This Land Is Mine

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

 

Early Man
This generic “cave man” represents the first human settlers in Israel/Canaan/the Levant. Whoever they were.

Canaanite

 

 

Canaanite
What did ancient Canaanites look like? I don’t know, so this is based on ancient Sumerian art.

Ancient Egyptian

 

 

Egyptian
Canaan was located between two huge empires. Egypt controlled it sometimes, and…

Assyrian

 

 

Assyrian
….Assyria controlled it other times.

Israelite

 

 

Israelite
The “Children of Israel” conquered the shit out of the region, according to bloody and violent Old Testament accounts.

Babylonian

 

 

Babylonian
Then the Baylonians destroyed their temple and took the Hebrews into exile.

Macedonian/Alexander

 

 

 

Macedonian/Greek
Here comes Alexander the Great, conquering everything!

Greek

 

 

Greek/Macedonian
No sooner did Alexander conquer everything, than his generals divided it up and fought with each other.

Ptolmaic

 

 

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

 

 

Seleucid
More Greek-Macedonian legacies of Alexander.

 

Hebrew Priest

Hebrew Priest
This guy didn’t fight, he just ran the Second Temple re-established by Hebrews in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile.

Maccabee

Maccabee
Led by Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee, who fought the Seleucids, saved the Temple, and invented Channukah. Until…

 

Roman

 

Roman
….the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and absorbed the region into the Roman Empire…

Byzantine

 

 

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.

 

Caliph

 

 

Arab Caliph
Speaking of cartoon, what did an Arab Caliph look like? This was my best guess.

Crusader

 

 

Crusader
After Crusaders went a-killin’ in the name of Jesus Christ, they established Crusader states, most notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Egyptian Mamluk

 

 

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

 

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

 

 

Arab
A gross generalization of a generic 19-century “Arab”.

 

British

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

 

 

Palestinian
The British occupied this guy’s land, only to leave it to a vast influx of….

European Jew/Zionist

 

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…

Hezbollah

 

 

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

 


 

Guerrilla/Freedom Fighter/TerroristState 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?

Angel of Death

 

 

 

and finally…

The Angel of Death
The real hero of the Old Testament, and right now too.

 

Note: If you want to support this project, please notice I have Paypal and Flattr buttons. TAX-DEDUCTIBLE donations accepted via the nonprofit QuestionCopyright.org.

Share

Author: Nina Paley

Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.

1,287 thoughts on “This Land Is Mine”

  1. hopefully there would be peace on palestinian and israel, war has brought so many victim especially death to innocent children

  2. nina,

    great video, but you forgot to mention after the Babilonians, the Medians/Persians who conquered Babilonians and loose the empire to Alexander The Great (Macedonian)

  3. I admire your work very much. Thank you for taking on this project. I wrote the poem below in ’09. I offer it to you in appreciation for what you are doing. love, Eliz

    EYELESS IN GAZA
    Ichabod is not a funny name

    A glamor of violence
    is thrown over all our days.
    Even the blind in Gaza
    wonder how
    freedom will rise
    out of all this pain.

    Hate is a terrible teacher.
    Generations survived from Warsaw
    remember the lesson
    too well.
    What must we do
    when brothers and sisters
    kill each other
    without apology.
    “He started it,”
    they protest,
    pointing rockets at each other.

    Sarah, will your heart be
    forever hard
    to keep Hagar’s children
    outcast always?
    Death is unforgiving
    and leaves only room for sorrow.
    Silence will not save us,
    the moat of distance is a lie.

    Elizabeth Barger, 1/5/09

  4. The fundamental problem is that both Muslims and Jews claim the same land. The answer to this problem is not for Israel to;

    illegally occupy land in defiance of UN resolutions,
    institute indiscriminate collective punishment,
    create an open prison in Gaza,
    illegally bomb Gaza,
    execute extra-judicial assassinations,
    institute Zionist apartheid,
    atomise the West Bank with walls and illegal settlements.

    Such unacceptable and violent injustices simply create more frustration and anger. The more that political solutions are frustrated, the more that, equally unacceptable, violence will be the response. The more the West supports these injustices, the more likely the West is to be targeted by violent attacks.
    I defend the right of Jews to exist peacefully but leaders on both sides have got to look to the future not to the past. A single, secular state is the sole sustainable solution. Roll on ‘New Jerusalem’; place of peace.

  5. “…theologically, whether you are a christian or a muslim you know and believe that Israel was promised to the jewish people.”

    Dang. I’m an atheist.

    Nobody promised me nothin’. 🙁

  6. Hi

    You missed the Achaemenid Persian Empire which, under Cyrus the Great, conquered the Babylonians and restored the Jews to their homeland. It was this Empire that fell to Alexander the Great.

  7. I love your work. I wish you’d do an animated version of Tim Minchin’s ‘Storm’. The grotesquery that exists should not go unanswered.

  8. Could you make up a Facebook Cover poster version of your characters and setting? It’d be really cool to have that.

  9. The co-operative one (shared) state solution with equal rights all round is the only one which will work.
    The land belongs to no one. It is Land, not something made by human endeavour.
    Can we state urging all parties to work towards this. Some will not agree but it has a good chance of reducing the violence.

  10. I think you left out the Hittites who occupied the area before being displaced by the Assyrians. Anyway, superb effort!

  11. great song , great animation ..really captivating .

    you got mixed up in the order of people and got mixed up a lot in some of the facts describing .

    but i still find myself watching it cause its a damn good cover 🙂

  12. Actually Mamluks fought and threw the Crusaders out of the entire Middle East too.So Mamluks fighting the Crusaders in the video is also historically correct.Great cartoon !

  13. Soy Catolico practicante en latinoamerica y tengo amigos Judíos, me preocupa, como se interpreta el video desde la vision Judío-actual, me impactó, lo ví con mi familia, ojala toque algunas conciencias.

    saludos

  14. This is sheer genius. No one could describe it better to the tune of a Christian-American-privileged song by Andy Williams.

  15. 1) The Israelite kingdoms predated the Egyptian conquest of the area, so that whole sequence about the Assyrians being killed by them is ridiculous. The Israelite kingdoms were a tribute state for both their empire and the Egyptian one in turn. They conquered the Israelite, not the other way around, either way, the Israelite were already/still here.

    2) The Persians conquered the Babylonians. You skip that part completely. A somewhat important part, since it leads to her next inaccuracy:

    3) No Israelite kingdom till after the Seleucids??? So… basically, when Alexander the Great came to visit our high priest to thank him for our God’s help in his conquests (a lovely publicity stunt he did where ever he went), both he and the priest AND the crowd were ALL having a joint hallucination?

    4) The Mamluks didn’t conquer the land from the crusaders, the Ayyubic dynasty did… aka Saladin.

    5) That whole thing about the “Mamluks were considered true lords”… that an explanation of their status AS SLAVES! So why even mention it? To point out how uppity they were? It makes no sense.

    6) There were no Palestinians during the British Mandate. There were Arabs. The Palestinians as a separate nationality didn’t emerge until after 1967. The people fighting the British and the early Jewish immigrants (not to mention the ancient Jewish communities in Hebron and elsewhere) before 1948 were self-identified as ARAB, not Palestinian.

    7) The Zionists didn’t come after the British, they came after the Ottomans. The first great immigration to the area by Jews in modern times was in the 19th century, long before the British so much as thought about coming there.

    8) The PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah were ALL created AFTER 1948, and Hezbollah aren’t even a “resistance movement”. They’re a Shiite Muslim movement in otherwise-Christian Lebanon that would have existed regardless of Israel.

    9) 90% of the peoples shown in this video didn’t even specially consider the land as “Theirs” or even make much of a fuss over it. It was just another tract of land in their otherwise vast empire. So, really… you’re painting a very twisted picture here.

    10) You could make a video like this about quite a few places in the world (ever look up the history of Italy? Or England?). And, like those other places, most of the land’s history isn’t as warlike as people try to make it sound. Some of the Empires that controlled the area did so for 300 years, 400 years… that’s longer than most modern countries can say they existed for. And, really, the only difference between Israel/Palestine and the rest of the world is that most of the rest of the world has settled down, while Israel/Palestine still hasn’t… though, tell that to all the new countries cropping up in Africa these days, or to the Islamists trying to dissolve the Sykes-Picot borders and form a new Caliphate. Hmmm… perhaps not much of a difference at all, then, between Israel/Palestine and the rest of the world. Like I said – Painting a very twisted picture.

    Basically… this video was made by someone with a VERY rudimentary grasp of history, and no grasp of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or it’s roots.

    I agree with its maker that the only winner in the conflict… in any conflict, really, is Death, but other than that… it’s a very stupid video that does more fanning of conflict’s the flames – judging by the comments on this page – than putting them out.

  16. Your cartoon is a wonderful summary of the history of Israel. I hope you can complete a full feature film.

  17. @Gin,

    Detailed historic accuracy is not the purpose of this video. The message is simple, that numerous wars have been fought over the land between numerous peoples over millenia.

    The spats we have in the last 50-60 years is just one of many in this very long history. No one group can claim sole right to the land based on the historic past.

    The implications are clear. Unification of Israel & Palestine is the solution. It will have to be a secular society where all religious communities commit to living peacefully together, and eventually co-operatively.

  18. Rachel et al,

    It is apparent that some have such a non-objective view that no argument in the world will sway you. But your logic is not even that.
    Firstly, dispense with religious arguments. I don’t care whose god gave “you” the land. Your god is not my god and not the god of other people living in palestine/israel. It’s a moot point and wouldn’t stand up in court.
    Secondly, historically, from your own history book, the old testament, the ancestors of the Jews, Joseph’s brothers, voluntarily left their homeland, wherever it was (not necessarily modern day Israel), to move to Egypt. After the Exodus, their descendents conquered the land now in question and took it from the Canaanites, so it was obviously the Canaanites’ land before the followers of Moses. If Arabs are descendents of the Canaanites, then it would really be their land, wouldn’t it? If the Hebrews conquering gave them the rights to the land, then so did all the peoples who came afterwards. You can’t have it both ways.
    Thirdly, it doesn’t matter how many Arab countries there are, or how much land those countries cover. What matters is that the Palestinians/Arabs you deride were born there, they were/are natives, more so than the Zionists and other Jews who immigrated there, some illegally. Are you really saying that someone born in the area of Palestine in 1910 or 1920, whose family had been in the area for generations, had less right to be there than someone who moved there from Europe or other parts of the globe? Not in most people’s books.
    Nina’s video was just to make the point that that small piece of land has changed hands hundreds of times, each time being conquered by another, including the Hebrews who came there from Egypt. And all the fighting over the land has resulted in needless bloodshed. Trying to trace historical provenance to the land is like trying to find one particular tsp. of water in the ocean.

  19. Gin,
    This video is a sketch not a history book.
    Draws attention that there is a strong persistent conflict. And history is long.
    Please help to put “the flames” out. Help with your opinion not with agressions.

    Is it possible a secular society where all religious communities commit to living peacefully together?

    And thank you all.

  20. This is absolutely fantastic!!! I love the video and the chilling conclusion. Bravo! Keep up the great work.

  21. Entièrement d’accord avec Edwina, l’exactitude historique pointilleuse n’est pas l’objet de cette vidéo. Ou alors examinons la Bible avec la même rigueur et là, nous n’avons pas fini de rire…
    Je suis tout aussi d’accord avec ses conclusions, je ne vois pas d’autre alternative.

  22. Good job, but wonder why you left out mention of the Arab states and their involvement, since you included reference to the West and the US in supporting the Zionists. As well, the “vast influx” included a significant number of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim states.

  23. Extremely simplified and with some glaring inaccuracies including the notes.

    1. The various empires wouldn’t have really claimed land as their home, they generally just incorporated it into their empire and administrated the existing population. The exception was the romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt when the romans genocided (why is that not a verb) the Isrealites as punishment for the revolt. The crusaders were trying to establish a state so they were an exception and were perfectly fine with massacring the existing (non-christian) population where it existed.

    2. The British weren’t fighting the Arabs in any major way, they fought the Ottomans for control of their empire. The opposition from the local arab population didn’t occur til after zionists started immigrating and coincided with the rise of arab nationalism.

    3. Speaking of which, in the notes Palestinians are presented as a distinct group who fought with the Zionists, but Palestine was as much a creation of the two state solution as Isreal was, that’s where there were the “arab group” should be. Palestinians should be presented later, fighting the state of Isreal along with other arab nations.

    4. Zionists shouldn’t be presented as religious (all the markers which identify them are religious in nature instead of cultural), it was widely opposed by the jewish religious community because of theological objections that the state of Isreal should not exist until the Messiah came, furthermore it was an explicitly secular movement with powerful anti-religious factions such as marxist zionists that were very influential. Religious Jews didn’t start immigrating en mass until the Holocaust and even in the 70s it was widely opposed in the Hasidic community and I believe certain factions still do.

    5. Where are the Zionist fighting the British, in the leadup to independence there was heavy jewish and arab terrorism.

    Powerful, but the factual inaccuracies annoy me.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *