Coleman Hughes
Published on May 11, 2026
Oren Kessler is a historian and journalist who spent five years researching the Arab Revolt of 1936–39—one of the most consequential and least understood episodes in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His book Palestine 1936 tells the story of the three-way struggle between Arabs, Jews, and the British that set the template for nearly everything that came after. In this episode, Kessler and Coleman dig in to who actually introduced terrorism to the region, why Palestinian violence worked in the short term and backfired catastrophically in the long term, what the revolt reveals about the murky origins of Palestinian nationalism, and the role of the Grand Mufti in radicalizing Palestinian politics in ways that still echo today.