Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done

going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is January 22nd, 2024, and my guest is historian and author Hillel Cohen of Hebrew University is the author of many books in 2015 he

published year zero of the Arab Israeli conflict, 1929, which is our topic for today.

Hello, welcome to Econ Talk.

Thank you very much for having it.

I want to let listeners know that there may be parts of

this conversation that are not appropriate for children so you may want to

listen first. This is a remarkable book partly because it illuminates a year of the conflict that indeed can be

described as year zero.

But it's equally remarkable for the perspective that Hilo brings to the year and his deep commitment

as a historian to understand how each side of the conflict experiences its own narrative in the moment and the challenge that provides to the

historian. In addition, it's a remarkable and very painful book because the events of

1929 are not so different from the events of

October 7th in its aftermath, the seemingly senseless murder and rape of defenseless civilians, and the

rape of defenseless civilians and the attempts by each side to justify or explain what happened.

And in the course of doing that, it's quite, can be quite disturbing because whatever your perspective on this conflict is

Hillel's book forces you to be aware of the other side.

And that's very, can be very uncomfortable.

And to add one more element of pain,

some of the deaths of 1929,

just as they were on October 7th.

...