I envisioned This Land Is Mine as the last scene of my potential-possible-maybe- feature film, Seder-Masochism, but it’s the first (and so far only) scene I’ve animated. As the Bible says, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
This Land Is Mine from Nina Paley on Vimeo.
Who’s Killing Who? A Viewer’s Guide
Because you can’t tell the players without a pogrom!
Early Man
This generic “cave man” represents the first human settlers in Israel/Canaan/the Levant. Whoever they were.
Canaanite
What did ancient Canaanites look like? I don’t know, so this is based on ancient Sumerian art.
Egyptian
Canaan was located between two huge empires. Egypt controlled it sometimes, and…
Assyrian
….Assyria controlled it other times.
Israelite
The “Children of Israel” conquered the shit out of the region, according to bloody and violent Old Testament accounts.
Babylonian
Then the Baylonians destroyed their temple and took the Hebrews into exile.
Macedonian/Greek
Here comes Alexander the Great, conquering everything!
Greek/Macedonian
No sooner did Alexander conquer everything, than his generals divided it up and fought with each other.
Ptolemaic
Greek descendants of Ptolemy, another of Alexander’s competing generals, ruled Egypt dressed like Egyptian god-kings. (The famous Cleopatra of western mythology and Hollywood was a Ptolemy.)
Seleucid
More Greek-Macedonian legacies of Alexander.
Hebrew Priest
This guy didn’t fight, he just ran the Second Temple re-established by Hebrews in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile.
Maccabee
Led by Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee, who fought the Seleucids, saved the Temple, and invented Channukah. Until…
Roman
….the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and absorbed the region into the Roman Empire…
Byzantine
….which split into Eastern and Western Empires. The eastern part was called the Byzantine Empire. I don’t know if “Romans” ever fought “Byzantines” (Eastern Romans) but this is a cartoon.
Arab Caliph
Speaking of cartoon, what did an Arab Caliph look like? This was my best guess.
Crusader
After Crusaders went a-killin’ in the name of Jesus Christ, they established Crusader states, most notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Mamluk of Egypt
Wikipedia sez, “Over time, mamluks became a powerful military caste in various Muslim societies…In places such as Egypt from the Ayyubid dynasty to the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, mamluks were considered to be “true lords”, with social status above freeborn Muslims.[7]” And apparently they controlled Palestine for a while.
Ottoman Turk
Did I mention this is a cartoon? Probably no one went to battle looking like this. But big turbans, rich clothing and jewelry seemed to be in vogue among Ottoman Turkish elites, according to paintings I found on the Internet.
Arab
A gross generalization of a generic 19-century “Arab”.
British
The British formed alliances with Arabs, then occupied Palestine. This cartoon is an oversimplification, and uses this British caricature as a stand-in for Europeans in general.
Palestinian
The British occupied this guy’s land, only to leave it to a vast influx of….
European Jew/Zionist
Desperate and traumatized survivors of European pogroms and death camps, Jewish Zionist settlers were ready to fight to the death for a place to call home, but…
PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah
….so were the people that lived there. Various militarized resistance movements arose in response to Israel: The Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah.
State of Israel
Backed by “the West,” especially the US, they got lots of weapons and the only sanctioned nukes in the region.
Guerrilla/Freedom Fighter/Terrorist
Sometimes people fight in military uniforms, sometimes they don’t. Creeping up alongside are illicit nukes possibly from Iran or elsewhere in the region. Who’s Next?
and finally…
The Angel of Death
The real hero of the Old Testament, and right now too.
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“This land us God Jehovah the only One.
Given to the God’s children and no one can take it fron them .”somebody said… my question is, just to be sure: are we speaking of the thunder-voiced gay who said once from a mountain in fire, eathquakes and everything… “THOU SHALL NOT KILL”?????
[quote]I don’t know if “Romans†ever fought “Byzantines†(Eastern Romans) but this is a cartoon.[/quote]
They did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Frigidus
muy bien… gracias
1. The Isralites were in the land of Canan before the Assyrians arrived, they actually destroyed the Kingdom of Israel, the Babylonians only conquered the Kingdom of Judah
2. You omit the Persians, who liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.
3. Whatever battles happened between the Eastern and Western Empire were not in the holy land, I actually thought it was supposed to be a Sassanian Warrior; to think it is a Byzantine implies some unwarranted ignorance of history.
4. Of all the conflict for the land, only the most recent, the Crusades, the Israelite invasion, the Maccabee Revolt, the Islamic Conquest and maybe the Byzantine-Sassanian War could be described as having religious connotations, most of the other invaders merely wanted to rule the known world. It would be the same as making a video over all the blood shed in Northern Italy, or the Bosporus, or the Flower Wars.
5. I have this skining feeling this video is also a subtle jab at any form of nationalism.
this could be more informative if you give the estimation years when it happened 🙂
Looking at the comments I find that this video has not changed anything. Humans just love to kill each other physically or verbally, attached to their religion/race or nationality. With their self righteous justifications of violence committed in the name of their community, which they clung into due to the fear of isolation.
I watched this video 10 times and it got better each time. Without knowing the exact history I pretty much “got” most of it. Most importantly (before I read this) I got exactly what the last few moments meant including the angel of death preceded by a mushroom cloud – or 5. Not only is war senseless, but in this particular region where proxy wars are being fought left and right it is not just possible, but probable, man will accomplish his ultimate death wish unless cooler heads prevail. We know at this point none one of us can trust our governments to be those cooler heads. Its time for we the people to stand up and stop this unnecessary blood shed. The protests all over the world today to stop the bloodshed in Gaza (no matter your faith) were a statement we should all be proud of.
Well done on a fascinating and obviously provocative piece of art. As a Jew myself it frustrates me that any form of self-criticism or perceived violation of our defensive solidarity is automatically branded as anti-Semitic and we, self-hating Jews. This is less the case within Israel, ironically. Given the breadth of opinion in Israel from left wing to right wing, religious to secular, people are often more accepting of dissent. Outside of Israel any form of Jewish criticism is considered treason. It is important however, to be true to your integrity as a human being before you should be true to your religion.
Few gaps. After the Babylonians, should come the Persians. And after the Romans should come the Sassanid Persian empire.
Florian Geyer, butthurt detected. The video is a cartoon, not a history class.
This is great! It shows actually the funny side of our world.
Pity that the humanbeing is busy with all this ! Instead of living the short life ones has!
I really appreciate your efforts, and I see you have read a lot of history, but I would like to signify some clarifications (and excuse me for my poor English).
I’m a Syrian student who is very passionate about history (since it’s being written right now) I agree with most of your script:
People of the region did not really change. In fact, what changed is the force who ruled them, the people just gave their taxes for other authorities (whether it was an empire, a religion, or any shape of an authority) for that you can find diversity in religions and in origins in this region (which was called Chaam or Levant). However, all the wars you’ve stated didn’t make enormous changes in the region’s people, but it introduced new religions (Jews, Christians, and lately Islam, and many other forgotten religions) and imported new people to the region (Pharaohs (Egyptians), Greeks, Jews, Romans, Persians, Mongolians, people from the Arab Gulf, and lately Jews from all countries of the world, and I might have skipped some other origins) at the end, people who live there are a mixture of locals, and immigrants throughout history who are at the end “locals”, but at the beginning of the 20th century the Zionists decided to create a country in the region only for Jews which means kicking all locals who aren’t Jews (locals I’ve talked about), and this country “Israel” geographically should be between the Euphrates river (or al-FurÄt in Arabic) and the Nile river, and Zionists shall kick locals’ asses out (just like that) of most of Syria, and a part of Iraq, all Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and the Sinai desert of Egypt.
The thing is, Jews are a part of the middle eastern society and it’s not acceptable to take all over the region leaving millions of homeless and killing thousands and thousands, causing a deadly war that shall never end. If you really want a solution, you shouldn’t look for history (though it is against Israel) but we should acquire peace between people of the region and that is not by supporting Israel with deadly weapons because that can never solve the problem.
We cannot undo Israel though it is less than 70 years old, but we can let palestinians live in their country in peace, with the Jews, whatever the name of the country is, as long as they live in a country with no religion affiliations that gives equality between Jews and non-Jews.
Another small point about the video, you should show the difference between the Israelian (Western) weapons and the Palestinian weapons, Palestinians fight with stones (you can check the Palestinan Intifadah which is “Childrens Revolution of Stone” if you have google chrome it will translate this for you since it is only available in Arabic http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A3%D8%B7%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%84_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9) they have nothing to fight Israel with, because of the political power of Israel that controls the weapons market. However, those Islamic Extremist forces Hamas or Hisbullah, did not cause a lot of damage in Israel, they just cause fear and a few deaths, while Israel has killed thousands of Palestinian kids and destroyed thousands of homes for innocent citizens, that is the comparison you should know and state in the video.
I’m never with fighting because in this age, it’s not the Army force but the Political force that counts and sometimes (and hopefully) it can be changed by the people.
Israelis and Palestinians are tired of this, they want to live peacefully and equally in this land. That is what we shall seek.
I’m sorry for the long post, but I had to state all this, and excuse me for my linguistic mistakes.
666. The angel of Death was here.
Shalom
Usless to doing WAR And WAR every years for what ?
Dirt ?
In Ameriqua u can get Dirt too, in asia too, why did u need all the land of gods ?
All gods it’s not real.
We are every Gods, and ur land is THE HEARTH !
The history of humanity is much more than that and started in Africa not in Israel millions of years before those settlements.
I think a nuclear blast would solve the problem. I’m tired of jews and palestines fighting for a piece of shit. There’s no wildlife there, so I don’t see the problem of droping some H bombs there
The real hero of the Old Testament, and right now too.” “The angel of death is the real hero of the Old Testament”? well, that kinda shows Paley’s perspective on the Jewish Torah and history. Also, a question to Ms. Paley: Where in your cartoon history are the almost 1 million jews from moslem lands who were expelled from their “host” countries, most coming to Israel to fight ,as you say, for “the angel of death”. The zionist interloper’s ,as you would like to call them, were not confined to just angry, scared ashkenazim .
Yes, it’s true many nations and armies have fought over that piece of land forever. So what is your point? Besides that war, killing,religion,nationalism ,Pat Boone and Andy Williams are bad ?
hello great job although you totally skipped the Persian empire who came between babylonians and macedonian greeks and freed the jews from babylonian captivity ^^
Great work…Thank you very much… =)
It might just be a cartoon, but it is a highly biased and inaccurate one. If you are going to be making political / social commentary with your cartoons, accept the responsibility to be accurate and unbiased.
The Roman and Byzantine empires were the 2 halves of the Roman empire – it had split partially to make the administration easier, and the size was such led to the separation. Any fighting between the two was over who was leader, not for ownership of ‘Israel’.
Technically the ‘European Jew’ should attack the ‘British’, driving them off, THEN attack the Palestinians.
Hilarious, unfortunately. Beautifully executed, very South Park in style.
Hilarious, alas. Beautifully executed. Very South Park in style.
I don’t understand the point of this video. It would have been good if you explained this. Maybe you can reply, because it seems nobody on Facebook understands it either.
TRANSFER, TRANSFER, TRANSFER…
AFTER WE DISARM IRAN, HAMAS, ETC.
HANG JIHADISTS ASAP.
soo good
I visited the Holy Land last December and I found an extraordinarily beautiful Land that I though this is the reason why through the history so many “civilisations” say “This Land is mine”. I’m probably exaggerating but even the sunset looks like nowhere else. Old city of Jerusalem is beautiful but is a good exemple of Human being stupidity: “My God is sweeter than yours, I’m building a higher church”. By the way, this video is fine and esthetical and helps to explain to children the difficulty of the conflict in the most sensible part on earth.
Thank you Nina Pauley for such an informative video.
Thank you for your insight. I notice all the fighters are shown as males. Women often have a different point of view – loving and nurturing. Another cartoon could be the endless mourning of mothers for their dead children, whether fighters or not. God help the human race.
This is probably the best video/art/animation I have seen about the Palestine issue. You’re so talented. Wish you all the best for your upcoming projects.
Regards from India 🙂
The brilliance of this peace is exposed by how the extremes react to it. Whenever both sides are offended you know you have something close to the truth.
it’s great thanks.
you forgot the Hittites
Bravo Nina Paley! This is perhaps the best political statement on the Middle East for a very long time.
Great video. I loved the way the Angel of Death flaps its wings in tryumph as it declares in the end, “this land is mine!”
I’ve seen a lot of people saying this clip is about “the Palestine issue”, or otherwise relating it to the current bombing of Palestine by Israel forces. To me the message goes somewhat deeper: it illustrates how the region has been embroiled in conflict virtually since the Dawn of Time, and any claims to it are transitory – so many nations have called it “mine” before, and most of them are long gone.
“This land” is not “mine”, it was here before, it will remain after, and if whatever disputes related to it could be settled by force, it would all have been resolved long ago. It’s only unfortunate that the warnings of History always go unheeded.