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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Brilliant.!!!
Why are some of those relative to the plagues not available??
As well the going out f Egypt- exodus – which have been available last year.
Hello, i really enjoyed the video and the song mostly
so can you please upload the song without the soundtrack or at least send it to me by Email I’d appreciate it 🙂
You forgot the Persians, who liberated the land from the Babylonian empire and freed the Jewish slaves under Cyrus the Great. They were then conquered by Alexander the Macedonian. I know, many people don’t like the idea that ancient Iranians saved the Jewish people, but it’s a historical fact.
By the way, I love your style. And the song. And how you could put thousands of years of history into a 3 minute movie. Although you forgot the ancient Iranians.
..& here comes another round as gory and needless and murderous as those that have gone before.
Hoping the ending shown here can still avoided but not looking good for anyone really.
(Love this clip.)
Great video, this is creeping me out.
Hello, I love this video — The art is fantastic, as I am a big fan of animation in general. I would love to put your image of the angel of death on a guitar. I make guitars that I gift out, or sell. If I do use it, I will donate or purchase a shirt of the very image. I enjoyed your interview with Jordan Peterson as well. If you do not want me to use the image, I won’t. I will still donate something, as I have watched your video about 8 times — and some of your other vids
I like this animation. Israel’s nukes weren’t sanctioned though, they were (are?) illicit.
Great stuff! What a pity you can’t do something on Islam and/or Mohammad because you’d be in danger of jihadists lopping your head off.
Whatever happened to free speech
This video is great. But I can’t believe you forgot the Philistines mentioned in Genesis who had already conquered the land by the time Abraham arrived. Then the Caphtorim who conquered those Philistines some time after the Israelites left to Egypt and just before they returned with Joshua. Just adds to the overall theme I guess.
A crooked sabre of the Arab Caliph is not historic. Dabres appeared on Middle East in X-XII century.
Great Video and Animation Ever
Please extend your work into WWI and WWII
your video is easy to understand.
It would be so great if you kept aside from judging who is terrorist and who is not.
no need to ruin your amazing video by such political descriptions, u know all these kingdoms and races were so violent.
Absolutely fantastic!
This is great content. In love with this perfect mix of good music and history for years now.
Give the angel of death to me.
You will feel free from all the need for a man to command your life.
You will be free from this need to praise GOD MAN so strongly and submissively.
You will be free from HIM and you will find HER in an eternal and magnificent encounter.
Will you give me the angel of death?
what about mongols?
I just wanted to add how fantastic this is. I can’t bear to watch it very often, but every once in a while–wow.
Every time Death rises up at the end it gives me chills.
Brilliant!
I wish there was a student friendly version 🙁
While I don’t think cartoons have to be 100% historically accurate, it’s unfortunate you chose the Hezbollah logo for the last Palestinian fighters in the video, Hezbollah is a Lebanese militia, and while they go to war with Israel like when it invaded Lebanon, they are not fighting for Palestine despite their propaganda. Their fighting for their hold in Lebanon. The other groups are Palestinian groups. The second biggest Palestinian group, which you don’t mention, is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the PFLP, which is a communist organization. The biggest one was Fatah, which formed the PLO. The PLO is more or less defunct now but was functional at the time of this video and was a coalition between Fatah, the PFLP, and a few other groups before they a bunch left because of Fatah’s corruption and betrayal.
Anyways, if ever you decide to repost this in 1080, maybe put the flag of palestine on their shoulders instead of Hezbollah 😛
Still cool in 2020
this is so so good, one of my fav videos ever
Never have I liked history but this video is the most intresting thing I saw in a while. And the song choice is just perfect!
so whats the thesis
Words!
Art!
still relevant XD
And now it starts again… This video is brilliant and unfortunately timeless.
I stumbled across this video today while reading the Wikipedia article on the movie “Exodus.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_(1960_film)
I hadn’t realized until today that the lyrics for Exodus (“This land is mine”) had been written by Pat Boone.
Loved the video. I posted links to it on my Facebook page and in a post to Facebook group “Adamantly Anti-Theist.”
Maybe the words to the song should be “This land is MINED.” 🙂
Thanks for the great work!
One little comment: Byzantine never fought Roman empire because it was Roman empire. They called themselves this way. The word “Byzantine” was coined by European historians a few centuries ago. Yet, Byzantine fought a lot over Palestine with Sasanid Iran. So I prefer to regard those guys with long shields as Iranians. 🙂
This video is amazingly done, but it is misleading. This looks like hebrews were just another colonial foreign power, but they were actually the native people from the land. What you call as “early man” and “canaanite” are previous versions of the hebrews, before evolving their language and culture, it doesn’t matter what the bible says, what I’m telling you is what archaeologists agree on. The bible painted a heroic story of conquering for the people to feel powerful, but it’s like the story of romulus and remus of rome, nobody takes that as a factual story, but as a legend. Every other people shown in this video are foreigners trying to control the native people.
wow, a guy who’s historical knowledge lacks knowledge about the byzantines and romans fighting, and who had to go to wikipedia for making this video, is lecturing us about god being bad. pathetic, next time keep your deranged views to yourself.
I found this cartoon/animation/video hilarious in an unfortunate sort of way. For example, how each cartoon man seamlessly picks up the lyrics right after lopping the last guy’s head off. Throughout all of this, not a single wrong note was sung. All of them are basically just clones of each other, wearing something different each time. The Sun changing to reflect each guy’s culture was also a funny touch. It’s comical just how long it goes on and on for, sort of like what you’d see in an old cartoon – except that it’s a perfectly real account of history.
All in all, this was a brilliant video demonstrating the smoothly transitioning, never-ending cycle of violent conquest throughout history – a good education for someone like me who would otherwise be bored out of his skull hearing about all the men with their gold and titles, who fought with each other throughout history.
beautiful work, Nina Paley. I become a big fan of your work when I randomly clicked on this vid a few months ago, and since then I’ve been discovering your Tedtalks/movement and other content every day. I love your choice of music, and the unique style of animation, but historical accuracy brings the uneasiness. I think we need to acknowledge the Persians who freed the Jews of Babylon, I think it’s an important part of history of the Jewish race. I was expecting the Arab-Turks-Palestinians to wear historically accurate costumes; but who cares about what the Moslems wear, amirite? I’m relieved that you didn’t make all of the Muslims wear Arab white robes with Sabre swords! The ottoman forces looked very, very Indian. and I was wondering why’d Indian princes appear in medieval Palestine? I think the original ottoman outfits would’ve reflected the attires of Palestinian people of that time, and Levantine Arabs dress differently from the Gulf Arabs wearing the white robes and headwear.