- 5 months ago
Professor Tarek Masoud joins WIRED to answer the internet's burning questions about the Middle East. What's the origin of the conflict between Israel and Palestine? What are the most significant moments leading to the current geopolitical climate of the Middle East? What makes the Houthis of Yemen such a difficult adversary? Why is Islam unfairly associated with terrorism? Answers to these questions and more await on Middle East support.EXPERT'S NOTE: My edited response to the question about the roots of the Sunni-Shia divide seems to suggest that a civil war broke out immediately upon the death of Muhammad. In fact, the prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, was passed over for leadership three times, before finally becoming Caliph about 25 years after Muhammad’s death. His rule, however, was highly contested. A civil war broke out, and Ali was ultimately assassinated, setting in motion the split between Shias (the partisans of Ali) and Sunnis that persists to this day.Director: Lisandro Perez-ReyDirector of Photography: Charlie JordanEditor: Matthew ColbyExpert: Tarek MasoudLine Producer: Jamie RasmussenAssociate Producer: Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: Peter BrunetteProduction Coordinator: Rhyan LarkCasting Producer: Thomas GiglioCamera Operator: Lauren PruittSound Mixer: Rebecca O'NeillProduction Assistant: Caleb Clark; Ryan CoppolaPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinSupervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo; Erica DeLeoAdditional Editor: Samantha DiVitoAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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TechTranscript
00:00I'm Tarek Masood from Harvard University.
00:02Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:04This is Middle East Support.
00:10All right, let's look at the first question.
00:12Here's a question from at patrioticmommy1.
00:15Anyone know what Middle East countries are saying
00:17about the U.S. bombing nuclear sites in Iran?
00:19A lot of Arabs, in particular,
00:21don't like the idea of the United States
00:24bombing a Muslim country in conjunction with Israel.
00:28That's a very powerful strain of public discourse
00:32in the Arab and indeed Muslim world.
00:34But on the flip side, a lot of Arab countries
00:36are afraid of Iran.
00:37They're particularly worried that the Iranians
00:40will use the strength that they derive from a nuclear weapon
00:44to assert their dominance over the region.
00:48And so they're not necessarily that opposed
00:52to the United States using its military power
00:55to thwart Iranian nuclear ambition.
00:58Here's a question from Quora.
01:00If you had to make a timeline of major events
01:02in the history of the modern Middle East until today,
01:04what events would you put on the timeline?
01:06The modern world begins in the 15th century,
01:10according to most historians.
01:12So you're asking me to pick six events
01:14over the last 500 years.
01:17That's really hard to do.
01:19The first is 1453, when Mehmed II conquers Constantinople,
01:24renaming it Istanbul.
01:26And that really is the beginning of the Ottomans' rise to power.
01:32They conquer the entirety of the Arab world,
01:35and it remains under their control for the next 500 years.
01:41The second point I would put there is in 1492, the Spanish Reconquista.
01:46The Spaniards force out the Arabs who had been controlling Spain since the 700s.
01:54Then I'd come to 1744, a local tribal leader in Central Arabia,
01:59Muhammad al-Sa'ud forges an alliance with a local religious leader
02:04named Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.
02:06And that gives rise to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,
02:09whose leaders are the descendants of al-Sa'ud.
02:12The other thing it gives rise to is very puritanical understanding of Islam
02:17that we call Wahhabism, the radical ideology that eventually finds expression
02:23in organizations like Al-Qaeda.
02:25Then I'd come to 1798, Napoleon invades Egypt,
02:30one of the beginnings of Western colonialism in the Arab world.
02:36The next date I'd come to is 1897,
02:39and that is the date of the first Zionist Congress
02:43that decided that the way to cope with the scourge of anti-Semitism in Europe
02:48was for the Jewish people to have a homeland in Palestine,
02:51which in the Bible is the ancestral homeland of the Jews.
02:55That sets in motion the very tragic struggle that we're living through today
03:00between Palestinians and Israelis.
03:02Then we come to 1908, and that is when they discover in the Middle East
03:08the commodity that makes it so vital to the world,
03:12and that is black gold or oil.
03:15The Middle East is the world's largest producer.
03:19The last date, I'm going to say the end of World War I.
03:24It's really when the modern Middle Eastern state system comes into being.
03:27The British and the French and the allies take over this part of the world,
03:32and they draw the borders that today are the source of so much conflict.
03:38Let's take another question.
03:39Dillchips asks,
03:41It's been a bit more than six months since the Assad regime fell.
03:45Have things improved in Syria?
03:47It really depends on who you ask.
03:48This is the current president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa.
03:51He was the leader of the militia that ultimately forced Assad out of Syria.
03:57And his militia is actually an offshoot of an organization known as Al-Qaeda,
04:03or as Americans call it, Al-Qaeda.
04:05It's a measure of how terrible things were in Syria under Assad.
04:10That this man, Asharaa, could be viewed by the majority of Syrians as a savior.
04:16Though Asharaa has made a lot of the right noises about wanting to establish a democracy,
04:22about not wanting to seek conflict with Syria's neighbors,
04:26most notably Israel.
04:28He has been pretty brutal internally.
04:31So there was a crackdown against Alawis.
04:35It's a religious minority from which Bashar al-Assad came.
04:38Another religious minority that's located in the south.
04:42The Druze are also coming under violence from militias associated with Asharaa's government.
04:48Are things in Syria better than they were when Bashar was around?
04:52If you ask this handsome gentleman, things are great.
04:55Let's take another question.
04:57At Fulham Frenchy asks, is Turkey part of the Middle East?
05:02The Middle East starts in the west in Morocco and ends at its easternmost extent,
05:09either in Iran or depending on who you ask, in Afghanistan.
05:14Some people say that actually the Middle East is just this part,
05:18and we should refer to this as North Africa.
05:20So some people will say the Middle East and North Africa.
05:23Regardless of which definition you want to use, Turkey is, of course, in the Middle East.
05:29But a little part of it right here is actually in Europe.
05:34Turkey has been torn between two camps.
05:39One camp that says Turkey is absolutely part of the Middle East.
05:43It is one of the biggest and most powerful and historically consequential Muslim-majority countries.
05:49And another camp that says Turkey is European and it needs to become more like Europe.
05:56The founder of modern Turkey, a guy named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, said, look, World War I, we were totally defeated by the allies because the Turks were on the side of the Germans.
06:06The way we can never let that happen again is to become like the Europeans who defeated us.
06:11Ataturk instituted all kinds of reforms to make Turkey more European.
06:16One of the big things he did in Turkey, people used to wear a hat that looked like this.
06:22It's called a fez.
06:23The reason that lots of Turks wore it is because it's a hat that you could wear and still pray because it didn't have a brim and Muslims touch their foreheads to the ground when they pray.
06:33Ataturk was so keen on making his country European that he banned that headgear and said people needed to wear fedoras and hats with brims in order to become more like Europeans.
06:44That struggle between Ataturk's vision of Turkey and a more traditional Middle Eastern Muslim version of Turkey exists to this day.
06:53Big Ed Cactushead asks, why has the US Navy failed to stop the ragtag Houthis from attacking ships and protecting the shipping lanes?
07:03That's a good question, Big Ed Cactushead.
07:05To answer it, it would be helpful to look at a topographical map of the Arabian Peninsula.
07:11So the Houthis are located here in Yemen.
07:14It's very mountainous terrain.
07:16It's sort of ideal terrain for a militia that wants to hide from its enemies.
07:24It's very difficult for the Saudis or the Emiratis or for the United States to actually hit the Houthis.
07:31The only way that you could actually guarantee that you would stop the Houthis would be a ground invasion.
07:38And this terrain is very difficult.
07:41Here's a question for Quora.
07:42Why hasn't democracy been working in the Middle East so far in so many countries?
07:48The only democracy that exists right now in the Middle East is the state of Israel.
07:53Lots of people argue that even the state of Israel isn't a perfect democracy because it occupies several million Palestinians who don't get a vote.
08:01And it's an important question as to why that is the case.
08:05Some people point out the United States hasn't necessarily been friendly to democracy in the Middle East.
08:11We've got all kinds of alliances with Arab leaders who are not democratic and who are not friendly to democracy.
08:19And that suits us just fine because we sometimes worry that if there was democracy in the region,
08:25it would bring to power a kind of populists and nationalists who are not terribly friendly to the West.
08:33Another set of arguments says Islam itself is not necessarily friendly to democracy.
08:38After all, remember, the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was actually not just a religious leader.
08:45He was the ruler of the Muslims.
08:47And last time anybody checked, he didn't subject himself to a vote.
08:51And then the third set of answers has to do with the nature of Middle Eastern economies.
08:55Many of them are heavily dependent on oil.
08:58And when you've got oil, it means you basically pull your wealth out of the ground and sell it to foreigners.
09:03And what it means is you don't have to tax.
09:06Remember, no taxation without representation.
09:08So in the Middle East, you have the kind of the opposite.
09:10No demands for representation without taxation.
09:14This one is from Smexy Rexy Titan.
09:16Is what is happening in Gaza truly a genocide?
09:19Here's what is incontrovertible.
09:21There is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza of massive proportions.
09:26People argue about the exact number of people who have been killed.
09:30Is it 50,000?
09:32Is it more?
09:33Is it less?
09:34They argue about whether there's actually a famine going on in Gaza or just the beginnings of a famine.
09:39But the fact of the matter is that Gaza is today one of the most grim places on the planet.
09:48The death and destruction that have been meted out on that very small territory, on those very long-suffering people, is just extraordinary.
09:58And there is nobody with a heart who cannot feel extraordinary pain and grief upon looking at the pictures of what's coming out of Gaza.
10:08The question, though, of whether what is happening in Gaza is a genocide is actually a kind of technical question of international law.
10:16So there's a case right now before the International Court of Justice accusing the Netanyahu government of committing genocide against the Palestinians.
10:25And the International Court of Justice hasn't yet ruled on that, but they have determined that there is enough evidence to allow the case to go forward.
10:34In other words, they've concluded that there's merit to the claim.
10:38Some of the merit to the claim, they say, is found in the statements of Israeli leaders.
10:44You can look at the statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in one early speech, analogized Palestinians to Amalekites, which is a group in the Bible that fought the Jews and had to be defeated.
10:58There's Israeli security officials who have referred to the Palestinians as human animals.
11:04Even the president of Israel has said there's no such thing as an innocent Palestinian because they voted for Hamas 20 years ago.
11:13On the flip side, Israelis will point to almost every one of those statements and say they weren't meant to apply to Palestinians writ large.
11:20They were meant to apply to Hamas.
11:22They say, Palestinians, we don't think Palestinians need to be eradicated.
11:26We think Hamas needs to be eradicated.
11:29On the one hand, this feels almost like a technical question.
11:31You know, let the courts decide what is genocide.
11:34But if you look at how this question has really torn apart so many Americans on college campuses, et cetera, it's because on both sides of this question are normal, good, well-meaning people who each have deep attachments to one side or another of this conflict.
11:51So this is probably the hardest question you could ask.
11:54Otters in Tuxedos asks, why is there so much oil in the Middle East?
12:00You really have to go back millions of years.
12:03What is now the Arabian Peninsula was actually a kind of warm and shallow sea that was full of plant life.
12:12That plant life ultimately gets sedimented layer upon layer subject to tremendous heat and pressure and turns into the hydrocarbons that you know and love.
12:23And what's particularly unique about the Middle East is not just that there's a lot of oil, but it is very easy to access.
12:31It's very close to the surface.
12:32It's not as simple as sticking a straw in the ground and sucking, but it's close.
12:37So it's very cheap to extract, and that's why the Middle East is really the gas station of the world.
12:42Here's a question from the No Stupid Questions subreddit asked by UlteriorKid324.
12:48The United Arab Emirates has the lowest crime rate and the most influx of millionaires.
12:54What is their secret?
12:55The United Arab Emirates secret really comes down to what I call the three L's.
13:01Location, law, and lubrication.
13:04With location, this is where the UAE is located in the Arabian Peninsula.
13:08It really is at the crossroads of a lot of global trade.
13:12The leaders of the UAE recognized this in the 1970s and 80s, and they doubled down on turning their country into a global trade and logistics hub.
13:23They built one of the world's great airlines.
13:26If you want to fly from New York to anywhere in Asia or South Asia, odds are you're going to fly through Dubai.
13:33So the United Arab Emirates has some of the most business-friendly laws in the world, and they enforce them.
13:39If you go to the UAE now and you, for example, sign a contract with somebody in the Emirates, that contract is going to be enforced.
13:46Then we come to the third ingredient in the UAE's success, and that's lubrication.
13:50And by this, I mean oil.
13:52The UAE is oil rich, and they use that oil money to make their country into the kind of place that would attract millionaires and foreign investors and turn it into one of the most exciting parts of the Middle East.
14:08At Ryan57429 asks, what's the origin of the conflict between Israel and Palestine?
14:14So, let's look at a map of this conflict.
14:17When we talk about Palestine, we're generally talking about this territory, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and this territory here, the Gaza Strip on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
14:29When people talk about the land from the river to the sea, this is what they're talking about.
14:34Jordan River, Mediterranean Sea.
14:36The basic reason for this conflict is that you have two peoples who are both indigenous to this land between the river and the sea,
14:45and who cannot agree on whether to share the land or divide it or how to share it or how to divide it.
14:53One of the complications here is that for most of the last 2,000 years, there's only a very small Jewish presence there.
15:00The majority of Jews having been expelled about 2,000 years ago after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
15:09The Jews scatter throughout Europe, and we all know the history of the Jewish people in Europe,
15:13which is one of great tragedy and triumph.
15:18But ultimately, by the 19th century, the Jewish people have been experiencing so much anti-Semitism in Europe
15:24that a powerful movement emerges to resettle the land of Palestine.
15:30And so, Jews start returning in large numbers in the latter half of the 19th century,
15:36and they invariably start to bump up against the Arabs who had been living there.
15:41In the very beginning, when Jewish immigrants from Europe show up,
15:45they have pretty good relations with the Arabs because the Arabs find in them source of employment.
15:51Arabs were agricultural workers, farmers, and so they would work on the lands purchased by the Jews.
15:57A little bit later on, some of the Jews who immigrate to Palestine have a different idea about how they want to live.
16:04They say, we don't want to depend on Arab labor. We want to become self-sufficient.
16:08And if you're an Arab faced with this new kind of Jewish pioneer,
16:12you're going to be upset because they're actually boycotting your labor.
16:16Another driver of the conflict between the Arabs and Jews is that a lot of the Arab land
16:22was actually owned by wealthy landowners who didn't live in Palestine.
16:28They lived in more cosmopolitan parts of the Ottoman Empire.
16:32And so, when Jewish immigrants showed up and wanted to buy land,
16:35absentee Arab landowners were happy to sell it to them,
16:39selling the land out from under the native Palestinian Arab farmers who were working on it.
16:44So, this was almost a perfect storm guaranteed to create a very durable conflict.
16:51Mad Season 1994 asks,
16:53What is it about Dubai that so many dudes find appealing and always want to go there?
16:58One of the ways that Dubai has attracted so much global talent is by making the country really fun.
17:07So, if you were to go to Dubai, you'd really find it to be the playground of the Middle East.
17:11Some of the world's greatest restaurants, hotels and dance clubs and other entertainments.
17:17I, for example, went to SeaWorld in Abu Dhabi and it was amazing.
17:21There's the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, really crazy building projects,
17:27like this development that's made up of reclaimed land in the Persian Gulf.
17:32You know, you can't exactly reenact the plot of the Hangover movies there, but it is a very open society.
17:40But there is, of course, a less appealing side to it.
17:45If you are, for example, an Indian guest worker who's been brought in to Dubai or to any of the cities
17:52in the Arabian Gulf from Doha to Riyadh to build some of these gleaming skyscrapers,
17:58you're not having such a good time.
17:59You're making money to send back to your family, but you may be living in conditions that are not humane.
18:06It's not all fancy nightclubs and Michelin-starred meals for all of the young men who are in Dubai.
18:13This one is from the Israel Palestine subreddit.
18:16How would a two-state solution even work?
18:18That's a great question.
18:19When we talk about a two-state solution, we're generally talking about
18:23a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
18:27Right off the bat, there's two big problems that emerge.
18:31This Palestinian state would be non-contiguous, got a part here and a part here,
18:36and they're separated by Israel.
18:39How do you deal with that?
18:40How do you actually have free passage of Palestinians from this part of their territory
18:45to this part of their territory without the Israelis feeling that having a bunch of
18:50Palestinians pass within Israel proper is a security threat?
18:54Another problem that jumps right off the bat, the Israelis say,
18:58if we also give away the West Bank and we have no security presence in the West Bank,
19:02then the entire state of Israel is vulnerable because there's lots of highlands here in the
19:07West Bank.
19:08Israelis say, well, we're going to cede the highlands so that the Palestinians can just
19:12launch rockets and artillery against us.
19:14But that's not even the half of it.
19:16Another problem is that this map is a little bit misleading because if we look at
19:21a detailed map of the West Bank, this is not one undifferentiated mass of Palestinians.
19:27The Israelis have since 1967 been settling the Palestinian territory of the West Bank
19:33with Jewish settlers.
19:35And there are now about 750,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
19:40How would it work?
19:41Would you have to expel the Jewish settlers?
19:44Can they remain in a Palestinian state and be safe?
19:49There's a lot of technical details that have to be worked out.
19:54And so when you ask how would a two-state solution even work, I'd say today in 2025,
20:00my answer is I don't know.
20:01I also don't know of any other solution to this problem.
20:04Here's a question from Nate Nandoz 21.
20:07Why does the Middle East have so many wars?
20:09If you were to look at a map of the Middle East,
20:12you would see that the borders between Arab countries look like straight lines.
20:16You can almost see the British or French colonial officials standing there with a ruler and a pen
20:22drawing these borders.
20:23And that looks very different from the borders between European countries,
20:27which tend to follow natural formations like mountains or rivers.
20:31That leads to two kinds of conflict.
20:34The first is conflict between states, countries that don't necessarily like where the border was
20:39drawn when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
20:42In part, that was because they didn't like where the British drew the border.
20:45And then it also leads to conflict within states.
20:49If you're a Kurd and you are included in this entity called Syria
20:54that the colonial powers drew, you may be thinking,
20:57this is not real.
20:58I'm not really a Syrian.
20:59We could have drawn this border in another way that would have given me
21:03an independent state of Kurdistan.
21:05AtterianRD asks,
21:08What is the difference between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims?
21:12The main difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims really goes back to the early days of Islam.
21:18The religion, which today counts 1.8 billion people among its followers,
21:22was started in the early 7th century by a man named Muhammad, who is revered by Muslims as a prophet.
21:30When Muhammad died, the Muslim community was divided about who would lead them.
21:35Some people said,
21:36Oh, you know, the prophet Muhammad has this good buddy and father-in-law named Abu Bakr.
21:41He should be the one to lead the Muslim community.
21:43Whereas others said,
21:44Well, the prophet Muhammad's cousin, Ali ibn Abi Talib, is more suitable for leadership.
21:52There was civil war.
21:54And the Shias today are basically the descendants of those who supported Ali.
21:59They were called Shi'at Ali, the partisans of Ali.
22:03And today they make up about 10% of Muslims concentrated in Iran and Iraq,
22:09with large populations in Lebanon, large population in South Asia.
22:14There's definitely conflict between Sunnis and Shias.
22:17For example, Iran and Iraq fought a war through the 1970s and early 80s.
22:23But of course, there's lots of Shias in Iraq who fought against Iran.
22:28So the idea that the conflict between Iran and other countries is about Iran being Shia
22:35and the other Arab countries being Sunni, that's a very contested idea.
22:39Here's a question from at Zenith 6-0.
22:42Why is Islam always linked to terrorism?
22:46One of the arguments that you might hear from other scholars of the Middle East
22:51is that Muslims are often linked to terrorism because Western commentators have some prejudice
22:57against Islam.
22:58And that's why they're much more likely to call violence by Muslims terrorism
23:03and not apply the same name to violence committed by any other religious group.
23:09Others will point out that in the last hundred years or so,
23:13inhabitants of Muslim lands have had a lot of reason to mete out violence against Westerners.
23:20After all, the Middle East was subject after World War I to a series of occupations by Western countries.
23:28And there's still a very strong Western presence in the Middle East that a lot of Arabs chafe under.
23:34We saw this expressed most clearly on September 11th, 2001 when Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center.
23:41Their argument for why they did it was that this was in retaliation for oppression and violence against Muslims.
23:49But there's another group of scholars who say that the root of the Islamic connection with terrorism
23:55really goes back to the essence of the religion.
23:58And they'll point to chapters in the holy text of Islam, this beautiful book, the Quran,
24:05which exhort Muslims to engage in jihad or holy war on behalf of the Muslim community.
24:12Some people say that jihad really here needs to be understood metaphorically as a struggle against your inner demons.
24:20But others say that no, when the Quran talks about jihad,
24:24they are talking about fighting wars in order to spread the religion of Islam
24:30or to rid Islam of the domination or oppression of non-Muslims.
24:36Here's a question from the Ask Historians subreddit.
24:39Why did the US really invade Iraq in 2003?
24:42What's the real reasons behind the war?
24:45So remember the Iraq War of 2003 was brought to us by this gentleman, George W. Bush.
24:53And it was to unseat Saddam Hussein, who was the dictator of Iraq.
24:59There were a couple of big reasons offered for why the United States needed to invade Iraq.
25:06The first was that Saddam Hussein was somehow implicated in 9-11.
25:12There was also an associated fear that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction,
25:17most critically, nuclear weapons.
25:19One of the reasons people think that the war in Iraq was fought for other than its stated reasons.
25:27After the invasion, we found Iraq didn't have any weapons of mass destruction.
25:31So clearly there was something else going on here.
25:33Critics of the war, of course, make a third argument that it was all about that oil.
25:38And if you ask a second question, which is, did it pan out?
25:43You'd have to conclude that on almost every metric, the Iraq War was a failure.
25:48We didn't get any oil.
25:49We got rid of Saddam Hussein, who was an enemy of the Iranians,
25:52and basically empowered allies of the Iranian regime.
25:57And the collapse of Iraq gave rise to all kinds of terrorist groups
26:02that continued to wreak havoc in Iraq and in Syria, in particular, even to this day.
26:08This one's from Lotus Wong TKO.
26:10I heard Iran was really very rich in the 1960s.
26:13Was it true?
26:14Iran was rich in the 1960s, and it's still rich today.
26:16Remember, it's a major oil producer.
26:19One of the other things you'll hear about Iran in the 1960s was that it was very liberal.
26:23You'll see people share photos of women in Iran in the 1960s, wearing mini skirts,
26:28and having beautiful, finely coiffed hairstyles, and contrasting that to today,
26:33where women in Iran are kept under very tight restrictions with respect to how they can
26:38dress in public.
26:39And that really is a result of what happens in Iran, I would say, starting in the 1950s.
26:45So in 1953, Iran is actually a constitutional monarchy.
26:51There's an Iranian leader named Muhammad Musaddiq, who decides to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian oil company.
26:58This is the major oil company that's producing Iranian oil, and it's owned by the British.
27:02America decides to cooperate with the British and overthrow him.
27:07And we do.
27:08But what happens as a result of that is that America invests very heavily in an authoritarian regime
27:15led by the king who called himself the Shah.
27:19And that was a very restrictive regime.
27:22They were pro-Western, they were modern, but they also did not brook any dissent.
27:28And it all explodes in the 1979 Iranian revolution led by this man, Ayatollah Rouhullah Khomeini.
27:38And this guy was a religious scholar who believed that the proper form of government
27:44is for religious scholars to rule.
27:47And he set himself up as Iran's supreme leader.
27:51And inaugurates what is now known as the Islamic Republic of Iran.
27:57A country that is run on their understanding of Islamic law.
28:01This is from at salinophile48.
28:04Why are there American bases in Qatar?
28:06Because look at where Qatar is.
28:08It is in such a strategically important territory.
28:12You've got Iran here.
28:14You've got the oil of the Persian Gulf that flows through here.
28:18So it's very important for the United States,
28:20which wants to ensure the free flow of oil and the security of its allies from Iranian adventurism
28:28to have a military presence there to keep the oil flowing and to keep the peace.
28:33So if you were to ask a lot of Palestinians, they would find that to be a weird question.
28:41They would say America has been pro-Israel from the very beginning.
28:44After all, the UN vote that results in the international global recognition of the state
28:50of Israel, the US played an important role in lining up the votes for the state of Israel.
28:56The US was one of the first countries to recognize the state of Israel.
28:59The question is right that something does change in the 1960s,
29:03where the alliance between the United States and Israel becomes much stronger.
29:09And I would say a big part of that is the Cold War.
29:11During the Cold War, where the US is locked in the struggle with the Russians,
29:15we're looking for allies around the world.
29:17And in that point in time, the Arab countries didn't look like great allies.
29:22The oil producing countries of the Persian Gulf were definitely pro-American.
29:26But then you had countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, where they were much more naturally aligned
29:32with the Soviet Union, both because they were kind of leftist in their orientation,
29:37but also because they saw the United States as the successor to the former imperial powers,
29:43whereas the Soviets talked about ending colonialism and liberating the peoples of the global south.
29:49Israel, in contrast, looks like a natural ally of the United States.
29:54Culturally, there are similarities because so many Jewish people came from the West.
29:59There's a large Jewish community in the United States.
30:02And the state of Israel at that time, unlike any of the Arab countries, was a liberal democracy.
30:08Here's a question from the AskMiddleEast subreddit.
30:11What is Israel's main goal with invading other countries?
30:15Would the Middle East be more peaceful without them?
30:17The Israelis actually fight four wars against the Arabs.
30:21The first is the War of Independence in 1948, which the Palestinians called the nekba, or the
30:26catastrophe.
30:26The end of that war results in the map of Israel looking like this.
30:33The Jewish state has captured all of the green territories, except for this, actually.
30:37This is the Golan Heights.
30:39And this territory here, the Gaza Strip, is controlled by Egypt.
30:42And this territory here, the west bank of the Jordan River, including Jerusalem, is captured
30:47by the Kingdom of Jordan.
30:49Then there was a war in 1956 in which Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser, as he's called in America,
30:56he nationalized the Suez Canal.
30:59And so the British and the French, with the connivance of the Israelis, attack Egypt.
31:03They are eventually pushed out because the United States sides with the Egyptians.
31:09Then in 1967, Israel launches a preemptive war against its Arab neighbors.
31:16And that's because Nasser, that dictator in Egypt, was saber rattling.
31:20His rhetoric was always very bellicose.
31:22He talked about throwing the Jews into the sea.
31:26So the Israelis would say, in 1967, the reason we, quote, invaded other countries is because
31:33we were facing a threat from those other countries.
31:36At the end of that war, they had captured not just the Gaza Strip.
31:41They captured the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
31:44They captured the West Bank from Jordan.
31:47And they captured the Golan Heights from Syria.
31:51It wasn't until 1973, when the Egyptians launch an attack on the Israelis in order to recapture
31:59the Sinai Peninsula, that the Israelis lose Sinai ultimately as a result of a peace deal
32:05that they make with the Egyptians.
32:071982, the Israelis invade Lebanon because the Palestinian resistance movement had relocated
32:13to Lebanon and was launching cross-border raids against Israel.
32:17The general rationale that Israeli security analysts will give you is that all of these
32:23cross-border conflicts that Israel is involved in are in order to fend off attacks.
32:30That even includes the war in Gaza.
32:33Hamas uses their control of Gaza to launch rockets at Israel.
32:37And then when October 7th happened, that too is another reason why the Israelis say they have
32:42to wage this war.
32:43There's lots of people who point to the conflict between Arabs and Israel as the main source of
32:51conflict in the region.
32:52It's a major source of conflict.
32:54But it's not the only conflict in the Middle East.
32:56When you ask this question, would the Middle East be more peaceful without them?
33:00The natural answer is to say, well, why stop at the Israelis?
33:04You know, the Middle East could be a lot more peaceful.
33:07The world could be a lot more peaceful if there weren't any people.
33:10Where you have people, you have conflict.
33:12Here's a question from PlayfulInterview753.
33:16Why the heck are the Saudis building a futuristic city in the middle of the desert?
33:21The question is referring to a city that the Saudis are building that is called Neom.
33:27This is supposed to be a futuristic city with beaches that have glow-in-the-dark sand,
33:33a hundred-mile-long linear skyscraper.
33:37One of the ambitions that the Saudis have is to really establish their country,
33:41just like their neighbors in the Emirates did, as an attractor for global talent.
33:46The Saudi Arabia that I grew up in was a very conservative society.
33:53So when I was growing up in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, women weren't allowed to drive.
33:57Women had to wear concealing black garments when they went outside.
34:01And if you were unlucky enough to be caught outside during prayer time and you didn't go to the mosque,
34:07there would be religious police who would strongly suggest that you go and pray in the mosque.
34:12The current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, is trying to change this.
34:17And so this project of building this big glitzy city is an attempt to signal very powerfully
34:25that Saudi Arabia has changed and the new Saudi Arabia has arrived.
34:29Here's a question from the Afghanistan subreddit.
34:31Why does the Taliban want to stop women from doing anything?
34:35So the Taliban are the religious fanatics who currently run Afghanistan.
34:39They adhere to a particularly puritanical brand of Islam that believes that women's place is in
34:47the home and not experiencing equal status with men.
34:51This is a problem most acute in Afghanistan, but we see it to greater and lesser extent
34:58throughout the Middle East and indeed throughout the Muslim world.
35:01Lots of people will point out that in most commonly accepted understandings of Islamic law,
35:08women are accorded a subordinate status.
35:11They may not be as extreme as the Taliban, but for example, one aspect of Islamic law says that
35:17women should get less inheritance than men.
35:21The testimony of women in court is worth less than the testimony of a man.
35:27I personally don't feel that there's anything within Islam that is inimical to equality for women,
35:34but lots of conservative Muslims don't think that way.
35:38This is from the Explain Like I'm Five subreddit.
35:40Explain Like I'm Five, the difference between kosher and halal.
35:44Kosher is the dietary regulation followed by adherent Jews, and halal is a set of dietary
35:51regulations followed by Muslims.
35:53There's lots of similarities between the two.
35:55Kosher, you don't eat anything that has to do with a pig.
35:59The same in halal.
36:01There's some areas where halal goes further than kosher.
36:04So for example, in Islam, it is not halal to consume alcohol,
36:10whereas it is kosher to consume alcohol for Jews.
36:14And there are other areas where kosher goes a lot further than halal.
36:17So for example, in kosher dietary laws, you're not allowed to mix meat and milk.
36:24In Islam, there's no such restriction.
36:25So a Muslim can have a cheeseburger, an adherent Jew cannot.
36:29In Judaism, for example, you're not allowed to eat shellfish.
36:33Most Muslims think eating shellfish is totally fine.
36:37One of the reasons they overlap is because Islam, like Christianity, descends from Judaism.
36:43There's all kinds of ways in which you can observe the practice of contemporary Muslims
36:48and see how it's so similar to the practice of contemporary Jews.
36:53For so many hundreds of years, Islam and Judaism developed together.
36:57You know, when the Muslims dominated Spain, Jews and Arabs created their individual religious
37:04laws in conversation with each other.
37:06And that period of cooperation and that common genealogy is what makes the conflict
37:14between Muslims and Jews today so much more tragic.
37:17But it's also what gives me a little bit of hope that one day they'll be able to transcend it.
37:22I got to say, those are some of the toughest questions I've ever faced.
37:26That's probably tougher than the toughest Harvard classroom.
37:29Thank you for watching Middle East support.
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