Who's Killing Who? A Viewer's
Guide
Because you can't tell the players without a pogrom!
Early Man
This generic "cave man" represents the first human settlers in
Israel/
Canaan/the Levant. Whoever they were.
Canaanite
What did ancient Canaanites look like? I don't know, so this is based on ancient
Sumerian art.
Egyptian
Canaan was located between two huge empires.
Egypt controlled it sometimes, and
...
Assyrian
....
Assyria controlled it other times.
Israelite
The "Children of Israel" conquered the shit out of the region, according to bloody and violent
Old Testament accounts.
Babylonian
Then the Baylonians destroyed their temple and took the
Hebrews into exile.
Macedonian/Greek
Here comes
Alexander the Great, conquering everything!
Greek/Macedonian
No sooner did
Alexander conquer everything, than his generals divided it up and fought with each other.
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.)
Seleucid
More Greek-Macedonian legacies of Alexander.
Hebrew Priest
This guy didn't fight, he just ran the
Second Temple re-established by Hebrews in
Jerusalem after the
Babylonian Exile.
Maccabee
Led by Judah "
The Hammer" Maccabee, who fought the
Seleucids, saved the
Temple, and invented Channukah. Until...
Roman
....the
Romans destroyed the Second Temple and absorbed the region into the
Roman Empire...
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.
Arab Caliph
Speaking of cartoon, what did an Arab Caliph look like? This was my best guess.
Crusader
After
Crusaders went a-killin' in the name of
Jesus Christ, they established
Crusader states, most notably the
Kingdom of Jerusalem.
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.[
7]" And apparently they controlled
Palestine for a while.
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.
Arab
A gross generalization of a generic 19-century "Arab".
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.
Palestinian
The British occupied this guy's land, only to leave it to a vast influx of....
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...
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.
Guerrilla/
Freedom Fighter/TerroristState of Israel
Backed by "the
West," especially the US, they got lots of weapons and the only sanctioned nukes in the region.
Guerrilla/Freedom Fighter/
Terrorist
Sometimes people fight in military uniforms, sometimes they don't. Creeping up alongside are illicit nukes possibly from
Iran or elsewhere in the region.
Who's Next?
and finally...
The Angel of Death
The real hero of the Old Testament, and right now too.
- published: 03 Oct 2012
- views: 222044