Technology
200. Israel at War, Explained: The Changing Middle East, Part 2
In this milestone 200th episode, host Jason Harris delves into the evolving geopolitical landscape of the Middle East, particularly in light of recent conflicts. This episode continues the discussion ...
200. Israel at War, Explained: The Changing Middle East, Part 2
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Alright, clocking in at episode number 200 for this Jew on an O podcast.
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This began as a whimsical few episodes that I never thought would get beyond my immediate
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family.
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But here we are, with listeners on all seven continents and more than a million streams
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and downloads.
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And an absolutely wonderful and growing group of donors who have kept and are keeping
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this project going and to whom I am incredibly grateful.
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If you've donated and have been willing to reveal your name, you can find it listed
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on the donor page on my website, JewOnno.com.
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And there you can find all the details in the past eight seasons, covering everything
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from ancient history to who wrote the Hebrew Bible to Jewish philosophers you should know,
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to modern Israeli history, and of course the last year and a half of this remarkably
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dramatic time that we're all living through and trying to make sense of.
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Whether you've been here from the beginning or this is your first episode, it's great
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to have you aboard so 200 episodes and many, many more seasons to come in the coming years.
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And I'll be re-releasing some of the original episodes, remastered with better audio,
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so keep a lookout for that too.
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So with that, let's get to today's episode.
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It's a continuation of the last episodes.
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That was part one.
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This is part two.
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So you should listen to part one before today.
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We're talking about how the Middle East is changing, the big picture.
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How this new era that was accelerated after October 7th is producing a new geopolitical
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alignment, new powers that are rising, new threats that are emerging, but also old
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rifles that are becoming friends or at least cooperating.
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Last episode we focused on the new threats.
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The conclusion was that Israel needs to develop its own block of influence to counter
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the potential threat from Turkey and ongoing jihadism.
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Israel needs its own allies in the region.
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And that process was already underway with the Abraham Accords.
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That was the diplomatic agreement between Israel and several Arab countries that was signed
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in 2020.
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And there's also a broad alignment against Iranian aggression.
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So new ideologies are emerging that complement these efforts in what could very well be a turn
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towards the positive.
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So here we go.
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Episode number 200.
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I'm your host Jason Harris.
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And this is Juwata No.
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Allah akam akhati min ala yudhi fi ares dihtra al.
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I would say to young people and let we can do everyone our share to redeem the world.
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From up to the 20th century, the most powerful ideology in the Middle East was secular Arab
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nationalism.
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Broadly speaking, Arab nationalism says that Arabs represent a single national people.
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They share a culture, language and history across the entire Arab world and its many independent
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states.
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It was revolutionary and romantic and it could take on a mystical aura.
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Arab nationalists envisioned a single Arab state that would renew Arab civilization after
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Arab centuries of stagnation and loss.
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Free of Western influence, Arab consciousness would return to its pure state reminiscent
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of when Arabs really undisputed masters of the Middle East.
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Arabs had a destiny with history, a role to plan a cosmic level in determining the future.
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This was really powerful stuff.
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It was coming after decades of the two world wars that collapse of the Ottoman Empire,
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the division of the Middle East into Western colonies and spheres of influence.
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A real sense that the Arabs had lost their way.
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Just about every country developed its own particular brand of Arab nationalism and made
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its own contributions.
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The two most important were the brands in Egypt and the one in Syria and Iraq.
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In Egypt, we get Nazarism.
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This is named for President Gamel Abd al-Nasser.
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He was an Egyptian army officer who led a revolutionary coup that overthrew the king of Egypt
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in 1952 and installed an independent Arab state.
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Nazar served as the second president from 1956 to 1970.
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Nazarism envisioned Arab solidarity under the leadership of Egypt and specifically Nazar himself.
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It paid lip service to things like socialism and democracy, but in reality it was a one-party,
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anti-Western, anti-Zionist state.
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We can interpret Nazarism as a cult of personality or a modernizing movement or a decolonizing
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liberation ideology or some combination of all three depending on how you want to look at things.
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Nazar was immensely popular.
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In 1956, he defied the West by seizing and nationalizing the Suez Canal.
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He sparked a war with France, the UK and Israel.
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That made him a hero in the Arab world.
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He inspired similar nationalist movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, like in Algeria and Libya.
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More than anyone else, he was indeed seen as the leader of Arab nationalism,
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the remarkably charismatic leader who would unite all the Arabs, defeat Israel, defeat Western imperialism,
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and bring about an age of Arab glory and prosperity.
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While this was going on in Egypt, Iraq and Syria had their own Arab nationalist movement.
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This was known as Bathism, usually translated as Renaissance.
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It was started by a small group of intellectuals in the 1940s.
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When Nazarism was more focused on Egyptian nationalism and leadership,
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Bathism put a greater emphasis on pan-Arab unity and Arab identity across the entire Middle East.
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Bathists started out as revolutionary socialists, promising a future free from Western colonialism and Zionism.
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It was idealistic and secular.
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Bathists envisioned Arab solidarity across national, ethnic and religious lines.
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Only through the imposition of Bathist ideology could the Arab peoples enjoy liberty.
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Eventually, the Bathists hoped for a single Arab state to emerge across the Middle East and North Africa.
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So, that was very short.
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Arab nationalism, whether Nazarism or Bathism or similar movements in other countries,
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it was an immensely powerful and popular idea.
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It promised an incredibly bright and independent future for Arab society.
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But it quickly collapsed on itself.
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Arab nationalism was fatally compromised by the failure to achieve what it had promised.
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Instead of pride, strength and independence, Arab nationalism turned into dictatorship and militarism.
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It also failed to deliver on its key promise, which was to destroy Israel.
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In Egypt in the 1960s, Nazar bogged the country down in a disastrous war in Yemen that killed 30,000 Egyptian soldiers and a couple hundred thousand civilians.
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The Yemen war, so weakened Egypt that Nazar was then unable to eliminate Israel during the 1967-06th day war.
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After years of rhetoric promising to drown all the Jews in the Mediterranean, and after shackling Arab nationalism to the cause of Israel's elimination,
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Egypt instead had its entire Air Force destroyed and lost both the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula.
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After Nazar died in 1970, his successors rolled back much of his program and even made peace with Israel.
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Egypt eventually aligned itself with the United States, deepened cooperation with Israel, and cut off money for Nazarist revolutionary movements.
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In both Syria and Iraq, Bathism was overtaken by cruel dictatorships.
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You have Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
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They turned their respective Bath parties into cults of personality that used extreme violence to impose a police state.
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They developed militaristic and antagonistic regimes that started wars with their neighbors and repressed their own people.
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Instead of being forces of unification, Assad and Hussein used their power to keep their people weak and divided.
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They favored their own tribal and political clans as a means to stay in power and prevent regime change.
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Saddam Hussein was finally defeated by the United States during the Iraq War that began in 2003.
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He was executed by his countrymen in 2006.
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The Assad regime persisted under Hafez's son Bashar until it was overthrown by Syrian rebel groups just this past December 2024.
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So in practice, Arab nationalism turned out dictatorial regimes that were nasty, corrupt and incompetent.
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That lost it legitimacy from ordinary people who realized that it was a sham to entrench authoritarian rulers.
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And it turned out that Pan-Arab ideology was much more about destroying Israel than about true solidarity amongst Arab peoples.
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And when it couldn't destroy Israel after launching multiple wars and decades of terrorism, it was discredited as a hollow ideology.
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It turned out that the obsession with Israel, Zionism and Western imperialism couldn't provide prosperity, harmony, liberty or unity.
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Another way to look at it is that Israel's ability to successfully defend itself from Arab nationalism proved what a sham that ideology was and more or less killed it off.
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While Arab nationalism remains influential as a kind of historical aspiration, there's really only a few small nationalist parties and politicians left and almost no one takes it seriously anymore.
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So Arab nationalism is no longer a governing principle and that leaves room for other ideologies to emerge.
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When we look around the Middle East, we see some new ideas and new power players.
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The heavyweight is Saudi Arabia. It was once an austere, ultra conservative, radical Islamic state.
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You might remember that nearly all of the September 11th hijackers were Saudi and the Saudis funded jihadist mosques, schools and groups all over the world.
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But in the years after 9-11, the Saudis almost entirely de-radicalized.
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In recent years, they've been ruled by a, for the Middle East, a more enlightened or at least more progressive ruler named Muhammad bin Thalman.
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bin Thalman is also known as MBS and he's actually the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He's not the king.
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But the king is 89 years old instead to be ailing. So MBS, who was 39, is the future.
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Now, Muhammad bin Thalman is an autocrat. But he's pushing Saudi Arabia into a massive transformation.
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He's trying to turn the country from a repressive oil state that exports violence into a socially liberalized modern economy that brings stability to the Middle East.
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bin Thalman knows that Saudi Arabia can't rely on oil forever. But it's huge population of young people need jobs in the future.
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And that a diverse economy needs things like rule of law in the absence of violence.
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Let's call this new ideology, Salmanism.
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Social liberalization and economic diversification is Salmanism.
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This isn't about uniting all the Arab peoples or bringing about an Islamic restoration through violent conquest.
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It's about launching Saudi Arabia into the 21st century.
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Salmanism has so far had a lot of success with social liberation. Saudi Arabia was once infamous for its repression of women.
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And it's obsessive squashing of anything fun like movies and music. A violent religious police roam the country at will.
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But those police are now gone. And women are freer than ever before. They're able to drive by themselves, find work, travel, live without the constant authority of a male relative.
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Saudis of all ages and genders now hit the movies and concerts. That's a huge leap forward.
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MBS is struggling much more with the economic transition. It's proving hard to ween off oil and invest in more worthy economic endeavors.
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But where this all intersects the changing geopolitical realities is that Saudi Arabia is no longer a regional threat, at least to Israel and the West.
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In fact, there's an alignment now because both countries see Iran as their nemesis. That's why it makes sense for them to cooperate.
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And that's why they've been building towards diplomatic normalization for years.
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This drive towards normalization was complicated by October 7th.
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MBS doesn't care about the Palestinians, but his Saudi subjects do. And they've been propagandized by a relentless campaign, especially from social media, as well as Al Jazeera.
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Qatar's media channel. Remember that Qatar is at root to Sunni jihadist state that tries to play both sides with the West.
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So bin Salman is wary of making formal peace with Israel while the Gaza war is going on.
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But there's every reason to expect them to get there eventually. And that does represent a new way forward for the entire regime, between the country that controls the Jewish holy sites and the one that controls the Muslim ones.
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We're not just talking politics. We're talking a kind of religious and cultural reconciliation never really seen before.
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And for Israel, the strategic implications are huge. If Iranian jihadism is really giving way to a new Sunni jihadism from Turkey and Qatar, then having Saudi Arabia, the major Sunni Muslim power as Israel's ally, is hugely important.
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But still, we're a long ways off from that, and plenty of things could still disrupt that new narrative.
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So let's turn to another developing ideological orientation. This one in Syria.
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Syria spent 54 years in the dictatorship of the Assad family. They were nominally bathists at the political party associated with Arab nationalism.
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But it wasn't reality a crime family whose only real ideology was their own tyranny. But this past December 2024, a group of rebel groups overthrew the regime.
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The leader of the main rebel group, Muhammad al-Julani, appointed himself as the new president of Syria. He also goes by the name Ahmed al-Shara.
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President Julani is trying to hold Syria together and consolidate the country under his leadership. It's not easy. There are dozens of militias running around, many of them with competing goals and loyalties.
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Turkey is occupying huge chunks of the north of the country. The economy is a complete wreck and the state is fragmented in a week after decades of tyranny.
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What makes Julani so interesting is that he used to be a jihadist. He's a Syrian Sunni. He was born in Saudi Arabia. And he was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq during the US invasion. He was actually imprisoned for five years.
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When he came out, he established a jihadist group to fight in Syria. But when ISIS tried to take over his militia, Julani went to war with them. And by 2016, he renounced jihadism.
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His group captured a chunk of territory in Syria and he turned his jihadists into the local government. And they actually did a pretty good job of it. They were focused on actual governing and providing jobs and services in functioning cities.
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Since becoming president, Julani has been critical of Israel but not antagonistic. He's been clear that his priority is the stability of Syria, not waging more war.
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He's refused to cooperate with Hamas. He arrested Islamic jihad terrorists. He disrupted Hasbola's smuggling operations. He's even suggested that Syria would like to join the Abraham Accords.
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And considering that Syria has remained in a technical state of war with Israel since 1973, this is an extraordinary turnaround.
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But is it real? Is Julani a true reformer? Or is he just saying what the West wants to hear?
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Now on the one hand he's putting action towards. He seems to be building a more moderate and inclusive government that's modeled on his rebel group's control of its own territory. That is, it's focus on actually running a country and building things.
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He's promised Christians and Jews that their rights will be respected and protected and that they'll have a voice in the future Syria. He seems to want to create a genuine moderate muslim nation.
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On the other hand, it's too early to really tell. Can we really trust the jihadist, even a former one? Is he going to consolidate power under himself and just become Syria's latest dictator? Or if he is genuine, can he even deliver a moderate muslim nation? Can he keep Turkey out? There's a lot of open questions.
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But if we accept Julaniism at face value for a moment, then there is much to gain. Israel will get a buffer state between itself and Turkey.
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Julaniism will join like-minded Salmanism, taking the best parts of Kamalism and Arab nationalism and discarding the cruel dictatorships, militarism and obsessive focus on destroying Israel.
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In that scenario, think about it, Israel will become completely surrounded by stable, moderate Arab countries. That means more secure borders, Palestinian and jihadist terrorist groups that are more isolated and therefore weaker.
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And this is all wildly optimistic, I admit that. And even in the best case scenario, it's a long layoff. And much also depends on yet another ideology, perhaps the modern Middle East's oldest and most successful Zionism.
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Zionism began as a political movement with Theodore Herzog in 1897. But its ideological underpinnings go back into the early 1800s. And its messianic overtones can be traced back nearly 2000 years to the Jews' long historical connection with this part of the Middle East.
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And Zionism actually has a great deal in common with other Middle Eastern ideologies. It's secular and nationalist, though of course it's Jewish nationalism rather than Arab or Turkish nationalism.
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It's decolonial and anti-imperialist. Zionist also wanted to escape from the European powers by establishing an independent homeland and they had to defy the British to get it.
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And in its early stages through the 1970s, Zionism emphasized socialism, just like the various forms of Arab nationalism.
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What was significantly different about Zionism was its adherence to liberal democracy. Where Arab nationalism and Islamism descended into authoritarianism and cults of personality, Zionism never had a dictator and never developed into a tool of repression against its own people.
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It also had the advantage of focusing on a small distinct population in a small area, right? Only a few million citizens in Israel, rather than hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims scattered over a couple dozen countries more than 3000 miles wide.
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And all of that and more helped give Zionism staying power, right? It's still the state ideology of Israel.
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From its beginnings, Zionism imagined two big goals. One was for the Jewish homeland to be a safe haven, a place where Jews threatened anywhere in the world to come live.
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The other was to craft a model society. It was an intensely progressive vision taking the most idealistic aspect of a variety of ideologies from revolutionary socialism to nationalism.
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Zionism imagined that all of things Jews struggled with has persecuted minorities will become manifest in the Jewish homeland, equal rights, gender equality, worker solidarity, freedom of religion, on and on.
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A Zionism that is primarily concerned with the safe haven is a Zionism that is primarily focused on security.
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A Zionism that is primarily concerned with the model society is going to be primarily focused on the politics and policies that can best achieve that.
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The questions are what's the right balance, what's the right way, and when can lean more on one or the other.
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In recent years, we tend to see two dominant branches of Zionism competing over these answers. We have liberal Zionism, which focuses on Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
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With a heavy emphasis on the democratic part, as the source of Israel's strength, military security and overall success.
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For liberal Zionists, the answer to the model society is essentially more and better democracy.
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Then we also have the religious Zionists, which say that the answers are found in Torah.
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If you want to craft this idealized Zionist nation, then it is the Torah which gives us the ethical values and the moral reasoning to do that.
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Therefore, Israel should place greater emphasis on Jewish law and principles, and it should be a more explicitly Jewish country.
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A more Jewish state means a stronger Jewish identity, greater solidarity, and that means more security, since it gives people something concrete and powerful to fight for.
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So it seems like liberal Zionism and religious Zionism must be opposites working against each other, but it doesn't have to be.
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A liberal democratic Israel can also be strongly Jewish. We could argue that Israel's strength comes precisely from these two branches working in ways that complement each other.
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Now, to today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he's not really an either-camp directly. He's a small-d Democrat, but he's opposed by the liberal Zionists.
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He's not religious, but he relies on religious Jews to keep him in power.
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Netanyahu's Zionism is security Zionism. He sees threats to Israel's existence and wants to make sure Israel is strong enough to defeat them.
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That's why he's been so focused on Iran's nuclear weapons for the last 20 years.
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Building a model society doesn't motivate him as much as security does.
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So Netanyahu, Netanyahuism, tends to see everything through that lens.
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So the recent agreements with several Arab countries, the Abraham Accords, this has an economic and diplomatic component to it, but it's really about security.
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It's about finding Israel allies in the Middle East.
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Normalization with Saudi Arabia would be a huge boost to Israel's security.
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In agreement with Syria would be a huge boost, a reformed Lebanon without Chesbola, and of course a Gaza liberated from Hamas and the Palestinians freed from jihadism altogether.
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And so the question is, how much longer Netanyahuism is going to last?
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Does Netanyahu's version of Zionism outlast Netanyahu himself?
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Will Israel at some point alter the balance more towards the Zionism of building a model society?
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Now much depends on what happens with Gaza, what happens with the wider region, what happens with the hostages.
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When Israelis feel more secure, perhaps they'll focus more on this other goal of Zionism.
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Okay, so what should we take away from all this?
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We should take away that nothing is certain.
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I was tempted to end the last episode thinking that the Middle East was in for decades of more war, and I'm tempted to end this one by declaring that peace is imminently at hand.
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The truth is that we're looking at the Shrodinger Middle East.
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The old era is probably over, a new era is probably coming, and we're in the muddled middle when anything is possible.
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The Israeli and American campaign against Iran did not start a global war, but it also didn't kill off radical Islam.
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Iran is down, but it's not out.
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Without regime change, the Iranians may go right back to building nuclear weapons and exporting mayhem, and we'll be back to square one.
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Turkey has not declared war in Israel, but neither is any other Muslim country racing to make peace with the Jewish state.
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The Saudis have always maintained that normalization will only come with progress towards a Palestinian state, which seems distinctly unlikely right now.
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So it may be that that goal will remain cool for some time yet.
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And there could always be a reversal.
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Hasbola is severely weakened, but is still influential in Lebanon, still represents the Shia Muslims there, and has plenty of scope to continue making trouble.
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Syria could still collapse into a failed state to become a battleground for warring rebel groups backed by different outside powers, or become a vassal state of Turkey.
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And the war in Gaza grinds on with seemingly no real end in sight.
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Israel's 12-day campaign against Iran was remarkable, but it didn't solve all the problems and didn't completely clear the way for new ideologies to arise.
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So as ever, the Middle East has a way of surprising everyone. We'll see what happens.
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200 episodes seems like a good place to put down the microphone for the rest of the summer.
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And speaking of Zionism, I am three-force of the way through a first draft of a book on the history of Zionism.
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I've promised my ever-patient wife that I swear I'm nearing completion.
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If you'd like to support this project, please consider a donation to Jew, I don't know, or if you have a friend in the book world like an editor or an agent who might be interested, I'd love a connection.
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My email is Jew, I don't know, podcast at gmail.com.
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In the meantime, I'll be re-releasing remastered episodes from at least season one while I continue to plug away at various Jewish history projects over here.
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Huge thank you to all your listeners, all your donors, everyone who supports this project in any way.
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Plenty more to come. I'll be back soon.
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But hit the roads. See you later.