Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (with Hillel Cohen) 2/12/24

How far back should you go to understand the current moment in the relationship between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors and the attack of October 7? Some would say 2005, or 1967, or maybe 1948 when the State of Israel was founded. But for historian and author Hillel Cohen of Hebrew University, year zero was 1929. Listen as he explains to EconTalk's Russ Roberts the significance of that year for the current moment, and the challenge of being an open-minded historian when tribal issues loom large.
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[daviday]

I really appreciated this conversation, even 7 months later (now October 2024)...Thank you for having this available for all on here. Hillel Cohen presents a nuanced and open-mindedness we rarely see in the online discourse today.
I would be curious to know what Hillel Cohen thinks of Haviv Rettig Gur & Benny Morris, and vice-versa (Benny has written at length a long time ago about this book of Cohen's but I wonder what they would agree and disagree on today)...I feel like the three of them on a longform podcast like this moderated by you would be a wonderful exchange of opinions.

[MayaBloke]

Wow! Beautifully said, Cohen! This must have hurt, Russ. 44:00 onwards.
Finally, you brought someone on who didn’t fit your bias. I really enjoyed this one.

[Ariverwhosestreamsmakeglad]

Thank you for an interesting discourse. Hillei Cohen raised several interesting points. Israel's history has been mostly defensive, not offensive. It is an unsolvable region, given the animus be it expressed in full or partial, from various quarters.

[FlamingBasketballClub]

Please invite Dr. Stanton Hom to the podcast sometime.
🇮🇨🇳🇫

[Vcagle]

About 1967, our president had gone out of his way to consult with our intelligence community about whether or not Egypt was about to attack Israel and everyone assured him that, no, Egypt was not about to attack Israel. Part of the reason for this was that although Egypt had a brand new state of the art air force, they did not yet have pilots well trained in the new jets. Anyway, Israel came to Washington and stated as much, Egypt is about to attack us, we want to attack first, and our president objected to this point of view but also offered his approval for Israel's planned assault on Egypt, basically giving the green light for a preemptive assault. But no one thought an Egyptian attack was imminent and Israel had been considering attacking Egypt for months before that.

[willosee]

Well that took the wind from your sails.

[minimalistic_banhaus]

26:22 I have no doubt Russ and Hillel earnestly want to be open-minded and give a fair shake to the opposing perspective, but this comes off as performative in that they want to feel that they did that instead of actually doing it. Stating you have bias is not the same as overcoming it. It can even be dangerous, where because you know you have a bias, you believe that it no longer clouds your thinking. That is unfortunately not the way it works. Bias only dissipates when strong emotions dissipate. With this conflict, that appears very far away.

This series on the Israel-Palestine conflict (continues to) desperately need guests who present the Palestinian perspective.

[stephenschwab]

What were the circumstances under which the policeman murdered the Arab family? Did he just walk into their home unprovoked and open fire? Was he a psycho?

[alrosano]

Can Palestinians and Israelis coexist together? Absolutely !

[ipitchford]

I couldn’t keep watching after Roberts supported the war on Gaza. This sliver of history all seems so completely unimportant.

[jonsopher]

Can we be objective, this is the challenge.

[mmikee]

1:04:25 It is almost 100 years and the more things change the more that they stay the same. It is a curse when the conflict is seen through the prism of religion and mysticism, rationality takes a backstep and even when one side is vastly rational (by virtue of being more Western and secular) and hence morally superior to the other, still the overall conflict is inexorably recalcitrant to a detente.