Conversations with Coleman The War Before the War: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine
88 snips
May 11, 2026 
Oren Kessler, writer and author of Palestine 1936, The Great Revolt, is a journalist and political analyst. He unpacks the origins of Palestinian nationalism and challenges the idea that Jews started the conflict. He traces preexisting violence, compares partition parallels like India, and examines why compromises and disarmament have been so elusive.
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Why The 1936–39 Revolt Matters
- Oren Kessler focused on the 1936–39 Great Arab Revolt as an understudied but formative period for the Israel–Palestine conflict.
- He frames it as a three-way story between Arabs, Jews, and the British that seeded institutions, tactics, and political trajectories still visible today.
Let Compelling Voices Shape Historical Judgment
- Let primary voices from all sides speak to complicate simple narratives when writing history.
- Kessler uses figures like George Antonius and Musa Alami to present eloquent Arab perspectives alongside Jewish and British voices.
Terrorism Existed Before Jewish Militants
- Jewish militant attacks (Irgun from 1937) were real acts of terrorism but did not originate the tactic in Palestine.
- Large-scale Arab violence (e.g., 1920 Nabi Musa, 1921 Jaffa, 1929 Hebron) preceded organized Jewish terrorism by years.
