LYRIC:
The Exodus Song, "This Land is Mine"
(Lyrics by Pat Boone. Sung by Andy Williams)

This land is mine
God gave this land to me

This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun
Reveals her hills and plains
Then I see a land
Where children can run free.

So take my hand
And walk this land with me
And walk this lovely land with me
Tho' I am just a man

When you are by my side

With the help of God
I know I can be strong.

Tho' I am just a man

When you are by my side

With the help of God
I know I can be strong.

To make this land our home

If I must fight

I'll fight to make this land our own.
Until I die this land is mine!

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Early Man
This generic “cave man” represents the first human settlers in Israel/Canaan/the Levant. Whoever they were.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Canaanite
What did ancient Canaanites look like? I don’t know, so this is based on ancient Sumerian art.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Egyptian
Canaan was located between two huge empires. Egypt controlled it sometimes, and…

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Assyrian
….Assyria controlled it other times.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Israelite
The “Children of Israel” conquered the shit out of the region, according to bloody and violent Old Testament accounts.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Babylonian
Then the Baylonians destroyed their temple and took the Hebrews into exile.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Macedonian/Greek
Here comes Alexander the Great, conquering everything!

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Greek/Macedonian
No sooner did Alexander conquer everything, than his generals divided it up and fought with each other.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Ptolemaic
Greek descendants of Ptolemy, another of Alexander’s competing generals, ruled Egypt dressed like Egyptian god-kings. (The famous Cleopatra of western mythology and Hollywood was a Ptolemy.)

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Seleucid
More Greek-Macedonian legacies of Alexander.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Hebrew Priest
This guy didn’t fight, he just ran the Second Temple re-established by Hebrews in Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Maccabee
Led by Judah “The Hammer” Maccabee, who fought the Seleucids, saved the Temple, and invented Channukah. Until…

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Roman
….the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and absorbed the region into the Roman Empire…

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Byzantine
….which split into Eastern and Western Empires. The eastern part was called the Byzantine Empire. I don’t know if “Romans” ever fought “Byzantines” (Eastern Romans) but this is a cartoon.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Arab Caliph
Speaking of cartoon, what did an Arab Caliph look like? This was my best guess.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Crusader
After Crusaders went a-killin’ in the name of Jesus Christ, they established Crusader states, most notably the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Mamluk of Egypt
Wikipedia sez, “Over time, mamluks became a powerful military caste in various Muslim societies…In places such as Egypt from the Ayyubid dynasty to the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, mamluks were considered to be “true lords”, with social status above freeborn Muslims.” And apparently they controlled Palestine for a while.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Ottoman Turk
Did I mention this is a cartoon? Probably no one went to battle looking like this. But big turbans, rich clothing and jewelry seemed to be in vogue among Ottoman Turkish elites, according to paintings I found on the Internet.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Arab
A gross generalization of a generic 19-century “Arab”.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست British
The British formed alliances with Arabs, then occupied Palestine. This cartoon is an oversimplification, and uses this British caricature as a stand-in for Europeans in general.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Palestinian
The British occupied this guy’s land, only to leave it to a vast influx of….

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست European Jew/Zionist
Desperate and traumatized survivors of European pogroms and death camps, Jewish Zionist settlers were ready to fight to the death for a place to call home, but…

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah
….so were the people that lived there. Various militarized resistance movements arose in response to Israel: The Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست State of Israel
Backed by “the West,” especially the US, they got lots of weapons and the only sanctioned nukes in the region.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست Guerrilla/Freedom Fighter/Terrorist
Sometimes people fight in military uniforms, sometimes they don’t.

▧ تصویر در دسترس نیست and finally…
The Angel of Death
The real hero of the Old Testament, and right now too.