahim. On the other hand, some of these Jews, 288 00:39:58,620 --> 00:40:07,830 not too many actually have used cash in their countries of origin and had brought the habit with them to Israel, 289 00:40:07,830 --> 00:40:11,700 other first and second generation immigrants from Muslim countries. 290 00:40:11,700 --> 00:40:21,910 We're not hashish smokers, but had picked up on the habit in Israel owing to their socio economic and ethnic marginalisation. 291 00:40:21,910 --> 00:40:28,960 Many of these immigrants were settled in transit camps in Hebrew and singular Marlborough, 292 00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:40,420 which sprang up across the country with some transforming into development towns in the 1960s, as their name implies. 293 00:40:40,420 --> 00:40:45,400 These settlements were originally perceived as temporary places of dwelling. 294 00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:49,510 Yet many Jews remained there for much longer periods. 295 00:40:49,510 --> 00:41:01,360 Settlement between one to seven years, they suffered from poor sanitary and hygiene conditions, poverty and neglect, 296 00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:09,220 as well as ill treatment and discrimination by the state authorities so beset by these adversities. 297 00:41:09,220 --> 00:41:14,560 Transit camps looted role with the centres of drug wheeling and dealing and substance abuse. 298 00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:24,460 And this way hashish became the Jewish problem where formerly it was considered largely an Arab world. 299 00:41:24,460 --> 00:41:33,000 It is crucial to stress that the she smoking in Israel remained limited to no more than a few thousand members of the 300 00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:42,400 Mizrahi underclass and did not make inroads into the dominant Ashkenazi middle classes until after the 1967 war. 301 00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:55,510 Yet there were plenty of moral entrepreneurs for whom hashish consuming this regime endangered the very western foundations of the Jewish state, 302 00:41:55,510 --> 00:42:05,340 bringing it to the brink of becoming a full fledged Arab or Levantine space. 303 00:42:05,340 --> 00:42:11,910 The primary terms that expressed these fears were contagion and a plague, 304 00:42:11,910 --> 00:42:19,410 as though she smoking was a disease that might spread to the enlightened European. 305 00:42:19,410 --> 00:42:25,140 Not to say white sectors of Jewish society in Israel. 306 00:42:25,140 --> 00:42:35,310 These metaphors are reminiscent. Of older continental anxieties of reverse colonialism, 307 00:42:35,310 --> 00:42:47,880 which spoke of an insidious invasion of Orientals and oriental drugs disrupting metropolitan life by debilitating and immobilising citizens. 308 00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:56,220 Consider, for example, the following ominous warning issued by senior police officer in 1956. 309 00:42:56,220 --> 00:43:01,680 What we have here is a national peril, a terrible peril. 310 00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:13,890 If something is not done to eliminate this terrible plague in ten years time, Israel will become a second Egypt. 311 00:43:13,890 --> 00:43:19,980 How smoking venues were hashish could be shared by Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. 312 00:43:19,980 --> 00:43:21,510 On the one hand, 313 00:43:21,510 --> 00:43:33,570 and between Jews and Arabs on the other were especially signalled out as a threat to the homogeneity come Europe centricity of the national project. 314 00:43:33,570 --> 00:43:41,220 Now that these venues were usually located in Israel's ethnically mixed towns such as Jaffa, Haifa, 315 00:43:41,220 --> 00:43:51,270 Acre, Lod and these towns are basically binational borderlands in which Arabs and Jews live together. 316 00:43:51,270 --> 00:43:59,310 That that these venues were actually located there heightened the threat of mixing this issue, 317 00:43:59,310 --> 00:44:11,130 issuing from the mainstream public discourse, test these hashish smoking spaces into the realms of theoretical alternative. 318 00:44:11,130 --> 00:44:16,680 Patrons of these venues were described as, and I quote from a collection of references. 319 00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:20,100 They were described as worn out and filthy refracts. 320 00:44:20,100 --> 00:44:31,350 The most revolting figures ever seen a mixture of malignant diseases, the generation and the underworld, and the prey for bugs and lice. 321 00:44:31,350 --> 00:44:40,020 The interiors of these establishments were also said to be filthy, foul smelling, depressing and in a state of utterly disrepair. 322 00:44:40,020 --> 00:44:48,870 And here again, a collection of of of utterances about this, about about these places. 323 00:44:48,870 --> 00:44:51,750 Everything in this place is dirty and sticky. 324 00:44:51,750 --> 00:45:00,870 The furniture, the glasses, the cups, the thick hair air hanging in space, or most of these cafes are very dirty. 325 00:45:00,870 --> 00:45:09,030 They are located in ancient, ramshackle one-story buildings in quarters of tin shacks, in pitiable wooden shacks, 326 00:45:09,030 --> 00:45:17,430 in plaster lost buildings whose entrance yawns before you, bringing to mind toothless old women. 327 00:45:17,430 --> 00:45:29,600 The stench is discernible in every corner. The smell of beasts manure is truly nosy. 328 00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:35,300 OK. Briefly turning the gaze to the voices of the restructuring themselves. 329 00:45:35,300 --> 00:45:37,790 And I don't have time to go into it. 330 00:45:37,790 --> 00:45:47,840 It is interesting to note that they oftentimes assimilated these negative derogatory notions of hashish and hashish smoking. 331 00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:53,100 The case in point, and again, I don't have time to go into it right now. 332 00:45:53,100 --> 00:45:58,410 A case in point is novelist Shimon Bus. 333 00:45:58,410 --> 00:46:04,140 Now. And of course, I take it that most of you are familiar with him. 334 00:46:04,140 --> 00:46:08,970 So I will keep it short for all of bonuses. 335 00:46:08,970 --> 00:46:18,450 How should I put it vehemently subversive? Mizrahi susceptibilities oftentimes anti-Zionist in nature, his literary works, 336 00:46:18,450 --> 00:46:25,740 such as is his novel The Transit, The Transit Camp, Marlborough, Right. 337 00:46:25,740 --> 00:46:34,380 His literary works also testified to a remarkable, even wholesale integration of Zionist oriented ideas, 338 00:46:34,380 --> 00:46:39,840 racialised and gendered conceptualisation of hashish and hashish addicts. 339 00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:46,110 The same goes, however, for other Mizrahi novelists such as Shlomo Callow, Southern Israel. 340 00:46:46,110 --> 00:46:54,540 Marshall had modified the Beeb Elie Amir, Amnon Shamash to name but a few. 341 00:46:54,540 --> 00:47:02,100 So I shall limit myself saying that this circumstance is consistent with other cases of the colonial 342 00:47:02,100 --> 00:47:09,360 post-COVID world in which the indigenous middle classes have conceptualised hashish in negative terms. 343 00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:21,090 In much of the same way as the recently departed European colonisers had done, so, I come to the conclusion. 344 00:47:21,090 --> 00:47:32,400 Global trends and the occupation of Palestine territories in 19 in the 1967 war joined to prompt a 345 00:47:32,400 --> 00:47:41,790 significant expansion of hashish smoking amongst Israeli Jews that were previously immune to to the habit, 346 00:47:41,790 --> 00:47:53,340 thus bringing down the ethnic, gender and class boundaries that had kept the fees strictly an Arab or Mizrahi or of roughly base. 347 00:47:53,340 --> 00:48:01,200 This process? Which was by no means linear persisted through the 21st century. 348 00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:01,460 Well, 349 00:48:01,460 --> 00:48:16,320 in this circumstance prompted a rather recent publication of an Op-Ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that crowned Israelis as a nation of stoners. 350 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:24,160 So let me just give you a little piece from that op ed about the op it was titled What Really Unites Israel? 351 00:48:24,160 --> 00:48:34,130 Israel's right, left and centre, and it argues as follows A love of pot smoking is shared amongst all populations in Israel. 352 00:48:34,130 --> 00:48:44,440 Hilltop settler youth until I beat radicals, young and old Knesset members and simple folk, city and country people, religious and secular. 353 00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:56,360 Everyone loves. Marijuana and hashish are the largest common denominator in Israeli society, despite the common ideals held by hippies in Israel. 354 00:48:56,360 --> 00:49:05,630 It turns out that one can be a religious fanatic, a human rights trampling racist or a war mongering militarist. 355 00:49:05,630 --> 00:49:12,120 And will be incredibly and still will be incredibly good at rolling joints. 356 00:49:12,120 --> 00:49:16,620 No problem. Hot couldn't be any more common in Israel. 357 00:49:16,620 --> 00:49:27,300 There aren't enough lungs, so admittedly this description of Jewish Israel as a nation of stoners is surely an overstatement. 358 00:49:27,300 --> 00:49:37,750 But a 2017 survey conducted by the Israel Anti-Drug Authority validates the general impression. 359 00:49:37,750 --> 00:49:45,300 Backing breaking it up with hard numbers. The survey found. 360 00:49:45,300 --> 00:49:54,530 A dramatic surge in the adult. A surge in the prevalence of cannabis use by Israelis, 361 00:49:54,530 --> 00:50:03,080 Jews and non-Jews like twenty seven percent of the adult population reported using 362 00:50:03,080 --> 00:50:11,160 cannabis in the past year in comparison to just under nine percent in 2000 and not. 363 00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:21,240 A comparison with surveys conducted in other countries shows that Israel is probably at the top of cannabis use by adult populations, 364 00:50:21,240 --> 00:50:29,080 with Iceland and the US lagging behind at 18 percent and 60 percent, respectively. 365 00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:36,940 So although the normalisation of recreational cannabis use in Israel has been gaining 366 00:50:36,940 --> 00:50:44,620 steam in recent years as old mythologies about the substance are losing their credibility. 367 00:50:44,620 --> 00:50:53,260 Remnants of obsolete oriental fantasies about the substance remain in reconfigured form. 368 00:50:53,260 --> 00:51:03,970 A blatant example of this is a short 33 second video clip prepared by the Israel Anti-Drug Authority 2006, 369 00:51:03,970 --> 00:51:11,650 with which I will conclude designed to dissuade teenagers from using intoxicating drugs, 370 00:51:11,650 --> 00:51:18,340 particularly cannabis, and broadcast on Israel's main public television channel. 371 00:51:18,340 --> 00:51:26,560 The clip was produced in the style of The Daily Times last and will testament videos by Muslim suicide bombers. 372 00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:41,860 It shows a teenage boy holding a bong is a deadly weapon, standing in front of an unsteady camera and reciting the following monologue. 373 00:51:41,860 --> 00:52:00,010 Look. I over Kendall, aged 16 of Ra'anana, bid goodbye today from my parents remittance Cherwell and from my sister Karen, 374 00:52:00,010 --> 00:52:11,590 and I'm going to a party and to the. There's only one way to be truly liberated to get drunk, take drugs and get really stoned. 375 00:52:11,590 --> 00:52:16,360 Don't cry, mom. I'm going to paradise now. 376 00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:24,400 It is easy to see in this short clip echoes of Orientalist fantasies about sheesh taking Muslims, 377 00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:30,860 which are addressed in an early 21st century Islamophobic garb. 378 00:52:30,860 --> 00:52:35,160 At the time of the clips broadcast, and let me remind you that 2006, 379 00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:44,240 so it's the final days of the Second Intifada and at the height of President George W. Bush's global war on terror, 380 00:52:44,240 --> 00:52:55,250 the suicide bomber had in the US, in Western Europe and in Israel become emblematic of the so-called Islamic death culture. 381 00:52:55,250 --> 00:53:04,040 The clip does, I argue, deliberately played on the strength of these anti-Muslim sentiments that were rampant in Israeli society at the time. 382 00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:11,030 At the same time, it drew upon the vocabulary of 19th and early 20th century images of cannabis, namely, 383 00:53:11,030 --> 00:53:22,670 that hashish is an oriental substance used by uncivilised Muslim Arab zealots who champion a ritual of death rather than a ritual of life. 384 00:53:22,670 --> 00:53:29,330 Whatever the case may be, it appears that the Zionist nightmare of assimilation into the Levant and nightmare 385 00:53:29,330 --> 00:53:35,840 that haunted Jews in Palestine Israel since the 1920s had has materialised, 386 00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:41,540 at least to some extent, or at least to the extent that cannabis consumption is concerned. 387 00:53:41,540 --> 00:53:45,860 Thank you very much. Thank you. 388 00:53:45,860 --> 00:53:49,805 Thank you for this fascinating, fascinating presentation.