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Palestinian Intellectual History with Sabri Jiryis
1 Playsin 18 hours
Palestinian scholar, lawyer, and former director of the Palestine Research Center, Sabri Jiryis, joins this episode to discuss the historical significance of the Center and its archives, as well as his seminal work, The Foundations of Zionism, recently translated into English for the first time.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Rethinking Palestine'
00:00:05
Speaker
From Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine.
The Foundations of Zionism: An Overview
00:00:16
Speaker
The Foundations of Zionism was originally published in Arabic over two volumes in 1977 and 1986, written by renowned Palestinian scholar and former director of the Palestine Research Center in Beirut, Sabri Jirias.
00:00:31
Speaker
This work is an intimate analysis of the ideology of Zionism, its foundations and beginnings, and the institutions and prevailing narratives that supported its eventual manifestation in the establishment of the State of Israel.
00:00:46
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Drawing on primary sources, as well as somebody's own expertise as a scholar and lawyer who lived through the Nakba, graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and then later served in the PLO, This work was and continues to be a vital contribution to literature on Zionism.
00:01:03
Speaker
Decades later, on October 7th, 2025, The Foundations of Zionism was published in English for the first time by liberated texts. in a collaborative series with Ed Books, who notably have also published translations of Ghassan Canafani's writings.
Significance and Impact of Jirias' Work
00:01:18
Speaker
The translation of the Foundations of Zionism was done by none other than Sabli's daughter, Fidat Gilius, who is also the author of a memoir titled Stranger in My Own Land.
00:01:29
Speaker
To discuss the significance of this work and its translation and publication in English on Rethinking Palestine is none other than Sabli Gilius himself.
Role of the Palestine Research Centre
00:01:45
Speaker
Before we talk about the book, Sabri, I would like to ask you about the Palestine Research Centre and its significance to the political struggle. The centre was set up by the PLO in 1965 to serve as a hub for Palestinian intellectual production, ah to conserve and archive source materials on Palestine and its people.
00:02:05
Speaker
Why was it important to have a research centre that was explicitly tied to the political struggle? I would reverse the question, why it is not important.
00:02:17
Speaker
Of course, it is a important. one I still work. Then, the day the Palestine Research Center was established, the decision was taken to establish it, I got my lawyer's license in Israel.
00:02:30
Speaker
on the 28th of February 1965, exactly the same day that decision was taken by the Executive Committee of the PLO to establish the research center. And at the same day, I went in Jerusalem and I bought my advocate's license.
00:02:45
Speaker
As far as I know, and I think I know well, it was very clear and it was very nature of the Serbicine Center. Because at that time, the Anesthenians were disappeared everywhere. ramsstein The Palestine question was almost fading away, going away. All of the Palestine was just taken away. I mean, now you couldn't know it. You had...
00:03:06
Speaker
Part of it in Israel, part of it was the West Bank, which was, and the other part was the other strip, which was under Egyptian military rule. And the war of Palestine had banished from the UN n in the early nineteen fifty s before the mid of the 1950s, when Trig B'nai, the then Secretary General of the UN,
00:03:28
Speaker
has changed the item on the list of the United Nations the General Assembly and from the Palestine question to the situation in the Middle East.
00:03:39
Speaker
So the PLO wanted, that you know, under the leadership of Shuqairi, the founder of the PLO, is that to have an institute to start researching the Palestinian question and documenting it.
Research as a Tool for Liberation
00:03:52
Speaker
That's all. It was so simple. And that's exactly what Ramah Panisthain Research Center was doing and is doing until this day. I wanted to ask how can research and scholarly work better serve the liberation movement?
00:04:07
Speaker
That has nothing to do exactly with the liberation movement. The people there fighting there and working and so on, they simply needed information. They have to know what's going on, what to do, how to do. So you ah have not only to care for history, but you have also to care for the present situation. Collect the news, comment on it, analyze it, and give it to them. I mean, without it, in it's very hard to work.
00:04:34
Speaker
And you could see it, you know, andly before knowledge was spreading, the Palestinians and I think the Arabs also were playing or were walking in the dark. They didn't know who they are fighting and what they are fighting for.
00:04:50
Speaker
So this was very important. But I would add in the meantime, ah Due to the effort of the and Institute for Palestine Institute and then the Reserve Center, and say a big wave that took all of the strategies almost, like spread knowledge about Israel and you're trying to educate people, even trying to teach them Hebrews that they can follow up.
00:05:16
Speaker
or risk, say, a branch of knowledge, has expanded very much. And today, for example, almost, almost in all Arab important newspapers, and even in most Arab institutions to deal with double-signing question, you see too much material translated or not from the very heart of the Israeli press.
00:05:40
Speaker
which is quite a very good thing to let people i understand what is going on. And I mean, even dealing now, asking just simply Palestinian people, you would you would sometimes think that they are almost half experts on Israeli affairs, which is really very good. I like it very much.
00:06:00
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Meaning in this attitude, in this branch, in this activity, we really succeeded.
Challenges in Preserving Palestinian Knowledge
00:06:06
Speaker
In 1983, the Israeli regime bombed the Palestine Research Center in Beirut.
00:06:11
Speaker
This was but one moment in a long history of the Israeli regime destroying or disrupting Palestinian knowledge production preservation. Can you tell us about that specific attack? The attack was on the war aggressive of the Bialo.
00:06:26
Speaker
And we were attacked at other parts of the other BLO institutes. Then they didn't came to attack us only. I mean, not only the recreation attack. They attacked the BLO in all of its institutes, all of its organization. And they simply wanted the BLO out of Lebanon.
00:06:44
Speaker
thinking that by diving the PLO out of Lebanon, they will just terminate the Palestine question. They didn't do very much, the needs to ask, but they simply robbed all of our material. They took our library away, they took even the furniture that was there, they took it.
00:07:01
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Later they had to return it and after like something like 40 years, this material is now in the renewed PLO Restoration Center in Ramallah.
00:07:12
Speaker
We got it back. I mean, the other people, my colleagues there, are already renewing it normal there as it was before.
00:07:23
Speaker
I mean, we were only a small part of the damage that we wanted to do to the Palestinians. Right, and this is also part of a long durée of attacks on Palestinian intellectual production. Today, every university in Gaza has been bombed. Palestinian universities in the West Bank are continuously raided. And Palestinian knowledge production institutions abroad face lawfare and coordinated attacks to shut them down.
00:07:49
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And that's why, in the face of this systematic attempt to destroy Palestinian knowledge production preservation, it is so important that Palestinian intellectual scholarship remains steadfast.
00:08:01
Speaker
They want to distinguish the Palestinian people, to kill them, to say that there were no Palestinians, they had no civilization, they had no heritage, they had nothing.
00:08:14
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And it is up to this day. It is more deeper than you think. Because, for example, take now what is called the public opinion in Israel. Do you know what to know?
00:08:25
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Perhaps you find eight or nine people who would support the establishment of Palestinian state. Everybody be of the Israelis know that the Palestinians are persecuted. They are killed. And they just say nothing. They don't care.
00:08:42
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Even now, the Saudi state, Israelis, establish a Palestinian state, so that we can go on for normalization with them. And then, if they now tell you them, make the Palestinian state in your country, not here.
00:08:55
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So it is not only against Palestinian knowledge and history and so on. It is against the Palestinians, people themselves, per se.
Translating Zionism for Wider Understanding
00:09:05
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Sabri, turning to the book, why was it important to you to have your work on Zionism published in English at this moment, now so many years after it first came out in Arabic?
00:09:16
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I think I should have done that years ago. It's very important because there is a big fallacy going around with all Zionists about Zionism.
00:09:29
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They portray Zionism as part of Judaism and as existing centuries came into existence. which is really a very big drive, has not been this way.
00:09:42
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My first aim was to let the Arabs, I mean, and the Palestinians especially, know more and more in-depth about the Ramis movement and its activities. And number two,
00:09:55
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to refute all of those assumptions that Zionists and their allies were spreading around. So having this book in English is very important, you know, to refute their arguments.
00:10:10
Speaker
And why is it important for us, and in particular for us as Palestinians, to under understand Zionism? Why is it important for Palestinians to write and publish about Israel and Zionism?
00:10:22
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It's getting It's really getting worse. They continued to clean Palestinians. They attacked Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Iran, and Yemen.
00:10:34
Speaker
And they committed a genocide in Qatar. They are really criminals. And they do the same thing, but on a smaller and scale, as the Nazis did to the Jews in Europe.
00:10:46
Speaker
What but does that mean? Or my how can you describe the destruction which they have done in Gaza? Both in universities, mosques, schools, hospitals, you know, everything. It is really a genocide, really, not kidding. Just that is genocide.
00:11:03
Speaker
And they are doing now the same thing to Lebanon. They give the people own birth from a big, big area to leave it. Otherwise, they will kill them. So it's, I mean, it is really a criminal state, a criminal regime.
00:11:17
Speaker
And they know nothing except crime as long as they feel that they are losing. For example, today, you know, something like a funeral in Israel.
00:11:29
Speaker
They are very sad and very angry. I was following them from the early morning to see what they are convinced on this agreement between Iran and the U.S. And I dare tell you, you never know how much they hate it, how much they don't want it, and how much do they feel miserable.
00:11:48
Speaker
They don't want this agreement. Neither do they want peace. They want the world to go on and they want to destroy Iran and they want to conquer Iran and they want to teach some lessons, etc., etc.
Zionism Compared to Historical Crusades
00:12:02
Speaker
So in this translation, there is a new concluding chapter that has been added on Gaza and understanding Zionism post-October 7th. Has something changed for you in your understanding of Zionism today as opposed to when you first wrote about it nearly 50 years ago?
00:12:18
Speaker
What I think, they are a new crusade. Some 900 years and ago, Europe has decided to rescue tomb of Jerusalem.
00:12:29
Speaker
And they came with the crusade waves of attacks. They have for about 200 years this, and they were you know making the treaty and tax.
00:12:42
Speaker
with some neighbours here and some neighbours there, against the other neighbours, just exactly as ah they are doing now. And I think if they want to change their attitude, the area, the region here, would just absorb them and eat them.
00:12:58
Speaker
And their end would be similar to the of the Crusades. And as a concluding question, where does the Zionist project go from here?
00:13:09
Speaker
I mean, we are part of the Middle East, of the area of the Arab East. I call it the Arab East, not the Middle East. We are part of it and we are affected by the policies of the neighboring state.
00:13:22
Speaker
As things are going now, you know, it is more that it's dispute between Iran and the U.S. and Iran and I hope that this will be set in one way or another, because as far as I see the primary reaction of the Americans, it seems they are they are heading for business. They knew that they can't get more, and then they, yeah I mean, find a solution what's going on.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I hope that would go on there. And then there will be only one single air problem them in the area, which is the policyary question. And I really think we they will start working i say seriously on a solution.
00:14:05
Speaker
The solution is to have a two-state solution, which I was one of the main propagators. But in the meantime, I really, really slowly changed my thoughts and my ideas and my thinking.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I think we should strive toward one single state in Palestine with equal rights for Jews and Ba'ara. And here is that communism should gradually vanish.
Conclusion and Future Exploration
00:14:32
Speaker
If not, you will go, I mean, the area and the Palestinians cannot do anything except fighting them. There's no other way. So in the meantime, I think there's nothing to do, nothing tangible, nothing really concrete to do, because the only kind of things, other things.
00:14:50
Speaker
We hope they will stand sure, and then we return back to this.
00:15:00
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Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Ashabaka, the Palestinian policy network. Ashabaka is the only global independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide.
00:15:17
Speaker
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