The Nakba, commemorated annually on this day as "Nakba Day", was the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 following Israel's creation. Nakba Day protests take place around the world and have been attacked by Israel.
The foundational events of the Nakba took place during and shortly after the 1947-1949 Palestine war, including 78% of Mandatory Palestine being declared as Israel, the exodus of 700,000 Palestinians, the depopulation and destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and subsequent geographical erasure, the denial of the Palestinian right of return, and the creation of permanent, stateless Palestinian refugees.
Although May 15th had been used as an unofficial commemoration of the Nakba since 1949, Nakba Day was formalized in 1998 after Yasser Arafat proposed that Palestinians should mark the 50th anniversary of the Nakba during the First Intifada.
The Nakba was a key event in the development of Palestinian culture and is a foundational symbol of Palestinian identity, along with "Handala", a ten-year old cartoon character developed by Naji al-Ali; the keffiyeh, a checkered black and white scarf worn around the head; and the "symbolic key" (many Palestinian refugees have kept the keys to the homes they were forced to flee).
On Nakba Day 2011, Palestinians and other Arabs from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria marched towards their respective borders, or ceasefire lines and checkpoints in Israeli-occupied territories, to mark the event. At least twelve Palestinians and supporters were killed and hundreds wounded as a result of shootings by the Israeli Army.
"In resisting the Nakba, the Palestinians have struck at the heart of the Zionist project that insists that the Nakba be seen as a past event. In resisting Israel, Palestinians have forced the world to witness the Nakba as present action; one that, contrary to Zionist wisdom, is indeed reversible." - Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad
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Al-Nakba: The Palestinian catastrophe - Episode 1 | Featured Documentary
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Farha (2021) internationally co-produced historical drama film about a Palestinian girl's coming-of-age experience during the Nakba, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians from their homeland. Its on Netflix
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The History of "Socialist" Zionism | Leftist Zionists did the Nakba & founded Israel
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Using indigenous motifs would, I think, depend heavily on whether indigenous film makers, writers, and other workers were involved in the production and wanted to incorporate indigenous themes. There's a "Magical Indian" trope in US cinema where indigenous people are used as a magical figure to guide the white protagonist and it's generally very poor representation that furthers the settler-colonial myth that indigenous Americans are all gone, their nations and societies are in the past instead of being a modern part of North American culture, politics, and economics.
The "Frontier Preacher" is a pretty stock character in westerns. I think you could do some cool things playing the austerity of American protestantism and it's fire and brimstone ideology against the more spiritual and weird elements of Arthurian grail stories. Taking the black suit black hat black tie protestant preacher with fire and spittle pouring from his mouth then cutting to a dreamier, more interpretive, more fluid mystical Christian figure could shake things up. Like have Gawain sitting in Church watching this guy preach about everyone going to hell, and then it cuts to some surreal sequence where the woman sitting next to him is revealed to be a ghostly saint figure, something like that.
You know, if the writers and crew did want to engage with, idk, the relationship between colonizers and indigenous people, I could see something where Gawain is challenged to abandon the settler colonial mindset, and the resolution is whether he can do that or not, and what it portends for the fate of North America. Something like Gawain has to reckon with his role as an invader and oppressor, and decide whether to abandon the "Good King" represented in US Marshall Arthur and his "Camelot" western town, and go back east, rejecting the violence and cruelty of the frontier. But then that still centers the white guy as the person who has agency with his relationship to settler colonialism, so Idk.
Damn now I'm wondering how you could do the Grail Quest in an American context. Your post has really got me thinking.
I realized there were some problematic elements of using native Americans in that role as soon as I pressed post. But on the other hand, it would be severely messed up to invoke imagery of the old gods/spirits of the land/the old magic in the Americas and have it be Celtic or early Catholic stuff rather than indigenous American stuff.
Protestant imagery is a good angle though.
My understanding was that Gawain and the Green Knight was a thoroughly Christian story and Gawain's ultimate submission to the Green Knight is an allegory for Christ sacrificing himself on the cross?
There are multiple interpretations kf Gawain and the Green Knight. But the idea of the Green knight specifically being connected either with imagery like the green man, Satan, Hades, or the wild man who stands outside of the Christian order is pretty common, while still serving as a judge of Christian virtue.
And of course his Green halls is a pretty obvious parallel to the fairy knolls of celtic mythology
It is of course a Christian story, as are most of the stories of the Arthurian mythos, but it is impossible to look at these stories and not see the way in which for instance Christian figures through their virtue confront figures steeped in pagan imagery.
Cool, thank you for the explanation.