What Britain’s Most Famous Philosopher Said About Zionism
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166,248 views Feb 25, 2026 Zionism
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Transcript
0:033 secondsIn this video, I want to share with you the final letter written by a very prominent British philosopher, Bertrren
0:1010 secondsRussell. And this letter written in 1970 was about what's going on in the Middle East today. Really, it speaks to the
0:1717 secondssame issues, the same concerns, and it seems very fresh and relevant, almost as if it was written yesterday. And I want
0:2525 secondsto read this letter to you and explain who Bertrand Russell was because he was a hugely significant uh figure in the
0:3232 secondswest. So Bertrren Russell was a British mathematician, a philosopher, logician and public intellectual. Then he died in 1970 and he was born in 1872.
0:4545 secondsAnd he had a huge influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence,
0:5252 secondscognitive science, computer science, and various areas of analytic philosophy.
0:5858 secondsespecially the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language,
1:021 minute, 2 secondsepistemology, and metaphysics. And when I was a kid, actually, I remember reading the problems of philosophy. It's the first philosophy book I ever read by by him. I think I was about 15 or 16 at the time. And that kind of blew my mind and got me fascinated by philosophy uh
ever since. Now, he was one of the early 20th century's most prominent logicians.
In other words, who practice logic in philosophy and a founder of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Frager, his friend and colleague GE Moore and his student and prodigy the famous Ludvik Vickenstein. Russell with Mo L Moore led the British revolt against idealism, the philosophy of idealism and together with his formersteacher an Whitehead, Russell wrote the famous Prancipika Mathematica, a milestone in the development of classical logic and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to logic. But for our purposes, what's really fascinating about him is that he was a a a pacifist who championed anti-imperialism and chaired the India League. And he went to prison actually for uh his beliefs for his pacifism during World
2:182 minutes, 18 secondsWar I. And he also but he also saw the war against Hitler and Nazi Germany as a necessary lesser of two evils. But he later criticized Stalin and his regime and condemned the United States involvement in the Vietnam War and became an outspoken advocate of nuclear disarmament. In 1950, uh, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for, quote, in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought," unquote. Now, in January 1970, the year of his death, Russell issued a fascinating statement, a letter condemning, quote, Israel's aggression in the Middle East, unquote, and in particular, Israeli bombing raids carried out deep in Egyptian territory as part of the so-called war of attrition, which he compared to the bombing the German bombing raids in the Battle of Britain. and the US bombing of Vietnam. That's who he compared it with, Nazi Germany and the American bombing of Vietnam. He called for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre6 day war borders.
And this was Russell's final political statement and it was the last thing he ever wrote. And fascinatingly, he was
3:503 minutes, 50 secondsactually read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo on the 3rd of February 1970, the day
4:004 minutesafter he died. That quickly it got to Cairo and it was read out to the the assembled Egyptians, the
4:074 minutes, 7 secondsparliamentarians in Cairo. So, I want to share with you what Bert and Russell's last message was. And as I say, it's
4:144 minutes, 14 secondsvery fresh, contemporary. It could have been written yesterday. is so contemporary and it is also very sad
4:214 minutes, 21 secondsbecause the same themes, the same problems, the same injustice as he saw it uh reoccurs still today. Nothing
4:304 minutes, 30 secondsreally has changed except perhaps it's got worse if that's possible. So these are Bert and Russell the great his last
4:384 minutes, 38 secondswords his last message to mankind. This Nobel Prize winner this famous mathematician philosopher and public
4:474 minutes, 47 secondsintellectual who captured the imagination of the western world when he was alive.
And this is what he wrote. The last phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment. The Vietnamese, who have endured years of American heavy bombing, have responded not by capitulation, but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940, my own fellow countrymen, obviously the British, resisted Hitler's bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination.
For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose. But at the same time, they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world. The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. how little has changed. I think for over 20 years, Israel has expanded by force of arms. At every stage in this expansion, Israel has appealed to reason and has suggested negotiations.
This is the traditional role of the imperial power because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence.
Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned not only because no state has the right to annex foreign territory but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate. The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. And I've just come back, by the way, from Jordan, where most of the population, I think, are either Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees. Russell continues, "The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was given by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state." Now, Russell doesn't mention it, but I'm sure he's referring to the Balfold Declaration of 1917, of course, issued by the British government. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict, their numbers have increased. How true that is still. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanting cruelty? And what would he made of the images we see today on television and online and Twitter? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven. And the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled on mass from their own country. How can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which no one else would tolerate? a permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East. So notice how here for Russell a just settlement is the is the key point
here as a philosopher very concerned with justice not just expediency but with a right and proper outcome. He continues, "We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe
at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned." In other words, it can't be approved of. This is in 1970.
and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross shypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery, not only are many Arabs under occupation, condemned to military rule, but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development. And he concludes uh
Bertrren Russell in the final paragraph of this incredible letter. All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict.
Justice. This word again, justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June 1967.
A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the longsuffering people of the Middle East. End quote. So, that's an extraordinary uh message. his last message that he ever wrote, the day the day he died, the day after he died, this was read out to the Egyptian uh people. And how fresh, how relevant, how timely, still 50 years later or so these words still seem today. And I think he this could be read out still
10:5510 minutes, 55 secondstoday. I think if he'd seen this uh what was happening in the occupied territories in Gaza uh today, he would have been horrified of course and and would have rung his head in shame.
Nothing really has changed on the ground. So um I just wanted to share those words with you to show that there were some very prominent British intellectuals, public figures in the past who stood up for justice, who stood up for the rights of the downtrodden, for refugees, for the oppressed, the dispossessed. It's not just a recent thing. Um, and I do recommend also if you want to read more this book by Israeli historian uh, Ilappape called the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Uh and this is a seminal work because it references with uh great meticulous historical detail documentary archival evidence taken often from Israeli sources themselves that demonstrate uh unfortunately the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in all its shocking detail. A story that's often been forgotten in our modern world. Until next
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