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<h2><b>Of Sabras & Rappers: Cultural Appropriation & Orientalism
in Invincible's "People Not Places"</b></h2><font size=2>By
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/author/guest-post/">Guest Post</a>
• Sep 1st, 2009 at 10:53 <br>
</font><font size=1>
<a href="http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/09/01/of-sabras-rappers-cultural-appropriation-orientalism-in-invincibles-people-not-places/" eudora="autourl">
http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/09/01/of-sabras-rappers-cultural-appropriation-orientalism-in-invincibles-people-not-places/<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>WRITTEN BY Michelle J. Kinnucan<br><br>
Author's note: This article was started and mostly completed in December
2008. Then the Israeli massacre in Gaza intervened, followed by an
intensification of organizing efforts for the
<a href="http://nigelparry.com/photos/hacking-batsheva.shtml">Batsheva
Dance Company protests</a> After that, it gathered dust in the Drafts
folder while I moved cross-country. An extended, remix version of
"People Not Places" was just dubbed
"<a href="http://www.kabobfest.com/2009/08/people-not-places-greatest-hip-hop-song-for-palestine-ever.html">
Greatest Hip-Hop Song for Palestine Ever</a>" by blogger Will on
Kabobfest. The text that appears below is substantially the same as the
one completed last December.<br><br>
Recently, I got an e-mail from someone about a
<a href="http://www.eastbayexpress.com/music/invincible_in_two_worlds/Content?oid=790298">
Jewish Israeli-American rapper</a> who uses the stage name,
"Invincible" (pictured at left). The message was a forward of
an e-mail from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
promoting Invincible's song,
"<a href="http://expressionsofnakba.org/gallery/node/85">People Not
Places</a>." One of IJAN's points of unity is "Challenging the
privileging of Jewish voices in conversations and negotiations about
Palestine." It is, at least partly, in this spirit that I
proceed.<br><br>
So, I listened to the song and read the lyrics. My first impression was
of appropriation of Palestinian culture even though Invincible is not
entirely insensitive to the issue of "Erasing the culture." It
is said that imitation is the highest form of flattery but I wonder.
There is a harmful, ongoing process of Jewish appropriation of Arab
culture–"<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ZSG_LWhncnEC&pg=PA337&vq=hummus&dq=massad+post-colonial+colony&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0">
theft</a>" is what some people call it.<br><br>
For example, Israeli linguist
<a href="http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/new-vision.pdf">Ghil'ad Zuckermann
says</a> "Modern Hebrew" is "a semi-engineered
Semito-European hybrid language." He continues, "The formation
of so-called 'Israeli Hebrew' … was facilitated at the end of the
nineteenth century by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda … to further the Zionist cause.
… it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the
language was first spoken." Some words for this
<a href="http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=59&menu=004">new
language</a> were simply invented but others were adapted or lifted from
Arabic.<br><br>
Consider sabr, the English transliteration of the Arabic name for the
prickly pear cactus. As
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dZwKWOPLA14C&pg=PA213&vq=sabr&dq=palestinian+sabr+folklore&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0">
Farsoun and Zacharia, authors of </a><i>Palestine and the
Palestinians,</i>
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=dZwKWOPLA14C&pg=PA213&vq=sabr&dq=palestinian+sabr+folklore&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0">
note</a>:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>The prickly cactus bush called the sabr became a national symbol
because it dots Palestine, marking the areas of
<a href="http://www.alhaq.org/etemplate.php?id=368">destroyed
villages</a>. In Palestinian folklore it is known as a symbol of patience
and perseverance. Like the enduring cactus, the Palestinians remained
steadfast (samedoun or samedin) in their struggle despite great pressures
threatening to separate and destroy the people's relationship with their
land and cultural heritage.<br><br>
</dl>To many Jews, though,
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=H5PAwJvTtasC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=UNDERSTANDING+the+Israel-born+Jew,+the+Sabra,+so+called+from+the+soft+fruit+of+the+prickly+pear,+is+the+clue+to+understanding+Israeli&source=bl&ots=eyVSYpxJ_X&sig=cUEqRCte3-G4w_r8NtxpO04oE-A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result">
the sabra</a> (Hebrew for the same plant) is a metaphor for the
idealized,
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ZSG_LWhncnEC&pg=PA337&vq=hummus&dq=massad+post-colonial+colony&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0">
tough Israeli-born Jew</a>.<br><br>
On food,
<a href="http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Food/1022LEDE-Hummus">Jana Gur
writes</a>:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>The Zionist enterprise brought to Israel Jews from all over the
world, each carrying memories of food they grew up on. At first, the
ethos was rejection of everything that reeked of Diaspora and an eager,
almost childish, embrace of the Levant. The infatuation with falafel and
hummus, staples of Arabic cuisine, started there. … While not a single
Israeli will claim that this chickpea and tahini concoction [hummus] is
anything but Arabic, the status it has reached in Israel is unprecedented
anywhere in the Middle East.<br><br>
</dl>Gur's "not a single Israeli" remark is, perhaps, not so
easy to sustain (see
<a href="http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/food/IsraeliFood/Humus.htm">
here</a> and
<a href="http://www.jewishrecipes.org/jewish-foods/hummus.html">here</a>
). Or see the web site of <a href="http://www.sabra.com/">Sabra
Hummus</a> (yes, that "sabra") where hummus is referred to as a
"Mediterranean" food. (An Israeli company, the
<a href="http://www.strauss-group.com/AboutUs-Overview">Strauss Group,
owns a 50% stake</a> in the company that makes Sabra Hummus and,
therefore,
<a href="http://adalahny.org/index.php/boycott-divestment-a-sanction/consumer-boycotts-against-israel">
Sabra Hummus is being boycotted by people of conscience</a>).<br><br>
In the aptly titled
"<a href="http://www.presentense.org/magazine/issue-6/arts/culinary-zionism-ingathering-edibles">
Culinary Zionism: an ingathering of the edibles</a>," Eythan-David
Volcot-Freeman writes:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>When asked to define "Israeli food," Diaspora Jews
invariably point to hummus, falafel
[<a href="http://www.palphot.co.il/?catid=%7BB25D9507-43FD-4503-A2B0-112C2401ACB9%7D&itemid=%7B3D8445A7-96EB-11D9-8423-444553540000%7D&usg=__fzShofGtoAl9P4mz_FiEc5LPMUk=">
"Israel's national snack"</a>], and shawarma. … Presented with
the same query, a sabra (native-born Israeli) would likely describe a
typical Israeli meal featuring Middle Eastern hummus as a starter … The
early halutzim (settlers) found inspiration in their Arab neighbors,
whose lifestyle recalled that of the biblical Hebrews. Shawarma, falafel
and hummus soon became "sabra" foods.<br><br>
</dl>And here is a passage from
"<a href="http://www.babelmed.net/Countries/Israel/the_jewish.php?c=2921&m=18&l=en">
The Jewish Keffyieh</a>":<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"I hate the idea" confesses Hasan Nusseibeh, 27, a teacher
at Al-Quds University. "They stole our land I guess it’s normal that
they steal our Keffiyeh too", comments his little sister Sahar, a
student. Their brother Munir reminds that this country dress is part of
the culture of the region and that "Israelis are looking for new
bonds with this ground". He believes that the "keffiyeh"
is only another "effort" they're making in this sense. This
young lawyer then enumerates the previous cases of cultural
appropriation: traditional dress and embroidery, falafel and hummous.
"Soon they'll claim that the Konafa (Arabic pastry) is Jewish!"
jokes Ma'moun M. Kassem, responsible for an Italian NGO, who accuses
Israelis of being "arrogant" and "thieves".<br><br>
</dl>Overall, Invincible's rap song
"<a href="http://expressionsofnakba.org/gallery/node/85">People Not
Places</a>" calls to mind Edward Said's critique of
Orientalism–"A Western style for dominating, restructuring, and
having authority over the Orient." Here, we have Invincible, an
Israeli-American Jew, using a
<a href="http://www.yazoorecords.com/2018.htm">primarily Black spoken
word form</a> with the backing of an Arab instrumental track to speak out
about the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe.<br><br>
In Orientalism, Gustave Flaubert's representation of an Egyptian dancer
stage-named Kuchuk Hanem is described by Said: "she never spoke of
herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history. He
[Flaubert] spoke for and represented her." Have things changed so
much since Flaubert's time?<br><br>
Today, the Palestinian voice or 'cause' is frequently mediated through or
represented by Jews like Invincible, Ora Wise, Anna Baltzer, Norman
Finkelstein, Jeff Halper, Noam Chomsky,
<a href="http://vfpdissident.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-pluto-press-in-trouble-again.html">
Joel Kovel</a>, Michael Lerner, Gila Svirsky, Phyllis Bennis, Susan
Nathan, Marc Ellis, Hannah Mermelstein, Daniel Barenboim, Uri Avnery,
Mitchell Plitnick,
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2009/03/david-wesley-information-or-obfuscation.html">
David Wesley</a>, etc. (on mainstream representations of Arabs/Muslims by
the
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Their-Own-Invented-Hollywood/dp/0385265573">
predominantly Jewish Hollywood</a>, even by Jewish actors, see
"<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-600397827976179049">
Planet of the Arabs</a>").<br><br>
The problem is twofold: First, these folks don't typically content
themselves with bringing their message to primarily Jewish audiences;
rather, they crowd out Palestinian and other non-Jewish voices–they
disproportionately occupy the finite social space devoted to
'Israel-Palestine.' And, thus, they enable–inadvertently or not–others
who are uncomfortable having Arabs represent themselves. One result is a
self-fulfilling prophecy I've personally heard too often: "People
won't come to hear Arabs."<br><br>
Commenting on an earlier draft of this section, a friend wrote "…
its high time that more anti-Zionist Jews should step up to the plate. We
always hear about the deep moral failings of 'the good Germans' of the
Nazi era: where are all 'the good Jews'?" The "good
German" is, of course, a trope for Germans who did not oppose the
Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. My reply is yes, but the "good
Germans" should have been working on/against other Germans not
explaining to the French or Swedes that "we're really good people
and not all Germans support the Reich's occupation policies." And,
certainly, the "good Germans" should not have been displacing
Roma/Sinti, Poles, Jews, and other victims of the Nazis and lecturing
them and their allies on the 'proper,' philo-Teutonic way to oppose the
Nazis.<br><br>
Frankly, there is something perverse about the prominence in the US
Palestinian solidarity movement of so many people who hail from and
identify with the oppressor group, especially when one considers that
Jews comprise
<a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html">
less than two percent</a> of the US population. Do/should we allow male
"allies" to so dominate the discourse on sexism? How about
White "allies" controlling discussion of anti-Black racism? I
know of only one historical parallel and that is the early American
anti-slavery movement. Dominated by Whites, it was conservative,
reformist rather than abolitionist, segregationist, and had no room in it
for the likes of articulate former slaves such as Frederick Douglass or
Sojourner Truth. Needless to say, it was largely counterproductive and
racist, too.<br><br>
The second problem is that their presence and prominence allow Jews to
strongly influence the agenda and the parameters of 'acceptable'
discourse. This often, but not always, means a focus on the occupation of
1967 but not the occupation of 1948, a reiteration of the narrative of
Jewish victimhood and the crucial importance of combating
'<a href="http://vfpdissident.blogspot.com/2008/10/are-you-new-anti-semite-state-dept.html">
anti-Semitism</a>', support for the "two-state solution," and a
blackout of the <a href="http://bdsmovement.net/">BDS campaign</a>. This
is understandable as we are all creatures of our own backgrounds and
experiences but it is not excusable. To paraphrase Said: For a Jew
working on Israel-Palestine there can be no disclaiming the main
circumstances of her actuality: that she comes up against Palestine as a
Jew first, as an individual second. And to be a Jew in such a situation
is by no means an inert fact.<br><br>
Let us now examine Invincible's lyrics. In the first verse she
says:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>museum of the holocaust<br>
<dd>walkin outside- in the distance-saw a ghost throwing a Molotov<br>
<dd>houses burnt with kerosene-mass graves-couldn't bare the scene<br>
<dd>it wasn't a pogrom-it was the ruins of Deir Yassin<br><br>
</dl>Prior to this she contrasts "a land without a people for people
without a land?" with "But I see a man standing with a key and
a deed in his hand". It is clear that she means to expose hypocrisy
by contrasting <a href="http://www.deiryassin.org/byboard18.html">Yad
Vashem</a> with the <a href="http://www.deiryassin.org/">massacre at Deir
Yassin</a> but why is it that a pogrom is not a pogrom if it happens to
Arabs? As a rapper, words are her medium. Can it be that she does not
know that "pogrom," usually applied to attacks on Jews, can
also refer to <a href="http://imeu.net/news/article0014246.shtml">attacks
on non-Jews</a>? Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert referred
to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7616269.stm">Jewish
violence against Arabs</a> as a "pogrom." And since when are
rappers bound by linguistic convention? If that is the issue then why not
smash that Judeo-centric convention and liberate the word? If that was
Invincible's actual intent then it is by no means obvious.<br><br>
And why is it that the 1933-1945 pogrom(s) detailed in Yad Vashem are
implicitly bearable/'bareable'(?) but the pogrom of 1948 against Arabs in
Deir Yassin is not? Is it because Jews were the perps just three years
after the end of WW II? And as one of my Arab sisters pointed out
"ghost throwing a Molotov" is obscure. Why is that? Who's
throwing Molotov cocktails at whom? Is all this, as Edward Said put it in
"Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims," some expression
of discomfort with "treading upon the highly sensitive ground of
what Jews did to their victims"?<br><br>
Invincible begins the chorus with "my Ima misses people not
places". Invincible's "Ima" (Hebrew for mother) is not
unknown to me. Although her mother, Tamar, lives in the US now, she is a
determined Israeli nationalist who does not shrink from interjecting her
opinion at Palestinian solidarity events to support Israel and the
"two-state solution" to permanently lock-in the violent theft
by Jews of 78% of Palestine in 1947-48.<br><br>
In an interview last Summer, Invincible said, "Recently my mom took
a trip back home and her sister kicked her out of the house for
protesting the Wall." But her mom is not above getting her own licks
in. Just last month she chastised me for quoting
<a href="http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/126">Palestinians who dare to
refer to "Israeli apartheid"</a> and said that
<a href="http://www.pacbi.org/campaign_statement.htm">Palestinian calls
for cultural and academic boycotts</a> of Israel are "wrong."
Further,
<a href="http://www.icpj.net/2007/icpj-praised-for-its-work-for-middle-east-peace/#more-382">
Tamar, is a member</a> of a
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2007/05/response-to-beth-israels-hasbara.html">
Zionist synagogue</a> that
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2007/08/beth-israel-house-of-warship.html">
poses it's children with armed Israeli soldiers</a> and supports a rabbi
who gave
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2008/06/rabbi-dobrusin-tortures-truth.html">
a justification for torture</a> from the
<a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bima">bima</a>.<br><br>
So, Invincible's Ima seems pretty committed to Israel as a Jewish place
even if she doesn't "miss" it. It is clear that Invincible does
not let her mother's remark go unchallenged. As she (and Abeer)
indicates, the places and the people cannot be so easily disconnected.
But, perhaps, one lesson of this is that Invincible should consider
focusing even more exclusively on challenging Zionism within the nerve
center of Zionism–the Jewish community.<br><br>
Certainly, as Israeli Jew, she potentially has entree to the Jewish
community that few, if any, non-Jews, esp. Arabs, could hope to achieve.
Anti-Zionist Jews can't expect gilded invitations from the Jewish
mainstream but there are plenty of Jewish communal events to infiltrate
and quietly subvert or to protest and disrupt. No doubt this, in part,
explains her connection with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist
Network but the organization appears afflicted by many of the
shortcomings discussed by Gilad Atzmon concerning a not dissimilar Jewish
group (see Atzmon's
"<a href="http://www.serendipity.li/zionism/not_in_my_name.htm">'NOT
IN MY NAME' An analysis of Jewish
righteousness</a>").<br><br>
Invincible, again in the chorus, tells us "You'll never be a
peaceful state with legal displacement." True enough but why not
openly and forthrightly interrogate the very "legality" of this
"displacement" when in fact all of it violated international
law whatever Israeli law may say? "You'll never be a peaceful state
with phony legal displacement" works, doesn't it? Also, the
implication is that the state will be peaceful when the displacement ends
but how realistic or desirable is it that "Israel" would
continue to exist if Palestinians were allowed to return?<br><br>
In the second verse, Invincible tells us:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>This aint about a Quaran or a synagogue or Mosque or Torah<br>
<dd>The colonizer break it into acres and dunums<br><br>
</dl>This denial of religious motivations in invading and occupying
Palestine comes just a few lines after Invincible acknowledges performing
a profoundly religious act at one of the most important sites in
Judaism:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>At the wailing wall I’m rollin a wish<br>
<dd>Then stick it in between the hole in the bricks<br><br>
</dl>Although in recent decades Islam has become more prominent as an
important ideology in organizing the resistance of Jewish occupations of
Lebanon and Palestine (Hizbullah and Hamas were both founded in the
1980s), it is true that–on the part of Palestinians–the conflict in
Palestine is not mainly about religion. In "Zionism from the
Standpoint of its Victims," Edward Said notes, "… Jewish
colonizers in Palestine (well before World War I) always met with
unmistakable native resistance, not because the natives thought that Jews
were evil, but because most natives do not take kindly to having their
territory settled by foreigners."<br><br>
Conversely, the Zionist invasion and occupation of Palestine is very much
"about" synagogue and Torah. "The colonizer" who
broke it "into acres and dunums" was a Jewish colonizer on a
self-consciously Jewish mission to suppress or remove non-Jews in order
to build a Jewish country. As with the Molotov thrower discussed above,
Invincible obscures the identity of the "colonizer"–the power
of naming is foregone. This is a pattern Invincible repeats in the third
verse:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>200 year old Olive trees uprooted the groves<br>
<dd>to build a wall now Their future enclosed<br><br>
</dl>Who uprooted those groves? Who built that wall? Again, the power of
naming is kept in check.<br><br>
The 'secular Zionism' fairy tale is one that distracts folks from, as
Ludwig von Mises put it, "the ideology that generates war"–in
this case,
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2007/04/judaisms-culture-of-death.html">
Judaism</a>. As
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2007/05/another-response-to-m.html">
noted elsewhere</a>, in The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, the key figure
of modern political Zionism, claimed, "we [Jews] feel our historic
affinity only through the faith of our fathers …" and the Jewish
"Faith unites us." In The Origins of Zionism, David Vital
writes "characteristically, on the day [in 1897] before the [first
Zionist] Congress opened, a Saturday, Herzl attended the morning service
at the local synagogue and was duly honoured by being called to the
<a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/reading-of-the-law">reading of the
Law</a> …" (p. 355). Also, Herzl described the reaction of his
"only spiritual mentor and intimate confidant," the Chief Rabbi
of Vienna, Moritz Guedemann, to Herzl's book, The Jewish State, as
follows: "Guedemann has read the first proofs and writes me in
rapture. He believes that the tract will strike like a bombshell, and
work wonders."<br><br>
And as the Chief Rabbi of Britain, Hermann Adler, said in a sermon
published in the Jewish Chronicle in 1898: "Every believing and
conforming Israelite must be Zionist …" Adler's successor, Hertz,
gave a clear and strong religious imprimatur to the infamous Balfour
Declaration before its issuance. After a visit to Palestine in 1925,
Chief Rabbi Hertz affirmatively described Jewish colonization there as
follows: "Religious zealots and fanatic free-thinkers alike rejoice
in the redemption of the soil by Jewish labor, and look upon it as the
holiest of human duties." In 1967, the immediate past Chief Rabbi of
Britain, Immanuel Jakobovits, called "upon the Anglo-Jewish
community to mobilise all its resources in the defence of Israel"
which had just launched the Six-Day War. In 1977, Jakobovits
wrote:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>The origins of the Zionist idea are of course entirely religious. The
slogan "The Bible is our mandate" is a credo hardly less
insistently pleaded by many secularists than by religious believers as
the principal basis of our legal and historical claim to the land of
Israeli … Modern Political Zionism itself could never have taken root if
it had not planted its seeds in soil ploughed and fertilised by the
millennial conditioning of religous memories, hopes, prayers, and visions
of our eventual return to Zion … No rabbinical authority disputes that
our claim to a Divine Mandate (and we have no other which can not be
invalidated) extends over the entire Holy Land within its historic
borders and that halachically we have no right to surrender this
claim.*<br><br>
</dl>With reference to Jakobovits' "credo" above, in 1936, when
asked about the basis for the Jewish claim to Palestine, Ben-Gurion told
the British Peel Commission:
"<a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E1D71139F93BA35752C0A961958260">
The Bible is our mandate</a>." On the matter of Judaism and Zionism
see also the 1942 statement declaring Zionism to be an
"<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2008/03/zionism-affirmation-of-judaism.html">
affirmation of Judaism</a>" and signed by 757 Rabbis–"the
largest number of rabbis whose signatures are attached to a public
pronouncement in all Jewish history."<br><br>
Returning Invincible's lyrics, am I the only one uncomfortable with
Palestinians being likened to slow, passive marine mammals? Granted, it's
not as bad as Israeli general and government minister Rafael Eitan
likening Palestinians to "drugged cockroaches" (NY Times</i>
11/24/2004) but, still, it is dehumanizing. From the third
verse:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Disguising lies extincting lives like
<a href="http://www.manatees.net/">manatees</a><br>
<dd>Callin it a transfer? Please-<br>
<dd>More like a catastrophe!<br>
<dd>Birthright tours recruiting em, confuse em into moving in<br><br>
</dl>"confuse em into moving in"? Please. This comes across as
another example of the
<a href="http://zionistsout.blogspot.com/2007/04/judaisms-culture-of-death.html">
victimizer cast as victim</a>. Jewish victimhood of one form or another
is a persistent theme and as Norman Finkelstein has observed:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>… The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon.
Through its deployment, one of the world's most formidable military
powers, with a horrendous human rights record, has cast itself as a
"victim" state, and the most successful ethnic group in the
United States has likewise acquired victim status. Considerable benefits
accrue to this specious victimhood–in particular, immunity to criticism,
however justified.<br><br>
</dl>So, why is Invincible reinforcing one of Zionism's most potent
weapons? The entire song is a narrative of a Birthright Israel trip. In
notes, Invincible writes:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>The song takes the listener on a journey through a haunted
"birthright" tour where the buried Palestinian significance of
each location comes to light. Along the route i expose the process of
historic and continued colonization as being even deeper than land
seizure and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but one that is invested in
erasing the Arabic language, culture, and memory.<br><br>
</dl>Is Invincible or the (at least partly autobiographical) protagonist
of the song the only Jew capable of seeing through Zionist propaganda? Is
she the only one who can "superimpose the truth"? Do those Jews
who emigrate to Israel have no responsibility for their choices, no duty
to learn, see, and refuse to become colonizers and instruments of
injustice? How can it be that they are just confused?<br><br>
If the Birthright Zionists are portrayed as passive in "People Not
Places," they are not the only ones. Except in one instance, i.e.
"their grandkids is the ones that's throwing rocks at borders,"
Palestinians are merely passive victims, not a resisting people with
their own sense of agency.<br><br>
It's time to bring this to a close. Some will no doubt object to my
critique above. It may be argued that Invincible has the support of some
Palestinians such as Abeer, who performs on
"<a href="http://expressionsofnakba.org/gallery/node/85">People Not
Places</a>." I would point out that even Gone with the Wind had
Black actors. It's not for me to judge Abeer or, for that matter,
Butterfly McQueen or Hattie McDaniel but I think the comparison bears
some consideration.<br><br>
The Billy Jack movies of the 1970s–starring Tom Laughlin, a White man
playing an American Indian–also come to mind. As Amanda J. Cobb
(Chickasaw)
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kd4QPhUnvAcC&printsec=frontcover&client=firefox-a#PPA206,M1">
observes in Hollywood's Indians</a>, the films:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>… say more about white Americans coming to terms with their feelings
about the Vietnam conflict than they do about the lives, experiences, or
feelings of actual Native American people. These images have contributed
to the conceptualization of American Indians not as distinct nations of
people or as distinct individuals or even, in fact, as people at all, but
rather as a singular character or idea, "the Indian" - an idea
that helps whites understand themselves through "play." … Using
the idea of the Indian, especially in terms of "playing
Indian," time and time again is an act of cultural appropriation -
an act that threatens the continuance of Native cultures and Native
sovereignty.<br><br>
</dl>Summing up, in the first part of this post I examined how Jews and,
in particular, Israeli Jews have appropriated or stolen Arab culture.
With that background, I situated Invincible's performance of "People
Not Places" in the context of Edward Said's work on Orientalism. In
the second part I took a closer look at the lyrics of "People Not
Places" and argued, implicitly, that they validate concerns about
cultural appropriation and Orientalism. It is my hope that this article
will prompt a larger discussion about Jewish representations of Jews,
Palestinians, and the Israel-Palestine conflict and also about the dearth
of Palestinian self-representations of their own lives and
issues.<br><br>
Note<br>
* Except as otherwise noted, the source for the preceding three
paragraphs is Immanuel Jakobovits, The Attitude to Zionism of Britain's
Chief Rabbis as Reflected in Their Writings, (London: Jewish Historical
Society of England, 1981).<br><br>
Thanks to LH, H. Samuel, LN, Khawla, and Joseph for their pre-publication
comments on this post.<br><br>
Michelle J. Kinnucan's writing has previously appeared in
CommonDreams.org, Critical Moment, Palestine Chronicle, Arab American
News, Electronic Intifada</i>, Palestine Think Tank</i> and elsewhere.
Her 2004 investigative report on the Global Intelligence Working Group
was featured in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories</i> (Seven
Stories Pr., 2004) and she contributed a chapter to Finding the Force of
the Star Wars Franchise</i> (Peter Lang, 2006). Click
<a href="http://michellejkinnucan.myopenid.com/">here</a> for information
on how to contact her.<br><br>
<br><br>
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