Archive for April, 2011
Palestine and Israel
Introduction
One of the oldest conflicts of the world that has taken thousands of human lives and infinite damage to the properties is still unresolved. It is the conflict that has changed the culture and psychology of the people of the region. The world is keeping at mum and the two warring sides, one is the most powerful and the other is the weakest are left to fight with each other.
Beginning of the conflict
In 1936, the Palestinians rebelled against British rule and the Jews. Saudi king Ibn Saud got involved on behalf of the Palestinians. The Arab league was founded and President Roosevelt assured King Saud that the United States would not back an independent Jewish state in Palestine but later it proved that it was only a lolly pop. On May 14, 1948 the independent state of Israel was announced that was duly rejected by the Palestinians at once. Although the partition of Palestine was not acceptable to Palestinian even the Arab world, yet they accepted it as a last resort to end the crises. It was Jews who rejected the United Nations organizations plan and refused to make Jerusalem the part of the plan.
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History of Israeli Dance
Israel has a rich tradition of dance, arising from Jewish religious and cultural celebrations that developed in the Jewish diaspora.
Israeli folk dance is dancing brought to Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) by Jewish olim (immigrants) from various countries of the Jewish diaspora, and the forms of dance that have been and are still being developed in Israel and are highly influenced by those Jewish immigrant traditions.
Much of Israeli folk dance is reminiscent of the lands of the early Eastern Europen pioneers, with circle dances and line dances being common, and with dance attire usually resembling that of Eastern Europe. The circle dance called the “Horah” is one of the most well known Jewish and Israeli folk dances. Not strictly Israeli, it was a European Jewish folk dance before the founding of the modern State of Israel, but it has functioned as an important foundation in Israeli folk dance. This dance is often done at Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs to the tune of the folk song “hava nagilah”. In large groups of people it can be done in concentric circles, with one circle dancing inside an other.
In most countries folk songs’ and folk dances’ creators are generally unknown because they were developed long ago, but the modern State of Israel is a young country and its folk traditions are still being developed, with their creators generally known and acknowledged. Modern Israeli folk dances developed in Israel are often influenced by other forms of dance such as ballet, as well as Arabic folk dances and the dances of Jewish immigrant communities from Arab lands, such as Yemen.
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Palestine – Mapping the History
I have seen, and I presume lots of you have, “The Pianist”. This is story of a Polish Jew pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, based upon his autobiography, who witnessed the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939. Subsequently with the invasion, living conditions of Jews living in Poland deteriorated. They faced hunger, humiliation, poverty and in the end extermination by the hand of SS organization. When the family of Szpilman was being rounded up for deportation to Treblinka, Szpilman saw his brother reading “The Merchant of Venice”. Szpilman asked him to read aloud. On which he read the famous sentences from the play:
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? If you wrong us, do we not revenge?”
These sentences in fact describe the inner feelings of any other person experiencing that kind of torment and misery. The irony of the fact is that the play narrates to the agony and sadism being faced by Antonio from the hands of rich Jew moneylender, Shylock. The movie moves on to the period of 1941-1943 when underground resistance movements were developed in around one-fourth of all ghettos in Nazi occupied Eastern Europe. Thousands were already died inside those ghettos because of starvation and disease. The goals of these resistance movements was to breakout of those ghettos and join their brothers fighting against the Nazi occupation, an act neither considered a crime nor terrorism those days. The single largest uprising was in the ghetto of Warsaw in the spring of 1943. Hundred of Jews fought with whatever they could get hold of; rifles pistols and revolvers. These firearms of little import had been “smuggled” into the ghetto by Armia Krajova and Gwardia Ludowa (Polish organizations), though they knew from the beginning that the defeat was certain. The members of Å»ydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Å»OB) and Å»ydowski ZwiÄ…zek Wojskowy (Å»ZW), the Jewish resistance movements took control of the ghetto. They built fighting posts and killed anyone who collaborated with Germans. The insurgents relied mainly on IED’s and incendiary bottles. In the retaliatory and defensive (from the perspective of Nazi Germany) strikes, Nazi forces initially shelled and later on burned the ghetto to force out the resistance movement. A total of 13,000 Jews were killed in “collateral damage” or because the resistance movement used them as human shields, knowing the fact that any act of provocation from the militants would cause the civilians (including large number of women and children) to face the might of Nazi forces. According to official Nazi version, the German losses stood at 16 killed in action with 86 wounded. The incinerated houses were completely razed and Warsaw concentration camp was built in their place, after the fighting was officially over on May 16, 1943. I will discuss the fate of Nazi commanders and collaborators in the end of the article.
Tags: palestine politics, palestine solidarity movement