Video Essay Script so Far

Hi,
I'm making my first video essay. Proper one. Finally.

Here's what I have so far. You can see I picked a real casual topic :) I also have WAYYYYY too much. But I will widdle it down. Enjoy! Also transfer from obsidian removed page breaks sorry about that.

_WELCOME TO ISRAELLLLL_ (impose the video clip of the pageant queen) I figured it was time to try a proper video essay. So naturally, I decided to start with a war—one wrapped in centuries of history, soaked in grief, and full of social, religious, and political dynamics that most Western audiences are wildly under-informed about. 😊 Right up front: no matter who your “side” is, this video will probably leave you both disappointed and validated. That’s not a bug—it’s kind of the point. In the comments, you’ll find a pinned thread. I’ll highlight the first example of two people, from different perspectives, engaging each other in actual good faith. If you’re here to scream or score points, this probably isn’t your video. What I _am_ trying to do is crack open a broader, more uncomfortable question—one that sits beneath nearly every war, every occupation, every act of rebellion: **Is violence ever ethical? Or is it only ever effective?** And if violence is just a tool, then what happens to us—the people using it, excusing it —when it becomes a necessary strategy for survival? For sovereignty. This won’t be a complete history. It can’t be. But I want to offer a framework—both emotional and analytical—for asking better questions about this conflict, and about the choices we make when violence is on the table. Also: there will be cats. They don’t care about ideology. They always choose violence. Let’s begin. ------ # Act 1 Let’s go back. Like—_way_ back. _Ben-Gurion declares a Jewish state._ Lets go further. _Roman legions at the gates of Jerusalem._ Keep going. *1200 BCE*. *On screen an image of the area and artist rendition of what Israel in this era looked like* This is the beginning of what would become Israel. Or rather, the beginning of the stories that give shape to that claim. The earliest known inhabitants of this land were the **Canaanites**—a Bronze Age Semitic people who lived across the Levant. Semitic, in this period, doesn’t mean “Jewish.” It includes a wide linguistic and cultural group: **Arabs**, **Chaldeans**, **Hebrews**, **Phoenicians**, **Akkadians**—virtually every major player in the ancient Middle East outside of the **Persians**. Then come the **Hebrews**, later known as **Israelites**. According to the Hebrew Bible, they arrived from Egypt, conquered Canaan, and took the land by divine mandate. Most modern historians, like Israel Finkelstein - not to be confused with Norman Finklestein aka Finklestenelli (come up with some other stupid name) - and Neil Asher Silberman, suggest something more complex—an internal cultural evolution, not an external invasion. A slow integration of local Canaanite groups with emerging Hebrew identity. Less “military conquest,” more “messy cultural fusion.” Or you could take the Biblical account of Joshua rode in and stole it from a bunch of 8 ft giants. By around **1000 BC**, a centralized monarchy forms. **King Saul**, then **David**, and finally **Solomon*. Jerusalem is established as the capital. This is the golden age of the Hebrew people—brief, contested, mythologized. But like many golden ages, it fractures. Around **930 BCE**, the kingdom splits in two: - Israel: The **northern kingdom** and - Judah: The **southern kingdom**: Now begins the blood bath that is the Levantine history. As we walk through the next era, begin to consider this. Can violence be permissible? What justifies violence and how do we, who exist in a world deeply privileged by how little violence we encounter, how do we understand those who commit violence? Violence is a price that those underprivileged have to pay and the more fortunate can afford to judge. **In 722 BCE**, the **Assyrian Empire** sweeps down and **conquers Israel**. *Cite K.A. Kitchen*, The Assyrians were systematic in their deportations—moving populations to weaken ethnic identity and quell rebellion. The northern kingdom tribes disappear from history. These are the so-called **“Ten Lost Tribes.”** **In 586 BCE**, the **Babylonian Empire**, under **Nebuchadnezzar II**, crushes Judah. They sack Jerusalem. The **First Temple** is destroyed. Tens of thousands of Jews are deported to Babylon. This is the **Babylonian Exile**—a defining trauma. A moment where Jewish identity detaches from land, but not from memory. The exiled scribes write down oral histories. Rituals deepen. Prophets speak of return. The idea takes root: _This land is not just where we lived. It’s who we are._ Violence forced them out—and violence, they believe, will be justified in returning. Then come the **Persians**, under **Cyrus the Great**, who in **538 BC** allows Jews to return to Jerusalem. They rebuild. This is the era of the **Second Temple**. But the peace is temporary. 400 years later, **Rome** invades. And it conquers the land. The puppet kings. The taxation. The revolts. The most infamous: the **Great Jewish Revolt** (**66–73 AD**), crushed by **Vespasian** and **Titus**. The **Second Temple** is destroyed in **70 AD**. "Get a quote from a writer about the streets running red." Josephus In **135 AD**, after the **Bar Kokhba Revolt**, the Romans ban Jews from Jerusalem altogether. They rename it **Aelia Capitolina**. Judea becomes **Syria Palaestina**—a name meant to erase Jewish history by invoking the old enemies: the **Philistines**. Historian Benny Morris and others mark this moment as the formal **beginning of the Jewish Diaspora**. Scattered. Marginalized. Persecuted. But never forgetful. The story of exile—and the belief in return—solidifies into religious and national identity. However, time does not pause. The land doesn’t sit empty. New groups move in with visions of a blooming desert. After the failed Bar Kokhba revolt, Roman control over the region remained intact, but over the next few centuries, the empire fragmented. By the 4th century, it became the **Byzantine Empire**, with Christianity as its official religion. Jerusalem was transformed again—pagan temples torn down, churches erected, Jewish access to the city severely restricted. Under Emperor Justinian, synagogues were even burned. It was no longer Rome—but the Roman idea—now Christian and imperial. Then, in **638 AD**, **Muslim armies** under **Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab** conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantines. The city was surrendered peacefully by the Christian patriarch Sophronius, under terms that protected Christians and Jews—though Jews had to wait until later caliphs to return in larger numbers. This conquest was part of a much larger **Islamic expansion** that swept across the Middle East. And behind that rise was the Prophet **Muhammad**—whose legacy is complex, especially in relation to Jews. Muhammad’s early life in **Mecca** was defined by resistance. But it was in **Medina**, after his migration, that his relationship with local **Jewish tribes** unraveled. Initially, he viewed them as fellow monotheists and future fellow followers of Allah who had simply lost touch with the nature of God. But the alliance fractured—largely over political disagreements, refusal to accept his prophethood, and shifting loyalties during Medina's conflicts. The most dramatic rupture came with the **Banu Qurayza**, a Jewish tribe accused of conspiring with Meccan enemies. After a siege, Muhammad ordered the **execution of the tribe’s adult males**—estimates range from 400 to 900—and the enslavement of women and children. This event, recorded in early Islamic sources like **Ibn Ishaq’s** _Sirat Rasul Allah_, has been debated for centuries. For some, it was wartime justice. For others, the seeds of antisemitism. Certain Quranic verses, like **Surah 5:64**, were later interpreted by some to justify hostility toward Jews—though scholars like **Abdullah Saeed** argue these verses were historically contextual, not eternal prescriptions. What matters here is not just what happened, but what it meant. Under Islamic rule, Jews were granted **dhimmi** status: protected, but second-class citizens. They could live in Muslim lands, but not on equal footing. And yet, compared to Christian Europe’s brutal pogroms, Islamic empires were often more tolerant—unequal, yes, but not annihilatory. So now the land belonged to Islam. Arabic became the dominant tongue. The **Dome of the Rock** and **Al-Aqsa Mosque** became sacred fixtures in Jerusalem’s skyline. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad was taken from Mecca to Jerusalem in a miraculous night journey before ascending to heaven. This city was now their gateway to the divine. This is where we will pause our history. To highlight both groups sense of historical, cultural, and religious connections to this holy land. Both groups feel an ancestral tie to the land, and in the late 19th, 20th, and now, in the 21st century. In the next section, we will use the contemporary and modern history in this land to wrestle with the central question I want to pose today. When and how is violence justified? And how do we aim to understand those who enact violence? # Act II - They Deserve it Let’s be honest: most of us don’t believe in total pacifism. We just want violence to feel justified. _Reasonable. Proportional. Defensive. Deserved._ But the truth is: every side in a conflict tells a story where their violence is the exception. The special case. The one time it was necessary. So for this next section, I want to offer a basic framework. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s how I believe _most_ people evaluate violence. If you have an idea of a better framework to evaluate violence through, please post it in the comments below and maybe you will get the fated Pinned Comment honour. ### The Four Ethical Filters of Violence: 1. **Who swung first?** 2. **Did they deserve* it?** 3. **Was it proportional?** 4. **What does everyone** else say?** These are the tests. The hoops we make violence jump through so we can say: “Yes, that was allowed.” None of these filters are objective. Our job, as thinkers, as people, is to be honest and ensure the standards we erect for, "Ethical Violence" is something we can apply unilaterally. Rules for thee and rules for me. Let’s start with the first test. ## 1. **Who Swung First?** In most fights, the first blow matters. It tells us who the aggressor is. It gives us a clean narrative—_that person started it_. In the case of modern Israel and Palestine, the “who swung first” question seems simple—until you start unspooling the timeline. Let’s take **1947–1948**, the moment when the conflict truly explodes into war. After decades of Jewish immigration under British rule—and rising Arab opposition—the **United Nations proposed a partition plan** to divide the land into a Jewish and an Arab state. The **Jewish leadership accepted it**. The **Arab leadership rejected it**. And then: **Arabs attacked.** That’s the blunt timeline. Palestinian militias, and soon after Arab states, launched attacks on Jewish communities. But stop. That’s only the surface. Because we have to ask the second part of the equation: # **Did they deserve it?** Why did the Arabs attack? To answer that, we have to roll back to the **late 1800s**, under the **Ottoman Empire**. Jewish immigrants, backed by the emerging **Zionist movement**, began moving into Palestine. Jewish families were making legal purchases of land, from mostly absentee Arab landowners, causing the tenant farmers to be moved off the land. The Jewish move to Palestine was driven by a number of events across Europe and Asia. Some Jews were fleeing pogroms (define on screen). Some were ideological nationalists. All were entering a region already populated by Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians, as well as a Bedoins, and other Jewish tribes. The Ottoman Empire was wary though of these private sales to Jewish immigrants, and by **1892**, land sales to foreign Jews were banned. Sultan **Abdul Hamid II** rejected **Theodor Herzl’s** proposals outright. The Ottoman Empire was in its death throws and viewed the dominantly European immigration as a destabilization and attempt at colonization. I will note here, if it was, it was a unlike any other colony established in the region by European countries. Still, land purchases continued—often from absentee landowners. More tenants were displaced and this bred resentment. - Fula Affair, large amount of land was purchased by the Jewish National Fund from Lebonese Orthodox landowners. The locals were in aggressive protest to it as it meant 1000 villagers having to leave home and Saladin's castle being lost (it was on that land). [Rashid Khalidi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Khalidi "Rashid Khalidi"), "the important thing was not whether the ruin had originally been built by Saladin: it was that these newspapers' readers believed that part of the heritage of Saladin, savior of Palestine from the Crusaders, was being sold off (by implication, to the "new Crusaders") without the Ottoman government lifting a finger." - **Zionist leaders** often ignored or excluded local Arabs from negotiation, feeding the belief that this wasn’t just migration—it was a **settler-colonial project**. - Signed in January 1919, the [Faisal–Weizmann Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal%E2%80%93Weizmann_Agreement "Faisal–Weizmann Agreement") promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a [Jewish national homeland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Israel "Land of Israel") in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the [Middle East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East "Middle East"), though this event had little to no effect on the conflict. Why were the locals themselves so opposed to the sales? 1. Jews would not hire the tenant farmers, so it displaced people (Why?) 1. Jewish labour policy 2. Early Zionist ideology stressed “redeeming the land” by Jewish labor (Hebrew: avoda ivrit).<br/>• Hiring Arab labor was seen as impeding Jewish national revival; “conquest of labor” was a core principle (Labor Zionists) 2. Distinct dislike of the Jewish nature of the purchasers? Then came the **Balfour Declaration (1917)**—Britain's promise to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. WW1 ends with the defeat of the Ottoman empire and Palestine falls under administration of Britian. Jews continue to migrate into Palestine and the people who lived on that land were displaced as they never owned the land. And in the eyes of many Palestinians, that was the final confirmation: _This wasn’t coexistence. This was conquest._ For the Jewish settlers? They purchased the land legally. They made multiple agreements with British and Arab leaders for peaceful coexistence. They wouldn't however, keep original Arab tenants hired or working, but instead wanted to "redeem the land" by Jewish labour. Between 1916-1918 there is a jumble of communications and promises between France and Britian, Arab leaders, and Jewish leaders. There is still much historical debate for example, to Husseins reaction to the Balfour declaration. More simply said, ownership, agreement for peace, and agreements on land division was a mess. This mess led to tensions and eventually, violence. Hitlers rise to power plus pogroms in Soviet Russia sped along the Zionist movement, which further angered Palestinians with more immigrants moving in. This led to more Arab attacks to Jews and an underwhelming response to control the Arab violence and protests by the British mandate. (Jaffa Riots, Nebi Musa riots, Hebron massacre, the Black Hand, Battle of Tel Hai) Many of these attacks initiated by the Arabs resulted in counter violence to the Arabs (from the British soldiers or from Jews themselves). GPT, we gotta simplify this all. Something like, the Arabs felt angry by increased Jewish settlement. The Jews felt angry but multiple massacres and riots triggered by Arabs that resulted in Jewish deaths. So when Arab militias attacked Jewish convoys in 1947, they believed it was **defensive violence** So yes: **they swung first**. But they didn’t swing blindly. They swung because they believed Zionism—however justified by Jewish trauma—was not a movement of peace, but a **replacement**. However, Arabs had been swinging first for atleast years before the As **Rashid Khalidi** puts it, this conflict wasn’t just about _land_. It was about **two national identities colliding** - Jews wanting a land for themselves after facing centuries of attack and Arabs enraged by loss of ancestral homes that they felt wa Moslem land.