World War Z & Unified Palestine

by R.S.

(Spoilers)

Firstly: the flick is not a work that is based, in any real or meaningful sense on Max Brooks’ work World War Z: An oral history of the zombie war (2006). It has the title (well, partly), but this is about it. One of the few things they took from the novel was a plot line that teetered on the edge of Brooks’ narrative on Israel/Palestine and stretched it through a large chunk of the film.

Brad Pitt’s character Gerry arrives in Jerusalem to complete a mission given to a virologist (KIA) to find patient zero in what seems like hours of the undead outbreak. It doesn’t really make sense, but there you go.

In Jerusalem, in the radical othering, zombies seamlessly replaced Palestinians as the threat par excellence. This transition is entirely unremarkable. Behind the Wall – now used to protect from the swarm of undead – is a fantasy of human purity, protected, safe, and a sanctuary from a world whose intent is to wipe the inhabitants from the face of the earth. The desert is in bloom and life needs protection. Beyond the borders, beyond civilization, are uncontrollable hordes, baying for blood. They are mindless. They hate life. Israel has a right to protect their borders, after all.

In both narratives Israel has managed to implement procedures early to stem the threat of the “African Rabies” (was this in the film? warning: it is in the book). In the novel, describing a situation where Israel had been driven out of the occupied Palestinian territories by the resistance and thus wielding considerably less power, the Israeli ambassador announced to the UN General Assembly that they were enacting a policy of “voluntary quarantine”. The Palestinian interviewee Saladin Kader tells the (unnamed) narrator twelve years after the outbreak:

I didn’t even hear the second part of the fat bastard’s speech, the part about offering asylum, no questions asked, to any foreign-born Jew, an foreigner of Israeli-born parents, any Palestinian living in the formerly occupied territories, and any Palestinian whose family had once lived within the borders of Israel. The last part applied to my family, refugees from the ’67 War of Zionist aggression…I had never been to Israel, or what was about to be absorbed into the new state of Unified Palestine…(2010, 39)

The film entirely skirts these narratives of the novel. Instead, Israel-proper is innovative, benign and site of salvation for the world’s refugees. Within the scenes of a benevolent, peaceful, harmonious Israel, power has not shifted, and Palestinians – we assume from the racialised discourses – are just happy to have their lives saved in a world gone to shit.

Given this is meant to be an adaptation, the filmmakers are directly antagonistic to this post-apocalypse speculation. The novel goes to Tel Aviv and Bethlehem, but not to Jerusalem – in fact in the novel Unified Palestine had withdrawn altogether from Jerusalem because it did not make sense strategically in the planned defense from zombie attack.

It does, however, (and I speculate) make strategic sense for Israel that an international film to be set in a contested space such as Jerusalem with benign nationalists at the helm. Herein the Israeli state and nationalism is not problematized in the way the book suggested were possible in a situation of extreme emergency. It would be interesting to know what incentives  the filmmakers were given to depart so significantly from this narrative.

What made Brooks’ work so distinct was a number of factors: it was speculative fiction; it was set 12 years after the Zombie War; it was a reflection on experience, rather than action-thriller. I suspect what would have worked well as a format for this story (perhaps ironically) is the Israeli film Waltz With Bashir, albeit without what Ghassan Hage calls the “postexterminatory existentially anxious warrior”. Set 25 years after the “Lebanon War”, it flits around in time and space, has a central character that is collecting stories, and does not require action scenes to propel it forward.

The filmmakers had a chance to be innovative with a radically new zombie apocalypse film format and story telling style, but instead made clichés collected from every zombie apocalypse flick since Night of the Living Dead, without the fun of Shaun of the Dead.

 

(But also:

I was really disappointed by World War Z. Many reviewers have cited (lazily) Romero’s work, but I think where this departs from Romero so spectacularly to the endless miraculous escapes by our protagonist Gerry. Zombie films need to suspend your disbelief and as someone who is pretty into the genre, it really doesn’t require much to get me there. We never, for instance, get any sense why Gerry is so important. Or why the mission is on is so urgent, why he was chosen, or why he is so materially supported in doing this is not entirely clearOr why, after the immediate outbreak a massive fuck off plane can be afforded so a virologist can go and find patient zero (or why this would be a pressing issue). Or why Gerry continued the work of the virologist (who thankfully toppled himself)– what the fuck does Gerry know? Come to that, what does he know that he is considered so important by the UN that he is shunted around the world? Or why is it that Gerry’s plane was allowed to land?  Or why he could move around with little more than a limp after being impaled after a plane crash (I wont go into that).

Also: Do not watch it in 3D, whatever you do.)

weekend music breakout

by tobybee

“Filmed June 9, 2013, Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Festival. Michael Winograd and the Klezmer Orchestra International entertain the crowd outside the Museum at Eldridge Street. Steve Weintraub facilitates dancing.

In it’s thirteenth year, the Egg Rolls and Egg Creams Festival celebrates the Chinese and Jewish communities who’ve called the neighborhood home. It’s one big block party both inside and out combining history, culture, music, performances, and folk arts demonstrations.”

these brave women

by tobybee

south korean jews

by tobybee

so this short video of some residents at one of the jewish care homes in melbourne watching the video clip of ‘gangnam style’ has been doing the facebook and blogging rounds over the last couple of weeks.

and it annoyed me from the beginning. in part that annoyance is driven – if i am honest – by my feelings of alienation from the majority of people in the melbourne jewish communities, which has been hammered home for me by a number of incidents and interactions with friends and non-friends over the last couple of months (all of which are way too boring to mention here). and so, because i’m dafka, i’m going to resent something like this, which comes straight out of the belly of the Community.

but i also think that there’s something incredibly problematic in this clip, and that is its essentialising force. it’s interesting to me that people commenting seem to find this a highly amusing clip. and i wonder where the humour comes from. from what i can understand, it seems to be that people experience the clip as a disjuncture being played out: these elderly people inherently can’t relate to the clip. so along with the humour, people note the poignancy of those who make larger meaning of the clip, winding in their personal wisdom. but that seems also to reinforce the disjuncture: they are making meaning despite the situation; or, maybe, they’re rising above the situation in some way that does not seem to trouble the disjuncture. but the representation of the disjuncture is a source of humour.

but then what is this disjuncture? the commentary seems to be saying that these people won’t be able to relate to the music and visuals not just because of a perceived generational gap – although that is fundamentally important too (which makes me wonder, why do people enjoy suggesting that particular music is for particular generations?) – but also because of an ethnic gap. and in doing so, that ethnic gap is racialised: the boundaries between jew and south korean are overdetermined. the humour comes, it seems, from the idea of these old jews being out of place watching south korean music. which also overdetermines, or essentialises, the music as south korean. so the humour comes from the boundaries between jewishness and south koreanness being reinforced. which seems to me an inevitable problem: the assertion that jews are not south korean and that south koreans are not jews seems to cut off certain possibilities.

spare cash?

by tobybee

if you have any, there are some good places that you could kick it to… and if you don’t (like me. curse the vagaries of employment in the tertiary education sector!), then maybe you could pass on this info to others you know who do.

in no particular order:

firstly, RISE in Melbourne has written that

Last Wednesday we had 54 families and 84 adults came to RISE to access our foodbank total of 138 asylum seekers and we ran out two weeks worth of food in one day. Now we are complete out of stock and need your urgent support for our foodbank.

The RISE FoodBank aims to address the initial critical needs of the
most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers within our community by providing access to free dry food and fruits and vegetables. In order to reach our goal to provide our community with access to food, we are calling for donations of food items to be donated to the RISE food bank.

Food items that we urgently need include:

• Rice
• Oil
• Sugar
• Pasta
• Pasta Sauce/Tomato Sauce
• Milk
• Tea and Coffee
• Bread
• Fruits and Vegetables
• Tuna
• Lentils
• Plain Flour
• Instant Noodles/Vermicelli Noodles
• Canned Tomatoes

In order to donate, please drop off items at our office: Level 1, 247
Flinders Lane, Melbourne or you can do you order before Wednesday via online shopping.

PS:- Many of the RISE members have been released to the community through the based detention scheme and do not have the right to work or access to government support services. RISE also supports a large number of families in community detention, many who are ill-equipped to meet their daily food requirements, therefore they are at risk of falling through the cracks of the system to the point that they cannot afford basic food and are left in a perilous state.

so if you can drop off some food, that would be rad.

secondly, AJDS is currently running a fundraising campaign for Grassroots Jerusalem, and a generous anonymous donor has offered to match donations dollar for dollar, up to $5000. pretty great!

The AJDS – Grassroots Jerusalem fundraising project:

The AJDS is supporting Grassroots Jerusalem (GJ) to raise awareness about the human rights violations committed in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and to further the local development of community-based advocacy.

Our project is designed to apply your financial contribution directly to each stage of the community development process and to include you in developing the Grassroots Jerusalem global network.

Our project is specifically aimed at supporting two communities in Jerusalem: Al-Walajeh and Al- Jahalin.

and thirdly, you can support The Helix Project:

What is Helix?

The Helix Project tells the story of the life, not the death, of the Jews of Eastern Europe. For too long, mainstream Jewish institutions have distilled the fascinating history of Jewish life to a handful of talking points: religion, Israel, Holocaust, and a vague emphasis on “maintaining Jewish identity.” Helix wants to transform the way Jewish history is taught and perceived.

We bring a group of 12 university students to the historical heartland of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe for an expenses-paid three-week long immersion in cultural history to see how European Jewish life, contrary to the dominant story, was not a successive chain of miseries — but a millennium filled with creativity, joy, and vitality.

We start in LA with an intensive crash course in the languages, history, and culture of Eastern European Jewish life. The trip then moves to Europe, where students follow in the footsteps of Yiddish poets in Belarus, visit centers of Jewish political activism in Poland, and make a literary pilgrimage to Vilnius, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.”

Helix students take the lead in sharing their skills and knowledge—academic, artistic, and social—with the group, learn to facilitate discussion and to navigate exploration of new sites. Helix takes students out of the classroom and into the streets of the places that were recently home to the majority of the world’s Jewish population.

Helix is organized by Yiddishkayt, the trend-setting non-profit which has promoted Yiddish language and culture, and especially the values of cultural openness and compassion embodied in that culture, for the past two decades.

“interstices we would normally eschew”

by tobybee

there’s a lot going on that’s kicking my ass at the moment, but here’s six and a half minutes of excellence that reminded me why i do what i do

(i thought it was better to share this tonight than an essay on why the liberal party’s announcement today that they are going to cut funding to anyone (with a particular focus on academics) who supports bds is utterly atrocious and terrifying (for it is an exemplary disciplinary measure to ensure that those of us who are political radicals, or simply stand for movements for justice, as well as academics are forced to compromise ourselves in some way). better that we should have some hope, a vision for a better world, than engaging with that tripe)

(hattip to C.F.)

nakba poem

by jewonthisguest

a guestpost (or, more precisely, the sharing of a poem) by friend of the blog, and Melbourne-based writer, Micaela Sahhar

On the day of our Nakba, a reflection on an article published in The New York Times during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Describing a scene of chaotic abjection at Shifa Hospital, a journalist wrote ‘all hope flickered out’. In response I wrote a poem, angered by the ease of a suggestion that the Palestinians might just fold if things got bad enough. They have, and we haven’t. So in acknowledgment, love and solidarity with all Palestinian people today, but particularly to the ones in my life: you, the life blood, our hope has not flickered out.

Reportage
(for shoe throwers everywhere)

Hope flickered out, the journalist purpled describing
the body of a young man who two hours frozen
returned: the shudder of a wrist, fresh blood at his
mouth (no one on hand to explain how air waits
in the lungs for hours) – instead, his brother yelled
‘How could you keep him in the refrigerator?’ The journalist

(again) described the family member – Male, Angry.
Later that day, in an event seemingly unrelated, Two
males (angry) scaled the barrier at Qalqilya. Ignoring
the warning shots, apparently (so logically what followed
were shots to kill). In the event, One survived, however,
while others kept throwing rocks. Analysis some years

hence evinces a picture of how the journalist’s
prose has perished, exposing the planar nucleus of
transmission again. Hope has not flickered out.

pieces of the past

by tobybee

I think a lot about how to create social change, or how to engage with people in effective ways, or when to scrap strategy and just stand in solidarity. I have no idea how effective Szmul Zygielbojm thought he was being when he killed himself 70 years ago, on May 12, 1943 – he gassed himself and asked to be cremated – or when he sent this letter explaining why. But it is clear that his actions are affecting and that they ask us to consider what we are willing to do in solidarity with others.

Zygielbojm – a Bundist – wrote this letter, Yiddishkeyt explains, “in utter despair upon receiving the news of the complete destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, in protest at the passivity with which the world was reacting in the face of the ongoing genocide, and in an act of unimaginable solidarity — killed himself by gas in his London apartment. In his note he wrote: ‘I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people in Poland whose representative I am are being exterminated.'”

gendered dating etiquette

by tobybee

Someone I know was interviewed for this sbs podcast that played today, called “A look at ethnic dating in Australia”. The transcript shows that a variety of ethnic groups were involved in this, including the Jews. And as a result I discovered an Australian-based matchmaking site called J-Junction. Michelle Lewis, who runs the site, says in the podcast that “The reason that continuity is so important for the Jewish community is that if we look at the statistics – and we do when there’s a census, we look at those and we have people who do reports on them – and within a couple of generations at the current rate of intermarriage there will be hardly any people worldwide outside of Israel who actually identify as Jewish.”

I find comments like this super-interesting. I can’t imagine that it’s possibly empirically true (that within a couple of generations there might not be many people who identify as Jewish), and it’s a nice bit of a Zionist fantasy in there too, but it’s more interesting to think about how such statements come to have meaning. How is this link between intermarriage and Jewish identity developed and maintained? Where does it get its force from? How does such a link become thinkable?

Leaving that to one side, on the website (which I explored strictly for research purposes only), they explain that the system works by a matchmaker setting up two people. And then, “When two members mutually approve a match, phone numbers are sent to both members to arrange a conversation and then plan a date. Men are encouraged to contact women within three (3) days of receiving the phone number. If he cannot call the woman, then he should contact the matchmaker to let her know when he will be calling. If women would like to make the initial contact this must be mentioned to your matchmaker.”

Because of course, if a woman wants to call a man, alarms must be sounded. Remember that ladies.

indefinite detention

by tobybee

About thirty minutes drive north from my house, in Broadmeadows, sits MITA, the Melbourne Immigrant Transit Accommodation facility. You hear that name and it’s possible to imagine that the people who are detained inside are merely on their way through, temporarily being held there until they are released in some way. Tragically though, at the moment that’s not the case.

Approximately 50 refugees – people, most of whom are Tamil, who have been through the disastrously long and unwieldy processes that our government hurls at them and have proven their refugee status – being imprisoned there have been given a negative assessment by ASIO. They are “ASIO rejected refugees”. This means, quite simply, that ASIO has said that there is a problem with them – that they are a danger in some way – but they have not explained how, or in what way. As others have pointed out, this can mean that there has been a determination not that a refugee has done anything wrong before, but that they have the potential to do something wrong in the future. Moreover, ASIO assessments are kept secret: the refugees are not told of the allegations against them, nor are their lawyers. nobody. there is no possibility of appeal. The effect of this is to create a situation of indefinite detention: they are refugees, but are not allowed out of prison. Think about that. (it seems to me just one more reason why systems of detention are never ok, why we need to be working so hard to take that right to imprison away from governments)

And so some of these men – 27 at the moment – sitting in Broadmeadows, have begun a hunger strike. Today is day 6. They are spending their time sitting outside, and have painted banners (one of which you can see here) to try to communicate with the Australian population, and with the Government who holds the key to their futures. On Day one they released this statement to explain what they are doing:

MESSAGE FROM THE ASIO REJECTED REFUGEES:

We are 30 people here at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (25 Tamils, 2 Burmese and 2 Iranian) and 56 people all over the Australian detention. We have been here for four years and more. We cannot tolerate it any longer. We need to be released to save our
lives.

At 2 a.m. today (Monday, April 8, 2013) we began a hunger strike together. All 30 of us plan to keep doing this until there is solution, one way or the other.

We will gather together in the grounds of the detention centre and stay there until we get a solution. If the Australian Government does not release us, we ask that they kill us mercifully.

We have painted banners as part of our protest. There is one that shows many people hanging. That is what we want to happen to us if we are not released. for life here.

People in here are jumping off rooves, they are going on hunger strikes, they are taking tablets, they are trying to hang themselves……It is a cruel and inhumane environment for everyone.

We plead with you, the Australian people, to help us. We are on the edge of life and don’t know how much longer we can stand it.

We ask Prime Minister Gillard, Immigration Minister O’Connor, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus Opposition leader Abbott and ASIO director David Irvine to stop this torture of all of us……. of
men, women and children, who have done nothing to warrant this cruel treatment that is destroying our minds.

We ask the authorities : You say we are a threat to this nation. So if we are such people why have they now put women and children and families in here with us? We are willing to be released into
the community under strict orders if they think we are threats, which we aren’t. But whatever they want we will do.

But we can’t keep living like this. We are not in detention. We are in a cemetery.

We don’t want to die. We left Sri Lanka, Burmese and Iran because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

SIGNED.
ALL ASIO REFUGEES-AUSTRALIA.

This is happening 30 minutes down the road from my house. That fact hits me over the head; my friends have kept remarking on it in the last couple of days (despite the fact that we try to care about, mourn, and grieve lives that are damaged all around the world, that we fight against injustice in all sorts of places). There is something particularly awful about this happening at the edge of an industrial park, just down the road.

Some people have set up a 24 hour solidarity vigil at MITA, people are going inside to visit the refugees, and others are visiting the vigil briefly. I went yesterday for a couple of hours. It was one of the more distressing moments of a life. We went around the side, and stood with a warehouse, long driveway and fences between us and the men. We waved to each other, clapped so we could all hear each other, and those of us on the outside shouted words of support. And it seemed quite simple: this situation should not exist. And quite horrifying: but it does.

So what can you do? what should you do?
Firstly, you should care. You should care that this is being done by your government, that this is happening just down the road.

Secondly, you should take action. There’s so many levels to what needs to be done. The Minister – Brendan O’Connor – is the man who can make the decision to free them. What power he holds. You can contact him and tell him to release these refugees. Send him an email, call his office, visit his electorate office (which happens to be in Caroline Springs, also not far down the road).

Keep up to date with what is happening by looking at this blog, visiting this facebook event or visiting the RISE facebook page.

You can go join the vigil. It doesn’t matter how long you go for, anytime offers something. I’ve been told that the vigil brings some comfort and support to those on hunger strike. There is no doubt that being able to see each other, and interact in that small way, brings some comfort. By visiting you can also support those who are camping there, and maintaining the vigil.

And, it seems to me, everyone should see what is being done, what is happening. Everyone should understand the processes put in place to determine the lives of people. Everyone should understand the structures of control and discrimination operated by the government. This should not be happening. Neither ASIO nor the government should have this power over life and death. The people must be freed.