1,288 thoughts on “This Land Is Mine”

1. Onur: What is a “Gypsy”?
   Are you referring to the Domari (of Jerusalem) or a Romani sect, Rroma perhaps? I also don’t really understand your motivation behind mentioning them, can you elaborate please? Thank you.

2. Wonderful. Nina, you know you have succeeded when you’ve upset everyone. I mean that sincerely. Mr H. Sapiens (when has he *ever* been wise?) is a creature who wants to figure things out and, having done so, loves to inflict his clear-eyed vision of righteousness, God and reality on everyone…for their own good and the greater glory of God, natch. Reality is, only God truly has those chops, and the righteousness of us poor sinners is but tin-plated.
   So we are offended, as here, by Nina pulling back the curtains. We have a nice stake, rope and piles of tinder-dry faggots to help you see the light (whatever that might be). Some things are just too painful.

   Might I ask for another animation on the life of Christ with all the 100s of different forms of Christianity being purged around 300 A.D and the heretics not only put to the sword but all knowledge of them and their Scriptures burned out of existence…followed by the Reformation and the Counter Reformation and……..?

3. Dear Creative Genius Nina,

   BRAVA! Rare juxtaposition of gorgeous footage, magnificent vocals, historical accuracy, comic relief, and stunning finale.

   BRILLIANT!
   TIMELESS CLASSIC!
   IMMORTAL ART!
   GENIUS!
   MASTERPIECE!

   Sharon Lampert
   SEE THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF A CREATIVE GENIUS

4. when does historic right begin and where does it end? did the first men who ever put his foot into a certain region, accuire it for all of his/her ancestors until the end of time? or does historic right start to count from exactly 8000,3000,1000 or 64 years ago?
   why do all the nations in the levante have such strange straight borders? where they written by the hand of god?
   so many questions and so few sense…

   what is a people, is it god given or is it determined by biological kinship? since all humans are related by blood, wich grade of a cousin would be included or excluded from your nation? and who is makeing these rules? can shared history, culture and language make a population a collective übersubject?

   Does every nationalism from the continuum of 19th century european (including zionism, turkish and arab nationalism) nationalisms have contradictory founding myth wich are held as claims for universal truth by its followers, or is it just the ones i listed?

5. This is genius. Perfectly summarizes my opinion of that worthless strip of territory called the “Holy Land”….

6. To go upthread …

   Schroeder Kitzel, your 12:32 comment is one of the cleverest and best-written comments I have seen on the Internet. No joke (on my part).

7. Schroeder Kitzel, are you for real?

8. Rosa,

   By Gypsy I mean the Romani people. I mentioned Gypsies because they are the only ethnic group in Anatolia and the Balkans who can be as dark in skin color as the “Ottoman Turk representation” of the video (there is also a very tiny minority of Black African slave descendents in a very restricted part of Anatolia since the Ottoman times, who, too, are so dark in skin color, but as they are a very tiny and restricted minority, they are negligible). So the “Ottoman Turk representation” is a very bad representation attempt in skin color.

9. Perfect!
   But what you call Byzantines is actually Sassanid Persians who did fight the Romans. So the cartoon is correct.

10. Pingback: A history of Israel/Palestine in three minutes | bluejay's way

11. This video’s events are continuing in these comments.

    Please, wake up.

    Neither jews nor arabs are evil. All humans in all times are just trying to find happiness for themselves. We are not enemies.

12. Thank you, Nina, for a wonderful video that takes on all of history is a palatable amount of time. Yes we can all quibble about the historical details but you did a very good job considering that you were not going to make a 10 hour cartoon.

    Now to RACHEL–as much as you would like to dismiss the claim of the humans who lived in Mandated Palestine in 1948–and I know every single argument from the lack of “P” in Arabic to the lack of sovereignty by these people anytime in history to the fact that many of their fore parents migrated into the area after the settlers of the yishuv increased the economic attractiveness of the area–it is just not up to you to decide that a group of people who are fighting for their rights have no right to those rights. It is a losing argument. The world just doesn’t work that way. If you want to make peace, you have to make peace with the people who are in the conflict. You can’t define them out of the conflict. And if you don’t want to make peace, you are part of the cartoon and the only one you are “helping” is the Angel of Death.

13. I’m both Jewish and vaguely Zionist…and I thought this was both hilarious and accurate. There’s always been a tiny part of me who thinks “with all this tsurris, maybe we should have opted for Uganda after all.”

14. Nina –

    Man, you’re good!

    As an Hindu, I enjoyed “Sita” — and more so, given how many self-appointed guardians of the faith came down on you.

    So for whatever flak you’ll get for this, let’s just say the problem people are letting us know who they are.

    Great ending, BTW!

15. Pingback: A Brilliant Animated History “of the land called Israel/Palestine/Canaan/the Levant”: ‹ I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists
16. Pingback: ‘This Land is Mine’, Oriente Próximo en los ojos de Nina Paley

17. @ Rachel
    You are talking about 20-th century Nobels. I can add to this: in Russia, after the revolution of 1917, jews actually replaced the educated Russians who were killed or emigrated. Under the new regime many if not most of the jews changed: they went to engineering, medicine, etc. They abandoned the jewish life. Fraud is not in one’s genes; it’s only a tradition.
    Sadly, Israel did not became a state of the decent jews. It developed the worst of all jewish to the degree that it is now a criminal state. I was living there for 4 1/2 years. They took the worst from communists and fascists also. To give such group of criminals the right to have an army and give them nuclear weapons was a big mistake. A propos, Einstein knew their character very well, he made explicit warnings. Nobody listened.

18. I’ve tried to post several times and for some reason it doesn’t get through. Hopefully this will.

    Gina and Rachel, you are both children of the same Creator. Before this cartoon entered your lives, you had no knowledge of each other. If you had met in a grocery line, you might have shared pleasantries or commiserated over any one of life’s small trials. That’s where peace is born and where it lives. It may seem a small place, but it’s where we spend the vast majority of our time and energy. It’s hard to imagine that either of you would ever send your children off to kill those of the other. Without knowing you, I think that’s who you really are and would still be if Nina Paley hadn’t reminded you of this painful conflict.

    Nina, whatever you hoped to accomplish in fact what you’ve done is set people arguing who might otherwise not have. One can speculate as to what your motives for doing this might be, but you can hardly claim the propagation of forgiveness and toleration as your mission, nor could you have been encouraging anyone to let the past be the past. You’re obviously too intelligent to have thought this through and decided that this would be the way to do that. Instead, you point at a problem. then turn to accept the applause of your adoring public, but do you offer a solution? No. You’ve merely engaged in an easy, risk-free proposition. It’s well-trodden path and it’s no crime, just as copying isn’t theft. But copying is easier than creating new material and in this work as in the others you display on your sites, you’ve contributed very little that’s original in either style or content.

    In my opinion, you’ve been trying to draw attention to yourself by fanning the flames of an ancient conflict. You’ve proven that caricatures and deliberate misrepresentations are not the sole franchise of the Tea Party. In my own life, your video has opened a rift between myself and dear friend. What you have not done (as far as I can tell by these comments) is cause anyone to reconsider any previously held ideas. Rather, you’ve caused people to entrench themselves even more deeply. You haven’t sown the seeds of peace but rather, you have incited division. Of course, that’s where the money is and that’s why there is more hate than love in the world.

    You might not be the Angel of Death, but you have done a small amount of his work.

19. Absolutely Bullshit! This is the complete spoofing & leveling of all human values! This land is promise us by God

20. Pingback: Magpie Monday | Robert E. Stutts

21. Hi Nina,

    Thanks for creating and sharing this animation. Your work is fantastic! On similar lines, Indian epic Mahabharata has the first mythical battle for land in India. You of course may know it all as you did the Sita Sings Blues (another fantastic work). Prior to Mahabharata, wealth was cattle and not land. I think it was denial of land that gave rise to the proprietary right of land.

    Just curious, how much time or effort does it take to create this animation? I guess it’s 2-D and animated in Flash. Any thoughts on HTML5 animation and Flash’s so called “demise” to come?

    Regards,
    Hasit

22. Pingback: indi.ca » An Animated History Of Israel/Palestine

23. Artisticaly and thematicaly promising!

24. Pingback: 此地属吾:THIS LAND IS MINE | 动画狂

25. @ Michael Pyshnov:

    oh please relax will you?
    i’m a russian jew, i live in Israel for 30 years, i’m a lawyer, a PHD of HISTORY from an IV league, and i know very well, better then you, what’s up. Russia never lacked anti semitism. my granfather fought for russia’s red army and in the WW2. stupid russian hillbilly Peasants never liked jews, cause they were allways smarter and wealthier.

    you have a problem with accepting the truth, even when i Contradicted your claims with facts + there are sooo much archaeological and other evidence that prove jewish existance in Israel for thousends of years.

    i wounder why you think that the jews are the criminals when just this morning, there were 40 ROCKETS firred from GAZA by Islamic terrorists on civilian cities in ISRAEL! no Distinction made.
    when Israel fights back it does this against terrorists only, not against Civilians (unless they hide the terrorists in their homes).

    GOLDA meir once said: we will have peace when the arabs will love their children more then the hate us”, but you see, the muslims cherish death, so it will never happen. how can you be so blind?!

    i suggest that instead of bad-mouthing a democratic country, a western country, where women and gay’s have rights, you go to SYRIA, where you will see that in the past year and a helf, Asad had slaughtered, with the supporte of your der RUSSIA and Putin, over 30’000 people of his own!

    your comments derive either from ill-information, anti-semitism, or plain stupidity (or all of the above).
    I think that Ты антисемитские дебил.

    and finally, if you hate Israel and the Jews so much, oppose their right of self defense, and want to support muslim terrorisem (the religion of peace, yeah right!) you should really stop using computers, facebook, medicine, google, and everything described in this following link below:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kc6LE6FXcQ.
    🙂

26. But what you call Byzantines is actually Sassanid Persians who did fight the Romans. So the cartoon is correct.

    Both the Byzantines and Sassanid Persians are redundant for this video. The Byzantines because the Byzantine Empire is just a modern name for the Christian Roman Empire hence a continuation of the pagan Roman Empire, and the Sassanids because they controled what is now the Israel/Palestine region only for a very short period (for about 10 years) in their history, later to give it back to the Byzantines, the previous and long-time rulers of the region.

27. Awwsome work keep it up.

28. Nina. This is brilliant. You must really LOVE your “wings” to make funny, effective and anti-dogmatic work such as this.

29. Too much about jews, no scandinavian no rus no china???
    it looks only jews make WAR

30. Nice animation – but looks jews makes too much war in this plane

31. Pingback: Thousands of Years of Religious Slaughter in One Cartoon

32. simply genious

33. This is a BRILLIANT piece of work, congratulations to all who participated in its making! We will have peace in that land, the day our collective children decide to kick us all out and share it with each other…the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, to live as equals.

    Until then, the tragedy shall continue.

34. this is a great work but have some problems.
    1- the symboles that you have used in this clip are from persian civilisation.
    2- after assyrian occupation that was the Cyrus the great who released the jews not Alexandrer.

35. This is a pretty fantastic video. One minor problem I have with it is that the Zionists are depicted in it as Hasidim. Originally, Zionism was a movement of so-called “secular Jews,” NOT the Orthodoxy. Early Zionists were those who had tried to assimilate into secular European society, and whose efforts in that regard had been rejected with persecution and violence. The religious claims to ownership of the land came much later.

36. Outstanding! This little land should not belong to anyone. Both Jews and Palestinians – Jewish, Muslims and Christians should live together. After all we are doing rather well living together in many other countries. Why not in Israel/Palestine. The country should be renamed UNITED KINGDOM OF ISRAEL & PALESTINE.

37. You are my hero. This just has to be one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I’ve probably watched it 20 times today…VERY well done! It really makes one think and the ending is breathtaking. Keep up the great work – can’t wait for Seder Masochism!

38. Your video has certainly earned a lot of fans. I have to admit that I am one of the them.

    Great video. Great work. Thanks.

    Although many have suggested some corrections. I would also like to point out some flaws….the IDF uses a defender or a smg and probably not an Kalashnikov.

39. Excellent.
    The only thing that would make this better would be approximate dates flashing the various interchanges so that history noobs could situate in time.

40. I can’t imagine orthodox-zionist. Ortohdox zionist is nonsence, absurd

41. who preforms the exodus song in your clip ?

42. this video made me cry. so much war in such small country… 🙁 i am jewish and i know that the bible says this land is ours. i have nothing against the arabs, but we only have this small country. except from her, we have no where to live , we have nothing.

43. Great clip,

    The Persians conquered between the Babylonians and Alexander.

    Thanks

44. @ Rachel

    >i’m a russian jew, i live in Israel for 30 years
    -I was a Russian jew when I came to Israel in 1974.

    >Russia never lacked anti semitism. my granfather fought for russia’s red army and in the WW2.
    -In Red Army? That’s why peasants hate jews. Over 70% of the first communist govt. were jews. 20 millions people were slauthered in the next few years.

    >stupid russian hillbilly Peasants never liked jews, cause they were allways smarter and wealthier.
    -Wrong, the masses of jews were poorer than peasants.

    >there are sooo much archaeological and other evidence that prove jewish existance in Israel for thousends of years.
    -Correct, I never said jews did not live there. But, jews, from their first visit to Palestine and to the present, hopefully the last visit, lived there as conquerers, sent there by God’s word. A lawyer must understand that for the Arabs and for the rest of the world, this is a lame pretext, I call this a “jewstification”.

    >i wounder why you think that the jews are the criminals when just this morning, there were 40 ROCKETS firred from GAZA by Islamic terrorists on civilian cities in ISRAEL!
    -The struggle against jewish occupation on the part of the Arabs is 100% legitimate.

    >when Israel fights back it does this against terrorists only, not against Civilians (unless they hide the terrorists in their homes).
    -But Arabs think that Israeli civilians hide jewish troops. And, Arabs think that Israeli civilians are the occupants who uproot their olive trees and evict Arabs from their homes and kill Arabs indiscriminately, by a village, all the inhabitants.

    >GOLDA meir once said: we will have peace when the arabs will love their children more then the hate us”, but you see, the muslims cherish death, so it will never happen. how can you be so blind?!
    -You would not want my answer to this, as it will take a couple of pages or may be a book.

    >i suggest that instead of bad-mouthing a democratic country, a western country, where women and gay’s have rights, you go to SYRIA, where you will see that in the past year and a helf, Asad had slaughtered, with the supporte of your der RUSSIA and Putin, over 30’000 people of his own!
    -That’s soooo typical an Israeli demagogy. They always say: “Gam ba Europa ve gam ba Africa” Completely irrelevant defence for the ganavim.

    >your comments derive either from ill-information, anti-semitism, or plain stupidity (or all of the above).
    I think that Ты антисемитские дебил.
    -That means you have nothing more to say.

    >if you hate Israel and the Jews so much, oppose their right of self defense….
    -War criminals have no right to self defence. They must stop the crimes, surrender and wait for a Nuremberg Tribunal. Always remember the strongest words of the Judge on this Tribunal:
    “You have falsified, perverted and abolished the Law.”
    Of course, when you dictate to Arabs and to the rest of the world a jewish religious law considering jews a chosen people, that means the end of the Law and every human right as we know them. You commit the same falsification of the Law for which the death penalty was imposed in Nuremberg.

45. I don’t side with any of these religions or nationalities and yet even I know that this is a grossly inaccurate account of history. In particular, Zionism began in the 18th century, not in response to the Holocaust. Please do better than sourcing your research from Wikipedia.

46. “What’s next”, you ask? This comment thread, by the look of it.

47. Amazing…a history of the world in 3-1/2 minutes. And I think you have the ending right.

48. Thought it was great, like a Monty Python send up who always took things, to the ridiculous and created humour. It was a portal for truth to emerge out of the mire. If only, if only, if only they could say STOP. Mother Earth is to be adorned by a carpet of nature that doesn’t belong to anyone not destroyed by bombs.

49. Pingback: Caspost | هذه الأرض لي | الصراع على فلسطين عبر التاريخ (فيديو)
50. Pingback: Nina Paley’s “This Land Is Mine” | And Far Away