NINA PALEY is a Jewish-American illustrator and animator. The video clip posted here is from her larger work, Seder Masochism, which may be reached here. Paley heightens the power of her clip by having each wave of invaders keep the song going. This land is mine, they insist - until there is no land left to own, except by the Angel of Death. A grim, but very pertinent message.
Video courtesy of YouTube
This post is exclusive to Bowalley Road.
16 comments:
Way back I commented on Public Address (before I was shown the door) that if the world was an equal playing field such that Holy Migrants come here and we go their it wouldn't be an issue (assuming that there wasn't a smoky over crowded hell).
I was told to "get bent you racist".
Shocking as it is that was the way of the world for most of it's history; the Middle East is far from unique in that respect. The waves of conquerors, the Roman, Viking, Jute and Saxon invasions, of Britain for instance.
The scattering of the Jews in response to persecution over millennia is not featured in the cartoon but it surely underpins the significance of the Homeland ideal to the Jewish people. The revival of Jew hatred in what were long regarded as safe havens must also have revived the attraction of the homeland idea even among Western Jews - despite the obvious "out of the frying pan into the fire" conundrum that represents.
And that's to say nothing of the persecution and almost complete disappearance of Jews from the broader middle East and North Africa that has already taken place. After the war Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen had populations of 851,000 (mostly Sephardic) Jewish people. By 2018 this number had fallen to a mere 3,300. There were heavy losses in the first half of the 20th century as well.
"The first Nationality Code was promulgated by Egypt in May 1926 and said that only those “who belonged racially to the majority of the population of a country whose language is Arabic or whose religion is Islam” were entitle to Egyptian nationality. This provision served as the official pretext for expelling many Jews from Egypt."
There were massive prior population losses outside of those eight countries as well of course (Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia for instance) through emigration, expulsion and actual genocide. God help us if we refuse to learn from all of this.
Reference source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."
It's worth asking ourselves what level of corruption would it take for me to come to believe that beheading babies was the answer.
And what sort of monster, this side of Hell, would even attempt to coerce us along that road.
It might surprise some to know there has never been a Palestinian state - before Israel there was a British mandate.
Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire. (Turkish)
Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt.
Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid Arab-Kurdish Empire.
Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Frankish and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Umayyad and Fatimid empires. (Islamists)
Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine Empire. (Constantinople)
Before the Byzantine Empire, there were the Sassanids. (Persians/Iranians pre Islam)
Before the Sassanid Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire. (Capital was Constantinople)
Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire. (Rome)
Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonean state. (Jewish)
Before the Hasmonean state, there was the Seleucid. (Remnants of Alexander the Great empire)
Before the Seleucid empire, there was the empire of Alexander the Great.(Greek/Macedonian))
Before the empire of Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire.(Iranian)
Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire. (Iraqi)
Before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. (Jewish)
Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel (Jewish)
Before the kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel. (also Jewish)
Before the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms.
Actually, in this piece of land, there has been everything, except a Palestinian State.
Largely unintelligible comments! An unstable unsustainable political "solution"! ... Haah! ... will have this effect. There is no ready answer to the existence of Israel.
David, you seem to have missed an important point. Facts have no place in this event, or the world in general these days. It is all about your personal truth, what used to be called your belief. By giving it the new label, 'truth', there is now no need to be able to justify a position that has no moral justification. Any questions can be just screamed at, discourse shut down. How can anyone argue with the 'truth'.
David George
Whether or not there was a "Palestinian State" in the Middle East before Israel began colonising the area and ethnically cleansing the land of its Arab inhabitants is completely irrelevant, even though it obfuscates the real issue. State or no state, there were people already living there for centuries before 1948 and earlier (calling them Palestinians or anything else is not important) and Israel was always going to experience some serious resistance from these displaced people.
Thank you Madame B.,
yes, it's difficult and I have genuine sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs that lost their land, recognisable state or not. The "river to the sea" types claim over the entirety of existing Israel now is the very real problem they refuse, in word and action, to compromise on. The annihilation of the Jewish people is clearly not some idle claim so, in the absence of any genuine efforts at rapprochement, fight they must.
How is it exclusive? I've seen this all over the place.
Please explain.
Shalom.
Madam B. Your clear eyed observation that the Israeli state was created at the huge cost and disbenefit to generations of "Palestinians" is the nub of unrest then,now and unfortunately for the future.
This unsustainable morass is complicated by ... but could be rectified by ...
boundary realignment that does not place warring parties adjacent to one another.
Altered borders and monitored control buffer zones with countries like Eygpt and Jordan ceding further territory to an enlarged Palestine would disappear Gaza and reinforce Israel's ability to defend its borders without the strategic necessity of straying into neighboring no go zones.
In sum ... a big part of the problem is geographical ... it's fix ... Ditto.
.
Who cares if there has never been a Palestinian state? There wasn’t a South African one or a Bolivian one until recently. The fact remains that a group of Arabs (not Israeli Arabs or even Gazans I might add) remain under Israeli control and do not have the freedoms or rights that their illegal settler neighbours do. The fact that no one calls out Israel is an injustice.
It needs to be recognised that Israel also has it's share of religious fanatics helping lead to the current Hell on Earth.
"For more than a generation, defence policy and much else has been increasingly determined by the dictates of Israel’s religious settler lobby and its Messianic visions. Though not numerous, parties representing the settlers exploited Israel’s system of proportional representation, which magnifies the influence of small, well-organized pressure groups, to effectively capture an entire state."
https://quillette.com/2023/11/05/a-generation-of-misguided-policy-in-israel/
To: David.
"This post is exclusive to Bowalley Road" simply means that it is not a reposting of an opinion piece originally posted on another site.
Nina Paley's "This Land Is Mine" is, quite obviously, being posted everywhere right now. My take on her brilliant effort, equally obviously, is not.
Hope this helps.
You have to be careful that you are not a historical when assigning identities to people in the past. Those that were Jewish or Samaritans during the Hellenistic and Roman period were Canaanites that had developed a Hebrew cultural and linguistic identity. After the Jewish - Roman wars and Pilate's near genocide in Samaria, many urban Hebrews joined an already established diaspora. Most on the land in Judea, Galilee and Samaria stayed.
When the Roman's became Christian most converted to Christianity. When the Arab conquests happened, the same people would eventually adopt Islam and obsorb Arab culture and language. In the meantime those of the diaspora maintained religion and culture.
So, for both Palestinians and those that maintained Jewish identity in Europe, the near east and north Africa, the.last time their ancestors had an independent state was under the Maccabeans.
The pro Palestine (Hamas?) protestors are a very confused bunch. Yelling for war (Jihad and Intifada) and peace at the same time. Perhaps they just hate the Jews, I think that's it.
Thank you, Chris, for posting this clip from Nina Paley's Seder Masochism. I have never seen anyone in NZ refer to this artist before. I recommend everyone to watch the whole movie. You'll get a commentary, not of this conflict and maybe not of modern war, but a take on history, a story about a people, a religion and a family, and a commentary, in genius-ly crafted cartoon and musical form. I've loved this movie for years - Nina Paley perfected the art of 'embroidermation' here...(look her up) and her other major work, 'Sita Sings the Blues'...another brilliant and semi-irreverant but respectful/insider take on another cultures' mythology and religion from again, a personal perspective. Both movies are so powerful, as powerful as cartoons can be.
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