Above is a "docu-music-video" of Detroit MC Invincible’s song People Not Places. Kabobfest calls it the "greatest hip hop song for Palestine ever."The video, like the song, is a powerful indictment of both the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, and attempts to shield young American Jews from this reality through programs like Birthright.
Be sure to watch the entire thing. The video continues after the song is over to show how there are some very similar conditions to Israel/Palestine right here in the US, and that as hopeless as the situation might feel at times there is an amazing capacity for change.
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Powerful stuff, and the characterization of the hasbara goon is a riot.
I recommend this short film as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL9bRtJ3XDY
Thanks, kylebisme. Powerful video about jumping to conclusions. BTW, check out the hat on the hasbara goon–it’s the same hat worn by the Jewish kid in South Park.
great line ” they’re turning the holy land into hell “
Good concept and ideas; maybe a tad too many ideas, though. And I would consider swallowing a couple of nails before having to listen to the girl rapping in Arabic again. Sorry but had to say.
I would consider swallowing a couple of nails
I watched the video a couple of times, I wish it could be stopped, it seems it can’t be. I surely wouldn’t have done if I didn’t think it is very, very good.
Concerning the “female ‘Arabic’ (!*) rap voice” don’t agree with you at all. That “dialog rap voice” is much on my mind in hindsight. It’s used as if a refrain, an echo.
* if it was Arabic, I wouldn’t be able to understand, but quite obviously I do. It’s refrain use seems to make it a haunting tune. Is that what bothers you?
None of the too many ideas hasn’t been on my mind too associatively in this context. Thus this makes it for me one of the best approaches I’ve seen so far. It presents patterns, similarities not a definitive answer.
I think it is a perfect pop art example of what “the enigmas” Adam and Phil (Richard Witty) are trying to do. To not suggest a specific line of action but present the case as complete and complex as possible for an unpaid two-man-team.
powerful propaganda. a symptom of why peace is so far, the film’s solution is obvious get rid of the yahud and all will be well. this is a prescription for war and not for peace.
and guess what? the wailing wall came way before the moroccan quarter and this is a connection to place.
The film suggests nothing about getting rid of anyone. Based on your proclaiming connection to the Western Wall as if that excuses the destruction of the neighborhood which stood by it, I gather are just projecting a desire to get rid of others.
That is, I gather you are just projecting a desire to get rid of others.
How so, “a prescription for war?”
The whole video advocates opening up your mind and heart to the plight of the Palestinians–made clear by the Jewish girl talking about her mother at the end. Everyone in the USA is well aware of the Israeli narrative, and simultaneously most are completely ignorant of the Palestinian narrative; this
manipulation of public opinion has not been, nor is it, in the best interests of the USA
or Israel. Remember Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind”? Informed consent is everything
in a free society. Conversely, misinformation guides the dogs of war.
The wall was there and it still is, but where are the houses?
It was called the Mugrabi Quarter. 135 houses used to be there, but the Israelis sent in bulldozers, expelled the people from their homes and tore them down.
The first step towards peace is the yahud opening their eyes and recognizing just why their presence in an Arab land is a problem.
Israel was born in sin. Once you can bring yourself to accept this fact, everything else falls into line.
People like wandering jew are like Cain, when asked what happened to his brother Abel. “Brother? What brother you talking about? There was never any brother here, and that’s not blood on my hands.”
In the Arabic rap poem in the video, the rapper states: “We’re in an ocean. The Zionist project is a ship rowing with right and left wing straight to the waterfall. When they fall off the ledge the Holy Land will stop being a hell land.”
What do you think the Zionist project falling off the ledge will look like? Do you really think this is a prescription for opening up the eyes of the Yahud to the damage that we’ve done.
True this is not the overall theme of the video.
The line has the Zionists rowing themselves towards the edge, not being driven by the Arabs, and I think that’s what it looks like.
Israelis are already leaving. They have airline tickets. Net emigration is up. Unlike the fate of the Arabs, no one is forcing them into refugee camps.
You seem to be conflating Zionist and Jew when they are obviously not the same. Imagine if you will using the term “white supremacist” in place of Zionist and “white person” in place of Jew. A “white supremacist” project “falling off the ledge” does not equate to getting rid of all “white people”. It means getting rid of bias and supremacy on the basis of race, or in the case of Israel, supremacy on the basis of a combination of religion/ethnicity.
The question of the Wailing Wall is an interesting one. (It is commonly referred to as the Wall or the Kotel.) Question: would you hope or expect for the Jews to allow the place to remain a narrow alleyway as it was when they conquered it in 67. Would you hope or expect for the Jews to consider it occupied territory and thus avoid it altogether. Neither of these hopes make any allowances for human connection to a place.
Indulgence’s mother felt no connection to places only to people and thus to the rapper the Jewish connection is inferior to the Arab connection. Here is an instance of a real connection to a place, which contradicts the rapper’s entire thesis.
History seems to show that one woman was killed in the destruction of the neighborhood after the 67 war. This death seems to me more than tragic, but actually criminal. It is symptomatic of callousness that too often characterizes much of the history of the Zionist enterprise. Yet I think that to expect the Israelis to leave access to the Wall to be a narrow alleyway is totally unrealistic.
The Western Wall was uncovered by a Muslim Sultan, and I’d expect any decent person to demonstrate some semblance of gratitude for that. As for Jews in general, being familiar with the story of the golden calf along with many other warnings against serving graven images contained in Torah; I’d expect them to clinging so feverishly to materialistic things. Granted, in regard to Zionists I’ve long come to expect far less.
Rather, ” I’d expect them *not* to cling** so feverishly to materialistic things”.
. Here is an instance of a real connection to a place, which contradicts the rapper’s entire thesis.
The connection to the place existed over the centuries before Zionism. Didn’t it? Both on a spiritual and minor Jewish community level? No?
The question is, is the ultimate aim of Zionism the return of all Jews the world over to the land? If not, what exactly is his aim, to paraphrase Richard Witty.
If the aim is to provide a safe haven for Jews the world over, what function has religion in this? Everybody can convert to Judaism and move there? Am I supposed to consider all the people that do threatened. Not one I know is or was.
Besides the safe haven line of thought needs the assumption that antisemitism will always exist. Consider self-fulfilling prophesies.
From the top of my head.
I would sum up Zionism’s goals today as two fold: survival of the Jews living in Israel at present and maintenance of a Jewish state/homeland for the future.
It is understandable that you perceive that Jews are not threatened at present in the world. This is only partially true. Jews whose origins are in the Middle East have congregated in Israel because they were threatened by the regimes and populations in which they lived. So it is not true that Jews could just return to their countries of origins and everything would be hunky dory. Ask the Jews of France if they feel safe. I think their answer would be ambivalent. The Jews of England feel safe only if they take a vow of antiZionism, otherwise they too feel threatened.
To Americans who have just celebrated their 233rd birthday, 64 years is a major chunk of time. To the Jews who have been around in various forms for thousands of years, the timespan since WWII is just a mere eyeblink of history, so they are not quite as sanguine about the disappearance of antisemitism.
You call it a self fulfilling prophecy, I call it a natural appreciation for the vicissitudes of history.
It was done illegally, without law or lawful orders, another example of creating facts on the ground that can’t be undone when you know you would never get permission to do it if you tried legal means.
According to Tom Segev, some people did want to leave the narrow alleyway because that’s the way it had always been and it felt holier to them. But I doubt if this was practical in the long run.
If might makes right, then so was Goering, and the Nuremberg Trials were just kangaroo courts, and as well, all the “crimes against humanity” and “wars of aggression” etc. Similarly with the international watch dog agencies and Geneva conventions, etc. I don’t
think either the USA or Israel learned any lesson. I think they both have shown that
Goering has been their mentor. I do not support either the USA’s or Israel’s foreign policy. From a Palestinian POV, the main reason I think they suffer is that they have
no economic clout.
Noone was “always there”. Not Palestinians, not Indians. And, even if someone was always there, democracy is in the present. There is no permanent national right to land.
We’ve all been alive for a short time, our parents came from mostly different places, and the VAST majority of our great-great-grandparents, and from very mixed relationships.
Both the religious and the political basis of title by decree are unfounded. They create sentiment, but not legal right.
But, there is current association and basis of association that can be national by some definition (even a vague one).
Telling response, Richard Witty: “There is no permanent national right to land.”
So you agree with Goering. Great. One giant step for Lebensraum policy on God’s little green acre. And too your “democracy is in the present.” Again, telling on your POV. Thanks again for being honest. I guess that’s a clarion call for the current, but fading fast white Americans, since their role as “the majority” will soon be over. Nicht Wahr?
In other words, the descendants of the Israelites have no national right to the land of Israel. Glad to hear it.
I’m always hearing this retort from the Zionists – If you think we ought to give back our land to the Arabs, why don’t you give yours back to the Indians? What they never seem to mention is that the Israelis are still taking.
The US, at least, has recognized its crime and stopped committing it. The Israelis aren’t stopping and refuse to stop.
“I didn’t steal. I took. Everyone takes, so I took, too.” – Israeli thief, caught with 60 stolen hotel towels, articulating the national motto.
It is true.
There is NO NATIONAL RIGHT TO LAND.
Not for Zionists, not for orthodox Jews, not for Palestinians, not for Islam.
The democratic assertion is that it is individual choice and law that mediates between individuals, that defines right to land or any property.
And, I agree that the Israeli state effort to expropriate land that is titled to another on nationalist grounds, is illegal.
We will find common cause on that issue.
I guess the official word now that most people are catching on to the fact that European Jews are not the descendants of the Biblical Jews is that everyone’s great-great-grandparents were mixed! Mine weren’t. They weren’t immigrants, either. As far I can tell, all of my ancestors were colonists from Western Europe, and mostly from the British Isles. I even had a DNA test that shows my patrilineal line going back to the neolithic tribes of Western Europe. I don’t know what to make of your claim, Richard.
Israel Isolated, Alone, and Shunned by the World regarding its settlements
“It is now abundantly clear that there is a synchronized effort among the major nations of the world to put pressure on Israel to change its ways. Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, the European Union, Russia, USA and the UN – all have asked Israel to freeze its settlements. India, which aspires to be a world class technology giant and economic super power, is strangely silent regarding Israel’s settlements. I suppose Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is still thinking about how to respond and what to say. I wonder whether a cup of strong Darjeeling tea might help to wake him up.”
Obama has already decided not to put any financial or economic pressure on Israel. In fact he’s rubber-stamped an increase in material benefits to Israel. So why would anyone, including Obama, think jawboning will accomplish anything but the thinnest veneer of change? Rhetorical question?
Gideon Levy http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107603.html has summed up Obama’s contribution to the problem.
Effectively, by failing to act against it, the Presidential Dud has given tacit permission for the settlement project to accelerate.
Were you expecting something significant from Obama?
John Pilger – Obama Is A Corporate Marketing Creation
It is like getting all excited about a fight and then, it becomes like the lyrics to Steve Wynns Boxing Song –
“Joe Louis, Gene Tonney,
hard knocks, easy money
took 2 million to take a dive
and Las Vegas paid out eleven to five
Jerry Cooney, Sonny Liston
wasn’t firing on every piston
took five and threw in the towel
and another wrong taken from Valhalla
Go down, go down, go down, go down
Go down, go down, go down
ain’t no mistaking, everybody’s taking a dive
Sugar Ray, Marvelous Marvin,
the line judge wasn’t all that charming
took 2 million to fall down
and Las Vegas set the word all over town
Go down, go down, go down, go down
Go down, go down, go down
ain’t no mistaking, everybody’s taking a dive
Joe Louis, Gene Tonney,
hard knocks, easy money
took 2 million to take a dive
and la la la la la Las Vegas paid a million to five
Go down, go down, go down, go down
Go down, go down, go down, go down
ain’t no mistaking, everybody’s taking a dive
walking home ah ha ha ha”
Let’s say I was pleasantly surprised, after Obama’s campaign of ass-kissing to AIPAC, to see him actually making demands of the Israelis. But I wasn’t surprised at all to see how fast he caved in.
THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES
Lyrics by Invincible
Phase 1: Air strikes all day and all night
Phase 2: Rockets hit the Gaza strip with phosphorus
Phase 3: Ground attack how we gonna counteract?
Boycott Divest and Sanction
Israel– you should be ashamed
Kill and maim 1,000’s of civilians in our name
Claim you hitting terrorists but children in your aim
Even murder relief workers blood spilling from they brain
While they tried to drive the ambulance, damn they couldn’t stand a chance
Even bomb students, hospitals, mosques, Rafah, and Khan Yunis
Shot em in the back like the cops to Oscar Grant…
And in each case the good ol’ united states sponsored that
7 million a day that we pay tax and AIPAC’s lobbyists is robbin us
Sometimes it feels like they’re ain’t no stopping this
BUT now nobody can deny it cuz you made it too obvious
Naked truth exposed like the emperor’s clothes
The struggles getting hotter and the temperature rose
Since 1948 when you formed the state
Palestinian people still defending their homes
They aint been surrendering, NO
Boycott Divest and Sanction
Cuz they even bombed the United Nations
Look, i’m Israeli, my government’s so arrogant
War criminals who call Palestinians terrorists
For resisting extinction and occupation
Comparing this to genocide and reservations of Native Americans
Its a massacre! Kick out they ambassadors!
Divest from their apartheid like South Africa
Boycott em like King to Montgomery buses,
Show them we want peace but only with real justice
They murdering the media and witnesses left
We gonna stop shopping at all the businesses that invest
In building they settlements and gentrifying our corners
Illegal walls over there and the US-Mexico border
Build a worldwide movement til the truth is heard
And supporting the Israelis who refuse to serve
All the C.O.s who AWOL when deployed to Iraqi stations
All the people rallying while the cops are chasing
If we enlisted in the system we got an obligation
We ain’t got the patience, time to stop the occupation
Boycott, Divest, and Sanction
Til there’s right of return for displaced and reparations
Yes, and meanwhile, back on the reservation –
HOME SWEET HOME
All settler states are the same, the compare notes – and when one of them gets in trouble a tear comes to the eye of all the others.
Because if someone gets something of significance, if a concession of import is made as in Palestine – well than they see it as a short walk to addressing their own atrocities. The settler states do not want to set a precedent of any sort. So, the indigenous just have to go away or die, but they can never get justice, oh no, this is the worse nightmare of the murderous colonial interloper. The song remains the same -
IT IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE
“The general rode for sixteen days
The horses were thirsty and tired
On the trail of a renegade chief
One he’d come to admire
The soldiers hid behind the hills
That surrounded the village
And he rode down to warn the chief
They’d come to conquer and pillage
Lay down your arms
Lay down your spear
The chief’s eyes were sad
But showed no sign of fear
(chorus)
It is a good day to die
Oh my children dry your eyes
It is a good day to die
He spoke of the days before the white man came
With his guns and whisky
He told of a time a long time ago
Before what you call history
The general couldn’t believe his words
Nor the look on his face
But he knew these people would rather die
Then have to live in this disgrace
What law have I broken
What wrong have I done
That makes you want to bury me
Upon this trail of blood
(chorus)
We cared for the land and the land cared for us
And that’s the way it’s always been
Never asked for more never asked too much
And now you tell me this is the end
I laid down my weapon
Laid down my bow
Now you want to drive me out
With no place left to go
(chorus)
And he turned to his people and said dry your eyes
We’ve been blessed and we are thankful
Raise your voices to the sky
It is a good day to die.”
So you thought this was all disconnected? That there were just random acts without any coherency or any strategy? To be sure there might be different interests in other regions, but the main goal is all the same – it is a formula that has been used over and over again. Now, you might be saying to yourself – “this guy is a conspiracy theorist.” Don’t get me wrong, what I am talking about is worse than conspiracy, it is systemic (or, in the sense of conspiracy you believe that things just happen? Than you are classically known as stochastic, or you believe that shit just happens with no plans at all).
The logic of both Israel and apartheid-era South Africa can be found in their common origins as settler states. In both cases, the settlers CREATED MYTHS, semi-religious or explicitly religious, including that GOD HAD PROVIDED THE LAND for them and that the land was unoccupied upon arrival, a very, very common theme in every settler state, whether it’s the United States, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc. In both cases, the settlers portrayed themselves to be VICTIMS against natives who were described as SEMI-BARBARIC OR INTOLERANT. Given the permanent state of siege, every settler state AGGRESSION came to be DESCRIBED as a DEFENSIVE ACT, an approach also common with the United States. By way of example, for South Africa, incursions into Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe or anywhere else always against alleged TERRORISTS were justified as alleged defensive actions.
I loved this video. This is what what I call resistance.next!
What the video is trying to convey, and I think this is clear at the end, is that the issue of the systematic and deliberate erasure of the Palestinian culture, hardly disputable, needs to be addressed. It needs to be acknowledged, and yes, needs to be, at least, apologized for. We recently heard apologies from colonial nations, like Australia, for their extermination of the indigenous peoples. But I guess Israel will only do that when Palestinians are like the indigenous peoples of Australia and America and Canada, etc, when they are politically insignificant, wen the apology has no practical consequences. This is probably the single most important failure of Israel; it couldn’t marginalize the indigenous people of Palestine enough. The biggest problems for Israel right now is the EXISTENCE of a large number of Palestinians (and their sympathizers). If somehow Israel manages to make them disappear, Israel will gladly open its archives, Zionist historians will suddenly be enlightened, they will apologize for the whole thing, and they will probably make museums full with full-size 3D models of Palestinian men and women in their traditional clothes.
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