1 00:00:01,470 --> 00:00:05,310 Among his other credits, Ibrahim has been with Arthur Goldschmidt. 2 00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:17,500 Author of one of the most widely used and respected texts, A Concise History of the Middle East, which has just appeared in its 30th edition. 3 00:00:18,310 --> 00:00:21,390 This copy arrives before you go. Yes. 4 00:00:21,430 --> 00:00:28,180 So it's with pleasure. I welcome the 13th edition of A Concise History of the Middle East and its author. 5 00:00:28,600 --> 00:00:38,110 Back to the very centre. Please give it up for Ibrahim. Very good. 6 00:00:38,140 --> 00:00:41,290 Well, uh, before I begin and before I, uh, thank. 7 00:00:41,290 --> 00:00:48,260 Can you one. I was hoping that, uh, we could just have a moment of silence. 8 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:54,100 Uh, this is a picture I took in Baalbek. Uh, not too far of where the fighting is happening now. 9 00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:57,770 It's of a cat whose faith I wonder about. 10 00:00:57,790 --> 00:01:00,370 I'm sure all of us have people we're concerned about. 11 00:01:00,820 --> 00:01:06,320 I've been doing this quite a bit since October 7th, but I specifically brought my old school watch. 12 00:01:06,340 --> 00:01:09,970 If we could just have one minute of silence before proceeding. 13 00:01:16,250 --> 00:01:27,710 Okay. Thank you. And the symbolism of watching a hand on a clock is also very symbolic of the trouble writing this book, and I'll tell you how so. 14 00:01:28,100 --> 00:01:31,790 But before I begin, uh, so I wanted to thank you for having me back here. 15 00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:36,260 I wanted to thank Jenny Williams for all the work she did in bringing me here. 16 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:48,469 Uh, and since there's a good number of students in this class, uh, in this, uh, uh, gathering, here's a question I ask my students before I begin. 17 00:01:48,470 --> 00:01:52,640 And it's also, uh, emblematic of the approach I used to writing this book. 18 00:01:53,450 --> 00:01:56,900 Uh, so this is the question I have. 19 00:01:57,470 --> 00:02:07,100 Which NGO, which non-governmental organisation transformed the international system and world order in the 21st century? 20 00:02:07,100 --> 00:02:11,809 So I wear a couple of hats. I'm a historian. I also teach political science. 21 00:02:11,810 --> 00:02:17,060 So these questions about the international system are very political science and with NGOs. 22 00:02:17,060 --> 00:02:22,880 The other subject I teach is public health and NGOs are the key actors in public health. 23 00:02:23,420 --> 00:02:32,270 So for anyone gathered here, does anyone want to throw a guess about what non-governmental organisation I'm looking for 24 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:38,720 an NGO that transformed the international system and the world order in the 21st century. 25 00:02:39,050 --> 00:02:46,220 Yes. Okay. The Red cross is a very good example of an NGO I founded in the late 1800s. 26 00:02:46,700 --> 00:02:55,460 Uh, is a good example of a non-governmental organisation that not only is important for the health sector, but also for our rules of war. 27 00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:01,970 Hypothetically, if it transformed the international system, there wouldn't be any war crimes being committed. 28 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,800 Uh, and I wish this is, uh, it would be great if we could have transformed the world. 29 00:03:07,190 --> 00:03:11,389 But for it to be redundant, it would have. 30 00:03:11,390 --> 00:03:18,500 We would see, uh, cessation of all these violations of war crimes and, you know, the perfect delivery of world health on a global level. 31 00:03:18,500 --> 00:03:22,790 Unfortunately, we haven't gotten there yet. Very good. Thank you for giving me the first answer. 32 00:03:22,790 --> 00:03:28,010 That is an NGO, not what I'm looking for. Any other guesses? 33 00:03:29,130 --> 00:03:34,800 Microsoft. Microsoft is a non-governmental corporation. 34 00:03:35,460 --> 00:03:39,730 No, I'm glad you said that because I was looking for the Bill Gates Foundation. 35 00:03:39,750 --> 00:03:48,750 On the other hand, would be a great contender. And if you look at the field of public health, uh, when the Ebola epidemic broke out. 36 00:03:50,180 --> 00:03:55,170 The Bill Gates Foundation was able to work more swifter in its response. 37 00:03:55,190 --> 00:03:59,210 It was more it was more nimble in the face of Ebola than the World Health Organisation. 38 00:03:59,570 --> 00:04:06,670 So ideally, everyone if the Bill Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation start to transform the world as we know it, 39 00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:12,500 we should all be happy getting vaccines, not worried about microchips being implanted in our, uh, bloodstream. 40 00:04:13,040 --> 00:04:17,010 And, you know, problem solved. Unfortunately. And malaria should be eradicated. 41 00:04:17,030 --> 00:04:20,900 These were all goals of the, uh, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 42 00:04:21,290 --> 00:04:25,640 Uh, yet to have been achieved. Um, another guest, the Carter Centre. 43 00:04:26,060 --> 00:04:31,130 Carter Centre would be a good one. That is a good example of an NGO. 44 00:04:31,550 --> 00:04:37,940 Uh, you know, gathering of the elders I wish could have, uh, transformed the world as we know it. 45 00:04:38,990 --> 00:04:43,280 Any other guesses as an NGO like PPC? 46 00:04:44,030 --> 00:04:47,750 What does that stand for? Into Intergovernmental Panel? 47 00:04:48,260 --> 00:04:52,520 Uh, so that is technically a multilateral organisation within. 48 00:04:52,550 --> 00:04:55,100 So if it's a United Nations that's multilateral. 49 00:04:55,610 --> 00:05:03,590 Uh, so the W.H.O., the collection of scientists that work for that panel, multilateral organisation, and I wish everyone was listening to them. 50 00:05:03,950 --> 00:05:07,700 Problem solved. We. Climate change is real at the end. That's it. 51 00:05:08,150 --> 00:05:11,960 I missed you. Amnesty international is also a good NGO. 52 00:05:12,230 --> 00:05:18,350 And hypothetically, the death sentence would be abolished around the world because that's why amnesty was established for. 53 00:05:18,350 --> 00:05:22,700 So I would say did not transform the world as we know. Okay, I'll give you the answer. 54 00:05:22,700 --> 00:05:28,250 The NGO I'm looking for was founded by this lanky youth right here. 55 00:05:28,700 --> 00:05:32,510 This lanky youth on a family vacation in Sweden. 56 00:05:33,050 --> 00:05:40,040 You know him as Osama bin laden? Yeah. Now, I want you to look at the way I ask the question. 57 00:05:40,250 --> 00:05:44,060 Okay. Is al-Qaida non-governmental? 58 00:05:45,560 --> 00:05:50,270 Is it an organisation, according to Al Jazeera, that it is. 59 00:05:50,750 --> 00:05:56,030 And did it transform the world as we know it? It did when I began my default here. 60 00:05:56,330 --> 00:06:04,160 Okay. Now who? Of course, using this as a prop to get us to think what is al-Qaida is not me. 61 00:06:04,640 --> 00:06:08,570 But it's from a sociologist named Ulrike Beck. 62 00:06:08,870 --> 00:06:16,880 Okay. Ulrik back basically describes. Now, look, in 2006, the world we were, the 21st century as we enter the 21st century. 63 00:06:16,890 --> 00:06:21,590 Look what he was describing. We live in a terrifying new millennium of global risk. 64 00:06:22,190 --> 00:06:25,820 You could be bombed on your way to work by terrorists. Reference to al-Qaida. 65 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:30,590 I should you managed to get through the day unscathed. There's a risk of you catching avian flu. 66 00:06:30,620 --> 00:06:37,310 This is BSE is a abbreviation for what's otherwise called mad cow disease or being washed away by a tsunami. 67 00:06:37,940 --> 00:06:44,600 A natural disaster obliterated by a hurricane as you lay lie in bed dreaming of happier times. 68 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:47,630 And unfortunately, just if you go to my YouTube channel, 69 00:06:47,900 --> 00:06:52,940 one of my students at University of San Diego had to drop out to deal with the hurricanes in the Appalachian Mountains, 70 00:06:53,270 --> 00:06:58,910 which historically never endured hurricanes. This is 2020 for Look back. 71 00:06:59,010 --> 00:07:05,050 Speaking in the year 2006, terrorist networks can be thought as NGOs committed to violence, 72 00:07:05,060 --> 00:07:11,540 while Greenpeace tackles environmental crises, terrorist NGOs have the state monopoly on violence. 73 00:07:11,820 --> 00:07:15,050 In other words, a reference to Max Weber in their sights. 74 00:07:15,350 --> 00:07:21,320 And based on this, this is what I'm writing. A history of the Risk society of the Middle East in the 21st century. 75 00:07:22,010 --> 00:07:27,770 How do you write about natural disasters and now going to the natural disasters? 76 00:07:27,770 --> 00:07:31,220 Okay, as well as a variety of. 77 00:07:31,820 --> 00:07:38,000 Well, let's look at the NGOs. The preferred term in political silent sites is violent non-state actors. 78 00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:43,490 The term terrorism is argue, has lost so much meaning over time that analytically, 79 00:07:43,670 --> 00:07:47,810 okay, the term that everyone agrees on is the violent non-state actors. 80 00:07:47,840 --> 00:07:56,240 Okay, here are the challenges. Writing the environment or the political ecology of the Middle East, new technologies and bringing in gender. 81 00:07:56,630 --> 00:08:04,820 We're all challenges in not only writing the history, but also challenges facing the region in one way or the other. 82 00:08:04,850 --> 00:08:10,550 So just to give you a story, this is not a book reading per se, because I've just seen the copy of the book for the first time. 83 00:08:10,970 --> 00:08:14,120 This is about the Me search that went into the research. 84 00:08:14,120 --> 00:08:19,490 What influenced my history or writing the history when I was an undergrad? 85 00:08:20,690 --> 00:08:26,270 I was assigned this textbook, A Concise History of the Middle East by author Goldschmidt Junior. 86 00:08:26,900 --> 00:08:34,459 As an undergraduate, I began my undergraduate career at UC San Diego, transferred to UCLA, and back then there was no images. 87 00:08:34,460 --> 00:08:37,790 It just had this, uh, you know, geometric pattern. Okay. 88 00:08:38,180 --> 00:08:50,300 Now, uh, back then, when I was a student, when I was a student in the 90s, this obscure group known as al-Qaida had just entered my imagination. 89 00:08:50,840 --> 00:08:54,169 Uh, I was studying at UCLA at a particular time. 90 00:08:54,170 --> 00:09:00,380 And then just to say, I made my way to Georgetown. And finally, I want you to look at this image here. 91 00:09:00,650 --> 00:09:04,190 Where is this image? When and where is this image? 92 00:09:05,490 --> 00:09:13,920 Of missiles being launched, interceptors being fired off to engage and intercept over the skies of Tel Aviv. 93 00:09:14,370 --> 00:09:17,730 When and where is this? Okay, I told you. Where? When was this picture taken? 94 00:09:18,810 --> 00:09:22,050 When was this picture taken? Last month is a good guess. Last month. 95 00:09:23,900 --> 00:09:27,950 Thinking was around September 30th is a good guess. It could be any other guess. 96 00:09:27,950 --> 00:09:31,700 It wasn't the first time. Um, okay. 97 00:09:31,700 --> 00:09:35,000 In March. Yeah. March 2024. This isn't so far. 98 00:09:35,270 --> 00:09:38,750 This is Saddam. This is 1991, you see. 99 00:09:39,360 --> 00:09:43,100 And again, this is another trick question. All right, personalise it. This isn't Iraq. 100 00:09:43,430 --> 00:09:50,900 This is it. Yeah. This is Saddam. This is Iraq launching a barrage of Scud missiles and being intercepted over this guy. 101 00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:54,499 Now, why is this particular incident important? 102 00:09:54,500 --> 00:10:05,210 Of course, this is what had just happened, uh, about close to, uh, almost nine years before the summer of 2000. 103 00:10:05,420 --> 00:10:11,600 Okay. And I want you to think of the timing of this case. Right. So before that summer, uh. 104 00:10:13,350 --> 00:10:20,370 I was in Jerusalem taking a taxi to the airport. 105 00:10:20,820 --> 00:10:23,160 Right. And in the summer of 2000. 106 00:10:23,190 --> 00:10:31,770 Uh, here I am in Jerusalem, and I have to make it to Saint Anthony's College to begin my defence with my supervisor, Eugene Rogan. 107 00:10:31,950 --> 00:10:36,149 Okay. And just to say something about that journey, I have to make it. 108 00:10:36,150 --> 00:10:42,490 I can't do anything risky. And yet, here I am, taking a road trip from Cairo, Jerusalem to Jerusalem. 109 00:10:42,510 --> 00:10:46,280 I met a man. Damascus. Damascus to Lebanon. Why was I doing this road trip? 110 00:10:46,290 --> 00:10:52,410 I'll tell you. But taking the taxi from the, uh, from Jerusalem to the airport. 111 00:10:52,860 --> 00:10:56,850 Sure enough, the minute you enter a taxi anywhere in the Middle East, they want to know where you're from. 112 00:10:57,240 --> 00:11:00,540 Uh, and by the. The easy answer I gave was Iraq. 113 00:11:00,750 --> 00:11:07,650 From the taxi driver who was Palestinian. Turned back to me, started speaking me in Arabic and saying, I love Saddam Hussein. 114 00:11:08,280 --> 00:11:12,670 Now, of course, it's Saddam Hussein who sent me, my family fleeing from Iraq. 115 00:11:12,690 --> 00:11:16,410 I was hoping to write a DPhil about the horrors of Saddam Hussein. 116 00:11:16,420 --> 00:11:20,850 Yet here I am, uh, now engaging this Palestinian taxi driver. 117 00:11:20,850 --> 00:11:29,640 Why does he love Saddam, I ask? And he's basically says Saddam was the only Arab leader this ever stood up for us Palestinians. 118 00:11:30,600 --> 00:11:36,360 Now this is in the summer of 2000. What did I understand from that exchange? 119 00:11:36,390 --> 00:11:42,410 First of all, it was that exchange that pushed me into the direction of writing a thesis on the Gulf War. 120 00:11:42,420 --> 00:11:49,140 As Eugene mentioned, I had a trove of documents to work with. What influenced my decision to do the 91 Gulf War was the following. 121 00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:57,510 It was this paradox. You see, Saddam lost the 91 Gulf War, but apparently he won the war for Palestinian memory. 122 00:11:58,770 --> 00:12:03,149 Based on that anecdote. Based on that anecdote. Here are in 2024. 123 00:12:03,150 --> 00:12:09,690 What do a good number of Palestinians still tell me? If Saddam was still alive, none of this would be happening. 124 00:12:12,540 --> 00:12:20,700 Um, so sure enough, this is an anecdote that influences me on my way to my journey with the DFL, and here I am now in 2024. 125 00:12:21,120 --> 00:12:26,939 And you see, now, in terms of writing, that missile's about that missile strike in 1991, 126 00:12:26,940 --> 00:12:31,800 that Scud missile barrage didn't make it into any of the previous editions of this history. 127 00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:36,600 Okay. Why did I have to write about the 1991 attack? 128 00:12:37,080 --> 00:12:44,969 Because, of course, when I'm writing the 13th edition. Okay, Iran had just launched the barrage around early April, 129 00:12:44,970 --> 00:12:51,060 and it's that Iranian attack that makes me go back into the past and say, how do we make sense of the Iranian attack? 130 00:12:51,540 --> 00:12:55,460 Because what I want to do is shift the narrative. 131 00:12:55,470 --> 00:13:01,290 Everyone kept on saying that this was a defeat for Iran, whether it was in early April or here we are. 132 00:13:01,290 --> 00:13:06,720 Then just a few weeks ago. Right. And basically using that anecdote. 133 00:13:06,810 --> 00:13:15,360 Okay. How do we define victory? And here I was in 2000 and redefining that failed missile strike. 134 00:13:15,390 --> 00:13:20,370 Okay. Uh, with this guts as now kind of a symbolic victory. 135 00:13:20,940 --> 00:13:24,749 So this edition was published in 2018. 136 00:13:24,750 --> 00:13:28,260 And just to give you a story, so author, of course, was the first primary author. 137 00:13:28,260 --> 00:13:31,470 So here I go from reading the author, no pun intended. 138 00:13:31,800 --> 00:13:36,780 And the 1990s to becoming having him approached me to be the co-author. 139 00:13:37,290 --> 00:13:43,650 And of course, for this edition, the primary, uh, matter that we were looking at was ISIS. 140 00:13:44,130 --> 00:13:49,770 So here I began in the 1990s, looking at al-Qaida as a young student reading about it in the textbooks. 141 00:13:50,280 --> 00:13:55,319 By the, uh, 2020, 2018, ISIS had just been defeated. 142 00:13:55,320 --> 00:13:58,790 And this is what takes up most of the final chapter of the book. 143 00:13:58,800 --> 00:14:06,630 Of course, when you revise a chapter, you update it, but usually when you update, you go back into the past and see what could have told us. 144 00:14:06,810 --> 00:14:14,550 What were the indicators that a group like ISIS could have emerged. And here I began a tradition of choosing a convert that was symbolic. 145 00:14:15,180 --> 00:14:26,970 And this is that it's Mosul. I chose Mosul because one of the minarets that you see here would be demolished by the time this, uh, book was published. 146 00:14:27,600 --> 00:14:32,250 That is a Z very old place right there. 147 00:14:32,850 --> 00:14:39,120 Uh, what I assumed to be mosques and, um, basically what was chosen was one church in the background. 148 00:14:39,600 --> 00:14:45,569 Later, I was told by a person named Omar who was responsible for the blog Mosul. 149 00:14:45,570 --> 00:14:48,570 I, uh, that this is just a fantasy. 150 00:14:48,930 --> 00:14:52,290 It's an orientalist fantasy that this scene does not exist in Mosul. 151 00:14:52,590 --> 00:14:56,700 I didn't know that he embarrassed both of us saying that. Yes. What you chose for symbolism is great. 152 00:14:56,730 --> 00:15:01,260 Yeah, but in fact, this image doesn't really exist. This is an orientalist fantasy. 153 00:15:01,260 --> 00:15:04,739 But I'll tell you who. Um, well, how it started a tradition. 154 00:15:04,740 --> 00:15:11,000 Nevertheless, I finished and you can imagine from 2018 what happened. 155 00:15:11,010 --> 00:15:14,399 Well, this is what I'm going to talk about, the evolution of the Middle Eastern society. 156 00:15:14,400 --> 00:15:18,270 What happens is the 2018 edition, I'll tell you on them. 157 00:15:18,270 --> 00:15:27,120 On a particular morning, I was in Madrid and I finished the bibliography for the 13th edition, and they say that number 13 is bad luck. 158 00:15:27,120 --> 00:15:36,020 Well, let me tell you this story. And the 13th edition, where I was just finishing up the bibliography, it was, uh, 159 00:15:36,030 --> 00:15:44,580 the final citation was of a uoa along the making of Jordan tribes, colonialism and the modern state. 160 00:15:45,570 --> 00:15:53,610 I was finishing that citation, ready to send out the text, and then I sent an email to the author. 161 00:15:54,420 --> 00:15:58,379 You're off. Who I met. So did I make it to Saint Anthony's on time? 162 00:15:58,380 --> 00:16:06,150 Just barely. And I met you off. And almost just like with, uh, Eugene, I met them almost exactly 24 years ago. 163 00:16:06,810 --> 00:16:10,050 And the month I met you off right before I entered here. Right here. 164 00:16:10,470 --> 00:16:14,520 That's when I met him in September. That would have been the September 2000. 165 00:16:15,390 --> 00:16:21,300 And I want you to think September 2000, when I met you. What? I remember the anecdote with the taxi driver. 166 00:16:21,650 --> 00:16:23,850 Right. What was the other conclusion? 167 00:16:23,850 --> 00:16:33,030 Not only about Saddam symbolic victory, but something an ill feeling and ill feeling, me questioning, why is this Palestinians celebrating Saddam? 168 00:16:33,900 --> 00:16:39,300 I thought that the Palestinians were on a road to peace in the summer of 2000. 169 00:16:39,670 --> 00:16:43,139 Right. And that was also another indication. 170 00:16:43,140 --> 00:16:50,940 Something is not right for this Palestinian. There's this is not a Palestinian who looks happy and optimistic towards a new future. 171 00:16:51,450 --> 00:16:57,840 And just a week later, when I arrived, the so-called Second Intifada began violence on the part that began. 172 00:16:57,900 --> 00:17:00,840 Okay, now think of that anecdote and that kind of ill feeling. 173 00:17:01,290 --> 00:17:10,130 On the morning when I finished writing your off citation, I sent him an email because he was supposed to be, uh. 174 00:17:10,290 --> 00:17:14,519 Taking a visiting post in San Diego saying you off? Do you have your flight time? 175 00:17:14,520 --> 00:17:19,230 I'll pick you up in the airport. It was the morning of October 7th, 2023. 176 00:17:20,220 --> 00:17:22,860 When I finished this book thinking, that's it, my book is finished. 177 00:17:23,250 --> 00:17:27,690 I'm about to send it to the publisher, writing to you off saying, give me your flight time. 178 00:17:27,690 --> 00:17:30,780 I'm going to be picking you up from the airport on October 7th, 2023. 179 00:17:31,260 --> 00:17:35,249 And then I turned on the news and I realise you off. 180 00:17:35,250 --> 00:17:41,790 It's probably not going to make a flight anytime soon, and I mistakenly had sent off that manuscript too soon as well. 181 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:45,660 And so this is the question now, what do you write after that day? 182 00:17:46,350 --> 00:17:49,680 First I will tell you, it's quite amazing. 183 00:17:50,310 --> 00:17:56,880 Uh, bringing God's love back into history. This is a screenshot I took from an old Imperial Airways. 184 00:17:57,220 --> 00:18:02,010 Uh, Phil. Right. You see the importance of God's love, then. 185 00:18:02,010 --> 00:18:05,819 And it's not till the events of October 7th that God's have found this place. 186 00:18:05,820 --> 00:18:14,490 Still history. I have to admit, it wasn't till October 7th I did not realise that Alexander the Great besieged Gaza on the way to conquering Egypt. 187 00:18:14,490 --> 00:18:18,810 That Alexander wouldn't have been great had he succumbed to an, uh, 188 00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:27,270 arrow wound that he got outside during the siege of Gaza that he recovered from with this medicine that we all familiar with today, 189 00:18:27,270 --> 00:18:30,690 we call them opiates. Uh, today, in his day, they would have called it opium. 190 00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:39,120 So, of course, not only it was since October 7th did I find a way to try to bring Gaza back into the history of this region. 191 00:18:39,630 --> 00:18:42,750 But let me read, uh, Arthur Goldschmidt. 192 00:18:44,050 --> 00:18:52,120 Our conclusion. Okay. And look at we usually every conclusion we say this all good things must come to an end. 193 00:18:52,150 --> 00:18:53,440 Even history textbooks. 194 00:18:53,980 --> 00:19:01,840 Any historian writing a textbook must deal with the recent path, with the acknowledgement that events occur suddenly in the Middle East. 195 00:19:02,060 --> 00:19:08,770 You think of that morning. Yeah. Projections are hazardous. Who knows what a future reader will see us is having. 196 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:14,440 We'll see as having been the major Middle Eastern events from the seismic events of 2011. 197 00:19:15,190 --> 00:19:16,479 Let us give you an example. 198 00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:24,160 By looking backwards at the dawn of the 20th century, a burning issue was the building of a Berlin to Baghdad railway by a German company. 199 00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:31,150 Our Forebearers believed that this railway would enhance German power and the Ottoman Empire, and harm the interests of Britain, France and Russia. 200 00:19:32,470 --> 00:19:33,670 In contrast, 201 00:19:33,670 --> 00:19:41,560 few notice that a British subject obtained from the Persian government a concession that led to the first big oil discovery in the Middle East. 202 00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:48,340 Yet today we see Middle East oil as much more important than the railroad then a railroad that was never completed. 203 00:19:48,610 --> 00:19:54,940 By the same token, well, an incident that we now view as a major event seemed trivial by 2030. 204 00:19:55,180 --> 00:20:02,740 Yet it's seen the consequences of the events that began on 7th October 2023 will reverberate for generations to come. 205 00:20:03,250 --> 00:20:04,840 So this is the conclusion of the book. 206 00:20:05,680 --> 00:20:13,200 So going forward now, what I'm going to do is kind of take you on a grand tour, uh, writing the book using a couple of disciplines. 207 00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:22,030 So I said, first of all, the violent non-state actor. And for this, I'm going to bring in, uh, so I already mentioned Ulrich Beck. 208 00:20:22,330 --> 00:20:26,860 I'm going to bring in David Rappaport. He's an American political scientist at UCLA. 209 00:20:26,890 --> 00:20:34,690 He was my professor, and he had a model that really determined the studies of terrorism. 210 00:20:35,380 --> 00:20:40,950 Uh, that really went unquestioned, particularly after 9/11. 211 00:20:40,960 --> 00:20:48,130 So just to give you, uh, an overview, he argues that violent non-state actors had evolved over waves. 212 00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:53,630 Okay. The first wave you dealt with was the anarchist violence that began in the 1880s. 213 00:20:53,650 --> 00:21:00,850 So by anarchist violence is whether it's the brother of Vladimir Lenin was an anarchist who tried to assassinate the Tsar. 214 00:21:01,210 --> 00:21:07,900 Uh, the king of Italy. Umberto, the prime minister of France, uh, I believe the King of Spain, 215 00:21:08,230 --> 00:21:13,330 Empress Sisi of Austria, all in the 1880s, were assassinated by anarchist terrorists. 216 00:21:13,360 --> 00:21:16,360 Okay, then, Rappaport said that wave ended. 217 00:21:16,720 --> 00:21:20,770 And then he looks at another wave. So to show that wave. 218 00:21:20,770 --> 00:21:24,180 And I probably realised, don't worry, I'll read out the titles. 219 00:21:24,190 --> 00:21:28,089 This is a just a um. So this is what political scientists love. 220 00:21:28,090 --> 00:21:32,979 They love their data, their data sets and mapping out, uh, acts of violence. 221 00:21:32,980 --> 00:21:39,160 Everything in red represents a violent act. Everything below our fatalities, casualties. 222 00:21:39,490 --> 00:21:42,760 It's a very grim subject that I like to call necro history. 223 00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:45,670 And I'll get to this. Where did I get the term necro history for? 224 00:21:46,180 --> 00:21:52,650 So I begin with, um, what took us by surprise, both from the political science vantage. 225 00:21:52,660 --> 00:21:59,920 What was surprising about October 7th is the following. Okay, uh, let's look at violent non-state actors. 226 00:21:59,920 --> 00:22:05,620 If you look at the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, here are the Provo IRA. 227 00:22:05,620 --> 00:22:12,760 What do they have in common? They are both groups that are secular nationalist. 228 00:22:13,780 --> 00:22:17,049 And what I add as a category bound by geography. 229 00:22:17,050 --> 00:22:24,040 What do I mean by bound by geography? So secular, even though the LTTE was a group founded by Tamil Hindus, right. 230 00:22:25,690 --> 00:22:32,140 Hinduism wasn't driving their violence. It was a Tamil nationalism on an island dominated by the Sinhalese Buddhists. 231 00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:39,670 Okay, uh, even though they were secular, they were the first group that invented what I call the human cyborg, 232 00:22:39,730 --> 00:22:46,060 or basically fusing explosives to the human body, what we would call the suicide bomber today. 233 00:22:46,660 --> 00:22:51,670 Okay. Uh, in other words, uh, it's a tradition born in a completely different area. 234 00:22:51,670 --> 00:22:56,079 Had nothing to do with the notions of martyrdom that are, you know, associated with the Middle East. 235 00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:56,330 Okay. 236 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:08,890 Or if you look at the IRA again, uh, both groups, I would argue, had the again, products of the Cold War usually left leaning, bounded by an ethnic. 237 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:15,100 Rather, we talk about Irish Catholics but not fighting in the name of, uh, Catholicism, uh, Hindu Tamils. 238 00:23:15,190 --> 00:23:21,070 Okay. And bounded by geography, whether it's Ireland, island of Ireland or the island of Sri Lanka. 239 00:23:21,220 --> 00:23:31,660 Okay. If you look at the second wave, again, if you look at the PKK or the Basque ETA, okay, unlike the previous two part of the second wave, 240 00:23:31,660 --> 00:23:37,450 but still bounded by geography, they wanted to create either a Kurdish homeland within the Republic of Turkey. 241 00:23:38,170 --> 00:23:43,090 The Basques wanted to create a Basque homeland within the borders of Spain. 242 00:23:44,030 --> 00:23:47,690 Uh, they didn't care that I didn't care about the, uh, Basques in France. 243 00:23:48,140 --> 00:23:52,010 Uh, the PKK really left the Kurds and Iraq alone. 244 00:23:52,250 --> 00:23:57,320 Okay, that was another group of Kurdish groups. Territory. Okay, so, in other words, left leaning. 245 00:23:58,130 --> 00:24:01,340 Carving out a state out of an existing state. Okay. 246 00:24:02,150 --> 00:24:08,450 And then if you look at the PKK and compare it to San Duro Luminoso of Peru or the Fark of Colombia, 247 00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:14,090 again, these are now groups that are avowedly Marxist, so still fits into that Cold War paradigm. 248 00:24:14,780 --> 00:24:18,650 Still bounded by geography. Sendero Luminoso work through Colombia. 249 00:24:19,100 --> 00:24:22,219 Uh, Park. I'm sorry. Park. 250 00:24:22,220 --> 00:24:28,340 Work for the Columbia. Sendero Luminoso bound to Peru. And again, very much a product of the Cold War. 251 00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:32,900 All Rappaport second wave. And I would argue the caveat bounded by geography. 252 00:24:34,550 --> 00:24:39,230 The third wave is groups like Hamas or Hezbollah. 253 00:24:39,530 --> 00:24:45,890 Now, what do they have in common is this they're still bounded by geography, I would argue. 254 00:24:46,370 --> 00:24:51,649 Okay. They are still more or less bounded by the Cold War to some extent. 255 00:24:51,650 --> 00:24:58,670 But I would argue they're they're more or less influenced by a third pivotal event, the, uh, revolution in Iran in 1979. 256 00:24:58,970 --> 00:25:06,320 Definitely. Hezbollah emergence is tied to the victory of the Islamists in Iran in 1979. 257 00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,820 But what's interesting and why does this deserve a third wave is they're not secular, right? 258 00:25:11,360 --> 00:25:17,090 If you look at their flag, they're the Islamic resistance. But we're still bounded by geography in Lebanon. 259 00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:24,320 So that hypothetically, you still have to be born into this group, whether it's Tamil Hindus, Irish Catholics or Lebanese Shia. 260 00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,770 And then if you look at, uh, Hezbollah logo again, look what I highlight. 261 00:25:28,790 --> 00:25:31,820 They're still bounded by the geography of the Palestine Mandate. 262 00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,460 Hamas. Sorry. What did I say about Hamas? 263 00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:41,150 All right. The again, the movement of Islamic resistance, but still bounded by geography. 264 00:25:41,150 --> 00:25:44,750 And that's the third way. What differentiated the fourth wave? 265 00:25:45,380 --> 00:25:50,510 Okay. If we look at ISIS, al-Qaida, al-Qaida's branch and the Arabian Peninsula. 266 00:25:50,510 --> 00:25:58,790 Shabab. Okay. No longer bounded by geography, no longer bounded by geography. 267 00:25:58,850 --> 00:26:05,270 Anyone. If you looked at al-Qaida founded by. I showed you a Saudi second in command in Egyptian. 268 00:26:05,690 --> 00:26:09,680 Their scope of violence is not bounded by geography per se. 269 00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:13,130 Okay. And hypothetically, this is what made a difference. 270 00:26:13,340 --> 00:26:15,020 You've almost come back to the fourth wave. 271 00:26:16,100 --> 00:26:23,180 Anarchists weren't bounded by any particular ethnic or geography, and everyone thought the future was the fourth wave. 272 00:26:23,780 --> 00:26:29,989 Okay. And then what was the surprise? The surprise on October 7th was look at the language. 273 00:26:29,990 --> 00:26:32,480 I'm using a jolt to the international system. 274 00:26:32,810 --> 00:26:40,190 Nobody thought the third wave was ever going to make a comeback to jolt, let's say, the global imagination. 275 00:26:42,950 --> 00:26:46,970 That was one of the great historical junctures and inflection point of October. 276 00:26:47,420 --> 00:26:51,290 Right. Uh, anyone studied and this was one of the faults of the political science, 277 00:26:51,290 --> 00:26:55,759 but very much based on a kind of neorealist structural reading of the evolution of terrorism. 278 00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:59,350 Rappaport was great for introducing a historical analysis of this phenomenon. 279 00:27:01,010 --> 00:27:06,850 And so if we look at this right, what is the secure axis of Islamist resistance? 280 00:27:06,860 --> 00:27:10,729 Okay, here is something that I did towards the end of the book, 281 00:27:10,730 --> 00:27:17,540 which I found was quite interesting because for all you know, is this more bluster than an actual axis? 282 00:27:17,540 --> 00:27:20,840 I would argue there is an axis in the region. It's quite interesting. 283 00:27:21,350 --> 00:27:28,010 But if you look at it from 2003, the frame that kind of dominated the way we studied the Middle East was sectarianism. 284 00:27:29,360 --> 00:27:35,389 Now it's I mean, if you look at it and you know, only something as, as a historian could appreciate by looking at 2003, 285 00:27:35,390 --> 00:27:38,930 if you look at the, you know, the so-called axis of resistance, a, 286 00:27:39,020 --> 00:27:45,770 you know, 12 hour Shia, Iran, Arab, Alawi, uh, Syria, Hezbollah, Arab, 12 Russia of Lebanon, 287 00:27:45,770 --> 00:27:51,270 uh, had a cut in their Jabar of Iraq, an Arab 12 or Shia group that couldn't have emerged. 288 00:27:51,290 --> 00:27:54,199 If you look at when this axis emerged in 2023, 289 00:27:54,200 --> 00:28:02,269 this was the group that became famous for lobbing drones against the American military base in Jordan, on the Syrian border. 290 00:28:02,270 --> 00:28:09,280 That started off the American involvement in what seems to be kind of a creeping, uh, well, uh, creeping mission creep, so to speak. 291 00:28:09,860 --> 00:28:15,709 Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Arab, Sunni. There are some Shia Palestinians, but they're very small. 292 00:28:15,710 --> 00:28:20,680 And then who? These are Arab fibre Shias. Sure. 293 00:28:20,690 --> 00:28:21,860 ISIS is still there. 294 00:28:21,980 --> 00:28:31,160 And if you're following, uh, kind of, uh, if any of you are fans of a singer known as Taylor Swift, I mean, her concert was, uh, cancelled. 295 00:28:31,490 --> 00:28:37,940 And I want you to think of the transnational element here as these were Austrian Muslims with Croatian, 296 00:28:37,940 --> 00:28:42,200 North Macedonian, Turkish roots, but still not bounded by geography. 297 00:28:42,230 --> 00:28:50,850 Okay. And we all thought it was the fourth way. So the concise history of the Middle East, look at the day it came out October 7th, 2024. 298 00:28:50,850 --> 00:28:55,280 And I don't think I think Rutledge did this on purpose, but this was the problem. 299 00:28:55,490 --> 00:29:01,520 I kept on telling Rutledge the book was not ready. It's still too early to turn and a history. 300 00:29:01,820 --> 00:29:09,469 So to tell you kind of the history of this region just an easy way. It begins with from Nebuchadnezzar to Napoleon to Netanyahu. 301 00:29:09,470 --> 00:29:14,090 If I use a little iteration. Right. Uh, when to turn a book in. 302 00:29:14,510 --> 00:29:18,350 This was the hard part. But Rutledge said, give me a specific date. 303 00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,610 I didn't know they wanted it to have it come out on October 7th, 2024. 304 00:29:23,030 --> 00:29:29,120 What was the hardest part? For me to turn it in? And this is what I say, was getting to the necro history of all this. 305 00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:34,800 Well, let's go to the cover. Um, October 7th, 2024. 306 00:29:34,810 --> 00:29:42,560 The cover I had chosen was a town in what is today's Turkey known as Marrakesh. 307 00:29:42,580 --> 00:29:46,210 It's where I get my last name, even though I'm not, uh, ethnically Turkish. 308 00:29:46,630 --> 00:29:52,540 But it's not. That's not the reason I chose. I said, if I'm going to begin a habit of choosing covers with orientalist paintings. 309 00:29:53,050 --> 00:29:57,940 If Mosul was the city suffering in 2017, I chose Mirage. 310 00:29:58,420 --> 00:30:01,150 And this is what I term kind of necro history. 311 00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:11,740 Um, taking a, uh, you know, something from the postcolonial literature as she remembers necro politics that he wrote in 2003. 312 00:30:12,970 --> 00:30:18,250 And basically, necro politics is the study of people left to a slow and certain death. 313 00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:25,870 Necro history is this, um, when I, uh, in this city of ash and its surrounding environs, 314 00:30:25,870 --> 00:30:31,900 all the way to the north of Syria, 55,000 people died in the single night due to an earthquake. 315 00:30:32,590 --> 00:30:36,630 Now, why do I turn this necro history when you leave people to a slow death? 316 00:30:36,650 --> 00:30:43,030 In this case, it was the faulty architecture that could not withstand the seismic shifts, the tectonic plates. 317 00:30:43,060 --> 00:30:50,320 Now, I did not realise this, but should architects have known that Marrakesh was an earthquake prone area? 318 00:30:50,650 --> 00:31:00,140 Well, apparently so. If there was an earthquake in 1114, then an earthquake in 1513, then you almost notice almost 500 years separating it. 319 00:31:00,710 --> 00:31:05,480 Yes, I mean march the whole of southeast Anatolia, never mind Istanbul, are earthquake prone. 320 00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:10,370 And for that reason I chose, uh, not only Marash as the cover. 321 00:31:10,610 --> 00:31:18,229 A place that suffered 55,000 fatalities. Here begins the story of the risk society that on the that talked about that people, 322 00:31:18,230 --> 00:31:25,880 by simply living in shoddily constructed buildings, are at risk for a predetermined slow death. 323 00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:31,400 Uh, what's happened since October 17th? 324 00:31:31,410 --> 00:31:36,530 So, in other words, this is if I use the story of what the Turks named these seas. 325 00:31:36,860 --> 00:31:42,710 I'm going to give you kind of writing a history of the Black Sea, the White Sea and the Red sea since October 7th. 326 00:31:42,980 --> 00:31:52,460 Now, I'm going to go to this spot here, because another place I was, uh, considering is having the cover with a Libyan city known as Derna. 327 00:31:52,940 --> 00:31:57,980 Okay. That city, they had their own September the 11th, on 2023. 328 00:31:58,370 --> 00:32:03,510 Uh, the amount of deaths they suffered. And again, this is what I would argue in natural history. 329 00:32:03,530 --> 00:32:09,830 They were condemned to a slow death. More than 10,000 dead in the single night. 330 00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:17,300 Then in the single night, due to another freak event that's called a mediterranean hurricane. 331 00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:21,600 Okay. Uh. Darren. 332 00:32:21,620 --> 00:32:24,979 I didn't like that. I didn't have to suffer this fate. 333 00:32:24,980 --> 00:32:29,600 The dams that were holding back the waters and Derna could have been strengthened to 334 00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:34,400 prevent the collapse on that particular night due to this anomalous weather event. 335 00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:43,490 So, uh, like I said, that event and you're going to see I have no trouble publishing articles. 336 00:32:43,820 --> 00:32:48,620 But the case with the medication. Daniel, I could not get that article published. 337 00:32:49,310 --> 00:32:54,830 Okay, so here we begin. Now, the story of the. Now before I begin. 338 00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,520 So and now I want to do basically what am I alluding to? 339 00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,750 I'm writing a good number of history of environmental disasters. 340 00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:10,610 Okay. Since the 2018 event something is worrying that's happening in the history of the region. 341 00:33:10,820 --> 00:33:20,390 Okay, so like I said. This is not Mosul, but who did I choose this image for? 342 00:33:20,750 --> 00:33:24,400 A famous muscle, Allawi that came from Mosul. 343 00:33:24,410 --> 00:33:27,890 Okay. And her name is Zaha Hadid. 344 00:33:29,090 --> 00:33:36,290 I was writing Zaha right before Mosul was liberated from the rule of ISIS. 345 00:33:36,560 --> 00:33:46,130 Okay. And right before Mosul was liberated, a the iconic minaret that defines the city called the hunchback. 346 00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:53,870 Okay. Was it destroyed? Zaha Hadid passed away before the minutes destruction. 347 00:33:54,050 --> 00:34:00,500 And in that tragedy, I was kind of I thought it was fortuitous that she did not witness the destruction of Mosul, 348 00:34:01,310 --> 00:34:07,220 that she passed away before witnessing the destruction of that city that has brother was named for Fuller, 349 00:34:07,340 --> 00:34:12,169 and I had the pleasure of studying him, meeting him at that same time, meeting your wife Eugene, 350 00:34:12,170 --> 00:34:16,790 on that same afternoon, and for love her older brother a few days later. 351 00:34:16,790 --> 00:34:25,370 This was all in the year 2000, and again For love also passed away before witnessing the destruction of his native Mosul under ISIS rule. 352 00:34:25,850 --> 00:34:29,959 Uh, the story of Zaha I find interesting. 353 00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:35,210 And the new field that's developing that I tried to develop, and this history known as the environmental humanities, in other words, 354 00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:42,950 how to put human stories in the history of the environment, how humans shape the environment, and of course, how the environment shapes humans. 355 00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:48,200 And I did not know it was thanks to a children's book, if you could show them that, and I highly, 356 00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:55,579 I'm going to make a shout out for this one building Zaha an excellent children's book that I learned a lot about that. 357 00:34:55,580 --> 00:35:02,150 Zaha uh, architectural techniques. This famous architect, she was inspired by the marshes of the south of Iraq. 358 00:35:02,750 --> 00:35:08,660 Zaha love to stay up late reading and one book she read about how people built floating homes in the Sumerian wetlands. 359 00:35:09,140 --> 00:35:12,560 She was determined to see this for herself. Zaha travelled with her father. 360 00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:19,790 Now this would be Mohammed Hadid. Uh, I mean, a great Iraqi politician of the 1950s. 361 00:35:19,790 --> 00:35:23,150 Um, but I won't go into that diversion. 362 00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:30,440 He would have taken her there. Zaha travelled with her father to Sumer, where watery marshes, reeds and grasses rippled and flowed all around. 363 00:35:30,890 --> 00:35:34,230 It was beautiful, complete harmony and never remained still. 364 00:35:34,340 --> 00:35:40,010 I have wondered whether it was better to live in a modern city like Baghdad, or like this as one with nature. 365 00:35:40,010 --> 00:35:46,430 And if anyone knows that architectural techniques combine both the natural flow with modern cities. 366 00:35:46,430 --> 00:35:53,120 And so sure enough, if you look at the structure here, right, if you go outside and look at this structure here, 367 00:35:53,420 --> 00:36:01,010 what I see influencing it is the smooth leaf of the south of Iraq, the mouth of the marshes. 368 00:36:01,010 --> 00:36:06,050 And, um, if you look at the I mean, if it looks more obvious, if you look at the original design, 369 00:36:06,470 --> 00:36:09,680 but if you look at the interior, where I had the pleasure of having obviously, 370 00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:18,350 um, attend my lecture on Iraq almost a year ago for the 20 year anniversary of the Iraq war, it does look like the movie of the Southern Marshes. 371 00:36:19,530 --> 00:36:21,210 And if you don't know, these are the marshes here. 372 00:36:21,660 --> 00:36:31,170 So, uh, on one level is to write about the, uh, environmental history of Iraq and to understand the environmental history of Iraq. 373 00:36:33,030 --> 00:36:37,980 What is interesting is the following. Of course I. 374 00:36:38,310 --> 00:36:43,310 So in other words, I told you I had written about the history of ISIS in the 2018 version. 375 00:36:44,340 --> 00:36:53,790 This version, this history of ISIS, made me realise something that the Islamic State was in the Islamic State of the Euphrates and Tigris. 376 00:36:54,180 --> 00:36:58,020 What did I say? The Islamic State wasn't bounded by geography as an idea. 377 00:36:58,170 --> 00:37:03,480 It wasn't. But the original course states its capital was in Raqqa. 378 00:37:03,510 --> 00:37:14,190 The first city it conquered in Iraq was Fallujah. Uh, the interesting story is give me other cities on the Tigris, Tikrit, Samarra, Mosul. 379 00:37:14,700 --> 00:37:22,320 And so what I did in this, uh, newest version of the Concise History was in the same chapter. 380 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,080 I mean, what I had to work with in, um, 381 00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:33,690 there were very few women's stories when I read the fifth edition of The Concise History of the Middle East as an undergrad was, 382 00:37:33,690 --> 00:37:39,210 first of all, not only trying to put women's stories into this history, but also juxtapose them. 383 00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:43,190 And in one chapter, I have two people, uh. 384 00:37:46,680 --> 00:37:50,630 al-Baghdadi. Now that is full of title. 385 00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:54,700 What was his name? I'm a black daisy. 386 00:37:55,140 --> 00:37:58,170 But what do you like to say? His real name is Ibrahim. 387 00:37:59,490 --> 00:38:05,490 Who's the real Ibrahim al-Baghdadi? My civil registration. 388 00:38:05,490 --> 00:38:09,150 Civil restriction certificate. Um. 389 00:38:09,450 --> 00:38:16,960 Says my name. I was born in 1945, and it says I regret it. 390 00:38:17,370 --> 00:38:24,480 So I'm really pretty mad. Now, here's a real impression that, yes, a chap is a fake. 391 00:38:24,720 --> 00:38:29,910 The other track is a fake. That Ibrahim Baghdadi comes from Samarra. 392 00:38:29,970 --> 00:38:34,320 The al-Baghdadi was so again to just give him the list, just name associated with the Caliph. 393 00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:38,370 But I took that. The first so-called caliph of ISIS and juxtaposed stuff. 394 00:38:38,370 --> 00:38:46,620 Right? Uh, one was, uh, al-Baghdadi, and the first so-called caliph was male from Samarra and a destroyer. 395 00:38:47,430 --> 00:38:50,460 And up the river was a female. 396 00:38:52,720 --> 00:38:59,379 And the creator, you see, and I so what I wanted to do was kind of take the story of two Iraqis shaped by the rivers, 397 00:38:59,380 --> 00:39:04,450 and see how they had two very different life legacies. Saddam Hussein was from Tikrit. 398 00:39:04,810 --> 00:39:12,180 Yeah. What was also his legacy, going back and looking at how kind of environmental histories was and an act of punitive ecology, 399 00:39:12,190 --> 00:39:17,710 he, um, drained the downstream rivers, you see, draining the marshes that inspired Zaha. 400 00:39:18,370 --> 00:39:25,780 And do you see how I can tell the story of Three Rivers? I'm sorry if three seas of three people whose life was shaped by the Tigris. 401 00:39:26,380 --> 00:39:34,780 Then if we go to Yemen. Right? If you go to Yemen and in Yemen, by the way, something used to grow in Yemen. 402 00:39:34,780 --> 00:39:38,320 But by the way, it doesn't need, uh, it has a natural pesticide in it. 403 00:39:38,380 --> 00:39:46,600 Does anyone know what was used to grow in Yemen that has a natural pesticide in it for most of its history, used to grow abundantly in Yemen? 404 00:39:47,350 --> 00:39:50,710 Coffee and the pesticide we call it. Caffeine. 405 00:39:51,670 --> 00:39:55,280 Yeah. Caffeine drives bugs crazy, and it drives us to heaven. 406 00:39:55,300 --> 00:39:58,540 Yes. By the way, just another interesting factoid. 407 00:39:58,540 --> 00:40:08,350 Uh, besides the, uh, caffeine plant, the other one that has a natural built in pesticide, but other plant to the coca plant. 408 00:40:08,830 --> 00:40:15,640 It's called cocaine. Yes. Cocaine and caffeine. There are two drugs that were basically evolutionary designed as a pesticide. 409 00:40:16,150 --> 00:40:22,479 Um, the. Why do you have the remote, uh, area that couldn't sustain a large population, 410 00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:27,760 sending a good number of have the enemies following the monsoon winds to Malaysia, 411 00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:33,999 Indonesia, I think the sultan of Brunei, or in the other direction to Zanzibar, where my father was born and raised. 412 00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,410 The monsoon winds would have the remains a society based on the flood. 413 00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:42,099 Um, flash floods can erase large populations. 414 00:40:42,100 --> 00:40:46,809 They either went to Zanzibar on one side of the Indian Ocean or to Malaysia. 415 00:40:46,810 --> 00:40:52,230 Indonesia, of course. Another very famous how the Redmi family went towards Saudi Arabia. 416 00:40:52,240 --> 00:40:55,720 I just showed you that famous father on my family, the bin laden family. 417 00:40:56,200 --> 00:41:00,190 And again, you think again how environment kind of shapes the stories of this region. 418 00:41:00,610 --> 00:41:03,760 But this town here, you might not know it. 419 00:41:03,820 --> 00:41:07,209 Uh, this town is where that coffee was shipped from. 420 00:41:07,210 --> 00:41:10,600 It was Maha, or what we pronounce as mocha. 421 00:41:11,620 --> 00:41:16,030 It was geo strategically important back then. It was where the world's coffee was shipped from. 422 00:41:16,420 --> 00:41:21,040 And, um, coffee. Very little still grows in Yemen. 423 00:41:21,130 --> 00:41:24,940 And it costs $62 a bag for a reason. 424 00:41:24,940 --> 00:41:27,270 Very little survives, very little survives. 425 00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:34,780 It couldn't compete when the Dutch stole it and started growing it in the Indonesian island of Java and their Java moka. 426 00:41:34,780 --> 00:41:39,680 You've heard this term that when the Brazilian, the Portuguese took it to Brazil, uh, Yemen couldn't compete. 427 00:41:39,700 --> 00:41:42,219 Now, the second part of the story is this. 428 00:41:42,220 --> 00:41:50,020 If we look at a tale of two chokepoints, uh, in 1956, it was the Suez Canal that probably dominated any history of the region. 429 00:41:50,410 --> 00:41:52,180 Here we are looking at the Red sea. 430 00:41:52,180 --> 00:41:59,770 And if you look at a lot of these ships that were attacked in the name of solidarity, Hamas, solidarity with Lucy, this isn't a mistake. 431 00:41:59,770 --> 00:42:05,260 It's not Yemen, New York Times, it's Yemen. Right. Uh, what are a lot of these ships carrying? 432 00:42:08,290 --> 00:42:11,379 Of coffee from the greatest. 433 00:42:11,380 --> 00:42:14,980 Now the second largest producer of coffee is Vietnam. 434 00:42:15,550 --> 00:42:22,210 And that has to deal with, uh, the Vietnam War. The U.S. dropped so much Agent Orange on Vietnam. 435 00:42:23,350 --> 00:42:29,890 Very little can grow there except the coffee broth, the coffee, the robusta, not the arabica batch that comes from, uh, Yemen. 436 00:42:30,430 --> 00:42:35,020 And of course, now the other legacy of Yemen was the following. 437 00:42:35,110 --> 00:42:40,180 When they replaced coffee, they replaced it with this very water intensive crop known as pot. 438 00:42:41,890 --> 00:42:49,540 And in 2014, a scholar named Juan Cole, who I also had the pleasure of meeting around, 439 00:42:50,170 --> 00:42:57,219 I think it was 2001, if I'm not mistaken, when he invited Juan Cole, his work on why is Yemen so violent? 440 00:42:57,220 --> 00:43:03,580 Because it's so poor and thirsty again, was one of these elements that's had me start looking at the role of water in the region, 441 00:43:04,150 --> 00:43:12,100 because the great paradigm was of countries, nation states going to war over water in the 1990s. 442 00:43:13,240 --> 00:43:23,260 What we started looking at was whether there was one call in 2014 got me interested in looking at the way ISIS weaponized water. 443 00:43:23,260 --> 00:43:26,170 So I mentioned ISIS being a project of the two rivers. Right. 444 00:43:26,650 --> 00:43:33,520 But let's not forget, if we talk about non-state actors and the control of water, let's not forget in 1964, 445 00:43:34,150 --> 00:43:41,350 a one non-state actor made its name for attacking a water diversionary facility. 446 00:43:41,350 --> 00:43:49,540 Okay. And that faction, you know it. That's Fatah. And so here you see Yasser Arafat making it on the front page of time magazine. 447 00:43:50,470 --> 00:43:56,860 Now, remember what I said about the war for Palestinian memory. I'm going to show you now the next front page of time magazine. 448 00:43:57,910 --> 00:44:01,610 Here's the author of that. And here's some more. Okay. 449 00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:05,450 Now, if I compare them. I want you to look at the cover. 450 00:44:05,630 --> 00:44:15,960 Okay. Of another person. And when I'm talking about wars for memory, this the and this is the reason why I told Rutledge the book is not ready. 451 00:44:16,830 --> 00:44:20,190 I told you, Rutledge, the book is not ready. And I could not covers any words. 452 00:44:20,190 --> 00:44:23,400 Death. That literally occurred as I was getting on the plane over here. 453 00:44:24,210 --> 00:44:28,140 But what am I when I go into the 14th edition? 454 00:44:28,260 --> 00:44:33,240 What am I going to be forced to revise the execution of Saddam Hussein? 455 00:44:34,970 --> 00:44:43,280 Because if you look at the kind of the stoic death that both figures face, even people who hated to admit it. 456 00:44:43,580 --> 00:44:45,770 Even I, who hated to admit it. Right. 457 00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:53,870 That's Adam would go into history for facing his executioners with a certain stoicism where he was defiant towards the very end. 458 00:44:54,140 --> 00:44:58,850 Okay. And that was what Sinwar was given a defiant death. 459 00:44:58,850 --> 00:45:01,900 Were taking a stick, throwing it at the drone towards the very end. 460 00:45:01,910 --> 00:45:05,180 This is how he would be remembered when I write the 14th edition. 461 00:45:06,530 --> 00:45:12,829 Sure enough, what was I saying? I was writing the history of water in the region, coming up with words such as hydro terrorism. 462 00:45:12,830 --> 00:45:21,530 How high wasn't the hydrological state it controlled water gave it to its citizens and flooded water downstream, flooding its enemies. 463 00:45:21,610 --> 00:45:30,020 I remember the sinking feeling I had in the summer of 2000, when I heard the anecdote of the Scuds. 464 00:45:30,590 --> 00:45:35,270 What did I write? And now here brings in the other story of, besides my other teaching gigs. 465 00:45:35,270 --> 00:45:38,930 There's one I couldn't talk about in the bio because that teaching gig is over. 466 00:45:39,350 --> 00:45:45,200 I used to teach in the summer in August. The best place in the world to be in August is a city called Lviv in Ukraine. 467 00:45:46,150 --> 00:45:50,980 The best weather there and there. I was trying to bring Middle East studies and a post-Soviet context. 468 00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:56,800 Uh, so yeah, I used to teach in Ukraine every summer, of course, until 2022. 469 00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:07,770 And of course. Originally, I was planning to look at how water had been weaponized in the case of Ukraine in the summer of 2023. 470 00:46:08,130 --> 00:46:15,790 And of course, when writing about how water was weaponized in Ukraine, what was the conclusion I came to again, I thought of. 471 00:46:15,810 --> 00:46:19,710 Now, of course, every article you see here is feeding into the updated edition. 472 00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:23,340 I thought of one called article referring to Yemen. 473 00:46:24,060 --> 00:46:27,510 Why are people so angry and violent if they're thirsty? 474 00:46:27,780 --> 00:46:32,969 And of course, what I was concerned about in the summer of 2023, June 2023. 475 00:46:32,970 --> 00:46:41,250 And if you go to this article, you will look at the desperate situation of water justice in Gaza or the lack of it. 476 00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:43,860 And asking myself this question. 477 00:46:44,190 --> 00:46:55,200 Now, the thing about Gaza's water crisis, as you say, it wasn't just me writing in 2023, anyone following the history of water in Gaza, 478 00:46:55,530 --> 00:47:02,790 like myself back in 2020, was worried about the water situation in Gaza because it's the same dynamic affecting the marshes in Iraq. 479 00:47:02,790 --> 00:47:07,770 Rising water levels are leading into salinisation of underwater aquifers in Gaza. 480 00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:14,099 And let's not forget, the conflict in Gaza has been raging since 2008, and every single one of those conflicts. 481 00:47:14,100 --> 00:47:18,420 What was I keeping track of? Just like in Yemen, the destruction of water facilities? 482 00:47:19,350 --> 00:47:23,670 Because now we're wearing my public school hat. Public health hat. 483 00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:32,100 Destruction of water facilities leads to rises such of diseases cholera, polio, hepatitis B, so on and so forth. 484 00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:35,340 I looked at the water situation. 485 00:47:35,580 --> 00:47:45,360 Okay, people don't realise this, but Theodor Herzl wrote a science fiction novel on the genre with just born Theodor Herzl. 486 00:47:45,390 --> 00:47:53,640 It's talking about a hydro utopia. And this strip of land that he would later envision. 487 00:47:53,700 --> 00:47:59,970 Okay, Alternate Land is about how if Jews were to settle this land, that hydro utopia would emerge. 488 00:48:00,150 --> 00:48:03,420 Okay. Now, if you look at this eco site, 489 00:48:03,810 --> 00:48:12,030 is now what the term we're using to describe this situation in Gaza is going from was a term such as an environmental napper, 490 00:48:12,420 --> 00:48:19,170 an environmental dystopia. Okay. Among the actual dystopia that I would argue is being lived in the Gaza. 491 00:48:19,550 --> 00:48:22,980 Okay. Uh, other ways. 492 00:48:23,010 --> 00:48:27,690 Now, I end of this book. I want you to look at the houses here, and I'll start to wind up. 493 00:48:27,720 --> 00:48:34,260 If you look at the houses here, look at them with their car all coming together with their Kalashnikovs. 494 00:48:34,320 --> 00:48:39,660 Now let's end with this quote. Let's not forget what was the event that inspired Edward Said. 495 00:48:40,910 --> 00:48:44,270 If you remember I said I finished writing this book October 7th, 2023. 496 00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:49,160 I would have never ended my this version of the book with this quote. 497 00:48:49,550 --> 00:48:54,090 I've said were it not for the events that happened on October 7th, 2023. 498 00:48:54,110 --> 00:48:58,660 Look at this quote here. My interest in Orientalism began for two reasons. 499 00:48:58,670 --> 00:49:03,200 One, it wasn't a media thing. That is to say, the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, 500 00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:07,249 which had been preceded by a lot of images and discussions in the media in the 501 00:49:07,250 --> 00:49:11,450 popular press about how the Arabs are cowardly and they did not know how to fight, 502 00:49:11,450 --> 00:49:14,240 and that there were always going to be beaten because they are not modern. 503 00:49:16,590 --> 00:49:23,399 And then everybody was surprised when the Egyptian army crossed the canal in early October of 1973. 504 00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:28,380 And of course, now we know the date. It was October 7th, 1973, when that crossing occurred. 505 00:49:30,250 --> 00:49:33,340 And demonstrated that, like anybody else, they could fight. 506 00:49:33,850 --> 00:49:39,040 Okay. That was my one immediate impulse. My interest in Orientalism began for two reasons. 507 00:49:39,070 --> 00:49:45,700 It was that immediate thing, that is to say, the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, which had been preceded by, oh, sorry, did I just. 508 00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:51,250 Okay. That was it. Right. Okay. So in other words, now when we look at what it means to be modern, right? 509 00:49:52,180 --> 00:49:55,720 Israel weaponized artificial intelligence. 510 00:49:56,820 --> 00:50:00,650 We've entered now a brave new world. But people that you probably don't realise. 511 00:50:00,660 --> 00:50:04,889 And this gets to my school of public health Ahat remember what Arthur was saying? 512 00:50:04,890 --> 00:50:08,010 Who knows what was important back of the 21st century? 513 00:50:08,310 --> 00:50:14,070 Remember back when Covid occurred, we all were thinking about the post-pandemic world, right? 514 00:50:14,070 --> 00:50:18,930 We kept on talking about it. But you don't realise a lot of the artificial intelligence, 515 00:50:18,930 --> 00:50:25,800 a lot of the tracking equipment used to surveil Gaza was introduced into Israeli society thanks to Covid. 516 00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:30,659 A lot of those AI algorithms, a lot of the mass data that generates it. 517 00:50:30,660 --> 00:50:39,600 I was looking at this very closely. A lot of the words being generated due to monitoring people for Covid in Israel. 518 00:50:40,110 --> 00:50:45,260 Okay. But now we bring in the brave new world in terms of technology, what's happening? 519 00:50:45,270 --> 00:50:53,280 Technology. So not only did the Middle East endure a pandemic, and now as I start to round up that I had to cover, 520 00:50:53,700 --> 00:51:01,650 and I want you to think something about the pandemic, uh, we are what was called a post-pandemic world was caused by a coronavirus. 521 00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:09,660 Okay. Basically all what the happened was a bat made what's called a zoo, not a jump to an intermediate animal. 522 00:51:09,660 --> 00:51:16,740 The bat was a vector. And from there, that animal fact. The last humans that happened, uh, probably somewhere in the Yunnan province of China. 523 00:51:16,950 --> 00:51:24,450 Okay. Um, that was the first that was the first jump of a coronavirus, probably around 2019. 524 00:51:24,450 --> 00:51:27,180 Another one where did a break out in the Middle East? 525 00:51:27,900 --> 00:51:36,060 The Middle East respiratory syndrome was simply this a bat which was infected with a coronavirus bitter camel, 526 00:51:36,570 --> 00:51:42,060 and that camel infected a human and Saudi Arabia. That coronavirus was so deadly it never became a pandemic. 527 00:51:44,150 --> 00:51:53,050 We got lucky with that one just because it was so deadly. The great coronavirus that started off the 21st century was around 2003. 528 00:51:53,060 --> 00:51:57,170 I remember I was here. I remember here when a friend I should've mentioned his name. 529 00:51:57,170 --> 00:52:03,469 I'll keep him anonymous. A good Turkish friend, uh, got off the plane and people that he made a joke. 530 00:52:03,470 --> 00:52:07,910 Somebody was coughing on the plane and he got socially distance by his cohorts. 531 00:52:08,420 --> 00:52:11,590 That was SARS, Covid, okay, of 2000. 532 00:52:12,170 --> 00:52:15,770 That's three corona viruses in the 21st century. 533 00:52:17,170 --> 00:52:25,990 Do you know how many coronaviruses may that jump from humans, from animal reservoirs to humans, over the last 4000 years? 534 00:52:27,210 --> 00:52:30,540 For. Something you have to start asking yourself. 535 00:52:30,900 --> 00:52:37,260 And the human history. We only have records of for coronaviruses since we started domesticating animals. 536 00:52:39,350 --> 00:52:42,890 There's a hieroglyph. Okay. You'll be surprised for one of these viruses. 537 00:52:43,130 --> 00:52:47,170 There's even over the span of, let's say, the domestication of animals. 538 00:52:47,170 --> 00:52:52,940 So let's just say good. 4000 years for coronaviruses made the jump from animals to humans before the year 2000. 539 00:52:53,420 --> 00:53:01,850 And then the last 20 years, three have made that jump. Something is going on in terms of the way we are living in the modern world. 540 00:53:02,270 --> 00:53:06,259 And again, the answer to that is all right, back. It's very simple. 541 00:53:06,260 --> 00:53:15,889 We're just living closer to bat reservoirs. And deforestation means, let's just say easy 2000 years for coronaviruses, 20 years. 542 00:53:15,890 --> 00:53:21,260 Three coronaviruses. Uh, there is something going on, but that's it. 543 00:53:21,380 --> 00:53:26,510 This was just a side distraction. I wanted to look at the drones that were mass gathering. 544 00:53:26,510 --> 00:53:33,240 This. The V1 led to the Blitz over London, and it's that same technology. 545 00:53:33,260 --> 00:53:36,410 Who would have thought that throughout history? 546 00:53:36,650 --> 00:53:44,330 So every single addition. Right. It was the Middle East that bought arms from the West, particularly the Soviet Union. 547 00:53:44,330 --> 00:53:49,010 If you're talking about Iran and the Arab countries. Right. Who would have guessed? 548 00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:59,270 It's Iran producing drones that are now being purchased by Russia, the Shah Hydra, the same Ukraine is purchasing most of its drones from Turkey. 549 00:53:59,630 --> 00:54:03,590 Okay. Never in history. What's the Middle East now? The weapons exporters? 550 00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:08,120 Ukraine. You probably don't realise it's one of the world's largest weapons exporters. 551 00:54:08,150 --> 00:54:13,970 It still does. Still exports weapons. But when it needed the drone technology, it needed it from Turkey. 552 00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:18,890 Now, who was the first nation to introduce drones in the Middle East in the 1970s? 553 00:54:19,250 --> 00:54:25,670 It was Israel. Now, one of the arguments it's going to make is when you, uh, create a weapon, your adversaries are going to get it. 554 00:54:26,090 --> 00:54:35,370 If 1970s Israel introduced the first drone in the Middle East who recently attacked Benjamin Netanyahu's home with a drone, okay. 555 00:54:35,450 --> 00:54:36,979 Hezbollah again, 556 00:54:36,980 --> 00:54:42,910 would you have ever told me that a non-state actor would be now throwing drones at the Israeli prime minister's house in the year 2000? 557 00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:44,180 Could any of us have imagined? 558 00:54:45,740 --> 00:54:52,910 So here's an article that here I'm writing, and I'll start to conclude, uh, when I wrote this article about Kyiv in the blitz, 559 00:54:52,910 --> 00:54:57,020 uh, blitz with a fellow Ukrainian, uh, one of my former Ukrainian students. 560 00:54:57,020 --> 00:55:03,379 What does the Shahid mean? It's a witness. And you have to understand, every Ukrainian knows the word Shahid. 561 00:55:03,380 --> 00:55:08,150 Now, every Ukrainian has a story of their daily ontological security being upended. 562 00:55:08,690 --> 00:55:13,970 Finally, as we conclude, I want you to think of this. 563 00:55:14,720 --> 00:55:19,280 What are the two actors are engaged in the first instance of space combat? 564 00:55:19,290 --> 00:55:26,870 In other words, two actors engaged in violence at 100km or 60 miles above the Earth's surface. 565 00:55:27,500 --> 00:55:33,080 Is it Hamas and Israel, the Houthis and Israel, the Houthis and the Blowfish? 566 00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:38,300 That's just a bad joke from the 1980s. This is literally, if you don't know this, I teach the history of the space program. 567 00:55:38,330 --> 00:55:45,650 This is a literal question. On my exam, uh, Hezbollah and Israel were the first two actors that weaponize space. 568 00:55:46,340 --> 00:55:50,070 Any guesses? How was this in Israel? 569 00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:50,379 Yes. 570 00:55:50,380 --> 00:55:57,160 Because, you know, I mean, if you look at this meme, what I imagine every time I hear the Houthi is this is a reference to the jar was from Star Wars. 571 00:55:57,160 --> 00:56:02,380 But yes, literally the whole these have their own Star Wars they inherited. 572 00:56:02,830 --> 00:56:06,790 It's the V-1. It's basically the first drone in human history. 573 00:56:07,150 --> 00:56:14,139 Uh, the second weapon, the V-2, the first ballistic missile was the first human made object that ever entered outer space. 574 00:56:14,140 --> 00:56:20,890 The V2 was it, and the V2 evolved into the same rockets that took humanity to the moon. 575 00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:28,710 The US program and the B-2 became the Soviets got the same missile that Saddam launched towards Israel, 576 00:56:28,950 --> 00:56:34,560 and the same Scud missiles that the Houthis launched towards a lot. 577 00:56:34,770 --> 00:56:35,070 Okay. 578 00:56:35,370 --> 00:56:45,720 Now, the interesting thing here is, yes, for the US, Israel to be able to intercept those missiles, it launched a US designed weapon in outer space. 579 00:56:47,970 --> 00:56:51,870 Finally, I said, I'm going to end this. Uh, let me just forget. 580 00:56:51,870 --> 00:56:56,340 And of course, I saved it to the very end, the gendered aspect. But let me just end with the following. 581 00:57:00,240 --> 00:57:06,620 I'm just going to skip because I saw this image. And some of his office in the image. 582 00:57:06,630 --> 00:57:10,670 Yes. Okay. I don't know how to say I saw the image of Layla College and the office. 583 00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:22,000 There is one film I highly recommend called Paradise Now, which is an obvious reference to Hamas, 584 00:57:22,780 --> 00:57:28,380 and it has an iconic part where the protagonists film their farewell message. 585 00:57:28,510 --> 00:57:32,050 Okay, but if we go to the edge, the second wave. 586 00:57:32,380 --> 00:57:36,100 Okay. And this is kind of an homage to the third wave. 587 00:57:37,700 --> 00:57:42,910 Uh, here's Layla Harland. But what what was interesting was that again. 588 00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:50,720 Okay, uh, the suicide of a mother. Okay, here we get to somebody who originally, actually, who killed herself. 589 00:57:50,750 --> 00:57:53,990 Uh, uh, this became the third wave. 590 00:57:54,590 --> 00:57:59,290 Okay. And like I said, we thought the third wave was over, but no, the third wave never went away. 591 00:57:59,290 --> 00:58:05,869 In other words, you have to ask yourself this. What were the conditions that in the case of Layla Khalid, she was married. 592 00:58:05,870 --> 00:58:10,969 The wedding ring was the grenade pin. The diamond was the bullet. 593 00:58:10,970 --> 00:58:15,320 She was married to the cause. Remarry? Uh, she actually was married and had a child. 594 00:58:15,470 --> 00:58:19,310 Okay, but this is a question. Whether it's access to water or simply this. 595 00:58:19,310 --> 00:58:23,360 What were the frustrations that led to Reem Rashi killing herself? 596 00:58:25,070 --> 00:58:29,360 Well, all matters that I have to go and look back to when I write this history. 597 00:58:30,050 --> 00:58:33,440 Okay. Um. Uh, okay. 598 00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:38,580 So now I promise to conclude. Other women that I wrote about. 599 00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:43,300 In the 21st century. Who would have thought? Angelina Jolie. 600 00:58:44,050 --> 00:58:47,520 Now, when I talk about non-state actors, I want you to think about this. 601 00:58:47,530 --> 00:59:00,190 A single tweet by Angelina Jolie referring to, uh uh uh uh, mass death and the refugee camp gets condemned by the president of Israel. 602 00:59:01,240 --> 00:59:06,630 And again, if you look at the politics of the 21st century, okay, whether it's Angelina Jolie, 603 00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:12,260 remember, she was a U.N. goodwill ambassador, but kind of bringing more women into the story. 604 00:59:12,280 --> 00:59:15,670 Okay. A Syrian swimmer? Yes. Or a mardini. 605 00:59:16,030 --> 00:59:21,910 Okay. Uh, that I used to discuss the fate of Syria and the Arab Spring. 606 00:59:21,940 --> 00:59:32,730 Uh, Amal Alameddine, a Lebanese barrister, uh, working on behalf of a Yazidi sex, uh, violence survivor. 607 00:59:32,740 --> 00:59:39,100 Sexual violence in the 21st century, ISIS weaponized, uh, sexual slavery, weaponized rape. 608 00:59:39,790 --> 00:59:43,870 And then in all of this, can we have some happy stories to conclude with? 609 00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:49,480 Okay, where do we find agency? And, uh, yeah. Well, you see, who am I ending the story with? 610 00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:57,700 Okay, whether it's the Hadi, uh, Habiba Amarachi, uh, the first person to ever create an environmentalist group, 611 00:59:57,700 --> 01:00:01,479 uh, a group together gave it to environmentalism in the UAE of the 1990s. 612 01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:09,050 Of course, she is my aunt. Right. But what was I doing in Jerusalem in the 19? 613 01:00:09,070 --> 01:00:12,459 Uh, really up to in the summer of 2000. What was I there, here. 614 01:00:12,460 --> 01:00:20,860 Therefore, I was on my way to a town called Zactly to search for a side of my family I did not know existed. 615 01:00:21,130 --> 01:00:25,930 And to give you a spoiler, sure enough, in the year 2000, I found. 616 01:00:27,570 --> 01:00:33,010 The Syriac Orthodox Christian side of my family that literally I had no idea existed. 617 01:00:33,030 --> 01:00:39,359 I walked into Zactly and all it took was another taxi driver who said, hey, 618 01:00:39,360 --> 01:00:45,090 does anyone know the woman from Ashley in the 1950s who married the Iraqi Muslim? 619 01:00:46,170 --> 01:00:49,590 And sure enough, the taxi driver said, oh, that story. 620 01:00:50,100 --> 01:00:53,850 This is in the summer of the year 2000, because I want you to think of this, 621 01:00:54,450 --> 01:00:59,160 the idea of a Syriac Orthodox Christian woman, of a Christian for that matter. 622 01:00:59,380 --> 01:01:00,230 He didn't say that. 623 01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:08,160 He just said the Christian woman from this town who married the Muslim from Iraq in the 50s and the mechanic who lived to the year 2000 and said, 624 01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:13,830 oh, that story. That's how scandalous it was to think of a Christian Muslim marriage back then. 625 01:01:14,460 --> 01:01:19,110 And sure enough, in ten minutes I found my, uh, my grandmother's. 626 01:01:19,110 --> 01:01:25,980 And she was not only exactly, but when my grandmother died in Iraq in the 50s. 627 01:01:26,130 --> 01:01:32,780 For 40 years, she had been lighting a candle to the Virgin Mary saying, please let my sisters kids can find me. 628 01:01:32,790 --> 01:01:38,610 She never thought it would be her sister's grandchild that would find her. And I found her exactly in the summer of 2000. 629 01:01:39,930 --> 01:01:45,180 The day before, I caught a flight to London and made it to Oxford. In other words, what was I doing right before I met you? 630 01:01:45,180 --> 01:01:49,950 Two days earlier? I found the Christian side of my family and the mountains of Zactly. 631 01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:53,790 That was the summer of 2000. The thing is. 632 01:01:54,840 --> 01:02:02,040 Does she look at me as a Lebanese Christian and say, you know, you're the product of that marriage to the Iraqi Muslim in the 1950s? 633 01:02:02,070 --> 01:02:10,620 No. All she saw was the grandchild of, uh, her sister, who she had been waving for the side of her family every night lighting the candle. 634 01:02:10,950 --> 01:02:17,370 I say this for a reason. Because when you look at the intense conflict coming, you know, going on there again, it's hard to predict the future. 635 01:02:17,820 --> 01:02:21,840 That was in the summer of 2000. And here I am. 636 01:02:22,500 --> 01:02:25,709 It's February 22nd. Sorry. 637 01:02:25,710 --> 01:02:32,790 February 24th, 2022. Ukraine had just been invaded, and I wasn't sure I would make it into a flight. 638 01:02:32,790 --> 01:02:36,030 And exactly because I was flying through Istanbul, I thought the flights would be cancelled. 639 01:02:36,390 --> 01:02:41,250 And what was the first thing she told me was, I'm worried that you can sneak in a second. 640 01:02:41,250 --> 01:02:46,440 I know the price of bread is going to increase because what comes. You know, how is the woman exactly? 641 01:02:46,440 --> 01:02:49,800 What is she going to be affected? The price of bread coming from Ukraine. 642 01:02:50,340 --> 01:02:53,479 And here she is. When I said goodbye to her. 643 01:02:53,480 --> 01:02:58,280 It was her Ash Wednesday, right? And so I wrote about this story. 644 01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:02,330 Okay. Uh, from Ukraine to Lebanon. A tale of two Marias. 645 01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:06,370 This was all the summer of 2000 when I discovered her. 646 01:03:06,380 --> 01:03:11,780 Uh, she is still in the mountains. Sadly, she can't evacuate. 647 01:03:12,020 --> 01:03:16,009 You know how old people are when it comes to leaving their home. Especially her condition. 648 01:03:16,010 --> 01:03:19,490 Her kitchen. But she decorates with little decorations. 649 01:03:19,730 --> 01:03:25,820 She's still in the mountains of Zactly. And during the bombardments of every bomb, she feels, uh, exactly has evacuated. 650 01:03:25,820 --> 01:03:28,250 But she's still there. She's 98 years old. 651 01:03:29,330 --> 01:03:35,000 And if anything were to happen to her, it's always the Red cross that will come and, you know, take her to the hospital. 652 01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:39,080 She's still there. Uh, I hope that Katherine Baalbek is still there. 653 01:03:39,390 --> 01:03:42,450 Whatever happened to you off? Where happened to you? 654 01:03:42,620 --> 01:03:45,770 Did he make it to San Diego? Yes he did. 655 01:03:46,130 --> 01:03:51,170 He did make it to San Diego. And here we are, the day he's about to fly back. 656 01:03:52,250 --> 01:03:55,530 To Tel Aviv is just a couple of weeks ago. He made it to San Diego. 657 01:03:55,530 --> 01:03:59,430 He he really did not want to come back to Tel Aviv. He did not want. 658 01:03:59,670 --> 01:04:02,790 It's me. You off. And there's supposed to be some turtles in the. 659 01:04:02,940 --> 01:04:07,410 That's a turtle pond that unfortunately, I come get back. But this is what I want. 660 01:04:07,470 --> 01:04:13,290 This is how I. This is the story of me. Search the me search that went into this edition. 661 01:04:13,380 --> 01:04:22,260 Yeah. The research that goes into writing the history, uh, some actual events, some individual stories that I'll never write up. 662 01:04:23,700 --> 01:04:32,750 Uh, but that's the the last the story of the last 24 years of me, uh, the Middle East Centre at Saint Anthony's at Oxford. 663 01:04:32,770 --> 01:04:35,960 My story with Eugene and his students. So thank you. 664 01:04:35,970 --> 01:04:39,959 You never know what's going to happen 24 years from now. For all of you assembled here. 665 01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:40,830 Thank you for coming.