This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
This video by the cartoonist Nina Paley is getting passed around. It features the Exodus song, This Land Is Mine, sung by the late Andy Williams. Thanks to Sheila Rechtschaffer and others.
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So what’s this? A clever way to repeat the tired trope that the present problem in Palestine is nothing more than the latest expression of an eternal, anhistorical, apolitical struggle that mysteriously has plagued this region since the beginning of time. Another version of the “equivalence” analysis; one side’s interchangeable with another. Palestine and Israel? Just the latest iteration of Assyrians battling Hebrews, etc. Plus ca change…
What can one do but throw up one’s hands?
Not my view, nor, I think, the view of most posters here. I think Palestine and Israel struggle for specific and unique reasons, not because they are the latest actors in an eternal drama.
And I think there’s a right side and a wrong side.
Ismael, I like it. It is a call for actions. These crazies are going to nuke the world if we dont stop them. It is a lot more impactful than any good-vs-evil video I have seen. The standard equivalence trope never says any of the following
1. The exodus narrative is full of shit. God did not give the land to anyone
2. Its not just two parties locked in battle. Many parties have come and gone.
3. Sometimes its Jews annihilating other. Sometimes Jews slaughtering Jews.
4. White people and Western Civ are not innocent bystanders but active participants
5. Maybe this is not a ME story but a global story.
etc
Pretty creative. It’s got a “Triumph of the Mine” quality in that it can update continuously to that point the struggle between top dog and disgruntled 2nd place becomes a final solution.
I disagree that this video represents the kind of “two sides” or the state of Israel and the Palestinians are political equivalents of each other. I suppose that’s one way to read it, but I think that’s tendentious. I read it about how Palestine has been claimed and conquered by many historical forces, and that the kind of heady nationalism founded on exclusive claims to the land has left a very bloody history.
After all, the PLO’s original vision as well as Arab vision, going back to WWI, was of Palestine as composed of Muslims, Christians and Jews, since all three had been there for centuries.
Meanwhile women stand by and weep over the graves of children…ad infinitum.