- há 1 dia
World War I finds Jerusalem under Ottoman rule; Prince Faisal leads an Arab revolt, aided and encouraged by Britain; the war ends with the British in control, declaring the Crusades over and setting in motion the city's next great conflict.
Categoria
📚
AprendizadoTranscrição
00:00.
00:00.
00:00.
00:10.
00:11.
00:12.
00:13.
00:13.
00:14The chosen city.
00:16The holy city.
00:20That's its blessing.
00:22But it also gives it its danger and its ugliness, too.
00:28Because it means that people believe that they must possess it absolutely.
00:37The Palestinian-Israeli conflict that we are experiencing today,
00:41you've seen it experienced in Jerusalem for thousands of years.
00:47For the Jews, Jerusalem is where Solomon built the holy temple.
00:52For Christians, this is the place where Jesus was crucified.
00:57For Muslims, Jerusalem is where the prophet Muhammad made the night journey.
01:03People are said to have conquered the world.
01:05They've swept through the city.
01:08No other individual changed the landscape in the way that Herod the Great did.
01:15Saladin was determined to take on the Christians and throw them out of Jerusalem.
01:20At a time of Ottoman Islamic rule, the British badly wanted to control the Holy Land.
01:27The main case of the Arabs is against the British government policy in Palestine.
01:35We are the only people in the world homeless and safe-less.
01:40For Israelis, the creation of the State of Israel is seen as a miracle.
01:45And, of course, for the Palestinians, it's a great disaster.
01:50The history of Jerusalem, a very complicated story.
01:54And if you don't know it in its complexity, it's very hard to understand what's going on there today.
02:02The past is never dead.
02:04And if there is a city in the world to which that applies, it's Jerusalem.
02:45725 years have passed since the end of the Third Crusade.
02:49By 1914, the world has undergone a drastic transformation.
02:54Fueled by the rise of technology and industrialization.
03:03But World War I now threatens the entire globe.
03:07And Jerusalem lies directly in its path.
03:12At the time of the outbreak of First World War, Jerusalem was still occupied by the Ottomans,
03:18also called the Turks, who had been there for hundreds of years.
03:23The Ottoman Empire was controlling most of what we call today the Middle East.
03:28It had lost Egypt because Egypt had become part of the British Empire.
03:33But they had Turkey, some parts of southern Bulgaria, eastern Greece, and what is today Palestine, Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula,
03:44Lebanon, and Syria.
03:46In World War I, the Turks ended up siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
03:52So they became really the third part of the axis of that time.
03:58Allied with the Germans, the Turks send a strong military leader to protect the Middle East.
04:10Jamal Pasha was sent by the Ottomans to become the Governor General of Jerusalem,
04:16thinking that this would be an important battleground,
04:19and that they needed a military man to be in charge.
04:29Jamal Pasha served a major part in the Armenian Genocide.
04:35He is known to be somebody with very little mercy and does not look favorably at any sort of dissent.
04:45He was very brutal as a general. Everywhere he goes, he left behind him trails of assassinations and executions.
04:56Jamal Pasha executed so many people that his nickname was Jamal the Slaughterman.
05:04That's not a nickname of a peaceful man.
05:11General Pasha's brutal tactics incite the local Arab population to rebel against his control.
05:18So the Ottoman Empire was seen as corrupt, was seen as disconnected from the needs and wants of the Arab
05:27population at the time.
05:29I think one of the great ironies of the Ottoman rule was that it actually helped spur the rise of
05:37Arab nationalism.
05:37They were not Arabs, they were Turks.
05:41The Arabs said, screw them, we should be united ourselves.
05:46The Arabs don't have their own country.
05:49For 400 years they have been a province, they have been subjects of a Turkish sultan ruled from far away
05:58in Istanbul.
06:00And they begin to want independence.
06:05So the rise of Arab nationalism started with a dream to create some kind of an Arab kingdom to combine
06:11and unite all the Arabs in one nation.
06:14But Jamal Pasha despised Arab nationalism, he viewed it as a direct threat to his presence to the Ottoman Empire
06:25and crushed it with brutal force.
06:29So for Arab nationalists, he made sure that they are followed by spies, that their correspondence being opened and checked,
06:36and he would use any pretext in order to arrest them, put them in prisons, and in many cases actually
06:42execute them.
06:45Jamal Pasha often hung them from the Jaffa gates of the old city to show his power.
06:53And that only forced these Arab nationalists to speak out all the more, which meant he just began banning their
07:01symbols, banning their speech.
07:03He was going to make more executions.
07:07And every time he tried to suppress their speech, Arab nationalism only grew.
07:15It causes some people to react very strongly against the brutality of these executions.
07:25Particularly important among those is Prince Faisal.
07:33Prince Faisal was the son of Sharif Hussein, who was in charge of Mecca at the time.
07:40They are part of the Hashemites, which is the same family as Prophet Muhammad is from.
07:49Faisal is tall, slim, soulful, a bit melancholic, but he has charm and he has finesse.
08:00Faisal had this ability to really listen to people and to compromise.
08:06Faisal spoke Turkish, spoke English and French, was educated and was being prepared by the Ottoman Empire to be a
08:15Turkish ruler in his area, but loyalist to the Ottoman Empire.
08:19Yet, he harbored extreme resentment against the Ottomans and wanted them out.
08:29Faisal was interested in liberating the Arabs of what is today the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia and parts of Jordan
08:40and the Gulf.
08:41Liberating it from the Ottoman hands and trying to create their own sovereign rule.
08:51On that promise, he launches the Arab Revolt in the summer of 1916.
08:58Faisal rallies his Arab brothers, he drives the Turks out of Mecca, and he has successfully created a small rebellion.
09:10But very quickly, the revolt kind of reaches paralysis.
09:15They can't really advance, the Turks have artillery and machine guns.
09:20The Arab tribesmen don't, so it all kind of looks like it's all about to fall apart.
09:26And Faisal recognizes that they're not going to be able to fully sustain this rebellion, this movement, without some help
09:36from some big players.
09:46Prince Faisal's Arab Revolt has managed to seize control of Mecca from the Turks.
09:52But they need help to keep the rebellion alive.
09:56By October of 1916, the truth is that the rebellion is hanging by a thread.
10:02Because the Bedouin guerrilla fighters really can't stand up to the concentrated firepower of the Ottoman army.
10:12Crucial at this moment is the role of the British.
10:17The British badly wanted to control the Holy Land.
10:21To bring it under Christian influence at a time of Ottoman Islamic rule was enormously compelling.
10:29And Britain believed itself to be still a very huge empire.
10:34It was nicknamed the empire where the sun never sets.
10:37The British felt that they need to have serious control in pretty much everywhere.
10:42They saw that Palestine was an attractive site for British imperial and colonial purposes.
10:49And the ports of Palestine created easy access to Europe from the Middle East.
10:55So the British wanted to set up shop in Palestine to basically exploit the resources of Palestine.
11:01The British send their top Arab expert to meet Prince Faisal, T.E. Lawrence.
11:08T.E. Lawrence was one of the most enigmatic, endlessly fascinating people early of the 20th century.
11:15He's an adventurer, a beautiful writer.
11:18He enjoys extraordinary adventures, political, military and sexual.
11:24He loves the Middle East and he writes letters home where he is saying that he doesn't really want to
11:30come home.
11:35T.E. Lawrence was a brilliant intelligence officer, somebody who understood how to fight war, how the different forces need
11:46to be organized and what is at stake if you don't get the local support in order to win.
11:56But if you understand Lawrence of Arabia through the prism of the movie, Lawrence of Arabia, then you're missing out
12:03the larger picture.
12:05Lawrence of Arabia is a great movie. It's just not true.
12:08It's wonderful fiction that plays into the narrative that the West understands.
12:14The white guy who helps the not white guys do the right thing because they're not capable of it themselves.
12:21Lawrence of Arabia was not a savior of Arabia.
12:26He was a loyal British intelligence officer that carried out his mission to the T.
12:31And in 1917, British intelligence finally recognizes just how valuable an asset Lawrence can be.
12:40Lawrence was sent out to establish the bases of cooperation and essentially became the liaison officer between the British guy
12:47and Faisal.
12:48I think Faisal doesn't trust the British, but I also think he understands that if he has any chance at
12:56establishing his own Arab state, he's going to need British help.
13:02They need guns, they need munitions, they need supplies.
13:06But the promise that the British made to the Arab rebellion was that if you join us, we'll arm you,
13:12we're going to help organize you and train you.
13:14We'll both get rid of the Ottomans and then we'll turn over the show to you.
13:20But the British have kind of conflicting deal with their allies, the French, which will become known as the Sykes
13:26-Picot Accord.
13:28The Sykes-Picot essentially divided that part of the Middle East into a British part, and that included most of
13:35Iraq, Jordan and Palestine.
13:37And a French part, which included Lebanon, Syria and parts of Turkey as well.
13:43So it was completely against everything that they agreed on with the Arabs at the time.
13:48But I can't say that it's surprising because, again, the British and the French were fighting for the British and
13:54the French.
13:55They were not fighting for the Arabs.
13:59Faisal and all these people were misguided.
14:03They were lured and they were lied to by Britain.
14:07They thought it's simply liberation. They did not know it was preparatory for an occupation.
14:15Lawrence is one of a very few people who knows this.
14:17And as he works with Faisal, it starts working away at Lawrence, the duplicitous role that he is playing in
14:24this.
14:25So Lawrence was having an internal struggle and that got exacerbated.
14:30With time, the more he got to know Faisal, he found a lot of things in common with Faisal, who
14:37was of the same generation and with whom he shared a lot.
14:42He finally takes Faisal aside and he tells them, look, do not trust in my government because they're going to
14:50betray you.
14:51So certainly now Faisal sees Lawrence as somebody who's actually come over to his side.
15:00Together Faisal and Lawrence worked to drive the Turks out of Arabia.
15:05So Lawrence and Faisal planned a series of attacks on Turkish supply lines.
15:16The goal was keep them bleeding so that they come, repair them and then blow them up again and so
15:23on.
15:23The longer you draw them out, the weaker they become, the more likely it becomes possible that you push them
15:29entirely out.
15:41And eventually this proved to be a very successful strategy.
15:54Jamal Pasha is getting beat by these Arab soldiers and he finally figures out these guys can't be doing this
16:04on their own.
16:06They've got to be getting help and the only people they could be getting help from is the British.
16:15And so Jamal Pasha figures, I've got to go on the offensive and that's precisely what he does.
16:29T.E. Lawrence and Prince Faisal have launched a series of attacks on Ottoman supply lines.
16:39But while Jamal Pasha struggles to contain the elusive Arab rebellion, he prepares an offensive against the British forces in
16:47the Middle East.
16:47Jamal Pasha was facing a sustained and coordinated British offensive across the Sinai Desert,
16:56which had pitched themselves just to the south of what today is Palestine.
17:00And that's when you get the first and second battles of Gaza.
17:09Twice, about a month apart, the British Army do frontal assaults right up against the entrenched Turkish armies.
17:18Exactly what they've been doing on the Western Front against the Germans and their fiascos both time.
17:25It cost a lot of British soldiers' lives in the thousands.
17:29It was a very humiliating defeat for them.
17:32So they retreated.
17:34So Jamal Pasha sitting in Jerusalem, he sort of becomes a hero.
17:39And this is one of the really kind of outstanding Ottoman victories, these two battles of Gaza.
17:46After the British are beaten back, the Arab revolt plans an assault of its own.
17:52For the Arab revolt, the really important city was Damascus.
17:58Prince Faisal knew the importance of Damascus, wanted to be in Damascus.
18:03It's a very important place both historically, religiously and strategically.
18:10Damascus was the first real capital for the Islamic empire outside of Arabia.
18:16And it was so for almost a century under the dynasty that we call the Umayyads.
18:22And therefore, Arab nationalists always dreamt that ideally Damascus would be this kind of dream city
18:28that could be the capital for the Arab kingdom.
18:32Now, the eastern end of the Sinai Peninsula is this narrow straits that leads to this town of Aqaba.
18:39A crucial port city, Aqaba is the gateway to capturing Damascus.
18:45But the problem with Aqaba is you'll never get off the beach,
18:49because the Turks have artillery and machine guns all pointed out at sea,
18:53because that's the natural place where they thought someone was going to attack.
18:56So this is going to be a replication of what the British have done everywhere else,
19:00which is go up against the strongest part of the Turkish line and be slaughtered.
19:04So, Lawrence comes up with this idea that the way to do it is to go inland,
19:10come over the mountains and take it from behind.
19:15In May 1917, the decision to take Aqaba is taken by Faisal and Lawrence without any reference back
19:27to the British military authorities in Cairo.
19:30He goes off everybody's radar and sets off with a commando force on a 600-mile march
19:38and disappears into the desert.
19:46Days and days and days of waterless desert,
19:49with the possibility that the camels will begin to die before they get to the opposite side.
19:56And, of course, if the camels die, then everybody else dies.
20:03Nothing to relieve the eye. Men go mad.
20:06And at different times on the journey, I think Lawrence thought he might be going mad.
20:10They hit sandstorms, people die along the way.
20:13Lawrence, at normal times, weighed about 140 pounds.
20:17He was down to 90 pounds by the end of this trip.
20:20But the focus is on persuading the local tribesmen to join the Alliance
20:26and to bring their forces into this army.
20:32He would tell them, we're going to fight for Faisal because he's the descendant of the prophet.
20:36If that got them motivated, he'd stop there.
20:38If that didn't get them motivated, then he'd say,
20:41there's gold and there's a big reward and you could be the prince of this region.
20:45He gave you what you desired in order to get what he desired,
20:50which was an organized army against the Turks.
20:57By the time the Arab army descends upon Aqaba at the beginning of July 1917,
21:05it is 2,000 strong.
21:07And they're going to storm down onto Aqaba from the landward side.
21:14All the Ottomans' defenses were directed toward the sea in the opposite direction.
21:21And very quickly the Turks realized that there was no way out for them.
21:25So they surrendered.
21:29The Battle of Aqaba proved the importance of an alliance with the local tribesmen.
21:35They knew the lay of the land and they were fighters.
21:40These were tribesmen who survived by protecting what was theirs in the desert.
21:45And it would not have been successful had Faisal not been part of it.
21:53Aqaba is the turning point because it puts the Arabs in a position where they can spread the revolt into
21:59the core regions of the Middle East.
22:03At this point, Lawrence sees himself as no longer fighting for the British, he's fighting for the Arabs.
22:10But no one had heard a word from him in over two months.
22:13He was certainly missing and maybe even presumed dead.
22:18So Lawrence realized he had to deliver the news about the fall of Aqaba.
22:22First World War communications were often quite primitive.
22:28If we haven't got a laid down telegraph line or telephone line, we're still depending on people actually physically moving
22:36in order to communicate information.
22:40So Lawrence leaves Aqaba and heads towards the Suez Canal to get to Egypt to inform headquarters.
22:51By the time Lawrence stumbles back to Cairo, he finds a new leader in command of the British Regional Army.
23:05The Arab revolt has resulted in the first Allied victory in the Middle East.
23:10And T.E. Lawrence returns to Cairo to deliver the news to British headquarters.
23:17So picture the scene. The Ottomans have won these victories at Gaza over the British.
23:23Morale is down among the British troops.
23:26And the war isn't going very well for them.
23:30And all of a sudden, Lawrence comes with the news,
23:34I've taken Aqaba. I've won this incredible victory.
23:38This is gonna swing the entire war in favor of the British.
23:44But more importantly, when he gets to Cairo, a new British commander in chief is taken over.
23:51Allenby.
23:52General Allenby was not a typical British general of the time.
23:57He didn't come from a family of generals.
24:01He was an aggressive cavalry officer. He commanded great personal loyalty because of his integrity, his courage.
24:10He had a tremendous vision and perhaps the static, claustrophobic trench warfare did not suit his mind.
24:18But as a cavalryman, he could kind of envision how to utilize his cavalry units as well as the British
24:26Camel Corps.
24:27At the same time Allenby arrives in the Middle East, there are major changes in Ottoman-controlled Jerusalem.
24:33The occupation of Aqaba by the forces of Faisal was a panic moment for the Germans because they realized they
24:42cannot depend on the Ottoman army alone to keep the British at bay from occupying the Middle East.
24:50Germany sends thousands of reinforcements to Jerusalem.
24:56And now what has been up until this point a proxy war between the British and the Germans now becomes
25:04an actual front of World War One.
25:09General Allenby sends Lawrence back into Arabia and at the same time plans his push and his move via Sinai
25:18towards Gaza and then towards Jerusalem.
25:22And here is a very important point that deflects the importance of Jerusalem to the Christian world.
25:29The Prime Minister of England sends a message to General Allenby, make sure that you get Jerusalem before Christmas.
25:40The news that were coming from the front in France weren't any good.
25:45Serious casualties that are coming every day.
25:47So they needed what you could call a very sentimental story that they could sell to the British people in
25:54England back home.
25:55He wanted Jerusalem as a Christmas present for the British people, the Holy City itself.
26:04And so significant British forces were sent there.
26:08There was a naval covering force and then motor transport, air elements, supplies, British and Australian troops.
26:22Jamal Pasha sees the British army coming, but he's fairly confident that he can win a ground offensive against the
26:33British.
26:34He's got so many German troops with him that this shouldn't be that difficult.
26:39But he has no idea how the British are going to attack.
26:46What Allenby does, rather than just smash up against the wall like it happened twice before in Gaza, he's going
26:52to go inland.
26:53He executed this brilliant coup de main that is still studied in military academies, where he outflanked the Ottomans, took
27:01Gaza, and within weeks then marched on Jerusalem.
27:07And Jamal Pasha, of course, was in overall command of the battlefront.
27:13So the Germans say to Jamal Pasha, look, you're out.
27:18And Jamal Pasha says, no, this is my army, this is my land, but Germany being Germany, says not only
27:26are you out, you will never see Jerusalem again.
27:31And true to their word, Jamal Pasha never sees Jerusalem again.
27:36He was eventually removed to the Russian front and eventually became a political refugee.
27:44And Jamal Pasha was ultimately killed by an Armenian because he had a hand in the Armenian genocide.
27:53With command of the Holy City now directly in their hands, the Germans turn their attention to destroying the British.
28:01The Germans are going to make sure that for every inch of ground the British advance, they are going to
28:09bleed.
28:09And as the British advance towards Jerusalem, the desert theater becomes a brutal, brutal place for battle.
28:21The combat is fierce. It's ugly. This is desert combat at its very worst.
28:30But for all his success, General Allenby will soon learn he's lost one of his best assets.
28:42General Allenby and the British are marching on Jerusalem.
28:47But T.E. Lawrence is missing in action.
28:53Lawrence is in the Syrian interior trying to marshal tribes to push against the Turkish forces in that area.
29:01And he was in the city of Dara in what today is in very southern Syria.
29:06He was well known to the Ottoman Turks. There was a price on his head.
29:11He was discovered, he was arrested, brought to the Ottoman officer who was defending Dara.
29:16And it is said that he was put in prison and raped.
29:20And that really was transformative in his life.
29:24Something that people say he never recovered from.
29:28I think that it became this intense source of humiliation and degradation to him.
29:36After torturing Lawrence, the Turks leave him for dead.
29:47Meanwhile, General Allenby continues towards Jerusalem.
29:51But when his entire force encounters a brutal winter storm, they're stopped in their tracks.
29:58People don't recognize that the winter conditions in the Judean hills and southern Syria can be very, very tricky.
30:06So that sudden, like, hailstorms, flash floods, snow even, can hold up modern motor transport and a modern army very
30:15easily.
30:17So the Germans are in Jerusalem.
30:20The British are just outside, ready to take the city.
30:24And there's this massive storm.
30:26And you can't see what's going on.
30:28And they have to wait this storm out before the British begin their assault on Jerusalem.
30:35While General Allenby is forced to wait, Lawrence clings to life in Dara.
30:45Lawrence escaped from his captors in Dara.
30:50And he goes back to this kind of desert hideout that he's been operating out of in Azraq.
30:56And then he gradually makes his way back to Arabia.
31:01Lawrence is still reeling from his captivity.
31:04But he rushes to rejoin the British front.
31:09Lawrence meets General Allenby just outside Jerusalem.
31:12Where the British wait for their opportunity to strike.
31:16When the storm finally lifts, the British are expecting the bloodiest battle of their lives.
31:23They enter Jerusalem.
31:25And it's complete silence.
31:29At that point in December of 1917, the Germans kind of saw the handwriting on the wall.
31:34It lost all of southern Palestine very, very quickly.
31:38The British just kind of poured through.
31:40And the Germans recognize that any kind of destruction in Jerusalem would create such negative publicity for them that they
31:49just moved north.
31:50The Germans didn't devastate the city before leaving. They left the city intact.
31:55So the British didn't so much conquer Jerusalem as the Germans abandoned it.
32:01So when the Germans and the Ottomans flee Jerusalem, all that's left is the mayor of Jerusalem.
32:09And he doesn't have an army. All he's got are the keys to the city.
32:15And so what option does he have? All he can do is surrender the city.
32:21The flag that was presented was actually a bed sheet to show that there was a surrender.
32:32I think what's fascinating about the British conquest of Jerusalem in December 1917 is how orchestrated and choreographed the actual
32:41events were.
32:44Britain's romantic culture of the 19th century had made a great deal about the Crusading tradition.
32:53And you'll see it in certain propaganda posters that a ghostly figure of a crusader looms in the sky behind
33:01British soldiers in the Judean hills.
33:04So the fall of Jerusalem is playing really well in Western capitals.
33:10Because, you know, this is finally after several years the Crusades have won.
33:14And the British media tried also to present it as such.
33:18So as Allenby was advancing to Jerusalem and he took the city, there were constant daily reports in British media
33:27comparing him to Richard the Lionheart and the campaign of Richard the Lionheart.
33:33But the legacy of the Crusades in the Muslim Near East is one of Western people coming in, invading, conquering,
33:41killing people.
33:42And Allenby knows to them the word Crusade has an incredibly toxic legacy.
33:48He makes clear that he reveres the city, he respects the city, and he refuses to enter the city except
33:56on foot.
33:57So this is the iconic photograph of Allenby walking into the old city from the Jaffa Gate, surrounded by his
34:06entourage, and then proceeding to St. David's Citadel, where he read out the proclamation of conquest.
34:14General Allenby announces that from now on all three languages in the city, Arabic, Hebrew, and English will be respected,
34:24and all three religions will be respected, and everything will be done to support the idea of freedom of religion.
34:31That sounds wonderful, right?
34:33For the Palestinians, they were all lined up to see him, because the British presented themselves to the Palestinians as
34:42the saviors from the Ottoman oppression.
34:45And there was the white man, so wonderful, coming down from the car, walking in humility in the holy city,
34:53having in his pocket, such Pico agreements that is really stabbing the Arabs in their back.
35:04General Allenby and the British forces have captured Jerusalem, but T.E. Lawrence decides he must leave the holy city
35:11to help Prince Faisal and the Arab revolt claim Damascus.
35:15Lawrence is obsessed that we have to get to Damascus before the British and French do, and Lawrence arrives there
35:22with Faisal.
35:23They go into Damascus and set up a provisional government.
35:28Meanwhile, in San Remo, Italy, the European powers, without Arab representation, met to implement the terms of the Sykes-Picot
35:39Agreement.
35:41The legacy of Sykes-Picot is very horrible, because essentially it established the way the modern Middle East is divided.
35:50But when it was first made public, lots of Arabs still believed that the British were honest with them, and
35:56they are going to support the creation of an Arab kingdom.
35:59Everybody was in denial, and only much later that they realized the British were playing everybody against everybody.
36:08It was the great powers carving up the Middle East and allocating slices of territory that became the modern nation
36:16-day states of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq.
36:22Those lines were drawn artificially.
36:25Did they ask the Arabs in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon what they wanted? Absolutely not.
36:35And imagine if you're Faisal, right? You've been fighting all along, hoping to regain this homeland, and now it's ripped
36:44away from you.
36:45He ended up with another territory, which was basically created by the British called Iraq.
36:52This is a country, a region Faisal has never been to, and he actually is then the king of Iraq
36:59for the next several decades.
37:03For T.E. Lawrence, the ending of the Great War takes a very personal toll.
37:10Lawrence emerges from the First World War, a psychologically broken man.
37:15I think that's partly because he's suffering from PTSD and the sense of guilt with which he emerged from the
37:24war.
37:25This is a guy who was fighting for an Arab nation, but he was also a British soldier, and this
37:40empire consumes everything that it touches.
37:46And there it dawned on him that he was used as an instrument to betray the people that he came
37:53to appreciate and love.
37:55And there's this incredible irony of Lawrence's life, a life with many ironies.
38:02But he's also been discovered by journalists, and he's become kind of a matinee idol because of his adventures in
38:08Arabia.
38:09And of course, they have him going over sand dunes and palm trees and dancing girls.
38:14The British and the French could give no credit to anybody but themselves.
38:19Hence the invention of T.E. Lawrence, kind of like the Tarzan story.
38:24You know, the savages couldn't organize themselves.
38:27They were too divided, they were too ignorant, they were too cowardly.
38:32They needed this little white guy to organize them and do it.
38:37And this experience of fame, I think, frightened and disillusioned them.
38:42So he retired, lived in a little cottage without electricity or water in a dorset.
38:49He has several episodes of severe depression, contemplates suicide.
38:54And finally, in the spring of 1935, he's killed in a motorcycle accident.
39:02The story of World War I is very important to the Middle East because the Middle East changed forever.
39:12It became a war-torn region divided into states and nations that some of them made sense, some of them
39:19don't make sense to this day.
39:22The crisis of the Arab world now stems from this arrangement that Sykes-Picot had set in action.
39:33It was a plot concocted by the Western world.
39:38The colonial powers threw their weight behind unelected monarchs who were not chosen by the people at all.
39:47And the promise of democracy and independence has not been seen or realized in most parts of the region to
39:56this day.
39:56And one wonders, what would the Arab world be today were it not for what imperialism did?
40:05To snuff out the national ambitions of people, to impose regimes on them, to spoil their wealth and exploit them.
40:17Imperialism committed a sin that is still taking a toll today.
40:23The British played everybody to their advantage.
40:28They told the Jews, you want a home in Palestine, here's your land.
40:33They told the Arabs, you want to be independent, you want to have kingdoms.
40:38We're with you, let's do that.
40:40At the end, the British were working for the British.
40:44So to a large extent, the main outcome of the First World War for Jerusalem
40:48was that the Israel-Palestinian dispute that we know so much about today
40:54is really instituted unwittingly to a degree by British multiple promises, by British political gambling.
41:04The Palestinian Arabs expect to finally be granted their own nation.
41:09But the Jewish population now expects the same thing.
41:12The seeds for Jerusalem's next great conflict have been planted.
41:17It's only done them instead.
41:18You can't hear a word in the Shepherd.
41:18or an a child if they're here.
41:20Then now, do they put them on their carrier,
Comentários