Tasnim: Conflict of Loyalty

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

Conflict of Loyalty

3 comments:

northshorewoman said...: this clip is really frustrating. It doesn't even begin to get at the complexities of Druze and other ethnic/religious identities inside Israel and the multiple locations they occupy in unequal relations of power--with the Ashkenazi/white Europeans and North Americans at the top of the hierarchy. Only for the last minute does this clip begin to enter into some of the multiple positions they take up (some see themselves in a pan-Arab light but others do not even consider themselves Arabs--in fact, there is historical animosity, and this is just a simplification of much more complex realities). Even the term "conflict of loyalty" is such a poor term that reproduces the simplistic --and wrong-- binary of Jews against Arabs and vice versa. A number of the snipers who went willingly into the Gaza bloodbath one year ago were Druze. Indeed, they are often trained and placed as the snipers. Indeed, the Druze themselves requested conscription into the Israeli army in the 50s. Another thing, there is so much racism in the ME, whether in Israel, Lebanon, Bahrain, wherever. Lots of 'brown racism.' One thing I have learned--and heard-- in my limited knowledge is that there is a lot of racism against the Palestinians. Self-defined Phoenicians have murdered Palestinians, why not Druze?; Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tasnim said...: You can see the rest of the program on aljazeera's youtube channel.

I feel like the discussion in the last part esp takes up some of the problems you talk about, for example in referring to those who wanted to be part of the Israeli army, although it doesn't really go into what these multiple positions mean for the community.

I see your point that it doesn't get into the complexities, but I guess one program can't be in depth enough to cover all the issues, there is bound to be some simplification.; Wednesday, December 23, 2009
lilly said...: @northshorewoman:
i don't agree with you... have you seen the whole documentary? I was actually baffled about how they managed to master the complexity of the problem in such a short amount of time. I'm not saying that that's all there is to it, of course it provides us only with glimpses into the set of problems, but it still manages to give insight into parts of the story that under the rug.

@tasmin:
do you know where the different parts of the doc are still available? For some reason they're marked as "private" on youtube and can't be watch any longer...

thanks!; Thursday, January 07, 2010

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